Heathen Dawn

You place here a false dilemma. You say: either the Christian system, or a God who admits people to heaven after they say sorry after death. But I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t believe any misdeed goes unpunished. There is a long time in the fire (or whatever it is) for the Hitlers and the Stalins of the world. But, unlike in Christianity, and unlike in chess, there is no situation that earthly misdeeds are irreversible and afterlife punishment unstoppable. Because unending punishment serves no purpose at all (except for the obvious one of being a scenario that scares the preacher’s congregation into belief and obedience).

So do I. But I think the Christian system is absurd too. Instead of both these absurdities, I have from the Spiritualists what they have gleaned about God’s all-wise plan for reward, punishment and salvation. And that I can certainly believe is a Divine Setting!

That’s not what’s going to happen. You’re going to stand in front of God and all your life flashed before your eyes, you’re going to see all you’ve done wrong, and say, “for this, O God, send me away from you!” And then you are, for as long a period as it is required to purge the sins away, to make the inner change necessary for admission into the abodes of bliss.

Mageth

But, according to you, "going to hell" was still their choice. If God's not responsible for sending them to hell, why should the murderer be?

(BTW, I agree, of course, that a murderer is guilty of depriving the victim of their (remaining) life).

And when God drowned all those poor souls in the Flood, he prevented any chance of any of those people from changing their mind. Oh, I'm sure you'll answer "But God knew none of them would ever turn around" or some such. But then how about natural disasters? Or manmade disasters? Or murders? God allows those things to happen, when people are killed that might later in life "see the light". Where do those people end up?

And that leads us to: if someone is murdered or otherwise dies an early death, does God know whether or not they would have "changed their mind" if they'd lived longer? (If you answered in the affirmative on the question about those that died in the flood, then you'd just about have to answer in the affirmative here). And, if God knows someone that died an early death would later have changed their mind, does he still allow them to "go to Hell"?

So, either God doesn't know if someone would change their mind if they lived longer (in which case God is as guilty as the murderer in denying them the chance in cases like the Flood, and all other cases of "early death") OR God does know, in which case the question arises: is God justified in allowing those that would have "changed their mind" if they lived longer to go to Hell anyway?

Just some questions to think about...

Eckz

That doesn't change the fact that they WOULD go to Hell if they existed right? I don't see how that has any bearing.

post tenebras lux

But how old do you have to be before you can be "saved" Magus?

Or, rather, how young? I have this thing about dead babies.

If you want to keep the dead babies biblical for now, you can reference what happened to the souls of the innocents massacred by Herod in an effort to kill Jesus, or the earlier innocents killed by the Pharaoh in an effort to kill Moses.
[That's the same Moses whom God forgot to mention the role that hellfire and damnation played in His scheme of things to, which is a bit odd given the nature of the books Moses wrote with His help.]

You will note that God ensured that neither Jesus nor Moses were harmed (and it actually did Moses quite a bit of good), but what fate did God have in store for the other babes-in-arms, who weren't forewarned and spirited away with divine blessing, but were left defenseless against Herod's, and the Pharaoh's, soldiers?

Luxie

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How can there be any trust given to a being who describes its existence and the rules of its existence in such a manner as to be able to be interpeted in any of a thousand different ways? I'm sure you've noticed that many people read and interpet the same passages in the Bible in different ways...and that there is absolutely no way to determine which interpetations are the right ones. There are no red or green flags that opo up to let anyone know they are on the right track...and according to your God, everyone had better get the answers absolutely right or else...

What does it matter if the end result is eternal pain and agony or extinction? Either way, God is a monster for having created such a system in the first place...all the more so by deliberately obscuring the "path to Heaven" to the degree that it is impossible to objectively tell the difference.

Your version of God has a very nasty threat hanging over everyone's heads--"Believe in me or suffer/die." It is a threat that he put there in the first place. It is a bat that He threatens to use to keep everyone in line--and there is no truely clear instruction about how to avoid it. None of the people outside the chosen few who guessed right are going to be able to avoid this giant baseball bat...it's going to hit them regardless of their degree of faith because they didn't believe "the RIGHT way".

And you don't see what is wrong with this picture? :banghead: