steve_h

Top posted apologies for attaching reply to earlier post of my own,
again. The one I want to reply to has once again expired before its
predecessor.


news:<bgbkaf$ngf$1@rex.ip-plus.net>...


The overall impression I get from you is that hell is one's own
jealousy destroying oneself from the inside. I'm not sure that
being thrown into a fire is a good metaphor for this as it
provokes thoughts of instant searing pain from outside. Well
it does to me anyway and doubtless to countless generations of
christians who have been convinced of real fire. Couldn't the
god-inspired writers have come up with something better?

I can't see any problems with that. Can you spell them out for me
please? Ceasing to exist would just mean that we ceased to be
sentient beings. It would feel like our first 13 billion years did
to us. I don't think it beyond God to "undo" us, with him being
omnipotent and all.

Neutral is better than bad but less good than good. Feeling nothing
is not brilliant when compared to experiencing extreme pleasure,
but it's better than feeling constant unbearable pain, that prevents
you of thinking of anything else. That's why many terminally ill
people sometimes opt for suicide and why we put injured animals
out of their misery.


The impression I got from that, is that the people in hell are
jealous because they want what the people in heaven have. Since
God wants them to have it too, the solution is obvious. Their
crime is being willfully separate from God, and God, in enforcing
their separation from him, even after they've changed their
minds is an accessory to that crime. snip

No, I'm assuming a spirit can do these things. Now I only want to
know what the material brain is for? It seems to be either doing
very little or just mirroring processes which really happen spiritually. snip

How do you answer the second question? Can you f****ve someone
who wrongs you if they accept that they were wrong.
Or can you only do that if they accept that they were wrong and
also that somebody suffers 'justice'? If someone else volunteered
to suffer the justice, would you be happy to see that justice done
to them instead?

I could not do that. I would see the volunteer as a new victim -
a victim of the justice system - and his suffering would have
no bearing on the case of the original perpetrator.

Suppose a guy commits a murder. The wrong guy is accidentally
sent to prison. The murderer later gets religion, regrets his
crime and turns himself in. ISTM that as far as the murder
is concerned the conditions of f****veness of the murder
have all been met. Maybe the murderer should pay a price for
standing by and watching a man who he knew to be innocent go
to prison. In the case of God vs everyone except jesus, the
only innocent man in the entire world goes to prison, everyone
knows he's innocent and thinks it is somehow a good thing.

BTW, If an innocent man had not been sent to prison, justice would
demand that the murderer belatedly go to prison for the murder
and not for the lesser crime of allowing a miscarriage of
justice to occur.

Anything wrong with that?


But it doesn't matter who pays the price. Could a rich guy pay
a poor innocent man to serve his jail sentence for him?

The whole point of JC dying was to make the need for punishment
unnecessary. If punishment is always necessary for justice to be
served, Christians are bypassing justice. Justice as you define
it is not being done.

I do not condone the punishment of innocent individuals.

I have no such scheme for making people think the same way as I do
by imprisoning and then calling it "rehabilitation".
I just said that when a parent punishes a child that he loves,
he isn't focused on the punishment for the sake
of punishment alone, but only in the fact that the child
will be better for it in, and less likely hurt a sibling, or you,
or to get into a situation where another individual hands out
the punishment in the future.

If the parent could make the child see that his actions were
harmful and want to avoid such harmful actions in the future
through reason and consideration of others, and they could
make the child see it without inflicting pain upon the child,
then most parents would choose that. They wouldn't say
"justice requires an eye for an eye" or something like that.

But it would be okay to punish atheists to make them "atone" for
what they had done. I really can't see what you are getting at
here. I think you are confusing this with the "absolute morality"
thread from way back.

Plenty of reasons.

1) the guy obviously places more value on his own financial well-being
than on the lives of others. He may not kill another wife but I
wouldn't trust him not to kill other people.
2) If he sees a connection between offending and loss of liberty,
he is hopefully less likely to repeat his offense.
3) Or at least others may be deterred from trying the same scam
4) We also reinforce the message that we take a dim view of murder.
5) we don't want a mob to resort to its own justice because it
thought he was getting away with something.
6) we get to feel a little safer if we know other people
are suitably deterred.

How does god deal with such a Guy. "Do you accept Jesus as your
savior?", "Yes", Poof "You're f****ven". That man doesn't
pay the price that you seem to think is necessary. All God has
done is fixed him so that he isn't a criminal anymore which is
what you complain about in my "mainly rehabilitation" approach.

just like yours does (looking at it from a "bad people must have bad
things done to them to make it right" perspective).


Non-christian religious people do ask to be f****ven. They just don't
ask in the right way. Atheist don't ask to be f****ven as they don't
believe it possible to hurt someone that is a figment of someone
else's imagination. If it turns out that you are right and everyone
must make an informed choice at the time of their deaths then
maybe everyone will get in except a few pig headed people. However,
that's assuming you are right, maybe you will be the one having to
do an about turn.

Repentance can take the form of simple realization you were harming
others, feeling a twinge of guilt about it, and resolving to do better
in the future. But you don't seem to think that - you seem to
want the guy to suffer as well as being repentant and, AFAICT,
"justice" only requires the suffering bit.


Ok, but it will tend towards an infinite amount as time tends towards infinity.

[snip "actualized sin" and "'your' version of hell"]


"Doesn't want to" not "can't". God can do anything. God's presence
could stand the presence of a little sin. Surely a good being would
be one who would remain good even in the presence of any amount
of (absence of good)/temptation towards being less good etc.


That seems to be much the same as "some people are basically good
and some are not". Why can't our orientation change after we die?
(Apart from the obvious atheistic explanation)


Let's say a guy goes to hell and finds himself surrounded by
some of the people he loved when he was alive, and can hear the
music he loved when he was alive, and read the poems he
loved etc. etc. But he finds that all of these things now leave
him cold: there's no more love at all. He (presumably) realizes
that he didn't actually love these people and things at all when
he was alive, but had just been experiencing God's love of them.

In such a situation, the Guy will realize that he does want
to be with God after all. He only thought he wanted those people
and things because a bit of God had rubbed off on him or them without
his realizing. Now he knows the truth, it's likely that his position
will change. His position is now no different from yours
but you got there by different paths. Surely God could f****ve
him now? (Of course it goes without saying that I don't
believe any of that is likely to happen)

In any case, all this "is jesus the key" stuff still doesn't seem to
have anything to do with justice - the eye for an eye "on some level"
which you insist is necessary. What about the guy who murdered his
wife? Do we punish him or not, given that God is either going
to punish him for that and everything else he ever did or f****ve
him of everything? if we punish a f****ven man whom God has given
a clean slate, we are doing a bad thing, are we not?


Then original sin actually counts for nothing when God is making his
judgment. A perfect and just God, would send everyone to hell who
deserved to be there.


BTW, do people who undergo abortions guarantee a human being
a place in heaven and save them from risking hell? Would people
who risked their standing with God in order to save people in
this way be selfless admirable people? It would make more sense for God
to just plant the soul with a new sperm/egg pairing, one that he knew
wasn't going to be terminated and in which it could be judged on
its own behavior. Why even attach a soul to cells which you
know in advance are doomed?


Can people in heaven sin?
Do they get the urge to sin?

Steve