[TheGreatWhiteBuffalo]

In most religions there is a punishment for sin and this punishment is usually death or separation from life eternal.

The root of Islamic discipline is death the same as the root of Christian and Jewish sin.

How can killing an innocent person atone for the sin of others? This is preposterous, the veil of a false belief in making the wrong reparations for a sin instead of doing what is necessary which is; to go directly to the one that you have offended and fix the wrong. If necessary write the wrong to make the wrong right.

The word of GOD is clear for those that know.

The Church is wrong, the word of write is right.

Write of Life and find life eternal.

Have I got a lot to write about?

[billmc]

Okay, I'll bite (but not literally).

IMO, the whole notion that "the wages of sin is going to hell forever" is a gross misinterpretation and horrid imposition upon what God said. While I don't believe the Genesis account to be literal, God said that when Adam and Eve sinned, they would die -- die, plain, simple death. He never told them they would go to hell or that they would miss heaven.

It is fairly well understood that most OT Jews held to no belief in an afterlife, especially a "place of torment" where God was no longer there. When you died, you simply died. The only way to be "separated" from God was to no longer exist.

Popular Christianity holds to many discordant notions on this subject:
1. Hell is a place where the omnipresent God is not.
2. Those in hell actually do have "eternal life", they just spend it in a different place.
3. God cannot tolerate sin and sinners would sponateously combust in God's prescence (despite the notion of the incarnation).
4. The innocent can pay for the sins of the guilty
5. Jesus is a substitute sacrifice.

If God is an eternal, everywhere-present spirit, then the only way to be separated from him is to no longer exist. The wages of sin may or may not be natural death. But it surely isn't hell, not like it is preached in most churches.