The concept of Hell discourages belief

[Mister Agenda]

What if he chooses Hot tar to your company? or more likly What if this bad seed wanted to be in your company just to torment his brothers and sisters?

The former, if I couldn't stop him from jumping in, in the first place, (at least explaining the danger to him personally), I'd still pull him out when he realizes hot tar is worse than me. The latter would be a problem I suppose if I was powerless to prevent him from tormenting his brothers and sisters.

The pit of Hot tar is actually the emptiness or lack of anything created by God.

So the damned aren't created by God? God isn't omnipresent?

I

t's kind of an either or thing.

Only if God makes it one.

Either you want to be a member of creation or you do not.

I think I'm a 'member of creation' whether I want to be or not. If there's a God who is responsible for all creation, I'm a member of that creation by definition.

If you are apart of creation then God being omnipresent you would be with God. Hell is the absence of God.

If there's an abence of God, God cannot be omnipresent.

That what makes it hell that's what makes you burn with loathing and regret. Because you will have full knoweledge of what God offered, and you will lement your desision to have been seperated from it.

So I get full knowledge of what God offered AFTER his limited-time get-in-free-if-you-don't-ask-too-many-questions deal expires? If I lament my decision, why not take me back? Does God hold a grudge? Am I magically unable to change my character once I'm dead, although if I changed my mind 5 minutes before my death I'm in like Flynn?

Hell is the emotion or the experience of being consumed by the emptiness or the void of creation. Hell is hell because there is no God. Or at least for me.

If God is omnipresent, there is no such thing as a void of creation.

Because once I was knew what God offered I lemented my choice to be seperated from God. That said I do not think everyone will think the same way about Hell.

Maybe some of us would like it?

At some point in eternity future the children of God will mature just like the children you are trying to focous your arguement on. If the heart of the child is on loving the parent then that child will grow love and honor the parent. However if their is resentment or discontentment in that child's heart given enough time (A trillion years or so) that discontentment will manifest into hate and eventually a fight or even on a large enough scale war. Then what?

I acknowledge your point here, as I noted, God has already demonstrated an inablility to keep his own house in order, so that's a real danger. If only he were powerful enough to build a wall between the potential troublemakers and the good kids without putting them into a 'void of creation'.

This has already played out once and the highest ranking angel and 1/3 of his brothers were lost. we do not know the cost of this conflict nor how it effects anything else on that side of eternity. We just know that we have been given this life without the imeadiate knoweledge of God's glory so we can make a honest heart felt decision about where we want to spend eternity. Persumably so it does not blow up into another conflict.

Because over trillions of years, none of the pro-God kids will ever change their minds, because humans are so constant. Seriously, God couldn't even keep the angels in line, and we're no angels. No way this ends well.

Which BTW is the reason I believe that God orders the complete destruction of those who apposed Israel, and in somecases where they did not obey we see the long term consenquences being played out. For instance acouple of women and a few children were allowed to live after God had told them to kill everything. The Jews let them live instead thinking the were more compassionate than God, think they knew better than God. In just a few short generations those people came back and nearly wiped out the children of Israel and enslaved the rest.

Because God has to do things a certain way to get the results he wants, just like us. He doesn't have options like making the survivors sterile, or killing them off with a disaster, he needs humans to do his dirty work for him, and he needs them to not let little things like conscience stop them, and if they're not brutal and ruthless enough, he can't protect them from the consequences.

I do not know how that all would play out on an eternal scale, but I know God's desision to destroy those who appose Him is what is best for His followers in the long run.

You don't know as much as you think you do.

Again God's love is not unconditional.

Well, it's Tex's love I was talking about. I agree, it's a neat solution to theodicy and the POE. Most people get out of it by limiting God's power or omniscience, you choose to do it by limiting his benevolence. What confuses me is that you also still limit his power with frequent claims that God has to do things in certain ways. You seem to have chopped both legs off the tripod of theodicy for no good reason. If God is limited in benevolence, you don't need to limit his power to explain his actions/inactions. If you limit his power, you don't need to limit his benevolence.

It is boundless to those who accept it but it is coonditional in that one must accept what He offers in the way He offers it.

Like a gunman's boundless mercy in letting you live if you hand over your wallet.

I think this happened to show us what would happen if malcontents were allowed to rome heaven for eternity. In essence why people are thrown into a 'tar pit.' rather than be forced into God's service.

Right, because God can't keep order in his own house, and people who choose God in this life will never in eternity act out in the next.

We do not know exactly what it meant for Jesus to be nailed to that cross to take on the sins of the world.

You seemed to be pretty confident that YOU knew what it mean when you told us what it cost God.

May say because He is God he took what the Father had to give on the chin and bounced right back. I am not so sure. I can't say one thing or another but to me Christ dying words tells the whole story. (My, God My God. Why have you forsaken me?) or Why have you left me? To me and what I read Jesus traded His righteousness for our sins. Meaning there was a literal trade. In that we took a peice of His righteousness to cover us in excange for our sin. Leaving Him as sin before the Father. Where does that Leave Christ? I don't know for sure, even though revelation says He is at the right hand of the Father. Meaning He his position is one of power and authority, but is it the same as before where He was on Par with the Father himself?? That is yet to been seen.

Whatever, if he's who you say he was, his choice was fully-informed. That's more than humans get.

In conclusion our redemption may have cost Christ far more than His mortal life. to me it does not makes sense to say: God gave his only son, just to physically die. There is more that we have not been given to understand I am sure.

Personally, I hope if Jesus was divine, he got to fully recover. He seems to have been a decent chap, mostly. Being human seemed to have a good effect on him.

Again it is not up to his 'missionaries to convince yoou of anything. God has taken on that task Himself if you will only A/S/K. Our job is to only point you to A/S/K.

Oh, I know the conversion scam depends on people convincing themselves. Christianity is just like the other prosyletizing religions in that regard: believe first, and you will receive the evidence you need to keep believing. Whoever came up with that was a real student of human nature.

[/quote]Then you do not understand the options or the reasons He has stated that only two options have been given.[/quote]

It's 'all-powerful' that I understand. If you don't think he can do it, just admit it.

Isn't that the point though? for if we had divine backing then that would not leave you with much choice other than to believe. That is what your own arguement states does it not?

It's very much to the point that the God you believe in uses exactly the same tactics a God that doesn't exist would.

So.. God the creator of everything is supposed to Humble himself before you and you will lift Him up and worship him on your terms...

God the creator of everything parts seas if the story is old enough but hides from skeptics if there's a chance of confirming it. I expect God to be smart enough not to expect people to believe in him if he doesn't let them know he exists. I'll take whatever terms he wants to set, but I'm not bowing down to your imaginary friend because you're so sure he's real.

If I were God I would tell you to pound sand, that I did X,Y and Z and have provided you a way to reach me, and you did nothing except demand that I approach you...

At least if he told me to pound sand, I'd know he exists.

If the president of the united states had one of his aids or interns say to you if want to be wants to come to a state dinner do X,Y,Z and the president will personall come and welcome you, would you intern say to the Aid have him invite me himself and I will come and be honored?

You know that I can actually check to see if someone represents the president, so this analogy is critically flawed right?

If this happened to you what do you think he would do? Who he come to your house and grovel for you to be honored, or will he extend the offer to someone more willing to do as he was asked?

Let me improve your analogy for you. A guy on the internet tells me the president has invited me to a state dinner. I don't believe. He says a bunch of stuff about the president to show he knows him, but some of what he says is at odds with what other people who claim to know the president have said. He can't even send me the paper invitation on presidential letterhead, I have to decide merely on his words.

BUT...it turns out that he actually is in touch with the president and tells him that I turned the offer down because I don't believe it. Is the president a smart enough man to understand that it's not unreasonable to with hold belief when someone claims something with nothing to back it up, or is he offended that I wouldn't believe a stranger who claimed to speak on his behalf?