(January 13, 2012 at 5:49 am)Godschild Wrote:(January 11, 2012 at 2:47 pm)Welsh cake Wrote:(January 10, 2012 at 9:39 pm)Godschild Wrote: You make the decision about your eternity, God gives you what you choose. Can't get much more fair than that. The weeping and gnashing of teeth is for the wrong decision one makes, weeping and gnashing of teeth is about sorrow not pain.What do you interpret Hell as?
I suppose this is the question you were asking me to answer, I really do not know why, you will not accept it as an answer, I stated this before and if I could find it I would refer you to that post.
First of all God is not a torturer, even if hell is a place of eternal fire. Secondly God does not decide who goes to hell, every person makes a choice scripture makes that very clear. God gave the 10 Commandments to expose sin for what it is, now man can not say there is no sin. God sacrificed his Son to redeem man from their sin. Those who choose to believe through faith in Christ will be forgiven their sin, those who choose to reject Christ and the saving grace he has brought to man will not have their sin forgiven, this is the plan of salvation, planned before creation. Everyone will be judged by the law that has sin in them, those who have their sin forgiven will not be judged by the law, I described above how one receives forgiveness. Those who are covered by the sacrifice of Christ will be found sinless and will enter eternal life in Heaven.
Those who rejected Christ will as I said before be judged by the law. Those who are judged by the law will be found guilty and be sentenced to hell. Just as a judge in our courts sentences someone to jail the judge is not responsible for the person being in jail, God is not responsible for the person that is found guilty, being in hell. Now that it's established that the person in hell is responsible for his/her situation let's look at what I believe hell to be.
The Lake of Fire is reserved for satan and his cronies. God said that hell is a dark place, so how is it possible to have fire in hell if it's a dark place. Hell is a place of loneliness, regret and a place where one can keep on rejecting Christ and become more resentful of being in hell. Where one can continue to curse God as they did in life before death. Sorrowfulness, despair, hate, turmoil and ect. will rule ones life for eternity. God gave one what he/she chose, to allow one into heaven would be a place unacceptable to someone who did not love Christ in this life. So you see God is just by giving one the choice he/she made in this life and not allowing them to suffer an existence in Heaven. All the atheist on this site have stated they would not want to live an eternity with God, so that's what he will give those who choose such, to me this is one statement made by nonbelievers that confirms why there is a hell for those who do not believe.
Thanks for laying this out. This explanation fleshes out everything that is immoral and corrupt in the Christian doctrine.
1. You god doesn't justify his reasons for those rules. He doesn't tell you why he came up with those rules and what purpose they serve.
And no, "because he doesn't want you to go to hell" is not a rational response. If he really didn't wan that then the most rational way to do that would have been not to proscribe any rules at all.
Your god does not want want rational assent from men, he wants blind obedience. Your god is the moral equivalent of a tyrant enforcing his will and people's actions at the point of a gun and then descrying any responsibility by claiming those actions to be voluntary.
2. When you speak of the "nature of sin", never once do you mention the requirement of accepting christ. Actions that count as sin exist independently of christ. This means that you can be sinful irrespective of whether you accept christ, reject him or have never heard of him. The opposite is also logically true. You can be virtuous without any other condition being necessarily true. You failed to mention what happens to them. In fact, going by your words "they would be judged and will go to hell", it would see that you don't think they can exist. But they can and they do.
3. On the point of acceptance of Christ: why should that cleanse you of your sins? It does not negate your actions or their consequences. The person you killed does not come back to life. The harm you caused does not come undone. So why should god's grace negate your sin?
The answer would be that the "grace" represents the goodwill of god and you have to get that to be forgiven. This system is often seen in human realm as well. When you have the goodwill and grace of the judge, you won't go to jail. You are being judged not on the merits of your actions but on the principle of "who you know and who you blow". If this is seen in any law court in any country, we correctly identify the system as corrupt and immoral.
4. But then, God cannot maintain the pretense of objectivity in that case. He has to find a scapegoat for your crimes. Someone who would bear the burden of your guilt. Apparently, he chose JC for the job.
If you consider the Christian opinion on the nature of JC, he is the most ideal human being possible. He has all the possible virtues and none of the vices. In a word, he is the best human that ever existed or will ever exist. By contrast, all others are not worthy enough. They are lesser.
Ignoring for a moment the insult that is to collective humanity, this is the morality your god practices. He'd sacrifice the best of humankind for the sake of the unworthy. Anyone who follows this morality cannot be expected to do anything but more of the same.
5. Under human law, the punishment for a crime is proportional to the crime itself. The penance or restitution you must makes depends upon the damage you have caused.
Your god, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have a sense of proportion at all. It doesn't matter whether you just had sex before marriage or killed someone, its off to the basement with you. I guess when all you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails.
6. Finally, if your god does exist and he does judge humanity by those standards, I would gladly go to hell rather that live in a heaven run by such a morally bankrupt system.
Why would hell be lonely? There would be a lot more people with my moral convictions to keep me company.
Why would resentful of heaven's rejection of me? I didn't want to go there and they didn't want me there.
Why would there be sorrow? I'm living in the company I wish to live in.
Why would there be despair and hate when a lot of people there would share my values and it would not be difficult to find love?
Why would there be turmoil if I'm certain in my convictions?
The only kind of suffering your god can threaten me with is physical suffering. The threat of being in constant neurological pain. This brings us right back to the image of your god as a tyrant holding humanity at gunpoint.
