ryanm

I apologize if I was not clear, but the reason I reposted the Carlin quote is because I think the answer is implicit in his statement, and, for the common man with reasonable sensibilities, doesn't need to be spelled out. However, I'll try to be more explicit about that below.

Simply calling Hell "punishment" is letting God off a little too easy. Certainly, punishment is not inconsistent with love. I may punish my child out of love, hoping that the punishment will have a corrective effect and deter any future misbehavior. Few people would disagree with this approach. However, if I put my child in a furnace, crank up the heat, take away his ability to die, and never give him opportunity to repent, then I would be considered a MONSTER. If you would like to argue that God's love is mysterious, or manifested in unexplainable ways, or different from our conception of love, then you've simply redefined love and we're no longer talking about the same thing. If you would like to do so, then feel free to give your comprehensive definition of love, and we can argue whether we agree on it, and whether it actually says something meaningful and important about God. I suppose that you could try to salvage the idea of unconditional love by saying "Well, God still loves you in his heart, but he can do really horrible things to you nonetheless. Torturing a person forever may be a terrible act, but it says nothing about the amount of "love" He feels." Again, love here is rendered meaningless, as we recognize love by its behavior towards its objects.

So, yes, I would agree with your statement that Hell as it is traditionally understood (and here, once more, feel free to give a different definition of Hell as we might not be working with the same understanding) is not compatible with the idea of an unconditionally loving God. That said, I still think an unconditionally loving God is improbable given the amount of unexplainable suffering going on in this earthly world alone. Hellish conditions can be found all around us if we care to look for them. Ignoring the plight of man by saying that all things eventually work for good is begging the question by assuming that there must ultimately be a grand design of good and love behind each event. Since these plans are "hidden" from us, then we can't reasonably consider them when arguing whether love is present in this or that situation. And I admit that in the end we are dealing only with probabilities, not certainties, concerning the love of God. But at the moment, because of the reasons outlined above, I don't find unconditional love a convincing attribute of the Christian God.

This verse is embedded in a very interesting chapter on God's sovereignty and plan for humankind, but I'd rather not open up that can of worms unless there is a specific aspect of it that you would prefer to talk about. I don't want this to seem like a dodge, so I'll gladly retract my earlier use of it and not accept it as an argument for my position. I don't have very strong opinions about it relative to our current conversation, so I'll leave it to someone else if they would like to touch on it.

Please see above that I have chosen to retract the verse, and hopefully I've more explicitly stated my reasons for being skeptical of divine unconditional love. I apologize for not being clearer the first time, and as always, I'm here to learn, so I'm open to changing my mind if you can tip my scales in the opposite direction.

Clivedurdle

Actually, maybe God's love is unconditional - God so loved the world he sent his son that whosoever believed on him would receive the gift of everlasting life.

Nah, there's a condition there - people have to respond to the love.:devil1:

Clivedurdle

What must I do to be saved? Give up everything and follow me - another condition.

And does not God's holiness impose a condition - that the only way to circumvent it is by a perfect sacrifice?

Very deep stuff this!

Adonael

What you have are unargued assumptions that are being passed on as if they were truisms. the problem with this is that your particular assumption is not a truism. the problem of hell is a controversial area among both theologicans and philosophers.

Since this particular talk of hell concerns Craig's comparision,then we'd should probably stick to Craig's idea of hell and hence there is no fire and a man with a pitch fork. for Craig, this language is metaphorical and hell is something of a seperation from God.

As for the rest of the pertinent talk, I think it heads too far into philosophy for this forum's purpose and so i will not venture there. However, I encourage you to observe my upcoming debate with a user named "wiploc" in regards to the problem of evil.

Autonemesis

The state of another being's mind affects me not at all, until that being takes action as a result of that mental state. So talk about how much love is in God's heart may as well be talk about angels on the head of a pin.

Put another way: if this world is the best that God's unconditional love can do, who needs it?

Minimalist

Then you need to see George Carlin so we can all get on the same page.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o

Szkeptik

So according to Craig I'm already in hell?

ryanm

My argument is hardly weakened by taking away the fire and certainly not the pitch fork. Put your kid in an isolated cage, don't ever talk to him, take away his ability to die or escape, and you're still a monster. The point is that torture no matter what its form is immoral when there's no chance of death or reform, especially when there are other logical alternatives available.

Adonael

I still don't see why this is conditional and you have yet to argue that. I have pointed out that even if it is true, it does not necessarily show that God's love is conditional. it shows an inconsistency.

One of the more glaring problems is with your analogy of me doing such and such to my kid and God. You should understand that analogies, like yours, only work because of their similarites. God is said to be the source of obligation and goodness, but I'm just its commanded actor. So, where is the similarity?

ryanm

I've tried to be sufficiently clear, and yes I have argued why I consider God's love to be conditional if he is indeed sending people to hell, but I'll try again.

As I see it, there are two options (unless you want to further argue for a different conception of hell), neither of which result in an unconditionally loving God:

1. Hell exists, and God doesn't love the people He sends to hell, therefore his love for them must be conditional. This is true because in order for God to love unconditionally He must love regardless of person, place (earth, heaven, hell), or time. I already outlined why I believe sending people to hell is immoral, but you attempted the following criticism:

Of course I understand that analogies only work because of their similarities. That's what an analogy is, a similarity. The important question is whether the similarities exist at the critical points of comparison, and for the purposes of my argument I believe they do. The reason the analogy makes sense is because the bible makes explicitly clear that God is good, and unless you want to render that a meaningless tautology that says nothing significant about God's character, there must be a point of similarity between a good God and a good man. Otherwise we can't make any sense of the statement "God is good." The bible also makes clear (I John 4:7-8 for instance) that God is love. It even takes pains to explain to us what love is in I Corinthians 13:4-8. I do not think these characteristics are consistent with sending someone to hell, fire or not. When you love someone, you want what's best for them, and when in your power, do what's best for them. God, on the other hand, seems to defy Kant and use people as a means to prove his power rather than as ends in themselves. That's fine, God can do what He wants, but He doesn't love in any sense of the word that we would recognize.

2. As you have pointed out, the other option is admitting that there is an inconsistency with unconditional love and sending people to hell, and therefore denying hell's existence. I mentioned reasons in an earlier post why I would still not regard God's love as unconditional in this case, and you said they introduced philosophical issues that shouldn't be argued here. So perhaps you'll bring them up in your debate with wiploc (which I look forward to) and we can mention them there.

In the end, I feel that the differences in discussions like these arise from how much leeway or excuses one is willing to grant to a supposedly unconditionally loving God. Having left Christianity and looking back on it from the outside, I can't help but see the Christian's unconditional reverence for God as something similar to battered wife syndrome. "I know he beats me horribly, but I've come to realize that I deserve it." It's hard to reason that we really do deserve it. I think many people receive unjustifiable punishment in this life alone, regardless of whether there's a hell or not. Perhaps you (or other religious folk) believe otherwise, and that may be the irreconcilable difference.