Even if the correlation between god and good was clear, we'd be hard pressed to get people to agree on what is actually good, for the same reason people don't agree on what is actually real and/or true. Note well, most things that may be considered good by one side may be considered evil by the other. Similarily, anything in this world considered good can be weaponized. Some might think I'm changing meanings when I say truth and reality mean the same thing. But look it up in any lexicon. Is the Jewish notion of Messiah reality itself? No, I don't think so. Nor is Jesus reality itstelf. But he could perhaps be reality itself, if the appearance as a man is considered to be an abberation of reality. But if you want to include all abberations to be real, truth, life, then the phrase "I am the truth and the life" means absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, what word would you use to describe a being that is itself the entirety of reality and life? Certainly not the Jewish notion of Messiah. And if Jesus is this being, what would you call him? Maybe not entirely meaninless. Whenever man includes himself in the attributes of good/god, reality, truth and life, man is endeavoring to "be as God". Christianity, as it has evolved, does just this. The reason it is a "sin" is because it is not, and never will be true...not because it is a bad thing to be good. In other words, the reason Christianity is trying to make Jesus a hybrid man-god is because man is still trying to take the attributes of god/good for itself. One Christian told me that if he likes vanilla ice cream, it's the truth. In so many ways, Christianity makes a mockery of the attributes of good, and appropriates them to himself. Not even Jesus would do this, in his capacity as a man.
So to clarify a little more, i don't consider anything that can be weaponized to be *good* or *god* or even *God*. The concept of "God" can be weaponized, as one man uses psychological warfare against other men. "God" is, or can be, a weapon in the arsenal of priests, when they wage priestcraft...which is to control the largest amount of people with the smallest police force. At face value, it is a meaningless word, meaning only what the priests say it means this century, or in that zip code of the globe. In one century, it could be the equivalent of having a nuclear bomb in one's national arsenal, if the fear of one's national God, of it's reputation, could dissuade another nation from attacking. One way to cultivate that fear is to tell stories about how such a God unleashed hell upon any nation that dared to mess with his "people". In this century, the word is used to attempt to secure "rights", as in "God given rights", in a ploy to appeal to the superstitions of judges, police or any other government entity capable of waging war on the average person. But in actuality, man has no God given rights, having been given what may be deemed the opposite of rights, including zero guarantee how long any man will live. Fresh off the conveyor belt and out of the factory, man has been declared to be "good" (before flaws and defects were discovered in the original design). But man came off the conveyor belt with *arms*. Arms = armaments = weapons. Some men are so lethal, they have to register their hands as weapons (might be an old joke). Point is, man is a "good" that can be weaponized. As such, man is not really good, let alone god. Other good things in man's world that can be weaponized: Sunlight (can be witheld, or overexposed, or focused with a magnifier) Water (can be withheld, overexposed, or contaminated) Air (can be withheld, or contaminated) Food (can be poison, or laced with poison, or poisoned, or withheld, or overexposed) Trees (can be made into crucifixes) Sex Pretty much anything and everything. So how can this be good?
https://www.rebelcircus.com/blog/15-signs-youre-already-living-hell/ 15 Signs You're Already Living In Hell Have you ever just had "one of those days?" How about "one of those weeks?" Life can get seriously out of hand, even when we try to force it back under our control, but that's just how it goes. Then again, what if this wasn't even life? What if you're already dead? Keep reading to discover 15 signs you're already living in Hell. Every day feels as unfulfilling and wasted as the one before. Nothing is new. Nothing progresses. No matter how much effort you put into something, it doesn't result in anything. You may as well be punching at the air — nothing you do would make any difference. Every step you take seems to take you backwards. All of your pursuits may as well be pointless because they never get you anywhere. You're in a tornado. You're always moving, always getting somewhere, but none of it is helpful — only destructive. Your dreams are better than your actual life. When you fall asleep, you may as well be waking up, because this is when you're at your happiest. You dream about wonders, about good memories, positive prospects of the future. But when you wake up, it's the same old, same old — which, in itself, is Hell. You lose everyone closest to you. A healthy life is about surrounding oneself with good people. People who make life worth living. But in your life, you keep losing them. Whether through death, breaking up, disassociation... they always end up going away. Even religion is terrible. The concept of religion ought to be positive. In theory, it should represent hope and peace. But in this life, it represents something much darker. It represents war, death, fear, abuse, crime... The only thing it values is the promise of something better, a promise of something hardly guaranteed and most likely fictional. The planet is dying. Whether you agree or disagree with climate change, there is no denying the facts that the planet is taking some heavy blows. It's a machine, like anything else, and machines are not infallible. They break down. Earth is breaking down, and the signs are not difficult to find. Everything seems to be working on autopilot. There's no true life happening in this world. Nothing seems groundbreaking anymore. Things are just happening, droning on in meaningless cycles. The planet may as well stop spinning. Everyone has their lives together, but you. This is what life seems like to you. You look around, and things seem to be working out fairly well for everyone. People have their lives together. Except for you. You're never reaching that moment of completion — not ever. The end is nigh. War is endless. People are literally being slaughtered all over the world, and no one seems to bat an eye until it happens to them. Every day in the news, there's something else. Something worse. Sinking and sinking into more and more chaos. You have a dark disposition towards most things and people. No matter how hard you try to dissuade yourself from being negative all the time, those feelings always take over. They drown you. They poke and bite at you. Nothing seems bright, because you're always stuck looking at life through dark-tinted lenses. You're always miserable. You don't want to be sad, but it's become impossible to run from it. Your insides are broken. Your brain is running on empty. You try to reach for something that will make you feel better, but everything that is potentially good is also just as fleeting. You always feel alone. Even when you're surrounded by people, you feel isolated. You feel cut off. Not just emotionally, but physically, as though you don't exist. You're there, but no ever truly sees you. You can't ever find true happiness. No matter how many friends you try to surround yourself with or how much you try to make yourself happy, nothing works. You may not always be sad, but you can't ever feel at peace. You can't ever feel true, genuine comfort. You're running in circles. No matter how much effort you seem to put into things that matter to you, they never actually pan out successfully. You're always an arm’s length away from reaching your goals. It all feels like a bad joke or a nightmare, and that's because it pretty much is. Your terrible thoughts are unrelenting. No matter how hard you try to shake them, nasty thoughts are roiling around your brain. They're vicious, hurtful and hateful. You see the worst in everyone you see, and you imagine horrible things happening to them. This can't be natural. Must be the work of the devil.
Hell As Complete Darkness If ignorance were equated to darkness, and knowledge equated to light, then i think it's pretty clear that all peoples dwell in darkness. People live by faith, which always contains, and is contaminated, by ignorance. The reason people believe, is because they just don't know. It is believed that people can know some things, and believe (have faith in) other things. But i disagree. The things that people can "know", such as the scientific observation of consistent phenomena, are themselves the fruits of faith. For example, the observation of gravity. For a long time now it is not really known what causes gravity. And then, should science eventually offer a plausible explanation, not everyone could really verify it for themselves, to a full understanding. It's because of the inability to know that people even argue about whether the earth is round or flat. But whether round or flat, the earth is a product of faith. Meaning, there is something that believes in earth, something much bigger than any one person, which holds all physical phenomenon in place, giving it the appearance of permanence. But it is only permanent to those who are passing by quickly. People are like shooting stars. To a shooting star, the earth might look stationary (not spinning). But everything is changing, even the relatively persistent phenomenon of mathematics and physics. For this reason, all human knowledge is actually still faith. And if faith, then it is underlined by ignorance. And if ignorance, darkness.
Hell As "The Living Dead", Where The Dead Can Never Die Dunnu if i've mentioned this yet, but... ... what if there was a life so alive, that even if it were to "die", it would still appear to be "alive"? I argue that all peoples are indeed the product of a dead life...walking talking oxymorons. The "life" i like to call "Christ", but you could also call it REALITY. A dead reality is...drum roll please...a fantasy, a dream, an unreality, an imaginative concoction. A dead reality is a reality that has been CHANGED in some way as to make it a REPRESENTATION, or an IMAGE. As such, unreality is a MOCKERY of reality. People, as such, exist as a mockery of reality. Reality, personified, may be given a name, such as "Christ". People, i conclude, are a *dead Christ*, who "live" like vampires, in the dark (ignorance, faith), who are actually "dead", but can never actually die. The phenomenon of reincarnation, if indeed it is the status quo, suggests that even if people die, they can never really stay dead. As vampires, people live on the blood of Christ, with certain religious groups openly admitting this.
Thoughts of Hell oft fear it brings, tho' put away such childish things; There are no monsters 'neath the bed, but those imagined in your head.
That's fine. Hell is the domain, the entire domain of imagination. It's this imagination that gives rise to all physical phenomenon, and is what it really means that man was created "in the image of" (in the domain of imagination). Hell is a real as you say it is. Reality doesn't care what you say.
Christians have imagined that the physical worlds of time/space/material are not hell, as if it were some other place and time. You appear to imagine that the same thing is not hell, confirming my theory that Christians and atheists are similar. They reserve hell for some other time and place, while you don't. Both require some kind of denial of reality, as it is. By "real as you say that is" I mean it will be sufficiently real - in your experience - to convince YOU that it is real, but never sufficient to convince reality. Take a dream, for example. Whose responsibility is the dream? And while you dream, how real is your experience? It only becomes apparent as you wake up that not much of dreams makes any sense to an awakened mind, and disappears so easily that it cannot be taken as "reality". Hell is even more deceptive than a mere dream at night, for when you wake up in your bedroom, you are still asleep. Christians have changed the definition of hell to mean something other than the here and now, within the space/time matrix. You seem to accept their definition and allow them to take the lead in most other definitions, seemingly working as a tag team to reject reality as it is. If you allow the "devil" to mean all that is difficult and "hell" to mean all that is hard, then it should be obvious both you and Christians are in hell together. Yet despite biblical clues which suggest, for example, that Jesus came to preach to those in hell, they would rather pay theological lawyers (pastors) good money, up to 10% of gross income, to explain why hell is not whereever teeth seem to exist. To your point, you can believe anything you want about imagination, while you experience it. It is, after all the entire domain of faith. You simply want to believe that the time/space/material matrix is not the product of faith, and maintained within imagination...having nothing to do with reality accept to avoid it at all costs. Likewise, Christians don't want to believe it either, despite their own bible telling them that all physical substance is a product of faith (see book of Hebrews) and the suggestion physical substance is removed by faith, if not rearranged. I am not confident faith can make what faith made in the first place disappear. At best, you could use faith to conclude that anything made of faith cannot be real. Rather, it is the subsequent acceptance of reality that would make faith-based conditions disappear. Christians have changed the mandate *do you accept reality?* to *do you accept Jesus?* and then define Jesus to mean whatever they say it means. Likewise you implore us to accept the time/space/matter continuum to mean whatever you say it means.
Problem with your theory being, everything you say applies equally to you. It's just as likely therefore that all you believe and say, is mere imagination, not what is real.. Reality does the convincing, not the other way round.