From: Edge
To: Ivy
Subj: risk

Whether you believe in Hell or not, do you even want to risk being there for eternity?

One cannot help but wonder if there was something some one did or something that happened to you to make you so anti religion. If you want to share what that is/was, I'll listen.

D

--

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." --1 John 3:16 (NIV)

[My response:]

From: Ivy
To: Edge
Subj: Re: risk

Whether you believe in Hell or not, do you even want to risk being there for eternity?

I'm willing to risk being there for eternity for the same reason that I'm willing to risk being reincarnated as a nanny goat and the same reason I'm willing to risk staying at this spiral of life for another turn . . . because I don't believe there's any truth to any of this stuff. You don't seem to understand that one can't "fear" going to a place one truly doesn't believe exists. This would be the same as asking you: "Even if you don't believe in reincarnation, do you even want to *risk* being reincarnated as something undesirable?" If you don't believe in reincarnation, it just doesn't apply. One cannot live one's life avoiding every religion's form of punishment. There are too many and sometimes they're contradictory.

One cannot help but wonder if there was something some one did or something that happened to you to make you so anti religion.

I'm not "so anti religion." I'm anti organized religion. I don't like the idea of someone else trying to feed me all the truths of life all thought out for me without giving me a chance to experience it for myself. I'm religious in my own way, it's just that there's no exact label for it, nor should there be.

There has never been anything in my past that caused me to rebel against religion or anything like that. I've never been interested in accepting one religion fully and rejecting all others, ever since I was ten or so and realized that everyone thinks they're "the only" chosen ones (and they have tons of books to back them up, too, all claiming to be "the only" truth). My dislike of organized religion has been intensified only by arguing with people who can't accept that maybe I am just as right as they are. I have never, however, tried to talk other people out of their religions, nor have I attempted to get them to accept something else. All I desire is to be left to my own exploration of my concept of religion without judgment. Once you decide I'm wrong because you believe something else, you're basically telling me I don't know how to worship God as well as you do, and that I don't understand God as well as you do, and who are you to say that? We're all children of the same Earth.

--Ivy

"An it harm none, do what thou will."

[He replied:]

To: Ivy
From: Edge
Subj: Re: risk

Hmm. I spend many emails a year or two ago arguing with you. It was fruitless. You failed to prove your point, as you claim I failed to prove Christianity as right. All I can say is you'll find out when you stand before the Judgement seat of Christ and are told to give an answer for your sins. Good luck.

D

--

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." --1 John 3:16 (NIV)

[My response:]

To: Edge
From: Ivy
Subj: Re: risk

I spend many emails a year or two ago arguing with you. It was fruitless.

I don't really remember anything like this.

You failed to prove your point, as you claim I failed to prove Christianity as right.

All you prove is that you believe it, not that it's right.

All I can say is you'll find out when you stand before the Judgement seat of Christ and are told to give an answer for your sins. Good luck.

You can get all hoity-toity and holier-than-thou with me if you like, but this is just your opinion, not "the only truth" as you claim, and no matter what you tell me or anyone else, you can't go farther than to say it's just what you think, not what you know. I refuse to see God as a judgmental jerk who will send me to eternal suffering for not believing someone else died because I was bad. I prefer to see God as a force of the universe and myself as part of the equation.

--iVY

[Never received word back from this one, but I suppose both of us think that's settled. . . .]

Kate: This guy kinda reminds me of boy in in grade who tries to get my agnostic friend to go to church with him.
It annoys me when people try to scare you into christianity by saying your going to burn in hell. Nothing (which i rememer) has happened in my life that has made me anti- reliogous. I'm not I except all kinds of people, but you can't make some one beleive what they don't. In a way it would be like trying to get me to eat meat because i'm a vegetarian. Reliogous freaks kinda scare me...