Posted on 01/06/2020 4:30:27 PM PST by Secret Agent Man
Except in that area of reality which has been separated from God.
That's no more logically incoherent than saying something always existed and had no creation.
Indeed. God is Everywhere. That is a promise.
he’ll is what atheists have been putting us through for years...
‘he will have to hold the logically incoherent belief that nothing created everything.’
utter nonsense; an atheist can be perfectly comfortable stating that ‘naturally occurring forces’ created the universe, without having positive proof of precisely which forces those might be...just as the theists have no issue with stating a divine origin, while having no idea of the particulars involved...(including what would then have created the creator)
Kennedy Wing of Hell, just past the McCain statue.
Its not a put-down.
And God would rather you have a relationship with Him.
But He respects people, who He made as persons, like Him, if they want nothing to do with Him, He lets them have nothing to do with him. I certainly wasn’t coerced or forced against my will to believe in Him. Didn’t cost me anything either.
And they will continue to be absent from Him when they die, because being around somoene you never wanted to be around, against your will, is not what He wants.
But it’s not going to be a fun place, and we are given an idea why it’s not going to be a fun place.
My point is that if athiests think this life is hard and somehow God isn’t present doing more for us because we still get aches and pains and grow old and die, you’re probably not going to like the afterlife for those who didn’t take God’s plan of salvation thatls open and free to everyone.
Of course not all athiests hold exactly the same views, just as in any group. I address the larger demogrpahic as a whole, no one singles you out, i dont even know you. Butmi know athiests as a group for their general beliefs. That’s why we speak to a group as a group. You may be an exception in certain areas but you are under the general umbrella of athiezt by your own validation.
And your exceptions do not change at all what I said prior.
I dunno...seems to me that Lucifer is an ever-present reminder of the existence and power of God.
All throughout the bible. Pick one up that has a back section where for certain words, it gives you every instance of where that word is used in the bible. You will find a lot of places discussing it.
2 Chronicles 16:9 For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.
I have wondered if what makes hell burning torment is being exposed to the direct glory of God in an unredeemed state.
Our God, after all, is a consuming fire. We know that sin cannot stand in the presence of God.
This is easy.
At this link, you can do keyword searches.
Just do one on *hell* and someone can find whatever comes up.
The word "hell" occurs nowhere in the Bible. Substituting a word is not the same as translating. Descriptions of the Hebrew "sheol" don't match later Christian theology which seems to me to be drawn more from Dante than anything in the Greek texts.
Which Greek word would I use?
If there is no God, there are no individual rights, only what the powerful decide there is. Is that what you believe? That man decides your fate? If there is no God, right and wrong does not exist because it will simply be whatever those more powerful than you decide. Is that what you believe?
I suspect also that the souls in Hell are surprised they are in Hell.
You say: "When you read descriptions of hell, it's a place where God is absent. He does not stop anything occurring there, nothing bad is prevented or stopped from happening. There is no healing. There is no release from torment and pain."
Well, the most detailed explanation of Hell that I've ever read was Dante's, ,which is still, as far as I know the only major literary work in the Western canon that dealt at length on the nature of hell.
I think a lot of people's view of Hell in the West was shaped by it, perhaps even more than the Bible. (I'm not saying this is right or smart, just that it's historically where a lot of our views of Hell come from).
Have you read Dante?
Here is the Wikipedia description of the Seventh Circle of Hell as described by Dante:
In the first round of the seventh circle, the murderers, war-makers, plunderers, and tyrants are immersed in Phlegethon, a river of boiling blood and fire. Ciardi writes, "as they wallowed in blood during their lives, so they are immersed in the boiling blood forever, each according to the degree of his guilt".[63] The Centaurs, commanded by Chiron and Pholus, patrol the ring, shooting arrows into any sinners who emerge higher out of the boiling blood than each is allowed. The centaur Nessus guides the poets along Phlegethon and points out Alexander the Great, "Dionysius" (either Dionysius I or Dionysius II, or both; they were bloodthirsty, unpopular tyrants of Sicily), Ezzelino III da Romano (the cruelest of the Ghibelline tyrants), Obizzo d'Este, and Guy de Montfort. The river grows shallower until it reaches a ford, after which it comes full circle back to the deeper part where Dante and Virgil first approached it; immersed here are tyrants including Attila, King of the Huns (flagello in terra, "scourge on earth", line 134), "Pyrrhus" (either the bloodthirsty son of Achilles or King Pyrrhus of Epirus), Sextus, Rinier da Corneto, and Rinier Pazzo.
Most modern descriptions of Hell, like Dante's, go far beyond the absence of God, and get directly to eternal punishment for sin. Certainly this was the catechism of the Catholic Church at the time I was instructed in it, almost 50 years ago. So this is an active Hell, quite different from the sort of passive Hell that you have described. God has set Hell up to serve out ultimate justice (sometimes referred to as "cosmic justice").
You say: "He does not stop anything occurring there, nothing bad is prevented or stopped from happening." , but that almost sounds like a heresy.
If God is all powerful, and created all things, then God created, and maintains, and continues to condemn souls to Hell. It's not some region outside of his creation where where he's decided to stop helping people, which is how you seem to be describing it.
Here is a short excerpt of what the Catholic catechism says about Hell:
The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, "eternal fire." The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.
I would say that the difference in the modern catechism of the Catholic Church and the one I was taught is summed up by the quotation marks around "eternal fire". This is the softening of punishment that is in keeping with modernism, so presumably the quotes have been placed there to imply that it's a figure of speech, and not an actual fire.
Of course I know that Protestants have different views on hell, different from the Catholics and different from each other, as they do of most other things. Here are some quotes on the topic (quotes within quotes, from Wikipedia)
One historic Protestant view of hell is expressed in the Westminster Confession (1646):
"but the wicked, who know not God, and obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ, shall be cast into eternal torments, and punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power." (Chapter XXXIII, Of the Last Judgment)According to the Alliance Commission on Unity & Truth among Evangelicals (ACUTE) the majority of Protestants have held that hell will be a place of unending conscious torment, both physical and spiritual,[22] although some recent writers such as Anglican layman C. S. Lewis[78] and J.P. Moreland[79] have cast hell in terms of "eternal separation" from God.
Certain biblical texts have led some theologians[who?] to the conclusion that punishment in hell, though eternal and irrevocable, will be proportional to the deeds of each soul (e.g., Matthew 10:15, Luke 12:46-48).[80]
So, essentially in both the Catholic and Protestant sects of Christianity you seem to have the old-school hell (let's call it Hell Hell) and a new-school version of hell, which is less eternal burning and more absence from God (let's call it Heck Hell).
And, in addition in Christianity, we have the old view that there is no Hell at all, which is a very old theory, but also has been considered heretical for equally as long. And is often accompanied by the another heretical view, that there is no immortal soul, or the soul is only immortal if granted eternal life by God after death.
So, where did all these Christian visions of Hell originate from? Well, presumably the only authoritative descriptions, from a theological point of view, must be found in Christian scripture. Again, details from the Wikipedia article "Christian Views on Hell" (which contains helpful hyper-links to the cited chapter and verse).
The most common New Testament term translated as "Hell" is γέεννα (gehenna), a direct loan of Hebrew גהנום/גהנם (ge-hinnom).Apart from one use in James 3:6, this term is found exclusively in the synoptic gospels. Gehenna is most frequently described as a place of fiery torment (e.g., Matthew 5:22, Matthew 18:8-9; Mark 9:43-49); other passages mention darkness and "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (e.g., Matthew 18:12; Matthew 22:13).[17]
Apart from the use of the term gehenna (translated as "Hell" or "Hell fire" in most English translations of the Bible; sometimes transliterated, or translated differently)[19][20][21] the Johannine writings refer to the destiny of the wicked in terms of "perishing", "death" and "condemnation" or "judgment". Paul speaks of "wrath" and "everlasting destruction" (cf. Romans 2:7-9; 2 Thessalonians), while the general epistles use a range of terms and images including "raging fire" (Hebrews 10:27), "destruction" (2 Peter 3:7), "eternal fire" (Jude 7) and "blackest darkness" (Jude 13).
The Book of Revelation contains the image of a "lake of fire" and "burning sulphur" where "the devil, the beast, and false prophet" will be "tormented day and night for ever and ever" (Revelation 20:10) along with those who worship the beast or receive its mark (Revelation 14:11).[22]
The New Testament also uses the Greek word hades, usually to refer to the abode of the dead (e.g., Acts 2:31; Revelation 20:13).[5] Only one passage describes hades as a place of torment, the parable of Lazarus and Dives (Luke 16:19-31). Jesus here depicts a wicked man suffering fiery torment in hades, which is contrasted with the bosom of Abraham, and explains that it is impossible to cross over from one to the other.
Some scholars believe that this parable reflects the intertestamental Jewish view of hades (or sheol) as containing separate divisions for the wicked and righteous.[5][22] In Revelation 20:13-14 hades is itself thrown into the "lake of fire" after being emptied of the dead.
It is also interesting to look into Hell as a concept pre-dating Christianity. Even the word goes back to the Pagan era Old English.
From a secular point of view it seems like the Christian vision of Hell has more in common with the Pagan view than with the views of Old Testament era Jewish prophets who wrote the Torah.
That's probably more than we need to get into, now, but it is really interesting if you are willing to analyze Hell as a concept, which had a historical development. But that's secular, and I'm trying to stay with the mainstream received religious views here.
You say: "If an athiest sat and thought about what life would really be like in a world without God, the logical end is it would look like what Hell has been described as."
Atheists believe life in a world without God would look exactly like what life looks like right now. That's because they don't believe in God, but they are not denying the existence of the world and physical reality. It's more of "what you see is what you get", with no hidden meaning or extra levels beyond the door.
The Wikipedia article on Hell (not the specifically Christian Views on Hell I linked above) contains this rather droll statement:
Despite written accounts and depictions of Hell throughout much of human history, and common belief in such a location, there is no scientific evidence that Hell exists.
Most atheists are satisfied with that statement, and the acceptance of the world "as it is" and reject the various super-natural explanations of life-after-death: be they the several alternate Christian views (Hell Hell, Heck Hell), based on the New Testament and it's interpreters (be they Catholic Popes, Protestant Reformers, latter day theologians, or devout Christian artists like Dante and C.S. Lewis).
Seeing as you have offered your original posting as advice for how atheists should think about things, I'll close with this saying of a well known atheist philosopher I know:
Stop Pretending To Know Things You Don’t Know
It’s a bit more than that. The problem is your existence as well as everyone else’s is based on original sin. God cannot look on sin. Because of that, he sent his only son to die as a sacrifice to forgive our sins. Think of sins as germs in an operation room (heaven) If you are being opened up in a germ filled environment, you die from infection. By accepting and turning your life over to Christ, your sins are forgiven, germ free.. Those that reject Christ out of free will, suffer the consequences of where they put thier faith. If it’s Buddha, hope Buddha had a plan. Same with Mohammad, Shinto, Hindu’s etc. The gospels are out there. No one will have a real excuse. I encourage you to read “The Case For Christ!” Written by a former atheist trying to prove that Christ was not the son of God. Fear not enlightenment, for the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Here’s your chance to cut in the line!
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