Metacrock

Meta ->But then one is hard pressed to understand your rationle for leaving the faith, at least on those grounds. Since it is possilbe to be a Christian and not believe in hell, why not just do that?

I didn't invent the concept of hell, christianity did.


Meta =>No acutally it didn't, hellinistic Judaism did, and there are many Christains who don't beleive in hell.



Meta =>Yea but that wouldn't dampen my faith. O I'm not saying that nothing could, bu thtat wouldn't be it.




<a href="http://pub18.ezboard.com/bhavetheologywillargue" target="_blank">Have Theology, Will Argue</a>

Metacrock

Meta =&gt;Ah, please stick to the "hell lite" version when arguing with me! It's unfair to ask me to defend a view I don't believe in.


Meta =&gt;Yes! That's a logical necessity. If you want morality you have to have free moral agents, and if you have them, they have to really be free, which means you have to risk really having bad things happen. That's the choice I would make if I were making a world. Because even though such things are hoorific, its still better than being a robot.



Meta =&gt;No he doesn't! Because there's no reason why omnipotence should be self construction. God can't make squre cirlces, he can't make up be down at the same time, he can't have his cake and eat it to. That's just a logical necessity. Omnipotence does not mean doing self contradictory things, no reason why it should.



Meta =&gt;Well that doesn't answer the liberal version. What can you come up with to respond to a liberal Christian? NO hell see? And again I remind you the Chruch didn't invent the idea of hell. They inherited it from the Hellinized Jews.


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4) It might also be a question as to wheather God knows concete actualities or all contingent possiblities.
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Which is at least an attempt to wryly admit you haven't a clue.


Meta =&gt;I always have admitted I haven't a clue. But the point is God's omniscience doesn't necessarily extend to knowing the actual fate of each concrete individual.


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5) The only other option would be to not create at all. Now if what is accomplished in creation is more important than anything else, then the risk that some creatures choose wrongly just has to be part of the deal, colladeral damage.
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If that is the only option then somebody has just lost their omnipotent cherry.


Meta =&gt;Why would that be? By the rationale of my argument, the fact that we are here could as easily mean that God weighed the consquences and found that creation is worth it.


quote:
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6) Don't choose wrongly.
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That means choosing truth for the sake of truth and not just because you want it to be true. I am really hoping some believer has an answer.


Meta =&gt;That argument doesnt' make any sense, no offense buddy. But look, this is the nature of my faith. My faith doesnt' extend to belief in hell, it understands that as a metaphor based upon concept of sheole. Now who is to say that this is not authentic Christianity? Especially when the revitionary tradition also states this, it's not just me alone. There's a whole tradition there. So why not belong that that tradition? Why scrap the whole thing just for that one point?

After all "choosing truth for the sake of truth" should also mean a realistic understanding of the historical realities of the doctrine, which means understanding hell as an import form hellinism and a metaphor for Sheole (death--the grave). So why is that not truth for truth's sake? If that is the case than being a liberal Christain would be as much a bold defient stand as giving up the whole shebang, and in my view much wiser.

Metacrock

Meta =&gt;Hi ya Helen. You get around on these boards! Fancy meeting you here. Say look, this argument is a red herring. See? Because no one was talking about that. Just because some people think that doesn't make it representative of all of Christianity, I am really puzzelled as to why that would be a sticking point for anyone's faith.

I mean I can understand why you might think it's not fair, but then why not just don't believe it? It's not as though all Christians have to believe in eternal security.

So you think you and RW will be up there arguing with me for all eternity wheather you like it or not? Great! ahahahaahahhah

copernicus

Hell plays an essential role in religion. Heaven is the carrot and hell is the stick. You are either cajoled to believe or frightened not to believe. The benevolent God invites you into heaven, and the vengeful God scares you away from hell. Heroin gives you bliss, and lack of heroin gives you the hell of withdrawal. Addiction comes in many forms, but it is fundamentally a mental disease.

HelenM

Photocrat

Perhaps this is the time for it... I saved it for my 'attack on the foundations of atheism' but I have too little time to complete something as ambitious as I had intended. Please bear with it; I spend *quite* a while getting to the point, but all of this is quite relevant.

As such, I shall pose a question to you [or any other atheists]:

Is having children moral? [in the context of this discussion] The immidiate answer is "yes" and is generally given with little thought.

The most direct way to end human suffering is to end human existance. The most expedient [moral] way to do that is not to have children. We also have a [statistical] guarantee that our children *will* suffer at some point--they will die at the very least.

Furthermore, given that the universe will die from heat death or something, more likely than not [given current cosmology and discounting various, even less-established theories that say otherwise...] our existence is pointless. The net effect of our actions is zero. Also, are we culpable for knowing [within reasonable limits] that our children will cause others to suffer [if from nothing else than making survival that much harder for all the others competing for finite resources, such as food]? Not to mention that they'll probably make a few, generally minor, mistakes which cause suffering; or worse, the small chance they'll do something really bad that hurts a lot of people.

Why do we have children again? "Love"? For an atheist, I do not know what meaning to invest it with, as it seems to be little more than a biochemical delusion put forth by our survival instinct. But when you experience it, it's not so meaningless, is it? "Survival"? What's the point? It's futile in the end--the sun will die, entropy will 'wear down' the universe, etc.

Anyhow, enough nihlism. This is why the atheists told me they still have children, in spite of this:

So, what's the point? How is our decision to procreate all that different from God's, save that He has more perfect knowledge? Equating foreknowledge with cause is still fallacy, after all. I know that an ice cube on a hot sidewalk will melt; but it's the heat that causes the melting, not me.

As for God creating only 'perfect' people, I'm not convinced that's possible & I subscribe to the logical definition of omnipotence (anything logically possible--no self-referencing, illogical things such as 'stones God cannot lift' and such).

<a href="http://www.leaderu.com/offices/koons/menus/lecture.html" target="_blank">http://www.leaderu.com/offices/koons/menus/lecture.html</a>

See lectures 19-22. They do a good job of getting rid of most of the other tidbits this brings up. A lot of it is about not being sloppy with words and insisting on logic. Of course, the usual counter is "that's all fine and good, but it's *my* soul that's going to burn, isn't it?" Ad misercordiam, even conflict of interest, as it were, obviously; however, that doesn't mean it isn't deserving of an answer.

So this is where hell comes into play, isn't it? You might accept God creating people who don't choose Him, but not Him frying people because of it. I think we tried to tell you about that 'non-literal hell thing', as Meta put it, before; too much Calvinism isn't healthy, I should think--especially around here. What happens instead of 'hell'? I don't know. Eternal guilt, conditional immortality [it *is* described as a second *death* ... not a second life, after all] and other things have all been supposed. Feel free to investigate.

If you still need a Calvinist answer, the only one I know is that God knew you would come back to Him. Calvinism aside, I hope that is true. Perhaps you're predestined to rejoin us as a somewhat less Calvinist Christian? :]

I don't think it means that I can make the Bible say any old thing; however. I find the Bible all the more meaningful when I view it through the eyes of history (e.g. that little thing called Hellenism) as well as those of faith... I'm simply not so pious as to see by the 'eyes of faith' alone. I would be but a nearly-blind Christian, known for often bumping into walls as it were, were it so. There is no Akashic record (a mystical 'perfect' record of history, according to occultists), there is no perfect knowledge of Christianity from our position, there is no perfect doctrine. Calvinism itself started with Calvin, don't forget... what did they all believe before that? We aren't saved by Calvin, Luther, Wesley, Moses, Hillel, David, or Jeremiah; but by Jesus, after all. That doesn't mean we don't know anything about the Bible. We may not have all the answers, but we have all that we need to get to know God. The rest is commentary.

Elsewhere, you said:

The laws of physics are "mathematically simple" [as opposed to the normal definition of "simple" ...], yet physics class is hard. The laws of physics work, even if I don't know the mass of the Higgs boson [oh wait, according to Lexx it's 1313131313 or something, isn't it? ;] and even if there's debate over whether the universe will collapse in on itself or expand forever. In physics class, the teacher can be put into a bind when physicists aren't completely sure what's going on. They just tell us that mankind will find the answers "in the [indeterminate] future" [but only if given enough grant money! ;]

Shall I congratulate them on their faith, or on their determination?

BTW, it's good talking to you again. I'll try to see to it that I pop back in for these conversations; however, my time on these boards has been *very* scant lately... :[ Can't really even lurk... There's just too much work to do offline... *sigh*

rainbow walking

Well, that's my whole point, Meta. I spent years in these forums arguing the validity of the christian message. (I'm a stubborn, tenacious individual) I started out very near the center of christian fundamentalism. As time passed and non-believers presented me with more and more contradictions in my beliefs I had to begin jettisoning and re-writing christianity. I could have stubbornly stuck my head in the sand and refused to address the contradictions, and did for long stretches of time. But I couldn't shake the veracity of the questions and found myself struggling for loopholes to alleviate the glaring contradictions. The more I tackled the issues the more foriegn my theology drifted from mainstream christianity. In the end I had essentially created an entirely new message complete with an entirely new god concept to sustain it. The problems inherent in this became more and more visible. I was now a heretic among those who were suppose to be my brethren. I had fought the good fight on all our behalfs and had alienated myself from being able to fellowship with my fellow christians because I now held a salad bar, heretical mixmash of how I interpreted christianity to be accurately represented. There was no church on earth that I could attend with a clear consciounce. There were many churches I could attend if I wanted to base my faith on one small aspect of the christian message, but no single church that held or taught or believed anything remotely akin to what I had been forced by my own integrity to create to eliminate the contradictions. I was an outcast in all respects. If I tried to express my beliefs among my fellow believers they would politely try to set me strait. If I tried to justify my beliefs among the un-believers they would also further pick them apart and send me back to the drawing board. But I started out doing just what you advised me to do. Simply jettison those aspects of the christian message I found offensive or contradictory. At some point, Meta, I had to choose between being true to truth or being set into a mold of what I wanted to be true in spite of the obvious contradictions so easily demonstrated. I just can't see any relevant truth value to any of it anymore. When compared to the reality in which I reside and what I have learned about that reality the message of christianity sounds like a distant drum beat of a primitive people trying to communicate to another primitive tribe across a long expanse of jungle in a howling wind and over the din of all the wildlife in it's daily struggle to survive, totally oblivious to the sound of the drum because they had become so accustomed to it.

rainbow walking

Hi Photocrat,
I always appreciate your attention to detail and thoroughness. I may be wrong but I think the gist of your objections can be summed up in these words you wrote towards the end of your post.

There are several differences that present themselves to me immediately, and likely more will come as I dwell on your point.

1. When we become parents we take an active visible role in the education and guidance of our children. There is no evidence that God does this. He seems content to allow it to be done by proxy through the church. Unfortunately the church is so divided on who and what this God is and can or cannot do that I would be hesitant to entrust the education or guidance of my children in relation to knowing God. The God one child is taught to know is fundamentally foriegn to the God another child is taught to know by a different denomination allegedly subservient to the same God.

2. Aside from God's dereliction of duties to his children, there's this claim that he has perfect knowledge. If he already knows who will stay in the flock and who won't, and makes no effort to help the weaker in faith, how can he be looked upon as a loving father? Is that the behavior of a loving father? Would you judge a father loving who abandoned his children to nannies at birth and never visited them again for the duration of their lives?

3. We, as human parents, have no perfect knowledge of how our progeny will turn out. But at least we try to help them along the way. If we were to use God's dereliction of parental duties as our perfect example of parenthood then we'd have to abandon our children at birth and let them fend for themselves.

4. God has allegedly created us to be born with some basic instincts. It would have been a simple matter for him to have created us with the instinct to believe in him rather than the choice. This wouldn't abrogate freewill because we control our instincts all the time and make decisions not to follow their lead. Courting rituals and sexual drives are instincts but we don't force ourselves on a woman who isn't interested, so we do have the will to manipulate our instincts. I throw this in as a response to the claim that God had to allow freewill to operate to develop a moral universe. An omnipotent God could have created us theistic such that our choice would have been to de-convert in spite of our instinctual urge to remain faithful. Then hell would have made more sense.

I know you're busy now and I appreciate the effort and concern you've expressed for me.

rainbow walking

rw earlier: And it conflicts so eloquently with His other attributes. God is so desirous of having man choose to love Him freely that He had to attach that little, "and if they don't, cast them into hell" trailer into the contract.

Meta =&gt;Ah, please stick to the "hell lite" version when arguing with me! It's unfair to ask me to defend a view I don't believe in.

Rw: Sorry Meta, there are so many versions I have a difficult time keeping up with them all.

Rw earlier: He's so protective of freewill that He allowed a handful of turkeys from Allah's camp to freely decide to exterminate thousands of innocent people in the name of God. Yep, sure sounds like a loving God's best defense to me...not.


Meta =&gt;Yes! That's a logical necessity. If you want morality you have to have free moral agents, and if you have them, they have to really be free, which means you have to risk really having bad things happen. That's the choice I would make if I were making a world. Because even though such things are hoorific, its still better than being a robot.

Rw: No, if you want MORALITY you decide what is good and what is evil and then you take an active role in teaching it and perpetuating it among the masses. Where and when has this loving god done this? Outside of a compilation of writings from the bronze age…nada. And just look at the examples of morality this loving god has preserved for posterity. He establishes a set of guidelines and then winks at those he has chosen to represent him when they flagrantly violate these guidelines. (aka David, Solomon, Jezreel, Jochobed, Abram, Moses, Noah, Adam etc. etc.) Much like a father smoking a cig in front of his 8 year old son and then telling him that smoking is bad for your health and that he will get his ass busted if he is caught anywhere near a cigarette. Granting the freedom to choose isn’t the do-all end-all of morality and a world of moral beings.


rw earlier: Yep, so this omnipotent God hasn't the power to do both. Strange bedfellows these omni's don't you think?


Meta =&gt;No he doesn't! Because there's no reason why omnipotence should be self construction. God can't make squre cirlces, he can't make up be down at the same time, he can't have his cake and eat it to. That's just a logical necessity. Omnipotence does not mean doing self contradictory things, no reason why it should.

Rw: Oh come now Meta, morality isn’t a matter of choosing between freewill and coercion. Humans have to LEARN what is good for them and what is not. Freewill isn’t the issue. An all good, loving father should covet the opportunity to use his wisdom and influence to help his children learn to discern the difference. Not hide in the obscurity of myth and fiction.


rw earlier: To know the creature will make the wrong choice and fashion an eternal hell for him because he does doesn't sound like much of a deal either. It sounds like a God who's into cross dressing and sex changes after the fact or a God being represented by a corrupt church that is too proud to admit it's mucked up the entire message.


Meta =&gt;Well that doesn't answer the liberal version. What can you come up with to respond to a liberal Christian? NO hell see? And again I remind you the Chruch didn't invent the idea of hell. They inherited it from the Hellinized Jews.

Rw: O’tay, let’s drop the hell question for the time being. Why doesn’t this all loving good father make an effort to stand on his own merits. If I had something to go on other than this contorted Christian version of him, something viable enough to justify a simple belief, I might be persuaded to recapture my faith and maybe even grow to love him. But I live in a world where morality is regulated by might, justice and revenge…a world he allegedly created for me…a world where I see no reflection of his version of the good. Now you can blame this on a fallen humanity but I would seriously question a father who sets up a scenario that trips up his children, does nothing to catch them before they fall and then curses all their progeny forever as corrupt and evil because they fell into the trap he set. A father who genuinely loves his children does everything in his power to at least teach them where the most obvious trip hazards are and how to avoid them and takes pains to keep them in a safe environment until they are ready to go it on their own. And he generally makes himself available to help them anyway he can even after they’re grown and on their own. Where’s the evidence that this loving god has taken even the minimal measures to express a genuine love and concern for me?


rw earlier: Which is at least an attempt to wryly admit you haven't a clue.

Meta =&gt;I always have admitted I haven't a clue. But the point is God's omniscience doesn't necessarily extend to knowing the actual fate of each concrete individual.

Rw: O’tay, how do you justify belief in a loving god who has left you in a world without a clue? And now here you are, on the same path I’ve journeyed, telling me that God’s omniscience doesn’t have to include xyand z. You’ve just re-doctored your theology to re-conform to an obvious contradiction in the original stance. When and where does it end? To what lengths will you go to preserve what you believe to be true? Truth isn’t subservient to belief but vice versa. Omniscience means all-knowing. All doesn’t exclude anything unless you insert a qualifier. You’ve just paved the way to insert one. The next step is to adopt it as a part of what you believe the Christian message is saying. But with each successive step you’ll find yourself a little further from the orthodox consensus until you hear that sawing sound of your brethren sawing off the limb upon which you’ve ventured.


rw earlier: If that is the only option then somebody has just lost their omnipotent cherry.

Meta =&gt;Why would that be? By the rationale of my argument, the fact that we are here could as easily mean that God weighed the consquences and found that creation is worth it.

Rw: In order for god to have “weighed the consequences” means he would have to “know the actual fate of each concrete individual”. Something you just said wasn’t a necessary prerequisite of his omniscience. How can you weigh consequences that you aren’t aware of?



[quote][b] Meta earlier: 6) Don't choose wrongly.


rw earlier: That means choosing truth for the sake of truth and not just because you want it to be true. I am really hoping some believer has an answer.

Meta =&gt;That argument doesnt' make any sense, no offense buddy. But look, this is the nature of my faith. My faith doesnt' extend to belief in hell, it understands that as a metaphor based upon concept of sheole. Now who is to say that this is not authentic Christianity? Especially when the revitionary tradition also states this, it's not just me alone. There's a whole tradition there. So why not belong that that tradition? Why scrap the whole thing just for that one point?

Rw: I hear what you’re saying my friend, believe me, I’ve been there. Who is to say what, if anything, is authentic Christianity. Which of the biblical doctrines can we jettison and still maintain a confidence in our salvation? What if hell is a viable aspect of the Christian message? Aren’t you flirting with eternal damnation to base your faith on YOUR interpretation of scripture? But, as you say, who’s interpretation do we trust? Why would a loving father god leave us in such a dilemma and spiritual quagmire?

Meta: After all "choosing truth for the sake of truth" should also mean a realistic understanding of the historical realities of the doctrine, which means understanding hell as an import form hellinism and a metaphor for Sheole (death--the grave). So why is that not truth for truth's sake? If that is the case than being a liberal Christain would be as much a bold defient stand as giving up the whole shebang, and in my view much wiser.

Rw: Unfortunately, the realistics of understanding the historicity of the doctrine doesn’t lend itself to establishing any of it as anything more than a fanciful spin on what some men believed to be true. Am I to adopt truth as my standard or what some men represent as truth? And when I’m confronted with so many various representations that can so easily be altered, how am I to judge the difference between what is true and what is some man’s belief that it is or isn’t true? Am I left at the mercy of AUTHORITY? Should I believe that what Paul said is more closer to truth than what Jesus or Timothy or Peter said? If I subjugate my rational mind to the authority of men who’ve never lived in my world, how does that insure me of the truth? How does that align itself with freewill and moral responsibility? If men, supposedly representing the mind of God, behave as if slavery is a moot moral issue, and I live in a world where it isn’t, who’s authority is being abrogated here? God’s or man’s?

Wouldn’t it be wiser for me to follow truth that can rationally, realistically, logically and simply be demonstrated independent of any man’s interpretation of it?

Koyaanisqatsi

...whu...? I... ....is it...I...

HOLY F'ING SHITE!

I know I'm coming in late on this, but...I mean...is it...have you awakened?

Welcome home, my brother, if this is true! :noteworthy:

Holy shite...congratulations!

Now on to what Photocrat posted:

Is it now? I would argue that bringing any child into this world is highly immoral and in general, selfish, but then I don't think that's the way it "works." I think we birth ourselves, but that's a whole 'nuther kettle o' fish.

Didn't ol' Yahweh already try this (twice)? Oh, that's right, it wasn't to end suffering, it was just because he couldn't get the design flaws out.

Now, what was his template again?

Actually, for anyone who believes in gods, the most expedient way to do that is to simply remove the concept of "suffering."

Don't christians consider that the end of suffering?

How so? What does ultimate annihilation have to do with personal growth and applied knowledge through experience?

My grandmother is dead. Just because she is dead, that doesn't mean her life didn't have personal meaning to all thos who were lucky enough to have known her.

You didn't know her, but did that adversely effect your existence? Then why would the "death" of the Universe likewise adversely effect your existence?

Ditto.

Well, if you're talking domino effect, then yes, of course, all beings are in some manner responsible for their actions; the point is, however, that they are responsible to one another as well as themselves.

Well, again, IMO, "we" don't have children, children birth themselves, thus each individual is indeed very deeply responsible for everything they do.

Oooh, a metaphysical atheist. Go figure.

That's because you're conditioned to believe that it's an either/or proposition; either Goddidit, or it's purely a biochemical, materialist answer.

As many have pointed out hundreds of times on these boards, not all atheists are materialists, but then that fact won't allow straw men.

Was your life ever "meaningless" because hundreds of billions of people were already dead prior to your birth? I fail to see the connection between death/annihilation/God and "meaning."

To have "meaning" in one's life, apparently, one needs nothing other than intelligence (aka, sentience). The fact that we all eventually die and that gods are just fairy tales does not alter the processing of "meaning" at all.

For you to even posit such a question (is there meaning without a god) proves that you don't need a god to posit such a question. Gods are fictional characters in ancient mythology concocted precisely because the question of "ultimate meaning" could not be adequately processed without positing such fictional creatures.

The fact that no such fictional creatures factually exist only demonstrates that the question would be asked regardless; indeed, it is the question that is inherently important and not the answer, apparently.

Again, the fact that countless billions have died prior to one's birth would arguably make little to no qualitative impact upon one's own ability to experience life, so I fail to see how any future death would have any impact, other than, hopefully, the knowledge to live life well precisely because it will end.

The only question anyone should ever asked themselves, IMO, is, "Is my corpse smiling?"

This is such a pointless straw man, you'd think it would be relegated to the trash heap by now.

But, that's the problem with fraudulent, instilled piousness; a moral compass that only points North will never allow you to circumnavigate existence, eh?

God procreates? Giggle...

Yes, and it is you that is creating the fallacy. Foreknowledge is one aspect of God's alleged attributes.

Cause does not come from foreknowledge; foreknowledge comes from cause.

But nice try at dodging the bullet.

And who caused the heat?

Obviously not, right? I mean, God's only as perfect as any one of us and he's failed twice. Even more so if you take the 144,000 from Revelations.

What did we expect out of an omnisicient being? Omniscience?



Yes, let's not bog God down to the logically impossible, because of how inconvenient that contradictory fact would be and how it would tend to disprove the existence of such a creature.

Such pesky things, like God existing before existence in order to create existence. What a pain in the ass that is.

Though, God creating a stone so large he cannot lift it isn't a logical impossibility like a square circle, but let's just sweep all that uncomfortable nonsense under the rug since it demonstrates flaws in the dogma, yes?

Yes...logic...Like a limitless creature being limited just because that's the only way possible to rationalize what should otherwise be dismissed as fraud.

Yeah, it's a bitch. When you're told by God through his inspired messengers what's what, just ignore it. Got it!

Well, let's turn to the Bible to find out....oh, sorry. Well, like Meta and luvluv and Tercel, let's just pick and choose anything we want to in order to revise and update the Bible to have it say anything we damn well please? Come on! It's EZ.

When the teams of biblical scholars that interpreted and subsequently wrote the NIV, KJV, YLT, NASB all tell us to fear God because he has the power to destroy our bodies and souls in the fires of hell, they were all wrong and just confused the issue. They didn't know any better.

And besides, what is hell, right? Hell is whatever you want it to be. Fires aren't fires and it's logically impossible to fear God since God is love and love is hate and hate is happiness and happiness is mercy and mercy is justice and justice is predetermined and predetermination is free will and arbeit macht frei and if you take cranberries and stew them like rhubarb they taste much more like prunes than raspberries do, right?

Tell you what. Let's just do as the atheists do and throw the whole damn thing in the trash as being too irreconcileably flawed and mistaken and contradictory and just plain old inconvenient? What do you say?

God schmod! It's all just pagan rituals infused into co-opted Jewish mythology by Roman propagandists anyway, right, so who cares what's what and why it's what, let's just make up whatever the hell we want to?

Read Matthew 10:28 (kill both body and soul in hell) and then Revelations regarding the "second death" from Hades and you'll see quite clearly that the concept of Hell was meant to one-up the hellenistic concept of where the dead go.

Fear him. Fear him so much, because he doesn't just have the power to kill your body and send your soul to Hades, but he also has the power to kill your soul by casting Hades into Hell.

The "second death" was meant to terrify the Greeks, IMO, but then who cares, right? We're just making this shit up.

Already have. Hades is thrown into Hell; aka, the Greek concept of what it means to be dead is nothing compared to what it is under the christian god; he is to be feared above all others because of his ability to extend a second death upon the already dead!

But don't take my word for it. Just make up your own! Weeeeee.

Then compare what Hades is to what Hell is supposed to be; the place where the souls found in Hades can be further killed.

Fear him.

Abundantly clear. You see whatever it is you want to see through your own eyes.

Good for you. But isn't it better to poke out one of those eyes...?