Hell

[Onslow]

You just summed up Christian mythology as a whole.

Ah, but remember, mythology is based upon fact.

 

[Blocko]

Ah, but remember, mythology is based upon fact.

To make the extension; reason is just an abstraction placed on top of the illogical world we live in. We create formal systems and structures such that we might understand what goes on around us and therefore have a chance at controlling it.

Now let's all fuck Michel Foucault!

 

[Blocko]

Or is there already a Michel Foucault related fleshpile thread?

 

[B_big dirigible]

I never saw it so beautifully worded before. Thank you for putting it in words that I not only agree with but understand.

That parable is an oldie.

I don't know the origin.

 

[Lordpendragon]

Ah, but remember, mythology is based upon fact.

Perhaps, rather my decadent friend, it has its roots in someone's facts.

 

[stretcher74]

I wouldn't have so much trouble with it if it was just some long-haired gay jewish hippie carpenter telling you to love your neighbour and not be such a selfish materialist asswipe and promising you some extra candy and good seating in the afterlife.

But ALL versions of the Abrahamic gods are fucking tools when you get right down to it.

Each new version of hell, Jewish, Christian, Islamic gets more brutal than the one that proceeded it as the creative-writing authors of the next so-called 'holy' book feel the need to seem more "serious" and "hard-core" than the those who came before them

The biggest religion in the world, Christianity as taught/practiced is essentially a militant, quietist, apocalyptic judeaic cult and slave-religion from the 1st century C.E, with some footnotes added by St. Paul on his own messed up personal psychosexual issues.

If it's followers followed it's holy book to it's logical/literal ends we'd end up with 2 billion people behaving like David Koresh mated with the Reverend Phellps. Most of Mr. Phellps behavior is scripturally accurate at least as far as that book of hate-literature the old-testament is concerned.

Next, how did we as a species improve on this wonderful Christian faith ? We invented Islam and added expicit murder and genocide,more misogony for God mixed in with some Arabist-racial supremacism. Now we have people in Iraq taking people apart with drills while they are still alive as they yell "God is Great". What a wonderful moral education !

Myself I want nothing to do with this sicko Tony-Soprano wannabe god.

This contrived construct called Religion often turns people into monsters.

Enough with the appologists for these fuckers too. Time to take these 3 religions out behind the wood shed and give them two shots to the head.

 

[Onslow]

Or is there already a Michel Foucault related fleshpile thread?

If not we may be able to start one--

That parable is an oldie.

I don't know the origin.

Oldie or not it's the first time I've read it and that was good enough for me.

Perhaps, rather my decadent friend, it has its roots in someone's facts.

You have LORD in your name-- isn't it somewhat blasphemous to be questioning Hell?

 

[Kassokilleri2ff]

One day, i will go the path of nero and hitler, and prosecute all religious people, untill all religion is gone. One, bright and sunny day, indeed.


muaahaha.

plz dont get me started on religious debate, ive got so much crap to say and i cant go typing it all, my fingers would fall off.

 

[Lordpendragon]

You have LORD in your name-- isn't it somewhat blasphemous to be questioning Hell?

It's in the word and ears, Lowson.

 

[B_big dirigible]

Here's something to dwell on although it may be me being a little simplistic. Heaven needs an antithesis to exist and the lines of good and evil, light and dark etc.

That's a simple model which fits some religions well enough, though others not well at all.

The difficulty for the modern Big Three is that God created everything, including Evil. The Evil One himself is one of God's creatures. Even worse, he was the chief archangel, God's finest and most sophisticated creation, though still an insignificant creature in comparison with God himself. This concept of God as the architect and master of all things, good and evil, complicates things considerably. If we are to believe that God is Good, his invention of Evil must be for some ultimately Good purpose. Since the only reason ever offered is Temptation, it must somehow be Good for us to be tempted.

It is, however, most unfortunate that the earliest temptation was Knowledge, portrayed as some of the fruit of the Garden - unless Eve counts as the first temptation, or maybe that was the demoness Lilith. Beats me.

 

[Lordpendragon]

Alternatively Big D, man's creation allows for imperfection even in the creator, reflecting us and the universe. It's a very very old concept and perhaps has a memory in our genes.

 

[witch]

Wiccan....... don’t believe in Hell or a Devil, I do believe in the evil that can be found in person’s heart. My goal in life is not to make the world anymore worse then it is.

 

[HazelGod]

Well, many philosophers believe that Religion is just a way for a plutocractic society to educate it's slack-jawed masses about morals and ethics. Religion, while spiritual in appearance, largely represents a moral code and set of "acceptable" behaviours, if in parable form.

Plutocrats aren't necessarily very good teachers, but they are generally technocratic (skilled in the use of power). Power doesn't teach that well through Socratic method... It's much better at allegory, indoctrination and ye carrot (heaven) and ye stick (hell).

Here's something to dwell on although it may be me being a little simplistic. Heaven needs an antithesis to exist and the lines of good and evil, light and dark etc.

I believe you gents are both pretty close to the mark. I tend to agree with the viewpoint of religion as a construct of indoctrination and social control, particularly given what we know of the degree of enlightenment of the average person 2000 years ago. I also believe that such dumb animals are most easily controlled through fear...hence we have heaven and hell. Behave in the manners we tell you are appropriate, you are richly rewarded in the afterlife...defy our rules and you will suffer eternity in damnation. Don't cry to us if you don't like the rules...we didn't make them. GOD did. Who are you to question the will of GOD almighty? Not sure about that whole afterlife thing? Only one way to find out. By the way...GOD says it's a mortal sin to off yourself, so...

Sadly, we have not evolved much beyond this level in the last two millennia (War on Terror, anyone?) of social evolution. But yes...hell is most likely the phantom negative reinforcement aspect of a well-developed system of control.

 

[IntoxicatingToxin]

If anyone has ever read the book "Conversations with God" by Neale Donald Walsh, then you know what I think of hell. I refer to that book as my "Bible", as blasphemous as it may be to say that. I'm trying to decide whether or not to go into details. I get very heated and passionate about this sort of thing, but I'm not sure that I have the energy to type 97 paragraphs about my beliefs. :smile: In a nutshell, I think that Hell was created to instill fear in us and make us follow whatever rules were set before us. I don't think that God honestly gives a crap about what we do on Earth. He loves us as people, and as his children, and he's not going to shun us if we do something wrong. For some reason, many people believe that God's love is conditional, but that makes no sense, really. If God is God, how could God's love be conditional? Why would he choose that? I think God is nothing but unconditional love. And I don't think that any of us (or at least very few of us) have ever TRULY experienced unconditional love. I'm going to post something now that is from that book, Conversations with God. It's long, but it's interesting. The basis of the book is basically what the title says... a man on this Earth having conversations with God. Some people say that's stupid and impossible, and I'm honestly not sure whether or not to believe that he actually had these conversations, but regardless of if he did or didn't, what is said in the book is truly amazing.

Conversations with God - An Uncommon Dialogue


Q: When you say that a prayer is a statement of what is so, are you saing that God does nothing; that everything which happens after a prayer is a result of the prayer's action?

A: If you believe that God is some omnipotent being who hears all prayers, says "yes" to some, "no" to others, and "maybe, but not now" to the rest, you are mistaken. By what rule of thumb would God decide?
If you believe that God is the creator and decider of all things in your life, you are mistaken.
God is the observer, not the creator. And God stands ready to assist you in living your life, but not in the way you might expect.
It is not God's function to create, or uncreate, the circumstances or conditions of your life. God created you, in the image and likeness of God. You have created the rest, through the power God has given you. God created the process of life and life itself as you know it. Yet God gave you free choice, to do with life as you will.
In this sense, your will for you is God's will for you.
You are living your life the way you are living your life, and I have no preference in the matter.
This is the grand illusion in which you have engaged: that God cares one way or the other what you do.
I do not care what you do, and that is hard for you to hear. Yet do you care what your children do when you send them out to play? Is it a matter of consequence to you whether they play tag, or hide and seek, or pretend? No, it is not, because you know they are perfectly safe. You have placed them in an environment which you consider friendly and very okay.
Of course, you will always hope that they do not hurt themselves. And if they do, you will be right there to help them, heal them, allow them to feel safe again, to be happy again, to go and play again another day. But whether they choose hide and seek or pretend will not matter to you the next day, either.
You will tell them, of course, which games are dangerous to play. But you cannot stop your children from doing dangerous things. Not always. Not forever. Not in every moment from now until death. It is the wise parent who knows this. Yet the parent never stops caring about the outcome. It is this dichotomy - not caring deeply about the process, but caring deeply about the result - that comes close to describing the dichotomy of God.
Yet God, in a sense, does not even care about the outcome. Not the ultimate outcome. This is because the ultimate outcome is assured.
And this is the second great illusion of man: that the outcome of life is in doubt.
It is this doubt about ultimate outcome that has created your greatest enemy, which is fear. For if you doubt outcome, then you must doubt Creator - you must doubt God. And if you doubt God, you must live in fear and guilt all your life.
If you doubt God's intentions - and God's ability to produce this ultimate result - then how can you ever relax? How can you ever truly find peace?
Yet God has full power to match intentions with results. You cannot and will not believe in this (even though you claim that God is all-powerful), and so you have to create in your imagination a power equal to God, in order that you may find a way for God's will to be thwarted. And so you have created in your mythology the being you call "devil." You have even imagined a God at war with this being (thinking that God solves problems the way you do). Finally, you have actually imagined that God could lose this war.
All this violates everything you say you know about God, but this doesn't matter. You live your illusion, and thus feel your fear, all out of your decision to doubt God.
But what if you made a new decision? What then would be the result?
I tell you this: you would live as the Buddha did. As Jesus did. As did every saint you have ever idolized.
Yet, as with most of those saints, people would not understand you. And when you tried to explain your sense of peace, your joy in life, your inner ecstasy, they would listen to your words, but not hear them. They would try to repeat your words, but would add to them.
They would wonder how you could have what they cannot find. And then they would grow jealous. Soon jealousy would turn to rage, and in their anger they would try to convince you that it is you who do not understand God.
And if they were successful at tearing you from your joy, they would seek to harm you, so enormous would be their rage. And when you told them it does not matter, that even death cannot interrupt your joy, nor change your truth, they would surely kill you. Then, when they saw the peace with which you accepted death, they would call you saint, and love you again.
For it is the nature of people to love, then destroy, then love again that which they value most.

(Side note: This is going to be in two separate posts due to the character limit.)

 

[IntoxicatingToxin]

Q: But why? Why do we do that?

A: All human actions are motivated at their deepest level by one of two emotions - fear or love. In truth there are only two emotions - only two words in the language of the soul. These are the opposite ends up the great polarity which I created when I produced the universe, and your world, as you know it today.
These are the two points - the Alpha and the Omega - which allow the system you call 'relativity' to be. Without these two points, without these two ideas about things, no other idea could exist.
Every human though, and every human action, is based in either love or fear. There is no other human motivation, and all other ideas are but derivatives or these two. There are simply different versions - different twists on the same theme.
Think on this deeply and you will see that it is true. This is what I have called the Sponsoring Thought. It is either a thought of love or fear. This is the thought behind the thought behind the thought. It is the first thought. It is the prime force. It is the raw energy that drives the engine of human experience.
And here is how human behavior produces repeat experience after repeat experience; it is why humans love, then destroy, then love again: always there is the swing from one emotion to the other. Love sponsors fear sponsors love sponsors fear...
... And the reason is found in the first lie - the lie which you hold as the truth about God - that God cannot be trusted; that God's love cannot be depended upon; that God's acceptance of you is conditional; that the ultimate outcome is thus in doubt. For if you cannot depend on God's love to always be there, on whose love can you depend? If God retreats and withdraws when you do not perform properly, will not mere mortals also?
... And so it is that in the moment you pledge your highest love, you greet your greatest fear.
For the first thing you worry about after saying "I love you" is whether you'll hear it back. And if you hear it back, then you begin immediately to worry that the love you have just found, you will lose. And so all action becomes a reaction - defense against loss - even as you seek to defend yourself against the loss of God.
Yet if you knew Who You Are - that you are the most magnificent, the most remarkable, the most splendid being God has ever created - you would never fear. For who could reject such wondrous magnificence? Not even God could find fault in such a being.
But you do now know Who You Are, and you think you are a great deal less. And where did you get the idea of how much less than magnificent you are? From the only people whose word you would take on everything. From your mother and your father.
These are the people who love you the most. Why would they lie to you? Yet have they not told you that you are too much of this, and not enough of that? Have they not reminded you that you are to be seen and not heard? Have they not scolded you in some of the moments of your greatest exuberance? And, did they not encourage you to set aside some of your wildest imagining?
These are the messages you've received, and though they do not meet the criteria, are thus not messages from God, they might as well have been, for they have come from the gods of your universe surely enough.
It was your parents you taught you that love is conditional - you have felt their conditions many times - and that is the experience you take into your own love relationships.
It is also the experience you bring to Me.
From this experience you draw your conclusions about Me. Within this framework you speak your truth. "God is a love God," you say, "but if you break His commandments, He will punish you with eternal banishment and everlasting damnation."
For have you not experience the banishment of your own parents? Do you not know the pain of their damnation? How, then, could you imagine it to be any different with Me?
You have forgotten what it was like to be loved without condition. You do not remember the experience of the love of God. And so you try to imagine what God's love must be like, based on what you see of love in the world.
You have projected the role of "parent" onto God, and have thus come up with a God Who judges and rewards or punishes, based on how good He feels about what you've been up to. But this is a simplistic view of God, based on your mythology. It has nothing to do with Who I Am.
Having thus created an entire thought system about God based on human experience rather than spiritual truths, you then create an entire reality around love. It is a fear-based reality, rooted in the idea of a fearful, vengeful God. It's Sponsoring Thought is wrong but to deny that thought would be to disrupt your whole theology. And though the new theology which would replace it would truly be your salvation, you cannot accept it, because the idea of a God Who is not to feared, Who will not judge, and Who has no cause to punish is simply too magnificent to be embraced within even your grandest notion of Who and What God is.
This fear-based love reality dominates your experience of love; indeed, actually creates it. For not only do you see yourself receiving love which is conditional, you also watch yourself giving it in the same way. And even while you withhold and retreat and set your conditions, a part of you knows this is not what love really is. Still, you seem powerless to change the way you dispense it. You've learned the hard way, you tell yourself, and you'll be damned if you're going to leave yourself vulnerable again. Yet the truth is, you'll be damned if you don't.
[By your own (mistaken) thoughts about love do you damn yourself never to experience it purely. So, too, do you damn yourself never to know Me as I really am. Until you do. For you shall not be able to deny Me forever, and the moment will come for our Reconciliation.]
Every action taken by human beings is based in love or fear, not simply those dealing with relationships. Decisions affecting business, industry, politics, religion, the education of your young, the social agenda of your nations, the economic goals of your society, choice involving war, peace, attack, defense, aggression, submission; determinations to covet or give away, to save or to share, to unite or to divide - every single free choice you ever undertake arises out of one of the only two possible thoughts there are: a thought of love or a thought of fear.
Fear is the energy which contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards, harms.
Love is the energy which expands, opens up, sends out, stays, reveals, shares, heals.
Fear wraps our bodies in clothing, love allows us to stand naked. Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away. Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.
Every human thought, word, or deed is based in one emotion or the other. You have no choice about this, because there is nothing else from which to choose. But you have free choice about which of these to select.

 

[Channelwood]

The traditional christian notion of hell, seems utterly ridiculous to me and frankly an insult to anyone's intelligence.

The traditional christian notion of God seems utterly ridiculous to me and frankly an insult to anyone's intelligence.


Invisible friends who know everything and can do anything, whose only communications with us are stories passed down or cryptic "miracles" that can be easily explained by natural mechanisms who promise life after death (something everyone would love) for which there is only anecdotal evidence? Wishful thinking don't make it so.

Why should rational thought and reason apply to every other thing in the universe, but God is exempt because He's a Great Mystery That Transcends All Things?

Sorry, but God is a silly idea that only makes sense if you choose not to examine it too closely.

- Channelwood, Devout Atheist

 

[stretcher74]

I wouldn't have so much trouble with it if it was just some long-haired gay jewish hippie carpenter telling you to love your neighbour and not be such a selfish materialist asswipe and promising you some extra candy and good seating in the afterlife.

But ALL versions of the Abrahamic gods are fucking tools when you get right down to it.

Each new version of hell, Jewish, Christian, Islamic gets more brutal than the one that proceeded it as the creative-writing authors of the next so-called 'holy' book feel the need to seem more "serious" and "hard-core" than the those who came before them

The biggest religion in the world, Christianity as taught/practiced is essentially a militant, quietist, apocalyptic judeaic cult and slave-religion from the 1st century C.E, with some footnotes added by St. Paul on his own messed up personal psychosexual issues.

If it's followers followed it's holy book to it's logical/literal ends we'd end up with 2 billion people behaving like David Koresh mated with the Reverend Phellps. Most of Mr. Phellps behavior is scripturally accurate at least as far as that book of hate-literature the old-testament is concerned.

Next, how did we as a species improve on this wonderful Christian faith ? We invented Islam and added expicit murder and genocide,more misogony for God mixed in with some Arabist-racial supremacism. Now we have people in Iraq taking people apart with drills while they are still alive as they yell "God is Great". What a wonderful moral education !

Myself I want nothing to do with this sicko Tony-Soprano wannabe god.

This contrived construct called Religion often turns people into monsters.

Enough with the appologists for these fuckers too. Time to take these 3 religions out behind the wood shed and give them two shots to the head.

Enough with the appologists for these fuckers too. Time to take these 3 religions out behind the wood shed and give them two shots to the head.

Nobody will challenge me on this ? LOL

 

[Freddie53]

Earlier posters have commented that the word we use as "hell" is actually a series of words that appeared throughout the Bible at different times. And that our modern viewpoint of hell is not really from the Bible but from Dante. Dante wrote about the different stages of hell meaing some people were burn hotter than others depending on what they did wrong." As I recall there are seven levels of hell in Dante's Inferno. Not sure about the spelling.

One of the definitions of hell not mentioned earlier but it the main Hebrew word is the same word that refers to the large city dumb outside ancient Jerusalemn. There is talk about eternal fire. That is because the fire never burned out in this city dump. But of course new garbage was always being dumped in hell.

Hell in this sense is not a place but a condition. Hell is a figurative word here. God figuratively puts the "garbage" of his creation there. When we paint a room, create an art project, and other do other projects we have debris left over that must be cleaned up.

The Jewish concept of hell was God's place to put hate, evil, coveting, and all those things to be done away with. As we live and ovecome the faults in our life, they cease to exist. They have been taken to the "dump" Hell is a figurative term here.

As far as the afterlive or heaven, I do believe in an after life. Heaven is a perfect place. All are invited in. Becoming perfect is a process not an event. The perfection that we fail to grasp in this life we have an opportunity to complete our forgiveness. All have that chance.

What if a peson honestly doesn't want to live in heaven? God gives a free will. I believe that that person just ceases to exist. The "dumb" which consumes in a figurative sense also means in a literal sense what happens when people die. I believe those wanting to go to heaven go and live forever. Those who just aren't interested or don't want to be made perfect by God, simply vanish, just like the potter who has a piece of clay that just want conform and make that pottery piece and so that piece of clay is thrown away, the same happens to people who just can't or won't allow perfection to happen.

This idea of a hot burning fire that is extremely hot and people burn forever and ever and feel intense pain forever,is not my understanding of Scripture at all. Again, people have let people like Dante to determine their beliefs on hell and some of the translations have been mistranslated to back up this myth.

 

[B_big dirigible]

Why should rational thought and reason apply to every other thing in the universe,

It does?

 

[hot-rod]

Q: But why? Why do we do that?

A: All human actions are motivated at their deepest level by one of two emotions - fear or love. In truth there are only two emotions - only two words in the language of the soul. These are the opposite ends up the great polarity which I created when I produced the universe, and your world, as you know it today.
These are the two points - the Alpha and the Omega - which allow the system you call 'relativity' to be. Without these two points, without these two ideas about things, no other idea could exist.
Every human though, and every human action, is based in either love or fear. There is no other human motivation, and all other ideas are but derivatives or these two. There are simply different versions - different twists on the same theme.
Think on this deeply and you will see that it is true. This is what I have called the Sponsoring Thought. It is either a thought of love or fear. This is the thought behind the thought behind the thought. It is the first thought. It is the prime force. It is the raw energy that drives the engine of human experience.
And here is how human behavior produces repeat experience after repeat experience; it is why humans love, then destroy, then love again: always there is the swing from one emotion to the other. Love sponsors fear sponsors love sponsors fear...
... And the reason is found in the first lie - the lie which you hold as the truth about God - that God cannot be trusted; that God's love cannot be depended upon; that God's acceptance of you is conditional; that the ultimate outcome is thus in doubt. For if you cannot depend on God's love to always be there, on whose love can you depend? If God retreats and withdraws when you do not perform properly, will not mere mortals also?
... And so it is that in the moment you pledge your highest love, you greet your greatest fear.
For the first thing you worry about after saying "I love you" is whether you'll hear it back. And if you hear it back, then you begin immediately to worry that the love you have just found, you will lose. And so all action becomes a reaction - defense against loss - even as you seek to defend yourself against the loss of God.
Yet if you knew Who You Are - that you are the most magnificent, the most remarkable, the most splendid being God has ever created - you would never fear. For who could reject such wondrous magnificence? Not even God could find fault in such a being.
But you do now know Who You Are, and you think you are a great deal less. And where did you get the idea of how much less than magnificent you are? From the only people whose word you would take on everything. From your mother and your father.
These are the people who love you the most. Why would they lie to you? Yet have they not told you that you are too much of this, and not enough of that? Have they not reminded you that you are to be seen and not heard? Have they not scolded you in some of the moments of your greatest exuberance? And, did they not encourage you to set aside some of your wildest imagining?
These are the messages you've received, and though they do not meet the criteria, are thus not messages from God, they might as well have been, for they have come from the gods of your universe surely enough.
It was your parents you taught you that love is conditional - you have felt their conditions many times - and that is the experience you take into your own love relationships.
It is also the experience you bring to Me.
From this experience you draw your conclusions about Me. Within this framework you speak your truth. "God is a love God," you say, "but if you break His commandments, He will punish you with eternal banishment and everlasting damnation."
For have you not experience the banishment of your own parents? Do you not know the pain of their damnation? How, then, could you imagine it to be any different with Me?
You have forgotten what it was like to be loved without condition. You do not remember the experience of the love of God. And so you try to imagine what God's love must be like, based on what you see of love in the world.
You have projected the role of "parent" onto God, and have thus come up with a God Who judges and rewards or punishes, based on how good He feels about what you've been up to. But this is a simplistic view of God, based on your mythology. It has nothing to do with Who I Am.
Having thus created an entire thought system about God based on human experience rather than spiritual truths, you then create an entire reality around love. It is a fear-based reality, rooted in the idea of a fearful, vengeful God. It's Sponsoring Thought is wrong but to deny that thought would be to disrupt your whole theology. And though the new theology which would replace it would truly be your salvation, you cannot accept it, because the idea of a God Who is not to feared, Who will not judge, and Who has no cause to punish is simply too magnificent to be embraced within even your grandest notion of Who and What God is.
This fear-based love reality dominates your experience of love; indeed, actually creates it. For not only do you see yourself receiving love which is conditional, you also watch yourself giving it in the same way. And even while you withhold and retreat and set your conditions, a part of you knows this is not what love really is. Still, you seem powerless to change the way you dispense it. You've learned the hard way, you tell yourself, and you'll be damned if you're going to leave yourself vulnerable again. Yet the truth is, you'll be damned if you don't.
[By your own (mistaken) thoughts about love do you damn yourself never to experience it purely. So, too, do you damn yourself never to know Me as I really am. Until you do. For you shall not be able to deny Me forever, and the moment will come for our Reconciliation.]
Every action taken by human beings is based in love or fear, not simply those dealing with relationships. Decisions affecting business, industry, politics, religion, the education of your young, the social agenda of your nations, the economic goals of your society, choice involving war, peace, attack, defense, aggression, submission; determinations to covet or give away, to save or to share, to unite or to divide - every single free choice you ever undertake arises out of one of the only two possible thoughts there are: a thought of love or a thought of fear.
Fear is the energy which contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards, harms.
Love is the energy which expands, opens up, sends out, stays, reveals, shares, heals.
Fear wraps our bodies in clothing, love allows us to stand naked. Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away. Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.
Every human thought, word, or deed is based in one emotion or the other. You have no choice about this, because there is nothing else from which to choose. But you have free choice about which of these to select.

Lord, I'm running out of paper and ink