There are not many people in paradise, but the population of hell is huge?!?!

[Soph0571]

That must be what many evangelical Christians believe. For millions of Christians the belief that you must be born again to enter the Kingdom of God is a fundamental cornerstone of their belief system:

‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again he cannot enter the Kingdom of God’, so said Jesus to Nicodemus. A puzzled Nicodemus asks how is it possible for a man to be born when he is old. The answer of course was that man should be reborn in the spirit, not in the flesh. Millions of Christians claim to have experienced that spiritual rebirth, without which they believe you cannot enter Heaven.

However what about the millions who are brought up as Christian but whose religious rules and mores say something different. Catholics for example, believe in talking to God through Priests, not through Jesus. There is 1.2 billion that are alive today, heading for the fiery inferno. How about those with no faith who live a life of good works. Fire and brimstone for you. Faithful Muslim, praying 5 times a day? 1.5 billion, burning for eternity.

Hell is starting to look pretty crowded. 2.5 billion Souls, just taking into account currently living Catholics and Muslims. Of course we have had 200,000 years of homo-sapiens on planet earth before the birth of Christ. We have all the people in all the world, who by virtue of their geographic location, or by the time of their birth, could never have possibly heard the word of God, and therefore could never make the choice to be born again? How many do you think that adds to the fiery pit?

Born again Christians believe that you cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven unless your spiritual experience is exactly like theirs. Current estimates suggest that worldwide there are about 285 million evangelical Christians. About 13.1% of the total population. They are going to heaven. Everyone else is going to hell. Sounds somewhat like a privileged, gated, white middle class community to me. Does your face fit? Can you follow the rules? Do you think, act, and behave exactly like us? Praise Jesus or be damned. Truly. In this version of events there really are not many people in paradise.


Just sayin'

[MineralMan]

1. Neither exists.

[3Hotdogs]

3. I don't know about that. I just got back from the Naughty store.

Spirit's been rising all afternoon.

[htuttle]

2. I've always heard...

[rownesheck]

4. If heaven is full of evangelicals,

I'll request a fast track transfer to hell. Plus, hell is where all the good music will be.

[Major Nikon]

13. Proof Rock-n-Roll linked to devil worship

[rownesheck]

14. Ha ha!

I love it! It's sad to see it declining after 2000, though!

[edhopper]

5. According to the TV Show The Good Place

nobody has gotten into The Good Place in over 400 years.

Consequences of a complex world.

[TreasonousBastard]

9. I love that show...

Don't have a link, but I was reading an article a year or so ago that it's creator spent several years intensely studying everything from Aristotle to Sartre, with a whole host of Hobbs, Augustine and Origen in the mix. And a lot of Eastern thought.

[edhopper]

10. It shows

I think it is the first show to ever tackle the Trolley Problem.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. Missed that, somehow. Were they happy with their answer?

[safeinOhio]

6. Isn't a billion years like less than

Second in eternity? I think that is a fair question.

[gtar100]

7. They are implying the Christian God is sadistic.

Forever is kind of a long time and it's got to take one helluva bad attitude to continually reconstitute people over and over again for billions and trillions of years just to repeatedly torture them. What kind of sin warrants that kind of treatment anyway.

I don't subscribe to their conceptual idea of heaven and hell, but even in keeping with their line of thought, I just don't think they thought the whole thing through quite enough. It's nonsensical.

[TreasonousBastard]

8. This question came up a lot while I was growing up in a...

conservative Lutheran church.

Aside from just how big Hell must be, we also questioned the fate of those in parts of the world that had not seen the Word and therefore could not be saved.

We ended up getting fair amount of gibberish about a fair and generous God who would only reserve Hell for those who denied God, not those who had no chance to accept Jesus.

"So, where do they go? If they don't deserve Hell, do they hang with the saved in Heaven, or is there someplace special for them?"

"Mumble, mumble..."

At any rate, we now know that the cosmos is large enough to have a hell big enough for galaxies of evildoers.

[brooklynite]

12. So, sort of like Business Class and Economy?