Questions and Thoughts I Never Expressed in Parochial School

The Bible consists of 4 Gospels written by 4 Apostles per our Christian teachings. However, none of the Apostles wrote the gospels. They were illiterate. Gospels were written decades after the Apostles died. Before that, the teachings of the Apostles were communicated verbally from generation to generation by each family. The odds of each family communicating the same teachings “verbatim” over generations are astronomically low. When the gospels finally were written down, in order to gain greater readership among competing written gospels, the anonymous writers chose Apostles as the authors, instead of themselves.

There were actually 50 gospels, not 4. So how did these 4 get chosen. About 300 years after the death of Jesus, the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine, just before a battle that he won, saw a comet explode in the shape of the Cross. He did not understand that it was a comet and took it as a sign from God to convert to Christianity which he did. Since there were so many different essentially unorganized sects of Christianity, Constantine wanted to have one organized religion and use it to support and unite his empire. So he convened a meeting with different religious leaders to determine which gospels best supported his goals of empire. That's how those 4 gospels were chosen and the rest ruled as heresy, punishable by death to believers. He made Christianity the official religion of his empire to more firmly control his empire. Other religions such as the Muslim religion initially used religion for military conquer and control purposes of a single leader/dictator. Even though the Muslim religion officially believes in the Ten Commandments, the Sixth Commandment – Thous shall not kill – was ignored and violated repeatedly.

God always existed. That makes a lot of sense to me because if God evolved, then that really does not fit the description of what we believe God to be. The problem for me comes when I think seriously about the timeframe of infinity. For example, a million years is a very long time. A billion years is 1,000 time longer. A trillion years equals a billion years one thousand times. Hard to fathom such a long period of time. Even harder to fathom 100 trillion years. Now think about 100 trillion years repeated 100 trillion times. Go back that unimaginably back in time, and by definition God would still exist. So why did he wait so long to create us? Wasn't he bored?

Looking into the future in the timeframe of 100 trillion years repeated 100 trillion times, how can a loving and merciful God punish anyone in unimaginable pain in hell for such a long period of time? That amount of terrible punishment for so long a period of time would make Hitler look like a mere choir boy. It does not fit with God's image of infinite love and forgiveness. How could a single person deserve such an overabundance of punishment? More likely, the image of an infinite horrifying hell for “sinners” was conjured up as a way to enforce the authority and discipline of the Church through fear, than to convey reality.

Even looking at the concept of an eternally happy heaven in the timeframe of 100 trillion years repeated 100 trillion times, how can we find enough interesting things to do to keep us from being overwhelmingly bored. Most of us during our very short human lifetimes have periods of boredom, more so when we retire. We have very intelligent minds which our souls keep – our minds need to be occupied and stimulated. Finding new things to do and think about is an important part of that. Seemingly we would run out of new things to do and think about within the timeframes of infinity. It might just be better to be non-existent after death.

God is all knowing. So then he must remember his very first thought as God. Remembering that thought would also date that thought. Since God always existed, that would seem to mean, whatever the date of his first thought, he went hundreds of trillions of years without any thoughts. Makes no sense to exist for what would be an infinitely long time without any thoughts.

Why did God make it so hard to find the one true religion? The purported religious events found in the Bible, Koran, and other religious documents each happened at a local place on Earth (which is 24,000 miles in diameter) during times when it was impossible to communicate worldwide and when entire Continents with people were unknown to each other. Consequently, we have many different religions – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhism, etc. and each of them have multiple divisions within themselves where people have different beliefs. Essentially, your parents' religion becomes your religion, and few people ever deviate from the religion of their birth to join another religion. Each religion has its very ardent believers who think that all other religions are heresy with some believing that those of other religions should be executed, or forcibly converted, or are doomed to hell. Given the lack of worldwide communication when these religions were created, why didn't God do something more “fantastic” on a worldwide basis to let all of us know at the same time who God is and the true path to heaven instead of fragmenting the way we have into numerous religions and beliefs?

How did God get so lucky? It must be nice to be all powerful, all knowing, all good, and perfect in every way. No risk of going to hell which is a risk that the rest of us supposedly have.

Why are there so few saints in the Catholic Church compared to the Earth's population? Shouldn't the overwhelming majority of us be going to heaven? If not, then why were we created? So that the majority or very substantial percentage of us would burn in hell forever?!! Would be better to never have been born then to involuntarily assume the risk of eternal hell.

Why did the Catholic Church ignore the Sixth Commandment – Thou Shall Not Kill – for hundreds of years, cruelly murdering millions of people? Why are some of the Popes who led this effort canonized as saints? Shouldn't they be in hell?

Every person in hell has a mother and father. If that mother and/or father are in heaven, fully knowing the unimaginably horrific ramifications of hell on their child, then how can either parent be happy in heaven?

God is supposed to know what each and everyone of us thinks or does 24/7 for our entire lives so that he could judge us at death. That's 7 billion living people thinking in hundreds of different languages and God knows what each of us is saying or doing every second of every day. Hard to imagine how. Add to that the people and angels already in heaven and hell, and it's at least 100 billion souls. And what if other intelligent life was created by God in our massive universe of hundreds of trillions of stars (why so many stars if life only exists here)? How does God have any time to have some fun and enjoy himself?

Bottom line – blindly, unquestionably following your religious beliefs in much the same way that a small child unquestionably believes in Santa Claus is likely to be more “comforting” to you personally than actually thinking in depth about the afterlife ramifications of one's beliefs to ourselves and others. Those who do try to get their human minds to wrap around the concepts of the infinity and fairness of heaven and hell, and what we actually would do for so long a period of time in the infinite afterlife find that our minds are too small to understand how it will truly work for us. I still believe in the afterlife though I do not fully understand it, nor how I can live forever without ultimately being bored, but I do believe that the infinitely horrible hell preached by religions cannot exist as described, but rather was and still is a tool of “control” used by religions and emperors to exert their absolute power over us. I'm not saying that there is no punishment for our sins, but infinite horrific punishment would seem to be incompatible with a loving and forgiving God.