How can a benevolent God stand for the existance of a hell with eternal suffering?

[Babylon Candle]

Originally Posted by Owl

Man, in and of himself, is finite and therefore changeable; thus, if left to himself, man will change. Once a man's belief changes such that he doesn't believe understanding is possible, he, by his own power, can no longer change his belief such that he will accept the possibility of understanding, and he will freely keep himself in this position of perpetual ignorance; for a man's desires proceed from his beliefs, and the belief that understanding is impossible will preclude the arousal of any desire for the attainment of understanding, for no man desires to obtain something he believes to be necessarily non-existent--such a man is a willing prisoner of his own mind.

if this is referring to my flirtation with nihilism...i've retreated from that somewhat ...ive more of leaned towards an idea that ideas should be judged on their utility, logical leaps from the premises and at least descent arguments for the premises. It is not 100% necessary to "prove" everything. I dont have to prove that my hands are here 100% to have a good argument that they're here.

you might eat me alive for this. but its the best ive got so far... Ti is my second most energy consumptive function... it both decieves, humors and fascinates me all at the same time... So i often either make irrational Te arguments for something i already believe or I just tire out in Ti and make mistakes.

the problem is that i refuse to believe something just because someone is of authority, so i often try and follow the argument, data myself. if it checks out im on board...its tiring though

The laws of thought are self-evident; i.e., the laws of identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle. Wherever there is meaning, the laws of thought are being used. Wherever a law of thought is violated, there is no meaning, and that which is meaningless cannot be true.

good to know. Once again i tire out and make mistakes: i used an absolute "nothing is 100% self evident" where i should of just said "most things are not 100% self evident..."

What do you think sin is? What exactly do people need to be redeemed from?

well the Christian definition (not sure if theres any other definition!?) is a transgression against God. It can follow from breaking his laws or I guess any act that is against the spirit of the laws? not sure on the expansion of this besides "transgression against God's laws".

Christianity teaches that God's self revelation is not confined to the bible, but is both clear and general so that all men, in all times, in all places can know of his eternal power, his divine nature, and the moral law. Once one knows the content of this general revelation, then he can understand the nature, content, and origin of special revelation. When interpreting special revelation (i.e., scripture), in light of general revelation...

"All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them" (Westminster Confession of Faith 1.7).

yes, i will admit that its clear in the simplicities of "follow this law or I will rebuke you!" "do this _____" "you will be saved from bad stuff if you believe in me" "follow me and do ____, _____ and _____". Its however very unclear on the complexities : "my dying for your sins works in this following way and avoids contradictions and absurdities for the following reasons: ______. " "God is able to be omniscient with your free will, still allowing no contradictions because of ____, _______".

a lot of the complexities have had to be filled in after the fact out. This is a problem. You can't force yourself to "believe". If one finds absurdities or questions how, how will he ever be able to "truly believe and surrender to God". My best example is the million different ideas of how exaclty atonement is achieved with Christ dying on the Cross. Its not that obvious how it works judging from the multitude of ideas on it: satisfaction, moral influence, scape goating, governmental, penal substitution, etc... It just doesnt point to a God that is "revealing" of truth when his own followers have to search in the dark to find suitable arguments for him.

Assume that there is a clear revelation, from the things that are made, of the eternal power and divine nature of God. If an infinitely powerful, infinitely good God exists, then why is there evil?

Haha, exaclty. If he was better at communicating himself, I doubt anyone would have any problem with him. It seems absurd to think that we would actually try and "thwart" or "transgress the laws of" this all powerful God. Its kind of like: If someone knew that the cashier had a shotgun, it would be stupid to challenge him with a knife. But if people don't know he has a shotgun cocked and loaded, they might be dumb enough to try and hold him up simply out of ignorance. Maybe people transgress against God because he isnt that clear on SHOWING his greatness, divinity etc.

its almost like this is a little game: "lets see who i can convince to believe in me, without ever actually giving them any real tangible REASON to!"

Might equals right assumes coercion. God doesn't coerce anyone to do evil. It wouldn't be just to hold a person accountable for an act he was coerced into performing. Persons are evil because they want to be evil, and God lets them do what they want; he lets them reap what they sow.

i dont think i understand how "might equals right" assumes coercion. He is all powerful and can do whatever he wants to uphold whatever he wants, thats all i was implying. This is often the Christian justification for how he "hardened the pharaohs heart" just so he could demonstrate his divinity (actually, how is that not coercion?).

I get the whole, "God didnt want to create a bunch of Robots...thats not love" but clearly as we see, some people are more likely to believe than others, and God knew that when he created them, so why couldnt he just abstain from creating the ones that he knew wouldnt "believe"? again what is with this believing thing? why cant he just pop out and show us? talk to us? is this all a game about believing in what you empiricaly (i know you're going hate my choice of words here) shouldnt believe?

if he is such a relational being then why heck doesnt he just show up and talk to us??? why would an omnipotent God limit himself to this 2000 year old book? him outright proving his existence would not make us robots of love! If i show up as the most awesome guy ever at a party, that isnt forcing any of the girls to like me! If God is relational and loves us, why is he so shy?

Pastors ought to be trying to convince you of the clarity of God's existence.

i definitely agree here to some extent...but again, how do we go from: there is some Divinity we cant define to "its most likely the God of a tiny ancient culture in the middle east".

I too find it disturbing that 99% of contemporary Christians neglect the OT. (And not just the OT, but the entire bible!) A Christianity that is informed by only the NT, (and perhaps Psalms and Proverbs), is impoverished. One ought to pay attention to all that by which God makes himself known, and this is especially true for the way God makes known how it is possible to have eternal life.

I think they realize how much it would test their faith to read Numbers, Deuteronomy, Kings and Leviticus... so rather than play with fire they simply go on in their perfect world of an eternally loving, relational God...

[Owl]

Originally Posted by Jennifer

Right.

I think what I am trying to ask here, though, is whether or not a choice actually is a choice or something driven by the inclination already pre-existing inside a person? What is the source of this choice? Is it predetermined or is there actually a will? Can people ever make a choice they were not inclined to already make?

There is no possible way to test that, as far as I can imagine. Because no matter what choice a person makes, we could simply say that he or she made a different choice than expected because something had changed and influenced them to make that choice.

So we do what we already have within us to do. And even when we change, it's because the situation has changed or we've been put under various stresses, leading us to our new choice. All the influences are identified and combined and the choice is output.

(Someone can choose to stop drinking, for example, after a lifetime of choosing TO drink. But they desire to stop because of the things that have occurred to them for drinking, and the experience has changed them enough that now they WANT to stop. People who do things they don't want to do cannot really persist in the new choice, and the imposition of external influence is even more obvious in those situations.)

I'm sorry that is so abstracted, I hope my point is still clear: I am probably dabbling around the edges of the idea of whether there truly is a "free choice" or whether our choices are always products of our internal inclinations, the forces acting on us, and our memory of past experience (i.e. very deterministic).

Your point is perfectly clear.

What is the difference between a "free choice" and an uncaused event?

Originally Posted by Babylon Candle

if this is referring to my flirtation with nihilism...i've retreated from that somewhat ...ive more of leaned towards an idea that ideas should be judged on their utility, logical leaps from the premises and at least descent arguments for the premises. It is not 100% necessary to "prove" everything. I dont have to prove that my hands are here 100% to have a good argument that they're here.

We assign utility to an idea if we think it practical to act as if that idea were true regardless of whether the idea is, in fact, true: it only matters if it works; however, the extent to which we believe an idea works will depend on what we believe to be good. An idea may help us get lots of stuff we want, causing us to assign a high degree of utility to that idea, but, just because it's true that acting in accordance with that idea works to get us what we want, this doesn't mean the idea is true or what we want is good.

Originally Posted by Babylon Candle

you might eat me alive for this. but its the best ive got so far... Ti is my second most energy consumptive function... it both decieves, humors and fascinates me all at the same time... So i often either make irrational Te arguments for something i already believe or I just tire out in Ti and make mistakes.

the problem is that i refuse to believe something just because someone is of authority, so i often try and follow the argument, data myself. if it checks out im on board...its tiring though

I'll do my best no to eat you alive. I'll make sure you're dead first.

Originally Posted by Babylon Candle

well the Christian definition (not sure if theres any other definition!?) is a transgression against God. It can follow from breaking his laws or I guess any act that is against the spirit of the laws? not sure on the expansion of this besides "transgression against God's laws".

OK. But what does it mean to transgress a law of God? What is the law of God, and how does one break it?

Originally Posted by Babylon Candle

yes, i will admit that its clear in the simplicities of "follow this law or I will rebuke you!" "do this _____" "you will be saved from bad stuff if you believe in me" "follow me and do ____, _____ and _____". Its however very unclear on the complexities : "my dying for your sins works in this following way and avoids contradictions and absurdities for the following reasons: ______. " "God is able to be omniscient with your free will, still allowing no contradictions because of ____, _______".


a lot of the complexities have had to be filled in after the fact out. This is a problem. You can't force yourself to "believe". If one finds absurdities or questions how, how will he ever be able to "truly believe and surrender to God". My best example is the million different ideas of how exaclty atonement is achieved with Christ dying on the Cross. Its not that obvious how it works judging from the multitude of ideas on it: satisfaction, moral influence, scape goating, governmental, penal substitution, etc... It just doesnt point to a God that is "revealing" of truth when his own followers have to search in the dark to find suitable arguments for him.

If there were absurdities, then Christianity would be clearly false.

Humans grow in knowledge, and questions naturally arise. If a question is met by a multitude of conflicting answers, this doesn't mean the answer isn't clear. That there are so few, (if any), people who know the answers doesn't mean the answers are hard to know; it could be that no one seeks to know.

Originally Posted by Babylon Candle

Haha, exaclty. If he was better at communicating himself, I doubt anyone would have any problem with him. It seems absurd to think that we would actually try and "thwart" or "transgress the laws of" this all powerful God. Its kind of like: If someone knew that the cashier had a shotgun, it would be stupid to challenge him with a knife. But if people don't know he has a shotgun cocked and loaded, they might be dumb enough to try and hold him up simply out of ignorance. Maybe people transgress against God because he isnt that clear on SHOWING his greatness, divinity etc.

its almost like this is a little game: "lets see who i can convince to believe in me, without ever actually giving them any real tangible REASON to!"

Wait... would you be surprised to find out that people are thoughtless, and because they're thoughtless they do foolish things?

Originally Posted by Babylon Candle

i dont think i understand how "might equals right" assumes coercion. He is all powerful and can do whatever he wants to uphold whatever he wants, thats all i was implying. This is often the Christian justification for how he "hardened the pharaohs heart" just so he could demonstrate his divinity (actually, how is that not coercion?).

You're only coerced into performing an act if you are forced to commit the act against your will. This usually happens when you're threatened with the loss of a greater good for failure to comply with a demand that requires that you give up a lesser good;e.g., "your money or your life." Pharaoh wasn't coerced because he didn't do anything against his will.

Let's say I know you're a jealous lover and physiclly abusive, and i know your girlfriend, (boyfriend?), is less than faithfull. Now say I engineer a scenario where I know your SO will give into temptation and cheat on you, then I tell you about your SO's infidelity. In a fit of rage, you beat the crap of your SO and her/his lover--just like I knew you would. What if I also knew you well enough to know this would make you even more bitter, angry person, and more likely to be suspicious of of any future lovers you may have. In this case, it could be said that I hardened you, but that I didn't coerce you into anything, because what you did you did willingly.

I don't have time to respond to the rest of your post... to be continued.

[mysavior]

I think the idea is that if anything is "free" and left to run wild, then it will eventually spiral out of control.

Like satan.

So there needs to be the promise of pleasure and of pain to keep things bridled.

Maybe we'll all die, and find that there isn't a heaven or hell, only a long line waiting to return to earth 2.0... as princes, or peasants.

Who the fuck knows.

[jamesvl]

How can a benevolent God stand for the existance of a hell with eternal suffering?

God isn't at all benevolent. Patience isn't benevolence. It's patience. A benevolent God would have no need for paradise and damnation. There would be no value in either.

A vengeful God on the other hand, has a use for both.

It's like sitting there listening to an idiot and saying nothing but smiling. You're not benevolent to the idiocy. You're just saying nothing outwardly... however, there always comes a point where you need to just tell them to shut up.

Break the universe into a more graspable reality, and it will change the religion of God for you, making God much simpler to understand.

[Lady X]

yeah...i'm not reading the whole thread but i will never believe in such a thing...ever. i don't buy it. hell is what you make it...you screw up and torment yourself about it...you may pass and relive all of your horrible actions over and over until you grow and move on...and that imo is the only real hell there ever is.

[kendoiwan]

+ "First of all" via YouTube

[kendoiwan]

+ "think about that" via YouTube