God is the great spirit friend

[Mystic]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but, you are saying that despite the mass majority of those who don't do well in adversity, the gems that do well are worth the tribulations and hellish sufferring [of those who don't do well] on an eternal timescale?

No, I didn't advocate hell.

You seem to be connecting life experiences with earning praise in success. But the two are non-sequiter. Here on earth, you win a race the other kids get second third prizes and the rest of them cry. But they always have another chance to beat you on the next race. In Christian gods' world, you win you win forever. You lose, you lose forever and the losers were only there to make the winners winners.

Well technically if God knew we would lose, you would be correct. So you are right about the Christian God. But here we are discussing simply the possibility of a benevolent Creator. It doesn't have to future knowledge, so people who weren't successful, wouldn't necessarily be created for that purpose.

I can see how one might think it would be benevolent if when we died we all go to heaven/peace, and our lives are tribulations of the most minute discourse in comparison to the eternal scale. I just don't think someone who puts us in this system of torture could be benevolent in the long run either.

I agree eternal torture seems to go against benevolence especially when so much of humanity is suppose to end in that terrible place and the system is designed so environment pays the biggest role on what you believe (and passing is based on belief).

Would you put your daughter in a sandbox with fireants and tell her to grab something buried in the sand if she wants to have cake as opposed to being grounded in the timeout chair for the rest of her life, when she comes out? Even if you gave her a cake the rest of her life and she wasn't permanently physically damaged: you can't take back what you made her do, and she can't take back in her mind what you did to her. Nothing can take back what's been done, or what will be done. The mere fact that we live in this world as we do, makes me think that there can't be a benevolent creator out there.

I wouldn't do anything that put's anyone in pain individually - rather - I have appreciation of the system we are in that some people do end up in pain with possibility of a next world of eternal peace, so that I see a benevolent Creator as possible.

Thing is though: we choose on this earth what to do and not to do. We aren't predestined in nature at birth to do the wrong thing. Genetics can help and environment is key. Those who raise you, conditions in which they live, those who control your environment, those who are in your life: make you who you are, not the other way around. That's what we visually observe in the real world. We grow up to be what we are made to be---based on the decisions we make, not by ourselves but by the positivity or the negativity of the world surrounding us and how we react to them.

This is true generally, but again, it gives opportunity for people to overcome their environment as well.

In the observable world, we learn our measure of good from our environment and from observing the systems around us that govern our physical existance.

Yet there is the stories of Socrates who questioned the whole system he was under. Escaping the Matrix would not be as beautiful (praiseworthy way) if it was so easy.

But the bible and science both contend that one is considered innocent as a baby.

If I'm born innocent, and have the choice up until the day of my death whether I'm a weed or grass, then why do you still tell me I've fallen? That we've all fallen? How the fuck is it benevolent in any way whatsoever to tumble innocents onto earth covered in the veil of sin by default, just so a few of them can overcome the sin and say they overcame the sin as they walk on all the sinners heads (which had to be there to get stepped on) in order for the righteous to get to freedom? Oh and forcefully leave the rest in hell else wise your reward is no longer a reward??

It's not benevolent. Period.

I agree.

I would like to say my reasoning to rejecting hell went on the lines of this.

It's good to put in yourself in position of another, and ask what you think is the right thing to do with regards to yourself, and apply it to others.
If you were evil, would it be the right thing to have compassion yourself and hope you are forgiven and reformed or eternally tortured?
I believe it's the former.
Therefore I believe it's right to wish others compassion and they not be eternally tortured but forgiven and reformed.
Therefore I believe if there is a Creator that shares morality of humanity, it would be wrong of him to eternally torture humans for being evil.

This is the reasoning I went through.