A Good God would not send a decent Atheist to hell.

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16 Aug 2015, 9:02 pm

I started this thread at Debating Christianity many years ago, just thought it would be fun to hear the opinions of PPR's strident atheists and meek passive theists. This following post(in quotes) got me banned on Christian Chat:

Quote:

Then God doesn't care about the goodness and decency of an atheist, a buddhist, etc. And if that is the message you are telling me, then there is no point to being a good person. There is no point of fighting on behalf of the oppressed, as America did, in WWII. The only purpose of fighting the Japanese, and beating back the Nazi's should have been so that we could bring more people to christ...is that what your saying? Should America be sending food and aid to heathens in Haiti? Should America be helping out muslims in disaster relief fallowing a natural disaster, unless it is to bring them to Christ? Is a person's only value to you, there potential to become a convert? They have no humanity beyond that?

You have an old testament my_adonai, and you are to be as obsessed with its obsessions, as you are with the new testament's. And the Old Testament's preoccupation is fighting evil, championing the good, and making a more ethical existence, during this lifetime.

And unless you think Christians alone can make this lifetime a little better, a little less genocidal, with a little less starvation, a little less torture, etc, it is an unethical message to peddle, that a good God would demand goodness, unless one doesn't believe in his son. Then one's goodness is pointless. One might as well not care about not gossiping behind other people's back, destroying someone's dignity in public, sleeping with a coworker's wife, extorting an elderly couple that one was hired to help, raping a pre-pubcescent child, killing another human being because of their skin color, etc, etc, etc.

Apparently, I was challenging people's faith, and was just there to be anti-christian, in saying that a Good God would not send to hell decent people, simply because they do not believe in his Son. I got all sorts of less then appetizing replies, saying I'm screwed for eternity, if I don't accept Jesus. I feel that I am not alone, even within the Christian community, in thinking this... as I've heard many catholic priests, and mainstream protestant pastors while I was growing up, distancing themselves from such a belief. I don't know where people on this forum stand, but I'll put it up for discussion:

Topic of Discussion: A Good God would not send to hell a decent person, simply for not believing in his son.

If you agree with me, and are a Christian, please square your response with the rest of the New Testament. What I'm looking for is scriptural consistency to back up your position, and more importantly, how one will then re-read the entire message of the New Testament, if one wants to hold that position. I say this because I don't want you to drop scripture, simply because it doesn't conform to your own personal beliefs, but I am looking for how one can reinterpret the New testament, if one drops that central tenant - & for the rest of us, impediment - to everlasting life. Is there room for this? Or is the New Testament rigidly in the affirmative about Christ being the only way to heaven?

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Fnord
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16 Aug 2015, 9:07 pm

A sovereign God would send to anyone to Hell, each according to God's will, and according to God's will alone.

AspieOtaku
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17 Aug 2015, 2:19 am

A good god would not send gay people to hell either and my friend was gay so I guess she is burning in hell just for being gay, regardless of being a good person!

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17 Aug 2015, 3:17 am

A real, almighty God would do with us whatever He chose to, with whatever criteria he liked. He wouldn't need to care whether we think those criteria are good or bad, or what we believe He will do, if we believe in Him at all.

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17 Aug 2015, 3:06 pm

Can we define hell? Is it a lake of fire or an eternity without God. Is it dying to have a consciuos nothingness. Whatever, I suggest it is the individual who makes the decision. John 3:16 seems like a good start. God did not send Jesus to condem the world. John 1:4-13 seems clear enough. People can receive or accept Jesus and God. That does depend on being given the opportunity. If you see the light do you take it for yourself?

We read of Jesus doing miracles but many seeing them would still not believe. Jesus said it was better for those who had never seen and did not believe than them. I might argue here that many have seen the money men evangelists and been put off. Will they be able to make a decision after death?

We read The Bible saying God is like the potter with people the clay. He does what he likes with the clay. In the end my question is can light be brought to those who prefer darkness.

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17 Aug 2015, 10:42 pm

Grebels wrote:

I can't speak to what constitutes hell, the punishment involved, or its duration, eternal or not. I just think that the reality that constitutes hell will be punishing and vastly different from the alternative, a reality that should be rewarding. The span between the two ought to be as great as the moral gulf between murdering people, and not murdering people, though I don't think it'll be eternal torment in a furnace.

You bring up a lot of great points Grebels, so let me run this by you, and I'm not looking to agree or disagree, I'd just like to know where you stand: Would a Good God send a good person to hell if he saw the miracles of Christ and did not believe. In other words, is "belief," a precondition to your goodness being of any value to God.

In my own view, if belief is a precondition to God valuing the good that you do, then it seems to me that God is interested in belief, and the good that follows is just an affirmation of your belief but not what God wants most from us.

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17 Aug 2015, 10:53 pm

AspieOtaku wrote:

A good god would not send gay people to hell either and my friend was gay so I guess she is burning in hell just for being gay, regardless of being a good person!

Yeah I don't tie goodness to sexual orientation. The reason that same-sex relations was banned in the bible was to discriminate against male-male and female-female love to create the elevated society the bible was looking to create. Which means that it was common back then amongst Israelites, not to mention an honest omission by the bible over the fluidity of sexuality. In the ancient world, men had male/boy partners, and the bible wanted men to limit their sexual drive exclusively to women. But a good, decent gay ought to have the same standing in God's eyes, as a good, decent heterosexual, as both are equally created in God's image.

Now... that having been said, I don't know if God will be so forgiving of changing the sexual orientation of society, especially if it challenges a rigid societal ideal of male-female relationships. Which is what same-sex marriage does. It holds for society two legitimate living arrangements as being perfectly acceptable. And it does while waging war on gender norms that once upheld the male-female ideal of the bible. So in a sense, it acknowledges the fluidity of sexuality, while partially refusing to accept what kind of reality it would lead to where we no longer have male-female as an ideal.

But that's for another discussion. So Yes, God won't send a good gay person to hell. But a good gay person who actively works to undermine God's ideal... that I'm not so sure about.

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17 Aug 2015, 10:56 pm

Spiderpig wrote:

True. But add in the word "Good" before the word "God," and then no... God cannot do with us whatever he so chooses to. Otherwise he would not be a "Good" God, given the amount of suffering we undergo during this life.

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blauSamstag
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17 Aug 2015, 11:05 pm

an all-powerful being who insists on being worshipped?

sounds pretty childish to me.

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17 Aug 2015, 11:16 pm

blauSamstag wrote:

an all-powerful being who insists on being worshipped?

sounds pretty childish to me.

Maybe if we just worshiped one God, we wouldn't worship anything else. Like the environment. Or politics / social justice. Or money.

Which would mean that the act of worshiping is more about the worshiper then the god worshiped. Also, maybe there's a human compulsion desiring to be nearer to this God, and that this basic human desire is responsible for formalized/personal worship we engage in with this God. I mean, for the most part, we're the ones who formalized how we will worship God, so maybe that speaks to something about us humans.

Ultimately, God doesn't need our anything, and like prayer, everything we do in religion is ultimately for our benefit.

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blauSamstag
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17 Aug 2015, 11:31 pm

How about i worship nothing and just try to be decent to the rest of the world?

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17 Aug 2015, 11:43 pm

blauSamstag wrote:

How about i worship nothing and just try to be decent to the rest of the world?

Well that'll be just fine. But why doesn't the rest of the world try to do the same lol, God-believing or not.

It seems to be something we all want to do, or even view as characteristic of ourselves. It often just doesn't always turn out that way.

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semiparametric
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18 Aug 2015, 12:02 am

People who say they believe in God for fear of going to hell, only think they believe in God. In reality they are only pretending to believe, and don’t have the intellectual capacity to distinguish between their actual beliefs and their fears.

People don't choose their beliefs. Beliefs are determined by judging the information at hand. The religious-right often assert that a particular set of beliefs, is the ticket to heaven. It is a technique used to keep the religious religious. By creating a fear of non-belief, it creates a fear of thinking.

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18 Aug 2015, 12:20 am

semiparametric wrote:

Perhaps. But so long as it animates them to do good, in order not to go to hell, that's all that matters. Being animated by fear and anger isn't inherently a bad thing.

People don't choose their beliefs. Beliefs are determined by judging the information at hand. The religious-right often assert that a particular set of beliefs, is the ticket to heaven. It is a technique used to keep the religious religious. By creating a fear of non-belief, it creates a fear of thinking.[/quote]

I don't really see belief as something that is trickled down from manipulative leadership, though that is sort of the defacto atheist outlook of why "herds" believe in invisible unproven fiction. Faith is very powerful. Look, there are people on the Left today who just can't bring themselves to crap on communism, or acknowledge that it failed and isn't workable. That is the power of faith, and we can't underestimate what it will cause people to do to keep something they believe true.

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izzeme
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18 Aug 2015, 2:48 am

If we define 'hell' as "anything other than heaven", then a good god can send decent people to this 'hell'; reserving heaven for those who really deserve to go there (based on whatever criteria he would set), and still be considered "good" by moral standards. reverse-equivalent to how obeying the law gets you rewarded by not going to jail.

however, if i use the 'classic' definition of hell (fire and brimstone, devil, pitchforks, the works), then no, no definition of 'good' holds up if you send someone there for the simple reason of not believing a tall claim.

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18 Aug 2015, 4:01 am

IMHO living humans, in general, are not qualified to make prognostications on god's actions or say much of anything truthful about god. it would be like a cat discussing the united nations. :alien: I believe that god just IS, and I believe we are all a part of IS.

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