"A good God wouldn't have a Hell"

No such entity.

 

From KAZENATSU, who responded to a quote asking if this thread was limited to Christians:

Then, in the quoted box, from the preceding post:

"I don't think you really understand the teachings of JESUS. If you did, I am thinking you would probably not be saying that.
Take a guess who is going to be the judge when it comes time to decide whether you are going to be thrown into Hell."-- KAZENATSU.

More evidence of my posit (post # 369, from the lower qtr. of pg 15) that kazenatsu is insincere in his arguments.

 

From their perspective, I don't know, dealer's choice. Some think that the end of life is the end, no continuation such as reincarnation, hell or something in between incarnations. Another point of view: according to the Egyptians and the late Rudolph Steiner, the afterlife cycle includes a trip out into the cosmos, with stoppoffs at various planets and stars.

I agree. But that's the way brainwashing by dogma works. Religious conviction can seem like an addiction. Intolerance of different belief is an exaggerated reaction based on perception of individual spiritual experiences and reinforcement from affirmative narratives by other witnesses, which in aggregate then seem like incontrovertible proof that such dominions are valid and real. Disagreement and rejection are viewed as unthinkable and unacceptable.

 

God created humans with the potential to place themselves in a hell or heaven.

He has nothing to do with it, personally.

 

Some near death experiencers are shown details about hell that may offend many deeply religious people who want to see vengeance on the people who annoy them....

https://www.near-death.com/experiences/gay/christian-andreason.html#a14

 

That is such a stupid post.

You weren't even thinking about what you wrote.

In your extremely prejudiced mind you seemed to automatically equate reference to the teachings of a historical figure to supernatural deity.

My post was to point out the inconsistency of your post.
(You seemed to claim that the Bible shows Jesus as being a much nicer bloke than God)

This is a thoughtless post on your part.
You are taking my statement out of context. I was responding to someone else.

Because my post that you quoted was in response to the subject brought up by someone else, there is no contradiction.

Do you understand? Yes or no?


Here, I'll make this easier:

As you can see, I'm not really the one that started this line of conversation about a specific religion.

My post was more to point out the ignorance/stupidity and inconsistency of someone else's post.

 

Again, I think that's sort of getting off-topic from what this discussion/argument is meant to be about.

The opening post tried to make the argument that a good God can send people to Hell, hypothetically. But now you seem to be bringing up a different (although related argument) of "How can a good God send people to Hell for not believing in him".

Do you understand how your question is off-topic in this thread?

Besides from that, I have already repeatedly linked to another thread in this long thread that answers your question. I can't be bothered and I'm not going to waste my time and energy to find it now. I already posted the link twice. I'm going to refuse to do so again. Why keep repeating things if they are just going to get ignored because the discussion is so long?

 

I took a look at your post #349. I could not see anything in that post that was valid. Except that it was referring back to your post #332, so let me try to look at that.

Unfortunately your post is kind of long and will require a complicated explanation, so I will have to address it piecemeal.

That is true. But let me point out that I don't really need to define it to make my point in this thread. Do you understand that?

I can present my argument, and then you, understanding what that argument is, can then determine with your own subjective opinion whether that God is still good.

What you are proposing seems to be a different strategy. I am not sure how effective your strategy would be, since what you are asking me to do is kind of complicated. It by itself could be the basis for another separate thread, even longer than this one. For one thing, we don't really need to define the overall morality of what is good, we would only need to do so as it relates to the specific issue in this argument.

What would be the point of me trying to define that? Are you asking me for an objective "proof" of morality (or a specific point)? That is something even renowned philosophers have struggled to do.
I suppose I can see how that could strengthen my argument in an intellectual sense, but pragmatically in discussion forum like this, I think it would just be far too complicated and distract from my main argument.
I don't think it's essential to make my basic argument here for casual use.

I don't think you need me to provide you with a definition for you to be able to determine if something is good.

That sort of almost sounds like extremely lazy mental thought where you are just going to stubbornly refuse to accept any argument unless I spoon-feed you all of the cumbersome logical presuppositions required to arrive at the conclusion. I think you yourself are capable of coming up with some basic definitions for the purpose of the argument, and deciding whether something can still be "good".

 

If you're talking about the concept of moral relativity, and you actually believed that, then I would put this to you: In that case it would be completely meaningless to talk about "a good" or "bad" God. That would make my argument (and any argument against it too) a moot point, and I'm not going to bring up the complicated issue of "moral relativity" here.

I really don't understand what your point is. What are you trying to get at?

Are you trying to disprove my argument by claiming the existence of moral relativity?

 

The point of the argument in the opening post was that even atheists can recognize that it would be hypothetically possible for a God to be good and still have the existence of a Hell.

That it need not merely be dependent on what your personal views are or what your particular religion is.

 

I think everyone here, if they are intellectually honest with themselves, can still answer that question for themselves, and my argument will still be valid.

You seem to presume there is no way to logically determine whether a good God could have a Hell, because there is no foundation on which to objectively decide what good and bad is.
But I would rather hold that there is something innate that would allow people to recognize that this is good, assuming they can follow a logical argument.

Imagine if you tried to apply the same argument you are using right now with me with every other political topic. That would be absurd, wouldn't it?

 

I don't want this argument to get too bogged down with details. I would agree that the nature of Hell would be kind of an important point, very relevant to this argument.
I think we can still have this argument leaving the nature of Hell kind of vague. For the sake of simplicity, we could just define Hell as involving some type of extreme and very long-lasting suffering.

 

Not if the political argument was that such-&-such, "is GOOD for the economy," or, "is in the public GOOD." Would you say that, in that case, wanting to define the public good would be, "absurd?"

 

Could you explain what the difference is?
I don't think I understand the meaning of what you're trying to say.

 

That would seem to be nearly half of the political discussions on this forum.

I do see your point, but unfortunately to argue about definitions of what is good would be an even more complicated argument.
I mean, I guess I might be willing to discuss it a little bit here as long as it doesn't get too long and complicated, and as long as we do not need to be too precise, if we can agree on some general points.

The question here would be whether causing people or letting people suffer can ever be a "good" thing, when we are talking about situations where that suffering will not improve the person who is suffering.
Would you agree with that simplification?

 

No; I think it's a given that suffering can be beneficial, have purpose: look at how many people willingly engage in athletic training.

It's the other part, that you seem to want to call, "too complicated," that is the crux: what suffering, for what improvement, in other words, is it justifiable?

 

I don't see any definition of god in your OP. There seems to be an assumption by you and other people posting here that the particular god you are

referring to is a personal god, similar to the god of Christianity. The most reasonable god to me would be one that has no concern about human beings or

planet earth, because there is no evidence of a god showing any concern for humanity or any other form of life on earth.

There is no evidence of "free will", defined as a thought or action that isn't predetermined. There is a feeling that we make decisions on our own

free will but that perception is not necessarily reality. Why does it make sense to punish a biological machine?

It is well known that certain individuals lack a conscience but they didn't chose that condition. Many individuals are raised in a dysfunctional

environment and become violent or "evil" because of that environment. They did not choose their environment. Why should a god be as

irrational as a human that believes in hell. Everything that we know through science tells us that the universe is rational, not emotional.

 

You can't dismiss the "details" as you describe them since they're fundamental to the question. The fact remains that the people making the statement you present in the OP will have details in mind for the nature of God and Hell when they say it. You can't say the statement is wrong in all cases by just presenting (minimal) details about a different form God and Hell that (you believe) would make logical sense. The fact is that both God and Hell have specific and detailed definitions (albeit countless different versions of both) so treating either as generic abstract concepts in this way simply doesn't make sense.

As an aside, I'd say "discussion" rather than "argument".

 

I think the problem is you didn't define what your hell is. Since it is up to the imagination, hell could be the product of a good god or a vengeful god. The verdict is whatever you think it is. Do souls stay in hell until they repent? Do they live in agony forever? Do souls that were unaware of a god go there? You believe many deserve hell sounds like you have a vengeful god. To judge the morality of hell, which is what you want us to do, we have to know what you think it is and that will reflect on you.

 

Well, that does not mean that my argument is invalid, does it?

I mean, you can't just completely dismiss my argument because of that one issue. Doing so would just be stubbornly looking for an excuse to dismiss it. The logic of saying my argument doesn't mean anything because no specific definition of "good" or "hell" was given, doesn't hold up.

 

Yes, in a hypothetical sense it could, but I believe even you know that is a stretch.

You seem to be claiming my argument is meaningless because we have no idea what "good" or "Hell" is.
I don't believe that's true.

Start with some basic conceptions or perceptions about what you think those two words mean, in a very generalized sense, and I think my argument could still likely still hold.

 

So you think this depends on the exact duration of the suffering. Do you think it would make such a huge difference to the argument whether it lasts for eternity and all time, or whether it merely lasts the length of several lifetimes?

Why don't we separately examine the possibilities?

 

related older thread that might answer this issue:
a lot of the misunderstandings about Christianity come from a lack of wisdom about human nature

 

It sounds like you are trying to make this a very complicated issue, or saying that this is a very complicated issue.

But the level of how complicated you are making it would make it probably make it impractical for most of us to have this discussion.
Since we don't actually necessarily know all these details for certain.

So what are we going to do, just not think about it? Because it's "too intellectually complicated"?

Is it at least fair to say (in the very general sense) that "a good God could have a Hell", so long as certain conditions were met?
(even though we might disagree a little bit about what exactly those conditions are)

I'm not talking about any extreme interpretation definition of what "Hell" could be, but rather one that conforms at least somewhat loosely to the perception most people have of that word.

 

Well then I guess (according to your argument here), we can't really judge the morality of Hell, since we do not have all the details of precisely what Hell will be and the exact nature of suffering in it.

If that is the case, then atheists cannot really criticize the (hypothetical) concept of a good God having a Hell, but can rather only criticize religions that describe a particular very specific version of Hell.