Eternal punishment is pointless.

[dyresand]

the day when man creates sentient life in a laboratory is the day we become gods.
not immortal gods just well mortal gods.

You'd think harnessing electricity would have already made us gods. We're making organs in labs. I don't know if we'll ever make sentient life, but it's kind of like how they have to shove god into the beginning of the universe. The more we advance, the fewer places they can hide their god.

if we did religious groups would jump out the wood work and would be really angry. the biggest reason its not one of gods creations so ergo its evil and must be destroyed. the second reason we played god and shouldn't have.

[Chad32]

They'd complain that it's wrong because we can't imbue it with a soul. Not that we've even proved souls exist in the first place. We have proved that you can change everything about a person by messing with their brain, but some people insist the real us is our "soul". Whatever that is, wherever that is, and however it's related to our physical bodies.

[dyresand]

They'd complain that it's wrong because we can't imbue it with a soul. Not that we've even proved souls exist in the first place. We have proved that you can change everything about a person by messing with their brain, but some people insist the real us is our "soul". Whatever that is, wherever that is, and however it's related to our physical bodies.

If there is a way to prove that there is souls and they do exist they might have something but what we are as humans are just electrical impulses and flesh nothing more.

[Brian37]

They'd complain that it's wrong because we can't imbue it with a soul. Not that we've even proved souls exist in the first place. We have proved that you can change everything about a person by messing with their brain, but some people insist the real us is our "soul". Whatever that is, wherever that is, and however it's related to our physical bodies.

If there is a way to prove that there is souls and they do exist they might have something but what we are as humans are just electrical impulses and flesh nothing more.

I hate this kind of implied splitting the baby in fairness.

Not only is there no evidence of souls, and not only do we not have evidence for such, with what we currently know about evolutionary biology , human flawed perceptions and projectionism, there is no need to insert such a claim into the gap of what we still have yet to learn about our brains.

We are literally our brains in motion, nothing more. Our personality and our thoughts one can look at like a car with a running engine burning fuel in motion. No engine, no fuel, no motion, no capability of speed. Destroy that structure you will not produce speed. No different than if you were to smash your computer tower and motherboard to unusable parts on top of unplugging it from the wall. It has nothing in tact so it will not work.

The idea of souls and gods are merely primitive gap filling due to our ignorance of scientific reality combined with selection bias and sample rate error.

[dyresand]

If there is a way to prove that there is souls and they do exist they might have something but what we are as humans are just electrical impulses and flesh nothing more.

I hate this kind of implied splitting the baby in fairness.

Not only is there no evidence of souls, and not only do we not have evidence for such, with what we currently know about evolutionary biology , human flawed perceptions and projectionism, there is no need to insert such a claim into the gap of what we still have yet to learn about our brains.

We are literally our brains in motion, nothing more. Our personality and our thoughts one can look at like a car with a running engine burning fuel in motion. No engine, no fuel, no motion, no capability of speed. Destroy that structure you will not produce speed. No different than if you were to smash your computer tower and motherboard to unusable parts on top of unplugging it from the wall. It has nothing in tact so it will not work.

The idea of souls and gods are merely primitive gap filling due to our ignorance of scientific reality combined with selection bias and sample rate error.

Thank you.

[Nope]

Sin is not responsible for corrupting creation. How exactly does disobedience to god cause thorns to grow, and make childbirth painful? All this was a curse Yahweh placed on the land because he was ticked off. Not something that just started happening because of disobedience.

Disobedience to Yahweh also didn't force him to kill an anaimal just to make clothes for Adam and Eve. He can poof animals into existence, but he has to slaughter one to get skins.

He killed the animal first and foremost as a sacrifice for their sin, then used the skin to cloth them. God cursed the creation because of the sin Adam and Eve committed. Sin is the reason for the curse and the curse is why the creation is corrupt. Sin started it off. He had a right to be ticked off, sin had entered His perfect creation because man misused the gift of free will.

GC

I have never understood why plants and animals were cursed because two humans did something that annoyed bible god. The entire story makes no sense unless your god is like the serial killer, Jigsaw in the movie series, Saw

Supposedly, he put a magic, forbidden tree in a garden with two humans who were so innocent that they didn't really understand right from wrong. Then he let a being who apparently hated humans roam their world so they could be tempted. To believe the story actually happened and isn't just a metaphor means that bible god should be considered evil

---

Well, then I suppose according to you, a huge number of people that identify as Christian are not True Christians™

Now you're own the right track. Scripture shows us this is true.

GC

So you believe that your god will put a huge number of people in a place of eternal torture and still don't see your concept of god as evil?

[vorlon13]

(I'm not reviewing 300 posts to see if this has been mentioned, if I'm repeating, eat me)

"Eternal punishment" would not be pointless IF the certainty of it was certain, and not a matter of belief. If there were daily or weekly features on the 6PM news updating particular individual's continuing, specific, horrific and eternal torments in Hell, we'd all be better behaved.

Imagine the talk around the watercooler tomorrow at work if Brigham Young was shown on the news tonite, still in Hell, and gutted like a pig, roasting on a spit over a blazing fire, screaming in (im)mortal agony all the while.

It's like the Doomsday Machine in Dr. Strangelove. It only works if you tell everyone about it, why would you keep it a secret !?!?!?!?!

[Ravenshire]

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?

Your gawd is allegedly all powerful. I'm sure an all powerful gawd could come up with some alternatives somewhere in between the extremes of heaven and hell.

Seriously prof, you don't seem to even be trying in your trolling any more.

---

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.

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?

By this logic, we should be able to draw this conclusion:
As long as gawd is not the tyrannical dick-wad, monstrous, beastial, demented bastard that is described in the buy-bull, we wouldn't mind hanging out with him. Therefore, he can't justifiably separate us from him if he's actually the good guy that you and GC keep playing him up to be.

---

I gave the facts from scripture

Here, let me fix that for you:
I gave the my opinion based on my interpretation of scripture

While you may not like it, that's far closer to the truth than claiming to get any facts from that source.

[IATIA]

Sin is not responsible for corrupting creation. How exactly does disobedience to god cause thorns to grow, and make childbirth painful? All this was a curse Yahweh placed on the land because he was ticked off. Not something that just started happening because of disobedience.

Disobedience to Yahweh also didn't force him to kill an anaimal just to make clothes for Adam and Eve. He can poof animals into existence, but he has to slaughter one to get skins.

He killed the animal first and foremost as a sacrifice for their sin, then used the skin to cloth them. God cursed the creation because of the sin Adam and Eve committed. Sin is the reason for the curse and the curse is why the creation is corrupt. Sin started it off. He had a right to be ticked off, sin had entered His perfect creation because man misused the gift of free will.

GC

Does not free will imply freedom to choose? I choose not to go to heaven or hell.

[Smaug]

Let us consider a situation:
- God creates sentient beings 'in the image of himself' for some reason,
- he filters some of them out according to some criteria,
- he places those who hasn't passed the selection in Hell.

In Hell the 'unfit' do nothing other than being tortured for eternity. Leaving moral aspects aside, this is just a pointless waste of energy. Why would he do so rather than just alter them to meet his requirements? Do we have to consider that the 'unfit' go to Hell for those in Heaven to see them being tortured?

In fact in light of Omnipotence even finite punishment by a divine being doesn't make sense. Punishment makes sense for humans who sometimes know no better means of enforcing social rules but not for someone who can casually alter human character.