[Serious] What God's justification for eternal torment?

[Apollo]

God is like playing chess with yourself—you have an imaginary friend that you try out all kinda different arguments and justifications on various moral and existential matters and sort them out by playing god and devil’s advocate at the same time.

It’s pretty convoluted in true sense of the word.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

God is like playing chess with yourself—you have an imaginary friend that you try out all kinda different arguments and justifications on various moral and existential matters and sort them out by playing god and devil’s advocate at the same time.

It’s pretty convoluted in true sense of the word.

Boru

[Confused-by-christianity]

I think that personal experience is the most compelling rationalization for why a person might believe, but it's no certification of the accuracy of the contents of that experience.

  [/quote]
Yeah that is true.  It's my own experience but it's likely not persuasive to someone who doesn't believe in God.  I could be lying, or telling the truth but mistaken.  It's also not verifiable to any other human.

That you dreamt of jesus instead of vishnu is entirely cultural. 

If God does not exist, it was likely entirely cultural, probably a mixture including my own acceptance of my culture too.  
If God exists, it might have been cultural anyway (the true God might be different than the Christian God I imagine).

Personally - I assume I am almost certainly incorrect about God.  I think Jesus really did come to me in a way that I could understand Him.  Perhaps as much as my mind could handle??

That you imagine a god would be kind or loving or patient or calm or understanding, equally so.  Perhaps you've mistaken god for those things based on the expectations your culture manufactured?  

That's possible.  

Personally - I wouldn't go so far as saying my experience proves A,B or C.  It doesn't.  I have made sense of it and applied a meaning to it

Taking the terrible out of god satisfies our ethical impulses, but it erodes one of the legs of the sense of the divine - which is found in dread and tragedy, cruelty and indifference and pain and death.  If there's some sacred all then these must find inclusion, else we begin to express our growing inability to believe, fully, in the notion of gods.

That statement is huge.  I don't even know where to begin thinking about it.
Is it the fear religion?  Is God really a horror for a bad reason?  Is He a horror for a good reason?  Are people horrible and they put their own horror twist on scriptures to whip people into shape?  

It's probably beyond the scope of my experience??

It's clear in this example, at least, that your faith (or the contents of your faith described) reduce to what you believe should be true, regardless of what is - and, ultimately, that's the fundamental basis of any religion that people have faith in.  

I think it's fair enough to conclude that but maybe a bit far to say it's "clear".

I think of 2+2=4 as "clear".  Is it fairer to say you have a standard of proof that must be met before you'd believe my conclusion, and I haven't met that standard?  (Your standard isn't unreasonable - it's fair from your perspective to conclude that my experience might have causes other than God??)

We have come to believe more in our ethical statements, ourselves-in-effect, than we have in the power and being of gods, right down to the faithful.  

Good chat man :-)  Lots to wonder about.

My assumption is that God exists, and, we do the thing you mentioned above as well?

It's not particularly recent - the transition from largely descriptive (and multitudinous) pagan gods to a single declarative god like the abrahamic is the story of monotheism and of man setting out to create the  truth he wishes to see instantiated in the world.  The imposition of human order to and in contrast to brute facts of nature, which, by turn, fascinate and terrify us.  The late pagans called the new monotheists atheists - and not for no reason.

I can see where humanity might respond to horror / nature and other - with religion.

Good chat man.

What's your view?
What's God's justification for eternal torment?  
If He exists, would He be right to do that?
If He exists, would He be wrong to do that?
If He doesn't exist - Did people just make the horror up out of fear?  malice?  control?

None of the above??  :-)

[Foxaèr]

What's your view?

God does not exist, never did.

It's okay to use one's imagination for creative purposes, but it goes too far when people begin to insist that what they have imagined is real.

[Confused-by-christianity]

I tried conveying to a theist once that her personal experience with Jesus was as relevant as mine, with having experienced the Almighty Sock Stealer, but she just wasn't buying it. I wonder why.

There is a consensus on the sock stealer - we all universally accept this being exists !!!  (We also happen to universally have identical experiences with the sock stealer haha)

And yes - I'd go to war over it.

---

What's your view?

God does not exist, never did.

It's okay to use one's imagination for creative purposes, but it goes too far when people begin to insist that what they have imagined is real.

Like trying to argue with you or force you to accept stuff?

[The Grand Nudger]

@Confused-by-christianity

Yeah that is true.  It's my own experience but it's likely not persuasive to someone who doesn't believe in God.  I could be lying, or telling the truth but mistaken.  It's also not verifiable to any other human.

I tend to assume that a person reporting an experience isn't lying or mistaken.  I also tend to assume that people who have experiences afford them the instant credibility that we all instinctively and routinely afford to any of our experiences.  

That's why I think that personal experience is a compelling explanation for a belief.  

That statement is huge.  I don't even know where to begin thinking about it.
Is it the fear religion?  Is God really a horror for a bad reason?  Is He a horror for a good reason?  Are people horrible and they put their own horror twist on scriptures to whip people into shape?  

It's probably beyond the scope of my experience??

If you're asking me, it's more the case that the terrible and immense are manifestly present in our experience.  Any god breathed whatsit that doesn't account for that (or refuses to include it in some way) has lost the instant credibility we afford to our experience - and also deprives itself of the a significant portion of the very content it was manufactured to describe, contextualize, or impart with meaning.

There's a reason that we call hurricanes and tornados acts of god.  It's a fine line, if there is a line, between terror and awe.  

What's God's justification for eternal torment?  

I don't think that there is one - either god or a justification - but I don't think that there has to be, either..so.  Maybe god tortures for the same reason that fires burn down towns.  

If He exists, would He be right to do that?
If He exists, would He be wrong to do that?

The existence of a god is irrelevant to a moral claim on any proposed act of a god.  Just as the existence of a god is irrelevant to any claim that you might make about having had a personal experience about gods.  I'd need to know other relevant facts about a god..and it's existence isn't part of the metrics of moral consideration at all.

We can demonstrate this by showing that a question regarding supermans moral state in any given context doesn't require an exploration of whether superman is a real boy..and, in fact, changing that fact does not and cannot change the conclusion of our moral reasoning.  A difference that makes no difference.

Is this god a competent moral agent?  What was the disposition of the choice or outcome field?  Is the act, accurately described, within a range of actions we deem to have negative moral content but, for whatever reason, also believe that we should withhold judgment even so?  I can think of any number of situations where any possible answer to this question - many of them mutually exclusive, could be true.  I've been given no relevant moral facts other than that this potential moral agent has done something of moral import.  

If He doesn't exist - Did people just make the horror up out of fear?  malice?  control?

None of the above??  :-)

As above, I'd say that part of what god concepts necessarily address are those things, that experiential content, which terrifies us.  We have to explain fear and malice and control, and the consequences of those things.  It's a requirement for us as creatures who navigate that context, and for whom that context is mortally consequential.  The point being, ultimately, that we see and feel and know that there are immensely powerful and destructive forces at play in the world because we're intimately familiar with them - and if one's ordering of the divine fails to account for that it puts itself in a strange position.

[ronedee]

OK listen, I get that God has rules and all, but when it comes to punishment, why does God need to punish us with LITERAL FIRE? Why BURN BILLIONS of people as punishment for "not accepting my son" ? and Why for ETERNITY? That has to be the most fucked up thing imaginable, that to me is NOT of justice, NOT of love and certainty NOT righteous, if anything, its barbaric, its savagery, its inhumane, and most importantly, its EVIL. And don't say "No they actually do die a second time in the lake of fire" because that "holy" book of yours is filled with contradictions. God cannot deal with sinners in a civilized, and humane matter? Why not the punishment for not accepting god or Jesus be: You die in this life, thats it, no heaven.

God, never said any such thing!

Jesus said, "...choose the narrow gate". For wide and crowded is the road to perdition."

Don't fret, no one goes to Hell who doesn't want to be there. They choose it wholeheartedly and willingly.

Many, many atheists over the years have told me, that's just where they want to be! One, I remember vividly
saying, "I'll kick St. Peter in the balls, and jump right down the hole myself" 

Nice, huh?

So, don't feel bad. Whoever they are, will be right at home and in good.....well....mixed company. On fire, gnashing teeth &
cursing....pretty much just like in here! Lighter version though...much lighter I might add!

[The Architect Of Fate]

Imagining people want to be in hell must be one hell of a coping mechanism. To excuse your religion 

[Confused-by-christianity]

Could we all be in an ascension training programme?

The goal being spiritual growth?

Hell meaning - Spiritual regression being hellish?

[The Grand Nudger]

The soul forge? Could be, wouldn't be a great look for the divine or for this world...but it's no more or less absurd than any god notion.