Rick_the_new_guy

Theology question

The religion: Christianity/ Judaism

The subject: Eternal Damnation

I have talked this over with different persons and have gotten different answers.

Hundreds of years ago, indeed even thousands of years ago, not every culture was familiar with the God that Christians/Jews speak of. Christianity was spread throughout the new world and Asia/South Pacific only up to 400 some years ago.

For example, the Aztecs lacked the knowledge of the true one and only God for thousands of years before the Spaniards helped them find the gospel.

During Aztecs prime, they worshiped the Sun and indeed their King who was a deity of sorts.

So here is my question:

Do Christians/Jews out there believe that for thousands of years each and every person who was born a Aztac and died during these thousands of years before Europeans brought individuals the gospel all went to hell for worshiping something other than God?

I would estimate that hunderds of billions of souls are burning in hell if the answer is yes.
I would also estimate, hundreds of different civilization that have come and gone are burning in hell because they were ignorant of the true God if the answer is yes.

not being a religous person, I did not anwerer.

What do u'all think about this.

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leejo

This Christian lets God wrestle with such paradoxes and challenges. I have enough on my plate as it is.

Steeler

In Dante's Inferno, virtuous non-believers are sent to Limbo along with unbaptized babies. I'm guessing that non-virtuous unbelievers all go to regular Hell. However I read somewhere that the Catholic Church kind of got rid of Limbo a few years ago. Not sure how that worked out for the tenants.

I have heard an Evangelical argument that all those left in limbo or otherwise born before the word of Christ was revealed will have the opportunity to "join the winning team" on the Day of Judgement, when Christ sorts through all the souls of the Earth and selects his chosen to ascend to heaven.

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Calvin

RFL

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Obi

I guess you're correct.

I guess lots of Christians would have difficulty answering that because all those people who have diea have been "dealt with". I believe in Catholosism they pray for the dead but not in Christianity.

TheFeniX

It really depends on the Christian. Some say yes, some no. Some don't know.

The big question I ask them is if they believe sufficiently mentally disabled people go to Hell. A person of low enough intelligence cannot understand the concept of God. What happens to them?

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Santa

If there's a God, i dont think Hed be so evil as to damn anyone that was brought up in a different part of the world and therefore believed in something else, especcialy because He hasnt clearly and plainly shown that He even exists. Its this kind of intolerance that has led me away from organized religion and theism in general and more to a leaning towards pantheism.

GhostintheShell

I look at religion as a sort of World of Warcraft fantasyland, except its in your head.

I'm sure that World of Warcraft is equally very "real" to some people.

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Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter.
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thebleakaffinity

Not a bad analogy.

CingularDuality

Ooh, in that case, I want to join the Church of the Smelly Orc !

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GhostintheShell

That sounds like a good one do you think its PVP or team based?

I think for my next religion I'm going the direction of some kind of earthy female god worshipping thing like Wicca.

A friend of mine is into it and it sounds way more fun dancing naked under the full moon and all. I do that now after a few pints anyway.

If you are going to dedicate yourself to something fantasy based it might as well be enjoyable. There's too much of the old behave yourself or you'll burn in hell stuff going on, its way too oppressive and dreary.

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Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter.
Ernest Hemingway, "On the Blue Water," Esquire, April 1936

leejo

I did that in my 20's but after a while I realized she was just a crazy biznitch.

Kerostasis

There haven't been that many humans in the history of the planet, so I find that unlikely.

You hear a lot these days of how huge the world population is and how fast its growing, but that's only a news item because it was never that way in the past! The world population is around 6 billion now, but as recently as 1930 was only 2 billion. Lets take 1700 as our starting point for the sake of argument, assuming that Christianity at least had the chance to spread to all major people groups by that point.

1700 world population was around 650 million. In the year 1000 it was around 250 million, and had been pretty constant since year 1. By 1000 BC your talking 50 million, 7 million by 4000 BC and just 3 million by 10,000 BC.

So whats the approximate population of the earth in the last 10,000 years? Assuming a standard generational turnover of 40 years (low today, but probably high in the past), I calculate approximately:
*does math*
7.875 Billion 1700-1000 AD
6.250 Billion 1000-1 AD
3.125 Billion 1-1000 BC
1.875 Billion 1000-4000 BC
600 Million 4000-8000 BC
= 19.275 Billion people world wide total for 10,000 years of human history, before the gospel propagated to every part of the globe. Of those, many billions did receive the gospel. (whether or not they accepted it is a completely different story.) Considering that Europe had a much higher population density than the Aztec-type civilizations, Christianity actually spread to the great bulk of the worlds peoples pretty rapidly. So there really aren't all that many people who missed out just by being born in the wrong place, so to speak.

As to what happens once you ARE born in the wrong place, I'll leave that for another post. Too tired tonight.

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thebleakaffinity

I don't think the exact number was really the important part of the post.

sordavie

According to the population reference bureau's estimate there have been 106,456,367,669 alive between 50,000BC and 2002 inclusively.

http://www.prb.org/Template.cfm?Sect...ContentID=7421

And, their estimate between 8,000BC and 1AD looks to be slightly more than 1 billion.

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