The concept of Hell discourages belief

[Mister Agenda]

What if he does not want your help in any way shape or form? What if from the time he could speak he made it clear he did not like you or your authority over him? Would you force him to accept you and what you offered? Would you force Him to stay in your house even if he was old enough to leave?

If he won't take it, he won't take it. But I won't have him thrown in a pit of hot tar for it.

With one condition, God respects his children enough to allow them to pick their own directions in this life and the next.

I would respect my children enough to do the same, and still love them enought not to prepare a pit of burning tar for them. Frankly, I wouldn't even have to love them to not do that, just not hate them with a psychotic passion.

So long as he lives right? How does that differ from what God has done for us through the atonement Christ offers?

No pit of burning tar (what hell is like according to your experience).

Actually no, that is not a biblical percept. I will agree most religions teach this but they do so outside of what Christ Himself taught. Do you know of the parable of the talents in Mat 25:14-30? Basically it says God will only hold us responsible to what he has given us. If we are faithful we will be given more if we are not the what we have will be taken from us and given to someone else. This means if we do not have to understand the bible like a Billy gram. All we must do is do the best we can with what God gave us. Not the best as in what you tell someone is your best, but your best as in all your heart, mind spirit and strength, and no matter what your finished product, God will judge you favorably according to this parable.

And if we don't, pit of burning tar.

What if your son chooses that fate over spending an eternity with you?

If I were God, I'll have determined the consequences for not spending eternity with me. If I were God, it wouldn't be eternity in burning tar, and if there were some punishment, it wouldn't be an eternal one: I will always be willing to take my child back. Real life fathers don't want their children to suffer and don't impose a life of suffering on them, the consequences of not heeding our advice are what we are trying to protect our kids from in the first place, we don't say if you play in the street I'll have a car run over you, we say I can't protect you from being run over by a car if you play in the street.

The problem I see is that you assume that all children love their fathers their whole lives. wait till you boys hit 16 and decide to do the opposite of what you would have them do for no other reason then because it would please you that they do what they were asked.

I don't see anything in the post to justify that conclusion. Saying his love is unconditional implies that he will love them no matter what. And again, it doesn't take loving them to keep you from planning to have them tortured forever, just lack of psychotic rage.

Now imagine this rebellion in the scope of eternity. I think given enough time this would make reasons for wars..

You've got a point there, I heard there was a war there already, so it's clearly an option. Apparently, nothing is guaranteed, even in heaven.

I did a thread on this titled God does not love you.. (the way you think He does.) In Short I look at the Greek word that gets translated to the word love in the English. It is Agape. This Agape form of Love is indeed conditional. It is not a love based on emotion but Choice. In that we must choose to accept God's offer of love. Once we do then we will experience that Boundless love you are describing. Agape is not a generic all encompassing love that knows no bounds for everyone in general. Agape is indeed conditional and has a price tag on it. In order for God to offer it it cost Him His only Son.

So Jesus is dead? Because if he's not, it didn't cost God his only son.

In order for us to receive it we must acknowledge and accept what it cost God to offer it. To me this does not sound unreasonable.

To me it does, and the 'or else' of eternal suffering for not being convinced by his missionaries makes it sound more unreasonable.

Again, He is not the modern day English understanding of all loving.

True, that model of love was too precocious for the fickel Oriental potentates Yahweh was modeled after.

He is the Koine Greek understanding of Agape. To understand God is to seek Him on His terms and not to try and force God to fit our understandings. If we do what you have done we build a strawman fallicy and lable it god. when our strawman fails to live up to or is not consistent with the God of the bible our reaction is to say God does not exist, because there is a fatal flaw in our strawman version of God, rather than admit we never sought the God of the bible to begin with.

If he did exist, he wouldn't be worth worshiping. Expecting or desiring worship should be beneath an ultimate being. Wanting worship automatically disqualifies him from deserving it.

Again have you asked yourself why? What fundamental principle is being violated when God forces someone to spend an eternity serving Him?

The fallacy of false dichotomy. A being as powerful as God can't be restricted to only two options.

Which is what this life is all about. To see if you can eternally serve Not the God you have constructed for yourself, but the God of the bible for all of eternity. If yes then simply accept the redemption offered, if no then stay your course and know you will be eternally separated from the God you want nothing to do with..

You know it's YOU we don't believe, not God, right? All we know about God is what people who claim to speak for him tell us, and you can't seem to get your stories straight. It's not really your fault that God doesn't make you very convincing when you don't have access to the power of the state to torture us in this life if we don't see things your way. Without divine backing, you're just schlubs trying to convince other schlubs you know things it isn't possible to know.

If there's a God that wants to speak to me, I'm all ears. Presumably, it knows how to reach me. If there is a God, I want to know about it, and I'm enough of a coward that I would worship him to avoid eternal torture, but I'm not going to believe this obvious conversion meme in advance just on the off chance it might be true, without a good reason to believe it actually IS true, anymore than I'd believe you if you told me a nuclear missile is going to hit my city tomorrow without convincing evidence: sure, if you're right and I don't believe you, I'm dead, but the severity of the consequences of not believing you don't make the odds that you're right higher.

God also gave me the ability to reason, and I would conclude, that Your idea of God is not real. That's not to say a God does not exist beyond what your god should look like.

Your version, his version, no sound reason to believe either of them is real.

This would be an accurate analogy save for one minor detail. God offers atonement. If God did not offer atonement or some way for one to redeem himself then you would be 100% correct. But because atonement for sins was offered then the destruction of your 'mini van' is because you chose to have it destroyed, and God/ford is simply facilitating what you wanted to do.

Like if someone holds a gun to your head, and tells you to give them your money, it's your fault if you get shot because you chose not to hand over the money.

Here is a thread I started explaining what I know of Hell.
http://atheistforums.org/thread-15622.html

Thanks for sharing, that was an interesting read.

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@ OP:

First problem is with your premise that all people are God's children. Biblically this isn't the case:

John 8
42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. 43 Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it."

Paul alsr refers to our adoption as God's children several times, indicating that we are not born as children.

So, your arguments based on proper treatment of children are groundless.

Because it's okay to torture other people's children forever?