You forgot the 'and face eternal damnation' part.

a question
 

I don't mean this to sound anal or anything, really I'm curious.

god is just, and loving, right? why would such a god send people to hell to suffer forever simple because during their lives on earth, they made a mistake in not believeing in (or loving) him? couldn't they right their wrongs, so to speak? ie, after dying, and realizing they were wrong, promise to, i dunno, love him?

edit: no I will not succumb to religious debates.

Reminds me of a lyrics


The closer you get to the meaning
The sooner you'll know that you're dreaming
So it's on and on and on, oh it's on and on and on
It goes on and on and on, Heaven and Hell

Oh, and shakey, you said "what kind of love is it?" It's exactly the kind of love that god supposedly created. Why not make love unconditional and permanent in his creations? afterall, he's the creator of the universe. Why bother making such a fickle definition of love when he knows that his creations will just violate it? It's like programming robots to think on their own and then demanding their allegiance or they rot in hell for eternity. Why bother when you can just program them to listen to you in the first place? It doesn't make sense when this supposed god is the creator of the very definitions of the things he strives to achieve.

God understands that we often choose ourselves over loving him. Nobody choses God all the time,its called sin, and that's what Jesus is about. God came to earth as a man, gave us an example to live by, and then was sacrificed for the forgiveness of man's sins, if we choose to accept it.
Death is finality. It ends the "probation period" that we call life. This is like asking why doesn't God make himself 100% emperical? Well, because then that would, in all practicality, eliminate choice.
Love is love because you know there are options, but you choose otherwise.
Would you rather be a robot?

This whole line of reasoning doesn't make sence to me,
Are you really saying that just because God gave you the choice to love him rather than forcing you to, you don't want to? Doesn't that line of reasoning seem juvenial to you?

And how does the line "Love me or suffer for all eternity!" sound to you?

Could you love somebody who is threatening you this way (well apparently you can)?


General Geoff's question (the way I understand it) is "Why isn't his love for his children unconditional?" (the way parental love should be)

Well, is the glass half empty or half full?
because "love me and I'll never let you suffer again", sounds like a pretty good deal.
Understand, hell is a theological problem, and not everyone agrees that you'll suffer forever, because the Bible never explictly says that. There are many Christians that I know that believe that those condemed to hell will just simply cease to exist, or be "annihilated". I myself, am unsure about the exact implications of hell, all I know is that I don't want to end up there.
Now, God's love for his children is completely unconditional, but he never in his word calls those who do not love him his children.

Then what's this about a "probation period"?

Depends, if the cup was full and was drank out of, then the cup would be half empty. If the cup was empty at first and then filled up, it would be half full. :p

So now you need an incentive to love something?

haha. sig material.
where did you get those statistics?

That's what life kind of is; I time to decide if you love God or not.
No, but bravo on your ability to take something out of context. :p

Re: a question
 

If you subscribe to the idea that Hell is being seperated from God, then it is just. God is just giving those people what they wanted. They didn't want God while they were alive, they don't get him when they're dead.

I can't believe that people said God should have just made everyone a bunch of robots that love him.
Try this experiment: program your computer to tell you that it loves you every ten minutes. Let me know how much more loved you feel.

Re: Re: a question
 

Well it tells me that it loves me, but I don't know how far
this relationship can possably go:p

You're missing my point. If god invented love itself (as well as every thing else in existence, both physical and logical), why didn't he just make it unconditional for us to love him back? And who's to say that we aren't loving him at this very instant, without us knowing? You know, a subconsious type of thing?

I just don't understand how any kind of self-respecting deity can invent such a concept and then expect his own inferiour creations to take it upon themselves to just happen to love their creator, sight unseen.

love means nothing if hate and indifference aren't available options

existance is nothing without proof.

The more I think about it: No it doesn't.

It's still blackmail, only reworded. Any kidnapper can say "Do what I tell you and you won't suffer.", does that really sound good to you?
(hmm, maybe religious faith is some kind of Stockholm syndrome)
And that's all that's necessary.

The idea of heaven and hell and life as a probation period makes perfect sense if you want to tie people in and control them.

Almost all religions (Buddhism may be an exception) obviously need something to scare people into submission.

Sometimes I think that there are laws (or concepts) inherent in the existence of God (or perhaps necessary in an integral scheme-of-things sort of way) that God did not directly create. It seems that He operates on certain principles that are either self-imposed or exist apart from him for whatever reason.

--And if we accept God as valid logically, why would we expect to understand all His actions and decisions? We're slightly less than nothing by comparison.--

to those who require a proof for God, have you required the same type of proof for Gravity or Yourself?


To the crazy Christians: perhaps you can explain to me this: How can God have no favorites yet have Isreal as his "chosen people"? How can God/Jesus/Holy Spirit love EVERYONE yet have only certain people whom he/they have CHOSEN to get to heaven?




The bottom line is that hte BIble is not infallable and it is entirely possible that God can exist.

It's also entirely possible that pink leprechauns exist.

Except noone is saying you'll go to hell if you don't believe in them.

Shakey, what about a group of people born on an island who have never heard of your god and your ways. Are they condemned to hell because they don't love your god?

Did GqSkrub just ask for proof of gravity? You're not implying it...no you couldn't possibly think...no theres no way..

That was a joke right? please...tell me you were joking.. I mean... dear lord the sheer stup... nope.

no he did not just say that.. no way...

Yes.

I'm also hoping that was a joke aswell.

The current scientific model of gravity has been show to work in all tests. However, we already know that it is likely to be superseeded by a better model at some point in the future (when a theory is developed that encompasses both quantum physics and general relitivity, which is the biggest possible development in understanding in the future).

Indeed, without our current understanding of gravity, man would not have landed on the moon. The fact that we have sent probes to most/all of the planets in the solar system shows that our current understanding works very well.

What you have to keep in mind about Gravity vs. God is that the theory of Gravity holds some (in fact, quite a lot of) predictive power - that is, knowing that theory allows us to predict that if we send a probe with X vector, then Y planet's gravitational pull will send the probe to Z.

However, the theory of God holds absolutely no such predictive power, and, as such, is scientifically useless.

word.

i love you guys.

Something similar could be said about the theory of evolution.

I still think that this argument is a matter of preception. I think the part that you are not understanding is that when God creates the new heavens and earth as promised in Revelation, they will be perfect, and God will fellowship with his church, and there will be no room for sin. So, in order to promise something better, there has to be something worse. That just happens to be hell. And the people who have been sent there have choosen to go there. Then how does proof exist?
Answer: God.God didn't invent Love, God is love. God is the meaning of is.
God doesn't expect, god wants, he craves it, but since the fall, he doesn't expect it.i would say that this is very accurate. However, these don't exist apart from him, but instead, he is the very embodiment of these principles. I've actually already answered this one. First understand, if someone has heard an accurate depiction of the Gospel, I think it is nessicery that they're heart be moved to the point of accepting him as savior. But should this not happen, I do think that those peoples' hearts (i've been using the word 'heart' in this posts figuratively) will be fairly judged by Christ. Job was not a Jew, he was from the east, but he still found favor inthe sight of God. God choose Israel as his chosen people do to Abraham's faithfulness. What this means is that God choose Israel to be the culture that the Messiah would be born into. That is pretty much all God's election for Jews was was, more or less.

So basically, you're saying that god is flawed and is a hypocrite because he covets love. Good job.

True proofs only exist in maths (and the axioms contained therein [such as 1+1=2]).

Humans created maths.

(Sure, we do use mathematical formalities to descibe the universe in science, but science is not in the business of proof, science is in the business of prediction. Similarly, law is in the business of "beyond resonable doubt" which is not proof.)

Nobody will be sent to hell against their will?

And what is "in order to promise something better, there has to be something worse." supposed to mean?
Is heaven so unattractive that you have to create hell to make it look good in comparison?
No offense but that's just stupid!
Creative linguistics, respect.
But what does that mean in the case of a man loving another man?

And of course then these sentences should read:
God is a word, nothing more, nothing less.

Science is the pursuit of fact; philosophy is the pursuit of truth. Math is the only absolute when it comes to proofs.

Then how do you explain imaginary numbers? :D

Can you show me a church that worships imaginary numbers?

Maybe I'd even join. :D

"Oh square root of minus one, thy kingdom come!"

numbers are nothing but imaginary. The number "15" doesn't actually exist; it's just a logical placeholder to represent a certain amount of things. Now here's a better question: What's the square root of -1 (and don't say i)? :p

I <3 imaginary numbers.

(they just came about because some mathematicians thought it might be interesting to see what would happen if sqrt(-1) did exist. turns out they are interesting and useful [the numbers not the mathematicians :p])