Hell + God = Nonsense

Originally posted by serigado
It's a contradiction with what religious guys say. They say he's all loving, peace and justice, the perfect representation of what is Good. Being a dictator goes against that view, nothing more.

So god is an all loving dictator. So what? god is a father. the religious model of justice isn't democracy it's paternalism. God the father makes his judgements from a place that transcends human understanding (I'm thinking of the book of Job).

Man is not expected to understand gods reasons only to obey his commands. Abraham was prepared to sacrifice Isaac. Such an act contradicted all earthly law and reason, but god's command transcended that.

As an aside: I'm not a believer myself, but it's one thing to say that a set of believes is untrue. It's quite another to say that they are internally incoherent.

Originally posted by bjohnson407
So god is an all loving dictator. So what? god is a father. the religious model of justice isn't democracy it's paternalism. God the father makes his judgements from a place that transcends human understanding (I'm thinking of the book of Job).

Man is not expected to understand gods reasons only to obey his commands. Abraham was prepared to sacrifice ...[text shortened]... set of believes is untrue. It's quite another to say that they are internally incoherent.

Yep, that's exactly my point. God is not as good as some paint him, but there's always the argument "how could you ever aspire to understand god?".
According to MY moral, ethics and intelligence, God is not such a good fellow. I don't want to take part of his "Heaven" and I prefer to stick with my own reasoning and beliefs. And I'll face god in the eyes and say to him how wrong he is. And one thing I will be sure: I will have a clear conscience.
I never submitted to anyone and my arguments are pure and simple. If ya'll want to take part of this coercive love, go ahead, be another sheep in the herd.
http://bertc.com/subfour/herd_of_sheep.htm
I God wants to punish me for stating my opinion and lead me to eternal damnation, let you all know: you are following a dictator who doesn't allow questioning and free thinking.

Originally posted by bjohnson407
I'm not a believer myself, but it's one thing to say that a set of believes is untrue. It's quite another to say that they are internally incoherent.

Good point, Big.

The latter is a stronger claim. Interestingly, however, it is one that is often easier to demonstrate.

Originally posted by serigado
You are a tough client. I am sure you have read enough about Rhetoric and Argumentation.
But I already see where the problem comes from. You actually believe the Bible to be true. (Maybe I should write "True"😉.
But OK... Let's assume for now the Bible is actually 100% correct.

1) God is holy... You must be obedient, or else be cast of his presence i.e, e earth is 6k yrs old and dinosaurs walked with men. You'll lose all my respect.

The Bible says that we were created in God's image, for fellowship with Him. If this was the purpose for which we were created, then it follows that God is our highest good -- the highest good. His will is our best interest, always, without exception. If God's will is truly our best interest, our highest good, then how can anyone call God fascist? -- to disobey Him is by implication necessarily self-defeating and not in one's best interest. I understand fascists like Stalin and Hitler thought their will was the highest good for mankind, but they were mere men -- here we are talking about the one and only Creator God.

We were made rational and free entities because we were created in God's image, which in itself raises the possibility of disobedience, i.e., "the freedom to go one's own way." By implication, our self-will is by nature, evil, because it veers away from our highest good, which is God's will.

Free will exists; that is, we can conceivably do whatever evil or good our minds can imagine. However, free will is not likewise free of consequence. Your beef with God is really a contention with the consequences of free will. Essentially you are saying, "God is wrong to impose consequences on us for our choices, since the consequence He imposes on us constrains our free will, leaving submission to His will the only viable option of the two."

But in the end, after your own choices led you straight into the bondage of sin, i.e. straight to the "gates" of hell -- God is the One who provided you with a choice where there shouldn't be a choice. Calling God a fascist for giving you a choice is the height of folly. After all, God's will was always our highest good, even before we chose to go our own way -- the consequences of our sin just clarifies this.

I think you'd be better to say the Bible isn't that right... but that is another thread. You say "most authenticated" ???? By whom? Don't tell me you are one of those who believe earth is 6k yrs old and dinosaurs walked with men. You'll lose all my respect.

No, I don't believe the earth is 6000 years old, but neither am I interested in your respect. What I'm saying is, the Bible is by far the most reliably preserved document from antiquity.

Originally posted by serigado
ok... saw some videos from the strobel guy (not the case for christ). The guy should be arrested for manipulating information that way. It does so in an intelligent way, and a normal guy who doesn't deeply understand the assumptions he's making is easily convinced by that line of argumentation. The guy is manipulative and is distorting what other people said to suit his line of argumentation. It's absolutely sick the way he convinces people.

What videos? I'd like to see them, too. I rented the video, "The Case for Christ," but that's been my only exposure to Strobel. I'm already a born-again believer, so I didn't watch it to convince myself, rather to determine what kind of evidence convinced him of the bible's authenticity and integrity.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
So how are they going to circumvent Matthew 25:46?

"And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matt. 25:46).

In both cases, referring to both hell and heaven, Jesus uses the word, aionios. If hell will eventually be empty, as the RCC wants to be able to say, then aionios would have to be ...[text shortened]... " Hell is everlasting, and life in heaven is eternal, just as Christ describes.

A quick search of Young’s Literal Translation (which we have both drawn on in the past; though I think it is not always quite literal) shows no occurrences whatsoever of the word “forever.” The word “everlasting” occurs once, in Jude 1:6, and translates the Greek aidios. This word is also translated as “eternal” in Romans 1:20. (The word “eternity” also does not occur in YLT.)

YLT translates aionios in Matthew 25:46 as “age-during.”

Liddel-Scott translates it as “lasting for an age (aion)”, but also sources Plato as using it to mean everlasting or eternal, or perpetual. My Greek/English The Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom consistently translates aionias ton aionian as “ages of ages.”

I suggest that, before we interpret, perhaps we could simply agree on YLT as a straight-forward translation. If nothing else, that leaves it open to interpretation.

Interestingly, the same kind of parallelism occurs in this Matthean passage as in the Corinthians passage vis-à-vis the word “all”—

1 Corinthians 15:22 for as all (pantes) die in Adam, so all (pantes) will be made alive in Christ... 28 When all (panta) are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all (panta) in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all (panta en pasen).

Now, I have maintained that the “all” cannot mean two different things within a single sentence, especially when the parallelism is so clear. And this text seems quite apropos to my opening post. Have all “died in Adam”? Will all “be made alive in Christ”?

That is the same kind of argument you’re making from the Matthean verse. Taken at face value, that implies a contradiction between Paul and Matthew here. That is not such a problem for me, because I am quite willing to accept that Paul and Matthew had two differing theological views.

I already indicated how I would reconcile the two, following a stream of thought in Orthodoxy—


“The division into ‘sheep’ and ‘goats’ of which the Last Judgment scene speaks would thus be made, not between two crowds of human beings, but between two kinds of character within each individual. In practice, other parables of a similar kind like that of the ‘good seed’ and the ‘tares’ cannot be interpreted in any other way. Jesus explains that the ‘good seed means the sons of the Kingdom; the weeds are the sons of the evil one’, and that at the end these latter will be cast into the blazing furnace (Matthew 13:36). Only Gnostics and Manicheans can hold that it is a question here of people. All human beings are creatures of God. What is ‘sown by the devil’ is destructive suggestions, the seeds of idolatry and folly. Good seeds and tares are human dispositions. To destroy the thoughts sown by the evil one is not to destroy the person but to cauterize him.”

—That is, I take Paul’s statement as a straightforward one, and take Matthew’s—which is in the context of a parable—to be metaphorical; hence Matthew’s use of the less precise word aionios instead of the more precise aidios. (Although Matthew seems to use aionios exclusively in the four relevant references; interestingly, again, this is the Greek word used in the LXX to translate the Hebrew l’olam, which has even a wider range of possible meanings.)

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Toward the end of our “Great Debate,” you brought in the word apollumi, but we never got to discuss it. How does that concept fit into your view?

Originally posted by vistesd
A quick search of Young’s Literal Translation (which we have both drawn on in the past; though I think it is not always quite literal) shows no occurrences whatsoever of the word “forever.” The word “everlasting” occurs once, in Jude 1:6, and translates the Greek aidios. This word is also translated as “eternal” in Romans 1:20. (The word “eternity ...[text shortened]... word apollumi, but we never got to discuss it. How does that concept fit into your view?

Don't get carried away, vistesd, you haven't yet successfully circumvented Matthew 25:46. 🙂

If hell is not eternal condemnation, then heaven is not eternal life. And if heaven is not eternal life, then it must end in death. If it ends in death, then you will have to explain to me why Christ's sacrifice was not enough to save the "saved" from their sins (the wages of sin is death).

I fear that you and, not surprisingly, the RCC, are creating more questions than you are answering. If this were a scientific process, your theory wouldn't be garnering many converts in the scientific community. Occam's razor, vistesd, Occam's razor...

Originally posted by epiphinehas
Don't get carried away, vistesd, you haven't yet successfully circumvented Matthew 25:46. 🙂

If hell is not eternal condemnation, then heaven is not eternal life. And if heaven is not eternal life, then it must end in death. If it ends in death, then you will have to explain to me why Christ's sacrifice was not enough to save the "sav ing many converts in the scientific community. Occam's razor, vistesd, Occam's razor...

Don't get carried away, vistesd, you haven't yet successfully circumvented Matthew 25:46.

A very good-humored LOL! However, I’ll return the favor—



Don’t get carried away, Epi, you haven’t yet successfully circumvented 1st Corinthians 15:22.

If all will not be made alive in Christ, then all did not die in Adam. 🙂

(One could add, with tongue only a tad in cheek, in reference to verse 28 that God will not be “all in all”, but only “all in a remnant”.)

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You now have me re-reading large chunks of a book called The First Christian Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Early Church. The kind of reading that Olivier Clement (an Orthodox theologian) does has an ancient orthodox pedigree [note the capital and lower-case o’s there]. As a matter of fact, it is how Gregory of Nyssa (4th century) deals with the wheat-and-tares parable in his On the Soul and the Resurrection.

In a real (although somewhat simplistically stated) sense, one can identify two major “breaks” in the history of Christian doctrine and theology: that between Rome and the East in 1054, and Luther’s Reformation in the 16th century. The latter led to the larger rift, I think, because later Protestantism, following Luther’s sola scriptura, seems largely to have forgotten the thought of the post-apostolic church of the first six centuries or so (except, perhaps, for Augustine), as well as Eastern Christianity today. A good intro to Eastern thought is Daniel Clendenin’s Eastern Orthodox Christianity: A Western Perspective; Clendenin is an evangelical scholar, who is both appreciative and critical of Eastern theology.

Really the question should not be asked about hell, rather, the question is really about suffering. On the one hand those who attack the notion of an all loving God asks how can this be so if there is suffering in the world? However, should God uphold our right to defy him, which is equivialent to upholding our right to sin? Even though such sin seems to cause suffering? So I guess God is suppose to preserve those who desire to wallow in their sin which enables those sinners to bring more suffering into God's creation. Is this a loving thing to do?

I suppose you could argue that God could have created us never to sin or defy him, thus preventing suffering from entering the world. However, who is the bigger dictator? Is it the God who allows us to defy him or a God that does not allow us to defy him?

Really the key is in the concept of love. Mutually shared love demands choice. The choice then creates risk. Who here has not be hurt in a loving relationship? However, who here would forgo love in order to control those we wish would love us back? If you were able, would you prevent those you love from ever rejecting you?

For me, to love someone you must set them free, so to speak. You do this in the hopes that they return to you, of coarse. However, being a God of love you disdain suffering that is generated from the rejection of a God who is the source of all life and love. He then hears the cries of those who ask him why a God of love lets such suffering continue. These cries do not go unheeded and he has a plan to erradicate sin from his creation. This plan consists of both the cross and hell. Those that choose God who will ultimatly choose him eternally will be saved via the cross and those will ultimatly choose against him eternally will be lost in hell. It is a method for erradicating all sin in God's creation at some point while all the while never prevening us from sinning and never violating our free will to choose. In short, it is a test to see if one desires to walk in faith because a walk in faith is the only relationship possible between the infinite the the finite. At some point we must submitt to the higher intellect because we are limited in our reasoning and understanding. That is, if we want to interact with the author of creation. If not, there is an alternative.....

As far a coersion, all one has to say is that God does not exist if they are repulsed by his ways. Perhaps this is why he does not prove himself? Where is the coesrion from an invisible God who refuses to prove himself to creation? Perhaps it is an invisible gun to your head?

Originally posted by whodey
Really the question should not be asked about hell, rather, the question is really about suffering. On the one hand those who attack the notion of an all loving God asks how can this be so if there is suffering in the world? However, should God uphold our right to defy him, which is equivialent to upholding our right to sin? Even though such sin seems to ...[text shortened]... le God who refuses to prove himself to creation? Perhaps it is an invisible gun to your head?

For me, to love someone you must set them free, so to speak.

This is one aspect of it. The other is that you continue to help, support, comfort and care for them in any way that the circumstances allow.

You do this in the hopes that they return to you, of coarse.

Of course you hope for that—but only if it is what’s best for them. You hope more that they will be healthy and happy and fulfilled in their life. And if there is a “statute of limitations” on when you’ll allow them to return, then that is a “statute of limitations” on your love for them. (Which, in the human domain, may well occur; I don’t judge anyone on that.)

Originally posted by epiphinehas
The Bible says that we were created in God's image, for fellowship with Him. If this was the purpose for which we were created, then it follows that God is our highest good -- the highest good. His will is our best interest, always, without exception. If God's will is truly our best interest, our highest good, then how can anyone call God fasci ...[text shortened]... , the Bible is by far the most reliably preserved document from antiquity.

You see the fault in reasoning my admitting by definition that God is the ultimate Good? It's like changing the referential to something else. If it's like we say, we are nothing more then stray sheeps, who's purpose is prove ourselves worthy of God and return to his perfect realm.

You believe, if i understood correctly that anything that differs from God must have some degree of evil. I don't know how you inferred this, but I totally disagree. You are also saying I can't disagree with God (or else I'll go to Hell). So why did God create us in his own image to have reason and free will, only to punish us with Hell if we slightly disagree with him? Does God only wants a bunch of sheep who say "yes" to every order he commands? Do you think that to disagree is "evil", because it goes away from what God wants? That doesn't make any sense! To give free will only to be punished (supreme punishing) if we go away from what God says!

You are basing all your reasoning in some quotes from the Bible. This is getting you to some incoherent conclusions. Yet, you circumvent them to seconder order by bending some interpretations to suit your viewpoints. If you want to follow your "perfect God", your leader, you can be his lackey. You'll be nothing else then a puppet without imagination and free will do to what YOU think is right. Your God wouldn't allow so. Pity.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
What videos? I'd like to see them, too. I rented the video, "The Case for Christ," but that's been my only exposure to Strobel. I'm already a born-again believer, so I didn't watch it to convince myself, rather to determine what kind of evidence convinced him of the bible's authenticity and integrity.

just went to youtube and typed the name

Originally posted by whodey
Really the question should not be asked about hell, rather, the question is really about suffering. On the one hand those who attack the notion of an all loving God asks how can this be so if there is suffering in the world? However, should God uphold our right to defy him, which is equivialent to upholding our right to sin? Even though such sin seems to ...[text shortened]... le God who refuses to prove himself to creation? Perhaps it is an invisible gun to your head?

The question is not about the existence of suffering in the world being against the idea of an all loving God.
The question is God gave us free will, but we are not allowed to use it or else we'll go to Hell for eternity. What kind of GOd is this? He creates us to love him and to the things he thinks are correct. Those who don't, suffer eternal punishment. What's free will for? So that we have the option of going to Hell?
I am sure there are a lot of intermediate steps from a real bad person to a really good one. Yet all those that don't follow the established path go to Hell. Some even say "if the poor child is not baptized, he'll go to hell". Like Epiphaneas said, God is perfect and just by definition. I simply don't go by that definition.
Yes, I am repulsed by that God, and The Bible looks no more then a book made by men to manipulate other men, even if Christ had a great philosophy, his deeds were manipulated in the Bible. I believe the intentions were good, but now 2k yrs have passed and the book simply doesn't make sense anymore.

Originally posted by serigado
The question is not about the existence of suffering in the world being against the idea of an all loving God.
The question is God gave us free will, but we are not allowed to use it or else we'll go to Hell for eternity. What kind of GOd is this? He creates us to love him and to the things he thinks are correct. Those who don't, suffer eternal punishment. ...[text shortened]... s were good, but now 2k yrs have passed and the book simply doesn't make sense anymore.

Hell is merely seperation from God. So why is being seperated from him equivalent to suffering? If he is the source of all life/love, what quality of life do you have? In fact, what life do you have?

It is akin to you wanting something from me that I possess. To get it, you must go through me first. Otherwise, you are on your own. This is how I see the matter. Those in "hell" are simply left to their own devices on their own power.

Now in terms of love, what good is life without it? In fact, how can their be love in the first place if there is no choice to love? Can you make someone love you? It is my observation that if one attempts to force another to love them it drives them away. It is simply a natural reaction.

Originally posted by vistesd
[b]For me, to love someone you must set them free, so to speak.

This is one aspect of it. The other is that you continue to help, support, comfort and care for them in any way that the circumstances allow.

And that is the key. You continue to help, support, comfort and care for them in any way that the circomstances ALLOW. Thus the era of grace was introduced, however, it is fleeting.....