Hell

[OrdinaryClay]

In the minds of people.

Telling me where you think they exist does not answer the question I asked.

 

[Huntun]

If ideas don't exist would that mean it's impossible to have one?

 

[OrdinaryClay]

You can't reject something that you don't believe exists.

However, there *is* a difference between an object and the *idea* of said object.

An idea exists in the mind. It may or may not have a corresponding reality, or
result in a corresponding reality.

ToddNotTodd was not talking about ideas. He was talking about existence. I think you are dangling a classic red herring hear.

es, and I agree with that definition.

Where do you get the idea that I don't believe God exists?

I asked a question. Do you believe God exists?

 

[OrdinaryClay]

If ideas don't exist would that mean it's impossible to have one?

Equivocating on two words does not make either case correct. What does it mean to have an idea?

Do numbers exist?

 

[Gadarene]

Telling me where you think they exist does not answer the question I asked.

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

 

[OrdinaryClay]

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

No. I'm following the claims where they lead, which is no where. It's an equivocation, play on words, to say ideas exist in the same fashion as the world does. It's fruitless word play.

Here's the nut. When an atheist says "You can't reject something that you don't believe exists." they are simply ignoring the fact that they did indeed reject God and that's how they reached their state of non-belief.

 

[Huntun]

What does it mean to have an idea?

Well lets go with an idea of a unicorn since someone brought that up.

Physically it could probably be described as a certain chemical / electric process in the brain. This process would be experienced subjectively, or "from the inside", as a visual image that is pink, shaped like a horse, and has a single horn. This experience of the image would not be the result of light impinging on the eye but would instead come about via the minds creative image forming ability*. Having had this experience I would say that I had the idea of a pink unicorn. You could say the idea of the pink unicorn exists as an electro-chemical process in my brain or as a certain subjective experience from the inside. The fact of experiencing it (or maybe observing the electrochemical reaction with some device) makes it nonsensical to say it is utterly non-existent. Does it even make sense to say you experienced something non-existent? This ideal existence would in no way imply that a creature answering to that description would ever be found walking around in a forest any time soon.

* Creative re-arranging of elements previously seen might make said image possible. Say you've seen horses, pink crayons, the horn of a goat, etc.. so it's easy to combine elements from each into single creature.

 

[Nooj]

Maybe there would be reasons not to be a Christian even if one were assured of his existence. It's always possible one could meet such a being and find him to be intolerable I guess. If he were actually all compassionate, all beneficent, etc.. I doubt I would have much of a problem with him but who knows.

being a christian is not about not having much of a problem with god.

in fact i think you're better off having a problem with god, passionately, rebelliously, riotously, à la manière of milton's satan or promethean courage versus zeus, than being the sort of person who lives senza infamia e senza lode. dante says those people end up in the antechamber for hell, not even fit to enter hell (along with the mediocre angels who neither rebelled and chose satan nor chose god's side).

doesn't matter how compassionate or whatever god is. With no evidence that he even exists in the first place becoming a Christian just isn't a live possibility for me though anymore than you could dedicate yourself to a relationship with Thor (assuming you doubt his existence).

i think you can have a healthy relationship with god without believing he exists, so i'm fine with that. i just wanted to point out that believing in god does not mean you're necessarily going to have a healthy relationship with god.

I can choose to love and have a personal relationship with my mom or my next door neighbor because I personally interact with them on regular basis in an unambiguous manner and therefore have little reason to doubt their existence (at least in an empty/ interdependent manner I understand that the term "existence" itself is problematic in Buddhist thought but I'm just using conventional speech). If I doubted that these said people even existed having a relationship with them or trying to follow their will would be a tall order to say the least.

on the contrary i think the relationship you have with a god you don't know exists is one of the most fruitful personal ones you could have, even without the exchanging hugs, words, gifts you do with people in your life.

you highlight the certainty, but to me, the important part of the christian journey is the uncertainty. not knowing whether god will answer, not knowing if there's going to be a reward or punishment, always living on the edge.

god is a person who you can't see, touch, lick or smell. you don't think christians know that? that's part and parcel of orthodox christian belief.

buddhism says that selves in the sense of brahmanic atman don't ultimately exist, although in a conventional sense selves do exist. so then what is it or who is it that we're supposed to be compassionate to? just a bundle of skhandas right, none of which you can point to and say aha! there's the self! but in fact in the stream of buddhism i'm familiar with, which is madhyamika buddhism, it is precisely because of the realisation of the emptiness of the self and the emptiness of all phenomena that compassion can truly, really start to flow, because when you see the emptiness of the self, then you can appreciate the self for the first time.

why i mention that is because it's integral in the moment of aporia that you run into something that seems to defeat the possibility of something happening, in this case compassion for the person, before realising that it's only in the impossibility that the thing can happen.

Not to mention the fact that failure to accept him apparently leads to eternal torture in hell according to more orthodox interpretations of Christianity. I wouldn't be to happy about going there, so even if, for some strange reason, his charisma wasn't enough to convince me to follow him with the carrot I still might go with him just to avoid that. An all knowing all good , etc... being should be fairly charming, awe inspiring, and charismatic to say the least though. I don't see how he could fail to win me over.

a god who charms you over in order to get your worship with his great knowledge, great power, great benevolence is like a guy who charms you over in order to get into your pants. i hardly think that god wants to charm you into worshipping him, and if people are so scared of hell that they're willing to be charmed into worshipping him, then i think that's more than a little sad. god sent his only son in order to express who he really is, which is love. god is love. true worship is only something that comes from your love of god. if there's no love, then it's utterly pointless to worship god. might as well go do something else.

and love, if i'm right, cannot be inspired or bought with flowers. just because someone buys you a bunch of chocolates doesn't mean you're under any obligation to love him. where does love come from? how is love maintained? mystery to me. i believe love comes from a mysterious source, which is god himself. so in my opinion, you could believe in god and still not love him, because you can't make yourself or fool yourself into loving him. certainly it's mistaken to think that things will fall into place once you just find the right amount of evidence that will tip you over. love just comes of its own accord.

 

[KCfromNC]

I'm speaking of two variations: the one everlasting flames, the other a metaphorical "outer darkness" (where perhaps the sinners get their own sin for eternity, some pertinent to Lewis' statement that the doors to hell are locked from the inside).

Let's speak about the eternal fire one first. I see three reasons as to how a person could believe something so unutterably terrible and unjust as an everlasting punishment in fire. (It's bad enough dying in a fire once.)

4) Someone who doesn't believe reality has to correspond to what they wish were true. That is, they may believe that hell is both terrible, unjust, and unfortunately the way things really are.

It is interesting you seem to presume that religious beliefs are sent though a set of "if it doesn't fulfill an emotional need, it isn't actually true" filters, though.

 

[andy b]

If something is said to exist only in thought then they don't exist.

thats what i said

 

[Rajni]

Is punishing wrongdoing evil? Then how is the concept of hell evil?

Because it suggests that the punishment goes on and on forever.
Infinite punishment for finite offenses is unjust, imo.

ToddNotTodd was not talking about ideas.

True; the term "idea" wasn't inserted into the rejection-process until you
mentioned it in your response to him (post #34), where you had stated: "I reject
the idea of unicorns because I don't believe they exist" (emphasis mine).

Which makes sense, because all we have to work with is the *idea* of unicorns; as
I previously explained, it would take actually coming face-to-face with a unicorn
to legitimately reject unicorns *themselves*. Until that happens, one is merely
rejecting the *idea* or the *concept* of unicorns, not the unicorns *themselves*.
Same case with God. Until someone runs right smack-dab into Him and literally
sees Him face-to-face, they're not rejecting *Him*, but only the idea/concept of
Him, because they don't believe He actually exists.

This may explain why at least one Christian I encountered incorporates into their
belief an allowance for an individual's post-death conversion—as opposed to the
standard "decide before ya die" view—because they realize that it's only after
death, when one is in the unmistakeable presence of God, that one can really
make a *fully informed* decision for or against Him—and I mean *Him*, not
merely ideas and concepts *about* Him. Big difference.

I asked a question. Do you believe God exists?

Yes, I most definitely do; that's pretty much why I agreed with your previously-
stated definition of God as "The Greatest Possible Being". You apparently didn't
read that part, otherwise you wouldn't keep asking. Not only that, but two of the
four symbols displayed under my username represent a belief in God, which
would've provided enough clues to have saved you from having to even ask the
first time.

Therefore, since I also asked you a question (but it remains unanswered): Where
do you get the idea that I don't believe God exists?

Here's the nut. When an atheist says "You can't reject something that you don't believe exists." they are simply ignoring the fact that they did indeed reject God and that's how they reached their state of non-belief.

No, as has already been explained, they reject the *idea* of God. Again, if one
doesn't think something exists, they can't very well reject it.


-

 

[Kylie]

I don't often talk with my husband about his religion, as we're both very content to let each other have our own beliefs and we never try to push them onto each other. And we're letting our daughter find her own path.

But there was one time, when (after making sure that he was okay with discussing it) I asked him if he thought I was going to go to hell. He told me that yes, he did, that I'd go to hell unless I accepted Jesus as my saviour. I asked him if he thought he was going to heaven, and he said yes. Then we spoke about the two. He doesn't think that hell is literally fire and brimstone, but more of a torture of our own making, so it's different for everyone. And he said that he thinks Heaven is not really a place where you sit on clouds and play harps, but more like a feeling of being perfectly happy and content for all eternity.

Then I asked him how he could be perfectly happy and content if he knew I was suffering in hell. That shut him up for a bit, lol. The only way was either if he didn't care (and he doesn't want to stop loving me, when we got married we promised that we'd always love one another, and he doesn't see that promise as ending at death), or if he was ignorant and had his memory wiped (in which case how could it really be him anymore?). Ever since then, he's changed his views, and he doesn't think that any loving God could put rules in place that would set up a situation like this. He thinks that as long as people are good and try to live the best life they can. they'll go to heaven, and he's told me he expects to spend the rest of eternity with me. Kinda cute, I guess.

 

[seeingeyes]

Then I asked him how he could be perfectly happy and content if he knew I was suffering in hell.

That's the heart of it, yep! All the rest is theological squabbles.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Hell, as a physical place is indeed established in Bible text. Whether one likes it or not is beside the point.

There is some discussion about the literal nature of 'fire' and 'cold' and such. Jesus mentioned at least once that Hell is a place where the fire never goes out and the worm never dies. It can be argued this is metaphoric language. Frankly, the reality of it boils down to 'it's not a good place to be and no one will like it'.

The other point about Hell is that is was designed for the confinement of Satan and the 'fallen' or renegade angels. Further, the Bible teaches all those who reject God will spend eternity there. So the people who populate Hell are those who don't want to spend eternity with God. How unfair is that?

I suppose it's easier to dump all the blame on God. In that manner, no human has any culpability in the matter, right?

Culpability for what? If someone has a gun to your head and says that they'll shoot you if you don't comply with their demands, you don't comply and they shoot you, are you then culpable for being shot?

 

[Honest Al]

Let's speak about the eternal fire one first. I see three reasons as to how a person could believe something so unutterably terrible and unjust as an everlasting punishment in fire...
No single person, unless he's a theological jerk (see 1), can experience his own deepest suffering and then look and find an everlasting fire Hell as anything remotely close to justice or love.

Hi Received,

I've written a book. There's a chapter in it that tries to convince people--from the Bible--that the Bible doesn't teach that sinnners will burn forever and ever in hell. I would be happy to send you (or anyone else) a copy if you would like.

God Bless

 

[Huntun]

Here's the nut. When an atheist says "You can't reject something that you don't believe exists." they are simply ignoring the fact that they did indeed reject God and that's how they reached their state of non-belief.

How could you possible know that this applies to every person who lacks belief in God/s? I don't see how you could have the necessary access to their experience to come to that conclusion on a logical basis. Sounds more like faith based speculation.

 

[bhsmte]

How could you possible know that this applies to every person who lacks belief in God/s? I don't see how you could have the necessary access to their experience to come to that conclusion on a logical basis. Sounds more like faith based speculation.

One thing you see quite often from some Christians, is them crawling inside the head of a non-believer and telling them what they really think.
Just as you often hear from some Christians, atheists really believe God exists, they just suppress the belief.

This is really just a manufactured attempt, for these types of people to label non-believers a certain way, so they can feel better about their own belief.

 

[Tigereyes12]

One thing you see quite often from some Christians, is them crawling inside the head of a non-believer and telling them what they really think.
Just as you often hear from some Christians, atheists really believe God exists, they just suppress the belief.

This is really just a manufactured attempt, for these types of people to label non-believers a certain way, so they can feel better about their own belief.

Don't atheists crawl inside Christians heads and tell them what they really think?

Specifically don't atheists say you believe this because "....no evidence, need based, ignorance, psych probs" ?

 

[Gadarene]

Don't atheists crawl inside Christians heads and tell them what they really think? Specifically don't atheists say you believe this because "....no evidence, need based, ignorance, psych probs" ?

Christians tend to use their take on the atheist mindset as more of a starting premise, because the bible makes such assertions and they believe them from the getgo.

Atheists tend to conclude what they do about the mindset of some believers after conducting an argument on a religious topic.

 

[bhsmte]

Don't atheists crawl inside Christians heads and tell them what they really think?

Specifically don't atheists say you believe this because "....no evidence, need based, ignorance, psych probs" ?

What I see from most atheists, is them asking Christians why they believe what they do, not telling them what they think. Typically, a Christian will produce reasons that make no sense to the non-believer and they will again be asked, why do you believe based on that?