Why don't you believe in Hell?

[gentlehorse]

Say you were a parent who gave their child STRICT rules of what not to do. Now imagine they disobey you. Do you punish them? Ofcourse you do! A loving parent always punishes children when they are wrong so they will learn.

I discipline my children when they disobey. I do so in order to teach them. I strive to make sure that disciplinary action is appropriate and that my children actually learn that which I intend for them to learn. I engage in disciplinary action so that, in the long run, my children will benefit.

How can a loving God NOT send people to Hell?

In the same way that I can keep from torturing my children when they err.

The fact is God is our parent and has given us STRICT laws to follow. If we disobey Him we MUST face punishment. [/B]

Perhaps. But what can we learn in Hell? How can we benefit from being eternally tortured? The Hell in which you claim to believe is a place of punishment for the sake of punishment.

A supremely compassionate God would be more compassionate than I, yet I would not subject my worst enemy, much less my children, to the utter hopelessness and agony of a Hell such as you describe. I find that odd.

 

[c4ts]

I discipline my children when they disobey. I do so in order to teach them. I strive to make sure that disciplinary action is appropriate and that my children actually learn that which I intend for them to learn. I engage in disciplinary action so that, in the long run, my children will benefit.

As opposed to letting them do what they want until they're about to leave for college, and then suddenly throwing them into a fire because they behaved badly. Way to be a parent, God of 1inC.

 

[Jellby]

NO GOD IS PERFECTLY LOVING AND JUST. PERIOD.

Maybe God is, but the Bogeyman you bel.ieve in clearly is not.

You got it wrong, read 1inC's sentence again, it actually says "there is no god who is perfectly loving and just". And I must say he is right here

Justice itself is a very subjective matter, and love has the ability to meddle with our feelings, thoughts and views. Justice and love just don't mix very well, no god and no human can be perfectly loving and just.

 

[JAR]

I would like to touch upon the issue of Hell again. Let me ask atheists a question:

Say you were a parent who gave their child STRICT rules of what not to do. Now imagine they disobey you. Do you punish them? Ofcourse you do! A loving parent always punishes children when they are wrong so they will learn. How can a loving God NOT send people to Hell?

The fact is God is our parent and has given us STRICT laws to follow. If we disobey Him we MUST face punishment.

The heaven I believe in is designed in such a way that no-one there can harm anyone else, thus there is no need for God to discourage evil deeds with punishment.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

Well yeah. What harm can you do someone? You can't see anybody without eyes, can't hear them without ears, can't process any information without your brain to begin with. You have no body in which to inflict harm on others with.

For that matter, there is no way to tell if you're in heaven or hell. So what does it matter?

 

[Dr Adequate]

I would like to touch upon the issue of Hell again. Let me ask atheists a question:

Say you were a parent who gave their child STRICT rules of what not to do. Now imagine they disobey you. Do you punish them? Ofcourse you do! A loving parent always punishes children when they are wrong so they will learn. How can a loving God NOT send people to Hell?

The fact is God is our parent and has given us STRICT laws to follow. If we disobey Him we MUST face punishment.

Wicked and stupid enough to go in my sig for a bit.

So, 1inChrist, tell us, what's the most painful torture you've ever inflicted on your daughters?

 

[Mr Clingford]

So, 1inChrist, tell us, what's the most painful torture you've ever inflicted on your daughters?

Why feed the troll?

 

[Flo]

I would like to touch upon the issue of Hell again. Let me ask atheists a question:

Say you were a parent who gave their child STRICT rules of what not to do. Now imagine they disobey you. Do you punish them? Ofcourse you do! A loving parent always punishes children when they are wrong so they will learn. How can a loving God NOT send people to Hell?

The fact is God is our parent and has given us STRICT laws to follow. If we disobey Him we MUST face punishment.

Oh dear ... and you still wonder why your daughters refused to follow you further in your madness ?

 

[c4ts]

NO GOD IS PERFECTLY LOVING AND JUST. PERIOD.

Well if he can't be perfectly loving and just, he must be capable of error.

 

[Checkmite]

Everybody's pretty much hit it on the head here. 1inC's parenting analogy simply does not work unless Hell were not an eternal punishment.

Your kid talks back, you make him stand in the corner for twenty minutes. The punishment is supposed to convince him that the consequences of talking back are not worth having to stand in the corner for twenty minutes. So, hopefully, when you let him out of the corner after the twenty minutes are done, he will not talk back anymore.

So, Hell is a punishment for not believing in God. I'm assuming that the lesson you're supposed to learn in Hell is "believe in God and be good", or something like that. That's fine, but it will not take an eternity of Hell to teach somebody that lesson. So, when will the "punishment' end, and the kid be let out of the corner to prove he now believes in God and will be good? Never? If Hell is not a vehicle for correction, then it is not a "punishment" as such.

 

[Temporal Renegade]

Man, I feel really sorry for his kids.

"Well, Junior, since you've misbehaved--and, since I talk to GOD, who's giving me child-rearing advice-- He says that He's sorry, but He's got no choice but to CONDEMN YOU TO HELL!!

Maybe next lifetime, you'll know better than to play ball in the house!"

 

[Yaotl]

Man, I feel really sorry for his kids.

"Well, Junior, since you've misbehaved--and, since I talk to GOD, who's giving me child-rearing advice-- He says that He's sorry, but He's got no choice but to CONDEMN YOU TO HELL!!

Maybe next lifetime, you'll know better than to play ball in the house!"

What next lifetime?

 

[Temporal Renegade]

What next lifetime?

Oh, that's right, I forgot....
reincarnation isn't an option!

Too bad for junior!

 

[SlippyToad]

Why do you reject that when you die that you will go to Hell and be punished forever?

I have never heard an atheist clearly explain why they don't believe in Hell.

I doubt you're following this thread anymore. I don't know why I'm feeding you. But on the off-chance that you are paying any attention, here it is. Ready?

There is no credible evidence that such a place exists.

Got it? No pictures. No first-hand accounts. No measurements of anything real. Nothing. Just a story in an old book.

There exists a cornucopia of mythology in our race's past that describes any number of fantastic things. Cyclops and Titans, chariots racing across the sky, gods of this, that, and the other. Every once in awhile, usually with the complete collapse of a civilization, these myths have been replaced by newer ones, but no myth has been more or less valid than any other. In the end it's just the same old world, turning around the same old axis. Despite attempts to unite all of these fairy tales under one umbrella of "interpretations" of some One True Faith, there are enough striking differences to indicate that some of these competing beliefs have to be wrong.

What people like you never consider is the distinct possibility that all of them are wrong.

 

[SlippyToad]

I would like to touch upon the issue of Hell again. Let me ask atheists a question:

Say you were a parent who gave their child STRICT rules of what not to do. Now imagine they disobey you. Do you punish them? Ofcourse you do! A loving parent always punishes children when they are wrong so they will learn. How can a loving God NOT send people to Hell?

The fact is God is our parent and has given us STRICT laws to follow. If we disobey Him we MUST face punishment.

Why do you always post in all bold, and why do you always print HELL in big bold red letters? Do you imagine this makes your words more credible?

On to the punishment question. I made a promise the day my child was born, and I made it verbally to him when he was old enough to understand. I promised him I would never hit him as punishment.

I therefore engendered his trust. He has this idea now that when I make a promise, it's real. He can believe in it.

There are consequences when he's clearly ignoring me, or doing something he obviously is aware I don't want him to do. But they don't include pain.

My child is remarkably well-behaved for an eight-year-old boy. In fact, the more reasonable I am with him, the easier he is to get along with. When I lose my temper and display anger, I have a hard time convincing him to get along and behave.

I'm mentioning this not because I think I need your advice or critiques on how to parent, because I don't, but to wonder if you've ever considered that screaming at people about the perils of hell doesn't really work.