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trying to gain wealth without worrying about how they got it if they had no fear of retribution? There might be robberies and murder. After all, if one believed in reincarnation, there is really no hell-fire and damnation.
Knowing one might go to hell instead of coming back to earth again was a good way to keep parishioners in line. If a person thought they had to pay divine retribution, they would be better people on this side.
There are some good points to this way of thinking. Few people wouldn't behave if they sincerely believed they would go to hell for the sins they committed on earth. If the promise of a heavenly reward doesn't keep them straight, the thought of burning eternal retribution makes them a little more considerate.
Because Arius followers continued to believe as he did, in 525 AD they were considered damned again and the church put a little teeth into it.
Anyone who still professed to believe this way wasn't long for this world. The church was going to give them their chance, before they could contaminate others with their thoughts, to return to the earth again in another life.
Please don't think I am against organized religion: I am not. Preferring that you think for yourself, I ask that you study different religions and history to come up with your own answers. Thank God, I am still questioning.
I do agree with Saint Augustine's assertion that evil was not created by God, whose creation is entirely good. Evil was created by those who have choices to make. Thus evil is the absence of light in the Biblical sense, God being the truth, the light and the way.
Saint Augustine also believed that what first appears as evil may be inherently good.
For an extreme example of this, look at the Holocaust. We as nations allowed Hitler to kill the Jewish people for no reason other than they were God's chosen people, who according to the Bible killed Christ.
Jews were allowed to be killed by Hitler because most humans thought deep in their hearts that they deserved it. After
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