Is there free will in heaven?

[reverendjeremiah]

Been a lot of that recently. Hell is becoming a "removal from the grace of god" in all the trendy new fundy shitholes. They realized the torture bit wasn't compelling anymore so they're attempting to change the script. Typical.

I just giggle at them, and shake my head as I watch them jump through verbal hoops.

Hell is eternal punishment...but not torture.

Hell wasnt created by God. Evil humans forced the creation of Hell to happen.

God doesnt throw people in Hell. People throw themselves into it by choice. (Yet when I tell them "The fuck if I will worship your god OR throw myself in Hell!" they say that I will have no choice...honestly, these freaks are fucked in the mind and then preach "freewill" 2 minutes later.)

and so on....and so on...G-C is a prime example of it, and I LOOOOOOVE fucking with him about it. G-C makes me laugh and laugh at all the poorly thought out excuses he tosses out.

[Minimalist]

Those who will be in heaven

First you need to demonstrate that there is a heaven. So far it merely seems to be an idea stolen from the Zoroastrians who were really just as fucked up as every other bunch of theistic assholes.

[Faith No More]

...for those who read this and go to hell you will find no pleasure there.

It will be pleasurable enough if I don't have to spend eternity with a bunch of Christians.

[Godscreated]

I can show you any of these places. Of the three words translated to hell in your bible, one of them absolutely and without any argument from anyone whatsoever means torture. "Tartarus" fruitcake. Had this convo on the forums awhile back with Salty I believe. Good thread I'll try to dig it up for you.

(take away the torture and no one would believe in your tiny, fear-mongering god)

The Greek is taptapow and means to incarcerate in eternal torment - cast down to hell. The only way I've seen tartarus used is toward the fallen angels and the meaning is to cast down and to chain in darkness, so as far as torture goes for humans it is not seen in scripture.

[5thHorseman]

So there is no torture in hell?

[The Grand Nudger]

It's true that tartarus and hades are not the hells we envision. These two are places literally within the bowels of the earth. Hades being a sort of upper level. A dull place devoid of joy or mirth. There is a mention of a sort of separation into two hades, believe the subject of the narrative was abraham. Tartarus is of course "the lowest hades". To give this whole thing a visual feel; hades is a flattened globe beneath our world, at the bottom of which is a "an abyss", a shaft without end leading down to tartarus. You know the reason that the tartarus verse seems so lonely? It was decided that the Book of Enoch was non-canonical. Which is unfortunate, because it's an interesting narrative itself (and is of course found in aramaic fragments on the dead sea scrolls). It's a sort of celestial supermax under the gp. "The Hole", if you will. You cannot remove tartarus from any mention of hades because they are inseparable concepts. One is a part of the other.

Gehenna would be the place we envision when we think of hell. In fact, hell itself is from an entirely different mythology that did not contain a hades, or a tartarus within the same. It did have a gehenna, and that was an easily absorbed mythology. Gehenna is "the lake of fire". It's interesting to point out that this is possibly derived from an actual place. This is the place of punishment, the final stop for unrepentant sinners. Gehenna is fairly well represented in the new testament, as is hades (and by extension tartarus).

All of this was subsumed under the title hell for a long while. It had alot to do with the native cultures that christianity encountered as it crawled across the map. The first beliefs to be incorporated are the ones with analogs in the native population. As the first doctrines absorbed they form a core piece of it. This is of course our understanding from cultural anthropology and studies of comparative religion. European christianity has traditionally been very heavy on the hell bit, and there were reasons for that. As such, this is the hell the believer inherits.

However, one could take the concepts of hades and tartarus as seperate from gehenna. There's no problem at all with separating them like this. It was intended. The trouble is that it does nothing to remove the idea of torture, torment, or punishment from either concepts. You're either burning in gehenna, or shambling about hades whilst ash rains on your head awaiting resurrection or judgement (being thrown in gehenna). All the while the shaft leading to tartarus is there beneath you where demons are held in torment and lie in wait to pour out onto the earth.

Sounds downright pleasant.

[searchingforanswers]

If hell is just separation from god I should have a fine time. Just fine. Won't be that much different from earth!

[ThomM]

1- I am unaware of any provable place called heaven - if YOU are able to provide proof of such a place - please identify the country it is in - as their laws would establish what is possible there

THe problem with "free: will - is that if YOU ACCEPT THE OTHER teachings of the christian church - free will CANNOT exist - even for the god

IF a god is OMNISCIENT FOR ALL TIME - then the only thing that can happen is what the god already knows - period. Even the god cannot make "Choices"

Since free will not only implies the ability to make choices - even choices not already known - but also the existence of more than one choice - since the ONLY THING than can happen if a god were ALL Knowing - is what the god already knows - there are NO Choices - the only thing that could be done - even by the god - would be what is known by the god.

These two opposing claims are one reason why the christian god cannot be real as defined by them. If you actually look at all the claims about the god as the religions of christianity define it - it simply is not possible for all the claims to be true in ONE being.

---

Hell is eternal punishment...but not torture.

Sorry - hell is proven ONLY to be a city in Michigan
YOU can make up all the fairy tales you want - when YOU can provide proof otherwise - we will address the proof

THE bible is already proven NOT to be a reliable source of truth - as admitted by the major christian sect themselves.

Hell wasnt created by God

Of course not - the god of the bible CANNOT exist as defined and never created anything


. Evil humans forced the creation of Hell to happen.

I would believe that calling all the humans in hell michigan to be evil would be argued against by those people

[Welsh cake]

Each will be alone and can do no harm to others, so for those who read this and go to hell you will find no pleasure there.

Oh darn, because we so enjoyed living such a sinful life here on Earth, a life where we harmed other people daily instead of kissing God's infinite arse.

And here I was thinking that I was a humanist living the one-and-only-life I'm ever going to have as best as I possibly can before the finality of biological death. >.>

[Epimethean]

Tartaros is not just a place, but a being, and it is Greek, though those lame xtians may have poached it from Hesiod. It was a place where only the worst beings (deities of one sort or another: The Greeks understood how fucked up gods had to be) could be sent.