I used to think that the idea of an afterlife, divine judgement, heaven and hell, etc was driven mainly by fear of death.
Recently I’ve been wondering if it was more about giving hope to the peasantry that no matter how untouchable the arseholes in charge seem, they’ll get theirs in the end.
You'd be wrong, just as the OP is wrong about this "theory."
Despite Marx's view of religion as the opiate of the masses, it's more like atheists are jacked up on speed and spend all their time either protesting for social change, or being afraid of death or government. Then they spend the rest of their time telling us that they aren't afraid of death, but none of us theists are fooled. You're afraid of death, and hell by extension.
The truth is, the biggest actual threat to Big Government is a population completely unafraid of death. How would they keep order if you can't threaten them? Religion is not a tool of order. It's actually counter-cultural.
This is why government tries to muddle or dilute the religious idea of afterlife, so the average person thinks they need to earn it by being good. Then they manage to convince the public that goodness is obedience to laws. If the public knew that afterlife is irrelevant to goodness or evil, they would stop cooperating.
I think I can understand you. you're afraid of death. you can't- don't want to believe that after your death, you cease to exist. Your life gone, meaningless. You want an afterlife - hell or heaven, to justify your existence after death. And bible is the gateway for that stupidity. and since your bible cannot be wrong, the earth is flat and the stars are little holes in your firmament. Lovely, but yeah, like I said, you really should go pick up a few textbooks on physics and math.
See, these are the tools of state control.
Atheists working for the Deep State to keep people trapped in the secular no-afterlife (plus heliocentric globalist) paradigm. "You just believe there is an afterlife because you're afraid of death." No, I'm not. But I'll humor you for a second with a brief Pascal-style Wager.
1. If there is no afterlife, then death is the end, and there is no eternal punishment for disobeying the state. Neither can any sin that you commit
2. If there is an afterlife, Jesus Christ himself refused to pay taxes, refused to obey the temple leaders, and died a painful death on the cross. By all accounts this would make him a criminal and a sinner. Both in terms of disobedience and in terms of being against the priests who supposedly represented God, nothing at all good should happen to him in the afterlife, Again, neither disobedience to state nor supposed sin makes any difference to the afterlife.
In either case, the result is the same.
The Bible, in fact confirms this. All the stuff about hell? People who didn't read the Bible and people who tried to revise the Bible. The actual text says we have grace, that our sins have been forgiven, that we are redeemed.
Puppets of the state and the religious elite are working together to suppress the truth. This is also mentioned.
11 While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. 12 When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, 13 telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ 14 If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” 15 So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
So, how much did they pay you? Was it worth it?
On Atheists he posits, “You're afraid of death, and hell by extension.” How in fuck does that makes sense, it is the threat of hell that gets all you godbotherers on their knees begging for forgiveness.
It's simple.
You are frightened to death of death because some minister like this one
has probably at some point told you that you are going to hell if you don't accept God.
This is a "if you people think the afterlife is like this, then I don't believe in the afterlife" idea. But denial of something doesn't make it any less real. Rather than following the atheists who go around thinking they can just wish away the afterlife, you ought to take a page from Martin Luther's book. No, I'm not saying be a Protestant Christian (though you can). Luther himself was convinced he was going to hell.
Did he go into denial mode? Nope, he worked through his thoughts for actual years until he had an answer. As long as you do not have an answer to the afterlife, you will not have peace in this life. Now maybe your answer is, "I don't accept the idea of joining religion. If God were loving, he wouldn't send us to hell." That's cool too. Denial, on the other hand, is a form of masked fear. Now you can do denial if you want, but it's not healthy. Ask any shrink, they'll tell you the same. Unresolved issues will not send you to hell. But they will make
this life miserable.