[ExI] thread name change please: theological musins: was RE: BICEP2 and the Fermi paradox

[John Clark]

Tom Nowell <nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk>

> Spike and John Clark were discussing Hell and damnation in Christianity
> midweek, and I'd like to point out there is more than one possible
> interpretation of Jesus' sayings about what happens to those who are not
> saved.
>

Jesus and Santa Klaus are similar in that what they were really like (if
indeed they existed at all) has no effect on people's behavior today, only
what people think they were like is important. In his book Summa Theologica
that prototypical theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas, speculated on what
heaven would be like, Just as santaklausologians speculate on what Santa
Klaus's workshop would be like. Aquinas said:

"That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more
abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell."

Apparently this self appointed expert on ethics was so deeply into bondage
and S&M that he took it as a given that the saved in heaven would be turned
on by seeing someone get tortured for a infinite number of years. The
church liked what Aquinas had to say so much that less than 50 years after
his death they turned this moral imbecile into a saint.

  John K Clark
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