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Okay, maybe I should have clarified that the Catholic church invented the idea of heaven and hell as places you go after death, and that they created the devil and hell all on their own using inspiration from pagan religions so that they could then demonize those religions and massacre them.
Seems like a silly semantic to argue over though, but if you want to split hairs I guess that is up to you.
I'm not splitting hairs, you simply refuse to acknowledge that these ideas found their origin in Judaism, and probably go back even further than that. For example:
Traditional Judaism firmly believes that death is not the end of human existence. However, because Judaism is primarily focused on life here and now rather than on the afterlife, Judaism does not have much dogma about the afterlife, and leaves a great deal of room for personal opinion. It is possible for an Orthodox Jew to believe that the souls of the righteous dead go to a place similar to the Christian heaven, or that they are reincarnated through many lifetimes, or that they simply wait until the coming of the messiah, when they will be resurrected. Likewise, Orthodox Jews can believe that the souls of the wicked are tormented by demons of their own creation, or that wicked souls are simply destroyed at death, ceasing to exist.
Biblical References to the Afterlife
Some scholars claim that belief in the afterlife is a teaching that developed late in Jewish history. It is true that the Torah emphasizes immediate, concrete, physical rewards and punishments rather than abstract future ones. See, for example, Lev. 26:3-9 and Deut. 11:13-15. However, there is clear evidence in the Torah of belief in existence after death. The Torah indicates in several places that the righteous will be reunited with their loved ones after death, while the wicked will be excluded from this reunion.
The Torah speaks of several noteworthy people being "gathered to their people." See, for example, Gen. 25:8 (Abraham), 25:17 (Ishmael), 35:29 (Isaac), 49:33 (Jacob), Deut. 32:50 (Moses and Aaron) II Kings 22:20 (King Josiah). This gathering is described as a separate event from the physical death of the body or the burial.
Certain sins are punished by the sinner being "cut off from his people." See, for example, Gen. 17:14 and Ex. 31:14. This punishment is referred to as kareit (kah-REHYT) (literally, "cutting off," but usually translated as "spiritual excision"), and it means that the soul loses its portion in the World to Come.
Later portions of the Tanakh speak more clearly of life after death and the World to Come. See Dan. 12:2, Neh. 9:5.
Resurrection and Reincarnation
Belief in the eventual resurrection of the dead is a fundamental belief of traditional Judaism. It was a belief that distinguished the Pharisees (intellectual ancestors of Rabbinical Judaism) from the Sadducees. The Sadducees rejected the concept, because it is not explicitly mentioned in the Torah. The Pharisees found the concept implied in certain verses... http://www.jewfaq.org/olamhaba.htm
The Catholic Church did not create ideas like heaven and hell (which as I pointed out already, have various expressions in other, older religions also like Hinduism and Toaism). What the Catholic Church did was define a specific doctrine that it's adherents were told to believe in.
Not only in Judaism, but also within early Christianity there were many varying ideas, beliefs and viewpoints about not just heaven and hell, but the nature of Jesus, how one is saved, which books were inspired etc. What the Catholic Church fathers did, was create a unified doctrine of belief that all Christians were supposed to adhere to. They didn't create the idea of heaven and hell itself, rather they framed the particular version of Christianity that went on to become dominant.
Secondly, although the popular understanding of heaven and hell is often places one goes after death, this is not what the Catholic Church actually teaches.
In three controversial Wednesday Audiences, Pope John Paul II pointed out that the essential characteristic of heaven, hell or purgatory is that they are states of being of a spirit (angel/demon) or human soul, rather than places, as commonly perceived and represented in human language. This language of place is, according to the Pope, inadequate to describe the realities involved, since it is tied to the temporal order in which this world and we exist. In this he is applying the philosophical categories used by the Church in her theology and saying what St. Thomas Aquinas said long before him.
"Incorporeal things are not in place after a manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are properly in place; but they are in place after a manner befitting spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us." [St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Q69, a1, reply 1]
http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2heavn.htm
If you read the early Church Fathers, you will see they emphasized entering the "heaven" of heart centered consciousness, in this life, and not as some after life reward for good behavior. The idea of heaven as an afterlife reward came about as a consolation to those who failed to attain what the church calls "theosis" or "divinazation" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosis_%28Eastern_Orthodox_theology%29) in this life, essentially saying if you don't complete your journey fear not, you will be liberated at death or at least get to pick up more or less where you left off (Purgatory).
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That isnt beside the point at all actually. How can someone who didnt exist say something? If the church wrote his story and made the entire thing up, then it is the church saying it, not him.
You do know how mythology works right?
I'm not an expert on the histrocity of Jesus but most scholars believe Jesus was an actual person and there are some references to him from non Christian sources. Either way, my argument does not rest on the statements made by Jesus as I have already shown that the Christian understanding of the afterlife is something which can be said to have developed out of Jewish ideas. I'm not saying that the church was right to create a single doctrine, but you make it sound like heaven and hell was just something the Church made up out of thin air and I have been trying to show that's not the case.
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The path of the herbalist is to open ourselves to nature in an innocent and pure way. SHe in turn will open her bounty and reward us with many valuable secrets. May the earth bless you. - Michael Tierra
Edited by Peyote Road (03/17/16 05:10 PM)
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