We send ourselves to hell?

[Emmy]

Dear ImmacculateSlaveOfGod. God is Love and God Loves us. You know that we have been given free will to either return to God our Heavenly Father, or go our own way. In Matthew 22: 35-40: Jesus tells us: " The first and great Commandment is: Love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds. The second is like it: Love our neighbour as ourselves." Then Jesus states this great truth: " On these two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." God wants our Love, freely given and No conditions tagged on." We have the choice to return to God, or go our own way. If we want to return to God, we must learn to Love God with all our beings, and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. If we choose to go our own way, that will be WITHOUT LOVE AND WITHOUT LIGHT, a place in OUTER DARKNESS, where there can be heard loud wailing and gnashing of teeth. Away from God`s Love, is Hell.
It is up to us, we choose where we want to spend eternity, either WITH GOD,
or WITHOUT GOD. If we choose to return to God our Heavenly Father, we have to follow Jesus`s advice: Love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds, And love our neighbour as we love ourselves:
neighbour being all we know and all we meet, friends and not friends.
Jesus told us: "Ask and ye shall receive," ( Matthew 7: 7-8 then we thank God and share all Love and Joy with our neighbour. Jesus will give us His Love and Joy, and the Holy Spirit will empower us with His Love, also.
We keep asking God and thanking God, then sharing all Love and Joy with
all around us. God will see our sincere efforts, and God will bless us.
I say this with love. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.

 

[juvenissun]

It is already known that Evolutionary Theory is fact yet the Bible denies it.

What qualifies you to say that? Shame on you.

 

[EnemyOfReason]

What qualifies you to say that? Shame on you.

The fact that I do not deny evidence. Scientific evidence does not need to be "reinterpreted". It either fails as evidence or is sufficient, one or the other.

Evolution has not been rejected simply because there is no evidence to reject it for.

 

[bling]

You are making numerous contradictions to yourself.

I never claimed that the future is linear, any multiplicity of choices we can make are void of free will and thus our actions are linear and god being omniscient should know these actions.
You keep using the concept of the soul as if it is a fact yet it is not. Some believe in it and some do not but it plays no relevance in thinking, that much is certain.

I do not assume everything is limited to the natural world either. I know it is as do many others. Everything we know of is natural in existence. Our choices can be evaluated by natural facts and no unnatural factor has been found. Name an emotion mental quality that can only be explained with the existence of the soul..

If God in our distant future new all of our free will choices as historical events and sent that information back to Himself in our past would the God of from our beginning know all our free will choices in our future?

Again “If” this is the way God knows our future choices than we still are making free will choices and God still knows everything before we “do” it (as far as we are concerned).

Scientifically (I am a Chemist) there is nothing that happens that is unnatural, since by definition if it happened it is naturally occurring, so no unnatural thing can be found by science.

There will not be any scientific “proof” for the existence of God since that would mean we would not need “faith” in God’s existence but could have knowledge of God’s existence. I will not be able to “proof” that man has “free will”, since that would also “proof” there must be some super natural force (God). But you cannot “proof” man does not have a God given free will to make the one needed choice of accepting or rejecting God’s charity. Some accept and some reject and it cannot be explained chemically and environmentally exclusive of the possibility of free will.

As far as “many others” there are “many others” that start with the assumption “God does not exist” so everything must be explained with the exclusion of a God and as I said science cannot “proof” the existence of God.

This is where you become outright weird. If the individuals you are referring to are limited to natural existence then you have just stated they have no soul. By stating that God has given them to us as opportunities for us then you are again denying God's omniscience.

I did not say they are limited to “natural existence”.

How am I denying God’s omniscience? Everything has been set up for willing individuals to make the free will choice to accept God’s charity.

The way in which you say "serve others" also implies they are a test of some kind which again denies your god's omniscience.

There is not “test” but God is providing opportunities for us. God knows what free will choice we will make in “our” future but we still need the opportunity to make the choice so God will know our choice.

If it doe snot adress God's involvement then why believe in Jesus?

Faith (believing) in the existence of God is an humbling experience (since the lowliest mature adult on earth can do it) and that humility is enough to allow us to accept pure charity.

In the Bible god clearly intervenes in mankind's affairs and you claim this occurs even till today(I assume). None of these claims are capable of being tested despite them affecting natural existence. This is entirely absurd

It is not “absurd” to understand why God would not make His presentence “obviously known” to all humans, since faith is needed to help humans accept His Charity. God is involved in doing all God can do to help willing individuals accept His charity (Love/grace/mercy/forgiveness).

 

[EnemyOfReason]

If God in our distant future new all of our free will choices as historical events and sent that information back to Himself in our past would the God of from our beginning know all our free will choices in our future?

Again “If” this is the way God knows our future choices than we still are making free will choices and God still knows everything before we “do” it (as far as we are concerned).

Scientifically (I am a Chemist) there is nothing that happens that is unnatural, since by definition if it happened it is naturally occurring, so no unnatural thing can be found by science.

There will not be any scientific “proof” for the existence of God since that would mean we would not need “faith” in God’s existence but could have knowledge of God’s existence. I will not be able to “proof” that man has “free will”, since that would also “proof” there must be some super natural force (God). But you cannot “proof” man does not have a God given free will to make the one needed choice of accepting or rejecting God’s charity. Some accept and some reject and it cannot be explained chemically and environmentally exclusive of the possibility of free will.

As far as “many others” there are “many others” that start with the assumption “God does not exist” so everything must be explained with the exclusion of a God and as I said science cannot “proof” the existence of God.

I did not say they are limited to “natural existence”.

How am I denying God’s omniscience? Everything has been set up for willing individuals to make the free will choice to accept God’s charity.



There is not “test” but God is providing opportunities for us. God knows what free will choice we will make in “our” future but we still need the opportunity to make the choice so God will know our choice.



Faith (believing) in the existence of God is an humbling experience (since the lowliest mature adult on earth can do it) and that humility is enough to allow us to accept pure charity.


It is not “absurd” to understand why God would not make His presentence “obviously known” to all humans, since faith is needed to help humans accept His Charity. God is involved in doing all God can do to help willing individuals accept His charity (Love/grace/mercy/forgiveness).

[youtube]anBxaOcZnGk[/youtube]

We do not have free will. All explanations you have given do not even hold up to biology and only provides to me evidence that you are not a chemist. I sometimes do part time work in a medical lab but I will not brag about being a "doctor".

 

[Emmy]

Dear ImmaculateSlaveOfGod. It is easy to understand and straightforward.
We only have two choices, to join our Heavenly Father or end in hell.
Jesus told us in Matthew 22: 35-40: " The first and great Commandment is:
Love God with all your hearts, with all your souls, and with all your minds.
The second is like it: Love our neighbour as we love ourselves." Then Jesus gives us this fact: " On these two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets: either God our Heavenly Father, or hell in Outer Darkness, without God`s Love or Light.
To return to God we have to follow the two important Commandments:
Love God with hearts, souls, and minds. And love our neighbour as we love ourselves. God is Love and God wants Loving children/sons and daughters.
Jesus will give us His Love and Joy, and the Holy Spirit will empower us with His Love, also. What do we do? We treat all we know and all we meet, friends and not friends, as we would love to be treated: with kindness and always friendly words. God will see our sincere efforts, and God will bless us.
(Matthew 7: 7-8 We ask God to give us His Love and Joy, and then thank God, and share all Love and Joy with our neighbour. God will also know that we Love God: because we are following God`s Commandments to Love and Care. A Christian`s great weapon is Love, and with Love we will overcome all
enmity and wrong behaviour. Love is very catching and we will change gradually into the men and women which God wants to be eternity.
Jesus our Saviour will help and guide us: JESUS IS THE WAY.
We have to " ask God and thank God," and keep sharing all Love and Joy with our neighbour: all around us.
All we do or say, all we advice and stand for, MUST BE FROM LOVE. It will be:
either we Love and follow God our Heavenly Father, or we go our own way:
away from God`s Love and Light is definitely HELL.
I say this with love. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.

 

[bling]

[youtube]anBxaOcZnGk[/youtube]

We do not have free will. All explanations you have given do not even hold up to biology and only provides to me evidence that you are not a chemist. I sometimes do part time work in a medical lab but I will not brag about being a "doctor".

Richard Dawkins preferences his statement with “I have a materialist view of the world” and Lawrence Krauss said this is a “philosophical question” and neither of them are philosophers. Richard Dawkins also admitted to not giving the question much thought.

These two men do not speak for all scientists and are not considering the possibility of a God.

The question that needs to be addressed: “If there is a God could there be free will?”

 

[EnemyOfReason]

Richard Dawkins preferences his statement with “I have a materialist view of the world” and Lawrence Krauss said this is a “philosophical question” and neither of them are philosophers. Richard Dawkins also admitted to not giving the question much thought.

These two men do not speak for all scientists and are not considering the possibility of a God.

The question that needs to be addressed: “If there is a God could there be free will?”

93% of scientist are non-theists and this naturally comes from the fact that science is materialistic in its view and answers.

If a materialistic conclusion answers a spiritual one then there is no need to continue the spiritual/religious one.

 

[bling]

93% of scientist are non-theists and this naturally comes from the fact that science is materialistic in its view and answers.

If a materialistic conclusion answers a spiritual one then there is no need to continue the spiritual/religious one.

Even if you are right about the 93% that still does not make it true.

How can a spiritual question even be addressed by the physical.

 

[EnemyOfReason]

Even if you are right about the 93% that still does not make it true.

How can a spiritual question even be addressed by the physical.

If the physical disproves the spiritual then it answers it .

If you told me that god took physical form right in front of me and could be touched you are implying that god is physically observable. But instead you opt out with this overused phrase.

If the spiritual has an effect on the physical it is thus observable but this has never occured

 

[elopez]

I have heard the claim that the non-believer sends himself to hell. This is utterly illogical and I have not been able to find a Christian who can explain this properly.

Taking into fact that...

A) God created hell along with everything that exist.
B) God is aware of the future as he is the beginning and the end and aware of the events and forth-bringer of prophecy.
C) God set the rules for the admission into hell or heaven and is the withholder of the beings being within these domains.

With these basic facts set forth I do not understand how it can be blamed by the non-believer for placing his/herself in hell when they did not wish it as they cannot desire something they do not believe exist

It's akin to a criminal being sent to prison.

The criminal wants to commit the crime, and he may even disregard or disagree with the crime being illegal. It's not that the criminal desires to go to prison, but the consequences of his actions are necessarily so that that is the case. Does the criminal send himself to prison? Of course. No one else is accountable for that. Not the one who created the prison. Not the one who knew if he committed the crime would end up there. And not the one who made the laws.

 

[RDKirk]

I believe God removed His presence from a specific area so that people who do not believe in Him can have their way and be in a place where He is not. The problem is that everything that is good comes from Him, so if He is not there, there is no good either. Therefore, hell is a place of misery and suffering.

I don't think God is not in that Hell--I don't think there is anywhere
God has created that God is not. But it's possible that God has created a dimension in which there is no evidence of His being--not even light: "The outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth."

 

[RDKirk]

This is one of the many cute sayings that are prevalent among Christians. And like most of those sayings, it's wrong. Nobody chooses to go to Hell. Scripture tells of being being hurled into it, forcibly removed. People do not like it there, and would love to leave, but they cannot.

They don't desire to go to Hell, they desire to be where there is no God.

 

[LBP]

93% of scientist are non-theists and this naturally comes from the fact that science is materialistic in its view and answers.

If a materialistic conclusion answers a spiritual one then there is no need to continue the spiritual/religious one.

Your "statistics," O Scientific One, are flatly incorrect; see below. Your original post was quite obviously nothing more than a launching pad for an atheistic diatribe. I see zero evidence of any genuine interest in discussion of the question you purported to raise in your original post.

A survey of scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in May and June 2009, finds that members of this group are, on the whole, much less religious than the general public. Indeed, the survey shows that scientists are roughly half as likely as the general public to believe in God or a higher power. According to the poll, just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power.
___________________________________

In the new study, Rice University sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund surveyed 1,646 faculty members at elite research universities, asking 36 questions about belief and spiritual practices. "Based on previous research, we thought that social scientists would be less likely to practice religion than natural scientists are, but our data showed just the opposite," Ecklund said. Some stand-out stats: 41 percent of the biologists don't believe, while that figure is just 27 percent among political scientists. In separate work at the University of Chicago, released in June, 76 percent of doctors said they believed in God and 59 percent believe in some sort of afterlife.

​

Arguing is a lot more fun, I realize, when one can simply invent statistics to support one's position as one goes along -- but it does undercut one's credibility "just a bit" when one purports to be representing the "scientific" perspective and is exposed as the one doing the inventing.

Here is where you got your statistics, which calls into question your reading comprehension ability as well. In the survey from which you draw your statistics, it was 93% of arbitrarily defined "greater" scientists (members of the National Academy of Sciences, only 50% of whom responded to the survey) who were either non-believers or agnostics. As you can see, a considerably higher percentage of "non-greater" scientists are believers (and would probably dispute the characterization of themselves as "non-greater" as well).

The question of religious belief among US scientists has been debated since early in the century. Our latest survey finds that, among the top natural scientists, disbelief is greater than ever — almost total.
Research on this topic began with the eminent US psychologist James H. Leuba and his landmark survey of 1914. He found that 58% of 1,000 randomly selected US scientists expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of God, and that this figure rose to near 70% among the 400 "greater" scientists within his sample [1]. Leuba repeated his survey in somewhat different form 20 years later, and found that these percentages had increased to 67 and 85, respectively [2].
In 1996, we repeated Leuba's 1914 survey and reported our results in Nature [3]. We found little change from 1914 for American scientists generally, with 60.7% expressing disbelief or doubt. This year, we closely imitated the second phase of Leuba's 1914 survey to gauge belief among "greater" scientists, and find the rate of belief lower than ever — a mere 7% of respondents.
Leuba attributed the higher level of disbelief and doubt among "greater" scientists to their "superior knowledge, understanding, and experience" [3]. Similarly, Oxford University scientist Peter Atkins commented on our 1996 survey, "You clearly can be a scientist and have religious beliefs. But I don't think you can be a real scientist in the deepest sense of the word because they are such alien categories of knowledge." [4] Such comments led us to repeat the second phase of Leuba's study for an up-to-date comparison of the religious beliefs of "greater" and "lesser" scientists.
Our chosen group of "greater" scientists were members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Our survey found near universal rejection of the transcendent by NAS natural scientists. Disbelief in God and immortality among NAS biological scientists was 65.2% and 69.0%, respectively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79.0% and 76.3%. Most of the rest were agnostics on both issues, with few believers. We found the highest percentage of belief among NAS mathematicians (14.3% in God, 15.0% in immortality). Biological scientists had the lowest rate of belief (5.5% in God, 7.1% in immortality), with physicists and astronomers slightly higher (7.5% in God, 7.5% in immortality). Overall comparison figures for the 1914, 1933 and 1998 surveys appear in Table 1.
​

 

[RDKirk]

Interesting that even in the most dismally expressed statistics, mathematicians were the most likely to be believers. I wonder what that means.

 

[98cwitr]

I have heard the claim that the non-believer sends himself to hell. This is utterly illogical and I have not been able to find a Christian who can explain this properly.

Taking into fact that...

A) God created hell along with everything that exist.
B) God is aware of the future as he is the beginning and the end and aware of the events and forth-bringer of prophecy.
C) God set the rules for the admission into hell or heaven and is the withholder of the beings being within these domains.

With these basic facts set forth I do not understand how it can be blamed by the non-believer for placing his/herself in hell when they did not wish it as they cannot desire something they do not believe exist

Read Romans 9.

 

[Chrisv]

I don't think God is not in that Hell--I don't think there is anywhere
God has created that God is not. But it's possible that God has created a dimension in which there is no evidence of His being--not even light: "The outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth."

You are correct of course. Since the power of God is what holds Creation together He is everywhere. So Hell must have a greatly reduced measure of His presence.
Thank you for pointing that out.

 

[drich0150]

I have heard the claim that the non-believer sends himself to hell. This is utterly illogical and I have not been able to find a Christian who can explain this properly.

Taking into fact that...

A) God created hell along with everything that exist.
B) God is aware of the future as he is the beginning and the end and aware of the events and forth-bringer of prophecy.
C) God set the rules for the admission into hell or heaven and is the withholder of the beings being within these domains.

With these basic facts set forth I do not understand how it can be blamed by the non-believer for placing his/herself in hell when they did not wish it as they cannot desire something they do not believe exist

Think of the road to Hell as a railroad track. Think of this life as a run away train on that track speeding to Hell. So what is God's roll in all of this? He is the manufacturer of said train, and sent His Son who knows how to save every one on board, to save as many people as want to be saved.

You were born on that train, you live on that train, and that train is all anyone knows. God however having created that train knows how to potentially save everyone on board. All they must do is follow His Son to the Back half of the train, where He will give/gave His life separating those who want to be saved from those who demand to stay the course as the see/feel their is no danger.

People choose salvation or they choose destruction.

 

[seashale76]

Hell is being in God's presence- the same as heaven.

This used to be on wikipedia at one time, but I can't seem to find it anymore:

"For many ancient Christians, Hell was the same "place" as Heaven: living in the presence of God and directly experiencing God's love. Whether this was experienced as pleasure or torment depended on one's disposition towards God. St. Isaac of Syria wrote in Mystic Treatises: "... those who find themselves in Hell will be chastised by the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love, undergo greater suffering than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart, which has sinned against love, is more piercing than any other pain. It is not right to say that the sinners in Hell are deprived of the love of God ... But love acts in two ways, as suffering of the reproved, and as joy in the blessed!" This ancient view is still the doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox Church."

 

[Lukaris]

I have not read the whole thread so I am just giving my opinion hopefully in truth. I think it all comes down to how we live our lives in accordance to what Jesus Christ proclaims to us basically to love God & neighbor, to not judge, to forgive others, repent of our sins as we live our days, to practice charity etc. The Christian has the advantage in knowing Jesus Christ as Lord to have salvation but has a commitment to live by the Gospel as much as possible. T

The non Christian has their conscience & if one lives their life accordingly (by the grace of God) they can be saved (Romans 2, Matthew 5:1-12: Beatitudes, Proverb 14, Psalm 15, etc.).

Jesus Christ is the savior of all & will judge each of us according to His Gospel.