Eternal punishment is pointless.

[Godscreated]

DISCLAIMER This is such a long thread that I didn't read through most of it. So forgive me if what I'm about to say has been said.

Does the Bible say that eternity in hell is supposed to be seen as punishment? I don't think it's meant to be a disciplinary act so much as it's just fear compliance. Like be-headings, back in the day. It wasn't meant to punish to discipline the person being executed so much as it was a show of, "See why you don't want to disobey us now?".

That being said, you can't have an all loving God that endorses it anyway. You can't have an all powerful anything either. Ah, self defeating premises.

Hell is not a place of disciplinary action, that would require a release from said punishment, there will be no release from hell. Do you understand it's the individual that chooses his/her place in eternity, God gives one what choice one has made in this life.

GC

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It really is ashame you do not understand how God's justice works. Here's a hint, it doesn't require your cynical opinions and opinions are all you have about this.

GC

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It does require justification, though. You have to have a better explanation than "because he holds a grudge for eternity". That is, if you want him to be seen as anything but evil.

I've never said God holds a grudge, that is what the atheist here are saying. God has given everyone the chance to be cleared of the guilt they carry, the guilt of being a sinful person. I'm no better than anyone else here when it comes to God and who He is, without Christ I would face the same judgement. This is kind of like it's who you know and not what you do, kinda that is.

GC

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It really is ashame you do not understand how God's justice works. Here's a hint, it doesn't require your cynical opinions and opinions are all you have about this.

GC

Pardon my butting in here, if I may, however it really is a shame you don't understand the inherently sick notion that you believe in an entity that endorses what we understand as cruel and inhumane. Worse yet, you praise that same entity. It'd be as if Germans knew of Hitler's concentration camps during his reign, but fully supported them because they put their beliefs on Hitler above their own moral sensibilities. "Those jews deserved to be tortured and starved to death because they don't worship the same consciousness that I do. They deserved what they got."

You may still justify your god because "he's a god". But it doesn't matter. The outcome is still the same. What if Hitler was a giraffe; would all those Jewish people have cared? No, the outcome is still the same.

It's so weird because when I was a christian, I really didn't see anything wrong with the notion of hell, either. Somewhere along the line I realized I cared about my own salvation over the suffering of others'. That's why hell is so effective. It scares someone so much for themselves that what happens to someone else really just doesn't matter. However, a truly moral person would stand at the gates of heaven and realize the cost for them to be there is the eternal suffering and pain of billions of others. For me, there could be no heaven in light of that.

No wonder you left Christianity, you did not understand what being a Christian really means, if you believed that escaping hell is the most important part you missed Christianity.

GC