Freethought & Rationalism Archive

luvluv · 04-12-2002, 03:21 PM

Hell is not an imposed state, it is a natural consequence. Hell is not used as coercion in the Bible, it has been used as coercion by priests and preachers. If Hell is not an imposed state, but a state of Total Depravity arrived at by the abuse of free will, is it not right of God to warn us about it?

Your entire idea, as I've told you a few times, is incorrect because you have an incorrect assumption about what Hell is. You don't go to Hell, you become it. Step by step, decision by decision... you abdicate your ability to chose to the pressures of your desires until you lose the ability to resist your desires at all. Your desires proceed immediately to action without having to pass through any "Self" that can make a decision. Hell is the abdication of free will to the desires as a consequence of submitting to your desires. The torment people endure in Hell is a result of being in the company of people who have become, through submission to their desires, total Sadists. The people in Hell torment each other, they are not tormented by God.

Neither God nor any Christian is compelled to argue you out of your misconception of what Hell is. If Hell is what you make it out to be, you have a valid point. It is not, therefore your point, respectfully, is not.

sandlewood · 04-12-2002, 05:36 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:
Hell is not an imposed state, it is a natural consequence.

What do you mean by �natural� consequence in a universe that is supposedly entirely created by God? The consequence was set up by him as the result of what happens to us if we do not choose as he wants. Why can�t it be that we simply pass into non-existence? I would prefer non-existence to torment. But God set up the universe so that I am tormented, regardless of whether I�m tormented by other people or not.

I think there must be as many definitions of Hell as there are Christians. How do you justify your definition?

Quote:

Step by step, decision by decision... you abdicate your ability to chose to the pressures of your desires until you lose the ability to resist your desires at all.

How are Christians any different? Christians have desires, too. And they expect to get their desires when they go to heaven. Isn�t that the whole lure? You will get whatever you want when you get to Heaven? And Christians have desires in this world as well. They want to go to church. They want to worship God. They want to post the Ten Commandments in pubic schools and they don�t want any atheists to be elected to public office. Christians submit to all their desires as well. But you have defined your own desires as being �good� things and atheist desires as being �sadistic� things. As an atheist, what are these desires I�m submitting to that are sadistic and that I�m going to torment others with? Eating fattening ice cream? Smoking cigarettes? And what is this place that the tormenting goes on? Is that place Hell? I thought you said I became Hell. Not a very clear explanation.

Your rules seem to be different than SOMMS�s. He says that you get a ticket to Heaven by seeking God, while you seem to be saying that you get there by not submitting to your desires. Everyone�s got a different answer apparently.

luvluv · 04-12-2002, 07:05 PM

With all due respect, I think atheists use the "God can" argument when dealing with God's supposed moral lackings every bit as gratiutously as Christians use it when discussing creationism.

Here's another sentence I'm oh so happy to have to write (yet again):

It is not the Christian opinion that omnipotence entails the ability to do the mutually exclusive.

I think that every decision that God makes in terms of our characteristics had trade-offs. It is possible that the flip side of free will is that the free will can be misused. Free will misused causes harm to the person who is misusing it. It is possible that the only way to avoid this harm to the person would be to remove free will. I think you guys are assuming omnipotence means that God is, at every step, working from a totally blank palate. That is not the view of most Christians. Once God decided that humans would have free will, his choices were lessened if that free will was to be retained. Free-will without consequences is not free-will at all. And again, I do not know that any being with free-will can ever be immune to the adverse consequences of his own choices. If you choose to hate, hate will destroy your spirit. Are you suggesting that God should have created a world in which hatred is not harmful to the person who does the hating? I don't think that is possible within the boundaries of free will.

Hondo · 04-12-2002, 07:55 PM

luvluv
Once again I find myself in utter amazement of your claims. You say that

Quote:

The people in Hell torment each other, they are not tormented by God.

I have never heard a definition of hell put this way. I'am currently about 3/4 of the way through Dante's Inferno, which to my limited knowledge is a fairily concise picure of the prevailing view of hell. Dante's vision seems to coincide with the hallucinogenic vision of hell presented by John (he of unknown origin) in Revalations. You can present your opinion of hell, but I IMHO believe that most people here are arguing against a more traditional view of hell. Dante clearly views hell as a manifestation/creation of his loving god, a place of infinite justice.

Quote:

Hell is the abdication of free will to the desires as a consequence of submitting to your desires.

Here you seem to miss the point. If this were true, then peoples actions alone would destine themselves to hell. Manson, Hitler, Pol Pot, ad infinitum would surely have no fate but enternity in hell. Yet I have encountered a fairily standard refrain in my search for truth, Manson, Hitler, Pol Pot, ad infinitum will make it to heaven if they accept christ as their savior, christ died for the sins of all. A hell without Manson, Hitler, Pol Pot, ad infinitum, is clearly preferable to a heaven with such maniacs.

From SOMMS

Quote:

The choice each person must make is 'Do I seek God or do I not?' Salvation can be described many ways: 'Belief in God', 'Personal relationship with God', etc. However these things really only come *after* one chooses to seek God.

I as well as most of the others I have enncountered on this forum seem to have made a genuine effort to find the truth. My numerous readings of the bible have left me with the impression that seeking has nothing to do with the concept of salvation. Salvation merely requires blind allegiance.

Hondo

Half-Life · 04-12-2002, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Typhon:
<strong>Free Will and a Free Choice

How many times do we hear some theist rattle on about the nature and necessity for free will in their god's salvation plan, and how this explains away all the lack of evidence in the world for his existence? Frequently, but I don't see why they bring up such an obviously nonsensical point about their collective delusions. I know this may be old hat, but it has come up several times in very recent threads, and I'd love to have some input.

Look at what they are saying:

1. Belief in god = salvation
2. Non-belief, or denial of the worship/existence of god = eternal, everlasting damnation
3. Free will = the freedom to choose either, and suffer the consequences

Now, there is a HUGE flaw in this, big enough to drive a small planet through. A couple actually.

In a system where the outcome is dependent upon the choice made, and the two outcomes are different in such a way that one is a reward, and the other is an almost unimaginable punishment (billed as worse than the worst thing a human could possibly imagine, and we can imagine BAD quite well), there is absolutely NO choice in the matter, unless one is a sadist, and even this, I suppose by the laws of hell, wouldn't work out, you'd just suffer, no gain.

The ONLY way that there could be said to be free will in such an equation was if the same thing happened to you whether or not you chose 1 or 2, as is what you might expect from a just and loving god.

In other words, it is only non-coercion of the worst sort if god says, "Hey, worship me or not, it's your choice. If you choose not to, nothing bad happens to you, I promise, if you choose to worship me, nothing good happens either, it's just a matter of choice for you guys. Choose freely."

Now Christians often retreat back into saying, free will is only the choice to choose between salvation and damnation. If so, then god has a very odd sense of what a free choice is, certainly one that is vastly different from our definition of it.

We would not hold a court that openly allowed a confession of any sort to be taken from a suspect with a gun pointed at their head, and the permission (not just the threat) to fire if the suspect refused to say what was being demanded they confess to, to be a fair or just court. And yet, god, supposedly the paragon of both justice and fairness, demands just this, but on a far more damning and horrific scale.

So then if free will is only the free choice to confess or die (or in this case, be saved or suffer eternal and everlasting torment), god can not be either just or fair, let alone benevolent or merciful.

Perhaps that's why theologians try so hard to obfuscate this point. No one in their right mind would want to worship such a god, out of anything but abject fear, if they really understood this equation. This doesn't even touch on the issue of that for an intelligent, reasonably rational person, to believe in a canonical Christian god is at best difficult and more commonly, ludicrous, but I'll save that for some other post I suppose.

.T.

[ April 11, 2002: Message edited by: Typhon ]</strong>

If we go over the speed limit, we get a ticket whcih is our punishment, if we obey the speed limit, nothing happens. it is still our choice though. Get what I'm saying?

Hondo · 04-12-2002, 08:16 PM

luvluvluvluvlalalalalala

Do you or have you ever stopped to think about what you believe or write?????

Quote:

Are you suggesting that God should have created a world in which hatred is not harmful to the person who does the hating?

IMHO nobody here is suggesting that hatred is to be condoned or supported. Hatred is all consuming, and leads to a horrible disfiguration of the mind, and being. If you are suggesting that atheists and agnostics are haters, and deserve eternal damnation, then you have indeed missed the mark by many, many, AU's.

Quote:

Free will misused causes harm to the person who is misusing it.

Once again you are wrong, let the haters of the world suffer the consequences, the concern is for the beings that are the victims of hatred, those are the ones suffering from undeserved harm. An all loving, omni, omni, omni, being could clearly have created a world without needless suffering.

Hondo

Pomp · 04-12-2002, 08:31 PM

luvluv,

It is not the Christian opinion that omnipotence entails the ability to do the mutually exclusive.

We understand that or, at least, I understand that. I can't speak for all of us.

The problem, however, is that we have nothing other than your speculation to indicate to us that free will is, indeed, mutually exclusive with any of the things you claim that it is mutually exclusive with. I'm not being difficult, you understand, I'm just explaining why none of us find your argument particularly compelling.

luvluv · 04-12-2002, 08:33 PM

Hondo, Dante's view of Hell is not even close to being considered the mainline idea of what Hell is. The Bible is remarkably silent about exactly what Hell is and where it came from. But I think it is safe to say that most modern Christians do not share Dante's view of Hell. The Inferno is regarded among Christians to be purely a work of fiction, you will not see it quoted in pulpits very often.

"Once again you are wrong, let the haters of the world suffer the consequences, the concern is for the beings that are the victims of hatred, those are the ones suffering from undeserved harm. An all loving, omni, omni, omni, being could clearly have created a world without needless suffering."

I've covered on other threads why I think that's wrong, please check out the "Has anyone read The Problem of Pain thread". I respect the fact that you've come into this discussion late, but I know you also can respect the fact that I am not going to repeat 7 pages worth of debate with everyone who comes in late.

luvluv · 04-12-2002, 08:34 PM

Maybe you could be more specific Pompous.

nixon · 04-12-2002, 08:39 PM

I don't know why some Christians come here on the sec web and try to defend the idea of free will. According to the bible, there ain't any. Never was meant to be. The only thing we humans are for is to glorify and worship God. Period. That's all the angels are for too. No free will. The fact that we do have our own minds (which often are against Christian values) says loads about the truth of the Christian bible. This is one of the many things that is actually disprovable about the bible. Of course most Christians then denegrade the bible into "reference" or "Mans interpretation of God". Which of course means they intend to be slippery with you when defending any claim they put forth.

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04-12-2002, 03:21 PM	#11
luvluv Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Planet Lovetron Posts: 3,919	Hell is not an imposed state, it is a natural consequence. Hell is not used as coercion in the Bible, it has been used as coercion by priests and preachers. If Hell is not an imposed state, but a state of Total Depravity arrived at by the abuse of free will, is it not right of God to warn us about it? Your entire idea, as I've told you a few times, is incorrect because you have an incorrect assumption about what Hell is. You don't go to Hell, you become it. Step by step, decision by decision... you abdicate your ability to chose to the pressures of your desires until you lose the ability to resist your desires at all. Your desires proceed immediately to action without having to pass through any "Self" that can make a decision. Hell is the abdication of free will to the desires as a consequence of submitting to your desires. The torment people endure in Hell is a result of being in the company of people who have become, through submission to their desires, total Sadists. The people in Hell torment each other, they are not tormented by God. Neither God nor any Christian is compelled to argue you out of your misconception of what Hell is. If Hell is what you make it out to be, you have a valid point. It is not, therefore your point, respectfully, is not.

04-12-2002, 07:05 PM	#13
luvluv Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Planet Lovetron Posts: 3,919	With all due respect, I think atheists use the "God can" argument when dealing with God's supposed moral lackings every bit as gratiutously as Christians use it when discussing creationism. Here's another sentence I'm oh so happy to have to write (yet again): It is not the Christian opinion that omnipotence entails the ability to do the mutually exclusive. I think that every decision that God makes in terms of our characteristics had trade-offs. It is possible that the flip side of free will is that the free will can be misused. Free will misused causes harm to the person who is misusing it. It is possible that the only way to avoid this harm to the person would be to remove free will. I think you guys are assuming omnipotence means that God is, at every step, working from a totally blank palate. That is not the view of most Christians. Once God decided that humans would have free will, his choices were lessened if that free will was to be retained. Free-will without consequences is not free-will at all. And again, I do not know that any being with free-will can ever be immune to the adverse consequences of his own choices. If you choose to hate, hate will destroy your spirit. Are you suggesting that God should have created a world in which hatred is not harmful to the person who does the hating? I don't think that is possible within the boundaries of free will.

04-12-2002, 08:31 PM	#17
Pomp Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Indianapolis area Posts: 3,468	luvluv, It is not the Christian opinion that omnipotence entails the ability to do the mutually exclusive. We understand that or, at least, I understand that. I can't speak for all of us. The problem, however, is that we have nothing other than your speculation to indicate to us that free will is, indeed, mutually exclusive with any of the things you claim that it is mutually exclusive with. I'm not being difficult, you understand, I'm just explaining why none of us find your argument particularly compelling.

04-12-2002, 08:33 PM	#18
luvluv Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Planet Lovetron Posts: 3,919	Hondo, Dante's view of Hell is not even close to being considered the mainline idea of what Hell is. The Bible is remarkably silent about exactly what Hell is and where it came from. But I think it is safe to say that most modern Christians do not share Dante's view of Hell. The Inferno is regarded among Christians to be purely a work of fiction, you will not see it quoted in pulpits very often. "Once again you are wrong, let the haters of the world suffer the consequences, the concern is for the beings that are the victims of hatred, those are the ones suffering from undeserved harm. An all loving, omni, omni, omni, being could clearly have created a world without needless suffering." I've covered on other threads why I think that's wrong, please check out the "Has anyone read The Problem of Pain thread". I respect the fact that you've come into this discussion late, but I know you also can respect the fact that I am not going to repeat 7 pages worth of debate with everyone who comes in late.

04-12-2002, 08:34 PM	#19
luvluv Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Planet Lovetron Posts: 3,919	Maybe you could be more specific Pompous.

04-12-2002, 08:39 PM	#20
nixon Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Valleyview, OH USA Posts: 6,638	I don't know why some Christians come here on the sec web and try to defend the idea of free will. According to the bible, there ain't any. Never was meant to be. The only thing we humans are for is to glorify and worship God. Period. That's all the angels are for too. No free will. The fact that we do have our own minds (which often are against Christian values) says loads about the truth of the Christian bible. This is one of the many things that is actually disprovable about the bible. Of course most Christians then denegrade the bible into "reference" or "Mans interpretation of God". Which of course means they intend to be slippery with you when defending any claim they put forth.

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