Faith and 38,000 paths to Hell

[widdershins]

Since all the previous discussions are now archived I thought I would post something some of you might find to be an interesting read.  The format is going to basically be like a blog post.  I don't update my blog any more (ran out of things to say and time to say it most of the time – maybe some day), so this is a good time to put such a post here.

Please keep in mind that some of the facts in this article are from memory, though I have taken efforts to double check them briefly.  If you find anything factually wrong, please point it out and I will correct it.

There are many Christian religions which claim to be the "one true path".  Some of them actually believe that any Christians not like them are going to Hell.  They're proud of the fact that they, alone, got it right.  How do they know they got it right?  Faith, of course.

Think about that for a moment.  There are over 38,000 Christian denominations.  If you devoted just one single hour to learning about each one it would take you more than 4 years to learn about them all.  And that's 4 years straight.  No work, no sleep, no food, no water, no bathroom breaks.  That doesn't even include the time it would take to gather all the information together, not to mention the expense.  And there are new ones popping up all the time.  Assuming the Christian God is real he obviously doesn't expect each and every one of us to devote our entire lives to finding the right path.  If he expected that then every single person on the planet would have time for nothing else.  Nothing would get done.  There would be no food, no innovation, no electricity because nobody would have the time to work for a living.

So, how are we to find the "one right path"?  Through faith.  Fucking faith!  In other words, "Pick one and assume it's correct".  It's no wonder the path to righteousness is so narrow.  If you picked one at random you'd only have a 1 in 38,000 chance of picking the right one.  And you're likely to pick from one of the religions you already know about, such as Catholicism, but the churches who believe the "one right path" thing are usually smaller churches that many people haven't even heard of, reducing your chances even more.  Why the hell would I pick one at random if only 1 in 38,000 will get me to Heaven (or Paradise Earth or Valhalla or whatever)?

There are several possible conclusions I can draw from this.  The first is that God does, indeed, expect you to spend your entire adult life finding the one right path.  Let's face it, it's going to take way more than an hour to research each and every religion.  It would pretty much consume my entire life and, if it were cut short, I'd still be screwed.  Oh well, go to Hell, should have worked harder, I guess.

The second is that God expects us to be logical about it.  The Bible says that the church was born with the death of Jesus.  Many take the line, "Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it" to mean that, from the day the church was born, it has always existed in its current form.  This means that we can rule out any recent additions.  In fact, this makes it easy.  We go back as far as we can and see which church was first.  Don't want to look it up?  It gets even easier.  The Catholic church put together the Bible.  They're the one right church, right?  But, there's a problem.  The Catholic church doesn't ascribe to the "only we will go to Heaven" philosophy.  This presents a conundrum, but one with an easy answer.  Fundies are outright wrong, plain and simple.

Of course, they will argue that their church is the "one right church", which has always existed since the Day of Pentecost.  They were "that other church", but then they started getting it wrong, so the "real church" split off.  In this way they can neatly claim that the "one right church" has always existed from the beginning.  At least, that's what they think.  But it's not entirely true.  The first "one right church" has to start getting it wrong before the true "one right church" can say, "Hey!  They're getting it wrong!" and split off.  There must have been at least some amount of time when the "one right church" didn't exist.  On top of that, who says they started getting it wrong?  Weren't the church leaders the mouthpieces of God?  Was it just "some guy" sitting in the pews that decided they were wrong?  How is "some guy" more qualified to speak on behalf of God than "the mouthpiece of God"?

Another problem with this is that the Catholic church can trace a pope back indisputably to the 4th century and, taking a little license, clear back to the first pope.  But the Great Schism didn't happen until the 11th century.  That means that for 700-1,000 years the church had a pope, which was considered a requirement and still is to this day, at least by the Catholic church.  There is no church which claims the "one true religion" nonsense which currently has or has ever had a pope.

So, before we've even come up with any more possible conclusions, including my favorite one, "It's all bullshit", we've already shot down the "one right church" claim.  We didn't even get to the reinterpretations of the Bible used by fringe religions such as Jehovah's Witnesses and how ridiculous it is that a group of people with no experience or expertise in ancient languages would be better at translating the original documents than those who chose which of those documents to include.  We didn't get to the fact that the Bible, which these fundies base their every belief on, was drastically changed in the 16th century with 7 books being thrown out (or, as I like to point out to fundies, if you count I and II Maccabees as a single book, "the Maccabees", protestants threw out 6 books of the Bible, leaving 66, making the protestant Bible the mark of the beast, created to lead the devout away from the one true church).  Originally compiled in the 4th century, that means that the Catholic Bible existed more than twice as long just BEFORE the King James version came about than the King James version has existed altogether.

There is PLENTY of evidence that if it is true that there is, indeed, only one true Christian church it MUST BE the Catholic church.  Obviously God doesn't want us to figure it out logically.

So it comes down to "you just have to have faith".  You just have to choose our religion and PRETEND you know it to be the one right religion, regardless what your brain or common sense have to say about it.  It boggles the mind how anyone can make a choice like that.  I often tell my Jehovah's Witness friend, "I chose a religion on faith the last time.  I chose wrong.  This time I need more."  He still hasn't found a way to answer that.  After all, he can't deny I chose wrong.  He tries to show me in the Bible how they are the "one right religion", according to scripture.  He doesn't understand that my last religion could show me in the Bible how THEY had the "one right religion".

So, when someone tries to tell you that they have the "one right religion", throw some of this heavy shit on them.  Tell me what happens.  I've only ever gotten to use it once before and I was a young atheist then, more interested in scoring a point than making one.  I would love to see all of this explained away.  Because I know it can be.  With enough time, enough delusion and enough faith you can make anything which says your cherished belief system is wrong disappear, but it's still a neat trick to see every single time.

EDIT: First long ramble!  Woohoo!

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Not every denomination condemns all other denominations.

It is true that a real hardcore Catholic will insist that unless you get your last rites from a priest you will go to hell.
It is true that a fundamentalist Baptist will insist that unless you are born again and can describe when it happened you will go to hell.
It is also true that a hardcore Lutheran will say that the Catholic and the Baptist and the Lutheran are all going to Heaven, but only the Lutheran knows why.

[widdershins]

Not every denomination condemns all other denominations.

It is true that a real hardcore Catholic will insist that unless you get your last rites from a priest you will go to hell.
It is true that a fundamentalist Baptist will insist that unless you are born again and can describe when it happened you will go to hell.
It is also true that a hardcore Lutheran will say that the Catholic and the Baptist and the Lutheran are all going to Heaven, but only the Lutheran knows why.

The first two sentences of the actual "post" address the fact that "some" Christian denominations believe this.  The rest of that is a little interesting and vaguely amusing.  What other little fun facts like that do you know?

[ApostateLois]

I often tell my Jehovah's Witness friend, "I chose a religion on faith the last time. I chose wrong. This time I need more." He still hasn't found a way to answer that. After all, he can't deny I chose wrong. He tries to show me in the Bible how they are the "one right religion", according to scripture. He doesn't understand that my last religion could show me in the Bible how THEY had the "one right religion".

 I went to a United Methodist church when I was a kid, only because my mom and aunt and other relatives attended and I didn't have much choice. When I got older, I switched to a Methodist church--not because I felt they preached the Word of God better, but because they seemed friendlier and more welcoming, and they had more activities for teens and children. Later still, I started going to an Assembly of God church--again, not really because they were closer to God or anything, but because there were more activities going on to hold my interest, and I met some nice people there. Finally, in my early 20s, I joined the Worldwide Church of God, and this time it was because I felt they lived closer to what was taught in the Bible (by keeping the OT holy days, for example). Guess I was becoming more spiritually aware by that time, or was searching for something more fulfilling, or something. At any rate, I felt that, this time, I had found the Real Deal. Assuming I was correct, if I had died while still attending one of those other churches, would I have gone to heaven? Are there different parts of heaven for different varieties of Christian? Why would God require faith to pick the correct church, but then make faith so unreliable that millions of people end up in the wrong church without knowing it? For some reason, I never asked these questions. I don't think very many Christians ever ask them; if they do, they keep it to themselves so as not to seem to be giving in to Satanic doubts.

It is also true that a hardcore Lutheran will say that the Catholic and the Baptist and the Lutheran are all going to Heaven, but only the Lutheran knows why.

  That's great!