Thread: Is hell really that important? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


To visit this thread, use this URL:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=70;t=026389

Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on :
 
John Shore - Huffington Post

The writer of this article is explaining why he thinks emphasizing teaching on hell as a real place of suffering and torture is one of the main barriers of entry for non-Christians into the church. He makes a few points worth noting:

quote:
If you're a Christian, it does not matter whether you're right or wrong about hell.

And why not? Because if you're a Christian, then no matter what you think about hell, you are safe from hell.

Christians who believe in hell go to heaven; Christians who don't believe in hell go to heaven. Virtually no Christians, from the evangelical right to the progressive/liberal left, argue that. (Or, if they do, they don't via anything in the Bible.)

All Christians agree that if you are a Christian -- no matter what you believe about hell -- you go to heaven, and not hell, when you die.

quote:
Now let us take great care to ensure that we're here employing flawless logic.

If rejecting the Christian God condemns people to hell; and

If a Christian who is wrong about hell goes to heaven anyway; and

If preaching about hell significantly contributes to people rejecting Christianity;

Then evangelicals should shut-up about hell.

Some people argue that not teaching about hell lures in new believers on a "soft gospel" and makes weak or uninformed Christians. On the other hand, it could be said that once people come to know Jesus, they will develop in their faith over time and eventually have a correct understanding of the negative impact of sin and its potential consequences.

Thoughts?
 
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on :
 
A few Christians do seem to argue that our doctrine needs to be more or less accurate or else we're in danger of hell. So, contrary to the article, for some Christians it's not enough that we believe in Jesus (or whatever 'being a Christian' means...).

However, I do agree with the main thrust of the article. I think that as more and more people (at least in my and seekingsister's country, the UK) have little concept of Jesus and Christianity, us folks seeking to share and explain our faith need to start a few steps further back from any talk about eternal destinies. In any case, I'm doubtful as to the effectiveness of scaring people into faith through threats of eternal consequences.

Finally, ISTM there's little talk of eternal destinies / consequences in the New Testament, except in dialogue with various Jews; i.e. people who thought they were already sorted with Yahweh. When Jesus, Paul and so on are talking to non-Jews (and even to Jews not in authority, on the whole?) they seem to take a more positive approach. If my memory serves me well...
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
I'm still wondering if the author is claiming that Christianity says that all Christians will go to heaven - which would be pig ignorant: at odds with pretty much all of historical Christianity and still to this day contrary to the official teachings of the vast majority of Christianity (RC and Eastern Orthodox, for one) - or that Christianity says that the belief whether there is a hell or not is not in and by itself significant for whether one goes to hell or not.

I think it is the former. But that would be so astonishingly stupid that I cannot quite believe it.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
or that Christianity says that the belief whether there is a hell or not is not in and by itself significant for whether one goes to hell or not.

I think it is the former. But that would be so astonishingly stupid that I cannot quite believe it.

Umm... it looks to me like the latter. The author may believe the former (he is taking part in an intra-evangelical debate) - but his argument is explicitly only using the latter weaker belief, which is sufficient for his purposes.
 
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I'm still wondering if the author is claiming that Christianity says that all Christians will go to heaven - which would be pig ignorant: at odds with pretty much all of historical Christianity and still to this day contrary to the official teachings of the vast majority of Christianity (RC and Eastern Orthodox, for one) - or that Christianity says that the belief whether there is a hell or not is not in and by itself significant for whether one goes to hell or not.

I think it is the former. But that would be so astonishingly stupid that I cannot quite believe it.

I think it depends on how you define Christian. I believe RCC and Eastern Orthodox consider anyone baptized into their churches to be Christians, regardless of whether they live out that faith.

I would strongly suspect John Shore's definition of a Christian is someone who actively has put their faith in Christ, if that makes any difference.
 
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on :
 
IngoB, would it help for the purposes of seekingsister's question here if you read the statement in the article she quoted from as:

'Because if you [think that you]'re a Christian, then no matter what you think about hell, you [think that you] are safe from hell.'

The point ISTM is whether the accuracy of our beliefs about heaven, hell etc. have any effect on our eternal destiny. If not, the author says, then we should keep quiet about hell because (the author believes) speaking about hell turns people off from Christianity. I suspect he's right.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
'Because if you [think that you]'re a Christian, then no matter what you think about hell, you [think that you] are safe from hell.'

Uhh, that didn't really help. I think that I am a Christian, and I do not think that I am safe from hell. As it happens, if I were to think so, then according to my Church (the RCC) I would be guilty of the sin of presumption.

quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
The point ISTM is whether the accuracy of our beliefs about heaven, hell etc. have any effect on our eternal destiny. If not, the author says, then we should keep quiet about hell because (the author believes) speaking about hell turns people off from Christianity. I suspect he's right.

First, I disagree with the premise. What we think about heaven and hell certainly can affect how we think, speak and act, and hence certainly can affect whether we in fact go to heaven or hell. Second, I disagree with the scope. Even if it were the case that belief in heaven and hell does not matter for the Christian, that does not tell us that they do not matter for the non-Christian. If for example all Christians go to heaven and all non-Christian go to hell (not something I believe in fact), then it would be important for the non-Christians to know this even though it would not be necessary for the Christians. Third, I disagree with the evaluation. While it may be the case that the Christian not speaking about heaven and hell is not lying, but rather employing "mental reservation", it is unclear that a non-Christian converting to Christianity without knowing about heaven and hell is actually becoming a Christian. If my employer hides from me a part of the contract which says that I have to run around naked, and once I have signed the document suddenly pulls out this extra section, then I'm not obligated to fulfil this part just because I have signed the contract. Trickery doesn't establish duties. Likewise, one cannot trick someone into faith and then hold them to it when the full picture is revealed.
 
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
If for example all Christians go to heaven and all non-Christian go to hell (not something I believe in fact), then it would be important for the non-Christians to know this even though it would not be necessary for the Christians.

If it doesn't help them come to know Christ, then how can we say it is important? Peter didn't speak of hell at Pentecost. His entire message was about the hope of overcoming death and experiencing the Holy Spirit through Christ's sacrifice.


quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Third, I disagree with the evaluation. While it may be the case that the Christian not speaking about heaven and hell is not lying, but rather employing "mental reservation", it is unclear that a non-Christian converting to Christianity without knowing about heaven and hell is actually becoming a Christian.

Well if you read through to his blog, you'll discover that he doesn't believe in hell as an actual place of eternal torment. I would agree with him that belief in that version of hell is not necessary before becoming a Christian. We know that heaven is where God is, and if we believe in Him then that is where we want to go. I don't care if it's a cave or a fiery pit or annihilation - I love God and I want to go where He is after I leave this Earth. Thinking that I'll be prodded with pitchforks by demons is not going to make me love God any more, and what compels me to follow Him is not the fear of punishment, but the fear of separation from Him.

I grew up in a church that taught hell was waiting around the corner for everyone. A faithful Christian who slips up and sins and then is immediately hit by a bus and dies before repenting is going straight to hell - that's what I was raised with. It turned me off of God entirely. So I profoundly disagree that emphasizing hell as a key concept is useful in evangelizing or conversion. It may be for some, but it wasn't for me or the many other drop outs from that church.
 
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :
 
In my experience, those with senses of guilt generally have too much. Those without that sense may require hell so as to understand what they may inflict on others. The rest of it? threats of hell and lakes of fire and torment and all that dearly loved awfulness of the armageddonist set? Probably better to consider that we must form ourselves to living a Christian life, and leave such matters to another time, avoiding the sin of pride. Pride in our presumed when dead destination.
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
I hear this a lot on the ship. "Hell scared me away from God. But I stopped believing in hell, and now I can believe in God again."

The question remains, though, whether that is the real God. The God of the Bible, at least, has never seemed to appreciate being redefined to suit the ethical fads of the age.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:

I grew up in a church that taught hell was waiting around the corner for everyone. A faithful Christian who slips up and sins and then is immediately hit by a bus and dies before repenting is going straight to hell - that's what I was raised with. It turned me off of God entirely. So I profoundly disagree that emphasizing hell as a key concept is useful in evangelizing or conversion. It may be for some, but it wasn't for me or the many other drop outs from that church.

The practical question is, do such churches attract more people than they repel? Do they hold on to more people than they lose? If they mostly lose and repel people, then the problem should resolve itself; those churches will eventually be weakened and marginalised, if they don't just fizzle out entirely.
 
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
I hear this a lot on the ship. "Hell scared me away from God. But I stopped believing in hell, and now I can believe in God again."

The question remains, though, whether that is the real God. The God of the Bible, at least, has never seemed to appreciate being redefined to suit the ethical fads of the age.

Many of the conceptions of hell that have terrified people over the years have more to do with Dante's "Inferno" than with the New Testament. Is that not an "ethical fad?"
 
Posted by The Revolutionist (# 4578) on :
 
Well, I think we've got an obligation as Christians to believe and preach the truth, whether or not it's palatable.

It's one thing to stop believing in Hell, at least in the "traditional" understanding, because you don't believe that the Bible truly teaches eternal conscious torment. It's another entirely to drop a belief simply because you or the people you're trying to reach don't like it.

As Augustine said, "If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself."
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
I hear this a lot on the ship. "Hell scared me away from God. But I stopped believing in hell, and now I can believe in God again."

The question remains, though, whether that is the real God. The God of the Bible, at least, has never seemed to appreciate being redefined to suit the ethical fads of the age.

Many of the conceptions of hell that have terrified people over the years have more to do with Dante's "Inferno" than with the New Testament. Is that not an "ethical fad?"
There is a whole lotta space between Dante's inferno and "Hell doesn't exist."
 
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on :
 
Here's John's actual position:

quote:
There is no support in the Bible for the morally repugnant idea that hell is an actual place to which God sentences people to spend eternity in mortal agony.
That's not the same as not believing in hell. He does think those who fail to follow God go someplace other than heaven. He just doesn't accept the conscious torment version of hell, from what I understand.
 
Posted by MrsBeaky (# 17663) on :
 
IngoB

Please would you jot down a quick overview of what you believe about what happens to those of us who believe we are Christians after we die? This is a serious question, not a dig!
Thanks
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB
If for example all Christians go to heaven and all non-Christian go to hell (not something I believe in fact), then it would be important for the non-Christians to know this even though it would not be necessary for the Christians. Third, I disagree with the evaluation. While it may be the case that the Christian not speaking about heaven and hell is not lying, but rather employing "mental reservation", it is unclear that a non-Christian converting to Christianity without knowing about heaven and hell is actually becoming a Christian. If my employer hides from me a part of the contract which says that I have to run around naked, and once I have signed the document suddenly pulls out this extra section, then I'm not obligated to fulfil this part just because I have signed the contract. Trickery doesn't establish duties. Likewise, one cannot trick someone into faith and then hold them to it when the full picture is revealed.

This all seems really rather different from what you were saying on another fairly recent thread:

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical
If everyone on the planet went through life acutely and entirely conscious that if they spurned God's advances, they would fall into a hideous pit of burning sulphur, and they could see this pit under their feet every moment - as if walking on a transparent surface - then who in their right mind would not comply? In reality, people would be 'mugged' into loving God. But then to argue that the choice is real and legitimate only because people don't know that this fate awaits them, is tantamount to saying that God's idea of true freedom is an illusory freedom, in which people are deliberately kept in a state of ignorance, unaware of the unspeakably serious peril they are in. What sort of sadistic trickster is this God?

You are now just making my argument for me. It is indeed near impossible for people to remain free in their choices if the eternal consequences of those choices are compelling present to them. And since love involves a choice, it is then near impossible to truly love God. One would have to love God in spite of being excessively forced to "love" God.
So, according to this argument, for people to make a genuinely free choice (and therefore truly to love God), we must keep them in ignorance about the possibility of their going to hell, because hell - if believed - is the ultimate deterrent, which, by definition, undermines the role of free will (except in the case of the extreme masochist).
 
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
I find it utterly astounding that in this day and age, with the factual knowledge available, that anyone can entertain the idea that there is such a state or place as hell which spirits/souls can be transferred to after death. The ideas about hell which have built up over thousands of years, all of which of course are humanly created ideas, can be interpreted as a state of being while we live, but to maintain that such a state, or place, can actually exist beyond death has no place in reality except in religious doctrines or superstitions. To foster any such belief in people is surely detrimental to a person's mental health. It would, in my opinion, amount to telling them a falsehood, since there is zero evidence for an actual hell and no demonstration of its existence can be provided. It might 'work' as a temperorary curb on some behaviours, but that's all.
For those who do believe there is a hel, may I ask where, or how, you imagine it to be?
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
What "factual knowledge" are we talking about, Susan? I honestly have no idea what you are talking about.
 
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :
 
quote:
originally posted by SusanDoris:
The ideas about hell which have built up over thousands of years, all of which of course are humanly created ideas, can be interpreted as a state of being while we live, but to maintain that such a state, or place, can actually exist beyond death has no place in reality except in religious doctrines or superstitions.

How do you know it has no place in reality?
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris
I find it utterly astounding that in this day and age, with the factual knowledge available, that anyone can entertain the idea that there is such a state or place as hell which spirits/souls can be transferred to after death.

The factual knowledge is as follows:

1. The reality of moral conscience.

2. The reality of the validity of morality, which cannot be denied, given that 80-90%+ of our daily news concerns moral issues of one kind or another.

3. The reality of the concept of justice, which can never be eradicated from the human psyche.

The above three are all really one fact, of course.

4. While this may not count as a 'fact' for atheists, it cannot be denied that some people have very definite experiences of what they believe is 'God', which involves a strong conviction of sin. I am one such person. An atheist may think I am deluded, but in no way can he prove that, because he cannot prove that consciousness is nothing more than brain function.

5. The fact of the behaviour of billions of religious people throughout history (the vast majority of the human race) seeking to appease whatever they regard as God / god / the gods / the spirits / the ancestors etc, which testifies to an awareness of something undesirable after death directly relating to moral behaviour peformed on this side of the grave. Atheists can dismiss this in purely naturalistic terms, but only by resorting to special pleading.

I think that's enough to be getting on with...
 
Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :
 
I find it really odd for anybody to view hell as an unimportant detail, given that all sides of the debate agree that it greatly affects our view of the character of God.

It is also the subject of a lot of woolly thinking with hardly any, even amongst the Clergy, being up front about what they believe.

I think that on this, the Church should be plain speaking about what it does believe. The article is just nonsense. The idea seemingly having been taken from New Labour that you define your beliefs by getting focus groups to decide what is nice.

FWiW I do not believe in the traditional doctrine of hell.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
What "factual knowledge" are we talking about, Susan? I honestly have no idea what you are talking about.

What Zach said. What factual knowledge do we now possess that disproves Hell? Please give the facts, and the chain of reasoning.
 
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I find it really odd for anybody to view hell as an unimportant detail, given that all sides of the debate agree that it greatly affects our view of the character of God... The article is just nonsense. The idea seemingly having been taken from New Labour that you define your beliefs by getting focus groups to decide what is nice.

I don't think the article was saying either that hell is an unimportant detail or that we should define our beliefs according to what focus groups tell us they approve of.

Rather, it was putting forward the idea that Christians shouldn't major on hell as we explain our faith to non-believers (the final line in seekingsister's quote was 'Evangelicals should shut up about hell). That's a separate question from what specifically we believe about the nature of hell and people's eternal destinies.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by MrsBeaky:
IngoB Please would you jot down a quick overview of what you believe about what happens to those of us who believe we are Christians after we die? This is a serious question, not a dig!
Thanks

Just the same as to everyone: First there is a "Particular Judgment" by Christ, in which the individual soul will be assigned by Him to either heaven, or heaven after undergoing purification (purgatory), or hell. This happens instantly after death, and the resulting reward or punishment begins then and there, as far as this is possible for a disembodied soul. Then at the Second Coming of Christ, He will sit in "General/Last Judgment" over all humans together. For this all of humanity will be assembled in body and soul, i.e., this is the occasion for the General Resurrection. There will be no change in Christ's judgement on the individual at this point. Rather, this is where these individual judgements become public to all, including their social and communal aspects, revealing the Divine plan and how the injustices of the world have been judged. This is also the occasion for everybody bending their knees to Christ, whether gladly or against their will. Literally. (Well, I mean in an embodied manner. For all I know we will fall flat on our faces instead of bending our knees.) Furthermore, with this humanity becomes "complete" again as embodied beings, experiencing henceforth the pleasures of heaven and the torments of hell. (Whereas as disembodied souls these were more abstract states of fulfilment in God or loss of God.)

quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
So, according to this argument, for people to make a genuinely free choice (and therefore truly to love God), we must keep them in ignorance about the possibility of their going to hell, because hell - if believed - is the ultimate deterrent, which, by definition, undermines the role of free will (except in the case of the extreme masochist).

This is misrepresenting a discussion of the reasons of the hiddenness of God as having favoured obscurantism about the Four Last Things. Nothing could be further from the truth, since of course the exact opposite follows. It becomes our moral duty to inform others about the realities of death, judgement, heaven and hell precisely because God, and heaven and hell, are hidden from this world other than through Divine revelation and our free response to it.
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief
What factual knowledge do we now possess that disproves Hell?

I anticipate the response that "the burden of proof is on the one making the positive claim, namely: 'hell exists'."

Wait for it...
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief
What factual knowledge do we now possess that disproves Hell?

I anticipate the response that "the burden of proof is on the one making the positive claim, namely: 'hell exists'."

Wait for it...

In that line, believing in hell isn't any less reasonable than believing that there is a God or that Jesus is risen from the dead.
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB
This is misrepresenting a discussion of the reasons of the hiddenness of God as having favoured obscurantism about the Four Last Things. Nothing could be further from the truth, since of course the exact opposite follows. It becomes our moral duty to inform others about the realities of death, judgement, heaven and hell precisely because God, and heaven and hell, are hidden from this world other than through Divine revelation and our free response to it.

OK, so I decide to fulfil my moral duty to go out on the street and tell all and sundry to "turn or burn" and "if you don't turn you will definitely burn", but... "please make sure that you turn only if you really want to, not because you have to".

Hmmmm... There's something about that, that doesn't quite seem right to me, logic-wise... [Confused]
 
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
In that line, believing in hell isn't any less reasonable than believing that there is a God or that Jesus is risen from the dead.

Correct. I think that there simply cannot be direct evidence for any of it. As soon as I am confronted with clear evidence, my freedom to believe or not is gone. I would have to believe from that point. Thus, an appearance of essentially 'no data' is required if the idea of 'faith' is to be meaningful at all.

The same issue makes me sceptical about those who claim to have seen or experienced miracles. I think that they interpreted what they experienced as miraculous, but the freedom to not believe means that either the other explanations were probable enough to support unbelief or they lack the appropriate "faith lens" with which to view the experience that is labelled miraculous by others.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
OK, so I decide to fulfil my moral duty to go out on the street and tell all and sundry to "turn or burn" and "if you don't turn you will definitely burn", but... "please make sure that you turn only if you really want to, not because you have to".

Hmmmm... There's something about that, that doesn't quite seem right to me, logic-wise... [Confused]

The main problem is that you are there trying to do in your words what God is doing for all of us by remaining hidden. It is precisely because your words are really just your words that I can find them to be lunatic ravings, or threats forcing me into servile fear of hell, or reminders of my filial love of God. Well, depending on what you say you can do your bit in steering me to one or the other. But ultimately it is not you who can realise any of these visions, hence I remain in principle free to find my peace with God on these matters. (I'm not ignoring that our words have real power over others. But in the end that power is empty, since it cannot bring about its claims. Hence it can always be challenged in principle, even though for some this might be near impossible in practice. And for those who mislead the weak, millstones.)

Your words will be realised for me only in my faith, for the judgement of God remains largely hidden. There is no need for you to tell me what I should really want, or have to do, if thereby you expect my faith to happen. You can neither make heaven and hell appear, nor grant me the grace of faith. There is a need for you to tell me what I should really want, or have to do, as a matter of your own charity. And since it is out of charity, you will have to find an effective way how to get me from where I am to where I should be (according to the best of your own belief). Just as if you see someone drowning, you do not lecture them on the importance of swimming and the best swim strokes to use, you jump in and try to drag them to the shore. And if you wish your children to learn swimming and enjoy it, then you do not throw them in at the deep end, hoping that the utter fear of drowning will motivate them. You start them at the shallow end and let them splash, and build them up slowly into confident swimmers. Ot at least so think I.
 
Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :
 
This is a good thread.

I have an impression that many people believe far more in Hell and Satan than in Heaven and God. I think this is a mistaken emphasis that does not make their lives richer, happier or wiser. It may be that it is easier to understand the idea of Hell than that of Heaven because so many people live in hellish conditions.
 
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :
 
I think that, while it's very easy to blow holes in much said in the article, the point that some non-believers are likely to be put off of Christianity for life by some of the hellfire and brimstone pushers is valid.

The good news Jesus spoke of, the hope and promise of an eternal life with God after physical death for those who follow Christ, is sound.

At the time of Jesus, it seems that the various beliefs about the afterlife were around that people speak of today: some thought death to be the end, some thought the spirit would leave the body and float off somewhere, some thought there would be a future day of the Lord when justice would be done (at which time the dead would be raised to face up to it) and some believed in reincarnation.

People converted to Christianity as they grasped the good news, which was better than all other possibilities, and which was shown to be true thanks to the experience of God they came to know through the Holy Spirit, whether directly or indirectly.

The hellfire and brimstone imagery is supposed to be the desirable outcome of evil, not the undesirable imagery of tortured souls who couldn't quite get their minds to see things the same way as a prominent theologian past or present.
 
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
All postmodern people are put off by the woodenism of 'Evangalicalism'.

And Jesus had much better news than that. Twice.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief
What factual knowledge do we now possess that disproves Hell?

I anticipate the response that "the burden of proof is on the one making the positive claim, namely: 'hell exists'."
I'm sure that's not what she means, because that is predicated on an absence of factual knowledge, and she is speaking about the existence of certain facts that make the concept of Hell untenable. There is a world of difference between "You can't prove that" and "I can disprove that," and her claim most clearly is of the second variety.

We can but wait and see, of course.
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB
The main problem is that you are there trying to do in your words what God is doing for all of us by remaining hidden. It is precisely because your words are really just your words that I can find them to be lunatic ravings, or threats forcing me into servile fear of hell, or reminders of my filial love of God. Well, depending on what you say you can do your bit in steering me to one or the other. But ultimately it is not you who can realise any of these visions, hence I remain in principle free to find my peace with God on these matters. (I'm not ignoring that our words have real power over others. But in the end that power is empty, since it cannot bring about its claims. Hence it can always be challenged in principle, even though for some this might be near impossible in practice. And for those who mislead the weak, millstones.)

Of course my words are my words, and you can take them how you like. But irrespective of whether I am a lunatic and pour forth lunatic ravings or not, what matters is what is actually objectively true. I think - though I may be wrong - that you believe that, in the final analysis, unbelievers go to hell. Correct me if I am wrong about that. I don't expect you to accept what I say, because why should you? What I am trying to do is understand what you believe, and whether it is coherent. Because I tend to think that logic is generally quite a good method in trying to ascertain truth, assuming we are using it on the correct presuppositions.

Now if God declares - whether to Himself in hiddenness or to us in openness - that it is objectively true that those who fail to believe in Jesus Christ go to eternal hell, then this speaks to the question of the validity of our free will, does it not?

We've been this way before on the other thread, and I don't think our discussion came to any kind of resolution. I cannot see how the love of God can be freely chosen, if the penalty for rejecting this love is so severe. I certainly believe in the love of God, but I don't accept that we choose it, in the sense that we choose a romantic attachment to, say, a future spouse. God's love is a necessity, like the law of gravity or the heat of the sun. God, as Creator, sustains the universe in every way, and since His character is love, then He sustains it as a God of love. The fact that evil people are sustained by the God of love - otherwise they would have no life at all - does not contradict my view. In this instance, the Creator is abused, not absent. We do have the ability to choose to reject this love, but only in the sense of rejecting a necessity, a bit like choosing not to eat or sleep. That is a rather different understanding of free will than that of freely choosing to love God without any element of compulsion or coercion, as one would freely romantically fall in love with another human being. If a woman said to me: "Freely fall in love with me otherwise I will arrange for you to thrown in the local incinerator", I think I would be more than a little puzzled at her use of the word 'freely'! And if I should go through life spurning the advances of this woman, but without any inkling of the consequences of doing so, and then there came a day when she informed me that I must now be thrown into the incinerator, because "you rejected me for all those years", then I would regard her as extremely devious. If she argued that she did not tell me what would happen to me if I rejected her, because she wanted me to respond to her freely and not under compulsion, then I would regard her as quite mad. She had been expecting me to freely love someone who is a deceiver. If free will can only work within the context of ignorance and false security, then free will is a sick joke.

Whether God is hidden or not is irrelevant as far as this point is concerned. I accept that overpowering evidence of God would... - as William Paley observed in his 'Evidences' - ... "restrain the voluntary powers too much; would not answer the purpose of trial and probation; would call for no exercise of candour, seriousness, humility, inquiry; no submission of passions, interests, and prejudices to moral evidence and to probable truth; no habits of reflection..." and so on. But this is a hiddennes that simply allows room for man to function without being overwhelmed. That is rather different from the idea that there is no element of coercion in the love of God. To use an analogy: much of the workings of nature are hidden, and are only revealed to scientists by great study and effort. This complexity and hiddenness facilitates and encourages human enquiry and intellectual effort and interest. But the source of this complexity and fascination is a 'given' - a reality forced on all of us - which if rejected and abused turns against us. We cannot freely choose nature. We simply have to accept it. But we can choose how much we wish to understand it and expose ourselves to different aspects of it.

Perhaps we are talking at cross purposes. But when an atheist challenged me by saying that the gospel does not involve free choice, because of the threat of eternal hell if the wrong choice is made, he was right. Virtually everything else he said was utter nonsense, but when I am intellectually challenged on something, and I have no answer, then I must reconsider my position. Believe it or not (contrary to what some people on the Ship may think) I do actually admit when I am wrong, even if I fight tooth and nail before getting to that position. This was one such instance, and I told this atheist (with whom I had had many very heated arguments) that he had made a very good point. I cannot see how the reality of the threat of eternal hell does not involve God coercing people to love Him.
 
Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :
 
How can we love the Persons of God adequately (let alone with our whole being) when we believe if we don't do so we will be sent to Hell? Sounds sort of like a catch-22.
 
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
How can we love the Persons of God adequately (let alone with our whole being) when we believe if we don't do so we will be sent to Hell? Sounds sort of like a catch-22.

How can we love (or believe in) a God who would do such a thing - especially when we wouldn't do it ourselves?

Surely God is more loving than we are?
 
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Why do we insist on debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? On comparing what we believe and not how we believe? We do not question our epistemologies and those of the writers of the Bible. And Jesus.

What is the story of Hell? That's important in evangelism if it comes up. Otherwise, why bother leading with some wooden facet of it? Leading with a postmodern meaning, predicated on God being an effective, affective lover, fine.
 
Posted by Chief of sinners (# 8794) on :
 
Preaching salvation as an escape route from hell, is just selling fire insurance. People want to pay as little as possible for the maximum amount of cover. here is a little verse CH Spurgeon's Morning by Morning readings:

quote:
"Law and terrors do but harden
All the while they work alone;
But a sense of blood-bought pardon
Will dissolve a heart of stone."

If we really want to motive and empower people to live for Christ then they will be motivated by understanding God's love and responding to it
 
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on :
 
Just a quick thought - I suppose threats of eternal damnation might prompt some people to investigate Christianity and the claims it makes, leading them on to learning about Jesus and growing in faith and commitment to following him? It's not how I'd choose to explain the good news of Jesus Christ but...
 
Posted by Oscar the Grouch (# 1916) on :
 
Never preached on Hell. Never will.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that Hell is simply a scary bedtime story for those of a religious persuasion.

Faith that is based on fear of being condemned to eternal anguish is not the kind of faith I think Jesus wanted of people. Faith shouldn't be based on fear of something nasty, but on the overwhelming, irrepressible love of God.
 
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
What "factual knowledge" are we talking about, Susan? I honestly have no idea what you are talking about.

My apologies; I was thinking of all that is known about the composition of everything, both in the universe and in the tiniest particle. When tried and tested knowledge of such things is available, and I see no reason to doubt the trustworthiness of this info, then where or what is hell? People used to think that God and heaven were 'up there' and raise their eyes to the skies, but those with access to the 'factual knowledge' I am referring to would not do that nowadays, would they?

quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
quote:
originally posted by SusanDoris:
The ideas about hell which have built up over thousands of years, all of which of course are humanly created ideas, can be interpreted as a state of being while we live, but to maintain that such a state, or place, can actually exist beyond death has no place in reality except in religious doctrines or superstitions.

How do you know it has no place in reality?
Ah, yes, fair question! Yes, of course, the idea of hell has had, and still has, a strong place in the reality that is human thought, but hell remains an idea which does not have a substance or reality which can be tested or measured.
 
Posted by Ad Orientem (# 17574) on :
 
Yet that rests on the assumption that all that is can be tested and measured using the scientific method.
 
Posted by Laurelin (# 17211) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
People used to think that God and heaven were 'up there' and raise their eyes to the skies, but those with access to the 'factual knowledge' I am referring to would not do that nowadays, would they?

Very likely not. [Biased] I think those of us who believe in an after-life think of it as being in 'another dimension'.

quote:
Ah, yes, fair question! Yes, of course, the idea of hell has had, and still has, a strong place in the reality that is human thought, but hell remains an idea which does not have a substance or reality which can be tested or measured.
Well, obviously. Nobody has ever come back from the dead to prove the reality of life beyond death. Nobody, that is, except Jesus. [Big Grin] [Biased]

I can understand the logic of a purely materialist view of the universe, although it is not my view. But do 'materialists-only' folk seriously think that people with a religious faith are incapable of holding parallel views in tension together? [Confused] E.g. that you can both accept science - i.e. how things work, the stuff that makes stuff stuff (as I heard the 'God particle' described the other day on Radio 4 [Big Grin] ) and at the same time believe in a spiritual/metaphysical dimension that exceeds the physical dimensions of the universe?

Science tells us how. It cannot tell us why.
 
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :
 
quote:
originally posted by SusanDoris:
substance or reality which can be tested or measured.

So?
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
...hell remains an idea which does not have a substance or reality which can be tested or measured.

Neither does God. Neither does God have a definite place in the universe.
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
SusanDoris:

Human consciousness cannot be tested or measured by the scientific method. Does consciousness therefore not exist?
 
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
EE Brief pause for gnashing of teeth ... I have been thinking about my reply while I've been out and about, checked it through a couple of times and, yes, accidentally lost it. I'll be back asap!
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Yet that rests on the assumption that all that is can be tested and measured using the scientific method.

Which is not a scientific belief but a philosophical (or religious) belief. Materialism cannot be tested scientifically. Materialists who think they are thereby being "scientific" don't know what the word means.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
I think - though I may be wrong - that you believe that, in the final analysis, unbelievers go to hell. Correct me if I am wrong about that.

Seriously?! Not only have I stated my opinion on this umpteen times on these boards, I'm also quite generally never far from what the RCC teaches officially - and so here. No, I do not believe that all unbelievers go to hell. Neither do I believe that all believers go to heaven. I do believe that believing increases the chances of going to heaven, significantly. But both heaven and hell will have their share of believers and unbelievers alike. Of course, after death there is no more such thing as an "unbeliever". Or for that matter "believer". Everybody will be a "knower" then. Belief, or lack thereof, is a feature of this world, not of the next.

quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
I cannot see how the love of God can be freely chosen, if the penalty for rejecting this love is so severe.

And yet, countless people all around make the apparently free choice to love God, or hate Him, or ignore Him, or any number of other choices with sentiment. Now, you can question how "free" their freedom really is. But it is clearly as "free" as usual, so you will end up with a general discussion of free will there, not with a discussion of the specific case. Or you can ask how people manage to come to a free choice in spite of an overwhelming threat / promise. And the answer is, and my point has been, that these matters are hidden. Not to the point where one would make no choice simply because one is not aware that there is one. But to the point where the mind is not forced by sheer instinct.

quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
If a woman said to me: "Freely fall in love with me otherwise I will arrange for you to thrown in the local incinerator", I think I would be more than a little puzzled at her use of the word 'freely'!

But that's not quite how this works. It's more "Do X, and I will make you regret the day you were born. Do Y, and I will blow your mind with pleasures beyond your imagination. Of course, if you grow to really love me, then you will do Y and avoid X because of me, rather than because of what you get out of it. But I will take what I can get from you in the meantime..." The point is then that the more present punishment and reward are, the less it is possible to transcend them towards real love. If however these are distant promises for the future, you might just chat with that woman and find that you quite like her company.

quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
But when an atheist challenged me by saying that the gospel does not involve free choice, because of the threat of eternal hell if the wrong choice is made, he was right.

He wasn't, as evidenced by the simple fact that he is an atheist. Clearly he does not in fact feel that his choice is forced by the gospel. Why not? Because he doesn't believe in it. Why doesn't he believe in it? Because God is hiding sufficiently to allow that.

quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
I cannot see how the reality of the threat of eternal hell does not involve God coercing people to love Him.

The observational data shows clearly that God is not coercing anybody, at least not as a matter of course by virtue of the teaching of heaven and hell. People sometimes do, including people belonging to religious institutions. Perhaps in other times your atheist friend could have managed to get himself burned on the stake for his atheism. But that's not God doing anything in this world that would coerce your friend. The threat of hell arises with faith in hell. Your atheist friend can make hell become coercive for himself by starting to believe in it, but the teaching of hell cannot coerce him into believing. It is powerless other than by the power he gives it.
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
I am kinda curious, EE, if you can think of a way for an atheist to be afraid of hell without being irrational.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
I am kinda curious, EE, if you can think of a way for an atheist to be afraid of hell without being irrational.

I'm afraid of hell. I'm afraid of it because of what paying attention to such a monstrous notion does to the consciences of those who believe in it. I don't believe that hell is real. But then I don't believe that this five pound note in my pocket to have any inherent value either. I also believe that if you believe it to be real then it is a factor I need to take into account when dealing with you.

Yes, I believe hell to be important as an atheist. I believe it to say something about the nature of the god you worship, and the so-called good news you have for me in the gospel. In short, condemning someone to be tortured eternally is quite literally the greatest evil possible (and killing people while they are in a state of grace is a perfectly rational response if those are the rules - another problem).

So yes, hell is that important. If you believe in it the foundation of your morality is upon a being that treats people in ways that make Guantanamo Bay or even Auschwicz look like a family outing. And you are telling me that this is good, meaning that your cosmology is not just evil, returning disprortionate bad for anything, but you worship that evil and call it good.

So yes, the attempt to pervert justice by calling hell just is important.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
My apologies; I was thinking of all that is known about the composition of everything, both in the universe and in the tiniest particle. When tried and tested knowledge of such things is available, and I see no reason to doubt the trustworthiness of this info, then where or what is hell?

Hell is not supposed to be a physical place in this world, and apart from religious folklore such a claim has never been part of Christianity. Hence this is basically like saying that Paris does not exist, because you cannot find it anywhere in the UK. It never was supposed to be found in the UK.

quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
People used to think that God and heaven were 'up there' and raise their eyes to the skies, but those with access to the 'factual knowledge' I am referring to would not do that nowadays, would they?

They would be rather dumb if they stopped doing this, in fact. Because we are embodied beings and our minds express themselves in our bodies, and what out bodies do impacts our minds. Take a note for example of a greeting expressing respect and/or submissiveness, it invariably results in the person performing the greeting making themselves smaller while averting the eyes: the bow, the curtsey, the kowtow, the prostration, ... Similarly, to raise our gaze to the heavens, i.e., to look up and hold that position, is an embodiment of seeking out a "higher power". Quite possibly so because we learn as children to listen to out parents, whose voices come from above our heads. But it does not matter why we have this bodily association, we do have it, and hence raising our face up to the sky is not proof for some stupid belief that God is in lower orbit around the earth. Rather it is showing in the body what is in the mind, and moving the mind by the actions of the body. It is an eminently practical usage of psychosomatic effects.

quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
Ah, yes, fair question! Yes, of course, the idea of hell has had, and still has, a strong place in the reality that is human thought, but hell remains an idea which does not have a substance or reality which can be tested or measured.

Sure. And?
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
I am kinda curious, EE, if you can think of a way for an atheist to be afraid of hell without being irrational.

I'm afraid of hell. I'm afraid of it because of what paying attention to such a monstrous notion does to the consciences of those who believe in it. I don't believe that hell is real. But then I don't believe that this five pound note in my pocket to have any inherent value either. I also believe that if you believe it to be real then it is a factor I need to take into account when dealing with you.

Yes, I believe hell to be important as an atheist. I believe it to say something about the nature of the god you worship, and the so-called good news you have for me in the gospel. In short, condemning someone to be tortured eternally is quite literally the greatest evil possible (and killing people while they are in a state of grace is a perfectly rational response if those are the rules - another problem).

So yes, hell is that important. If you believe in it the foundation of your morality is upon a being that treats people in ways that make Guantanamo Bay or even Auschwicz look like a family outing. And you are telling me that this is good, meaning that your cosmology is not just evil, returning disprortionate bad for anything, but you worship that evil and call it good.

So yes, the attempt to pervert justice by calling hell just is important.

This is all irrelevent, since we are talking about using hell as a threat to get people to believe, and you just want to talk about why people are awful for believing something you don't.

Just out of morbid curiousity, though, what happens to the conscience of a person who believes in hell? Be specific now, and substantiate.

[ 11. October 2013, 16:17: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
 
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :
 
quote:
originally posted by IngoB:
"Do X, and I will make you regret the day you were born. Do Y, and I will blow your mind with pleasures beyond your imagination. Of course, if you grow to really love me, then you will do Y and avoid X because of me, rather than because of what you get out of it. But I will take what I can get from you in the meantime..."

Orgasm or death beats cake or death by a mile. [Big Grin]
 
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
So yes, hell is that important. If you believe in it the foundation of your morality is upon a being that treats people in ways that make Guantanamo Bay or even Auschwicz look like a family outing. And you are telling me that this is good, meaning that your cosmology is not just evil, returning disprortionate bad for anything, but you worship that evil and call it good.

So does the existence of Christians like the one I quoted in the OP, or like me and several others who don't believe in hell as a place of eternal torment, make any difference to you? As in, does it make you consider Christianity at all?

I have heard many atheists say, as you do, that belief in Hell is a main reason for not wanting to worship a God that would send people to such a place.

However I wonder if these same people just consider it one of many reasons not to be a Christian, rather than as "the" reason. There are many Christian churches that don't teach or don't require members to believe in hell as a place of eternal physical torment for unbelievers.
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
I am not entirely sure that "I don't believe in this because it's immoral" is a strictly rational argument.
 
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
Makes perfectly good sense to me, depending on how you parse it. For instance: You say your god is good. Hell, on the other hand is clearly immoral. I don't believe a good God would do that. So your god is self-contradictory and does not exist.
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
Seems more an argument for God being evil than for him not existing.
 
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
I think it does go both ways for people. I know someone who gives about that argument and says, "I don't think God exists, but if he does he's evil."
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
This is all irrelevent, since we are talking about using hell as a threat to get people to believe, and you just want to talk about why people are awful for believing something you don't.

Just out of morbid curiousity, though, what happens to the conscience of a person who believes in hell? Be specific now, and substantiate.

What happens to the conscience of a person who believes in hell? They've added something more important to the calculus than how you treat other people and the world. How you stand in relation to God. The concept of justice is twisted because the notion of justice is perverted by the presence of hell.

In short there's dangerous garbage going into any moral reasoning. What happens after that varies. It varies from "Kill them all, God will know his own" and the auto-da-fe (a logical consequence of God and Hell) to "We must do good to be right with God" to "Lying for Jesus" to not a hell of a lot of difference. However it is not the only factor in how people behave. It merely is an enabling factor to allow people to show their darker sides and claim them to be good if that is something they wish to do.

quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
So does the existence of Christians like the one I quoted in the OP, or like me and several others who don't believe in hell as a place of eternal torment, make any difference to you? As in, does it make you consider Christianity at all?

It makes me consider their forms of Christianity may be morally benevolent rather than morally toxic. Christians who do not believe in hell aren't likely to end up at certain positions they claim to be moral.

quote:
I have heard many atheists say, as you do, that belief in Hell is a main reason for not wanting to worship a God that would send people to such a place.
I don't say that at all. The main reason I do not worship God is that I do not believe that God exists. And there is no point worshipping something fictional, whether God or money.

What I am saying is that if I believed that such a God existed and that hell was real I would have two choices. To worship God out of pure naked self interest or to become a Satanist because there is literally no being imaginable that is more evil than the one who sets up the rules that has people tortured for ever and then passes it off as "justice".

In short the presence of hell in a set of Christian beliefs has no bearing at all on whether I consider Christianity to be true. It does, however, have a bearing on how I consider messages from people who believe in it. And if I'm automatically going to treat any moral message from you as corrupt because you're so tangled that you don't see eternal torment as evil and incompatable with a benevolent overlord then I'm going to take any "Good News" you have to offer that involves this with a pinch of salt.
 
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:


The factual knowledge is as follows:

1. The reality of moral conscience.

2. The reality of the validity of morality, which cannot be denied, given that 80-90%+ of our daily news concerns moral issues of one kind or another.

3. The reality of the concept of justice, which can never be eradicated from the human psyche.

Yes, but the 'psyche' is another word for our personalities, partly controlled by genes and about which knowledge increases daily. The psyche is where it originated and where it remains. The ideas developed throughout our evolution and were evidently successful survival traits. I appreciate the fact that other species exhibit what appear to be altruistic behaviours, but these have not evolved since humans are the only ones who were able to articulate them.
quote:
4. While this may not count as a 'fact' for atheists, it cannot be denied that some people have very definite experiences of what they believe is 'God', which involves a strong conviction of sin.
We all have an enormous range of experiences, but it's the interpretation of these experiences which makes the difference. Interpretation depends on our surroundings, our upbringing and the words, ideas and beliefs of other people. When I was young, I had an experience of talking to God, but later of course realised that this was all my imagination, especially as my father was always sure that he and God had regular chats!
quote:
I am one such person. An atheist may think I am deluded, but in no way can he prove that, because he cannot prove that consciousness is nothing more than brain function.
Yes, but do you think that equal weight should be given to both points of view? I'd say that the factual information we have puts the probability ofcorrect interpretation very much on the side of the atheist.
quote:
5. The fact of the behaviour of billions of religious people throughout history (the vast majority of the human race) seeking to appease whatever they regard as God / god / the gods / the spirits / the ancestors etc, which testifies to an awareness of something undesirable after death directly relating to moral behaviour peformed on this side of the grave. Atheists can dismiss this in purely naturalistic terms, but only by resorting to special pleading.
The atheists I know don't dismiss' this, but would emphasise the way humans have accumulated knowledge of thoughts, experiences, observations andfound which ones stand up to scrutiny. When there was a lack of understanding of natural 'laws' , people invented stories and the threat of unpleasantness that might follow 'bad' behaviour might well have served as a curb, but I think that will continue to change with the increase in testable, measurable knowledge.
quote:
I think that's enough to be getting on with...
I'm afraid that's definitely not asgood as my lost response! [Smile] Ah well, that's the way life is, isn't it?!
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian
Yes, I believe hell to be important as an atheist. I believe it to say something about the nature of the god you worship, and the so-called good news you have for me in the gospel. In short, condemning someone to be tortured eternally is quite literally the greatest evil possible (and killing people while they are in a state of grace is a perfectly rational response if those are the rules - another problem).

Let us suppose that God exists (I know he does, but let me propose this as an argument), and that he is absolute love, and nothing but love. This love is the most powerful 'force' in the whole of reality.

Now, what happens when anti-love (aka evil) comes into contact with love? Doesn't love destroy anti-love? Now suppose someone chooses to be utterly committed to anti-love, and builds his whole life on it. He is then exposed to the full force of love. What will happen to this person who refuses to give up his anti-love? Will this experience of absolute love be comfortable for him?

Absolutely not.

He will be in torment.

It is precisely because God is love, that he is also 'hell' towards those who are unrepentantly committed to anti-love.

The only people who cannot - and will not - understand this, are those who have an amoral view of love, and who have deluded themselves into thinking that anyone - even the most depraved - will happily and joyfully embrace the love of God.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Seems more an argument for God being evil than for him not existing.

If you are trying to tell me that God is both good and condemns people to hell* then you are feeding me a line of obvious nonsense - those two are completely incompatable. Whether or not God exists, the conception of God you are trying to convince me exists is clearly incorrect.

* Or set up a system by which people are condemned to hell. Same difference.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Let us suppose that God exists (I know he does, but let me propose this as an argument), and that he is absolute love, and nothing but love. This love is the most powerful 'force' in the whole of reality.

Now, what happens when anti-love (aka evil) comes into contact with love? Doesn't love destroy anti-love? Now suppose someone chooses to be utterly committed to anti-love, and builds his whole life on it.

Then they are inhumanly perfect and obviously not a real person or even a person that is possible. Utter commitment to anything is beyond the realms of any living being - we are all of us imperfect.

If, to justify something, you need to argue that people do things that are impossible for people to do then your argument is self-refuting.
 
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
What factual knowledge do we now possess that disproves Hell? Please give the facts, and the chain of reasoning.

Having no evidence of anyone, either personally, or from any trustworthy and testable source who has after dying, been to and returned from hell, I think that I am fairly safe here in passing the burden of proof to you!
 
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief
What factual knowledge do we now possess that disproves Hell?

I anticipate the response that "the burden of proof is on the one making the positive claim, namely: 'hell exists'."

Wait for it...

And of course it's too late to refer to this in my post, which I had intended to do! [Smile]
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
What factual knowledge do we now possess that disproves Hell? Please give the facts, and the chain of reasoning.

Having no evidence of anyone, either personally, or from any trustworthy and testable source who has after dying, been to and returned from hell, I think that I am fairly safe here in passing the burden of proof to you!
You're not safe at all in passing the burden of proof; you're dodging the question. You are the one who said:

quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
I find it utterly astounding that in this day and age, with the factual knowledge available, that anyone can entertain the idea that there is such a state or place as hell which spirits/souls can be transferred to after death.

You were asked what factual knowledge you refer to. The burden remains on you to back your assertion up.

Lack of proof that Hell does exist is not proof that Hell does not exist.

[ 11. October 2013, 17:42: Message edited by: Nick Tamen ]
 
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Laurelin:
I think those of us who believe in an after-life think of it as being in 'another dimension'.

And would you agree that this new thinking is because factual knowledge has replaced false knowledge, and because sci-fi has taken up-to-date facts and added a bit of imagination?
quote:
I can understand the logic of a purely materialist view of the universe, although it is not my view. But do 'materialists-only' folk seriously think that people with a religious faith are incapable of holding parallel views in tension together?
No, it is clear that many people do hold the two thoughts together, but if I tried to do so, I would find it quite impossible to suspend my disbelief in order to believe in any God, spirit or invisible place.
quote:
Science tells us how. It cannot tell us why.
Why do you think there has to be a 'why'?
 
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
...hell remains an idea which does not have a substance or reality which can be tested or measured.

Neither does God. Neither does God have a definite place in the universe.
Well, I think I'll just say QED!
The things you mention aare the humanlycreated ideas, which could easily have developed from superstitions and conjectures to try and explain natural phenomena.
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by Laurelin:
I think those of us who believe in an after-life think of it as being in 'another dimension'.

And would you agree that this new thinking is because factual knowledge has replaced false knowledge, and because sci-fi has taken up-to-date facts and added a bit of imagination?
I'm not Laurelin, but I would not agree that it is "new thinking."
 
Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
...hell remains an idea which does not have a substance or reality which can be tested or measured.

Neither does God. Neither does God have a definite place in the universe.
Well, I think I'll just say QED!
The things you mention aare the humanlycreated ideas, which could easily have developed from superstitions and conjectures to try and explain natural phenomena.

And you know this with certainty how?
 
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
SusanDoris:

Human consciousness cannot be tested or measured by the scientific method. Does consciousness therefore not exist?

Yes, that is a tricky question, but maybe if we had come up with a different label for what we have labelled consciousness, it might have been easier to define. The exact answer won't be available for many years yet, I know, but if it turns out not to need a living animal to be involved, then I'd eat my hat if I happened to be still living!
 
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief
What factual knowledge do we now possess that disproves Hell?

I anticipate the response that "the burden of proof is on the one making the positive claim, namely: 'hell exists'."

Wait for it...

And of course it's too late to refer to this in my post, which I had intended to do! [Smile]
Oh there is plenty of proof for the existence of Hell. Look at all the people who believe in Hell. The Bible teaches there is a Hell. The Church teaches there is a Hell. Other religions teach the existence of something akin to Hell.

Plenty of evidence...

What kind did you have in mind?

Oh...let's just cut to the chase.

Logical positivism is still a load self-refuting nonsense.

[Roll Eyes]
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris
Why do you think there has to be a 'why'?

Because the asking of this question is part of something called 'reality' - you know, that thing that atheists keep appealing to!
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Then they are inhumanly perfect and obviously not a real person or even a person that is possible. Utter commitment to anything is beyond the realms of any living being - we are all of us imperfect. If, to justify something, you need to argue that people do things that are impossible for people to do then your argument is self-refuting.

Quite so, and while I usually think that you lack a measured approach to things Christian (not to speak of things Catholic), you are not wrong in this case in complaining about the evasiveness of many responses. In particular, the theory that people burn in hell just because that is how they experience the "love of God" is weird (really, experiencing love tortures them? how, practically speaking?) and in the end does little to counter the moral argument. After all, God should know their suffering as much as they do (being omniscient) and certainly could end their suffering by simply ending their existence (being omnipotent), and by what argument would that be "less loving" in a human sense?

However, I find it interesting that your paragraph above certainly suggests part of a more suitable answer. As you have noted, it is non-human to be really perfect, and that we cannot even really understand how one can be a person and perfect. Yet God is perfect. So it is clear that God is non-human. And indeed, while God is considered as a Person by analogy, He certainly is not a person in remotely the same manner as you and me according to traditional theology. Let that sink in for a bit. Just how many claims are you going to make about a non-human "quasi-Person" based on human morality and human personal understandings? Of course you can say "if God were a good human person, He could not possibly be doing this". But since the premise is very much not the case, what meaning has the conclusion?

There are quite a number of other things to consider here, which are being ignored usually. For example, that we will be dead. That seems like a somewhat obvious point to make, but de facto people are discussing this as if we will be alive in exactly the same way that we are now. That however is not really a justifiable assumption. It is, for example, entirely impossible to torture any of us eternally. Just as it is entirely impossible to feed any of us popcorn eternally. We are not eternity-compatible beings at the moment. We are probably not even endless-time-compatible beings at the moment. So we will all really have to be very, very different after our deaths to be in any sense "eternal". If we are going to be so very, very different as to make eternal or endless-time popcorn munching a thinkable activity for us, then how can you be sure that eternal punishment would be inappropriate for these strange beings that we will become after death? Life after death is not going to be just this life multiplied endlessly.

Another thing to consider is that morality is in the traditional picture just a reflection of what people are. A good earthworm digs holes through the earth to consume plant material, a good human does not steal from others. The difference between morality and what we could call "proper function" in animals is simply the level of control. The earthworm becomes a bad earthworm typically by becoming sick or old, i.e., it stops functioning properly based on external influences (or internal ones operating at a physiology level below these functions). Whereas humans can decide to function inappropriately, they have a cognitive ability to misdirect their behaviour. So what translates across different categories of things here is the concept of proper function, not morality as such. We consider it absurd to put a chicken on trial for being immoral. But we are entirely happy to say that this is a "bad" chicken because it does not lay any eggs. Something is wrong with that chicken. And something is wrong with us when we steal. The dysfunction is common, how it comes about is not. Likewise, we should not really ask if God is immoral. He is in a totally different category of being, there is no reason to expect that that would work. But we can probably ask whether God is dysfunctional, whether He is not as God should be. Well then, what must God as God be like? As it turns out, what God fundamentally must do to be God according to the Christian (theological) tradition is to exist. That's it, really. That's the essence of God, Being. This gives, as I'm sure you can see, rather little purchase for moral complaints about God. The only way God could theoretically be a "bad" God is by not existing.

Now, it is admittedly rather interesting to see how these contemplations about a rather strange entity "God" fit together with the God reported in the OT, and the God become man in the NT. Rather unsurprisingly, you will not quite get the huggy-bear god out of this that many Christians cuddle up with at night. Neither will you get simplistic but supposedly inspiring answers like removing hell altogether, or God frying the sinners with his love. Rather you will get the weird but wonderful world of traditional Western theology, where evil has no being, God's love is not an emotion, etc. It has to me the ring of truth.

But since you believe none of this anyway, I can boil it down for you somewhat differently. If tomorrow a miniature black hole slams into the sun, and the resulting catastrophic solar explosion torches all life clean off earth, would you say that the universe has done a great evil? Not really really, right? That just is how the universe happens to be. But if instead tomorrow you watch a glorious sunset, your girlfriend in your arm, and a beautiful bottle of wine to share, is that meaningless nothing? Not really really, right? You are having a good time. Now, what I consider as God - and what in my opinion traditional Christianity proposes as God - is very close to those basic experiences and thoughts. The difference is just that we think that Somebody means this. And that we hope that ultimately sunset, girlfriend and wine win over deadly solar flares. But not in a soppy manner, that possibility was firmly crossed out...
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian
Then they are inhumanly perfect and obviously not a real person or even a person that is possible. Utter commitment to anything is beyond the realms of any living being - we are all of us imperfect.

If, to justify something, you need to argue that people do things that are impossible for people to do then your argument is self-refuting.

So you accept that someone who shows no mercy to the most innocent and vulnerable of people is gladly and willingly open to receiving the love of God?

You don't think that the love of God (if you were to believe it exists) has any moral content such that it can counter actions and attitudes that are opposed to it? That it cannot induce deep shame? That it cannot torment the conscience of those who have committed evil? That it cannot cripple the unrepentantly evil person with an overwhelming sense of his own depravity? That it cannot search out and expose the corruption of the human heart (a painful process)? That it is just eternal liberality with no questions asked? That the proud and conceited person who desires to be superior to everyone else can happily coexist with a reality which only exalts and glorifies God and which declares that all people should wholeheartedly submit to Him?

If that is what you believe (which must the case if you think that the love of God - or even just genuine compassion on the human level - cannot trouble anyone) then what you are really saying is that evil actually doesn't exist, because there is fundamentally no difference at heart between someone who does evil and someone who does what is good and right. In this view, evil is just a word that describes certain outward acts that society has arbitrarily decided are not desirable.

As far as I am concerned, evil is very real and it is a problem of the heart. The love of God is not just amoral liberality, but has a moral content that utterly destroys human conceit. If God is not 'hell' towards those who are unrepentant, then He is not - and cannot be - a God of love.
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB
In particular, the theory that people burn in hell just because that is how they experience the "love of God" is weird (really, experiencing love tortures them? how, practically speaking?) and in the end does little to counter the moral argument.

No, it is not weird but completely logical. If you believe that the love of God has a moral content (how can it not have, given that it defines the nature of righteousness, as Jesus made clear in Matthew 22:37-40?), then how can it not oppose that which is antithetical to it, namely, evil?

What is completely weird is the idea that God sends people to hell for any other reason. I cannot imagine anything more stupid than the idea that God deliberately fashions a torture chamber to torment people who just died not having ticked the right religious boxes. Such unreality and delusion.

My position faces up to the reality of God, His love and the reality of evil. Yours is a completely mechanistic, institutionally religious, legalistic imposition, which is unworthy of the God of all reality. And it doesn't surprise me that you frequently talk about heaven and hell in the language of gambling and probability, which I find beyond weird!

Anyway, rather than listening to your religious speculations, I prefer the Word of God which clearly states: "Our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29). The verb here is "is" not "creates". Therefore the God, who is love, is hell.
 
Posted by agingjb (# 16555) on :
 
I've asked this before:

I've never been clear whether the (possibly endless) pain of the lost is supposed to be:

The painful presence of God

The painful absence of God

Self inflicted pain

Torture inflicted by demonic powers
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
I think it's the pain of being what they are. What they have made themselves to be, what they go on being, what they have no intention of ever ceasing to be. What is by this point so utterly at odds with Reality that you could probably describe their state using any of the terms on your list, and from varying perspectives, each would be true.

When i was younger aand more naive, i asked a pastor friend why a particular pillar of the church was so unrelentingly nasty to me. His response was a real eye opener for me-- he said very gently, "She's a very unhappy woman."

I think being in and of hell must be like that.
 
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :
 
If 'grace' is a state versus a place isn't 'hell' also a state not a place? I'm struck with the difficult metaphors we have for things like light, which apparently is a particle or a wave, depending on the need to explain in a particular instance. Hell might be a place and state, and really neither because we lack the ability to explain and understand.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
Makes perfectly good sense to me, depending on how you parse it. For instance: You say your god is good. Hell, on the other hand is clearly immoral. I don't believe a good God would do that. So your god is self-contradictory and does not exist.

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Seems more an argument for God being evil than for him not existing.

I don't think so. If you prove something is a contradiction, then you have shown it doesn't exist. An all-loving god sending people to Hell is (to these people's way of thinking) a contradiction. Therefore no such god exists.

quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
What factual knowledge do we now possess that disproves Hell? Please give the facts, and the chain of reasoning.

Having no evidence of anyone, either personally, or from any trustworthy and testable source who has after dying, been to and returned from hell, I think that I am fairly safe here in passing the burden of proof to you!
Nope. That is the one thing you CANNOT do, given the way you phrased your original claim. You claimed that there is factual evidence for the non-existence of Hell, NOT that there is no factual evidence for the existence of hell. When asked to bring forth this factual evidence for the non-existence of Hell, you punted.

This post of yours is, in effect, a capitulation.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Yes, and because a thingy on a different plane of reality may only be discussable in this one by means of metaphor.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
No, it is not weird but completely logical. If you believe that the love of God has a moral content (how can it not have, given that it defines the nature of righteousness, as Jesus made clear in Matthew 22:37-40?), then how can it not oppose that which is antithetical to it, namely, evil?

Obviously God is opposed to evil, that's not the point. But love is not fire or torture, other than metaphorically speaking. So there would not be an "external" fire or torture then. And even if you mean it metaphorically, then how does that work? Love may burn me like fire if I love someone and that love is not answered. But the one who does not love is not usually affected, at least they do not feel tortured (perhaps mildly annoyed by my advances). So if you told me that God is "burning in hell" because he loves the sinners now in His presence, who still do not love Him - fine. That makes sense. The reverse however does not make sense at all. Why would a sinner who does not want God be affected by not having God?

You really only have two choices. Either God burns the sinners in hell actively, whether directly (He is like a gamma ray burst and only saints get shielding) or indirectly (the classical being handed over to the demons as their plaything). Or God burns the sinners in hell passively, by denying them what they want. Maybe they now want Him, but He is now not willing any longer to accommodate that wish. Maybe they want to get into paradise, but they are locked out with no chance of access. In both these cases God however retains some obvious responsibility for the state of the sinners. The idea however that they are somehow pained by not having what they still do not want, namely God and His love, is weird.

Basically, your concept of how hell works, mechanistically not morally, is the bully's "you are hitting yourself" written large. It is not true for the bully, and I do not see how it can be true for the afterlife.
 
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
I think IngoB is right about presumption. Assurance is another matter. I have this Julian-like assurance that all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. I also have some kind of assurance that the myriad sufferings in this world, many of which cause "blood to cry out from the ground", will be finally put to rest. So there will be Judgment and there will be Mercy when Righteousness and Peace are met together. There seems to me to be a fittedness in that.

We need to steer a course between self-satisfied complacency and an anxious doing of things out of fear of consequences. That's not very easy in practice, but it seems to be necessary if we are to make progress on the Way.

I'm quite taken be the notion that in the end the "all in all" presence of God will be heaven for some, hell for others. How can God be both Love and Refiners Fire? That's not a question to which I have a perfectly clear answer. But I believe He is.
 
Posted by Cadfael (# 11066) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
it is non-human to be really perfect, and that we cannot even really understand how one can be a person and perfect. Yet God is perfect. So it is clear that God is non-human.

I am confused. What about Jesus? I thought that as far as most conventional Christology goes, God was and is really human and really perfect. God is also theorised as being more than human, but the latter does not deny the former.

Moreover, Jesus is a problem if you want to justify an eternal tormentor God as not evil, but simply wholly other. Jesus (and so God) understands the agony of suffering in excruciating detail, and this understanding was enough for Him to wish to avoid the agony.
 
Posted by Ad Orientem (# 17574) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'm quite taken be the notion that in the end the "all in all" presence of God will be heaven for some, hell for others. How can God be both Love and Refiners Fire? That's not a question to which I have a perfectly clear answer. But I believe He is.

That's closer to the Orthodox understanding. I don't believe that hell is separation from God or completely removed from his grace because nothing exists apart from God.
 
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'm quite taken be the notion that in the end the "all in all" presence of God will be heaven for some, hell for others. How can God be both Love and Refiners Fire? That's not a question to which I have a perfectly clear answer. But I believe He is.

That's closer to the Orthodox understanding. I don't believe that hell is separation from God or completely removed from his grace because nothing exists apart from God.
Yes, it's one of the understandings I've learned from dialogue here. It sits alongside William Law's remarkable insight that if we make articles (i.e some kind of contract) how we serve God we'll find we've signed both copies (of the contract) ourselves. We struggle with the clear as crystal truth that God really is Sovereign. The Lord who reigns. Who is and will be the judge of all the earth and will do right.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
IngoB's point is interesting, about not having what you don't want - how can that be painful? But my understanding is that for some, being loved is hell, and God's love is pervasive.

That makes sense to me, since I am familiar with people who dread love and shield themselves from it by various means. So you could see God's love as unbearable and a torment.

It's an interesting distinction - since some Christians see hell as separation from God, and others as quite the opposite.
 
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

That makes sense to me, since I am familiar with people who dread love and shield themselves from it by various means. So you could see God's love as unbearable and a torment.

So do I - but only because of their bad experiences.

Should they be punished due circumstances not under their control, which made them unable to receive love?

Once again - an example of God behaving worse than I would.

I like the New Church's (Swedenborgian) teaching on Heaven and Hell - that we go where it suits us best and we'll be happiest, heaven and hell are a continuum and we can move 'up' when we are ready.
 
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
In other words agingjb (love the mute ee), none of the above.

We truly have no idea, not the faintest, foggiest how transcendence works. There will be no wooden yeah-buts.

We are tiny, minimal creatures, crushed in tinier skulls, barely alive, barely aware, barely able to put one thought in front of another as we drag our boulders of dysphoria about here in Hell. The question as to how Hadean we are, is do we help each other?

As the inhabitants of Sodom, Gomorrah, Tyre, Sidon, Bethsaida and Chorazin will all have a bearable judgement there is NOTHING to worry about.

I had a fantasy I shared here recently as I walked across the park, inspired by reading Doris Lessing's Shikasta, the first of the Canopus in Argos series decades ago. We just keep walking. From one reality to the next. My former sister in law keeps walking, but without any of the limitations of Down's syndrome. Her sister has no bipolarity. Moz keeps walking without the slightest need for alcohol. Hitler walks where no one knows him and knowing, for certain, that he'll see his mother soon.

My narrative, as good as anyone else's, needs a process, not an instantaneous complete transformation to some Platonic ideal of ourselves.

This odd, unenlightened, wooden clinging to ancient Jewish Christian speculation is most ... odd.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief
What factual knowledge do we now possess that disproves Hell?

I anticipate the response that "the burden of proof is on the one making the positive claim, namely: 'hell exists'."

Wait for it...

And of course it's too late to refer to this in my post, which I had intended to do! [Smile]
Oh there is plenty of proof for the existence of Hell. Look at all the people who believe in Hell. The Bible teaches there is a Hell. The Church teaches there is a Hell. Other religions teach the existence of something akin to Hell.
Which might prove, merely, that the majority of people are deluded.
 
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :
 
It may. However, Susan Doris said there was no evidence for Hell existing. There is enough evidence to convince millions if not billions of people throughout the ages across the world of the existence of Hell. All of them may be wrong but I doubt all of them are deluded.

What Susan Doris means is that there is no empirical evidence for the existence of Hell. She often starts with bold claims like evidence proves the nonexistence of something then when questioned retreats to the burden of proof isn't on her. However, the burden of proof is on her to prove that empiricism is the only way knowing. Can we empirically prove that empiricism is the only way of knowing? No, we can't.
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'm quite taken be the notion that in the end the "all in all" presence of God will be heaven for some, hell for others. How can God be both Love and Refiners Fire? That's not a question to which I have a perfectly clear answer. But I believe He is.

That's closer to the Orthodox understanding. I don't believe that hell is separation from God or completely removed from his grace because nothing exists apart from God.
Yes, but I believe that the Orthodix understanding is not that it is God's love that people experience either as heaven or hell, but rather the uncreated divine light of God, which is either experienced as glory and blessedness or as fire and pain depending on the condition of one's heart.
 
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Aye leo, they are creating Hell and don't know it. And people who believe that because the majority of pre-postmodern people couldn't and can't not woodenly believe in Hell that that constitutes proof of Hell are doubly deluded and damned.
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen
Yes, but I believe that the Orthodix understanding is not that it is God's love that people experience either as heaven or hell, but rather the uncreated divine light of God, which is either experienced as glory and blessedness or as fire and pain depending on the condition of one's heart.

But how is the uncreated divine light of God not also the love of God, given that "God is love"? Is there a part of God which is not love?
 
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen
Yes, but I believe that the Orthodix understanding is not that it is God's love that people experience either as heaven or hell, but rather the uncreated divine light of God, which is either experienced as glory and blessedness or as fire and pain depending on the condition of one's heart.

But how is the uncreated divine light of God not also the love of God, given that "God is love"? Is there a part of God which is not love?
I should have been a little clearer—it is not just the love of God that people experience as heaven or hell. As I understand it, the uncreated divine light of God is the radiance of the love, of the truth, of the grace, of the creative and healing energies and of the Life of God. So it is not just exposure, as it were, to God's love that some experience as hell. It is exposure to the reality of all that God is. It is seeing God face to face.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

That makes sense to me, since I am familiar with people who dread love and shield themselves from it by various means. So you could see God's love as unbearable and a torment.

So do I - but only because of their bad experiences.

Should they be punished due circumstances not under their control, which made them unable to receive love?

Once again - an example of God behaving worse than I would.

I like the New Church's (Swedenborgian) teaching on Heaven and Hell - that we go where it suits us best and we'll be happiest, heaven and hell are a continuum and we can move 'up' when we are ready.

A very good point. In fact, this raises the whole question of evil, doesn't it? I mean, that many people who do bad things were fearfully abused as children, and later. As you say, some views about God seem to perpetuate this - now you're really gonna get a hiding from the head beak!

I suppose you could say that it's still their responsibility, no matter how abused they were, but the whole question of punishment seems shaky to me.

But then you could say that God might take all this into account.
 
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Words like 'responsibility' and 'punishment'? Where do they come from? Honestly 'q', they're utterly meaningless fossils.

Might? MIGHT?! Of course He does.
 
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
It may. However, Susan Doris said there was no evidence for Hell existing.

Yes, I should have said 'empirical evidence' but whatever the chosen description, or whatever is the correct phrase in philosophical terms, there are so many descriptions of what people believe hell to be that you'd think after all this time someone would have an acceptable definition, rather than more unsubstantiatede ideas.
quote:
There is enough evidence to convince millions if not billions of people throughout the ages across the world of the existence of Hell.
If there's one thing I've learnt from descussion forums, it'sthat the number of people who believe something to be unassailably true does not make it so. It's the perennial problem of the emperor's new clothes, isn't it?
quote:
All of them may be wrong but I doubt all of them are deluded.
Agreed; not all those people have had the belief forced on them.


[
 
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :
 
The fact something can be empirically proven doesn't mean that isn't true either. No, all those people didn't have the belief in Hell forced upon them. I'll even concede that not every atheist in Eastern Europe had atheism forced upon them either though many certainly did.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
The fact something can be empirically proven doesn't mean that isn't true either.

Do you mean the fact that something can't be empirically proven doesn't mean it isn't true?
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
Sigh. No-one can prove that Hell exists in this lifetime. No-one can prove that it doesn't exist. Therefore, we have the freedom to choose whether we believe in it or not. I personally don't, but I find SusanDoris' repeating non-arguments so boring at times.
 
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
The fact something can be empirically proven doesn't mean that isn't true either.

Do you mean the fact that something can't be empirically proven doesn't mean it isn't true?
Yeah, multitasking isn't one of my strengths.
 
Posted by ToujoursDan (# 10578) on :
 
I think much of the problem with hell comes from pop-culture's vision of hell whereby otherwise good people who had a bad day and were mean to their parents, or believed the wrong thing ended up there inadvertently and can't get out. This pop-culture vision of hell is lived out in the movies and TV shows over and over again and, like many other pop-culture depiction of Christian doctrine, is distorted.

Scripture has very little to say about what hell is and who ends up there. Christians believe that those who follow Christ are going to be saved, but we honestly don't know who isn't going to be saved from hell. We don't know if people can repent after death. We also don't know whether people must stay in hell for eternity or not (even the Greek word for "eternity" "aionion" in Scripture can mean either "forever" or "for an indeterminate time").

I may be on the liberal side of the faith but believe that hell must exist in order for those who wilfully choose not to follow God have their free-will accepted by a God who respects our decisions. But at the same time, it's hard to envisage an afterlife where we cease to grow, change and can reflect and change course. So while I believe that hell exists, I hope that one day it shall be empty.

[ 13. October 2013, 02:59: Message edited by: ToujoursDan ]
 
Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
Never preached on Hell. Never will.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that Hell is simply a scary bedtime story for those of a religious persuasion.

Faith that is based on fear of being condemned to eternal anguish is not the kind of faith I think Jesus wanted of people. Faith shouldn't be based on fear of something nasty, but on the overwhelming, irrepressible love of God.

Preach it! Amen! [Overused] My thoughts exactly.
 
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
Sigh. No-one can prove that Hell exists in this lifetime. No-one can prove that it doesn't exist. Therefore, we have the freedom to choose whether we believe in it or not. I personally don't, ...


I would be interested to know what is your strongest reason for this. (If we have had this Q and A before, I apologise for not remembering the answer!)
quote:
...but I find SusanDoris' repeating non-arguments so boring at times.
Please feel free to scroll past those tap shoes!! But thank you for reading anyway! [Smile]
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'm quite taken be the notion that in the end the "all in all" presence of God will be heaven for some, hell for others.

I find this quite strange. It is rather obvious that 1) this notion is weird, since nobody can come up with a mechanism for it that passes the laugh test, and 2) even if it were somehow the case, it would change absolutely nothing concerning the apparent "moral dilemma" that the loving God tortures some people eternally. This is nothing but "auto-sophistry", a way to bullshit yourself into believing that you have solved a serious problem, so that it can be glossed over and tucked away safely in some corner of the mind, when in fact not even a hint of a solution has been offered.

I have already commented on 1 above. (I may add in response to quetzalcoatl that to project human "love problems" onto this is nonsense. God is not a Rome to our Juliet, God is perfect, omniscient and omnipotent. He certainly can untie all our knots.) I might add that the "Orthodox" bit about people being fried in God's uncreated light is what I mildly made fun of with my "gamma ray burst" comment above. Seriously? God is now becoming a microwave oven that can't switch itself off? As I've said, this doesn't even pass the laugh test.

Anyway, the important thing to realise that all of this is completely moot, because of 2. Whatever wild and wonderful bullshit one invents why people burn eternally, God is always responsible for the setup. Because it is clear that we can have life without so burning. Evidence? Well, this life. There is nothing necessary about hell in a fundamental sense. Hell may well become necessary as consequence of certain design choices God makes (for one that people will live eternally one way or the other, rather than ceasing to exist). But God is making these design choices, and in full awareness of their consequences.

There is absolutely no getting around it. If people burn in hell, then because God wills it so. Perhaps in response to their sins, and perhaps as part of Divine justice. We can discuss all this. But this whole idea that one can sidestep God's responsibility by making hell the response of sinners to God's love is just sentimental twaddle.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
This is beginning to sound like a virility contest. 'Your view of God's love is soppy and sentimental, whereas mine is hairy-chested and well 'ard'.
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
If the very being of God cannot make an evil person feel uncomfortable, then God is a moral nothing. In fact, he is of no more moral consequence than the rain which pours on penitent and unrepentant alike, with both parties subject to the same essential experience of wetness.

If the love of God is as amoral as the rain, then Christianity is dead as a view of reality.

Thankfully such a notion is weird, cartoonish and intellectually naive, and thankfully can be deposited where it belongs: in the filing system marked 'garbage'.
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB
This is nothing but "auto-sophistry", a way to bullshit yourself into believing that you have solved a serious problem, so that it can be glossed over and tucked away safely in some corner of the mind, when in fact not even a hint of a solution has been offered.

Well, you obviously have not been paying much attention to what other people say.

Take pride. CS Lewis was right when he wrote that "Pride is the complete anti-God state of mind". And the Bible says "No flesh shall glory in my presence".

So what happens to the unrepentantly proud person when exposed to the reality of the presence of God? Joy eternal? I don't think so.

It doesn't take much intelligence to work out that humility is a necessary condition for the proper functioning of love. If you want a mechanism, then this is it. And what about the experience of those who reject this mechanism? Who demand to be better than everyone else? Who demand to say "I will be like the Most High"?

Think about it...
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
This is beginning to sound like a virility contest. 'Your view of God's love is soppy and sentimental, whereas mine is hairy-chested and well 'ard'.

You can try ad hominem evasions all you want, the underlying problem is both clear and entirely independent from my or anybody else's presentation. If you choose to ignore it, that is your decision.

quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Well, you obviously have not been paying much attention to what other people say. Take pride. CS Lewis was right when he wrote that "Pride is the complete anti-God state of mind". And the Bible says "No flesh shall glory in my presence". So what happens to the unrepentantly proud person when exposed to the reality of the presence of God? Joy eternal? I don't think so.

Rather it is you who is not listening, not to me and ironically not to the very scripture you are quoting now. Again, this is not a discussion why people are burning in hell or if they deserve it. This is simply a discussion about the claim that people are burning in hell, and that this is strictly impossible unless God wants this to be the case. So take you scripture: "No flesh shall glory in my presence," and let me for once pretend that discussing a single verse from scripture is meaningful. Well then, it is God saying that no flesh shall glory in His presence. It is not the people whose flesh would glory who are saying that. It is not that they get burned by their own pride in the mere presence of God, with God being some sort of passive enactor of punishment - as if they kept on running into a wall, for which the wall cannot be blamed. And even if God had such an effect on them (the mechanism for which remaining entirely mysterious), then there still is no reason why God could not simply stop being present to them, and thereby stop the torment. So the wall against which people bash could actually get up and go away, leaving no way for these people to hurt themselves. God sure as heck manages to keep enough distance to prideful people now, or at least I do not see them running around, screaming in agony. So there is no fundamental reason why God could not leave the prideful unharmed, by example of this world, if that wasn't clear from his omnipotence anyhow. No, it is God's decision. God is saying "No flesh shall glory in my presence," and God is making the prideful burn - by what mechanism, active or passive, is irrelevant.

I'm not discussing the right or wrong of hell here. I'm pointing out that the "solution" that people in hell are merely "hurting themselves" through the presence of God's love (or uncreated light, or what have you) is sentimental twaddle. It really is. If there is a hell in which people burn, then it is God who is throwing them into it for their sins. That's not a statement about the mechanism, for all I know He is burning the with uncreated light after all, or whatever you please. That's a statement about responsibility.
 
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :
 
The fact that God is with us means that we all receive the beneficial effects of God spiritually, whether we're conscious of it or not, and even though none of us is perfect. The dreadful 'desert' experience when God does withdraw is one I've only glimpsed briefly, but sufficiently to know the distress of the parched torment of a human spirit without God.

This is not the same experience imv as the 'dark night of the soul' in which we cannot reach the place of consciousness of God, or consciously receive God's love or peace.

Either or both might be described as hell. Eternity surely includes the present. God is calling us to account now, none of us will escape judgement imv. The one God is a God of justice and of love, who will be true to his own nature. Like others, I hope and pray that all people will continue to benefit from God's presence, and that all evil will be destroyed.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
IngoB wrote

I'm not discussing the right or wrong of hell here. I'm pointing out that the "solution" that people in hell are merely "hurting themselves" through the presence of God's love (or uncreated light, or what have you) is sentimental twaddle. It really is. If there is a hell in which people burn, then it is God who is throwing them into it for their sins. That's not a statement about the mechanism, for all I know He is burning the with uncreated light after all, or whatever you please. That's a statement about responsibility.

Aren't you saying that it's the sun which hides itself from the blind?
 
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
You see if Jesus said that to be Hadean to your enemies all you've got to do is be kind to them, how bad will Hell be?
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB
I'm pointing out that the "solution" that people in hell are merely "hurting themselves" through the presence of God's love (or uncreated light, or what have you) is sentimental twaddle.

Absolute nonsense! You are effectively denying something called "spiritual reality", hence...

quote:
It really is. If there is a hell in which people burn, then it is God who is throwing them into it for their sins.
So what you seem to be saying is that God has to force the wicked into hell, and if they were to be exposed to His love, they would be in bliss. This really is a deeply mistaken view. Why do you think people commit evil? Are we just all machines, and the damned are those which just happen to malfunction? Is everything reducible to merely outward actions and transgressions of the law? Don't you think that someone is evil because of the state of their heart or their spirit or their will or is it just based on the tally of how they have not measured up to the law? Why do you think Jesus gave the illustration of "the sheep and the goats"? The difference between the saved and the damned concerns what they are by nature, and their actions flow from that. Jesus also gave the illustration of the good tree and the bad tree, and the nature of the tree determines the nature of the fruit. The idea that everyone at heart is open to willingly receiving the love of God, but those who have 'blown it' in terms of outward moral and religious conformity are forced to go to hell, makes a mockery of redemption. It is an absolute travesty of the gospel. The gospel is all about a complete change of heart - you know, all the stuff about "the new man". It's not just some legalistic process, where people are judged purely on the basis of legally defined actions - i.e. religious and moral box ticking, by which we improve our 'chances' of getting to heaven.

If someone is evil, then they are evil by nature. That person is a bad tree, living with a will completely inimical to the love of God. Imagine someone who has gone through his life feeding on a deep hatred of a particular group of people, say, the Jews, for example. It could be prejudice against some other group, of course. And when this person, who has built his life on the idolatry of the superiority of his own race and nation (or even his own religion or denomination), which has necessitated condemning certain others, comes into an overwhelming reality, in which every single atom of his being is consumed with an awareness of the infinite value of the very people he built his life around hating, and he goes on justifying himself, he will be in absolute torment. The word 'shame' does not do justice to the experience. To call this understanding of this experience "sentimental twaddle" reveals a deep delusion about the nature of the love of God. In fact, it borders on blasphemy, because it turns God's love into mere amoral liberality. The love of God has a moral content; it is a fire that consumes every last drop of evil. How can it not do so?

Thank God for the gospel of justifying and sanctifying grace, is all I can say!! And away with legalistic religion, which is completely impotent to change lives.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Absolute nonsense! You are effectively denying something called "spiritual reality", hence...

I'm not, and I never have.

quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
So what you seem to be saying is that God has to force the wicked into hell, and if they were to be exposed to His love, they would be in bliss.

No, I'm not saying that. It could well be the case, but it certainly had not part in my argument at all.

quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Why do you think people commit evil? Are we just all machines, and the damned are those which just happen to malfunction? Is everything reducible to merely outward actions and transgressions of the law? Don't you think that someone is evil because of the state of their heart or their spirit or their will or is it just based on the tally of how they have not measured up to the law?

Whatever I may think about these things touches in no way or form the argument I have made here.

quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
The difference between the saved and the damned concerns what they are by nature, and their actions flow from that.

This is a terrible falsehood. It is totally anti-Christian and horribly inhumane. However, it is also entirely irrelevant to everything I have said here.

quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
If someone is evil, then they are evil by nature.

Forgive him, Lord, for he knows not what he is saying...

But as mentioned, this is also an entirely meaningless response. My argument that God is responsible does not rely on what people are like, but on what God is like.

quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
The love of God has a moral content; it is a fire that consumes every last drop of evil. How can it not do so?

First, can we stop pretending that metaphor is mechanism? The love of God is very much not a fire, and evil is not a liquid either. Second, that God's love does not have to consume every last drop of evil is evident all around you. And before you go into any lengthy discussion of the difference between temporal and eternal states - God does not have to make all human souls persist eternally either.

So let's be clear, God does not have a line manager. Nobody and nothing is forcing God to have humans fry eternally in hell. That is purely His design choice, and it is so no matter what humans are like.

Your desperation in defending hell as God's love has made you utter statements above that I consider to be nothing short of the satanic. I suggest it is time for a rethink.
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
quote:
SusanDoris: I would be interested to know what is your strongest reason for this.
Like some other people on this thread, I don't believe in Hell because I cannot square the idea of an Allmighty, All-Loving God with the eternal torture of souls.
 
Posted by Daedalus (# 17857) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian
Yes, I believe hell to be important as an atheist. I believe it to say something about the nature of the god you worship, and the so-called good news you have for me in the gospel. In short, condemning someone to be tortured eternally is quite literally the greatest evil possible (and killing people while they are in a state of grace is a perfectly rational response if those are the rules - another problem).

Let us suppose that God exists (I know he does, but let me propose this as an argument), and that he is absolute love, and nothing but love. This love is the most powerful 'force' in the whole of reality.

Now, what happens when anti-love (aka evil) comes into contact with love? Doesn't love destroy anti-love? Now suppose someone chooses to be utterly committed to anti-love, and builds his whole life on it. He is then exposed to the full force of love. What will happen to this person who refuses to give up his anti-love? Will this experience of absolute love be comfortable for him?

Absolutely not.

He will be in torment.

It is precisely because God is love, that he is also 'hell' towards those who are unrepentantly committed to anti-love.

The only people who cannot - and will not - understand this, are those who have an amoral view of love, and who have deluded themselves into thinking that anyone - even the most depraved - will happily and joyfully embrace the love of God.

Are you saying that all non-Christians are anti-love?
 
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
And who are these people?
 
Posted by Daedalus (# 17857) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
[QB]

If someone is evil, then they are evil by nature. That person is a bad tree, living with a will completely inimical to the love of God. Imagine someone who has gone through his life feeding on a deep hatred of a particular group of people, say, the Jews, for example. It could be prejudice against some other group, of course. And when this person, who has built his life on the idolatry of the superiority of his own race and nation (or even his own religion or denomination), which has necessitated condemning certain others, comes into an overwhelming reality, in which every single atom of his being is consumed with an awareness of the infinite value of the very people he built his life around hating, and he goes on justifying himself, he will be in absolute torment. The word 'shame' does not do justice to the experience. To call this understanding of this experience "sentimental twaddle" reveals a deep delusion about the nature of the love of God. In fact, it borders on blasphemy, because it turns God's love into mere amoral liberality. The love of God has a moral content; it is a fire that consumes every last drop of evil. How can it not do so?


You seem to be implying that good and bad are the factors in deciding who goes to heaven and hell, and not whether you are a christian.
I was under the impression that anyone who isn't a Christian goes to hell regardless of whether they are a good person or not.
 
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Where do you get that heterodox, unbiblical, unchristian idea at least doubly refuted by Jesus Himself Daedalus?
 
Posted by Daedalus (# 17857) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Where do you get that heterodox, unbiblical, unchristian idea at least doubly refuted by Jesus Himself Daedalus?

Mark 16:16 - Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

John 3:3 - Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God".
 
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
As I said Daedalus. Where ... etc? Are those two proof texts all you got? I've got a couple too. They see yours and raise them.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
Daedalus, in the RCC it is assumed that God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but He Himself is not bound by His sacraments. Luke 7:47 and Luke 23:43 are examples of the Lord stepping beyond His sacraments. Furthermore, in the RCC it is taught that Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament. This is in accordance with the scripture that you quote. However, it leaves open the possibility that those who did not hear the Gospel or did not have a chance of asking for this sacrament can be saved by God through some other way, see previous point, in accordance with their deeds, see Romans 2:15-16. We know that God desires the salvation of all (1 Timothy 2:4), and hence it reasonable to assume that He at least provides the means for all men to be saved, even if not all men avail themselves of this offer.

In our days, I believe we also have to ask how effective we are in bringing the gospel to our own societies. If someone encounters a feeble gospel, is he to blame for not hearing it? Does he belong to the doomed who heard the gospel but did not heed it, or does he belong to the unfortunate who have not really heard the gospel and may by saved by some other means?
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
I feel I've stepped into an alternate universe - agreeing with IngoB on a matter of theology. On one point, I disagree with IngoB, however.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
However, I find it interesting that your paragraph above certainly suggests part of a more suitable answer. As you have noted, it is non-human to be really perfect, and that we cannot even really understand how one can be a person and perfect. Yet God is perfect. So it is clear that God is non-human.

And here I would add a corrected version of the Ontological Proof. Anything that exists is imperfect. Only that which does not exist can possibly be perfect. If God is perfect then it is clear that God is not only non-human but non-existent.

quote:
Just how many claims are you going to make about a non-human "quasi-Person" based on human morality and human personal understandings?
That depends. Most morality IME derives from reciprocity or The Golden Rule. And that thing is effectively universal. So I can actually use the yardstick on any non-human that exists.

But how many claims am I going to make about a perfect being? Only one. That they do not and indeed logically can not exist. And are therefore irrelevant other than either (a) as a thought experiment to shed light on this world through simplification or (b) because people treat such an unreal thing as if it was real.


quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
So you accept that someone who shows no mercy to the most innocent and vulnerable of people is gladly and willingly open to receiving the love of God?

You don't think that the love of God (if you were to believe it exists) has any moral content such that it can counter actions and attitudes that are opposed to it? That it cannot induce deep shame?

I think such a hypothetical love could and inevitably would lead to shame. And from there to repentance. And from there to forgiveness of ones self. It might take 10,000 years. It might take longer. But the concept of an eternal hell, as opposed to purgatory as preparation for heaven is utterly inimical to the concept that the person inflicting it loves the person they have sentenced to torture.

quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
If someone is evil, then they are evil by nature.

If someone is evil by nature then they were created evil. The tree has born forth evil fruit - and the tree that bore forth evil fruit was God. Just as a good tree can not bear forth evil fruit so can a Good God not create people who are evil by nature (or even create things that create things that are evil by nature). Which means that if there is one single person who is evil by nature then God is not perfectly Good.

And at that point all your justifications vanish in a puff of smoke.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Daedalus:
I was under the impression that anyone who isn't a Christian goes to hell regardless of whether they are a good person or not.

Christians differ. And, speaking as a highly outspoken atheist that claim is highly contentious in Christian circles and most common round those who proof text their way into six day creationism (with God resting on the seventh). Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus has been interpreted many ways - with to the best of my knowledge only very conservative Christians believing you must be a Christian (whether that means sacraments or saying the Sinner's Prayer, or whatever), and most liberal or even mainline denominations believe it is dangerous tripe.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
And here I would add a corrected version of the Ontological Proof. Anything that exists is imperfect. Only that which does not exist can possibly be perfect. If God is perfect then it is clear that God is not only non-human but non-existent.

Interesting. Do you have anything but pure assertion to back up your claims? Note, the rejection of Anselm's ontological argument alone is not sufficient grounds to reject the existence of a perfect being. Aquinas for example rejects Anselm's argument but maintain God's perfection.

The actual classical claim for God's perfection is quite subtle. I'm looking forward to hearing your grounds for rejecting it.

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
That depends. Most morality IME derives from reciprocity or The Golden Rule. And that thing is effectively universal. So I can actually use the yardstick on any non-human that exists.

No, you cannot. You are certainly not extending the Golden Rule "down" to the animal kingdom. At least I assume that you have killed some mosquito without giving it a second thought, or the like. So there is no precedent for extending it "up" to the angels, much less to God. And even if you spend your days worrying about the bacterial genocide you cause by brushing your teeth: that you extend the Golden Rule to some non-human beings is no proof as such that it is right to do so. Indeed, apart from morals by faith, you would first have to argue for the application of the Golden Rule even among your fellow humans. The Golden Rule is not a self-evident truth, no matter how used you are to it being held up by our civilisation. And since it is far from clear that any sort of moral consideration can be applied to God, you really have lots of work to do here before you can claim to have some kind of moral argument.

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
But the concept of an eternal hell, as opposed to purgatory as preparation for heaven is utterly inimical to the concept that the person inflicting it loves the person they have sentenced to torture.

Yes, in the now conventional sense of loving someone, among humans. You should be aware though that in the classical sense of love and given God's role as Creator, there are some ... let's say counter-intuitive ... consequences:
quote:
ST Ia q20 a2
God loves all existing things. For all existing things, in so far as they exist, are good, since the existence of a thing is itself a good; and likewise, whatever perfection it possesses. Now it has been shown above (Question 19, Article 4) that God's will is the cause of all things. It must needs be, therefore, that a thing has existence, or any kind of good, only inasmuch as it is willed by God. To every existing thing, then, God wills some good. Hence, since to love anything is nothing else than to will good to that thing, it is manifest that God loves everything that exists. Yet not as we love. Because since our will is not the cause of the goodness of things, but is moved by it as by its object, our love, whereby we will good to anything, is not the cause of its goodness; but conversely its goodness, whether real or imaginary, calls forth our love, by which we will that it should preserve the good it has, and receive besides the good it has not, and to this end we direct our actions: whereas the love of God infuses and creates goodness.

Objection 4. Further, it is written (Psalm 5:7): "Thou hatest all the workers of iniquity." Now nothing is at the same time hated and loved. Therefore God does not love all things.

Reply to Objection 4. Nothing prevents one and the same thing being loved under one aspect, while it is hated under another. God loves sinners in so far as they are existing natures; for they have existence and have it from Him. In so far as they are sinners, they have not existence at all, but fall short of it; and this in them is not from God. Hence under this aspect, they are hated by Him.

So a more correct summary would be that God loves the sinner into existence, but hates him into punishment for his unrepented sins, and in the afterlife this becomes an eternal fixture. It's a bit of an edgy love then, God's love. As should be readily apparent to anyone who actually reads the bible, though remarkably it isn't.

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
If someone is evil by nature then they were created evil. The tree has born forth evil fruit - and the tree that bore forth evil fruit was God. Just as a good tree can not bear forth evil fruit so can a Good God not create people who are evil by nature (or even create things that create things that are evil by nature). Which means that if there is one single person who is evil by nature then God is not perfectly Good. And at that point all your justifications vanish in a puff of smoke.

Agreed. The claim that anything has evil nature is anathema to Christian thought. Not even the devil himself was created evil, he had to fall by his own designs.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Interesting. Do you have anything but pure assertion to back up your claims?

That nothing that exists is, or indeed can be perfect? That for something to be capable of growth it must be imperfect or the growth would already have happened leading it to a more perfect state? Pick one.

quote:
No, you cannot. You are certainly not extending the Golden Rule "down" to the animal kingdom. At least I assume that you have killed some mosquito without giving it a second thought, or the like.
You are citing that I fail to always apply it in particular to creatures that attack me. I fully accept that I am not perfect even if I've had long arguments refusing to allow spiders to be killed or people to kill crane flies. For that matter I try not to even kill wasps.

That I am imperfect and fail doesn't mean that the precedent isn't there. And that I worry less about spiders than humans doesn't mean the precedent isn't there. It means that I am imperfect.

But that I don't extend it to mosquitoes means one thing. That I do not value mosquitoes. If it does not extend to us then there is one possible explanation. That God does not value us.

quote:
Yes, in the now conventional sense of loving someone, among humans. You should be aware though that in the classical sense of love and given God's role as Creator, there are some ... let's say counter-intuitive ... consequences:
In short God wrfbl's us. A concept that is only tangentally related to love as we understand it. But it is often used as an alternative definition to love in the same way that to cleave can mean both to adhere to and to cut. Same word, different meanings.
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian
I think such a hypothetical love could and inevitably would lead to shame. And from there to repentance. And from there to forgiveness of ones self. It might take 10,000 years. It might take longer. But the concept of an eternal hell, as opposed to purgatory as preparation for heaven is utterly inimical to the concept that the person inflicting it loves the person they have sentenced to torture.

It may surprise you to know that I have a lot of sympathy for this position. In fact, I have already speculated that hell could actually be purgatory, and that is why those in that place are conscious, because consciousness is a necessary condition for the operation of free will. Hence this thread. The only reason I can think that God allows the damned to be conscious is in order to facilitate their free will, with a view to their escaping this appalling fate.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
That nothing that exists is, or indeed can be perfect? That for something to be capable of growth it must be imperfect or the growth would already have happened leading it to a more perfect state? Pick one.

The former. Since God does not "grow" in any sense or form, I see no point in discussing the latter.

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
For that matter I try not to even kill wasps.

Are you a vegetarian, too? Just being curious, it does not really matter. The point was not really how much you are breaking the Golden Rule with regards to animals, but rather to point out that 1. there is no reason to assume that such rules apply across different categories of being (even if you try to do so), 2. that you will find it hard to prove this rule from first principles even for humans (in particular since you are IIRC a utilitarian), and 3. that there is no reason to assume that any moral rules can be applied to God (hence also not this one).

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
If it does not extend to us then there is one possible explanation. That God does not value us.

I value cows, in particular as sources of milk, meat and leather. While I assume God's relationship to me is rather less oriented towards making physical use of me, there is no a priori reason whatsoever why God would not value us in a strictly non-equal sense. And we definitely are not His equals.

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
In short God wrfbl's us. A concept that is only tangentally related to love as we understand it. But it is often used as an alternative definition to love in the same way that to cleave can mean both to adhere to and to cut. Same word, different meanings.

Not quite. More like the word "impulse" has a specific meaning in physics, that clearly has to do with how the word is used commonly; but nevertheless is different enough in a technical sense to potentially confuse those who do not know the specific meaning while reading a physical analysis.
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
I don't like being wrfbl'ed. I'm very ticklish.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I value cows, in particular as sources of milk, meat and leather. While I assume God's relationship to me is rather less oriented towards making physical use of me, there is no a priori reason whatsoever why God would not value us in a strictly non-equal sense. And we definitely are not His equals.

If God loves us the way we love pets, I'm still calling the RSPCA on anyone who has their pets tortured for any reason at all. It's not about the equality. It's about the benevolence or lack of it.

quote:
Not quite. More like the word "impulse" has a specific meaning in physics, that clearly has to do with how the word is used commonly; but nevertheless is different enough in a technical sense to potentially confuse those who do not know the specific meaning while reading a physical analysis.
Given that impulse in physics is never in direct contradiction to impulse in the vernacular, I'm going with cleave being a better analogy.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
I'm still waiting for a reason why the perfect cannot exist.

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
It's about the benevolence or lack of it.

My benevolence to livestock would probably not impress those animals I'm about to eat, even though I'm probably more concerned about their well-being during their brief lives than most consumers.

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Given that impulse in physics is never in direct contradiction to impulse in the vernacular, I'm going with cleave being a better analogy.

No, that's precisely why "cleave" is not a good analogy. The technical meaning of love "to will the good for another" used here is not in any direct contradiction to the usage in the vernacular. You have to locate your disagreement elsewhere, for example you may disagree that existence can count as a good.

Actually though, I do not believe that you have to maintain any disagreement with me (or with classical theology, or with the bible) here in principle. After all, classical theology admits that scriptural statements about God hating sinners are to be taken at face value. The "technical" meaning of love used above allows one to maintain that "God is love" without making a dent in God's wrath for sin. After all, any good possessed by a creature is caused by God willing it, God's love is hence quite literally nothing but His creating and supplying grace. Whereas any evil possessed by a creature is caused by the creature, and invariably in some way thwarts the will of God for that creature (and hence thwarts God's love). God does not ultimately accept to have His will/love thwarted, and when one's time for repentance is over at death, eternal consequences ensue.

So unlike modern "huggy bear" Christianity, traditional Christianity has successfully squared the circle of a loving God throwing sinners into hell for eternity. And I do not think that you can rationally complain about the solution offered other than by saying: "Well, that's not what I thought of when you said 'God is love'. I would call that '<insert your favourite curses>'." Well, fine, we can agree to disagree on the evaluation of what God is like. Bitching about God is quite biblical anyhow...
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
I'm inspired.
 
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Uh huh. Pants on fire. Although I do love a good adversary for helping my polarize.
 
Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :
 
As an atheist, I have a small investment in the argument. I think when you die you cease to exist except for the memories of your friends and the possibly long further life of your work.

I am curious about those who do believe in Hell. Is life in Hell, eternal or temporary, better than simply ceasing to exist? If it is, then it's arguably kind of God to allow it for those who don't make the grade for Heaven.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I'm inspired.

... to work out your own salvation in fear and trembling? Do you understand now that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God? Or is that just the bored rhetoric of presumption?

quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I am curious about those who do believe in Hell. Is life in Hell, eternal or temporary, better than simply ceasing to exist?

Well, that is a good question. I would say that C.S. Lewis' use of this possibility is manifestly false, i.e., hell really is going be hell, a tortuous experience, a place of punishment unmistakably recognized as such by every doomed individual. But given that existence is a good, and given that God and His justice is ultimately revealed to all alike, sinners and saints, I'm not sure that the doomed would choose annihilation over their state - no matter how obvious that choice would seem to us now with our "pain times infinity is infinitely bad" calculus. Dives for one asks Abraham for some water (via Lazarus), not for the cessation of his existence...
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
I find some small comfort in the belief that, if I do go to hell, my torment will proclaim God's justice forever. Is it a contradiction to think that there might be consolation in hell?

Not that I don't hope for salvation, of course. Maybe I'm just in a gruesome mood.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
If you find comfort in it, it's a sign you don't belong there. Only one of God's own would care more about God's truth, or justice, or glory than about his own personal discomfort.
 
Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :
 
The other question I have about Hell is;
Are the elect supposed to enjoy Heaven knowing the damned are burning in Hell?
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Don't think it works like that. I suspect we are not talking about a shared timeline--heck, maybe there's no timeline at all. I think most of the trouble with the doctrine of hell comes from us trying to fill in concept gaps using assumptions from this world--assumptions that may make no sense at all from that perspective. It's hard not to fill in the gaps, but at least we can try to notice when we might be doing that. The texts themselves are difficult enough.
 
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Are the elect supposed to enjoy Heaven knowing the damned are burning in Hell?

Yes, certainly. Apart from the direct scriptural evidence, that is also the most straightforward expectation. Unless God would wipe out all memory connected to the doomed, the saints would either know or figure out from their remaining memory that some people are missing. Against collective amnesia speaks practically that the saints are supposed to communicate with the living of this world in intercessory prayer. God would have to carefully anonymise these prayers, and then censor out of them all mention of the doomed, to suppress this information. Rather, the traditional belief is that not only can it be known that there are doomed, no, the Last Judgement is in fact nothing but a humongous re-cap of all particular judgements in front of everybody, so that all of God's judgements are know to all. (It is usually assumed that the Last Judgement will only last an instant, i.e., this information is revealed, infused and memorised by grace rather than by watching millions of years of tedious trials.)
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I'm still waiting for a reason why the perfect cannot exist.

Because you need to interact with the imperfect. Perfect exists only in a vacuum or a perfect environment.

quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
It's about the benevolence or lack of it.

My benevolence to livestock would probably not impress those animals I'm about to eat, even though I'm probably more concerned about their well-being during their brief lives than most consumers.
Yeah, and if you say that you love your livestock I'm going to be very suspicious.

quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Given that impulse in physics is never in direct contradiction to impulse in the vernacular, I'm going with cleave being a better analogy.

No, that's precisely why "cleave" is not a good analogy. The technical meaning of love "to will the good for another" used here is not in any direct contradiction to the usage in the vernacular.
My point exactly. Your God condems people to be tortured eternally. If we follow the Summa Theologica your god emotionally and morally lobotomises those he selects for good things, taking away their sense of compassion and pity. This is all the opposite of the vernacular meaning of love. Which is precisely why I chose Cleave.

quote:
The "technical" meaning of love used above allows one to maintain that "God is love" without making a dent in God's wrath for sin.
In short you redefine "love" so God can condemn people to eternal torture while still "loving" them. You redefine "love" so that God can be said to love humans while demonstrating the opposite. I'm going with Cleave rather than Impulse here.

quote:
After all, any good possessed by a creature is caused by God willing it
And in this case your use of the word "good" is technical language in the sense of impulse. "Good" under your definition means, I believe, "Aligned to the will of God." I'm using it in a much less theological sense.

quote:
God's love is hence quite literally nothing but His creating and supplying grace.
"Aren't I nice, honey. See, I'm not hitting you. I'm taking it out on our son instead." God's grace, under your theology, is a way of saying that God will not torture us to an extent that would make Doctor Mengele blush.

quote:
So unlike modern "huggy bear" Christianity, traditional Christianity has successfully squared the circle of a loving God throwing sinners into hell for eternity.
Indeed it has. In exactly the same way that a battered wife has squared the idea that the husband who puts her and her kids into hospital loves said wife. The parallels go almost all the way down.
 


© Ship of Fools 2016

Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM 6.5.0