"A good God wouldn't have a Hell"

Think about it. Some of them do.
Some of them should know the consequences, but they do it anyway.

Think about those people who live entire lives of crime. You can hear stories from former gang members who will tell you they never thought they would live to age 35.

 

Nope, they commit crimes knowing that if they get caught they go to jail. But its far from certain that they will get caught.

 

After Jesus was crucified and entombed, but before He rose on the third day, He went to preach to the imprisonned.

What do you think that means? What specifically do you think Jesus was actually doing during those three days?

On a side note... why did you feel it necessary to decontextualize my comment into four seperate fragments before responding?

 

No, you are wrong. Anyone who lives an entire life of crime should know they are going to eventually get caught, and most of them do.

They're not really being fully rational, or they are valuing the present moment too much, not able to dwell on the long-term.
Maybe they just lack self-control, or that way of life is all they know. It's not so easy for them to step out of it on a different path.

 

Yes, I essentially said that in the part of my comment that you omitted in your response.

Why did you do that?

 

No they don't.

 

You know what? I think what our disagreement comes down to is not really religious, or about things about the afterlife that can never be proven, but is about what reality is. (I mean reality on earth)

You seem to believe that all of humanity is good and rational, and therefore cannot understand why anyone would end up in Hell.

 

Because your post was too long and full of too many different things for me to take on all at once.

And because I am hesitant to wait too long before responding to a post, because if I do, four or five other posts might appear between your post and my response, and I don't really like that.

I've also had computer freeze-ups (crashes) while writing out long replies, and then everything was lost, which is very frustrating, so I don't like doing that.

 

Nope, I think that those who are irredeemably evil should simply be annihilated from existence because to torture for eternity is pure evil.

 

Judging by your comment, it makes me think you didn't really read everything I have said so far.

I don't really like having to repeat myself.

I will summarize very quickly for you, without wasting the effort to repeat everything I have already stated in this discussion.
I think after the period of punishment is over, those individuals in Hell will have the opportunity to be annihilated from existence, if they so choose. Many of them will not choose that. The eternal element of Hell will be very bad, but it will not be so unbearable that they will all choose annihilation. (However, there might come an eventual point where they will be annihilated whether they want to or not)

It's also very possible God will just let them continue doing more evil so they deserve more punishment, and then it will go on and on for a very long time.

 

Here is something else to consider:
What if the human nature we see on earth is not really the full extent of human nature on display?

What if the full evil human nature of the individual does not become fully on display until there is even greater distance from God?

So things that go on in Hell might be more unimaginable than they are on earth.

That is, the "real you" might be even more evil than it seems to be on earth.

 

you said "I already told you they would not go to hell only just for not believing.'

sounded like your saying good people that do not believe in God won't go to hell to me

 

I can see how it might have sounded like I was saying that, but that is actually a very far thing away from what I was saying.


In a very (extremely) theoretical sense (and I don't want to give the wrong message here), a good person could go to heaven.
What I was trying to point out is that's far less likely to actually happen than most people think.
Which is why it would be extremely misleading to say that "good people will go to heaven".
Because then everyone is going to say "I'm good, so I'm going to go to heaven. I don't need any special saving".
If you're saying that, then there's a very high statistical probability you're not actually going to be getting into heaven.

Someone who is more evil than you, and at least recognizes they are such, and is trying to change, has a higher chance of getting into heaven.

 

bad people that ask forgiveness are allowed into heaven, but not all good people?

oh, I can say 100% I am not going to this heaven of the bible, as it doesn't exist

even if it did, I would not want to go if I had to worship some God that went by the name Jealous and did so many evil things, like not allowing my family and loved ones in cause they did not beleive

 

The problem is, most of those "good" people are not actually good enough.

The bad people were granted forgiveness because they were trying to change. They might still not have gotten to the point of being fully good but their heart is on the right path to change (which they will most certainly achieve in the afterlife).

If you think that is "unfair", there are several verses that address this.
Luke 7:47, Matthew 20:10-16

 

Okay, let's forget heaven for just a moment.

If someone offered you a supernatural means of changing, wouldn't you want to change to make sure you would not deserve hell (if a hell did exist) ?

I'm not even talking about doing so to avoid hell, I mean you would want to know that you wouldn't deserve to go there if it did hypothetically exist, even though you were positively certain it did not exist.


It's just amazing that people go to "self help" gurus to try to be "better people", but they think the idea of Jesus is a total bunch of phooey.

Or that we should put all children through tertiary education to make them "better people".

 

Let me give you an analogy. Two people knock on my door and assault me. One of them kicks me once and the other one kicks me twice.
Later that day, the one who kicked me twice comes back to my door, falls on the ground at my feet and begs forgiveness.
I call the cops and have charges filed against the other one.
The person who kicked me once goes to jail, while the person who kicked me twice gets forgiven.
Now, some might say "that is not fair". But it is my right to forgive the one and not the other.

 

If your family members do not go to heaven, it will be because they do not deserve to.
If you go to heaven even though you do not deserve to, it will be because you were given special forgiveness.

 

and they are good people, so if they would not go, why would I want to go?

 

First off, I do believe the biblical hell is a place of fire and torment and there is a lot of biblical support to this idea. If you disagree, we can debate about that.

Not even Hitler tortured the Jews non-stop. He did put them in horrendous conditions and killed millions of them. But he never actually constantly tortured them like in the middle ages non-stop. And no dictator has done this. They have employed torture but they didn't use it on every single dissident, and try to keep them alive all the time just to keep torturing them. Even the worst dictators didn't have the heart for hell. As much as I hate Hilter, I would just feel sorry for the guy being tortured for eternity. Its just sadistic and does no good.

So what do we do instead of hell? For the worst of the worst people, like Hitler, or Stalin the best approach might just be to execute them. Just end their existence. Death penalty. That is what we do in our country and it works, and its justice.

For people who are bad, but not the worst, I also don't have any sadistic desire to torture them. Even the people who have wronged me, I would not wish torture on them for eternity. We should try to reform them. Help them be better people. Maybe that means some tough love where you punish them for a while but the goal should be to help them. They should also try to atone and apologise for what they did to their victims.

Maybe some people don't want them to be helped. I'd just put them in a neutral place like earth where they can exist and have their own lives. When they are tired of it, then they can end their existence. Or they can get with the program and go on to do better things.

 

Do you have any evidence that the biblical hell would be a place of non-stop torment far worse than anything that has ever happened on earth?

I think we can agree it will be very bad, and there will be a lot of suffering, but to describe it as a constant Medieval-style torture chamber that is incessant and never ends is something different entirely.

It's also very likely different people will suffer different amounts, it won't be a one-size-fits all.

 

what do you think hell is?

 

That would not be divine justice. Death would be far, far too easy on them, considering everything they did.

If I were God, it would seem like the just thing to do would be to precisely calculate exactly their level of responsibility for all the atrocities that were committed under them, and then make them suffer the sum of what all their victims had to go through. Which might last for a million years.

Then all their victims (even if they were in hell) would get the benefit of being able to watch the suffering on live video. And while they were suffering in hell, they could take some small joy in the knowledge of God's divine justice.

If a victim said they do not want their persecutor to suffer for what was done to them, then I would not punish the persecutor for that.

 

Well, we can't know exactly.

But there are numerous hell-like situations on earth that I feel like are likely going to be analogous to what the afterlife hell would be like.

I can provide some links to other threads if you want. There are some very very bad situations.

I posted a thread about a prison in Yemen that was so bad the majority of the prisoners were trying to commit suicide.

 

Every single time the bible describes it, the bible straight up describes it as an unending lake of fire. I get that maybe the bible could be metaphorical, but I have to wonder how true that can realy be when in numerous books it describes hell that as a lake for fire. Additionally the bible compares hell to what happened to Soddom and Gamorrah. Additionally, Jesus paid for our sins by underdoing immense physical torture. So everything in the bible points to the bible being a place of unending physical torment. If you don't want to believe that I understand why. But it is the most reasonable interpretation of the bible reading it objectively without bias.