Some of them actually believe that if they can get you to say the magic words, you’ll go to heaven instead of hell.
If I thought I could prevent someone from eternal pain and suffering, and instead have them go to a place where the creator of everything, including… uh… hell…
I wouldn’t mind if there was a god who created a hell, if hell is the special place reserved for fascists, human traffickers, and greedy billionaires who destroy the planet.
People act like this god guy is such a dick for creating a hell. As if they really want to share an afterlife with everyone who ever lived.
Somehow the paradox of intolerance dovetails into this, but I’m too lazy to explain how.
I would mind: if you’re all-powerful then why create fascists, human traffickers, greedy billionaires, and the majority of people who are making the biosphere uninhabitable for most genera? And why punish them with hell, when you created them that way? That’s just sadistic.
I understand wanting a hell for bad people, because most people do extremely evil things:
voting to be ruled by openly greedy, sociopathic liars (with only about 1-4% of voters choose ethical candidates);
giving money to factory farmers and fishermen;
contributing to human overpopulation;
etc.;
but I still prefer honesty and saying there’s absolutely no evidence that a biblical hell is real.
Oh come on, that is so easily answered by the concept of free will. An all-powerful god doesn’t create a universe populated by sentient beings just to control everything that any of them do. That’s just silly.
Human beings are endowed with free will, and given a choice: use it for good or evil. You can try to be morally neutral, but ultimately you’re either serving yourself or others. It’s possible to balance doing both, but that means neither is to the exclusion of the other and therefore still counts as doing good.
It’s so lazy to just ask “Why did god let people do evil things in the first place.” Do you really expect me to believe the concept of free will has never crossed your mind when asking this question?
And I never said that a biblical hell is real, I was just following along with the hypotheticals of the previous comments.
Do you really expect me to believe the concept of free will has never crossed your mind when asking this question?
Free will is so obviously an illusion to me (since no-one in recorded history has ever been able to magic their way around causality) that I sometimes forget that most people, especially religious people, think they have free will. I should have stated that.
If free will is real for people tho, then God isn’t all-knowing or all-powerful, which means it’s not God - unless you use a definition of God that extremely few people in the West or Middle-East hold.
Free will isn’t about magic or causality. Framing it like that just shows you misunderstand the concept of free will.
We’re bound by circumstances and possibility, yes. That doesn’t contradict free will, because free will is about self-determination: being able to choose a course of action from among the possibilities, rather than being compelled one way or the other by some extrinsic force such as fate.
For example, say you go to a restaurant. They give you the menu. You get to choose anything on the menu, and maybe even make a special request, and no one is compelling you to choose one thing or another.
They might say “No, we can’t do that” when you ask if they can substitute hush puppies for a side. That’s not a contravention of your free will, they might just not have hush puppies.
Just because the menu doesn’t include everything in the universe doesn’t mean you don’t have free will when choosing an option.
Also, free will doesn’t contradict god being omniscient or omnipotent. I don’t know why you keep implying that it does, but you haven’t presented any rationale for why we should suppose that.
This doesn’t mean I believe in a god, by the way. I’m just telling you that your logic about free will and omnipotence doesn’t add up.
You are the one misunderstanding. When you are sitting there with the menu in front of you, what is doing the “choosing” in the end? What is causing you to rule out this dish or that?
Got food poisoning from eating salmon that one time? Better not order that then, you’d get nauseous just looking at it.
Grew up eating tamales? Of course you love them, but mostly the ones that taste similar to the ones your parents made.
Your parents fed you a ton of sugar as a kid? Well now you’re gonna want something sweet for dessert.
You had a bad day, you’re gonna want some comfort food.
You have a lifetime of experience behind you dictating your preferences, beliefs, values, epigenetic state, hormone balance, and current state of mind.
Note about god, they are supposedly the ones who set this whole sequence of events into motion. God would know that, given an initial state that they set up, the series of events of the universe would eventually lead to you picking tamales on the menu. Or pasta. Or honey glazed chicken. But that is more of a question of determinism, whether starting over at the same initial state would lead to the same current state of the universe. But given god is supposedly omniscient, they should know all the branching possibilities from the initial state in addition to which one the universe will tumble down.
In other words, if god is real, and they are omniscient and omnipotent, then literally everything that happens is their fault.
You have a lifetime of experience behind you dictating your preferences, beliefs, values, epigenetic state, hormone balance, and current state of mind.
Those things might all influence the choice you make on the menu, but none of them forces you to choose anything. You’re still the one making the choice. The things you’ve mentioned are about the web of conditionality, not determinism.
And your second to last paragraph assumes predestination, which not all christian denominations believe. So that argument only applies to presbyterians and other calvinists. And anyone who buys the prosperity gospel scam.
If humans have free will then god is not omnipresent omnipotent, we’re all powerful.
Evil exists in the world because God allows it or because he’s powerless to stop it.
Even if God is not omnipresent omnipotent and does not know everything you will do, Then he is still making creatures to which he will torture for all eternity if they do not align with him. The most morally just thing at all would be to create nothing or at least create things that are not bound to heaven or hell.
False, endowment of freewill doesn’t logically contradict omnipotence. And your statement “we’re all powerful” is a giant leap. Free will is not omnipotence.
Evil exists in the world because God allows it or because he’s powerless to stop it.
(Assuming we’re going with theistic explanations for the purposes of argument), Evil exists because humans are endowed with free will, meaning god gives humans a choice of how to behave. Anything less would make us mindless automatons/slaves, which would arguably be evil.
Then he is still making creatures to which he will torture for all eternity if they do not align with him.
Assuming an omnibenevolent god, hell would be a place for genocidiers and fascists and other people who caused untold suffering for others, who would then be tortured for eternity by their own degeneracy because when you remove the pleasures of the flesh from the equation, there’s nothing left to distract one from one’s own inner life.
multiple protestants have theological holes in their boats
hell is not eternal suffering
its just the state of nonexistence
as you will be in hell as you were without God
aka nonexistent, God made you.
And you cant have torture and suffering without life, so you cant have eternal torture and suffering if you do not have eternal life, and if you have eternal life, you aint going to hell.
Absolutely, You can be actively in the process of dying and they will be bible thumping your chest.
I don’t go door to door telling people they should be atheist but at least once a year someone knocks on my door to talk to me about Christ.
Some of them actually believe that if they can get you to say the magic words, you’ll go to heaven instead of hell.
If I thought I could prevent someone from eternal pain and suffering, and instead have them go to a place where the creator of everything, including… uh… hell…
OK, never mind.
Isn’t jesus torturing you forever too?
My version of jesus only tortures the epstein class
I wouldn’t mind if there was a god who created a hell, if hell is the special place reserved for fascists, human traffickers, and greedy billionaires who destroy the planet.
People act like this god guy is such a dick for creating a hell. As if they really want to share an afterlife with everyone who ever lived.
Somehow the paradox of intolerance dovetails into this, but I’m too lazy to explain how.
I would mind: if you’re all-powerful then why create fascists, human traffickers, greedy billionaires, and the majority of people who are making the biosphere uninhabitable for most genera? And why punish them with hell, when you created them that way? That’s just sadistic.
I understand wanting a hell for bad people, because most people do extremely evil things:
but I still prefer honesty and saying there’s absolutely no evidence that a biblical hell is real.
Oh come on, that is so easily answered by the concept of free will. An all-powerful god doesn’t create a universe populated by sentient beings just to control everything that any of them do. That’s just silly.
Human beings are endowed with free will, and given a choice: use it for good or evil. You can try to be morally neutral, but ultimately you’re either serving yourself or others. It’s possible to balance doing both, but that means neither is to the exclusion of the other and therefore still counts as doing good.
It’s so lazy to just ask “Why did god let people do evil things in the first place.” Do you really expect me to believe the concept of free will has never crossed your mind when asking this question?
And I never said that a biblical hell is real, I was just following along with the hypotheticals of the previous comments.
Free will is so obviously an illusion to me (since no-one in recorded history has ever been able to magic their way around causality) that I sometimes forget that most people, especially religious people, think they have free will. I should have stated that.
If free will is real for people tho, then God isn’t all-knowing or all-powerful, which means it’s not God - unless you use a definition of God that extremely few people in the West or Middle-East hold.
Free will isn’t about magic or causality. Framing it like that just shows you misunderstand the concept of free will.
We’re bound by circumstances and possibility, yes. That doesn’t contradict free will, because free will is about self-determination: being able to choose a course of action from among the possibilities, rather than being compelled one way or the other by some extrinsic force such as fate.
For example, say you go to a restaurant. They give you the menu. You get to choose anything on the menu, and maybe even make a special request, and no one is compelling you to choose one thing or another.
They might say “No, we can’t do that” when you ask if they can substitute hush puppies for a side. That’s not a contravention of your free will, they might just not have hush puppies.
Just because the menu doesn’t include everything in the universe doesn’t mean you don’t have free will when choosing an option.
Also, free will doesn’t contradict god being omniscient or omnipotent. I don’t know why you keep implying that it does, but you haven’t presented any rationale for why we should suppose that.
This doesn’t mean I believe in a god, by the way. I’m just telling you that your logic about free will and omnipotence doesn’t add up.
You are the one misunderstanding. When you are sitting there with the menu in front of you, what is doing the “choosing” in the end? What is causing you to rule out this dish or that?
Got food poisoning from eating salmon that one time? Better not order that then, you’d get nauseous just looking at it.
Grew up eating tamales? Of course you love them, but mostly the ones that taste similar to the ones your parents made.
Your parents fed you a ton of sugar as a kid? Well now you’re gonna want something sweet for dessert.
You had a bad day, you’re gonna want some comfort food.
You have a lifetime of experience behind you dictating your preferences, beliefs, values, epigenetic state, hormone balance, and current state of mind.
Note about god, they are supposedly the ones who set this whole sequence of events into motion. God would know that, given an initial state that they set up, the series of events of the universe would eventually lead to you picking tamales on the menu. Or pasta. Or honey glazed chicken. But that is more of a question of determinism, whether starting over at the same initial state would lead to the same current state of the universe. But given god is supposedly omniscient, they should know all the branching possibilities from the initial state in addition to which one the universe will tumble down.
In other words, if god is real, and they are omniscient and omnipotent, then literally everything that happens is their fault.
Those things might all influence the choice you make on the menu, but none of them forces you to choose anything. You’re still the one making the choice. The things you’ve mentioned are about the web of conditionality, not determinism.
And your second to last paragraph assumes predestination, which not all christian denominations believe. So that argument only applies to presbyterians and other calvinists. And anyone who buys the prosperity gospel scam.
If humans have free will then god is not omnipresent omnipotent, we’re all powerful.
Evil exists in the world because God allows it or because he’s powerless to stop it.
Even if God is not omnipresent omnipotent and does not know everything you will do, Then he is still making creatures to which he will torture for all eternity if they do not align with him. The most morally just thing at all would be to create nothing or at least create things that are not bound to heaven or hell.
False, endowment of freewill doesn’t logically contradict omnipotence. And your statement “we’re all powerful” is a giant leap. Free will is not omnipotence.
(Assuming we’re going with theistic explanations for the purposes of argument), Evil exists because humans are endowed with free will, meaning god gives humans a choice of how to behave. Anything less would make us mindless automatons/slaves, which would arguably be evil.
Assuming an omnibenevolent god, hell would be a place for genocidiers and fascists and other people who caused untold suffering for others, who would then be tortured for eternity by their own degeneracy because when you remove the pleasures of the flesh from the equation, there’s nothing left to distract one from one’s own inner life.
multiple protestants have theological holes in their boats
hell is not eternal suffering its just the state of nonexistence as you will be in hell as you were without God aka nonexistent, God made you.
And you cant have torture and suffering without life, so you cant have eternal torture and suffering if you do not have eternal life, and if you have eternal life, you aint going to hell.
Tell them they can stop, go home, and enjoy time with the fam. I found Christ, and I stopped the problem.
Ok, take it out on them