Billions of people are going to hell, sometimes I wonder why God created us, only to torment 3/4 of us forever and ever. Yes, I'm not exaggerating, 3/4 is probably correct. I also wonder why he created us to be such cruel, selfish creatures. I won't deny the Christian God exists, as I believe in my heart he does, along with Christ. I just simply believe God should have never created any of us. I'm tired of hearing of all the hate, intolerance, wars, racism, bigotry, etc. This world sucks, nothing but depressing things going on these days. I guess God would have been alright if he didn't create our human nature to be so awful.
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Better off without God?
- Thread starter FromTheDarknessToTheLight
- Start date
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explodingboy
Guest
Well that is the problem for the theologically minded. As a start though I'd look towards the non torture porn versions of hell.. from what I've been lead to believe most of that falls into later additions, and denominational interpretation/tradition.
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Out of curiosity, why are you here if you are an atheist? I have no problem if your atheist, but it just seems strange that you would bother putting up 4k posts on a religious forum.
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AndrewZinc
Newbie
God never made us to be so awful. He made us to glorify him and love him. He did give us a choice and we chose rebellion.
Given that God is omniscient (he knows everything), he must have known how we would turn out, but still made us. He had a rescue plan up his sleeve and we should be grateful for that rather than angry that God doesn't save everyone.
I'm reminded of that great Christian film (not really!) the Fifth Element with Bruce Willis. In it, the 'Supreme Being' learning of all the ugliness of humanity decides it is not worth saving. Bruce Willis shows her love and that makes a difference.
God's love does make a difference and it won't save the world but it will save all of his children who turn to him. I think that is worth shouting about but people love darkness, not light (John 3:19-20), and not everyone will respond. That breaks God's heart much more than ours.
Please don't misunderstand God. He made us and was pleased with us (Genesis 1:31), he was sorry that he made us (Genesis 6:6) but even then Noah pleased him. He is sovereign and has every right to wipe us off the face of the earth but because of his love and justice he saves us (John 3:16).
Isn't that wonderful.
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explodingboy
Guest
I must say I never realised I was up to 4K.
Otherwise, what can I say, I try not to let my Atheism define me, that's just unfortunately something that isn't changing.
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God did make us to be awful. He MADE our human nature, our DNA's, the way we think, our psychology. He made us to be awful, cruel creatures. Human experimentation has shown how human nature is naturally evil. The Stanford Prison Experiment shows how when human beings are put in a position of total control without being restricted in what they can do, a majority turn into evil controlling people and lose their morals. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Look at how the Japanese Unit 731 did terrible medical experiments of unwilling test subjects. These medical experimenters were put in a position of total power, and the result was prisoners being subjected to vivisections without anesthetic, blowtorches to the body, chemical experiments, frozen and then unfrozen, tied up to wood beams and fired at with tank and motor shells, then treated to figure out the best way to deal with such wounds. The list goes on, and many people died. We would not have such medical advancement right now if such tests weren't don't on live human beings, but was the torture of so many people worth it? It would not have been worth it if even this happened to only one person. We have advanced with our medical science due to forced human experimentation, not everything can be learned through guinea pigs and lab rats, and even then torturing animals is wrong.
It is surprising that we have not destroyed ourselves by now. We, human beings, are our own worst enemies. Not natural disasters, supernatural forces, extraterrestrial life, or anything else. It is natural for us to hate what we don't understand. Look at how those with down syndrome or other mental disorders are treated, a very large majority of the population looks down on such people with disgust, because we usually hate things we don't understand that are different. Human beings are generally not accepting creatures.
It is a fact; God created us to be selfish, cruel, controlling, and many other things. It is in our genetic make-up. Who created genetic make-up? Only God.
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NiobiumTragedy
Glorious Tragedy
You know, this is something I've been pondering on for a while now and it's becoming a harder and harder pill to swallow, but I'm assuming there is much more to it than we can possibly understand, but of what we do...
He created us, we are his creation.
There is no free will. He knows everything from the first to last. He knows already who will go to Heaven and who will go to Hell. There is nothing that can be done to change that because our destinies are already written out if he indeed knows everything. So he creates billions and eventually trillions of people whom have no purpose and cannot possibly save themselves. He creates them with the full knowledge that they are going to Hell. So why create them at all if only to make them suffer for something they have no control over?
He created us, we are his creation.
There is no free will. He knows everything from the first to last. He knows already who will go to Heaven and who will go to Hell. There is nothing that can be done to change that because our destinies are already written out if he indeed knows everything. So he creates billions and eventually trillions of people whom have no purpose and cannot possibly save themselves. He creates them with the full knowledge that they are going to Hell. So why create them at all if only to make them suffer for something they have no control over?
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NiobiumTragedy
Glorious Tragedy
Only if you don't consider what free will entails.
Free will would mean we have the ability to make our own decisions and choices. If God is all knowing and knows everything from start to finish before it even happens, then there is no free will because everything is already written, which means that every decision we make is like performing a play from a script; we have no choice in changing that.
It all comes back to that central point of God knowing everything. If this is the case, than our existence is utterly pointless. He creates people specifically to go to Hell and burn for eternity. He knows this millions of years before these people are born and creates them anyway because he knows every detail of their lives, how it will be played out, and how it will result. They cannot change this; they cannot do anything to save themselves for whatever reason... maybe it's simply the way God has programed them to think, but there will be no salvation for these people because they don't have the ability to have it.
It's such an odd concept to think on and very difficult to understand. :\
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if this is your perspective then it sure is a bleak one. are you a chosen one that is going to heaven or hell? what makes you believe God already has set people aside who are going straight to heaven or hell? do you have proof or is this just a belief?
you claim free will is the ability to make our own decisions and choices. you claim since God knows everything that we have no free will. in order to have free will there has to be something forbidden in order to allow us to choose between. which is why there was the tree of good and evil in the garden with adam and eve. the word teaches that God wants all to come to him and to be saved. our choices and decisions are what will ultimately lead to salvation not God's choosing. i have already shown God wants all to be saved but God will not override our free will. now submitting to God and doing his will is different then being forced to do God's will.
God gave a lot of rules we are to live by but are any of you made to follow those rules? no we do not because we choose if we decide to follow them or not. there is no one of their own free will that murders or heals because they have to. it matters not whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. peoples' desires have a lot to do with what they decide but everyone has a choice no matter what the consequences will be.
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This isn't biblical though.
The creation account says everything He made was good. It's only after the fall that Sin entered the world. Evil is an absence of good, it isn't created. We have a sinful nature because we are products of a fallen world.
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This is another way of looking at the issue of God being all knowing vis freewill. Because HE is all knowing he can see the future and knows decisions you will take in the course of your life time but he doesn't plan it for you to be that way. For example you have a car and the manual tells you where to put water and where to put oil, now if you put oil in place of water and your car breaks down who is to blame ? That is the reason God sent prophets to fulfill that function of presenting you with the manual.
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Free will is an illusion. It's like putting a gun to someones head, being told if we don't do the right things the trigger will be pulled. In reality, everyone as we speak has a gun to their head right now with God being the wielder of that firearm. Technically when a situation like this would happen you would obviously do the "right things." knowing if you do the "wrong things" you will die. Sure we have free will, but to what extent? I suppose you have free will to choose to live or die, so my argument in this post is possibly invalid.
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AndrewZinc
Newbie
I can't disagree more with some of these posts and how God is being portrayed as 'the bad guy'. God loves us. This is so simple that children can understand.
The topic is drifting into predestination but the way I look at it, is that God knows everything that is going to happen. That doesn't change the fact that we choose of our own free will. He just knows what we are going to choose. I accept that means he created us knowing that not all of us would choose to accept his offer of salvation. The consequences of that are serious.
And it is not a case of God saying, 'believe in Jesus, or you will burn in hell!' Some Christians go as far as to say, 'God couldn't possibly be like that, so everyone must go to heaven.'
Neither of those statements are biblical. God is a just and holy God. He cannot be in a relationship with us (as we were made to be) if we are tainted by sin. That's why it took Jesus to die in our place to make things right. God cannot be held responsible for people who choose to ignore that.
Okay, if what you say is true, then how do you explain that when 'the gun is placed to our heads' and you 'would obviously do the "right things"' so many people instead choose death over life?
This is not a new thought. I was reading from the book of Job during our Prayer Meeting tonight and found this:
"If it were his intention and he withdrew his spirit and breath, all mankind would perish together and man would return to the dust." - Job 34:14-15.
So, God is holding things together at the moment and that is why we have not yet destroyed ourselves.
The topic is drifting into predestination but the way I look at it, is that God knows everything that is going to happen. That doesn't change the fact that we choose of our own free will. He just knows what we are going to choose. I accept that means he created us knowing that not all of us would choose to accept his offer of salvation. The consequences of that are serious.
And it is not a case of God saying, 'believe in Jesus, or you will burn in hell!' Some Christians go as far as to say, 'God couldn't possibly be like that, so everyone must go to heaven.'
Neither of those statements are biblical. God is a just and holy God. He cannot be in a relationship with us (as we were made to be) if we are tainted by sin. That's why it took Jesus to die in our place to make things right. God cannot be held responsible for people who choose to ignore that.
Okay, if what you say is true, then how do you explain that when 'the gun is placed to our heads' and you 'would obviously do the "right things"' so many people instead choose death over life?
This is not a new thought. I was reading from the book of Job during our Prayer Meeting tonight and found this:
"If it were his intention and he withdrew his spirit and breath, all mankind would perish together and man would return to the dust." - Job 34:14-15.
So, God is holding things together at the moment and that is why we have not yet destroyed ourselves.
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Because so many people are atheists, and refuse to believe that God exists, they are blind to the fact that a gun is pointed at their heads but it is indeed there.
Also, there are those who follow false religions who are also unaware they have a gun pointed at their heads, but because they were raised in a Muslim or Buddhist family they were effectively brainwashed to believe that religion as the one and only true religion, so God eventually pulls the trigger on these people for living in ignorance, when it is not their fault. If God showed them a sign and led them to Him and His son, a sign saying, "follow me and give up your false religion" Then God would be just in sending these people to hell if they refuse. I refuse to think that God is just, because when you are born in Japan or China, all you know is those Asian religions, it's not your fault, and your soul is already on the road to destruction just by being born into a family with a false religion because of brainwashing. Does God show each individual a sign in such circumstances that they will not miss? It's not their fault if they didn't understand the sign, or somehow missed it. I believe also in the predestination theory. That's not fair or just.
I guess my argument above was invalid, we do have free will, but not without consequences.
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NiobiumTragedy
Glorious Tragedy
Do you not believe that God knows all? Our past, present and future? Do you believe he doesn't possess the knowledge of every aspect of our lives eons before we are even born?
If the answer is no, then you do not believe in the God portrayed in the Bible as he is the one whom is all knowing.
If the answer is yes, then you agree that he already knows who is going to Heaven and who is going to Hell and he creates these people knowing full well that he will be denied by them. He essentially gives them existence with the knowledge he will be sending them to Hell.
I certainly don't deny it's a bleak view, but with our understanding, it's the best we can consider by what we know of God.
Two things here to consider:
1) Genesis was a parable. There was no Adam and Eve, there was no forbidden tree of knowledge. It was a story written to prove a point. It didn't really exist or really happen. I'm not going to push the conversation in another direction with this other to tell you that if you believe otherwise, I suggest you look up some theological studies on the book of Genesis.
2) The point here is that it begs the question: if God knew 1,000,000 years ago that you would deny him, why would he create you to begin with knowing that you would end up in Hell? He essentially creates you for the purpose of going there because he already knows the end result of your existence.
Also, how do we have choices if our lives are already written? If you read a book, any book, the characters do exactly the same things every time in that book and this will never change. These characters (we humans) may think they have free will but how can they when their lives are already written by an all knowing God?
These are the things I'm trying to comprehend but I don't feel we have the ability to do so knowing what little we actually know. That certainly doesn't stop the situation from looking grim though.
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humblewatchman
Two greatest commandements are to love.
Free will is gift given to us so that we will be able to "choose" to love Him, and He had to allow an enemy of temptation and lies for this senario. You have to have the bad as a counterweight or an opposite so there is something to choose from. Someone who "chooses" to love us and to honor us by "believing what we say", is the highest form of love and relationship. He wants to be choosen by us. Without free will there is no choice, or choosing Him, just like without black, there is no appreciation for the whiteness of white. He does not want robotic praise or obligatory affection from us. He wants the "real deal", just like you do in your human relationships. When we are in a relationship, we want to know that the other person loves us the right way, the right depth, and for the right reasons....so does God.
He does already know what you are going to choose, but you don't. It is about "how" you walk out your journey along the way, as much as it is about arriving at the final destiny. God set free will as a law of nature. It is a law just like gravity is. It is a law that even He has to abide by. It was a sacrifice for Him to give it to us, but it was for both of our benefits (His and ours). Knowing that you do have to choose and what the choices are, do we sit around and say "heck with it" I will choose Him later, but for now I will do what pleases me? Well let's look at that attitude. You do not know when your time is up. Your life could end at any moment, and the most important thing to remember is that the choice is an eternal one.
Another law that He set into place that helps bring more light to this idea, is that He gave power and purpose to our prayers. We pray, He answers. He wants an active involved relationship with us, how can robots with no enemy and no choice be spiritually and emotionally involved with Him at all. They cannot.
He does already know what you are going to choose, but you don't. It is about "how" you walk out your journey along the way, as much as it is about arriving at the final destiny. God set free will as a law of nature. It is a law just like gravity is. It is a law that even He has to abide by. It was a sacrifice for Him to give it to us, but it was for both of our benefits (His and ours). Knowing that you do have to choose and what the choices are, do we sit around and say "heck with it" I will choose Him later, but for now I will do what pleases me? Well let's look at that attitude. You do not know when your time is up. Your life could end at any moment, and the most important thing to remember is that the choice is an eternal one.
Another law that He set into place that helps bring more light to this idea, is that He gave power and purpose to our prayers. We pray, He answers. He wants an active involved relationship with us, how can robots with no enemy and no choice be spiritually and emotionally involved with Him at all. They cannot.
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I'm not convinced that we know how many people are going to be saved, nor do we know that those who aren't are going to be tortured forever.
Jesus' threats of gehenna are almost entirely directed against believers who are unfruitful, not unbelievers. Rom 2 seems to envision non-Jews (and in context, I'd say non-Christians) as capable of salvation.
Luke 13:23 is sometimes cited as showing that few will be saved. But as far as I can see it doesn't say that. Jesus is asked whether only a few will be saved. He responds: Make sure *you* are. The gate may be hard for us to find, but if the context of that whole section is original, the people who are excluded seem to be fairly specifically those who are called and don't follow through. When they are excluded the whole rest of the world comes in (13:29).
Beyond that I can't go because the rules of CF forbid discussing alternatives in the Christian groups. However I should note that I don't consider universalism credible. I think some people are sufficiently hardened against God that they may turn out beyond salvation. I'm just not sure how common that is, nor do I think that we know exactly what God will do in judgement. We know that we will all be accountable, and that God will get rid of evil, including the evil in us. But the details in the Rev and other places seem highly symbolic.
There's plenty of hate in the world, but there are also plenty of people who care about each other. We've got good enough communications now that we can hear about notable examples of cruelty through the whole world. But looking at people around me, I find lots of good going on.
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itlivesinthere
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God does will not torment us in hell. Hell is a place completely devoid of God's presence, so He literally will not exist in hell in order to torment us. God did not create people as sinful creatures; He created the first people, Adam and Eve, as completely pure and sinless. Even so, they had free will, so they were capable of sinning and they ultimately did. Lucifer was the same way. God created Lucifer as a good, sinless being, but Lucifer decided to sin against God and therefore became Satan. Sin makes us into the corrupt and twisted creatures we are and only salvation through Christ can save us from our sin. God does not create things with sin because He simply cannot do so; it would be completely against His very nature.
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