“I found some more commandments: they were blocking the drain when I Shopvacced it”, Moses said succinctly.
But…He’s back! After all this time, I figured a celebration was in order. I already hid the eggs! There’s just no pleasing you people.
Golden Rule
God: “Don’t.”
Satan: “Do.”
Considering both the OP and the followup posts, it was rather obvious to all and sundry that this wasn’t going to be that type of thread. Perhaps you could start one up yourself that has a bit more substance to it?
This discussion veers into silliness, IMO, but I feel an urge to point out how this could make sense. In order to serve as a deterrent, the extent of damnation must be determined with regard to Hitler’s current perspective as he considers whether or not to exterminate all Jewish persons. It’s a pretty basic fact that we humans discount future pleasure/pain. Thus it wouldn’t be quite right just to sum up all of the mild discomfort units (MDU) — you must account for the diminished present-time severity of future MDUs.
Thus Hitler’s post-mortem utility (PMU) looks more like
sum from i = 1 to infinity of rho^i * U(MDU)
where rho is a discount factor less than 1. As long as U(MDU) is non-infinite that’ll sum to a finite number. Let’s say U(MDU) = 1; then PMU = rho / (1 - rho). E.g. if rho = 0.9, PMU = 9, much less severe than the 100 billion misery units Hitler caused.
We have used elementary economics to save Hitler from an unjustly harsh divine punishment, yay! Now all we have to do is mock up a cost/benefit analysis WRT going back in time and murdering baby Hitler.
Going down that route, how about PTerrys’ One Commandment.
“Thou shalt not waste.”
What sort of “moderation” would you have like to have seen?
Should we reprimand or admonish the OP for posting a wall of text that said rather little using inflated langugae?
If someone wishes to actually discuss the theological validity of Jesus of Nazareth as son of God, I will, indeed, make an effort to constrain the discussion to the actual topic.
However, the topic must be clear, (this OP was certainly not), it must set forth an actual theological discussion rather than displayng a lengthy act of witnessing with rather little theology included in it, and it must be focused on the point it is trying to make. Such discussions are rather rare on this board, but that has as much to do with the poorly posed topics as it does with the chants of the anti-religious peanut gallery.
I prefer sane rational thinker, myself…
But yes I would welcome reading a serious thread on this topic, I may not agree but I am a seeker of knowledge.
Well, okay, how about the passage where even the son does not know the time of the coming of judgement day? If Jesus is God, how can God know something that Jesus doesn’t?
(Harold Camping, bless his numerological little heart, said that “the son” in that verse referred to Satan, not to Jesus. Otherwise, he said – just as I just did – that this meant that there was something God knew which Jesus didn’t, which is impossible. There is an element of circularity there…)
They are not congruent groups.
This board has a great many posters who have no belief in the non-material or spiritual. It has a certain number of posters who are sane and rational. Those are overlapping, but not congruent, groups. There are also a number of posters who are fairly rabid in expressing their lack of belief in the non-material or supernatural. It is this last group whom I would identify as the anti-religious peanut gallery. That group may include some posters who have demonstrated a certain capacity for rational thought, but it also includes posters who are pretty irrational.
Confusing “anti-religious peanut gallery” with “sane rational thinker” does not actually demonstrate sane, rational thinking. 
So morality is a variable subservient to time. God’s divine judgement can be metered out in increments that, on the whole, dissolve his purpose.
Morality certainly seems to change over time. Slavery used to be just hunky-dory, but now it’s a fundamental violation of natural human rights. Adultery used to be grounds for execution; now, it doesn’t even get you ejected from the country club.
The idea of Hell being somehow amortized – now that seems screwy. Yes, there are ways to amortize a loan to infinity: pay interest only. (Or less.) But infinite punishment for finite evil still seems absurd, just as infinite payment for a finite loan is usurious.
The quotes from Grey, that He gave, were because in order to enter the after life one had to keep the laws that were quoted, to get eternal life and many are in the Book of the dead. There were more than 10 commandments (as I understood it) but was reduced to the 10 now used. Most of them except the first 3 are just common sense. If you want others to act kindly to you then act kindly to them.
Of course it is just my translation of the Bible, but if all are gods and son’s of god then of course Jesus would be god, and so would every one else, unless the Psalmist was just meaning the Israelites. And Jesus didn’t seem to think he was anymore god and a son of god (as the Psalmist he quoted).
The Great Beast himself, actually.
In case it wasn’t obvious, only in jest did I suggest looking at damnation as the present discounted value of a stream of punishments stretching to infinity. I do think that once you’ve allowed (as Learjeff seemed to) that damnation need not be a unending sequence of violent physical tortures, Hitler’s mild eternal discomfort need not compare unfavorably to the strictly finite horrors inflicted by his regime.
That said: I suspect it’d be best for the theist to discard the notion that our subjective experience of time holds for this discussion. Perhaps Hitler’s mild discomfort occurs within an eternal moment; and then, despite his punishment being unending, it seems wrong to call it infinite in the sense operative above.
FWIW, I think it’d be very interesting — and it’s something I’ve considered doing — to investigate how the prospect of eternal punishment should be revealed in individual behavior. For someone who claims to believe
(a) in a god G;
(b) that G proscribes certain sinful behaviors;
(c) that G inflicts horrible unending torture on those who engage in such behaviors and fail to repent before death;
(d) that anyone could die at any moment; and
(e) that no pleasure from sinful behavior could match the beatific vision,
it should never be worth it to engage in sinful behavior. Formalize that, take it to data, and we can determine whether anyone actually believes in god at all. Heh heh.
Now that you mention it: John of course famously says that Jesus is God’s only begotten son, but does Jesus ever say it?
I figured that part was fun, but since I have actually met people who hold that a murderer, say, should be punished forever, even though the pain he caused was only finite, I wasn’t sure whether you were supporting that idea or not.
Isn’t there a middle ground? Evil people could be punished three-fold, let’s say, or even 100-fold. That would certainly deter most wicked people (at least the ones who are capable of reason… Which isn’t all of them… Some would say that’s tautological, as no one capable of reason would act in a very pronounced evil fashion…)
This is a classic question about hell. After a while, wouldn’t one just “get used to it?” After being burned in a lake of fire for a million years or so, wouldn’t the experience begin to pale? The usual answer is that, by miraculous means, the sufferer is made to experience each torment anew. He is prevented from going mad, or from sliding into catatonia, or developing masochistic tastes, etc.
In the same way, we can allow the theist to say that God (or Satan, or whoever operates hell) prevents us from altering our time sense.
Otherwise, if, for instance, for every year that passes, my time sense slows by 50%, this would produce a converging series, and the overall duration in hell would appear to be finite.
Such ideas ameliorate hell…and that’s something I think we’re not supposed to do.
(Howard Cruse, in “Dancing Nekkid with the Angels,” had a sequence where people grow accustomed to the torments of hell, and, after a while, revert to a mild, even vaguely pleasant, form of human society. The idea was to take away the fear of the idea of hell. I think most Christians – say, the C.S. Lewis variety – would criticize this.)
FWIW, I think it’d be very interesting — and it’s something I’ve considered doing — to investigate how the prospect of eternal punishment should be revealed in individual behavior. For someone who claims to believe
(a) in a god G;
(b) that G proscribes certain sinful behaviors;
(c) that G inflicts horrible unending torture on those who engage in such behaviors and fail to repent before death;
(d) that anyone could die at any moment; and
(e) that no pleasure from sinful behavior could match the beatific vision,
it should never be worth it to engage in sinful behavior. Formalize that, take it to data, and we can determine whether anyone actually believes in god at all. Heh heh.
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I dunno… Second-order examinations get messy. It’s like the argument that the pro-life side doesn’t really believe that abortion is murder. Maybe, maybe not, but to get there you have to engage in a kind of psycho-analysis that goes beyond any ostensible declaration of their beliefs.
The typical Christian believes that he believes in God, and declares so when asked. I favor taking him at his word, as far as possible.
(This is difficult when you meet someone who declares himself a Christian…and then turns around and commits a violent act, or theft, or other act that Jesus would condemn.)