Hell
Threads discussing the existence of Hell, as advocated by some branches of some religions, and some religious texts, will be merged into this thread.
Quoting Empedocles
Quoting Empedocles
God and Hell
I’ve been thinking that hell is incompatible with the existence of the Judeo-Christian God. I’m open to being wrong and am looking forward to your objections.
My first argument has to do with God’s quality of being love/loving and his creating hell. Many Christians understand God’s creating humans and sending His son Jesus to die for our sins as acts of munificent love. 1 John 4:8 says God is love. But there’s also hell, and I think God being loving and creating hell are at odds with each other. I’m taking hell to be what most Christians believe in, the hell that is contains the “lake of fire”, where non-Christians go to suffer forever. Here’s my argument in a more regimented form:
1- If God is all-loving, He would not have created hell
2- He did create hell
3- Therefore, he must not be all-loving (1,2 MT)
Obviously, if you don’t believe in God or hell this won’t be of interest to you. I’m more interested in seeing someone square the commonly-understood concept of hell with the loving character of the Judeo-Christian God. Thanks everyone!
Comments (115)
It may help to consider that hell can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Bible writers were attempting to teach profound topics to masses of largely uneducated simple people. I suspect stories were often used to engage an audience and reach them on their level, without perhaps meaning to describe literal facts. Heaven and hell may be descriptions of psychological states, and not references to literal locations.
I think what often happens in religion is that somebody with a rare talent will have a deep insight, and then once the message is passed on to folks of more ordinary ability the message gets downgraded in to memorized chanted concepts that become a dogma.
We might remember that religion is not science, but is better compared to art. A play on the stage, a painting, a novel can all be interpreted in a variety of ways, and that's what makes them rich and interesting.
Knowledge entails truth, correct? If God knows that you will end up in hell then you will end up in hell. It doesn't make sense to suggest that God can choose not to create you as that would invalidate his prior knowledge. There's a conflict between God being omniscient and God having the freedom to change the outcome (so it's a type of omnipotence paradox).
The Koine Greek word rendered "love" here is agape (self-sacrifice), not philos (affection) or eros (romantic/sexual desire).
Using a concordance and/or lexicon, it is instructive to note the subject, object, and context for each occurence of these terms.
In short, the occupants of hell (Koine Greek, geenna) are not the objects of God's affection.
That would be a good question to ask Biblical LIteralists next time they knock on your door.
But this is a philosophy-forum. The notion of Hell as the result of a judicial decision is simplistic anthropomorphic Biblical Literalism.
So is the belief in omnipotence--evidently shared by Atheists and other Biblical-Literalists
Why do you so firmly and unshakably believe in a judicial decision that sentences people to Hell?
...and in God's power to make all of us in such a way that none of us will ensnarl ourselves in things that we later might not like?
In fact, the notion of "Creation" is, itself, anthropomorphic. No one is more Biblical-Literalist or Fundamentalist than an Atheist.
Should we believe in God's omnipotence to make custom-made worlds and people to order? And-- while we're at it--to contravene logic, and make a statement be able to be both true and false, and to make two contradictory true propositions or facts?
Michael Ossipoff
Nothing would be incompatible, illogical or impossible etc. with a being of infinite ability.
So you're saying god can be wrong, right?
How can you know that something will happen if that thing won't happen? It doesn't make sense to know that X is true and for X to be false.
Completely compatible, and entirely deserving of each other.
M
Well, first, I don't believe in the religious idea of God. However, if we assume there is a God that is omniscient in the Christian sense, i.e., that this being knows all that can be known (just a basic definition), then what we mean by know has to be in some way related to the concepts we're using. Second, I'm not sure that an omniscient being would arrive at knowledge in the same way we do, or that you could even say it's knowledge in the sense we mean. However, let's assume that it's possible that there is a being that's omniscient in the way many Christians believe for the purpose of this discussion.
I said was that knowledge of a future event doesn't necessitate the event. We know this from our own understanding of knowledge. For example, "I know the sun will rise tomorrow, but my knowing this doesn't cause the sun to rise tomorrow." So there is no causal link, as some might think.
My only point is that if God knows before he creates you, that you will make choices that necessitate being sent to hell, why would he create you? Why even bother to create a being that will spend eternity in hell? I can't make any sense of a God like this.
I further stated that the free will argument doesn't defend against my argument, because your free will is taken into account by God. For instance, if God is omniscient, then before he created you, he would know that you would exercise your free will with the kinds of choices that would send you to hell. This is not a loving being in my mind, it's a being that people have created in their own minds.
Finally, the Christian idea of God, makes God responsible for evil. For example, if I created a robot with a free will knowing that robot would kill millions of people, then I would be responsible for the evil. This is why I think that the God of the Christians is ultimately evil, given the way they define God. It's not a loving being at all, it's a being that you should despise. I don't think such a being exists. If there is a God, then this God doesn't have the attributes Christians assign to him/her.
I never said any such thing, that's your interpretation of what I said.
It's utter nonsense.
Ok, what is it that limits God's ability?
In any case the point stands. Trying to analyze some intelligence so large that it can create galaxies with something so small as human reason can be a fun game, but that's all it is. It's a fool's errand if we take it seriously.
I agree - all such matters are theology not philosophy. IMO the only real philosophical discussion should be " is theism in conflict with fact or reason". If it is not, than there is no philosophic argument against any faith based belief.
“Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.” Thomas Merton
I can't make sense of it either (unless God is a sadist)...
Quoting Sam26
:cheer:
I don't believe in any notion of god, and for the reasons you've mentioned an omniscient and omnipotent god would be downright despicable (let alone paradoxical).
Hell is one of the absolute most intellectually/morally retarded concepts mankind has ever bandied.
You're proposing that a God, should one exist, would be bound by the rules of human reason. Human reason is the poorly implemented ability of a single half insane species on one planet in one of billions of galaxies. You're essentially proposing human reason to be a god of sorts, a factor above all else.
The descriptor "supernatural" means "above nature". Above the laws of nature. Above human beings. Above whatever rules human beings create. Above everything everywhere.
Such an illogical insistence that gods would be subservient to the rules of human reason is a very common problem which plagues most discussions of gods.
I was asking for your definition. I know my definition roughly, although I am yet exploring it. :)
If God is also holy, that would mean that He is set apart. If He is just, then He has a law that He adheres to. Hence, Hell is really not a result of the absence of love. Love is not always getting whatever we what.
As for being sent to hell for never becoming Christians, what does being a Christian mean to you? Is it strict adherence to the Ten Commandments? Believing in the existence of God? or something else?
If he's omniscient he should also know which of "I will create X" and "I will not create X" is true.
Cool. God only tortures people he doesn't like.
Can't see how this helps the case, though. Good people seem to be able to get by without torturing anyone, even those they dislike. So God is still a bit of a bastard.
That's quite an extraordinary bit of reasoning, that is. Astonishing.
So... there is no point in trying to understand god? Just believe?
But if there is no way we can reason about god, then there is no reason to believe, either...
We can use reason to determine that we have no methodology proven to be capable of analyzing anything the scale of gods (should they exist). The God debate can accomplish that. Everybody (theist and atheist) makes their claims, the chosen authority each claim is built upon is examined, and we see that nobody's authority has been proven qualified for the task at hand.
The God debate can reveal that we are ignorant, in regards to questions of such enormous scale. This is useful information.
The problem is that few of us, theist or atheist, wish to follow the trail of reason where ever it may lead, because in this case that trail takes us to a conclusion that most people don't want to hear, we have no idea what we're talking about. This conclusion doesn't serve the ego agendas which are the primary driver of the God debate, and so this conclusion is swept aside, dismissed, ignored.
What a reasoned process would do is...
1) Discover the reality, that we are ignorant.
2) Look for ways to make constructive use of that ignorance.
The God debate could be productive if we were serious about following the trail of reason to it's conclusion. But we aren't serious. And so we hike a little ways down the trail, and then stop, and build a fort.
So much for cosmology, then.
That is, your contention that we are ignorant is a bit too convenient to your position.
What is my position?
I know what my position is. The question was intended to see if you have any idea what it is that you are rebelling against.
I think you can analyse god. For example, if you are a materialist, you must deny the Actually Infinite exists, so god is finite.
1 John 4:9-10 says that the way God showed his love for us was by saving us from our sins by trusting in the sacrifice of Jesus. Why trust in Jesus if there is no punishment for sin? Maybe hell could be temporary for some people?
I'd like to reply to your first premise, "If God is all-loving, he would not have created hell."
In objecting to this conditional, I first want to define "hell" as the separation from the presence of God. Therefore, hell is not something created but is rather merely the natural result of God removing his existence from a place. In the same way that darkness is not a material thing, but is simply the absence of light, hell is not one of God's creations, but is just the absence of his presence.
Ok, but that still does not answer why an all-loving god would allow for the existence of hell. This is where I bring in, as Sam26 put it, the “tired free will argument.” Let’s start with what we’ve already assumed: an all-loving god.
If God is all-loving, then he wants what is best for every person.
What is best for other people is not hell.
Therefore, God does not want people to go to hell.
If God does not want people to go to hell, they either go to hell because they are acting outside of his control, or because he allows them to go to hell regardless of his wants.
God is all-powerful, so people do not act outside of his control.
Therefore, God must allow people to go to hell regardless of his wants.
This is where free-will comes into the argument. This is my basis for believing in free will:
As the Maximally Good Being, God deserves to be loved more than any other being in the universe.
So, God deserves to be loved by the people he created.
Because he is also omniscient, God knows that he deserves love, and therefore wants people to love him.
So, when he created people, God must have designed humankind with the capacity to love him.
Forced love is not love.
So, God cannot force humankind to love him.
Humankind must, therefore, be capable of freely choosing to love God.
To have the capacity of free choice is to possess free will.
Therefore, humankind must possess free will.
Because free will includes the capacity to choose to love God, it also includes the capacity to choose to not love God. In the Judeo-Christian religion, to not love God is to sin, so people who do not love God are sinners. God cannot be in the presence of sinners, so those who do not love God cannot be in his presence.
Through this argument, we can see that God only had two options other than allowing for people to go to hell: (1) go against his nature, and be in the presence of sin, or (2) get rid of free will, and, by extension, the capacity for people to love God. God cannot act outside of his nature, so he could either destroy free will, or allow people to go to hell.
This is how an all-loving God can coexist with hell.
I would rather say that God is not only love, but also the truth. In the library of congress there is a statue of the Goddess of truth holding a mirror and a serpent. Why is that? In the ancient Egyptian mythos one only makes it into heaven when their heart is weighed against Maat, the Goddess of truth. There is actually a lot of weighing of hearts to get into heaven, it's a common theme.
Point is, that the truth hurts. The important stuff, the truths relating to ourselves and characters hurt the most, and we hide from that truth, delude ourselves about reality because we don't like the consequences or implications.
There is a distinction made between perfect contrition, and imperfection contrition. Perfect contrition is because one loves God, but any form of contrition, for any reason, as long as it is felt counts, and even for the reason of loving God if the contrition is not felt, it isn't contrition at all. All that is required is the genuine remorse, for any reason, and this restores one to favor, and presence.
In response to your post, I wanted to give some push back on your second premise, “He [God] did create hell”. To the best of my knowledge, I do not actually think that there is any Biblical evidence for the fact that God created hell. Further, I think it is even worth considering that there may be reason to believe that hell is a human conception and a modern misunderstanding of what is contained in the Bible. Thus, I would like to propose that hell might only exist conceptually, and does not actually exist at all. If hell does not actually exist, then God did not create it, and He can still be all-loving
There are many interpretations of what hell is, if it does exist. However, I do not think it is right to group the term “hell” in with Judeo-Christian belief. For, I believe the Jewish faith does not promote the existence of hell. Rather they promote a belief in Sheol – a dusty abyss where everyone goes regardless of belief in God, righteous or unrighteous. Sheol translates to “grave” as opposed to hell, and from my understanding, is not eternal, nor absent from God (I can provide textual evidence for this belief from Job or the Psalms if you would like to discuss this particular topic further). From the Jewish conception of Sheol, the majority of souls eventually ascend into a heaven-esque representation of a resurrected Eden, with only the utterly wicked being sentenced to Gehinnom. Gehinnom is by some interpreted to be a bit more on par with the fire and brimstone renditions of hell, but even that is still murky and up for debate. Gehinnom does not translate directly to hell either, but rather represents a deep valley in Israel. The only Greek or Hebrew word that refers to “hell” is Tartarus, and this word only comes up once in 2 Peter to describe a realm where fallen angels, such as Satan, await judgment from God. However, this realm seems to be only for fallen angels, and not human beings. Thus, with this context in mind, it appears misguided to ascribe the concept of “hell” that I believe to be implied in premise 2 of the above argument to the Jewish faith, much less a concept of hell that was created by God.
Additionally, I think there are a fair amount of misconceptions about what “hell” actually is amongst Christians, and that the concept of hell may be misguided entirely that are not limited to the reasons previously mentioned. I understand that discussion of translation errors may seem unconvincing to some, so I would like to offer a reconceptualization of what hell is, if it does exist, that I am deriving from imagery C.S. Lewis portrays in The Great Divorce. In this novel, Lewis depicts hell as a dark gray city full of people who have chosen separation from God. How deep one is in this sort of hell relates to how much he is convinced that he is separated from God. The narrator of the story eventually comes to find that hell often appears large and inescapable to those who find themselves in it (as created by their minds), when in reality, the depicted city is, in reality, a tiny crack in the ground that is along the path to the “light” – what I understand Lewis to be depicting as heaven or the presence of God.
Thus, what Lewis appears to be portraying, and a thought that I find rather compelling, is that hell is a conception created in the mind of human beings who are convinced of their separation from God, and that does not actually exist. Separation from God could very well be the most miserable thing one could conceive of experiencing, thus the fire and brimstone types of descriptions seem apt if one were doomed to this condition for eternity. However, I do not see this conception of separation from God for eternity – hell – to be represented Biblically. And further, if Lewis is right, the existence of hell could very well be merely of human conception and not actually a truth about the world. Thus, from this understanding it can be gathered that if one believes hell to exist, he is the one who created hell, and it exists only within his mind. If it exists only conceptually within his mind, then God did not create hell because it does not actually exist at all.
So, incorporating that, l would say:
- The Judaeo-Christian God is flawed and perhaps you are feeling the flaws reverbrating in the idea of hell
- It is flawed e.g. in that the NT says God is love. God is not love. Love implies a beloved, yet God is not contingent on anything, and thus God doesn't need a beloved, thus God is not love. Love is the taste of God's presence because God is perfect, thus needs nothing, and there are no other deities thus no war, thus perfection and peace are direct exponents of his existence, his existence being known to us as his presence, experienced by us as Love (hence love is transcendant, because we ascent, toward God's presence, God's existence, God's reality).
- Islam teaches God loves us more than our own mothers, and that he created love, such that even a deer would try not to trample its own babies, and also: God sends people to hell and doesn't care, and sends people to heaven and doesn't care.
Contradictory? Consider though, that God is an actual infinite being, and thus has infinite levels. Even if God were merely sky-high, you'd be able to appreciate that on a rainy day, it can all be blazing glory above the cloud cover, it can be both these contradictory things simultaneously, just different layers.
Unfortunately the Christian anthropomorphism isn't conducive toward getting the true height of God across, thus simultaneous love and hell bamboozle the casual observer who is expecting something man-sized, monolithic.
- Also consider that as God is actual infinity, nothing but him really exists. So, our souls would be pinched off from his but ultimately, all one soul, there's nothing else but actual infinity, which in itself is perfect as it needs nothing new. (in other words, God is fine sending people to heaven / hell, whatever)
1) Religion is not science, but is better compared to art. As example, a play upon the stage can reveal deep truths about the human condition, even though the plot of the play is entirely fictional. The value of art is that it can be interpreted in many different ways, opening the door to much interesting investigation and dialog.
2) Hell certainly exists in the minds of many tormented human beings, and religious teachings on the subject many in some cases be referring to this reality. Though other religious people will simply be repeating memorized doctrinal dogmas.
3) Religion, even a single religion like Christianity, is a very big playing field with a great variety of interpretations contained within. It would be a mistake to assume that Christians (or any other religion) all believe a particular thing.
4) Please demonstrate that the poorly developed reasoning ability of single species on a single planet in one of billions of galaxies is a methodology proven to be qualified to analyze assertions about the ultimate nature of everything everywhere, such as is contained in the hell concept.
A logical exercise is mostly irrelevant in religious belief. Belief just doesn't work that way. People do not arrive at belief through logic (in 99+% of the cases) and they won't abandon their belief because of a syllogism (in 99+% of the cases).
The Bible references numerous events and things that do not exist, as far as we know. There's no evidence, for instance, that the Red Sea was parted for the fleeing Hebrews, and then closed up over the Egyptians who chased after them. So Heaven and Hell, neither of which exist in some specific place that we can know about, are not supported by the Bible.
In the interests of strengthening your argument, I offer these criticisms.
I think you make a mistake right out of the gate with 1., which I take to be the premiss of your argument. Surely you would concede that there are things which exist but are not in the bible? Like black holes and many varieties of living creatures, hell could exist as well. This seems to dispell your premiss entirely.
I think 2 would be stronger if you made a distinction between differing states of existing, rather than restricting existence to exclude purely mental phenomenon. It is clear that things that exist conceptually still exist, so 2. will serve objections to your arguments if you structure it the way you have.
3. Is a pretty safe claim as far as I can see. There may be some wriggle room for interpreting the bible as alluding to a hell, but you seem to have largely countered this with some of your preamble before you stated your argument itself. (By defining hell specifically). You might want to include that as part of your argument structure somewhere.
Your conclusion in 4. doesnt follow from 1. In my opinion. I think what your argument accomplishes is concluding something like:
4. Therefore, concluding that hell exists based on a purely biblical account is not a reasonable conclusion.
I think you would still have some work to do if you want to make an overall religious argument against the existence of hell, there are biblical basis for accepting claims of hell existing from the clergy or in non-biblical religious texts and you would have to address those as far as I can tell.
Thanks for this. I wish people saw religious teachings as the true gem instead of heaping too much focus on the unnecessary stuff. If the scriptures were just teachings, like fiction, connected to our reality only by symbolism, then everything would be categorized logically. Perhaps.
I think it matters more what hell means than that it is. For me, hell is a situation that necessitates penance. It matters more that I learn and accept what I can't change and change what I can for the better.
Hi Empedocles,
I may not be exactly the Judeo-Christian worshipper of God you are looking for, nonetheless I am Christian, and was raised in a Christian household. However it wasn’t forced upon me, my parents allowed me to make my own decisions about whether or not I was to believe in God. As a result of my upbringing I have developed my own personal views of Christianity, and more specifically this concept of a loving God who also supposedly created hell.
I was never comfortable believing that my God would send a good person to hell simply because they don’t believe in him.
To elaborate, picture a good person. A person who has led a fruitful, loving life full of positive influence, motivation and charity. Now imagine that person is an Atheist. I was never able to believe that my all loving God would sentence this atheist to an afterlife of eternal damnation simply because they didn’t believe in him. After all, if God is love, shouldn’t God be more concerned with his creations inspiring and spreading love amongst each other rather than simply holding a belief that he exists? Shouldn’t my all loving God recognize that, even though this person was an atheist, they spread love and left the world a better place than it was when they entered it?
This is the belief that I grew up with, because I couldn’t picture a God who was all loving, as well as a God who would heartlessly send the majority of his creations to hell simply because they didn’t believe in the right deity.
To clarify, I believe that, regardless of religion, God sends genuinely good people to heaven. People who, in their time on Earth, inspired, cultivated and perpetuated love.
However, that still leaves us with the existence of hell, as well as the question of who gets sent to it. Well if those who inspire, cultivate and perpetuate love are sent to heaven, I believe it would be logical for those who do the opposite to be sent to hell. That is to say, those who inspire, cultivate and perpetuate hate are sent to hell.
To me, perpetuators of hate are people who leave the world worse off than it was when they entered it. To elaborate, the people who get sent to hell are people who absolutely deserve it. People who, in their time on Earth, left a wake of destruction in their path. I believe hell is a place for genuinely bad people who have violated the humanity of God’s precious creations. Hell is a place for rapists and other sexual abusers, senseless murders, abusive and violent people who took the precious gift of life bestowed upon them by the Almighty, and wasted it.
Now that you have the context of my religious faith, I would like to offer my interpretation of your above argument.
1) Heaven was created by God, who is love (1 John 4:8 ).
2) If heaven was created by God, who is love, then heaven is for people who inspired, cultivated and perpetuated love while on Earth.
3) Heaven is the antithesis of hell.
4) Therefore, hell is a place for people who inspired, cultivated and perpetuated hate while on Earth.
The only issue I take with this form of the argument is, I couldn’t directly account for God having created hell. However if you accept the fact that God created hate as the antithesis of love, it stands to reason that you should also accept the fact that God created hell as the antithesis of heaven.
If you don’t accept that fact, well you should.
There can’t be light without darkness.
There can’t be good without evil.
And there can’t be love without hate.
Thank you for reading!(:
In response to premise 1:
First, I would rephrase this to be “Either hell exist only in the mind or there is biblical evidence for its existence.”
Second, what you seem to consider Biblical evidence is the Bible directly mentioning hell, but this does not seem to be equivalent to evidence. There are a fair number of doctrines that I think are supported by scripture that aren’t necessarily mentioned directly. E.g. the doctrine of the trinity. The word trinity appears nowhere in the Bible, but are we to say it does not exist? Almost certainly not. So, I am not entirely sure what criteria you use to conclude what is considered evidence or not. This is also assuming that your first premise is really only true for issues of Christian doctrine, for surely things exist that are not evidenced in the Bible. But let us take more common parts of Christian doctrine that have little or no evidence in the Bible. God’s omnipresence. By your implied premise one, one could hardly believe in the omnipresence of God. I could only find one reference to it in the Psalm 139, which is hardly more evidence that we have for Hell.
This, I believe your argument, if true, may have some problematic consequences for other Christian doctrine.
In response to premise 2:
I think you should clarify what you mean by exist. Things that exist only in the mind certainly exist in some respect as you used the term “exist” to describe them. I think you maybe should say “do not actually exist in reality”.
Overall Response:
My main issue is with premise one. I’m fairly certain that the conditional you present isn’t true, and if it is, I think you would have to forsake some mainstream Christian doctrine including the Trinity and God’s Omnipresence. Or you could revise what you mean by evidence.
Now I think that if you want to take an annihilation view on Hell, that is certainly reasonable. Simply looking at John 3:16, the antithesis of Salvation seems to be perishing, which sounds really close to annihilation. Or in Matthew 7, when Jesus says that he will say to those who deny him, “I never knew you”. Thus, I think there is a reasonable argument to be made that the traditional conception of Hell does not exist, but I do not think that your argument is sufficient to reach that conclusion.
Some of the ideological assertions of religion are probably best seen as simplified fiction used to teach sophisticated understandings to the widest possible audience. And of course some aspects of religion are just silly nonsense cooked up by mediocre clerics with too much time on their hands.
However, some aspects of religion, the most important aspects imho, can be reasonably said to be literally true. As example, the core teaching of Christianity is all about love, and love does work, a reality that anyone can examine and evaluate in the context of their own day to day life.
Perhaps hell is just a colorful illustration of what happens to us when we ignore love and go racing off in the other direction?
I agree. And, maybe, the suffering implied by hell is a psychological consequence of that detachment from the ways of love (a metaphorical death) and which can even manifest in the physiological (hence the idea of pain).
From then on hell keeps being. Million years will pass, humans will evolve, turne into super humans, or call them metricellians, and, wow, hell keeps being? For whom? For creatures that are million times smarter than Einstein? Or does hell reman being hell only for people of modern time level, mediocre? It seems hell exists only in their brain. Metricellians will be so smart that they can turn hell into heaven thorugh the power of thought, eve if hell existed. But hell does not exist, and modern human is able to turn off this bug of the religious mentality— hell.
Thank you for sharing your personal experience and resulting beliefs. While I agree with some of your argument, specifically that heaven was created by God (premise 1) and that heaven is the antithesis of hell (premise 3), I would like to challenge your second premise and resulting conclusion. Please note that for this argument I am writing from an explicitly Christian view point, thus excluding the other aforementioned Abrahamic faiths.
"2) If heaven was created by God, who is love, then heaven is for people who inspired, cultivated and perpetuated love while on Earth."
"4) Therefore, hell is a place for people who inspired, cultivated and perpetuated hate while on Earth."
I believe that these premises do not entirely capture the importance of Jesus' great act of salvation on the cross and the resulting grace offered to those who believe. Although your argument sounds like a wonderful system of universal discipline at first glance, upon further review I find it hard for me to determine where I would reside after my time on earth ends.
Unfortunately, I often cultivate hate of some form, be it my personal disdain for a certain politician, my implicit hate for the earth through my blatant disregard of my gasoline usage, or simply the absence of love for a neighbor in need. Sure, I often love others as well (and certainly strive to do so regularly), but on any given day the balance between love and hate may ultimately lean toward my place in hell as described in your argument. (Although, to be fair, I recognize you did not attempt to delineate the exact tipping point between cultivating hate and cultivating love.)
Thankfully, I recognize the grace offered through the death and resurrection of Jesus on the cross. As He took the punishment for my sins (or, in other words, my habitual hate), I do not have to worry that when I sin/perpetuate hate I will be forever separated from God in heaven. Instead, I can rest assured that I will be with God due to the fact that I have chosen to accept God's gift of love by my belief in Jesus and acceptance of the grace given to me as a result of His resurrection. I know that the only way I will be separate from God in the afterlife, is if I choose to deny God's gift of love through blatant disbelief.
There's obviously much more to the concepts of grace and salvation, but in an effort to be concise, I offer my version of your argument as follows:
1) Heaven was created by God, who is love (1 John 4:8 ).
2) If heaven was created by God, who is love, then heaven is for people who accept God's gift of love by believing and accepting the salvation and grace offered by Jesus.
3) Heaven is the antithesis of hell.
4) Therefore, hell is for people who deny God's gift of love by not believing and not accepting the salvation and grace offered by Jesus.
I welcome your questions and comments. Thanks for reading.
I would challenge premise 3. The Greek word for hell ??????? (gaenna, or Gahenna), though used to describe the valley of Hinnom, also carries in its meaning the conceptual idea of "underneath the earth" and the symbolism equated more with the classic view of Hell. Gahenna appears 12 times in the New Testament, linked here: https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/geenna. Observing how the word is used, we can formulate this argument (assuming some respect for the Bible as true as you mentioned earlier):
1. Either the Bible is discussing the literal valley of Himnon, or it is discussing a more eternal place of punishment and Himnon is a paradigmatic representation of some sort of suffering (Hell).
2. The Bible is not describing the literal valley of Himnon
3. There is a more eternal punishment, Himnon is a paradigmatic representation of some sort of suffering (Hell)
4. Hell exists in the Bible
While I agree with FordFestivaPhilosophy in an annihilationist view of Hell, that still aligns with a biblical view of Hell, as well as acknowledges Hell as real.
My opinions, point by point:
1. Bible isn't the only text dealing with it. Moreover, it's non sequitur that there must be evidence for it, it could just be. Where is the rule that says there must be evidence for it, considering it's a place nobody in this world has access to?
2. Circular definition - you say it only exists conceptually, then conclude it doesn't actually exist.
By the way, something can exist conceptually, and actually exist without any proof. For example, l have no proof that Ouagadougou exists, l cannot even recall which country it is meant to be the capital of, so l have no country to relate any facts about it to, so l really don't have anything on Ouagdougou other than the word and the concept in my mind that it's a place. I believe it also exists, nevertheless. This is basic stuff bro.
3. Says you. Maybe the Bible is uncannily right about a lot of things, therefore by extension, it can be right about hell existing.
4. And in other texts all over the world :)
1 All good thinking beings would want corrective punishment for wrong doers
2 The creator(s) of the universe are good thinking being(s)
3 Hell is real
I'm not sure your conception of hell falls into the mainstream/orthodox tradition I was looking for. It seems like most Christians believe hell exists, and I tend to think they have good reason to think that. After all, Jesus' analogy about the sheep and goats in Matthew 25 contains a pretty distinct claim that hell exists: Verse 46 says "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life".
And what of Revelation 21:8, which says, "But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”?
Or 2 Thess 1:8, which says, "He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might"?
It doesn't seem right to me to take these and other verse and still claim that the Bible doesn't teach the existence of hell...
Hi FordFestivaPhilosophy,
In response to your rephrasing of premise one, I don’t necessarily think it changes the overall meaning that much and could attribute some more clarity, so I appreciate the suggestion. For reasons I will touch on a bit later, I would still want to keep the inclusion of “misinterpretation” in there somewhere.
I understand how from what I posted, it could seem that the only criterion I am considering for evidence in the Bible is it’s direct mentioning of something, in this case, hell. With my original intent being to refute the modern, western Christian conception of hell, I think showing that such an interpretation is not actually mentioned directly in the Bible is a worthy thing to consider. This also brings in the commentary from @Ben Hancock regarding the valley of Himnon. I briefly mentioned awareness of this inclusion in the Bible and perhaps did not do it enough justice. While it is likely true that the mentioning of Himnon is not to draw attention to the specific valley itself, and that it very well could be paradigmatic for something resembling hell, I still stand by the fact that I do not think the mentions of Himnon are meant to resemble hell as it is commonly viewed in modern, western Christianity.
That being said, I also see the concerns of premise two providing implications that could be problematic for Christianity – there not being direct mentions of the trinity, omnipresence, etc. To those concerns I would offer that in premise one, I chose to include “misinterpretation” because of the fact that I feel the references that are commonly used to affirm the existence of hell are likely being interpreted incorrectly when hell is viewed as a place of eternal punishment and separation from God. While I can conceive of a world in which I feel completely separated from God, and that would likely be on par with the worst possible thing I could imagine, I do not think such a world actually exists (in reality), because I do not think there actually exists (in reality) a world in which we will be separated entirely from God. I could conceive of it, yes, but I believe it would be a false conception. I felt that “in reality” was implied, but I understand the critique of the original premise being too strong.
With that adjustment made to premise two in addition to the inclusion of “misinterpretation” in premise one, I do not think the implications are as problematic as originally thought. I would not consider, for example, the trinitarian concept of God to be a misinterpretation. While the actual concept of the trinity may not actually exist in reality in the same way that hell may not actually exist in reality, I think that the trinitarian concept is still very reflective of the character of God and could very well be the best that our minds can do to interpret the nature of God in this life. On the contrary, I would still argue that the modern, western Christian conception of hell that was originally being referenced in the post I was responding to not only fails to exist in reality, but is also a misinterpretation of the Bible.
Finally, though I do not know if I would commit myself to the annihilist view of hell, I do think that is a more plausible consideration than eternal suffering and separation from God. However, I think I am still more attracted to the view of hell that C.S. Lewis presents in “The Great Divorce” as mentioned in my original post.
Thanks for your objections and I look forward to anything more you have to say.
Is it that Hell is not a physical place? (So it may be spiritual?)
Hell is not the classic 'fire-and-brimstone' place we might imagine? (Which does not conclude that Hell does not exist, merely we do not picture it correctly)
Or that there is no such thing as Hell?
It seems that in your second premise, even the addition of 'in reality' places you in a very strong position. The refined premise would be:
Quoting Francesco di Piertro
However, even then I would still object to this premise. There are things that exist only in the minds of human that very much so are a reality. Mental illness comes to mind as one of those examples in which it may exist only conceptually in the mind of the patient, but it certainly is a lived reality that exists.
" 1. If hell exists, there would be Biblical evidence for its existence, or it exists only conceptually in the minds of human beings due to misinterpreting the Bible.
2. Things that only exist conceptually in the minds of human beings do not actually exist.
3. There is no Biblical evidence for the existence of hell.
4. Therefore, hell does not actually exist." @Francesco di Piertro
I believe you are correct in your conclusion that Hell does not actually exist, but your reasoning is incorrect. I believe, that Hell does not exist as a physical place-- which it seems Ben hints as a possibility. Below is my thought process...
1. Jesus Christ is the Savior
2. If Jesus Christ is the Savior, He had to SAVE us from something.
3. Humanity seems to inevitably sin.
4. Jesus Christ was crucified to save us from our sins.
1. Sin is evil.
2. If humans sin, they are evil.
3. Therefore, humans are evil.
When God created humanity, He said “It is Good”, just as He did with everything else referenced in the Old Testament. If God created us as “good” then how are we evil as well? It seems reasonable to say that good cannot be evil. The explanation for humanity being both good and evil, even though God created us as good, is the gift of free will.
1. If we were guaranteed to be good then people would not have free will since we would not be able to choose between good and evil.
2. People are not guaranteed to be good and can choose between good and evil.
3. Therefore, people have free will.
Heaven and hell are not physical places, rather our choice to be in relationship with God or not to be.
Regarding Premise 1: Reasons for evil and the existence of Hell are explained in the Bible. Original Sin is understood to be what broke a perfect world. When Adam disobeyed God, he chose to strain his relationship with God, choosing evil over good. Choosing not to be in a relationship with God is Hell. Heaven is being in perfect communion with God.
God’s presence is not as one-dimensional as the presence of finite material beings. Biblically, there is a difference between God’s fully glorified presence and the presence that became incarnate and took on the sins of the world in Christ. This is why God told Moses that no person, due to their sinful nature, may fully see Him in His complete glory and live, and yet the New Testament instructs Christians to lay all of their sinful thoughts at the foot of Christ for Him to take captive.
We see more evidence that God’s glorified presence cannot coexist in the presence of sin through the ritual of the Holy of Holies in Jewish tradition. In this practice, just in case a priest entered the Holy of Holies with unconfessed (and therefore unforgiven) sin, he had a rope tied around his ankle so other priests would be able to draw him out of the glorified presence of God if he were struck dead in his sinful state. ??This example is consistent with what we know from the definition of God as the Maximal Being. Maximal Moral Goodness—the complete absence of sin—could not, by definition, be tainted with any sin, no matter how small. Therefore, God does not present Himself in His full glory in the presence of sin because to do so would be to remove any capacity for free will. If His omni- attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence) manifested themselves in all dimensions, as it would require to have God’s fully glorified presence be “omni,” then no human would possess the capacity to choose to act outside of God’s own will. We would be robots, incapable of choosing to love God, and thus negating the purpose of our very creation.
There must, therefore, be a difference between God’s fully glorified presence, and the presence that is everywhere—even in Sheol, as David penned in the Psalms. In Hell, there is, at the very least, the removal of God’s fully glorified presence, because it cannot coexist with sin.
We can further debate the interpretation of David’s psalm—perhaps he claimed that God would follow him even to Sheol because God knows that David loves Him—to help determine whether it aligns Biblically to believe in annihilationism, and to therefore believe that hell includes the removal from all dimensions of God’s presence. But, at this point, I think it is safe to conclude that, at the very least, “hell” is absence of God’s glorified presence.
I think your train of thought makes a lot of sense! :) It seems that free will is necessary for true love of God and indeed humans must have an alternative (to choose not-God). I would like to challenge your premise on free choice. You wrote
“Forced love is not love.
So, God cannot force humankind to love him.
Humankind must, therefore, be capable of freely choosing to love God.
To have the capacity of free choice is to possess free will.
Therefore, humankind must possess free will.”
I think it is important to distinguish what this free choice means. Does it mean that an essential aspect of humanity is the ability to choose to love God (regardless of whether they get the chance to do so on Earth), or that all humans do in fact have the ability to choose God on Earth? What I mean by this is that human free will in certain regards by the conditions that one is born into. For example, one might technically have the ability to choose to love God if they were aware that such a choice existed.
There are some people (infants, those living in remote areas, and the severely mentally disabled might be good examples) who do not get the chance to hear the gospel of about the existence of a God before they die. Christian doctrine more specifically requires belief in Jesus as a savior for salvation, and certainly no every human being has knowledge of Jesus during their lifetime. Thus if salvation requires belief and love of God, then these people who are never exposed to God will go to Hell (unless there some chance to choose to love God after death.) I would like to argue that those who are unexposed to information or knowledge about choosing God, in essence do not have a choice.
On account of this, I would also like to clarify what you mean by saying:
“If God is all-loving, then he wants what is best for every person.
What is best for other people is not hell.
Therefore, God does not want people to go to hell.”
If God does not want people to go to Hell and you are arguing that God has granted humans free will to choose to love God (not go to Hell), wouldn’t it be necessary for the choice to be real, rather than theoretical and contingent on one’s specific circumstances at birth?
If indeed the physical word is the only chance to gain salvation, these people are virtually in the same boat as the souls damned under a predestination argument. The mental capacity, origin of birth, or time of death dictated their access to God. Such thing are nearly entirely out of an individual’s control and thus such factors have predetermined their fate. This is similar to the predicament of a predestination argument which results in predetermined souls who go to Hell instead of given the mercy of Heaven, irrespective of their life choices. If this is an analogous argument, the salvation dynamic and existence of Hell are still is incompatible with a maximally good God.
I also tried to formulate this into my own argument on this post: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4199/salvation-after-death/p1
I would love to hear your thoughts!
1. If God is all-loving (and wants the best for us like a parent), then he would discipline us when we misbehave.
2. God is all-loving.
3. Then like a parent he would disciple when we misbehave. (1,2 MP)
However, I have a problem with this counterargument in that I only see a parent foreseeably disciplining their child for a period of time. According to many Christians, God will punish those that do not obey him for eternity… err… what parent would do such a thing to their child.
But still, many Christians argue that those that do not obey God, are not God’s children. I guess this approach eases the way Christians see God punishing humans that aren’t his own. This argument could go a little like this:
1. If you are not God’s child, then you will be punished for eternity.
2. You are not God’s child.
3. Then you will be punished for eternity. (1,2 MP)
However, once more, I ask to people that believe this at what point does not belong and is considered God’s child and at what point does one stop being one? It seems to me arbitrary from the people that espouse this view to say that this is when they believe an individual starts and stops being a child of God. In view of this, my thing is not to judge, in cases where people have lived morally good lives and yet were not believers. Let others be and God will decide if they get to go to this inferno or not. I’d love to know what y’all think.
If there were certain ways that God really didn't want us to behave then he probably shouldn't have made that behavior an option.
This is a debate that people should watch.
You could argue that we need at least the illusion of free will for happiness. We'd feel like slaves if we had behavioural inhibitors fitted. Free will seems to require hell of some form?
I think hell would be for correctional purposes only. I have this vision I hope is not true. Hell is structured as an upside down pyramid. The worst people are at the pointy end (bottom), the best at the wide end (top). The sewage runs downwards in such a way that the worst person in hell experiences 100% of everyone else's waste products, the 2nd worst 50%, the 4th 25% and so on.
Humam soul is the whole universe and nature and planet. You are just a piece of your soul.
So you find everything you need in your soul. You don't even need to think to much!
But you should live, like hell doesnt exist.
You just say, that Father is good and live like plants, who don't care.
If you are affraid, you can't even love and holy spirit doesn't come to you.
So don't be affraid and keep on moving.
Hi Terrapin Station, I believe your argument goes a little like this:
1. If God is a loving God and wants the best for us, then he would not make certain behaviors an option.
2. God is a loving God and wants the best for us.
3. Thus, he would not make certain behaviors an option. (MP 1,2)
Although I see where you're coming from, I believe that God made a world that allowed for such behaviors, in order to give humans complete free will. In other words, the fact that He allowed all behaviors, including the ones that are wrong, is so that we could choose between committing those acts or not. Had God forbid certain behaviors, it would have curtailed total free will, and I don't think he would have wanted that because having robots or people that do exactly as He dictates without ever erring as worshipers would be boring and meaningless. The fact that a human can choose not to kill, steal, or rape etc. shows rational and themselves abiding by a higher moral ground, at least in my opinion. So that is why I challenge premise one. I'd love to hear what you think.
You don't have anything like "total free will." You don't have the ability to behave in ways that are physically impossible, for example. You also don't have the ability to behave in ways that are practically impossible for many contingent reasons. A god could easily set up a world where ways that he doesn't want people to behave are physically or practically impossible. That would no more disable free will than it is in the actual world at hand.
The typical understanding is that,
This makes hell an eternal circumstance. That is, once in hell, there's no way out.
However, the proposed correct way of understanding it should be,
This latter rendition, to have the meaning that, for as long as there are sinners, they, the sinners, must endure suffering in hell. It then further explains that, hell is a 'place' of restitution and is also transitory. That is, it provides the opportunity to expiate one's sins and, having accomplished said expiation, one is no longer a sinner and therefore progresses out of hell and into further, more suitable and beneficial, territories of the spiritual realms.
From my perspective, the second version is more aligned with a loving God. However, how many people are willing to accept the possibility of a misinterpretation regardless of how intelligent the latter seems?
Also, none of this has anything to do with atheism. If one doesn't believe in a God, why bother with anything He supposedly does.
"Also, none of this has anything to do with atheism. If one doesn't believe in a God, why bother with anything He supposedly does"
I believe that it is relevant for atheists to try to empathize with how Christians might feel about their atheism. This is why this topic is something I wish to understand. There are people in my life who are concerned about my atheism because they believe I will go to hell if I don't repent. I find your view on this subject to be beneficial and interesting to some extent since it could perhaps alleviate the concerns of my loved ones. I'm often stuck in conversation trying to convince my Christian friends that they shouldn't be so concerned about me going to hell forever since it's inconceivable how a loving God would punish someone for an unlimited amount of time for reasonable skepticism about his existence. I would love to know if there's any way I could convince my loved ones to accept annilationism or at least the view that Hell does not last indefinitely and that we can escape from it like you have described. It seems like the Bible does suggest eternal torture for non believers though and I don't blame Christians for thinking that this is what the Christian God requires. Although, as an atheist, I don't think there's any centralized view that the Bible holds about Hell. That is because I think the Bible is written by a collection of people with different opinions and philosophies rather than based on the actual unified philosophical position of God who does not exist and therefore had no role to be play in advising the authors of the Bible.
The idea that hell is a 'place' of restitution is a feature of esoteric teachings, spiritualism, spiritism, some factions of hinduism, etc. It is also more in line with a God whose love is as expressed in 1Corinthians 13:4-8 (love is patient and kind... it forgives all things, does not keep a record of wrongs,... ).
There are arguments that the eternity of hell for sinners is often misinterpreted owing to the deficient translations from the original hebrew or aramaic. The supposedly correct way of understanding it is that, 'hell is constant for sinners'. Unfortunately, the word 'constant' can be replaced with synonyms such as continuous, eternal, infinite, etc, which may, outside of the original context, give different interpretations. I don't know what the original statements in the Bible are, but I prefer the version where hell is a place of restitution. It is the more intelligent version, for me.
I think, ultimately, it depends on what a person wants from a religion. Personally I abstain from them. I do study religious teachings but only because there's great wisdom in them. But, I can't reconcile an absolute God with the idea of picking a side in any of the religions. I much prefer the idea of a person deciding one's own fate.
Buddha
Krishna
When we go to Hades we can talk to the dead by digging a hole and then cutting the throat of a lamb and letting its blood fill the hole so the dead can drink it and speak with us. You know, as Jesus is the lamb who had to be sacrificed, and the blood of the lamb painted on our door can protect us.
I think to understand the bible we need to know how people thought back in the day.
I very much agree with you and like the quotes you used. Christianity had a terrible time when it as translated from Greek to Roman thought. Latin words had to be invented to because there were no Latin words for some Greek concepts. The problem with Romans not having Greek concepts lead to Christians killing Christians because of seeing God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost as three gods or one god. Romans didn't explore concepts as the Greeks did and didn't have the necessary vocabulary. Image making something believable by inventing a word.
I'm a big advocate for this. I've always thought that if psychology was a part of our considerations in reviewing religious teachings then perhaps most of the present misunderstandings could be alleviated because we would have a better context of what the predominant thought was back then and how to relate to it through the passage of time to the present.
I think it also takes an open-minded person to accept that religious teachings are not as indisputable as most people think and that perhaps a constant search for better interpretations is always worth the trouble to improve our understanding.
Thanks. It's always good to meet another investigative mind especially with respect to religions.
I appreciate your approval of investigating religious truth. I have loved the investigation since I was 8 years old, that age when our brains mature enough to demand we make such judgments. I asked a Sunday school teacher why Protestants and Catholics were different and her answer was not satisfactory. I decided none had God's truth, because if they did they would have an agreement. That set me a quest for God's truth and for me, that meant investigating all beliefs. My family encouraged this and because it is such a pleasure to learn I am very thankful I had a family that encouraged it.
At the moment I am listening to college lectures about western civilization and do you know a distinct divide between Egypt and Mesopotamia was the difference in the environment? In Egypt, the Nile floods regularly, with very little difference from year to year and the Egyptians who were obsessed with order, thought that the Pharoah was a god with the power to keep things in order.
In Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers, flooding was much more unpredictable and difficult to control. Here the head person was a human who had the favor of the gods. If bad things happened, it was assumed this person no longer had the favor of the gods and they got rid of him.
Now ponder the fight over if Jesus is God or a human? The gods did have children with humans and their children were mortals with unusual powers. Jesus is not the only one with an unusual birth following the visits of angels. So was he born human? If so when did he become a god? For some, it was unthinkable that a god could be born from a woman. Some Jews were revolted by this idea. What people believed really depended on where they lived and their previous mythology and Christians killed each other over this issue.
Surely we have a father in heaven because Romans were adamant about the importance of fathers and his responsibility for his family. It would not be much of a shift from being ruled by a king with the favor of the gods, to worshiping a Father in heaven. What do you think?
I was raised by a protestant mother and a catholic father, so you could imagine the drama. Anyway, they weren't strict about religion so I somehow managed to acquire a liberal view.
My idea of gods and such has changed quite a lot in the past 10 yrs or so. I still appreciate other people's perspectives but I'm more inclined to refer to what I call universal laws. For now, this just means I believe in vibrations and that our lives here on this little blue planet is a field of interaction between these vibrations, some higher, some lower, with respect to each other. For example, there are consciousnesses or intelligences whose nature is much higher than mine; there are those whose nature is much lower than mine; and there are those whose nature is closer to mine to negate any adverse confluences that may naturally occur. So, part of living, for me, means being able to recognise the nature of these vibrations and reacting accordingly.
As to whether there are gods or not, I think just as humans are awe-inspiring to animals, it is probable that there are beings whose nature is just as awe-inspiring to humans. I don't think their names matter as long as we understand what we're referring to.
Do I believe in an absolute being? No, because the very idea of being means a kind of limitation or relativity. However, I believe in an absolute unity, harmony and freedom - which is the nature of reality as a whole. For beings like us, absolutes are targets we aim for through progressive states of development. I can grow to experience more unity, harmony and freedom but there doesn't seem to be an ending to such growth.
I don't know much about Jesus, or any other person, being a god, but I know what to expect when such an intelligent person finds themselves greatly outnumbered by lesser intelligent people. Unfortunately, we still live in conditions where we expect some person we designate as 'leader' to determine the fortunes of our lives. So, inevitably, there will be a lot of chaos or conflicts in our associations. How we are affected, I think, is determined by how we position ourselves through all these interactions.
Usually, I don't know whether I'm spiritual or not but the pendulum has been known to swing both sides. Please share your thoughts... ?
I believe this void is the absence of God, nothing more nothing less and if you refuse to accept the reality of the existence of God and that in fact you are that God then there is nowhere for you to go except to stay in the void, a self inflicted existence where no one hurts you except yourself. I think this void is what is referred to as Hell, exaggerated and embroidered until it becomes a fiery furnace with devil's prodding you with forks. You can come out of the void if you choose but stubbornness is one 'hell' of a power!
That is a very theist position for an atheist to state. It would seem to me there is only one Atheist argument you could make to your friends, that there is no god - so don't worry. Looks like somewhere down deep you are hedging your bets here - Kind of like - there is no god, but if there is, He will be benevolent. Does not seem a very consistent position to me.
Well, I don't think there is any empirical evidence for any deities existing. As far as non-empirical evidence goes, at best you could speculate that there might be something that can remotely be called a deity in the universe. There's no reason to suppose that the Christian God has to be the specific God that created the universe. There's nearly an infinite number of potential Gods that could exist and it's not clear why people should assume that the Christian God is the one true God. That's usually the argument I make for my Christian friends but they don't believe that argument. And, they often try to convince me to be a Christian because of their concerns so it's not like I can just agree to disagree with them. I have to alleviate their concerns however I can. Most Christians would refuse to believe that there is an evil and sadistic God that sends people to Hell. That's because some Christians believe in Christianity because it's what they want to believe, not necessarily because fundamentalist Christianity has credible evidence:
Well, I think I agree with what you said, up to- us having a notion of what a leader can do, and arguing that point would make this a political thread far from a metaphysical one. But in keeping with the subject of hell, I can say, [B] in a short 200 years the US has swung for believing we are creating heaven on earth to believing we are in the last days.[/b] Obviously, something has gone very wrong and I think the problem began with education for a technological society with unknown values. Now we no longer understand what is necessary to have heaven on earth and we have hell on earth. That hell is going to get much worse if we do not take immediate and drastic steps to change that. Believing the problem is Satan and not ourselves is a serious problem! Believing our reality is caused by a God or a Satan, instead of our own decisions is a huge mistake but we allowed the wrong people to take control of education when the 1958 National Defense Education Act was passed, and we stopped transmitting our culture and left moral training to the church.
Perhaps I should check, why are we talking about hell? Is this supposed to be a metaphysical discussion or about reality that is materially manifested?
For a long time in Christianity, it was assumed only a handful of people were the chosen people who would experience heaven. Like the Egyptians may have thought only the pharaoh and those directly associated with him would experience a good afterlife. But as Eygpt gained wealth, more and more expected to enjoy a good afterlife. Same with Christians. The fuller their bellies got and the more secure they became, the wider the gates to heaven got until heaven could include all deserving souls.
Isis was the bread and water long before Jesus was the bread and wine. The Egyptian test for getting into the good afterlife was measuring a person's heart and if the heart was heavier than a feather, indicating a person lived a bad life, this person was not allowed into the good afterlife.
I think for most people the turn of this millennium was supposed to mark the end of the old world order in more than one way. And even those who didn't believe in a religious doomsday, still harboured thoughts of a kind of social revolution from the old ways of pain and suffering brought on by our ignorant ways. Unfortunately, as it turned out, not much changed. Hence, from dreams of heaven, we were roused by a new wake up call of this reality we wish to call hell.
Frankly, I think we're overreacting considering everything is a consequence of our collective actions. I think we let our hopes fall into naivety when we expected a magical turn around from the old ways. Though, in most ways, this is still a relative heaven compared with the past. So I'm kinda pretty ok with where we're at.
I understand that some Christians do believe that the majority of people go to Hell. Though, many Christians find hope in Christianity and feel that it's all about love, sunshine, and rainbows. I'm really just trying whatever persuasive tactic I can to alleviate the concerns of my Christian friends because I'm really sick and tired of having to have a constant conversation with them about my atheism. The problem with some religious people is that they feel like they know that they are correct about their specific religious beliefs and so they will try to persuade you to death about "turning over your life to Jesus Christ". It's just one of the disadvantages of living in the Bible Belt as an atheist lol.
It made me laugh.
I have recently become an advocate of the notion known as Christian Universalism, due to the exact reason many are debating in this forum. How could an all-good, all-powerful and all loving God sentence his most beloved creations to eternal damnation? I don't believe He could.
I have an argument that I'd like to purpose that further develops this idea of temporary damnation rather than eternal damnation.
1) If God is all-good, all-powerful and all-loving, then he has the ability as well as the desire to ensure that none of his creations suffer eternal damnation in Hell.
2) God is all-good, all-powerful and all-loving.
3) Therefore, God will ensure that none of his creations suffer eternal damnation in Hell.
Essentially, what I'm proposing with this argument is an elaboration on the quote listed above. Think of our earthly existence as a trial run of sorts, where we get to live in a world made up partially of good stuff and partially of bad stuff.
The good stuff that we experience is the manifestation of God's love, while the bad stuff is the absence of His love. In this trial run we are to decide if we want His love or not.
If we decide that we do in fact want his love, we die and subsequently go to Heaven, where we get to experience a world made up entirely of His love, the good stuff.
However, if we decide that we don't want his love, we die and subsequently go to Hell, where we get to experience a world made up of the absence of His love, the bad stuff.
Part of the pain and suffering we experience in Hell, is the result of a Godless, sinful existence. However, once we accept God and His love into our lives, we will subsequently be granted permission to enter his kingdom of love, Heaven.
I believe we can choose to accept His love at any point, even after we die. Meaning that even if we do end up in Hell, we will probably have some time to serve. However, we will still have the ability to accept His love and eventually join Him in Heaven.
I have a couple of questions I would like to ask you:
1. If there is an all powerful and all loving God, then why would God not eliminate all the bad stuff(which you refer to as the absence of his love) since he has the power to do that(given that he is all powerful)? Couldn't and shouldn't God just make his love omnipresent? I suppose your response might be to argue that God gave us free will and that allows us to choose to reject his love. But since there are plenty of things that humans have no psychological capacity to think or desire(For example, I can't think of a single human being that has had a desire to go smell his toaster after work or count to 100 while flickering his light switch), I doubt that the possiblity to have a lack of desire for God's love would be requirement for free will. Even if it is a logical requirement for free will, because God is all powerful he can change logic so that he could give people free will while simultaneously making his love omnipresent.
2. If the bad stuff that happens in our lives is the result of the absence of God's love then how come it feels like something?(namely pain and suffering). What would be the source of the negative mental states that we experience? It's hard to imagine how an absence of something could produce something with a presence like that of suffering. Shouldn't the absence of God's love manifest itself as nothing, while the presence of God's love manifest itself as something good?
To respond to your first question, yes your supposition is correct, God gave us free will in order to give us the ability to reject His love. And ultimately, yes God could do those things. However, that just seems like cheating to me.
To illustrate just exactly how this is cheating, let's imagine that you have a significant other with whom you are in love dearly.
As a man who's has been in love with a woman, I can tell you that, personally, one of the best parts about it is the fact that this person makes you feel so special. They make you feel so special because somehow, out of everyone this beautiful girl could've fallen in love with, somehow she fell in love with you.
Now let's imagine that somehow, before you actually met this beautiful girl you slipped her a love potion, making it so she would only love you for ever and ever, regardless of what you did or said. At first it might be great, however, eventually, wouldn't you begin to question the legitimacy of her love? Wouldn't you begin to wonder if she would love you had you not slipped her that potion? Would that not suck this "special" feeling out of the relationship leaving you ultimately feeling empty inside? Knowing that it's not natural love, but rather fake love that you induced by yourself?
Essentially what I'm trying to say is, yes, God could give us a love potion effectively giving us no choice in the matter, and we'd never be the wiser. And yes, that would ultimately be in our best interest. But I imagine, being that we are made in His image, God wants real love much in the same way that we want real love.
God wants us to choose Him too. After all He is a God of love, and while that would ultimately be in our best interest, God isn't interested in being some cosmic dictator, forcing His will upon all of his subjects, regardless of whether or not that's what's best for us.
Now to respond to your second question.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
I can name an absence of many things which would result in our imminent suffering. Let's start with the basics, how long could you go without food or water before you begin to suffer? How long could you go without sleep before beginning to suffer? How long could you go without human interaction before you end up suffering from insanity?
Now I realize this may be ever so slightly fallacious reasoning as that was probably the weakest part of your objection.
However, my response will ultimately be similar to my initial response. I think lack of God's love manifests itself as negativity because somewhere deep down, we want God's approval. Much in the same way we seek the approval and validation of those around us. Not only do we want His love, but we need his love to be complete. Maybe not in our earthly existence, however ultimately sooner or later, we are all going to seek His love. This is because sooner or later, everyone will get tired of suffering through the dark, sad, lonely, painful Godless existence waiting for us in Hell, and therefore seek re-union with God.
"This is because sooner or later, everyone will get tired of suffering through the dark, lonely, sad Godless existence in Hell, and therefore seek union with God"
I prefer 're-union' with God That would mean we are all God, pretending to be temporarily separate from God in order to experience what it's like to be mortal. Re-union in this case means remembering you are God and abandoning self inflicted loneliness in so called 'Hell'
I completely agree with you, minor oversight on my part.
Just edited my comment to reflect the fact that it's more of a re-union with God, rather than an initial joining.
I have a Christian friend and she used to drive me and her family crazy. She seems to realize now that her behavior of trying to save us was a relationship problem with people she really cares about. However, we live in Oregon and not the Bible Belt. Also, she got, while she was praying for people, I take action to help them and I think she realized taking action works better than praying? Like really on what grounds would a god condemn me and her family to hell? For Christianity to work, a person has to believe those who are not Christians are bad people undeserving of heaven. But what if they are good people? How do they explain being a good person but not a saved person, if being good depends on being saved?
The belief system does not work for democracy, because the kind of person we are depends on how we were raised, the people who influence us and education. People who don't understand that are okay with education for technology that prepares the young to serve industry, instead of preparing them for freedom. Liberal education is for free people, and education for technology is not. Satan didn't come to earth, we changed education, and what we have now is the social, economic and political ramification of that change.
The Egyptians had a trinity of the soul not a trinity of god. One part of our soul dies with our body and another is judged and may or may not go on to the good life and the third always returns to the source. I am afraid I didn't say that well but metaphysically what is the nature of spirit? Is it internal to us or external to us as the trinity of God is external to us?
I think Christianity is very paradoxical as it struggles with materialism (believing everything has matter) and spirituality (not a material manifestation).
You seem to be implying that God creates a possibility for suffering to satisfy his own interest in having genuine rather than fake love from people. That is not something a all-benevolent God would do, in my opinion(although it could be justified if the benefit for God outweighs the harm to people done).
Quoting Belouie
The reason I suffer from hunger is not the absence of food but rather the biological need I have for food. If I didn't need to eat then the absence of food wouldn't cause any suffering. If God had created a need for his love, in order to have us not suffer, would he not be forcing us to love him on some level? If I caused you suffering for refusing to love me, you would certainly call that cheating and you would only be able to give me fake love. My point is that God had a malicious role to play in creating a need for us to love him in order to avoid suffering.
Advaita Vedanta the Hindu school of philosophy holds that Brahman, or God if you like, and Atman the human soul are one and the same (Advaita means 'not two' ) Though interestingly Vedanta says Brahman consists of the creator, the maintainer and the destroyer, a bit Holy Trinity (ish)
I agree completely. I sometimes feel Christianity provides an opportunity for easy virtue. It could also give you a sense of moral superiority even if all you do is sit on your ass and pray to your imaginary friend.
Atheists are the biggest fundamentalists of all. Most people who believe in God as Love see Her as a Presence that can be called upon for strength, patience, hope, joy, understanding, empathy, humility, and most of all, love. Giving attributes to a Presence that is ineffable is fundamentalist language gaming.
He creates a possibility of suffering not merely to satisfy His own interest, but rather to satisfy the mutual interest shared by Him, as well as all of humanity. Therefore in my opinion, it is something an benevolent God would do, being that the result is the eternal happiness of every human ever while the cost at which this happiness comes, is merely temporary suffering.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Be that as it may, you still need to eat, which means you still need food, which means the absence of food will still ultimately result in suffering. Being that you need food to avoid this suffering, the absence of food is still arguably the cause of suffering from starvation.
God gave us needs to give us purpose. Our ultimate purpose being, to be loved by Him. Whether or not you choose to view that as malicious is up to you, much in the same way the choice to fulfill this purpose is up to you. I don't feel this is cheating because in this scenario, unlike the love potion scenario, God faces the same risk of suffering that we do. Meaning that He suffers without our love, just as we suffer without His. He already chose us, now its our turn to choose Him.
I agree with you that the God that you are describing is benevolent. Please don't misunderstand me. I'm certainly not claiming that you're God is evil. My claim was simply that the God you are describing is not "all benevolent". I think you set the bar too low for all benevolence here. That is because, in order for a God to be all benevolent, you should have a hard time imagining a better God
Having said that, let me imagine an omnipotent God that I think is more benevolent than your conception of God:
1. While we are alive on Earth, God's love manifests itself as the most extreme good imaginable. We feel the most extreme pleasure and awe from the presence of God's love. The absence of God's love manifests itself as mild and unimpressive good that disappoints us just a little. Our lives on Earth are a trial run by which we decide if we would like to accept God's love.
2. When we die(a pleasurable death, of course), if we accept God's love, we will subsequently go to Heaven(which is the place made of God's love and it is as great as you described). If we do not accept God's love then we will go to Hell, a place where there is an absence of God's love. But instead of being a place of torture, Hell is kind of boring place with the most mild pleasure imaginable.
3. While God does not provide us with the need for his love, he provides us with a strong want for his love instead. This gives our lives purpose.(if you think that we can't derive genuine purpose from strong wants, then my God could change that fact with his omnipotence. Also note that an omnipotent God could technically make the "fake" love you were describing earlier be the most genuine love imaginable because he decides what is genuine and fake in the first place given his omnipotence.)
In conclusion, while I do think your God is admirable. I'm still having a hard time seeing how your God is better than the God I'm describing.
In the early days of the United States many different religious groups believed it possible to create heaven on earth, and now we leave people on the streets even when they are dying or mentally too confused to care for themselves. How do we live with this reality? How could a hell be worse?