Views on Hell and the problem with punishment

[Wryetui]

If you want to go "old and original", then why don't you go farther back ? Why not believe in the ancient Sumerian religions ? There are a lot of texts which survive from that era (cuneiform), perhaps even more than Judaeo-Christian texts (I'm guessing here) ... and it's often argued that much of the mythos and narrative of the Judaeo-Christian beliefs build upon the earlier Sumerian/Babylonian/Akkadian/etc ones anyways. So why not go even more ancient and earlier ?

Is Orthodox the dominant religion in your community by the way?

Because those religions don't have Christ. Are you really a christian? How could you have asked something like that...

Orthodox christianity is the predominant religion in my country (89% of the population), I was baptised and raised in this religion since I was a little child, but that's not the reason I am now an orthodox christian. In my little city, we have 4 orthodox churches, 1 orthodox cathedral, 1 roman-catholic church, 1 eastern catholic church, 1 baptist church, 1 pentecostal church, 1 JW kingdom hall, 1 adventist church and even a synagogue, when I came back from atheism I could have chosen any of them, but I prefered to ask God for guidance, and He sent to me an orthodox priest so I can talk with and He to guide me trough the right path. However, not even that was my reason for being orthodox, but the reason I mentioned in the other post.

Trust me, whoever reads and studies Orthodoxy becomes Orthodox.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Because those religions don't have Christ.

So what? They are older, which apparently means something to you.

Trust me, whoever reads and studies Orthodoxy becomes Orthodox.

Anyone of any religion can make this claim.

 

[bhsmte]

Trust me, whoever reads and studies Orthodoxy becomes Orthodox.

Quite a claim.

You are saying that 100% of people of other religions and or non believers, who studies orthodoxy, will always become orthodox?

I guess this would also mean, no one ever leaves the orthodox church and converts to another religion or becomes an unbeliever?

Why do you think that is?

 

[True Scotsman]

Many atheists and agnostics see a problem with the issue of Hell and punishment, a lot of people think God punishes them for not believing sending them to Hell. That view sounds very poor and childish to me and it's far to be true, without any theological debates I would like to share with you the Orthodox conception of Hell and damnation.

Some Orthodox theologians see another example of distinction between East and West in the teaching of Hell as a created place. For the Orthodox, Heaven is not a place in the sky, it is being with God. Salvation in the East, is not salvation from the wrath of God, as St. Isaac teaches that the Love of God is the Tree of Life.According to Eastern Christianity people are not sent down to Hell by an angry God. Hell as professed in the East is neither the absence of God nor the separation of the soul from the presence of God, but rather the opposite: Heaven and Hell are the divine presence experienced either pleasantly or unpleasantly, depending upon one's spiritual condition. Finally the theological concept of hell or eternal damnation also via theoria is expressed different in the West, than in the East.

The Orthodox Church holds that both Heaven and Hell are a condition of relationship with God that is either theosis or perdition, both of which are often spoken of as the effect of being in the presence of God. The Orthodox Church teaches that eternal damnation in the lake of fire and heaven occur within the same realm, which is being with God; God is Heaven, God is the Kingdom of God and Heaven.For one who hates God (as existence, as Life for example called Misotheism) such a place as in the presence of God, will be eternal suffering.
The Orthodox Church teaches that Heaven and Hell are in the same realm, and that Hell is not separation from God symbolically or physically,
Hell as taught in Orthodoxy is a place chosen. The Western understanding of Hell (called inferno or infernus) can be understood from the works of Augustine as being a place possibly located under the earth. Saint Gregory of Nyssa, himself a believer in apocatastasis and universal reconciliation, argued that Hades (the place "which serves as a receptacle for souls after death" not the place of Hell per se) is a subterranean locale.
As the Church both Eastern and Western teaches, there is no place where God is not, and God's love is for all human beings, including sinners. Hell is described as self-exclusion from communion with that universal love, as cutting oneself off from love, or but as an enemy of God.Only of a human heart that excludes God can it be said that, in a sense, God is not there, and so Eastern Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware wrote that Hell is "the place where God is not" (emphasis in the original). In his review of the Bishop's book Hieromonk Patapios criticized this expression as unorthodox.

I would like to share this to make you see that God isn't arbitrary at all, and that not all the people think or believe that God is a tyrant in the sky Who punishes people for not believing in Him, like an egoist child. That view is very far away from the Orthodox view. I posted this on phylosophy because I wasn't sure that atheists could post on the Apologetics forum, but I will start this thread there too, maybe.

I don't believe there is a god nor a hell. It is a Human invention to put the fear in people so that they can be controlled. There is no way to control an innocent man so the first task of religion is to get the victim to accept an unearned guilt without any evidence. Fortunately for religious leaders, many are very credulous.

 

[Wryetui]

So what? They are older, which apparently means something to you.



Anyone of any religion can make this claim.

They can be as old as they want. For me, old doesn't mean anything, but original means it. If a church has preserved the original teachings of something, the original doctrine, I would stuck with it, instead of stucking with ideas developed later on the same subject. If something doesn't have Christ, then it's not valid. To me, at last.

 

[TillICollapse]

Because those religions don't have Christ. Are you really a christian? How could you have asked something like that...

Orthodox christianity is the predominant religion in my country (89% of the population), I was baptised and raised in this religion since I was a little child, but that's not the reason I am now an orthodox christian. In my little city, we have 4 orthodox churches, 1 orthodox cathedral, 1 roman-catholic church, 1 eastern catholic church, 1 baptist church, 1 pentecostal church, 1 JW kingdom hall, 1 adventist church and even a synagogue, when I came back from atheism I could have chosen any of them, but I prefered to ask God for guidance, and He sent to me an orthodox priest so I can talk with and He to guide me trough the right path. However, not even that was my reason for being orthodox, but the reason I mentioned in the other post.

So at first you made it seem as though some of your reasoning was based on Orthodoxy being the oldest and original. Yet I showed you even older and more original than that. But then you went with "It has Christ in it".

So how about this: how about the idea that since 89% of the population around you are Orthodox, that is the reason you are Orthodox: cultural identity.

IOW, if you had grown up where the population was 89% Jewish, you would have claimed some form of Judaism as the oldest/original, and not even worried about Christ. Or if you had been born where the population was 89% Muslim, you would have claimed some form of Islam, so on and so forth. Tribalism.

Do you think it's possible that instead of rationalizing your religion as being the oldest/original/Christ centered, etc ... instead you are simply the product of your surroundings and are rationalizing it from that perspective ?

Trust me, whoever reads and studies Orthodoxy becomes Orthodox.

Not true.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

They can be as old as they want. For me, old doesn't mean anything, but original means it. If a church has preserved the original teachings of something, the original doctrine, I would stuck with it, instead of stucking with ideas developed later on the same subject. If something doesn't have Christ, then it's not valid. To me, at last.

What counts as "original"? Christianity traces its origins to Judaism, while also seemingly blending other elements from extant traditions.

 

[TillICollapse]

What counts as "original"? Christianity traces its origins to Judaism, while also seemingly blending other elements from extant traditions.

Not only that, but various forms of Christianity also claim that Christ was present at creation and appeared in forms throughout history (Melchizedek, Angel of the Lord, Michael the Angel, etc). I would think Messianic Judaism would be attempting to be "closer".

Some believe Christianity was founded in the Garden of Eden ... the narrative of which has been argued as being a carry over from the Canaanites, which is even older (obviously).

 

[Wryetui]

So at first you made it seem as though some of your reasoning was based on Orthodoxy being the oldest and original. Yet I showed you even older and more original than that. But then you went with "It has Christ in it".

So how about this: how about the idea that since 89% of the population around you are Orthodox, that is the reason you are Orthodox: cultural identity.

IOW, if you had grown up where the population was 89% Jewish, you would have claimed some form of Judaism as the oldest/original, and not even worried about Christ. Or if you had been born where the population was 89% Muslim, you would have claimed some form of Islam, so on and so forth. Tribalism.

Do you think it's possible that instead of rationalizing your religion as being the oldest/original/Christ centered, etc ... instead you are simply the product of your surroundings and are rationalizing it from that perspective ?

Not true.

Nothing is further from reality than your post. Do you know I grew up in Spain, a major roman-catholic country, because I left Romania when I was 3yo and came back when I was 12? Why wouldn't I become catholic? Why wouldn't 12 years in Spain, my childhood, would affect me? Even studying in an Opus Dei school. What is true is true and what is false is false, no matter how many people believe it. What you are saying is practically an insult, you are saying that I cannot think beyond my own limitations and that I am forced to accept what I have here, well, trust me, that is not the case.

 

[GrimKingGrim]

Oh kill me.

Many atheists and agnostics see a problem with the issue of Hell and punishment, a lot of people think God punishes them for not believing; sending them to Hell. That view sounds very poor and childish to me and it's far to be true, without any theological debates I would like to share with you the Orthodox conception of Hell and damnation.

Sure, bring it.

Heaven and Hell are the divine presence experienced either pleasantly or unpleasantly, depending upon one's spiritual condition.

I'd like to learn about this so called "spiritual condition"

The Orthodox Church teaches that eternal damnation in the lake of fire and heaven occur within the same realm, which is being with God;

You're not differentiating a common view of Hell here; just changing the locales.

God is Heaven, God is the Kingdom of God and Heaven.

This sounds incredibly hard to grasp.

For one who hates God (as existence, as Life for example called Misotheism) such a place as in the presence of God, will be eternal suffering.

Well I guess those pesky people who hate God will be suffering, but what does that have to do with Atheists?

The Orthodox Church teaches that Heaven and Hell are in the same realm, and that Hell is not separation from God symbolically or physically,

Okay?

As the Church both Eastern and Western teaches, there is no place where God is not, and God's love is for all human beings, including sinners.

Oh my God make a point...

Hell is described as self-exclusion from communion with that universal love, as cutting oneself off from love, or but as an enemy of God.

Who would do that? Who are you even addressing?

Only of a human heart that excludes...

Gonna hit pause here, my heart pumps blood... what does yours do?

This was a whole lotta nothing. I don't even know who you were addressing.

 

[TillICollapse]

Nothing is further from reality than your post. Do you know I grew up in Spain, a major roman-catholic country, because I left Romania when I was 3yo and came back when I was 12? Why wouldn't I become catholic? Why wouldn't 12 years in Spain, my childhood, would affect me? Even studying in an Opus Dei school. What is true is true and what is false is false, no matter how many people believe it. What you are saying is practically an insult, you are saying that I cannot think beyond my own limitations and that I am forced to accept what I have here, well, trust me, that is not the case.

You said:

"I was baptised and raised in this religion since I was a little child."

Is that true ? Were you baptized and raised in that religion since you were a little child ? Living part of your childhood in a Roman Catholic country is one thing ... being baptized and raised in a religion is perhaps another, esp if your family helped to influence this. You then moved back when you were 12, getting ready to enter puberty and the teen years.

You don't see how any of those could possibly be factors ? And I didn't say that you weren't able to think beyond your own limitations, you said that, not me.

Let me ask you this: how do you account for religious majority demographics ? Why are certain areas majority Muslim, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, etc ? Do you see a link between culture/regional influence and beliefs ?

 

[Freodin]

Many atheists and agnostics see a problem with the issue of Hell and punishment, a lot of people think God punishes them for not believing sending them to Hell. That view sounds very poor and childish to me and it's far to be true, without any theological debates I would like to share with you the Orthodox conception of Hell and damnation.

Some Orthodox theologians see another example of distinction between East and West in the teaching of Hell as a created place. For the Orthodox, Heaven is not a place in the sky, it is being with God. Salvation in the East, is not salvation from the wrath of God, as St. Isaac teaches that the Love of God is the Tree of Life.According to Eastern Christianity people are not sent down to Hell by an angry God. Hell as professed in the East is neither the absence of God nor the separation of the soul from the presence of God, but rather the opposite: Heaven and Hell are the divine presence experienced either pleasantly or unpleasantly, depending upon one's spiritual condition. Finally the theological concept of hell or eternal damnation also via theoria is expressed different in the West, than in the East.

The Orthodox Church holds that both Heaven and Hell are a condition of relationship with God that is either theosis or perdition, both of which are often spoken of as the effect of being in the presence of God. The Orthodox Church teaches that eternal damnation in the lake of fire and heaven occur within the same realm, which is being with God; God is Heaven, God is the Kingdom of God and Heaven.For one who hates God (as existence, as Life for example called Misotheism) such a place as in the presence of God, will be eternal suffering.
The Orthodox Church teaches that Heaven and Hell are in the same realm, and that Hell is not separation from God symbolically or physically,
Hell as taught in Orthodoxy is a place chosen. The Western understanding of Hell (called inferno or infernus) can be understood from the works of Augustine as being a place possibly located under the earth. Saint Gregory of Nyssa, himself a believer in apocatastasis and universal reconciliation, argued that Hades (the place "which serves as a receptacle for souls after death" not the place of Hell per se) is a subterranean locale.
As the Church both Eastern and Western teaches, there is no place where God is not, and God's love is for all human beings, including sinners. Hell is described as self-exclusion from communion with that universal love, as cutting oneself off from love, or but as an enemy of God.Only of a human heart that excludes God can it be said that, in a sense, God is not there, and so Eastern Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware wrote that Hell is "the place where God is not" (emphasis in the original). In his review of the Bishop's book Hieromonk Patapios criticized this expression as unorthodox.

I would like to share this to make you see that God isn't arbitrary at all, and that not all the people think or believe that God is a tyrant in the sky Who punishes people for not believing in Him, like an egoist child. That view is very far away from the Orthodox view. I posted this on phylosophy because I wasn't sure that atheists could post on the Apologetics forum, but I will start this thread there too, maybe.

Whatever the doctrine, concept, idea behind the term "hell", they all have this one thing in common: it is a place or state of "eternal torment", something very unpleasant where the "inhabitants" suffer.

And so it doesn't matter how you explain it, whom you make responsible for it, who you say "choses" it... it is incompatible with the idea of a "loving" deity, and even more so for one who claims "universal love".

 

[Wryetui]

The "deity" loves us anyway, the matter is how we perceive that love. That burning love will be perceived as suffering by those who runned away from God their entire lives, and by eternal joy by those who loved Him and prepared to be in harmony with Him. God is a fair God, He cannot force us to love Him, and it's our love for Him who prepares us to be in His presence, if we lack of that love while we are alive then we will end up unprepared after our death. Can you blame the fire for burning? It's just how the fire is, the same is God, you can't blame God for being so holy that only those who prepared enough can approach to Him, and the others will burn. Do you remember Leviticus, and what happened to those ritually impure who approached the Ark of the Covenant? They died, the same will happen to those who will approach God impure after they die, but they cannot die again, so they will feel pain.

I find it very logical.

 

[HitchSlap]

The "deity" loves us anyway, the matter is how we perceive that love. That burning love will be perceived as suffering by those who runned away from God their entire lives, and by eternal joy by those who loved Him and prepared to be in harmony with Him. God is a fair God, He cannot force us to love Him, and it's our love for Him who prepares us to be in His presence, if we lack of that love while we are alive then we will end up unprepared after our death. Can you blame the fire for burning? It's just how the fire is, the same is God, you can't blame God for being so holy that only those who prepared enough can approach to Him, and the others will burn. Do you remember Leviticus, and what happened to those ritually impure who approached the Ark of the Covenant? They died, the same will happen to those who will approach God impure after they die, but they cannot die again, so they will feel pain.

I find it very logical.

I'd never blame a fire for burning. But I'd prosecute the one who started it.

 

[Freodin]

The "deity" loves us anyway, the matter is how we perceive that love. That burning love will be perceived as suffering by those who runned away from God their entire lives, and by eternal joy by those who loved Him and prepared to be in harmony with Him. God is a fair God, He cannot force us to love Him, and it's our love for Him who prepares us to be in His presence, if we lack of that love while we are alive then we will end up unprepared after our death. Can you blame the fire for burning? It's just how the fire is, the same is God, you can't blame God for being so holy that only those who prepared enough can approach to Him, and the others will burn. Do you remember Leviticus, and what happened to those ritually impure who approached the Ark of the Covenant? They died, the same will happen to those who will approach God impure after they die, but they cannot die again, so they will feel pain.

I find it very logical.

I find it very... telling... that you see no problems with comparing love with burning and killing people.

Whatever this is that you say God is... it isn't love.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

The "deity" loves us anyway, the matter is how we perceive that love. That burning love will be perceived as suffering by those who runned away from God their entire lives, and by eternal joy by those who loved Him and prepared to be in harmony with Him.

What's problematic here is your assumption that atheists are "running away from God." That's not the case at all, at least not in my own experience. If there is a God, I want to know about it. The problem is that religion been terribly unsuccessful in advancing a compelling or coherent case for a deity (or deities).

God is a fair God, He cannot force us to love Him, and it's our love for Him who prepares us to be in His presence, if we lack of that love while we are alive then we will end up unprepared after our death. Can you blame the fire for burning? It's just how the fire is, the same is God, you can't blame God for being so holy that only those who prepared enough can approach to Him, and the others will burn. Do you remember Leviticus, and what happened to those ritually impure who approached the Ark of the Covenant? They died, the same will happen to those who will approach God impure after they die, but they cannot die again, so they will feel pain.

I find it very logical.

As I stated earlier, this leaves open the possibility that a lifelong atheist could still experience Heaven. His soul would simply need to be pure enough.

 

[Colter]

In my theology the resurrection on the first mansion world adds nothing to us other than the fact of survival, we pick up right where we left off. We still don't meet God on paradise for a long, long time, after many translations and growth.

The God or Gods of the religious are conceptualizations, by the time we are capable of meeting the true God, he will be far removed from our current, primitive concepts of God.

The God of all faiths are the same in actuality, bearing in mind the confused, hazy conceptualizations of evolutionary man.

"the faintest flicker of faith is all that is required" ​

 

[Wryetui]

Suppose you encountered the God of Islam. What would your response be?

Wouldn't that be my God? Islam claims to have the same God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, the faith from the beginning, but I do not think so. Islam is a religion that came up from satanic deception. Jesus stated clearly that He is the only way to God and God Himself, but in the Gospel there are some interesting things too:

Mohammed receives a Gospel from an "angel from the heavens", Gabriel the Archangel, but look what the Bible states about this sort of "gospels" given by angels in heaven:

Galathians 1:8-9 -
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Mohammed considered himself the last prophet of God, but look what Jesus stated 570 years before him about this sort of "prophets":

Matthew 7:15 -
"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."
24:11 - And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.

To me, it is clearly that Islam is a religion made out of deception, besides, it cannot be compared to judeo-christianity. Anyone who compares judeo-christianity to any other religion making them equals has a poor religion knowledge, in my opinion. Besides, more than 40 prophets were equal in their profecies, perfectly ordered, even having lived in different times or centuries, and they all taught the same, the same ordered message, and then Christ came and He fullfilled all the prophecies made in His name. Mohammed, besides being moraly weak, made no miracles, made his own "profecies" and he was only one old man who also contradicted himself tens of times in the Qur'an, without being able to be compared with the Bible at all. Not to mention that Islam came as a copy of two pre-existent religions, there is hardly new stuff in the Qur'an that hasn't been presented previously in the Bible.

So, as you see, all the evidence points that there is no reason to believe in the "God of Islam" instead of the "God of Christianity", if the God of Islam were the true one, wouldn't you think he would have done his religion better, why did he allow christianity to be superior in miracles, people, time, prophets?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Wouldn't that be my God? Islam claims to have the same God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, the faith from the beginning, but I do not think so. Islam is a religion that came up from satanic deception. Jesus stated clearly that He is the only way to God and God Himself, but in the Gospel there are some interesting things too:

That's not what the question is asking. You asked me how I would respond if I encountered God, and you presumably meant the Christian God. I'm asking you how you would respond if you encountered God, but the God you encountered was not the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but the God of some other religion.

To me, it is clearly that Islam is a religion made out of deception,

That's beside the point. I'm not convinced by your religious claims, but I'm willing to consider the question of how I would respond if they were shown to be true in some afterlife.

besides, it cannot be compared to judeo-christianity. Anyone who compares judeo-christianity to any other religion making them equals has a poor religion knowledge, in my opinion. Besides, more than 40 prophets were equal in their profecies, perfectly ordered, even having lived in different times or centuries, and they all taught the same, the same ordered message, and then Christ came and He fullfilled all the prophecies made in His name. Mohammed, besides being moraly weak, made no miracles, made his own "profecies" and he was only one old man who also contradicted himself tens of times in the Qur'an, without being able to be compared with the Bible at all. Not to mention that Islam came as a copy of two pre-existent religions, there is hardly new stuff in the Qur'an that hasn't been presented previously in the Bible.

All of this is completely irrelevant to the question at hand.

So, as you see, all the evidence points that there is no reason to believe in the "God of Islam" instead of the "God of Christianity",

I see no reason to believe either, but I'm still willing to consider the question of how I would respond if it were shown to be true in some afterlife.

if the God of Islam were the true one, wouldn't you think he would have done his religion better, why did he allow christianity to be superior in miracles, people, time, prophets?

I'm not convinced your religion has any such superiority over any other.

 

[Wryetui]

You are not convinced by that because you didn't study it, Christianity is clearly superior to any other religion. I'm not a fundamentalist, neither an intransigent intolerant, neither a christian supremacist or every other tag you tag believers with, I am speaking the truth.