(November 16, 2014 at 2:32 pm)Ryantology (╯°◊°)╯︵ ══╬ Wrote: Punishment can take on two forms. There is the kind that a parent might administer to a naughty child in order to teach them right from wrong and help them grow into a better person, and the kind that a parent might administer to a naughty child mostly because they are stupid and brutal people who can only soothe their own crippling emotional flaws by physically beating people who are too small to fight back.
The Abrahamic religions seem to take the view that there is no such thing as an unjust punishment, because the person who makes the rules cannot, by definition, break any rules. That is why I am curious to get the opinion of a follower or two, what is the justice in eternal punishment? When a person is dead and goes into the afterlife, what is the material (or immaterial) gain of subjecting that person to an eternity of misery and horror in revenge for whatever acts that allegedly justify it?
If there is no good here, and it is just revenge for the sake of revenge, if God is inflicting pain and anguish just because he got pissed off, how can this possibly be justified as anything other than the most petty and brutal sort of revenge?
If we all live forever and hell is a result of a voluntary choice not to live with God, then I guess it's just, and God is just. The bible isn't specific about what goes on in hell. I just know that it is existence without God and it's a terrible place to be. I myself have a hard time imagining that a loving and just God would submit people who sinned on earth for, say 80 years to an eternity of unending suffering. Additionally, it's as if the devil wins by maybe getting more souls than God does.
