Ebonmuse

My view is that God, if such a being existed, would not be exempt from our moral judgment. Why on earth would it be otherwise? He is, presumably, a free-willed moral agent (again, if he exists). Simply because he's more powerful than us does not take away our right to express approval or disapproval of his actions; morality by its nature must apply to everyone or it wouldn't be morality.

Theists believe this too, in fact. How many times do you hear them affirm that "God is good"? Well, that statement implies a moral judgment of God, does it not? But if we can judge him to be good, we can also judge him to be evil. If you have much familiarity with apologetics, you may have noticed they only run to the "we can't judge God" defense when an atheist accuses him of doing something evil. But then they return to church every week and sing his praises. If a theist really believed that God was beyond our ability to judge, to be consistent said theist would have to admit that he has no basis for regarding God as either good or evil, and could only regard him as morally ambiguous.

The age-old problem is that, if God and God alone is the ultimate source of morality, then there is no morality. Whatever God's whim is on a given occasion is what goodness consists of, and that makes goodness a meaningless term. If he were to order that women who are raped must marry their rapist, that nonbelievers be massacred, or homosexuals to be executed - as indeed he does in the Bible - then those things would be good. I think you can agree that this is absurd. Alternatively, if God has any reasons for making the moral judgments he does, then those reasons are the objective standard (which atheists can appeal to just as well as believers), and God is simply the medium by which they are expressed.

Since I don't believe there is any such being, obviously I don't expect to ever be placed in that situation. But I like to believe that if I were, I would be able to choose Hell. Expecting to win against an omnipotent being is futile, but I think my own conscience would not allow me to tolerate being happy in Heaven with the comparative few for all eternity while the vast majority, including many of my friends, loved ones, and people I admire enormously - is suffering in endless, eternal torment - or worse, to actually be expected to worship the being who is inflicting that pointless torture on people. To be in Heaven under those circumstances would be Hell.

(Something to think about: Maybe this world is the ultimate test? Maybe there is a god and he only wants people who let themselves be guided by reason and their own conscience, who won't back down from what they know is right even when threatened with eternal torture?)

Black Leaf

I suppose that is possible, but that seems like on hell of a test. It is a little unfair ( ok screw that: really really evilly unfair) to hold a gun to someone's head, threaten to kill them, and then when they don't do it, say "Just kidding!" I wonder under that senario what happens to all the people that worshiped God so blindly.

I don't think hell is just. Period. No one deserves that! I mean, no one, not Hitler, not Stallin, no one deserves tourture. Its against the universial declaration of human rights! Now you want to talk about tourture for all of eternity.

capnkirk

Please allow me to elaborate on that:

The most profound spiritual and cognitive crisis in Hebrew history was the Exile. Defeated by the Chaldeans under Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC, the Judaean population was in part deported to Babylon, mainly the upper classes and craftsmen. In 586, incensed by Judaeans shifting their loyalty, Nebuchadnezzar returned, lay siege to Jerusalem, and burned it down along with the Temple. Nothing in the Hebrew world view had prepared them for a tragedy of this magnitude. The Hebrews had been promised the land of Palestine by their god; in addition, the covenant between Yahweh and Abraham promised Yahweh's protection. The destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple, and the deportation of the Judaeans, shook the Hebrew faith to its roots.

The literature of the Exile and shortly after betrays the despair and confusion of the population uprooted from its homeland. In Lamentations and various Psalms , we get a profound picture of the sufferings of those left in Judaea, who coped with starvation and massive privation, and the community of Hebrews wandering Babylon. In Job, a story written a century or so after the Exile, the central character suffers endless calamities— when he finally despairs of Yahweh's justice, his only answer is that Yahweh is not to be questioned.

Hebrew religion shifted profoundly in the years of Exile. A small group of religious reformers believed that the calamaties suffered by the Jews were due to the corruption of their religion and ethics. These religious reformers reoriented Jewish religion around the Mosaic books; in other words, they believed that the Jews should return to their foundational religion. While the Mosaic books had been in existence since the seventh or eighth centuries BC, they began to take final shape under the guidance of these reformers shortly after the Exile. Above everything else, the Torah, the five Mosaic books, represented all the law that Hebrews should follow. These laws, mainly centered around cultic practices, should remain pure and unsullied if the Jews wished to return to their homeland and keep it.

So the central character of post-Exilic Jewish religion is reform, an attempt to return religious and social practice back to its original character. This reform was accelerated by the return to Judaea itself; when Cyrus the Persian conquered the Chadeans in 539, he set about re-establishing religions in their native lands. This included the Hebrew religion. Cyrus ordered Jerusalem and the Temple to be rebuilt, and in 538 BC, he sent the Judaeans home to Jerusalem for the express purpose of worshipping Yahweh . The reformers, then, occupied a central place in Jewish thought and life all during the Persian years (539-332 BC).

Beneath the surface, though, foreign elements crept into the Hebrew religion. While the reformers were busy trying to purify the Hebrew religion, the Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, creeped into it among the common run of people. Why this happened is anyone's guess, but Zoroastrianism offered a world view that both explained and mollified tragedies such as the Exile. It seems that the Hebrews adopted some of this world view in the face of the profound disasters they had weathered.

Zoroastrianism, which had been founded in the seventh century BC by a Persian prophet name Zarathustra (Zoroaster is his Greek name), was a dualistic, eschatological, and apocalyptic religion. According to Zoroaster, the universe is divided into two distinct and independent spheres. One, which is light and good, is ruled by a deity who is the principle of light and good; the other, dark and evil, is ruled by a deity who is the principle of dark and evil. The whole of human and cosmic history is an epic struggle between these two independent deities; at the end of time, a final battle between these two deities and all those ranged on one side or the other, would permanently decide the outcome of this struggle. The good deity, Ahura-Mazda, would win this final, apocalyptic battle, and all the gods (Yahweh was considered to be one of the 'good' gods) and humans on the side of good would enjoy eternal bliss.

Absolutely none of these elements were present in Hebrew religion before the Exile. The world was governed solely by Yahweh; evil in the world is solely the product of human actions—there is no "principle of evil" among the Hebrews before the Exile. The afterlife is simply a House of Dust called Sheol in which the sould lasts for only a brief time. There is no talk or conception of an end of time or history, or of a world beyond this one. After the Exile, however, popular religion among the Judaeans and the Jews of the Diaspora include several innovations:

Dualism: After the Exile, the Hebrews invent a concept of a more or less dualistic universe, in which all good and right comes from Yahweh, while all evil arises from a powerful principle of evil (Satan). Such a dualistic view of the universe helped to explain tragedies such as the Exile.

Eschatology and Apocalypticism: Popular Jewish religion begins to form an elaborate theology of the end of time, in which a deliverer would defeat once and for all the forces of evil and unrighteousness.

Messianism: Concurrent with the new eschatology, there is much talk of a deliverer who is called "messiah," or "anointed one." In Hebrew culture, only the head priest and the king were anointed, so this "messiah" often combined the functions of both religious and military leader.

Otherworldliness: Popular Judaism adopted an elaborate after-life. Since justice does not seem to occur in this world, it is only logical that it will occur in another world. The afterlife becomes the place where good is rewarded and evil eternally punished.

While the reformers resist these innovations, they take hold among a large part of the Hebrew population. And it is from this root—the religion of the common person— that a radical form of Yahwism will grow: the religion of Jesus of Nazareth.

So, contrary to the prevailing Xtian belief that Judaism had ALWAYS embraced the dualistic otherworldly concept of an afterlife containing both a heaven and a hell, we find that it was a much more recent addition, and was an adaptive appropriation from another (polytheistic) religion that considered Yahweh a minor god in its pantheon.

IMHO, this inconvenient truth renders all the arguments thus far presented in this thread MOOT.

Ebonmuse

Beats me. It was just an idle thought, really; I personally don't believe in any gods at all, but if I had to pick, I do think that scenario might explain some things better than any of the currently existing world religions.

I agree. A finite being cannot commit an infinite crime, so no act a human being could ever commit justifies unending torment, and suffering should only be inflicted on a person with the intent of causing them to change wrong behavior. Causing suffering merely for its own sake is the definition of evil. I've said many times that the God of the Bible, if he existed, would be a psychopath.

Magus55

Not according to Immanuel Kant.

And of course, you just dwell on physical torture, and assume thats automatically what Hell is. Hell is locked from the inside. The true Pain of Hell comes from rejecting God. Spending eternity without His favor, knowing you could have been saved but you gave it up. The mental anguish of what you lost is where I think the true pain is. Jesus even parallels this on the cross. Did He scream out to God over the physical pain of the cross? Having his body punctured, suffocated, and shredded? No, He cried out to God for abandoning Him and breaking their bond.

Luke also touches on the concept of degrees of punishment. Your average unbeliever won't go through the kind of anguish that Hitler or Stalin would.

Black Leaf

Well, if the emotional trama is the real punishment, why all the need for the fire and brimstone then? Why the physical tourture eliement? Some people really would choose to be seperated from God if not for the eternal tourture aspect. Why not just create an earth like existance for eternity without God? Earth is pretty good right now and only looking to get better. I think I could be comfortable here for eternity. I mean, there is SO much more I want to do then I have time to do in my life time.

The physical torture aspect of it is the most distressing to me.

Let me argue your bible story with another bible story. Think of the story of rich man in hell. Did he complain about being seperated from God? No, he complained that he needed water to parch his tounge.

Mageth

Originally posted by Magus55
Not according to Immanuel Kant.

Instead of just mentioning his name, why don't you quote the relevant words of Kant, or at least summarize his take on the subject?

And of course, you just dwell on physical torture, and assume thats automatically what Hell is.

Physical torture, psychological torture, whatever. It's still torture...for eternity.

Hell is locked from the inside.

Great. Then we can simply unlock the door and let ourselves out?

The true Pain of Hell comes from rejecting God.

Once again, I (and other atheists) do not reject God, nor do we choose hell.

Spending eternity without His favor, knowing you could have been saved but you gave it up. The mental anguish of what you lost is where I think the true pain is.

And it all is in God's plan! If he didn't want it that way, if he didn't want us to suffer for eternity, he could make other arrangements, after all.

Jesus even parallels this on the cross. Did He scream out to God over the physical pain of the cross? Having his body punctured, suffocated, and shredded? No, He cried out to God for abandoning Him and breaking their bond.

Something he knew would happen, readily chose, and which lasted, for him, only an instant in time, which he knew in advance it would. Big deal.

Now, if I get to Hell and Jesus is there, I will be impressed by his sacrifice.

Luke also touches on the concept of degrees of punishment. Your average unbeliever won't go through the kind of anguish that Hitler or Stalin would.

Great. I only have to suffer, say, half as much as Hitler...for all eternity. That's so comforting. God's such a loving, kind God.

Ebonmuse

So much the worse for Immanuel Kant, then. (Argument from authority much?) A finite being can only commit a finite crime, and a human being cannot commit any crime at all against a perfect, omnipotent god who lacks nothing and needs nothing.

No sweat, then. If I die and find myself there, I'll just say, "Well, I guess I was wrong after all, oh well," and then leave.

Silent Acorns

If I were to read the Bible under the assumption that the god it describes actually exists and that the Bible is an accurate account of what this god wants me to know about him, the universe and me, I would have to conclude that the book is a collection of anti-Satan/pro-Yahweh propaganda literature.

From this point of view it is easy to imagine a very powerful being who exagerates his power and goodness in an attempt to court favour among us at the expense of his chief rival Satan. As such, it is clear that any claims that Satan would torture us for eternity in Hell should not be taken seriously. Why would Satan harm his supposed supporters? The character of Satan, as described in the Bible, is so over-the-top ridiculous that it begs the question, "how can we be sure that Satan isn't the good guy in this story?" If Yahweh had but a fraction of the power and benevolence he pretends to have in the Bible, Satan wouldn't still be around to tempt us.

Therefore, if he exists, Satan is probably just the victim of a blatent Yahweh-wing media bias.

Magus55

The earth is pretty good right now? What alien planet are you talking about? You mean good is where millions of children die of starvation, while the filthy rich die of overeating? Or how about the millions of people getting murdered on a daily basis? What about the millions of people dying from excrutiating disease like cancer? Is that good? The Earth will never be good with humans controlling it. We will always keep it screwed up. Science will not stop the problems of the world, no matter how advanced it gets. That may seem like a bleak view on life, but thats reality - you all are so fond of emphasizing reality. The reality is this world is a terrible place to live for most people.