I lost interest in this thread as soon as I read "Kiiling 2 or more babies is a +EV action". Poker analysis only goes so far.

If youre going to look at this mathematically...
The majority of Christians believe that h+h are for eternity i.e. infinity time. I always learned in maths that infinity*x = infinity FAVO x ..... so noone wins really :-)

The total number of accumulated souls in heaven should not be an important factor to a Christian. If someone really believes there is a place called hell where people go to suffer for eternity then I think they should be doing everything in their power to keep everyone out of this place.

Too many Christian are frightened by the thought of hell and don't really contemplate how truly terrifying such a place would be. I don't think Hitler or any other evil figure from history deserves such a fate. I mean can you imagine it?

Imagine 100 years of suffering, an entire lifetime...
Now imagine 1000 years of suffering, 10 times any long lifespan.

You are not even scratching the surface of eternity!

Imagine experiencing those 1000 years 1000 times, and you are suffering.

No one can imagine experiencing anything for this long, a human mind would succumb to madness long before 1,000,000 years of anything, even if suffering was not involved.

Now imagine those 1,000,00 times happing 1000 more times... you still haven't even begun to serve your sentience after this ludicrous amount of time!

10 billion times everything I have just said times 3, and the suffering is not half over.

Do you see how ridiculous this is? If hell was real I would make a deal with god and sacrifice my own life and the life of anyone I know on earth to free the souls of hell! I would, without hesitation, end life on earth to prevent one more soul going into hell.

Can you really sit there any say worshiping god is more important than other people's eternal future? Would god rather you stand there praising his name when you could be out saving someone from an eternity of hell? Is god so egomaniacal that he prefers worship over the well being of non-Christian souls?

Any Christian who believes in hell and does not devote his life too saving souls (and worshiping god god) is extremely selfish. Every soul you can save while on earth is so absolutely important that spending the mere 10's of years you have on earth doing so seems a trivial cost.

It is so important, saving people from eternal suffering, that you should be willing to do so through any means necessary. Killing babies is an efficient means which is guaranteed.

God does not like you killing babies, but in asking Jesus' forgiveness, you will be forgiven. Surely Jesus will give a sigh of relief when he sees a soul headed for eternal paradise in heaven, a soul which would have died an atheist condemned to hell had someone not killed it in it's infancy.

Here's the math on the infinite, assuming all souls are equal:

Lim as x-> +inf on (2x - x) = Lim as x -> +inf on (x) = +inf

The idea that God wants as many souls in Heaven as possible is taken way out of context.

I'm pretty sure killing does not fall under the category of intercession.

And God does want all to be saved, but He does not require it. Christians have done much more harm than good trying to cram God down the throat of every non-believer rather than letting God make Himself known. Killing babies would fall neatly into that category.

Seems pretty simple, doesn't it?

OK, one last time, it's not that we think the bible directly says you should kill babies, it's that, given the "rules of the game" killing babies is the only way to ensure they go to heaven instead of hell, and this should supercede all other concerns.

It's a loophole, in other words, that the Bible seems to have missed. And just because it was missed doesn't mean it doesn't have serious implications if literal Christianity is true.

And yes, it violates a number of statements in the Bible. However, this doesn't change the fact that the baby killing strategy would be an extremely effective.

For reference, what bible verse or verses state that all dead babies go to heaven?

It's not a loophole; it is a catch-22.

Either they don't get to go to heaven for reasons they can't control or they go automatically to heaven just because they had no choice yet.

And it is not interesting in regards to liberal (aka intelligent) christians.

A "catch 22" is a case where the necessary conditions for ___ to happen are mutually exclusive, even if each individual condition may be highly probable.

For example, to get A, you need both B and C. But having B makes C impossible, so it's impossible to get A even though it might be easy to get B and C individually.

A loophole is a back door route to a desired result that is neither explicitly accepted nor rejected in the formal "rules".

Killing babies to get them into heaven is certainly a loophole in the "rules" of Fundamentalist Christian theology.

What about severely ******ed people? Do they get a free pass into heaven also?

You asking for a pass?

No I was thinking of you, because I'm kind and compassionate.

Earlier it was the bible and now it is fundamentalist christian theology. Decide.

And it is only a loophole if you believe babies go directly to heaven. So if you are using the bible...not much of a loophole since it never says so anywhere explicitly.

So it falls down on what you believe, so therefore it is a catch-22; Either you believe that babies go directly to heaven and therefore it is horrible to allow them to miss out on that by growing up OR you believe babies go to hell and that having no choice doesn't matter in that decision.

Ofcourse it only matters if you are ******ed fundamentalist or crazy about your sect's chosen belief.

I don't have to. They both missed this loophole, because they do not address it directly. The primary target though is standard Fundamentalist Christian Theology, which usually claims that dead babies go to heaven and not hell. Of course, a lot of liberal Christians believe this too.

Sigh. If it was stated explicitly, it wouldn't be a loophole. And it actually only fails if murdered babies go to hell. I have yet to see anyone defend that idea. Feel free to defend such a theology. I'd love to see someone try without turning their god into an absolute monster.

It's still not a "catch 22". Did you know that the term has a specific meaning? It certainly doesn't mean "either you do or you don't, so meh ..."

I am not aware of any verse that states this.

In fact I have said before that for one to believe this they would be directly contradicting their primary theology.

Everyone must make a choice in one capacity or another.

I would be more inclined to believe in some sort of reincarnation then believe that babies or ******ed people go directly to heaven. Even though that is not taught in the bible either it is more cohesive with the core Christian beliefs.

Reincarnation is also far-fetched, but I do agree that the 2nd part is silly. Just think about it...

What kind of personalities do these baby and ******ed souls take on in heaven? Are the babies now grown up and the ******ed people now un-******ed, while all of our ("normal" adult) personalities remain unchanged?

Speaking of reincarnation:

My exterminator was telling me about Hindu people in my neighborhood who don't exterminate their houses because they might be killing one of their deceased relatives. So they live in unsanitary filth and garbage instead. Prospective owners come in to buy a house and have to exterminate 2200 roaches before buying because the Hindus had religious reasons for not doing it.

Yeah great it's a loophole. W/E.

This entire thread is still based on using stupidity to show why believing something moronic is silly.

Well I never said that I believed it, but that I would be more inclined to believe it then babies and ******ed people going straight to heaven.

What is it that you find so far-fetched? Honestly I have not thought that much about it.

First off, it's unfalsifiable. Secondly, it's not testable. Thirdly, we have no evidence for it other than the claims that people experience things (like deja vu) which would happen whether reincarnation was true or not.

If I conclude that souls are swept into another dimension after death, my assertion is no better or worse, no more credible, no more testable, and just as unfalsifiable as the idea of reincarnation. So we're back to square one.

We are really talking about two different things here. I am not talking about the Hindu version of reincarnation, nor the likely hood of such a system.

I am more speaking about the idea that God would insert the soul of a murdered baby into another baby. All of this inside of the realm of Christianity.

It sounds to me that you do not have a theological issue with this, inside the realm of Christianity, correct?

Side note, how do people explain deja vu? I get hard core deja vu experiences. It really freaks me out sometimes.

I love how it was apparently important enough for you to post about, but now that you've been proved wrong it's now all, "Yeah great ... W/E".

And as for the thread, it's based on following horrid ideas (i.e. the idea that one could be justifiably sentenced to eternal torment for being of the wrong faith) to their logical conclusion.

It's only moronic and silly if real people don't actually believe these things and teach them to children (that hell is real and eternal that is, not the "Fundys should kill babies bit"). Unfortunately, real people do believe this.

you should probably seek professional help then:

The strongest pathological association of déjà vu is with temporal lobe epilepsy. This correlation has led some researchers to speculate that the experience of déjà vu is possibly a neurological anomaly related to improper electrical discharge in the brain. As most people suffer a mild (i.e. non-pathological) epileptic episode regularly (e.g. the sudden "jolt," a hypnagogic jerk, that frequently occurs just prior to falling asleep), it is conjectured that a similar (mild) neurological aberration occurs in the experience of déjà vu, resulting in an erroneous sensation of memory it could be also mismatching in the brain that causes the brain to mistake the present for the past.

I just have a logical issue with things that are unfalsifiable and untestable. I don't know what you mean by "theological issue" (unless you're somehow implying that theological things fall outside of the realm of logic...which is really a cop-out).

The claim that God inserts dead baby souls into newly conceived babies is well...no different. See my thoughts on Hindu reincarnation and the extra-dimensional example I made up earlier. They're all purely speculative.

Everybody gets deja vu experiences. Some more than others. It's my opinion that those who have more of "life's experiences" get more deja vu (more past information floating around subliminally).

How do people explain it? Well, without using Google (out of laziness) I'd say it's a collection of past thoughts and encounters that get pieced together and recalled at some point in time to produce a feeling of familiarity.

It's really not so ridiculous when you consider the idea that people can keep sinning while they are in hell. That's why I posted the above.

Also, it looks like your argument against hell is fallacious here because it's an appeal to emotions. For example, here are some of the statments you made that make this clear IMO:

I can understand why people get emotional when they talk about hell, but throwing emotions into the argument doesn't make that argument any good.

Also, I'm puzzled by this statement you made. Perhaps I'm missing something, but it doesn't seem to make any sense. I don't understand why one should assume that a human mind would succumb to madness long before 1,000,000 years of anything, even if suffering is not involved.


I don’t believe for one second that you would do this if you believed in hell. If hell is really as bad as you say it is, and if you believed in it, then my guess is you would be afraid of it, and instead of killing babies, you would be trying to save your soul and other souls using methods that don't involve murder.

People who worship God often do go out and try to save people from an eternity in hell. Also, you fail to realize that if God exists, a lot of good can come out of worshipping God. For example, people that worship God will desire to do good instead of evil because doing good will please God. Also, the idea that one should praise God isn't nearly as bad as you make it seem to be. Praising God really isn't much different than praising others that I care about, such as friends and family. When others deserve praise, it can be a good thing to praise them.

Killing babies may not be as efficient as you think. One, you've never been specific about how something like this would be done. How many babies would be killed? How many Christians would be involved? How would they actually go about doing this? Second, if enough babies are killed, it could cause some people to either lose their faith, or take Christianity less seriously (if they aren't Christians). In other words, killing babies might lead to others going to hell.

A more efficient method would be to convert as many people to Christianity as possible. Many of them will be able to convert others to Christianity, and those people will convert others, and so on. This is efficient, it doesn't put one's own soul at risk nearly as much as the other method, it's far less likely to displease God, and it won't make Christians look like a bunch of baby killers.

Will you really be forgiven if you aren't even sorry for what you did? Someone who pats himself on the back for doing such a 'noble' thing doesn't exactly sound like a person filled with regret.

Umm, duh?

That's sort of his point. Most Christians spend almost 0 time trying to save others from going to hell.

I'm not suggesting none do, but I don't think it's debatable to say that over 90% don't reach out to try and save others.

I'm surprised you say if God exists, but no big deal. (you are a Christian, right?)

How do you jump to the conclusion that he fails to realize good can come from worshiping god? Why does everyone spell worshiping with two p's?

I agree that when others deserve praise it can be a good thing to praise them. But you and other Christians have eternity to praise your lord, yet you only have decades to save souls from an eternity in hell.

What do you think a good balance would be between worshiping and saving souls? If God is truly all-loving he would surely be happy with 90% saving/10% worshiping.
Right now it's probably those same numbers but flipped. (at least)

I also find it disturbing to think that some people need to praise God to prevent themselves from doing evil. I'm guessing it's just that you've been trained to think like that. meh.

Probably not more efficient, but definitely more realistic.

Even just a single, split-second pang of guilt qualifies as being sorry, so unless the person is a sociopath I think they're okay.