What if there is no God.....

[Tao_Equus]

okay... I picked 100 years out of the air... and yes, I sound like a Doomsday merchant, but I do think mankind is doomed...

and no, I'm not a depressive, or have had my head shrunk by witch-doctors... I'm just looking around me...

I think the world is on the cusp of profound change but one thing humans do well is survive. I would predict a radical depopulation but not extinction. And I do not think anyone here could ever accuse you of being "a depressive", lucid, forthright and honest yes, depressive no.

Tao

 

[mee]

okay... I picked 100 years out of the air... and yes, I sound like a Doomsday merchant, but I do think mankind is doomed...

and no, I'm not a depressive, or have had my head shrunk by witch-doctors... I'm just looking around me...

for me i can see from the bible that it is not mankind that is doomed , it is false religion that is doomed .

Throughout the world, religious leaders have preached love, peace, and goodness, but they have practiced hatred, war, and ungodliness.



The Bible describes them well. It says: "They publicly declare they know God, but they disown him by their works."—Titus 1:16.

We can see what Jehovah thinks about false religion by reading the Bible book of Revelation.


There, false religion is described as a symbolic woman,
"Babylon the Great." (Revelation 17:5) Note how God describes her:
● "The great harlot . . . with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication." (Revelation 17:1, 2) Rather than being faithful to God, false religion has meddled in politics, often telling governments what to do.


● "In her was found the blood of prophets and of holy ones and of all those who have been slaughtered on the earth." (Revelation 18:24) False religion has persecuted and killed faithful servants of God and has been responsible for the death of millions in warfare.


● "She glorified herself and lived in shameless luxury." (Revelation 18:7) False religion has great riches, which her leaders use to live in luxury.


● "By [her] spiritistic practice all the nations were misled." (Revelation 18:23) By her false teaching that the soul does not die, false religion has opened the door to every kind of spiritism and sorcery and has promoted fear of the dead and worship of ancestors.
Sounding a strong warning to people to separate from false religion, the Bible says: "Get out of her, my people, if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues."—Revelation 18:4, 5.​

In the near future, Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion, will be totally destroyed.

 

[Netti-Netti]

"It was more like he called the legalists fools & told them to go to hell."

"It's more like he ripped them an new orifice because they were so full of it."

Yoww!!

I don't care for the attitude and I don't think it was Jesus' attitude either. I'll explain.

The Pharisees saw a kind of sublime religionist role for themselves as "keepers of the halakah." They may have meant well, but their ideas on ritual purity were not part of the official religion, which was represented by the Sadducees. The halakah itself had doubtful status, and appears to have been at the core of the ideological split between the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

My sense it that Jesus saw the Pharisees as good people who were getting sidetracked with regard to the importance of outward ritual (see Luke 11:39-41). He Jesus may also have been concerned that they sought political ascendancy within the religious establishment in the hope of making their views on ritual law to be more dominant (see Luke 11:43). The Pharisees' concern with being visible at the temple may have been an aspect of that.

Jesus may have been upset with them because their preccupation with outward ritual and political ambitions had potential to cause them to lose sight of the importance of an honest relationship with G-d.

Btw, there is a book that suggests that Jesus himself may have been a Pharisee. That being the case, his concern with the Pharisees stemmed from the fact that he identified with them as a group and wanted to seem them thrive spiritually. I don't think Jesus had a punitive or even dismissive attitude toward them. He loved them enough to take issue with some of their shortcomings.

Here's a link to that book:
Amazon.com: Jesus the Pharisee: Hyam Maccoby: Books

 

[Operacast]

okay... I picked 100 years out of the air... and yes, I sound like a Doomsday merchant, but I do think mankind is doomed...

and no, I'm not a depressive, or have had my head shrunk by witch-doctors... I'm just looking around me...

Oh, but I think that 100 years is way too optimistic. To me, it's self-evident that, unless the whole global community quickly comes together on two chief things, cooperative speeded-up action on both free-lance WMDs and on impending ecological bootdown and polar melting, this species will have had it in only a couple of decades from now, never mind 100 years. Proactive global cooperation on all this, plus an equitable and efficient resource-and-energy-and-food strategy/development for everyone, is needed immediately, or the current sequence of automatic destruction for this entire species and the current destruction of all needed conditions for its survival are virtually unstoppable. Things are already moving way too fast for even as little as one more year of muddling through.

Seriously,

Operacast