What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[Mister Agenda]

Sure

The god of the OT is a monster, but the concept of hell does not appear until the NT and the preachings of Jesus; it's him that introduces the idea of tormenting the sinner for eternity without the possibility of appeal after the sinner in question is dead

Jesus also endorses the idea of thought crime, equating intention with action. This idea is totalitarian in essence: a law that is impossible to follow yet must be obeyed-on pain of postmortem torment

Having this in mind, how can you view the teachings of Jesus as moral?

Well first you have to understand that Hell is not a place you go to, kicking and screaming, where you will be burned and tortured by little men with horns. Hell is simply the only place where God is not present. And since God is goodness and love, Hell is a place where goodness and love are not present. That's why it is so bad.

The people who go to Hell are the people who reject goodness and love. For someone to avoid Hell, they don't necessarily have to believe in God. Maybe they were never taught about God. Maybe they just honestly could not bring themselves to believe He is real. This does not automatically mean they will go to Hell. What *does* automatically mean someone is going to Hell is that person's rejection of love and goodness, since God is love and goodness.

So the person who goes to Hell, a place where love and goodness are not present, is a person who *put themselves there* by choosing to reject love and goodness.

There is nothing immoral about Jesus being the messenger of this news.

As for your thing about thoughts... thoughts certainly can be immoral if they are intentionally indulged upon. For example, I am married. If I *choose* to sit around and day dream all day about having sex with another man, I am doing something immoral. I am not talking about involuntarily having a thought pop in my head and then brushing it away. I am talking about actively day dreaming and fantasizing about other men. A more obvious example would be a man who is attracted to children. If an inappropriate thought about children involuntarily pops into his head, and he pushes it away, he did not do anything wrong. But if he makes the conciese decision to sit there and start fantasisincg about rapping children, he is doing something immoral.

Jesus was simply reminding us that yes, thoughts *can* be immoral.

First, I like your sig, but the only religions I can think of that seem to be based on it are Jainism, Quakerism, and Universalism.

Second your description of hell sounds very made-up. You've dumped omnipresence from your version of God's list of omniattributes to come up with a version of hell that makes God seem less culpable for eternal torture (as though the creator of a system that results in eternal torture for anyone can escape culpability by semantic tricks). If you're going to be that unbiblical, why not chuck hell altogether, or make it brief? Your main guide to belief seems to be avoiding anything that might make you uncomfortable, why hold on to hell at all? It can easily go away or be transformed into a temporary, education experience through the magic of cherry-picking and scriptural interpretation.