Should religious folks have a serious objection to hell?

Well of course it is. The others are things you can kinda bounce back from in this context.

I interpreted the passages the fire was everlasting, not necessarily the punishment. Especially since we’re still discussing Gehenna, in which we may actually be discussing soul destruction.

Though we’re comparing two different books of the Bible here, and pretty much all translations agree that Matthew 10-28 is talking about God’s ability to destroy souls, not necessarily a foregone conclusion of what he does to those that have sinned.

Also, because interpreting passages is almost never clear, the Isaiah verse referenced in Mark is specifically for those that have “rebelled” against God. This is consistent with the context the passage in Mark arises, as Jesus is also addressing those that would cause others to challenge the faith of people in the verse before.

I wouldn’t say an eternal punishment for sinners is completely out of scope when talking Biblical canon, but I certainly wouldn’t say that it’s a view that can easily be reconciled with all the different terms regarding the fate of sinners and even when talking fire. John the Baptist even mentioned a “baptism by fire”, so “fire” or “Hellish punishment” might be another tool of purification.

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Honestly eternal fire seems like a pretty handy thing to keep around. I'd imagine the big guy has whatever equivalent of eternal fridges and eternal air fresheners too, but they're just somewhat less relevant to the subject matter.

Just going to point this out, but how is someone without a body going to burn at all? There's no nervous system, no way of sensing pain. All in all, it would be a fairly pointless punishment to toss the soul of a sinner into a fire. I think it's pretty fair to say what happens is a little bit more spiritual/metaphorical than that.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

Except that throughout the Bible events occurring outside the physical plane are described in physical terms - the description Kingdom of Heaven is probably the best known, but God and his angels being able to physically interact with material objects is also an obvious example. This does not, of course, rule out the possibility that descriptions of the afterlife are indeed metaphorical.

The key word here, I think, is "interpreted". Yes, you can interpret the Bible in many ways which don't involve eternal punishment, but you can also interpret it in ways that do, and many people have. That doesn't make them right, but unless you have access to some source that they don't, there's no reason to assume that they're absolutely, certainly wrong, either.

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Heaven isn't technically a kingdom, though. There is no king. And yes, the God and the angels can interact with the material world, but I don't think that goes the other way. I doubt, for example, you could hurt an angel.

I'll agree with you that what matters there is probably interpretation. What we do know is that Hell is the ultimate suffering, and most people view that in terms of physical pain.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

Isn't God basically the King of All Creation?

In any case, physical pain or not, "the ultimate suffering" is still severe suffering (which alone is sufficient to make such a concept pure evil, to my mind, though I'm clearly not operating under strictly Christian morality here).

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Well...this is where it really starts to rely on your definition of the word king. God isn't in charge by right of succession to the throne, He doesn't rule a country, etc. but He's still the supreme ruler, and He's still in charge. This just comes down to semantics, so I retract that point.

The issue of suffering is where we have to agree to disagree. I'm willing to allow those who refuse every chance at redemption to suffer until they do repent. You disagree. We're unlikely to sway each other. I'll just make one point: If it truly helps to set up a place of torment which forces the wicked to see the error of their ways, do you disagree just because you object to the methods? I can understand this, I'm just curious if that's your viewpoint.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

Well, assuming that God is completely omnipotent, there's always an alternative to suffering so there's really no excuse for it.

Assuming He isn't, it depends how much suffering we're talking about and whether it can be avoided. If you have somebody who clearly isn't ever going to repent, then rather than letting them burn forever, it seems like it would be better to just dump them in some kind of artificial paradise where they can't bother anyone else and leave them be, rather than subject them to endless torment.

Better yet, don't create such a person in the first place, but most Christians are metaphysical libertarians so I'm guessing that one won't fly.

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There is, but I believe not even God can work a logical contradiction.

That is to say, He can't make people better directly while preserving free will.

I don't think it should be our business where the unrepentant go. Perhaps it depends on their perception. Perhaps a lack of God is the punishment. I hope not to find out.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

As far as I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong), the general idea is that each and every person is actively sinning. There are no people who are good enough to avoid hell on their own merit - it is possible only by forgiveness of god. Hence the requirement for worship.

Regret does not make the crime go away somehow. It would mean that ultimately, there is no difference between someone who raped little boys but is really sorry now and someone who never done such things. Besides, I think that forgiveness should be granted by those who are actually harmed, not my some unaffected third party. But that might be my rather skewed view on justice.

Anyway, I do respect your views, and they seem to make much more sense than more common ones. But alas, it is not what I see when I try to find some info about this subject myself. Much more often I see various attempts to show hell as existing and justified, somehow. Often coming from the angle of views about morality that is downright scary (shudders). Correct or no - how do I know? And how something so common can be ignored?

I understand that it wasn't directed to me, but hope that you would not mind me answering too. Really sorry if it isn't appropriate to do so.

Personally, I disagree both at methods (and doubt that they can produce genuine repentance anyway. People won't be sorry for the wrongs they did to others, but for being foolish enough to do so and unable to get away), and, more importantly, on the definitions of "wicked" that seem to be commonly used. Not those who actually harmed other people without their consent, but those who broke some arbitrary rule.

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

It's fine, I guess you can join in if Bobby doesn't mind.

We'll never agree on 'methods'. That's a fundamental and basically unending debate. But we can have a meaningful debate regarding whether those methods are effective.

They most certainly are. You see, your mistake is in seeing this from a human perspective. But eternity is a long time. And you're right, that's not true repentance if they're regretting being sent to hell because they don't enjoy it. But where you make your mistake is in thinking that's grounds for leaving hell. If you temporarily accept the common principles of all branches of Christianity as true (which you have to for a discussion like this) then God is omniscient. Sinners can't trick their way out. End of story. There's no distractions, nothing to keep you from your sins. It may take a while, but eventually, I honestly believe almost anyone will repent. Maybe everyone, but I don't pretend to know what happens, so I can't be sure.

Edit: Forgot the second bit. Why do you think harming someone won't be punished?

edited 20th Feb '11 8:26:10 PM by Ultrayellow

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

We evidently have differing definitions of free will, because I see no contradiction there whatsoever. However, the combination of theism and metaphysical libertarianism has never made sense to me and at this point I doubt it ever will.

I consider it my business if I'm expected to worship the God who allows them to go there. I would not worship somebody I believed to be evil.

This is not the scenario being given, and has no relevance here. If that's the extent of their repentance, God will know that they haven't really repented and will deal with them accordingly. The scenario in question was when you have a person who has committed horrible crimes in the past, but is now genuinely repentant.

Of course I don't mind! Honestly, even if I did, I can't think of any reason why I should be permitted to object to that.

And until they do, they must suffer? Really? If anything, this seems far more of a violation of free will to me than simply never creating anybody who will do anything that condemns themselves to Hell.

I'm more troubled by the idea that somebody who has neither harmed anyone nor intends to harm anyone needs to be punished, and I'm also greatly bothered by the idea that people who are no longer capable of harming anyone need to be punished.

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That's a lot to process. I'll answer a few of those, but I'll forget some by the time I'm halfway through my post. Sorry ahead of time.

Why will someone who's never harmed anyone and never will be punished? I mean, I realize that's what a lot of people believe, but I don't. If it isn't bad, a just God wouldn't punish you for it.

I see, you object to the idea of punishing someone who can't do anything bad any more. How will they get better, though? If you don't show them what they've done is wrong, they will not change.

Creating people who could never go to Hell seems massively unethical to me. Especially since such people wouldn't even be people. Human beings are selfish, it's a side effect of free will. What would be the point of people who would never go to Hell? It's just a pointless, unending loop. But again, I don't think we'll agree here.

Edit: Drat. I knew I would forget one. When I said I don't think it should be our business where the unrepentant go, I was speaking in terms of individuals. The way I see it, each case is different, and would be dealt with in a different way. But I do think those who don't repent for their sins will suffer, one way or another. It may be direct, or it may just be painful to know, once and for all, that you're a bad person.

Second Edit: Two. I forgot two. All right, I know you've heard this already, so I'll give a super-brief definition of my view. Free will is the innate ability of a sentient, sapient creature to decide what to make of their life. They, in the end, decide an enormous number of times between themselves and others. The people who mostly chose others get straight into heaven. The people who didn't have to repent first. So if God made people better, it wouldn't be their choice, and they wouldn't have free will.

edited 20th Feb '11 10:12:32 PM by Ultrayellow

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

Hang on, how can an omniscient God be "just" in the Lady Justice sense? If you accept that God can see absolutely everything, then the whole world becomes his Xanatos Roulette. I don't see how there can be "free" choice involved when God can see every possible influence of every decision of everyone.

Looks like a side-effect of scarce resources to me, since that selfishness would disappear in the case of unscarce resources. (Then again, maybe free will does as well.)

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

Sorry for not formulating it better. I did not mean that repentance of those who leave hell is not genuine. What I've meant is that I fail to see how eternal torment can facilitate genuine repentance in the first place. If people do not see that what hey did was wrong in the first place, pain would not change their mind - it would only make them see the one inflicting it as unjust and cruel. It can change behaviour, of course, but that is not relevant to repentance.

Because people can simply say they're sorry and be forgiven. Not that I have anything against forgiveness, but I can't help seeing an implication that it places right belief as more important than any harm taken to others. If two people have acted in absolutely identical way with belief being the only difference, then it implies that harming fellow humans is not the thing being punished.

edited 21st Feb '11 8:28:04 AM by Beholderess

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

The way I see it, God knows all possible outcomes of all decisions made by other beings. But you can choose which path you'll follow, but he'll know of it either way in advance. Think of it as a Choose Your Own Adventure Book which God has read the entirety of, but ordinary people can use.

The Catholics would argue they have a solution for that - Purgatory. For those who repent and die in a state of grace, but still haven't fully compensated for what they've pulled, they get to suffer for it until the last bit of wrongdoing is accounted for. Then they go to heaven. Those that do manage to make up for their sins while still alive, we call saints.

Also, like I said, we don't know who is in Hell aside from Satan. For all we know he may be the only one there (I'm not counting Limbo).

edited 21st Feb '11 11:29:23 AM by Cojuanco

Honestly, I never understood how hell was supposed to make people repent. If anything, all that would do is either cause Stockholm Syndrome and give God a large quantity of souls who are so broken down and insane that theyre incapable of deciding anything for themselves, or he'll have another group that now actively hates him and will continue to refuse out of spite.

Well, for example, several of the sins mentioned in the Bible appear to be victimless actions that are arbitrarily condemned. Homosexuality is the obvious one in Western society, because of the continued controversy that surrounds it.

Do they need to change? Is it not a violation of their free will to demand that they do?

Er... it's difficult to express my point here without going into the "what is free will?" debate, which I want to avoid. But basically, I'm a compatabilist of sorts; I believe in free will but that everything that happens is either predetermined or possibly the product of random chance. By my understanding of the universe, to say that people who could never go to Hell wouldn't be people is essentially saying that all people go to Hell. I realise that this is not what you mean, but that's how little the sentence means to me.

The basic gist of the argument is that if God creates a person, He knows where they will end up, and He's created everything that could possibly influence their decisions which lead them there. They are still exercising the freedom to make their own decisions, but they're doing so within the confines of a universe created by God using the personalities God created them with. Therefore, they were either created so that they'd go to Heaven, or so that they'd go to Hell.

And with that in mind, it's possible that God chooses not to be aware where they'll end up, but to that I say: why would He do that? Why risk sending some people to Hell when He could send them all to Heaven?

Probably not. I don't regard people as having an intrinsic point, anyway. We just are, as are all things. If God created us for a purpose, then I guess our point is to fulfil it, and a pointless human would therefore be one who didn't. But if that point is to be able to suffer in Hell, I don't think I can possibly approve.

Fair enough.

I think there's a limit to how much I can usefully say in these types of debate because to me suffering is always undesirable, no ifs or buts. It would be acceptable to me if the only available alternatives resulted in even more suffering, but not otherwise.

I see your reasoning, but what I don't understand is why God would create people who would, when given the choice between an action that would take them closer to Heaven and an action that would take them closer to Hell, use their free will to choose the latter. I mean, not everyone would. We can be motivated by thoughts other than selfishness.

There is zero chance that a good person, when presented with a choice between "give money to charity" and "kick that puppy over there", would choose the latter. We don't regard this a violation of free will; it would only be one if, in spite of their desire to give to charity, somebody forced them to kick the dog instead.

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I wasn’t flat out denying the possibility, but aside from the Mark passage you mentioned and we explored or passages that have deal with the lake of fire and differing translations of “aeon”, I’m not seeing a lot of canonical support for an eternal punishment. Isaiah and by extension, Mark could mean an eternal punishment, but it certainly doesn’t clearly state that and there’s still strong evidence that the passages are meant for people who “rebelled” against God or actively attempted to cause people to “stumble” in there faith. Compare with Matthew 18:7-9 which has a similar message regarding people who temp others to sin, and chopping off one’s own limbs, gouging out one’s own eyes, etc…

It’s less that and more there are no people good enough to warrant Heaven on their own merit. The “People who don’t go to Heaven surely go to Hell” idea could possibly be built out of multiple passages from multiple books with something of a blind eye taken to the context of each passage, but I wouldn’t call that great support for the idea. Probably why we have ideas such as “purgatory” floating around as well, we’re addressing something that’s a bit more vague then most think.

I think you have a good idea for justice that operates within earth confines. The “after death” part is a bit trickier as its dealing with punishments and rewards that at the very least likely longer than a human lifespan, and probably worse/better than anything we could fathom on earth.

Other problems arise when we allow humans to do the judging in this case, as they can make mistakes. They also don’t have the same sort of insight into one’s actions, motives, thoughts that an omnipresent/omnipotent being does. So, God is less an “unaffected third party” and more an “ultimate judge” in this case.

From a Christian perspective, one could have no fairer judge, though most Christians are fine with things being judged on Christian standards and have reconciled their views with how they believe a just and merciful God should act.

If I may continue to hold onto my soapbox with reckless abandon, The Churches may be operating on “fire and brimstone” ideas of Hell that have been carried over from previous centuries. It takes a while for them to “let go” of certain views. For instance, before 1964 and the Second Vatican Council the official view of Catholics on non-Catholics was that they were all Hell bound heathens.

Furthermore, even once the Churches do let go, or soften views, there seems to be something of a disconnect with the adherents. The Catholic Church, for instance, has never really had a problem with evolution and even sort of embraces is yet,only 58% of Catholics in America support evolution.

Something I’ve also noted about religious web-sites is they are often written to “shoot down” opposing views rather than discuss things from a fair and balanced perspective. It can be difficult to track down sites that try to look at things more objectively. This site goes into great detail the nature of “Hell” as it is in the Bible, though it’s less a wall of text and more a tower.

It can be a bit of a logic head scratcher, but the gist of it is that God knowing what we will do and having the ability to change it does not logically imply that he wants what happens to happens. There’s lots and lots more thought on the subject, some managing to explain how free will exists with an omnipotent/omniscient deity some accepting it does not.

edited 21st Feb '11 4:30:29 PM by Justice4243

Justice is a joy to the godly, but it terrifies evildoers.Proverbs21:15 FimFiction account.

My general experience, theologically, has been that I disagree with non-Christians and I dislike Christians.

So, asside from "unique", what are your views on this subject?

Justice is a joy to the godly, but it terrifies evildoers.Proverbs21:15 FimFiction account.

Religiously I'm a Christian, but in everyday practice I'm a sort of libertarian. I find that both fundamentalists and leftists tend to infringe on individual rights. I'm not quite a mainstrem libertarian, either, as I'm against abortion (I see the fetus/infant as being an individual who deserves individual rights), and I'm not quite sure what to think about the sale of addictive substances. I mainly dislike mainstream Christianity for trying to censor or boycott art, for trying to restrict sexuality, and for producing Westboro-esque clusterfucks, while I mainly dislike mainstream leftism for trying to regulate business, for trying to censor or boycott art, for thinking themselves superior, and for pushing towards an artificial and nasty-sounding Free-Love Future.

Interesting, what are your views on Hell?

Justice is a joy to the godly, but it terrifies evildoers.Proverbs21:15 FimFiction account.

I don't really know. Personally, sounds like a bad idea to me. If I were God, I wouldn't do it. But I'm not God, so, who knows? I'm guessing that when I die, God will just have a brief brainwashing session with me so that I believe whatever I'm supposed to, so it doesn't really matter what I believe or what my opinions are now, so long as they're basically right at some level.