How can anyone be okay with Hell ?

[Minimalist]

No thanks....gravity is real and your god isn't.

[darkblight]

How can any Christian not go completely mentally insane about the idea that most people they see every day are going to burn forever in agonizing pain...the guy you pass on the bus, the co-worker who you talk about sports with...

How can you be okay with anyone not sharing your beliefs ? How can you have someone you love not believing in God and not do every single thing you can to convert them ?

It fills me with profound sadness every day.

Ultimately faith is a choice that we must all make. Belief is a personal thing, and though I may do everything in my power to help loved ones see what I see, in the end it is their choice to make and not mine. I must accept that I can do no more than support and love them as they make their choices in life, whether they be good or bad ones.

get off your high horse

[Zenith]

First, this post may be a bit emotional since i'm a bit shaken up, my brother, who i am really close with and who is not a fundie by any stretch of the imagination (he rarely even goes to Church) told me that i will be going to Hell when i die, and that i deserved it for being an atheist.

I simply don't get it...i mean Christians are always the first to talk about pity, and love, and acceptance...How can any Christian not go completely mentally insane about the idea that most people they see every day are going to burn forever in agonizing pain...the guy you pass on the bus, the co-worker who you talk about sports with...

I don't see how anyone can stay sane with that kind of fatality that the idea of Hell implies...

How can you be okay with anyone not sharing your beliefs ? How can you have someone you love not believing in God and not do every single thing you can to convert them ?

Is it that they just don't really believe it, or is it that they are entirely devoid of human emotions ?

The idea that whoever does not believe in God (no matter the reasons/causes) goes to hell sounds a bit insane to me. You know, for a loving christian (i.e. one that cares about everybody else) this would be a torment for him: to go perhaps from door to door, always talk to everybody and trying to convince them to believe in God. If a christian which believes this theory, takes it seriously, then this is exactly what he must do. And then the problems of annoying everybody else, lacking knowledge, logic, wisdom, etc. (things that are developed in time) when explaining - have a very bad effect in a debate. And, on the other hand, if a man would go to hell for the sole reason of not believing in God, and God loves people so much, then my logic is that He would have sent angels to do the job, instead of other men (angels - are wiser, have vast knowledge, good logic, know everything they need to know to handle a discussion), and they would be in enough number, and would have had access even to the pagan X who lives in a secluded place and never heard the idea of the existence of a single God. Besides of the fact that in the Bible there are verses that seem to show that a secluded pagan is not taken the same way as the others (Acts 17.30, John 9.41, 15.22-24).

[fr0d0]

But the believer doesn't lack knowledge, logic and wisdom Zenith. Annoyance can be good and bad. And God sends his spirit to work on you. I agree with your last line.

[frankiej]

A lot of people seem to claim that faith is a choice. I find this absurd.
And there is nothing that would ever give me faith, if I some how saw God or Jesus I would come to the conclusion of hallucination.

I have no problem with personal faith but when someone tries to force that on me I become offended. People use faith as an object to encroach on one's human rights.

[fr0d0]

If you're forced frank that's no choice. And I would think I was hallucinating too!

[Napoléon]

If you're forced frank that's no choice.

But frodo didn't you say to me before that the choices we make are already predetermined? That's why you don't believe in free will, right?

So if that's the case then god knows who's going to heaven and who's going to hell before they are even born.
The 'choice' you are referring to is really just an illusion.

[fr0d0]

So you think you don't have a choice then Nappy? (I do BTW)

[Napoléon]

So you think you don't have a choice then Nappy? (I do BTW)

Absolutely we have a choice.

I'm just trying to understand what you said to me before. How can we supposedly have a 'choice' if our choices are already predetermined. Like I said, it's just an illusion if that's the case.

[fr0d0]

1. Predetermination: If an entity existed outside of time... all of time would be as one moment to them... there are never 'before or after'. To them, everything you do is already known. That they know that has no impact on your freedom to make the choices that you make.

2. Free Will: You as a biological machine do whatever that biological machine is led to do. You can't do otherwise. The choices you make are choices you would always make. Even if you choose to do the opposite.

You are a free agent to make whatever choices you want, or as dictated by you as the biological machine.