On Hell and Forgiveness

[Silver]

Yes. Love is a way of experiencing God in this life.

Attributing things to god never works out in the end due to the ill logic. Sure, it makes you feel good in the end because of the lies you have been fed your entire life. That's about it, because you continue to want to believe in the lies because of how those lies make you feel. Emotion over logic is a great indicator of preferring the lie over the truth.

[The Grand Nudger]

Because you are wrong and unwilling to accept it.  Therefore, you're preferring the delusion over the reality.

How is that different from a believer accusing you of willful ignorance and degeneracy for refusing to believe?

The one can be demonstrated to be true, whereas the other is a foot stomping tantrum for having been exposed as a loon.  Easy question.

[Catholic_Lady]

Poly, may I ask you why? I'm not trying to change your mind or challenge you. I am genuinely curious to understand your perspective.

Hypothetical scenario:

At the moment of your death God appears before you and you realize at that moment that you were wrong about Him. He isn't an evil monster, or a tyrant like you always thought He would be if He were real. Things that you misunderstood about Him would be made clear. You see that He is good and loving. And you see that not only is He good and loving, but that He is literally goodness and love itself. And you understand at that moment that choosing to accept His love would mean complete fulfillment. It wouldn't be boring or bad, like you thought. It would be the ultimate fulfillment - complete joy and love.

Furthermore, choosing to "accepting His love" wouldn't be of any cost to you. All it means is that you reject greed (which is the opposite of love), admit/feel remorse for your wrongdoings and mistakes, and desire true goodness and love going forward. That is all accepting God's love would imply. (Think The Prodigal Son)

Why wouldn't you choose that? I'm just trying to understand why any good person wouldn't.

(Anyone else can answer this hypothetical as well)

You propose a scenario that makes no sense to me. Sure, we could have some powerful entity that is good and loving. But that is quite different than being 'goodness' and 'love' themselves. And those are psychological entities, NOT some all powerful force.

Furthermore, I *already* reject greed, feel remorse for my mistakes, and desire to be good and loving. So it is a question of whether this 'good and loving' entity wants to accept *me* as opposed to the other way around.

But I also don't consider perpetual 'love and joy' to be the same as fulfillment. That is, in many ways, closer to a drug high than reality. I prefer to see the world as it is: full of badness as well as goodness, full of possibilities of achievement, but also failure, complex and not simple. Being blissful is quite distinct from fulfillment, and often is in exactly the opposite direction.

Can you just answer the hypothetical?

[Silver]

Because you are wrong and unwilling to accept it.  Therefore, you're preferring the delusion over the reality.

How is that different from a believer accusing you of willful ignorance and degeneracy for refusing to believe? Accusing other people of intellectual stubbornness and professing things they don't actually believe sounds to me like an excuse to deny the possibility that Christians could have genuine and innocent reasons for their beliefs.

Think of it this way: 

Theist: god is real / unicorn is real
Atheist: god is not real / unicorn is not real

It is not willful ignorance on part of the atheist when there is absolutely no evidence for the existence of that for which the believer is making a positive claim of existence.

It is not a difficult concept to understand, yet theist tend to make it doubly so merely based on an ignorant adherence to faith.

Faith is nothing of which to be proud or to cling.  It should be discarded, because it is useless.  It corrupts the mind, which becomes more apparent the more we debate.

[The Grand Nudger]

If I died and saw a god and god -did- explain that he wasn't the christian god after all (silly christians, never realizing that this is the only way their hypothetical can be true, lol)..I'd still have all the same opinions about gods in the general.

[Silver]

Can you just answer the hypothetical?

Does a positive answer asserting your hypothetical lead to truth? Or are you just badgering?

[Neo-Scholastic]

How is that different from a believer accusing you of willful ignorance and degeneracy for refusing to believe? Accusing other people of intellectual stubbornness and professing things they don't actually believe sounds to me like an excuse to deny the possibility that Christians could have genuine and innocent reasons for their beliefs.

Think of it this way: 

Theist: god is real / unicorn is real
Atheist: god is not real / unicorn is not real

It is not willful ignorance on part of the atheist when there is absolutely no evidence for the existence of that for which the believer is making a positive claim of existence.

It is not a difficult concept to understand, yet theist tend to make it doubly so merely based on an ignorant adherence to faith.

Faith is nothing of which to be proud or to cling.  It should be discarded, because it is useless.  It corrupts the mind, which becomes more apparent the more we debate.

That reads like a polemic. I wouldn't be so certain. There are things that are evident about the world. People can reason from some of those observations that God exists. You may believe that that specific conclusion does not follow from particular observations, but saying flat out that there is "no evidence" inverts the relationship between evidence and the conclusions one could possibly draw from the evidence. As such it is an unfounded assertion. Let me show you the difference...

Step 1: There is something evident about the world.
Step 2: Some conclusion follows from what is evident.
Step 3: What is evident supports the conclusion.

versus

Step 1: No conclusions can be drawn from something evident about the world.

[polymath257]

You propose a scenario that makes no sense to me. Sure, we could have some powerful entity that is good and loving. But that is quite different than being 'goodness' and 'love' themselves. And those are psychological entities, NOT some all powerful force.

Furthermore, I *already* reject greed, feel remorse for my mistakes, and desire to be good and loving. So it is a question of whether this 'good and loving' entity wants to accept *me* as opposed to the other way around.

But I also don't consider perpetual 'love and joy' to be the same as fulfillment. That is, in many ways, closer to a drug high than reality. I prefer to see the world as it is: full of badness as well as goodness, full of possibilities of achievement, but also failure, complex and not simple. Being blissful is quite distinct from fulfillment, and often is in exactly the opposite direction.

Can you just answer the hypothetical?

I am trying to make sense of the hypothetical and failing. The hypothetical itself makes no sense to me. it identifies emotions (love, goodness) as a deity. That makes no sense at all.

[Silver]

That reads like a polemic. I wouldn't be so certain. There are things that are evident about the world. 1People can reason from some of those observations that God exists. You may believe that that specific conclusion does not follow from particular observations, but 2saying flat out that there is "no evidence" inverts the relationship between evidence and the conclusions one could possibly draw from the evidence. As such it is an unfounded assertion. Let me show you the difference...

3Step 1: There is something evident about the world.
Step 2: Some conclusion follows from what is evident.
Step 3: What is evident supports the conclusion.

versus

Step 1: No conclusions can be drawn from anything evident about the world.

1. If there was actual reason behind why you believe as you do, there would be no reason for anyone to disbelieve.
2. There is no evidence. It is that simple. Refer back to #1
3. God is not evident. Never has been. Imagination, on the other hand......

[Catholic_Lady]

Can you just answer the hypothetical?

I am trying to make sense of the hypothetical and failing. The hypothetical itself makes no sense to me. it identifies emotions (love, goodness) as a deity. That makes no sense at all.

It doesn't need to "make sense" to you how God can be love. It is a hypothetical. In the Hypothetical, God is love, regardless of whether that makes logical sense to you or not. Are you declining to answer?