Christian hell makes no sense. God supposed to be just, but finite transgressions can't deserve infinite punishment

They stol the idea of hell from vikings

Honestly by the same logic, heaven makes no sense. What can one do in this finite life to deserve an infinite reward? Our concept of desert simply does not suffice; if there is a God, it is up to God.

This user gets it like he said, hell is simply separation from God, not hellfire and brimstone.

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Who the fuck cares since they haven't proved God exists in the first place?

>so unpleasant that it can only be compared to being on fire forever
I don't see the people in the street that are godless feel as if they were on fire forever

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>many people live without the jew god (by virtue of simply not caring about religion)
But God still exists in their lives, they just don't know or acknowledge him. To go to hell is to go to a place where there is no God whatsoever (and thus where there is no good either).

>There's no reason to think this would suddenly change in death where there's no brain to produce thought or willpower or process anything.
And isn't that scary? Could you really die in peace while in the belief that it all ends with that? Can you imagine the end of your own conciousness? Without the promise of an afterlife could you bear that possibility?

Hell is a realm in which God does not exist.
God does not exist.
Therefore we are in Hell.
QED

tard. explain the logic of "punishment" in the first place.

I seriously question whether consciousness can end. Without a self, can you experience non-existance? Or perhaps bounded by your time on this earth as a definition of the self, you never leave, only to be reborn into the same life. I personally believe in neither, and in some sense believe in an afterlife, though not an anthropocentric heaven.

Well, I didn't have a consciousness before I was born, and it didn't hurt me any.

As a thought experiment, I posit that consciousness does not end with death, but that it simply stops. Whatever thought may be in your head, whatever image is resolved in your brain at the moment of death, is what you experience for eternity; but since you can no longer perceive time, eternity is also infinitely brief.

I imagine it might be something like when your computer game crashes, but rather than being the player, you are the character frozen or stuttering on screen.

But I doubt it. An infinitely brief eternity would be the same as nothing to a time-based perception. Unless death makes perception change in some spectacular way, the above thought experiment leads to same conclusion: a cessation and annihilation of all abilities perception and thought.

>but finite transgressions can't deserve infinite punishment.

That's you, not God.

Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is unpardonable in this life and the next. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit renders one in a spiritually dead state from which there is no return.

Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is Unbelief.

The Kingdom of God is for the living, not the dead. The dead have no place in it, and could not survive being in the presence of God. Yet as eternal beings, there is no annihilation, there is no return to the void; you will be alive forever.

All of your "finite transgressions" were forgiven at the cross at Calvary 2000 years ago. They are not why you're going to hell. You don't have a sin problem; sin is not keeping you from heaven.

You are dead, and refuse to accept the free gift of Life from God, Who is Life.

And in so refusing, you damn yourself to an infinite punishment that even you will come to know is holy, just and righteous.

>Unless death makes perception change in some spectacular way,

That is the case, yes.

1 Corinthians 13
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

How is God a slave to his own attributes? Would not God have the power to choose where he is, and where he is not?

Don't you have that power?

Do you have more power than God?

Luke 12
“The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”’

But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’

Matthew 16:26
For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Luke 16
But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented.

And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’

Revelation 21:8 But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

Romans 1
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

>without excuse

I agree, but I’m pretty sure this idea of hell isnt actually in the Bible, I think it comes from Augustine or Aquinas? I definitely could be wrong though

That presupposes that there is a “hell” with a god to create it

How could he have gained knowledge of a higher perception through his mortal perception? A human perception that receives divine revelation can't possibly receive it accurately, let alone communicate it to anybody.

The bible contradicts his baseless opinion.

Matthew 25:46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

--Jesus of Nazareth

If I accept your terms, I have a question.

When you speak of the “refusing” that makes you dead, in terms of the blasphemer’s thought or action, wouldn’t any single “refusal” be an eternal “refusing?” And if so, how is there actually anyone in heaven? Even people like Augustine refused at one point

He's speaking of transitions, and how he perceives things.

Child: perceives as a child.
Man: perceives as a man.
Resurrected: no more knowing in part; we will know as he is known.

You know, I don't think He actually meant that. He simply knew His audience. The trick still works, too.

Once a person consents to becoming a born again Christian, an eternal transformation takes place. The spiritually dead human being becomes a spiritually and eternally living new creation in Christ Jesus, unlike how we are now.

That transformation process begins when you are saved, and eternally sealed, but there is a maturation process you can go through at your own pace. Eventually, however, the Holy Spirit will complete the transformation and the believer will be a glorified new creation in Christ Jesus.

Jesus is the author of salvation, and the finisher of salvation. Once a person is saved, they are saved.

Everyone has witnessed the universe, and everyone has heard the witness of the Holy Spirit speaking to their spirit, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Everyone has a chance to agree with the Holy Spirit, be saved, and live in heaven forever.

When you refuse the Holy Spirit, when you grieve the Holy Spirit, when you continually deny the Holy Spirit, your heart becomes hardened to the point where you cannot be saved. That point is the point where God gives you the power to reject him forever. He also provides a resurrection body and an eternal destination befitting the person's status as a blaspheming spiritually dead sinner.

I'm pretty sure God knows what he's talking about.

Revelation 20:10 The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

Revelation 20:14 Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

Revelation 20:15 And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.

It does mean that you are not everbeating, though.
If god choses not to be present somewhere, it means he choses not to be omnipresent.

Why are you guys always resorting to retarded comparisons?

>are

Note this word, are. Not were. They are still there, alive, after a thousand years. And they were human when they were cast into the lake of fire.

A thousand years later, there they are.

There is no annihilation. Nothing does not exist.

Is that okay with you if God chooses where he wants to be, and where he does not want to be?

Is that okay with you?

Wouldn’t that mean that once someone is born again, they can refuse all they want?

>I seriously question whether consciousness can end.
This happens to you every night.
>Without a self, can you experience non-existance?
What does this even mean?

And I'm pretty sure God knows who he's talking to. He knows better than to give them straight talk they can't possibly understand if it's supposed to be for their own good.

Sure.

Why doesn't he want to be with sinners who at the point of their death did not want to be saved ?
He could come to he'll from time to time and offer them a new choice.

If he doesn't it means he choses not to be everloving, preferring to take the specific action of not being omnipresent, without any possible recourse for all of eternity.

I am everthankful that your mythology is just that.

So, God is all knowing and all powerful.

If he is all knowing, he must know who would go to heaven and hell before they're born. I forget the scripture verse that references this, but it's not really important for this argument.
If he knows who will be punished before they've done anything, doesn't this imply that a wide portion of humanity is doomed? That is, fated to hell before they're even born?

If he is all knowing and all powerful, then sin simply could NOT exist outside His permission.
If humanity/Satan/what-have-you is the source of sin, then how did sin emerge? If sin first came through pride, how was X able to feel pride to such a harmful extent in the first place? If pride turned to sin, which became , in theory, harmful to God's will, why did he not fix it, rather than let it continue its current course?
If God is all knowing, he must know where sin exists in a man's heart, who will sin at what time, and the overall effects of the act. If he is all powerful, he must have the strength to prevent or otherwise stop the sinful act.

So: God knows sin exists, and He has the power to stop it, but doesn't. Humanity, who does not have the power to stop sin, who has been likened to slaves (or servants if you're being nice) living under sin, is sentenced to torture for all eternity for lacking the strength or what-have-you - traits that must be under control of an all knowing, all powerful God - to escape.

Note that this is, strictly speaking, NOT an argument against god. It is only to suggest that, shock and surprise, we don't know everything, and if the Christian god does exist, that there are things he isn't telling us.

You assume through that that the Bible is to be taken completely literally. Thank you, American Evangelicals, for painting the stereotype that all Christians believe the Bible is to be taken completely literal, and that inquiries into the study of the usage of metaphor and allegory are heresy. Please know that hell is simply separation from God, not literal hellfire.

What is literal and what is metaphor in the Bible, and what authority has the power to dictate which is which?

No. Once you are born again, one of the costs to consider is that you can never be cast into the darkness, into a lake of fire, forever.

And if you consider that a cost, you're not taking the lake of fire very seriously.

It's actually a profound benefit.

>This happens to you every night.

What is a dream.

You keep saying that like God is hiding something.

John 18:20 Jesus answered him, “I spoke openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where the Jews always meet, and in secret I have said nothing.

You're asking how come matter and anti-matter can't just get along, except on a transcendent and much higher level.

No, it tells you that there's something deeply wrong with the fallen race of man, that most people do not choose salvation, but condemn themselves.

I'm certain that he is.

>If he is all knowing and all powerful, then sin simply could NOT exist outside His permission.

Permissive will. Make a distinction between what happens under God's permissive will, when he respects the sovereignty of his creation and withdraws into his own sovereignty, and God's express will, where he will do what he says he will do, and nothing will stay him.

Dreams happen in REM sleep, there are sleep periods where you don't have any form of consciousness.

dude just turn your brain off lmao

>then how did sin emerge?

Satan was the first sinner; he took pride in how he was made, and took credit for how he was made. He denied the glory of God and forgot he was a creation of God, and not a god himself. Being full of pride, he rebelled against God and started a coup that lasted one heartbeat before he lost that coup and was exiled.

Sin is "missing the mark", as an archer who looses an arrow and missed the target completely. As the mark is "be perfect, as the Father in heaven is perfect", when satan thought about putting his throne above God and being worshiped as God, he sinned.

Mankind's sin was to disbelieve what God told them, that if they ate the fruit they would die, and what the devil told them. The devil said they would not die, physically, because the fruit was not poisonous.

That was the lie.

The sin lay not with Eve, who was deceived by the lie, but in Adam, who not being deceived at the fruit in direct disobedience to God.

And as they sinned, the Breath of Life, the Holy Spirit, that caused Adam to become a living being left them, and they were naked. They had been clothed with the glory of God, and they became as we are now.

By Adam's sin, all mankind was condemned to hell, because we are all sinners, born spiritually dead and incapable of existing with the living God.

>why did he not fix it,

Cause and effect, crime and punishment, coup and exile.

>that there are things he isn't telling us.

Wouldn't that be a logical conclusion without any of the premises?

Yes, the Word of God says what it means, and means what it says.

Then go your gnostic way, and pay the price all gnostics pay.

And you can be awakened at any time, the sentinel part of your brain never sleeping.

>then you go your gnostic way, and pay the price all gnostics pay

fixed for meter, and I will, thank you

Then go along your gnostic way, and pay the price all gnostics pay.

Yes. Your point?

That your unconscious, subconscious, and conscious minds are all you, and they're never "off".

Are you saying you can’t be punished for refusing, or that you literally can’t refuse?

If the latter, how so?

By examination of the context of particular passages, and reading it through that lense. Authority is vested in the one with the best contextual arguments (whoever can prove what they say is accurate according to what the cultural context dictates, and can apply to our own culture.)

If you reject the only means of salvation God provided, you have no hope. It is appointed for a man once to die, and then the judgment.

Any man can refuse God, because God created us as free will moral agents with the necessary sovereignty to have our own wills decide our fate.

It is not God's will that any should perish.

Most perish.

It is therefore man's will that determines his fate and eternal destination, and not God's will.

Nonsense. The first rule of hermaneutics is to take the text literally. If taking the text literally leads to an absurd conclusion, like Jesus is made of bread, then the literal is not proper. So you would look for allegorical, metaphorical, symbolic or parabolic meaning, rather than literal.

And all are true. The literal, and the non-literal, are all true.

All authority comes from God.

it's not a physical condemnation, it's a spiritual one, which is tricky to understand since we're debating this on a physical plain
The souls in Hell aren't alive like you understand the body and the feeling of pain, but in a way we can only understand emotionally or conceptually. Consider the pain of loss or the pain of guilt, how does the physical body survive that, yet people change drastically when they experience it?

True while some critical areas of the brain are active, but this doesn't contradict the fact that consciousness as we usually define it can be easily nullified, that everyone can easily verify this fact, and that no metaphysical concepts are needed in this process at any point.

You're right.

It's far worse than we can imagine.

How am I denying His authority? I simply am stating that on this plane of reality that we must examine the Scriptures, and determine whether it is all to be taken literally or whether there is contextualization to take place in certain passages.

Part of determination of scriptural texts involves looking at multiple arguments, including literalism and the like. I'm not saying that there are not texts to be taken literally (there are, obviously), I'm just saying we shouldn't automatically assume that everything written in the Scriptures is literal.

free will and god can't coexist

*free will and the christian god can't coexist

>Authority is vested in the one with the best contextual arguments

Of course they do. Your free will allows you to choose from among your available options.

Surprising God is not one of your available options.

but free-will negates the omnipotence that we would associate with a being worthy of being called God
he can never know what i'll choose therefore his knowledge isn't infinite

if god is all-powerful and all-knowing then he purposely created me as an euphoric fedora tipper and would know my future from the very beginning, if he doesn't then he's really just some marvel superhero with god complex

I mean once you have been born again. Are you saying that you are no longer punished for blaspheming or that you literally are incapable of blaspheming once you’ve been born again?

If God is synonymous with the concept of being and is a superset of the universe, then he knew your thoughts in every detail before you were even born, i.e. he knew beforehand whether you would acknowledge him or reject him.

It tells me that for a deity who claims to hate sin so much, God has very little to show for it.

Which is exactly the issue: God permits sin to occur, and does little if anything to help us fight it. Then, He condemns who He wills. And us, with NO idea who actually gets into heaven or hell.

So by Adams sin, mankind was condemned to hell.
How was man able to sin in the first place? Where did the capacity come from? If internal, within man himself, that place was made first and foremost by God, was it not? If external, that simply moves the goal posts.
So: God is perfect - therefore, being perfect, he should be able to create perfection. Which, it is claimed, he did. But, if that creation then became imperfect and turned to sin, how did it become imperfect? If by it's own will, why was the capacity for imperfection there in the first place? If it is so we might have free will, wouldn't our paths being known to Him for eternity from our birth invalidate that?
If I am free to chose as I will, but an all powerful being that directly or indirectly controls all the variables in my life exists, how much does free will matter? My genes, the genes of my parents, the random everyday occurrences that shape me into who I am... isn't it a little silly to assume that God has no control over that?

>The text of the Bible doesn't matter when it clearly contradicts my opinions, and im the one who freely decides which parts are meant to be taken at face value and which were written by someone who was just kidding.
That's not how organized religion works you know. What you have just said could have earned you a death sentence from the Catholic Church during the time of the Inquisition if you lived in Iberia or Italy.

>but finite transgressions can't deserve infinite punishment.

You're absolutely correct, the idea sure is great for scaring people straight though.

>An infinitely brief eternity would be the same as nothing to a time-based perception

An infinitely brief eternity a good way to conceptualize a singularity. It is everything and nothing, but manifest reality exists forever asymptotic to it. The so-called cosmic egg is inherent at the beginning and end of the temporal universe, "alpha and omega" if you will. Another fairly common hypothesis, creatively illustrated in Slaughterhouse-Five, is that the movement of time is in some sense illusory, that all the past present and future states of being, the entire history of our universe, is static and our experience of time is a traversal of its topology.

If this were the case, and assuming *you* are defined by your self/ego/awareness (of course, there are many arguments to the contrary, especially in Buddhism), it stands to reason that *you* are eternally embedded in the temporal region laid out for you. This is why I land on the intuitive idea of eternal recurrence. Only thing is, eternal recurrence is redundant, a bit of a tautology, given what we suppose about the birth and death of our universe. It's amazing that we even would experience any of it at all.

But yeah, this train of thought has been fucking me up for a couple of years. Utter annihilation is just hard for me to wrap my head around, but not harder than all the other theories. The kicker is that when you do die, you may not even get a brief glimpse of what's happening. That bothers me the most.

/thread

Christian hell is just a metaphor for eternal recurrence, if you sin one you will suffer from your sin again and again, infinitely.

But God is hiding something from most people. Don't be fooled by the demiurge.

2 Corinthians 12:2-4
I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.