Eternal punishment is pointless.

[Mister Agenda]

The whole reasoning of this thread is wrong.
Hell was made for the devil and his angels.
There is no purgatory and the Hitlers, Stalins ,Maos are not going to Heaven,
so the only option left is to be sent where the devil is going.
There are people who would not be fit for heaven.
What else would you do with them?

What makes you think God would only have two options?

[abaris]

So for three days your god was dead? Not living? Not extant?

Nope.

However you twist and turn the trinity, there's still the father and the holy spirit left to conduct business as usual.

Jesus is supposed to be god, God is supposed to be god, the holy spirit is supposed to be god. 1+1+1=1 according to many appologist sites.

Godchild obviously thinks differently.

[GrandizerII]

Honestly spending eternity worshipping some dick of a God who does nothing kind of sounds like a hell in itself.

God sacrificed his Son for mankind, so your statement of Him doing nothing is false. You have nothing to worry about when it comes to worshiping God for eternity, hell is reserved for those who do not wish to do so. Now you only have to worry about what hell will be like.

GC

I wouldn't be proud of posting this if I were you.

[Mister Agenda]

In contrast to Heywood, I do not think of Hell as a punishment. It is an eternal state that is consistent with the logical consequences of your will and the ideas that follow from what you most love. The Twilight Zone video is most appropriate. The protagonist gets what he most desired to his eternal regret.

How on earth could you possibly know that?

[FatAndFaithless]

Still wondering why God couldn't just forgive us outright instead of forcing us into hell if we don't worship him.

[abaris]

Still wondering why God couldn't just forgive us outright instead of forcing us into hell if we don't worship him.

Just think what Ted Bundy would do and you get the general idea.

[Mister Agenda]

Not always. Somethimes punishment can be administered to criminal in order to keep a bad person out of society, hence prisons.

That's not punishment, it's containment. That it is not pleasant is secondary to isolating the offender from the general public. One could accomplish the same thing while providing comfortable accommodations.

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I think your looking at the Hell thing through the lenses of Catholisim.

Utlimatly if you strip Hell down to it's core principle, it is eternal seperation from God. Because where in creation can one go to escape an omnipresent God? The Absents of God is the defination of Hell.

If there is anywhere that God is absent from, God is not omnipresent.

So why does anyone need be seperated from God? Because it is clear just from this website not everyone want to be with Him. So again if you spend a life time trying to seperat yourself from God how can a Just God force you to spend an eternity with Him?

He doesn't have to force. He can just ask. The reason all these threats are timed for after we die is because that makes it impossible to verify or falsify. It's the kind of notion people retain after they're forced to admit that they can't support their assertions at all. Any supposed holy con man can spin tales of the afterlife out of whole cloth and form a following from any gulllible enough to believe on his say-so. It's happened over and over again through history, but every believer thinks THEIR supposed holy man had the real goods and it's only everyone else's prophet or otherwise-divine figure that was the con artist.

[Godscreated]

The only reason we need to be 'saved' is because God created Hell in the first place. Why not just forgive us, without having the requirement of worshipping him? That seems like something a truly loving god would do.

Like I said you need to study the scriptures and you would find out how far off you are from the truth.
God did create hell, first for Satan and the fallen angels, then when man (Adam) sinned, man with unforgiven sin will join them in the eternal punishment. The way of man seems right unto man, and the way of God seems wrong. There is a flaw in that kind of thinking, man has a fallible mind and God is omniscient.
Have you asked God to forgive you through Jesus Christ, no, then you really do not desire the forgiveness. When one understands the terribleness of sin against God one desires forgiveness of that sin and in honor of God's forgiveness one desires to worship Him, salvation is the beginning of a relationship. A truly loving God doesn't let people off the hook, He helps them to realize the consequences of their wrong actions, if they will listen.

GC

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God sacrificed his Son for mankind, so your statement of Him doing nothing is false. You have nothing to worry about when it comes to worshiping God for eternity, hell is reserved for those who do not wish to do so. Now you only have to worry about what hell will be like.

GC

I wouldn't be proud of posting this if I were you.

The truth is the truth and pride has nothing to do with it being posted.

GC

[The Grand Nudger]

Garbage. I've done things for which I honestly needed to ask forgiveness (and in as many cases as I could or would, I have) but that forgiveness (when given) doesn't and hasn't lead to a desire to fucking worship those people nor is it even remotely comprehensible why it would or why worship would even be appropriate, serf.

[Godscreated]

God did sacrifice His life so that everyone could be saved, however that salvation couldn't come without His resurrection. All men die and only an omnipotent God can call us to life, saved because of His love for us.

GC

So for three days your god was dead? Not living? Not extant?

The fault of not understanding the trinity is yours not mine.

GC

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Still wondering why God couldn't just forgive us outright instead of forcing us into hell if we don't worship him.

There you go again spouting things that are not true, please quit wasting our time until you study the scriptures and see what is actually stated about hell and who winds up there.

GC