What is the point of Hell?

@kellyjay said
Truth is the only reason we should accept anything. Not if it is popular or gives me warm and fuzzy feelings, if true it is a reality that is facing us all.

Some truths are not obvious from the start, one must be led to them step by step, any one of which may prove to be a fatal stumbling block to arriving at a full comprehension of it.

@moonbus said
Some truths are not obvious from the start, one must be led to them step by step, any one of which may prove to be a fatal stumbling block to arriving at a full comprehension of it.

🙂 Ignoring the beginning seems like a fatal way to stumble at arriving at the complete comprehension of it as well.

-Removed-

So what? If YOU insist that it doesn't, why are you entertaining these rather bizarre scenarios? Not only that, but you are creating some rather weird dogma of your own including it.

If someone says something, and you totally don't buy it, just drive on. You do not have to go out of your way (creating a dogma that includes it) just for giggles. I understand you want to gaslight others that KJ is somehow evil incarnate (and you rail on when people say that about you), but if you don't believe it, just shake your head and move past it. No matter how much you love yourself over others, that doesn't mean you are obligated to send them up as being such a jerk for believing something that at least 75% of Christians believe.

Grow up.

@fmf said
And if someone doesn't believe that this God you speak of exists, they will be tortured in burning flames for eternity. Got it.

Do you actually believe that? No.

Then unalarmingly, you DON'T "get it".

But you think you have to vilify KJ for it. Got it.

@fmf said
It sounds like a nonsense parlour game dreamt up by Lewis Carol

You are perfectly free to drive on, unbelieving. But you cannot claim that you've never heard of it.

There IS choice involved, whether you "believe" it, or not.

@fmf said
Industrial strength misanthropy and pessimism.

Do you sit around singing "Kumbaya" every day?

Not in THIS forum, you don't.

@moonbus said
The bit I really don't get is this: Why banish Adam from the Garden, why have generations of sinners, why have a flood to kill off nearly the whole human race, why have a Savior come down and get Himself crucified and still not have had a second coming 2,000 years later, with billions and billions of souls condemned to a Lake of Fire in the intervening millennia? Why the rigm ...[text shortened]... answer as the answer. I'm just saying, that's one of the reasons the religion makes no sense to me.

The point here (and my main point) is that this is a free will choice. God is giving people a choice.

If they don't believe and just want the status quo, great. But it is their choice, and that, is the entire point.

Man is unlike any other creature that God has made. We are the only ones with this free will choice, yet most will not choose God. That is why there are "billions and billions" "choosing poorly". I just don't think there's going to be any "eternal torment". Just poof, you're gone. Just like most people already believe.

-Removed-

What is wrong with you?

How many times does he have to answer you?

And then you attempt to gaslight people into thinking he's not answering you.

What is wrong with you?

@moonbus

He's not asking what's in scripture. He's not asking whether what's in scripture is true or false. He's not asking not a doctrinal question.

He's asking why anyone who doesn't already buy into scripture would find the hellish imagery presented there something he would want to buy into. Quoting scripture is not an answer to this question.

Why is quoting Scripture mandatorily NOT an answer to this complicatedly worded question?

Why is that necessarily so and a given?

Ie. "This question/s cannot be in any way resolved with a response which includes a quotation from Scripture because ______________________?"

Why is that moonbus?

@sonship said
@moonbus

He's not asking what's in scripture. He's not asking whether what's in scripture is true or false. He's not asking not a doctrinal question.

He's asking why anyone who doesn't already buy into scripture would find the hellish imagery presented there something he would want to buy into. Quoting scripture is not an answer to this question.

...[text shortened]... includes a quotation from Scripture because ______________________?" [/i]

Why is that moonbus?

....... because scripture is not self-validating.

@kellyjay said
🙂 Ignoring the beginning seems like a fatal way to stumble at arriving at the complete comprehension of it as well.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by a truth which is not obviously true. It is not obviously true that the Earth goes round the sun. Indeed it is counter-intuitive that it does, since, if you look in the sky and see the moon going round the Earth and the sun going round the Earth, it is easy to suppose that they are both orbiting the Earth. That's exactly what it looks like. It takes very complicated arguments, and the overcoming of a lot of very intuitive counter-arguments, and some pretty abstruse evidence, to prove that what the sun is doing is actually different from what the moon is doing, even though they both appear to cross the sky. Moreover, the evidence is not actually available to most people to examine for themselves; they just accept it. At the time of Galileo, there were what seemed to be cogent arguments why the Earth did not move; if it moves, why don't people fall down?, for example. It's not easy to refute these arguments, especially when the evidence of looking through a telescope at the moons of Saturn (which is how Galileo figured out that the Earth moves) can be interpreted in various ways.

Now, to your contention that knowing the beginning is essential to knowing mankind's purpose and why you are here -- that is exactly one of these so-called truths (which you have repeated many times here) which is not obvious. These are culturally specific ideas not shared by all cultures. As I too have many times pointed out, knowing the beginning is irrelevant to Buddhists and pagans. In the Greek pantheon, chaos or Mother Night came first, the gods and immortals came later. There is no obvious reason why the Judaic myth is the true one and the Greek one is false. The Bible is not any sort of evidence for settling this issue, no more so than Hesiod or Homer or the Bagavad Gita or the Upanishads or Gilgamesh would be.

And that is exactly the point of Dive's question here. Why believe the Bible instead of hundreds of other sacred accounts? If you don't already buy into the Bible, then quoting the Bible won't do it, because it is not any more self-certifying than the Book of Mormon or the Upanishads or Hesiod or any other sacred writing, every one of which claims to be the Word of God.