Thoughts on Hell?

[pocaracas]

What your "kind" fails to understand is that self-deception (aka faith) is not a trustworthy method to arrive at any sort of reliable information.
And knowing that you can deceive yourself of nearly anything, a person who is really desiring to find out how everything works will try to eliminate as many such deceptions as possible.

First things first, I'm not a kind I'm a human being just like you. I'm really tired of being referred to as a kind, it is just another bigoted term atheist like to use to demean Christians. Secondly I haven't deceived myself that is only your opinion which I do not regard as trustworthy. Like I said I do not deceive myself and so there are no deceptions to eliminate.

Yes, you're a human being... a special kind of human being... one who thinks the bible is actually history and trustworthy.

If you're not self-deceived, then you have been deceived by someone else. The most likely culprits would have been your parents or friends as you grew up throughout your childhood and teen years.
That you, as an adult, keep the deception and even try to foster it onto others tells me that you've hit a self-reinforcing loop in the deception.
But, hey.... you know everything about psychology to correctly identify and dismiss this as anything but your own mind working against you.

To be fair, it's not entirely working against you. If most of society prefers to be around people that display such deceptive behavior, then you're fitting right in!

As children, people usually let go of the faith in Santa... That they hold on so strongly to the god deception just shows how powerfully society reinforces that deception.
Society and psychology... understand these and you understand why people believe in gods. Why there are different gods in different parts of the world, why different religions go to war. Sadly, most people can't even glimpse these two disciplines.

That's because Santa isn't real. Belief in Santa and God are not even comparable. We have proof Santa doesn't exist and you have no proof God doesn't exist, this alone shoots down your flawed argument.
What's truly sad is that you refuse to glimpse the creator and savior of the universe. I understand society, and psychology has it's good points but in many cases is severally flawed, neither have cause me to believe or disbelieve, I think clearly for myself. As I said above God will prove His existence to those who seek it, I know He has done that for me.

Really?!
Where's the proof that Santa doesn't exist?

But meh...
I don't refuse to glimpse the creator of the Universe. I'm waiting for that creator to show itself.
I don't understand why you say that creator is also a savior... did some other similar entity want to destroy the Universe, but, thanks to the creator, it failed? How would we know about such a story? And how can I know that is accurate?

When you say "God will prove his existence to those who seek it", all I read is "if I deceive myself into accepting that a god exists, then I will find events correlating with that deceptive fact". This tactic works for most anything that is not easily proven to be wrong... It works for flat-Earthers, for alien abductees, for NDE proponents, Hindus, etc, etc...
Because it works for such things, it cannot be used to ascertain anything about any god. It will only tell you what you already assume to be true. It works within your mind.
But you understand psychology, don't you?...

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It means God is omnipresent and that He saw what was going to happen before creation, God hasn't changed just because he created the universe and brought everything into existence. Right time was created, for us not God He is eternal, He has always existed. That old book has the answers to everything we need to know to live in a relationship with God and he will explain it to those who are interested in that relationship. Pretenders need not apply.

GC

What does it mean to be eternal, in the absence of time?!
What does it mean to create something in the absence of time?!
What does it mean to create time?!
What does "always" mean in the absence of time?!

You need to be careful with the words you use. I know you're not used to think about these things, but you should try.

I think quite clearly, it is you who has no understanding of time and God, so I'll answer your questions that you thought proved I was stupid.

1) The absence of time is eternal.
3) God created time when He created our existence, man needs time for his daily routine.
2) God created time before He created anything else, so time existed before the material universe was created.
4) See #1.

Oh, FFS!!!
1) Do you understand what "eternal" means? Let me take a peek in a dictionary for you:
- lasting or existing forever; without end.

So, existing in all of time. Not in the absence of time! Time is required

2) (did you mix up 2 and 3? ) Look at that sentence. Look at what you wrote: "God created time when He created...". Doesn't "when" imply the existence of a pre-established time scale?
I know it's very tricky to think in terms of "absence of time".... and I know our vocabulary is utterly insufficient for the task. But please try.

3) Same thing! "God created time before He created..." Before?! What does that mean in the absence of time?!

It's very easy to have people go along with your type of reasoning... but I'm sorry, I'm not falling. I understand what you want to say, but I also understand that it can't be so. It's self-contradicting. You can't have an action in the absence of time that you claim to exist as god creates the Universe (and space and time).
It is difficult for a human to think in terms of absence of time, so most people go along with what you said.

This impossibility of action in the absence of time tells us that
- the god you envisage is not real.
- If there is to be a god similar to that, it would have to be contingent on the existence of time, even if it could manipulate time as it pleases. This means that either this god created space and bound it with time to produce our well known space-time, or space was already existing, too. This god could still pre-date the big-bang. There are many models that allow space-time to exist prior to the big-bang. Either way, it looks more like a super-universal alien, than a god. An alien that could, in theory (if not in practice) be subject to probing by science. And, yes, humans would be able to grasp it's nature, even if in a very non-intuitive mathematics-like abstract way.

You are advocating that, god exists in a state where no time exists. And that, somehow, without any time, god manages to generate a region of space and time. And then you claim further that god permeates through all of the created time, knowing all the events that take place within this region it generated.

I advocated no such thing, I said God is eternal and thus needs no time this is something that mortal man can not grasp because we need time. God did not generate a region in space, there was no space before He created the universe. God is eternal and thus lives in all the time, as we understand time, He is fully aware of every second of your life from beginning to end and the same goes for all that come after us. God is capable of this because he is not limited by time, He is omnipresent which means He is living in what we understand as the past, present and future continually.

Again, "eternal" doesn't mean that it "needs no time". That would be instantaneous.
And what I said was that god generated a "region OF space and time". Very different from "region IN space". You see why I keep telling you to be careful with the words you use?

Can you understand that this raises a bunch of questions about the nature of this entity?
And the least important of those is - why the heck would that god care if any particular individual on this blue floating marble believes that it exists or not?

The nature of God can not be fully understood by man so there are man questions we all would like to have the answer to but, God is beyond what we can comprehend. This is why God refers to himself as spirit. What you believe to be the least is the most important to God, pick up a Bible and actually read it to see what it says about who God is. It's difficult to have a discussion with someone that is ignorant of who God is even if you do not believe it's important to understand what is claimed. By the way to clearly answer your question above, God cares because He created us to love.

A spirit is what humans refer to their own minds, if they were independent from their bodies.
Our minds sure feel independent from our bodies, don't they?

Anthropomorphizing the unknown creator of the Universe... Knowing how well you understand psychology, should be completely comprehensible how humans came to that attribution of a spirit to the creator. But you've been deceived into thinking the other way around.

Bonus question for shits and giggles! If he saw what was going to happen before creation, then (within your temporal framework where things can happen without time) anything we do has been seen - it is thus fixed, and no free will really exists. Everything we do, everything we're going to do, has already been seen. It is already known. It is predetermined. Why would such a god have made things in such a way as to make me not believe in it, knowing full well that would be so?

It is fixed only to the One who knows, this does not mean anything was predetermined, it means that God alone knows what will happen. As far as for man nothing is fixed because we can't see pass the present moment. You seem to be the one deluding yourself by believing that foreknowledge is predestination, that isn't even close to being true. God knows your decisions, He has seen all you have chosen to do, He hasn't made you do any of it, that's why God can refer to mans thoughts as foolish. If God had predetermined your life and mine He wouldn't be able to refer to man's decisions and thoughts as foolish. Even though God knows the ones who will never believe till it's to late He still cares enough to offer salvation to them, God gave His Son for all mankind. This is a concept that is impossible for us to fully understand but nevertheless it is true, read the Bible and you can see it is so.

GC

If it is fixed to god, then it is fixed. Period.