Will you make it to Heaven?

[Vincitveritas]

Take the quiz and see!

jesusplusnothing.com/the-heaven-test

@Parker231 that's absolutely my take on it. Something is either wrong, or it's not. Wrong is measured by harm done. Everything else, as long as all those involved are able to consent and do so, is fine. That covers pretty much everything.

Why - it’s a major issue for women and regularly spoken about in the context of religion. Similar problem by the church with same sex marriages.
Can you expect to go to Hell if you have an abortion?

@Parker231 Because it's not relevant to the thread, because it's very emotive and likely to upset people on a website like Mumsnet and because the majority here will be pro choice.

Having an abortion is like any other sin and it's not appropriate to say whether or not a person will go to Hell. God forgives anyone who truly repents from their heart. Sin is not a tangible 'thing' it just means behaving in a way which breaks the law of God.

If there were a god, they'd bloody do something to stop it.

@pointythings I will endeavour to do look into it. If that is what's happening it's obviously abhorrent. Your other comment leads us to the question of why God allows suffering in general.

@fireflown I don't wish to get into a mud-slinging contest with you.

@OMG12 Saint Augustine was a prominent Catholic, as was Dante. Plenty of other notable Christians have had different, equally valid thoughts on the matter.

I don't wish to get into a mud-slinging contest with you.

You seem to think anyone disagreeing with you is mudslinging. You started this thread with thr intention of promoting Christianity but there are places where Christians and Churches are doing serious harm.

I wonder if society would head to the galaxies alot faster without religion, as some would then have to rewrite the whole various religions when humans realise their are various other beings in the various galaxies

@fireflown

You seem to think anyone disagreeing with you is mudslinging.

Not at all, I sensed hostility, always keen for a good natured discussion.

You started this thread with thr intention of promoting Christianity

Did I? This is turning out to be an "I'm a Christian AMA" with a line up of the usual suspects.

some would then have to rewrite the whole various religions when humans realise their are various other beings in the various galaxies

@Hawkins003 I should think there is intelligent life on other planets - there's enough of them! I don't see why it would make much of a difference.

@Vincitveritas , I think that @fireflown raised an incredibly relevant and topical point about religion and the role it still often plays in oppressing people. We could get into the argument about whether those colluding with Uganda's new law are Christians by your lights, but the bottom line is that they consider themselves to be Christians and they are enthusiastically supporting a government which is proposing to execute people for who they choose to love. That's the cold hard truth, a simple Google will tell you as much. This law has been held up before but is now fully back on the cards, and there's not a lot the international community can do about it. Some solid condemnation from the world's Christian community would be nice, though.

Because then various humans would see we are not the only creations by "god" or "goddess"

I think it might make an enormous difference. There's a science fiction show called The Orville, which is basically an excellent homage to Star Trek, and one of its main characters comes from a planet where (you are led to believe) only males exist, and so the only type of relationships that exist are same sex. It's more complicated than that, of course, but it does neatly lead the viewer to think about cultural/religious taboos, their relevance and their adverse impact on a society. It's not beyond the realms of imagination to conceive of a world where the dominant sentient species is single sex, hermaphrodite or otherwise - and that would make Christian heteronormativity look pretty intellectually flawed.

I just hope if humans ever went to war with the galaxy, it's one we could win.

Lovely to know that the church is so unsupportive of a womens rights over her body. Thankfully most people are pro choice and don’t believe that a sin and hell exists. No wonder most people are so critical of religion

Yes, I don't think it's fair to lump all Christians together. I'm not responsible for the actions of everyone who professes to be a Christian, especially when the word can encompass such a broad range of beliefs and practices.
While I'm not a supporter of same-sex marriage within a church setting, gay and lesbian couples should absolutely be able to go about their lives free from harassment and abuse.

Well really at the time of St Augustine it was simply the established church, he set out much of the theology of Christianity outside of the scriptures. Some of which most Christians still believe other bits they don’t.Again, as a Western European, really Dante was just a Christian, it being the really the only option in town in Western Europe if you had any sense.

Now many other interpretations of Christianity have come and gone. Some subscribe to a strict Augustine interpretation of original sin, others that we are inherently sinful (that even baptism doesn’t wipe clean) because we’re separated from God. Much of Christianity has adapted to meet popular demand eg between Augustine and Dante unbaptised babies moved from hell to limbo. Sending babies to hell left a bad taste, even in the mouth of Rome.

Jesus was supposed to heal that wound of separation, yet each church places a lot of focus on sin because fundamentally it allows control.

While I'm not a supporter of same-sex marriage within a church setting, gay and lesbian couples should absolutely be able to go about their lives free from harassment and abuse

A very discriminatory view- so you have no problem with a man and a woman being married in a church but not same sex? Reading your posts makes me think we’re still in the 1950’s!

Because then various humans would see we are not the only creations by "god" or "goddess"

@Hawkins003 Why would that be an issue? After all, God is creator of the entire universe, not just the solar system. As Billy Graham once said, "I firmly believe there are intelligent beings like us far away in space who worship God. But we have nothing to fear from these people. Like us, they are God’s creation.”

https://reasons.org/explore/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/does-the-bible-say-were-alone-in-the-universe

...he set out much of the theology of Christianity outside of the scriptures.

@OMG12 and therein lies the problem my friend!

@Parker231 That's correct, for many reasons, but I'm not getting into a debate about those either.

Most of the Christian belief system that is apparently based on the scriptures is rather dodgy hit and miss interpretation of translated scriptures out of a select few books out of many similar books floating round about the same time. Most of the interpretations ignoring the prevailing culture, origins and purpose of the books thought. Christianity can never just be based on the bible, it needs a wider interpretation if you’re to make a religion.

@OMG12 Two words for you - sola scriptura. The word 'religion' is unsettling.

Which is fine if that’s actually the case and every Christian is reading the scripture and making their own decisions and leaving others to make there’s. But that’s really not the face of Christianity

I think that "Sola Scriptura" is where the divisions in Christianity happens. The Bible is not "self interpreting" as all the various Christian denominations demonstrate - many claiming their's is the correct interpretation. Even the bible says to pass on "that you were taught by us either by our spoken word or by letter" (2Tess 2:15).

Even the Christian interpretation of Salvation being assured is understood differently among different denominations. It shows how the same words in the Bible are defined and understood differently by the different Christian denomination.

@SilverViking agreed, and it is completely logical and inevitable that it should be so. We're all different. It's almost impossible to write without ambiguities, so there's always going to be interpretation. And everyone wants their interpretation to be the right one. Very few people are able to admit that it's impossible to know which one is the right one because none of us were there sat with the author when they were writing and talking us through it.

https://www.focusonthefamily.com/faith/how-do-we-know-the-bible-is-true-2/

Plenty of evidence that the Bible is a work of fiction

@Parker231 there's some lovely delusional circular reasoning on that page. I mean, I'm more likely to believe that stupid deaths are funny 'cos they're true.

Focus on the family? Bloody hell, and those nut jobs still going?

@ShodanLives I would imagine they have been reinvigorated and emboldened of late, sadly.