{"id":238,"date":"2015-03-16T11:08:29","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T15:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=238"},"modified":"2015-03-16T14:13:43","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T18:13:43","slug":"is-judas-in-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=238","title":{"rendered":"Is Judas in hell?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As if to draw attention to the intellectual unseriousness of theology, CNN &#8212; who ought to know better, but probably wants to draw attention to its new series, <i>Finding Jesus<\/i> &#8212; published this weekend an article treating the vital question, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2015\/02\/19\/living\/judas-hell-jesus\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Is Judas in Hell?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Short answer: No, because there is no hell.  Or, at least, there is absolutely no reason to think so.  I know: &#8220;But, but, but &#8230; Jesus talks about hell in the New Testament!&#8221;  No, he didn&#8217;t.  Jesus talked about Gehenna, the constantly-smoldering town dump, and talked about people who don&#8217;t belong to his little cult being disposed of there; it is in the spirit of Hunter Thompson&#8217;s famous complaint that, instead of a state funeral, Richard Nixon should have been disposed of by burning his corpse in a dumpster.<\/p>\n<p>And could we please learn to make the most elementary of logical distinctions?  What you find in the Bible is not &#8216;evidence&#8217; in any meaningful sense, but claims for which evidence is needed if they are to be believed.<\/p>\n<p>More importantly, the question exposes a very serious flaw in Christian teaching.  As everybody knows &#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Eve was beguiled by a serpent, which caused her to &#8230;<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Pilfer a piece of fruit, and sweet-talk &#8230;<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Her husband into eating it, by which act &#8230;<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>They gained knowledge of good and evil.<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Because the gods were fearful that they would then know to eat from the Tree of Life, and &#8230;<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Live forever, they were &#8230;<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Thrown out of the Garden of Eden.<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Ever since, their descendents have been inexhaustible founts of &#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Wickedness<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Evil<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Lust, and &#8230;<\/p>\n<li>\n<p>Generally, just no damn good whatsoever.<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That means you, if you&#8217;re dumb enough and insecure enough to fall for it.<\/p>\n<p>BUT!  Jesus was sent to earth to be a blood sacrifice to Himself for your existence&#8217;s overall affront to the cosmos, and you can avoid your corpse being burned with the other trash at the town dump by joining a special club and giving it 10% of your future income until the day you die.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the flaw: <i>Jesus couldn&#8217;t fulfill his assigned role as a blood sacrifice to Himself unless He somehow got onto the cross and was executed<\/i>, and that means Judas was just playing his assigned role in His Grand But Convoluted Scheme Of Redemption.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, nobody thought about that when the itinerant, small-time apocalypse-minded rabbi was being turned into the all-knowing Invisible Wizard, and apologists have been looking for a dodge ever since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As if to draw attention to the intellectual unseriousness of theology, CNN &#8212; who ought to know better, but probably wants to draw attention to its new series, Finding Jesus &#8212; published this weekend an article treating the vital question, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=238\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions\/259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}