I believe I’ve asked that basic question in this thread already and got ignored: How do you cope in Heaven if you have loved ones in Hell? How can you be happy in Heaven knowing that people are suffering eternally in Hell?
I don’t know how informing people of facts reduces their free will. If God under your model really cared about free will there would be no Bible at all. Not to mention that for over a thousand years most in the West truly believed in Hell, but had no trouble sinning.
Kind of like a computer salesman refusing to give you the specs of different models so that you can make a free choice.
Not to mention that in the Bible some who saw the actions of God directly still rebelled, which kind of wipes out the “if God actually showed himself there would be no free will” argument.
An eternal hell of some kind (not necessarily an inescapable one) seems to me to be a necessity for free will. If I do not have the capacity to fully reject God, then I don’t really have free will.
If I was in heaven and I was aware of people in hell, I would hope that I have the kind of perspective where I can fully respect the dignity of my fellow souls who continually choose to reject God. But definitive statements about the afterlife are not personally very useful for my praxis.
But the question wasn’t “How can you be happy in Heaven knowing that people are sitting around choosing to reject God?” You left out the part God is responsible for-the eternal suffering. I ask both questions again of those that believe that Hell exists:
- How do you cope in Heaven if you have loved ones in Hell?
- How can you be happy in Heaven knowing that people are suffering eternally in Hell?
The big problem is that it treats “infinity” like a number. It tries to “jump to the end” of the number line. Norton Juster made fun of this, in The Phantom Tollbooth, by advising his protagonist to “Just follow that line forever … and when you reach the end, turn left.”
Saying “God knows everything” is akin to saying, “God knows all of the prime numbers.” But one cannot; there is always another prime number that can be constructed by multiplying all the ones you do know and adding one. You cannot “know them all.”
Being outside the cosmos might allow one to heft that cosmos might allow God the power to heft that cosmos – to alter or destroy it – but as the cosmos isn’t infinite in the mathematical sense, this power does not constitute “infinite” power.
(I don’t see at all how you arrived at the “by definition” clause of what you said. Can you expand, just a little, on the definition you depend on there?)
There are cosmological models of an unlimited universe…but they all fail to match mathematical infinity. It is always possible to construct a finite number that still exceeds the measure of such a cosmos in, say, parsecs. Or inches. This is why the appeal to infinity was dismissed as “schoolyard” nonsense. We can always say, “Oh, yeah? Times ten.”
The medieval theologians blundered, I think, in arguing that God is greater than “anything which we can conceive.” In actual functionality, my “conception” stops around six or seven objects. But in abstract conception, I can envision God – and then envision him being even greater than he is. (What if there were two such Gods!)
And, as I always point out here, there are perfectly good finite numbers that exceed any possible human purpose. If God can lift 10^10^800 galaxies…as far as I’m concerned, that is absolutely indistinguishable from infinity. So there can never be any means of testing the hypothesis. It is “nonsense” in the sense of meaningful verification, and it is self-contradictory in that it proposes a “completed” infinity.
It’s not that it reduces free will. It just makes free will completely devoid of any meaning.
I can “freely choose” to step outside right now. But if I knew a machete-welding rapist was standing on the other side, just waiting for me to come out so he can hurt me, my choice to stay inside is essentially a given. Only a suicidal masochist would choose differently. So what mystical purpose is served by presenting me with this dilemma? Might as well just make me an automaton without the ability to go outside.
Interestingly enough, the story of Adam and Eve is fraught with the opposite problem. Having foreknowledge of Hell’s horribleness undermines the meaningfulness of free choice, while Adam and Eve’s gullibility and ignorance left them without the means to make an informed choice. So as a species, we’re screwed coming and going.
Maybe–just maybe–if God had told Adam and Eve that trans-generational tragedy would happen if they ate from the tree before they ate from it (“…and oh yeah, ignore that smooth talking snake who somehow invaded this holy garden that I created”), then humanity wouldn’t be in this messed up situation.
But why does rejection of God require eternal suffering, though? Surely euthanasia is an option. God could also put those who reject him to sleep and awaken them periodically to see if they still reject him. If yes, back to the chiller they go but at least they wouldn’t be in pain.
Why is God is so preoccupied with us rejecting him anyway?
Personally speaking, hell is the rejection of God in the afterlife. Its eternality is a statement about its possibility as a state of being, rather than a description of it as a prison that is eternally inhabited. What suffering is involved is knowable only through inadequate analogy, but to the extent that I choose to explore that issue, I think it is something freely and continually chosen, and I leave open the option that hell is in some way escapable. So in that case:
- I would cope by loving them, praying for them, and respecting their dignity derived through their exercise of free will.
- Assumably in heaven I would understand cosmic reasoning or whatever, but here on earth, my conscience leads me to personally reject this conception of hell, and act accordingly.
It begins on earth. Jesus called it the Kingdom of God and talked about it over and over: not as a future paradise but as something we can experience here and now. “Jesus replied, ‘The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, 21 nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.’” – Luke 17:20-21.
So don’t confuse this reconciliation with the idea of heaven or hell in the afterlife. It is here and has been given to us. So when you ask are there people in heaven or hell right here and now – I’d say no, but some people are closer to the kingdom of God than others. Then, in what Jesus (and others of his time) call “the age to come” is when the judgment takes place. Those who have embraced the kingdom are welcomed into eternal life, and those who still stand outside the kingdom are “cast into the outer darkness.” And though that outer darkness (Hell) is real and eternal, nowhere does Jesus say that people have to stay there.
So reconciliation can begin here and now, but does not end. It’s not a limited time offer anywhere I see in the Bible. And it’s to see people everywhere who choose to live apart from God. I suspect that there are many who call themselves Christians who are not really living in the Kingdom, and I’m even more convinced that there are people outside of Christianity who are (and will be just as surprised as the Christians to find themselves counted with the sheep).
As to why someone would make that choice – well, any multitude of reasons. Pride and self-centeredness, primarily, is my guess. Isn’t that what caused the fall of Adam and Eve? But eventually – in this world or the next – the irresistible draw of God’s love and grace will overwhelm even the most prideful heart.
I don’t agree with your analogy. God created us as individuals capable of self-determination. If hell isn’t a permanent condition, but more like a prison for which we hold our own key, then letting us stay there until we decide to come out isn’t cruel. I let my children make decisions I know that they will regret, because it is part of letting them grow. And if I just told them that they were making a mistake, they would not believe me.
On the contrary, most contemporary ideas about hell are not supported by anything in the Bible. Twenty-five years ago when I was in college (a Big 10 university) I had two religion professors I greatly admired, a Methodist and a Roman Catholic. They had a long discussion about hell and then told us that they finally agreed that based on the Bible, Hell must exist. And, also, that it must be empty. I thought they were off their rocker. But after twenty more years of church-going, bible-reading and living with God I finally caught up to them. It’s really the only thing that makes any sense at all because as you’ve pointed out, a loving and compassionate God who sentences people to eternal suffering for an uniformed ‘choice’ is a logical impossibililty.
I disagree that the bible refers to non-believers as destined for eternal punishment.
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Furthermore, what is the point of any of this? What lessons are to be learned in Hell? “If you don’t turn to God, you suffer; thus, you might want to turn to God” isn’t all that profound and it’s not really an endorsement for God’s greatness.
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God created us to love us. We are literally incomplete without God. Hell is not to teach us a lesson. Hell is where we put ourselves when we try to resist that love we were created for.
blush
Yes, I agree God is all powerful. And I agree that he wants a certain outcome to occur – that outcome being that we are joined with God and each other in eternal community. And He has enabled that outcome the life and death of Jesus. But forcing us to love him – squashing our self-identity and self-determination – he can’t do that and still have it be love, can he? I don’t see how.
As far as ‘creating’ Hell – like I’ve tried to explain, hell is just what we experience without God. I think it was C.S. Lewis who said that Hell is God’s way of saying to us “thy will be done.”
Bearing in mind that I believe that we cannot really know the full truth of God, the afterlife, etc., but only the individual fragments of truth that we come across as finite beings, I take some comfort in the idea that traditional descriptions of hell are analogical and can be understood as statements related to practice on earth rather than accurately descriptive truth statements. So I can say “eternal suffering” but this is only useful to the extent that it can assist me to move toward God on earth (and it might not be useful for this at all), rather than as an objective description of Hell. Another description, like your chiller proposal, might be more accurate in some ways, but just in the sense that 1000 dollars is closer to infinity dollars than 100 dollars. Real, but still limited.
In my understanding of Christianity, God’s love is similarly knowable only through inadequate analogy, but I wouldn’t necessarily say he is preoccupied with us rejecting him. Day to day I compare it to an omnipotent version of the love that I can partly manage to maintain for those close to me.
Well, I don’t know what hell is like. Maybe you are aware of other people there; maybe you are completely alone. I do know that all those things we long for - love, joy, peace, hope - all come from God. So, in hell, you would have none of that.
I’m arguing that 1) “God made hell” is a misleading statement; and 2) those in hell are not in it for eternity.
But ‘darkness’ isn’t a thing. You can’t measure ‘darkness.’ You measure the amount of light. “Full darkness” is just the absence of any light at all. You don’t make a room darker by adding more darkness, you make it darker by removing light.
Why do you think Gandhi is in hell? I don’t know that he is.
Also, saying God is everywhere, and that hell is a state of separation from God, we are talking about apples and oranges - like asking if it’s colder in December or in Minnesota. Yes, you cannot escape God anywhere in the physical universe. But you can be spiritually separated from him.
Again, not eternally, I argue. And I think, maybe, the way you cope now when your love ones are in pain and suffering beyond your control.
I’ll leave it to someone who believes in eternal suffering to answer.
I think ñañi and I are very close in our understanding of hell. Close enough to be indistinguishable in any important way.
I thought he was all powerful?
What caused the fall of Adam and Eve is them being tempted by a snake who advised them to take from a forbidden tree that existed for no reason at all except to entrap them into doing forbidden things. Their mistake had less to do with pride and self-centeredness and more to do with them simply not knowing to distrust the snake who lured them into danger. Their ignorance made them ill-equipped to evaluate the wisdom of their own actions. So of course they fell.
Yes, but when your child rejects your instruction and opts to do something that you know will severely hurt them (like taking naked pics of themselves and posting them online), it is your duty as a parent to do what you can to stop them. Tough love is a thing, even if it means encroaching upon their autonomy and freedom.
This aside, rejecting God has emotional connotations that aren’t comparable to a child choosing to stay up late and eat up all the pie. The emphasis given to Hell in the Bible implies that God is so preoccupied with this concern that he wants us to be concerned about it too. Why, though? If belief in Christianity isn’t even necessary for us to gain entry into the kingdom and it’s inevitable we’ll all embrace him eventually since he’s so irresistible, what value is there in sermonizing about this unfathomable prison that isn’t really prison but rather a state of spiritual exile or whatever? I see little value in that.
With all due respect, I think the most logical conclusion is that the Bible causes more problems than solutions when speculating about the afterlife and Creation. You and others have one interpretation of Hell, but a boatload of others have another interpretation of Hell, also supportable with scripture. And then there are folks like me who were raised in the church and struggled so much to reconcile a loving God with fire and brimstone that they only conclude it’s all bollocks.
I’ve taken in stray cats. They didn’t love me when I took them in. They were wretched, frightened, flea-bitten things that probably saw me as a predator.
After feeding them, keeping them warm, protecting them, petting them, and proving myself to be a unconditional source of love to them…guess what? They loved me. They are nestled beside me right now. (One of them almost died a couple weeks ago and is very grateful that I saved her. Cost me a pretty penny too but I love her too much to tell her that. Sacrifice schmacrifice.)
If God created us to love us (as you say), then that means he would love us as I loved my wretched stray cats. Selflessly, without the expectation of reciprocity. My cats didn’t love me when I first took them in, and yet my unconditional love for them eventually earned me their love. But even if it hadn’t, I still would take care of them. I wouldn’t turn them loose on the streets to suffer and starve until they “figured out” its better to be with me.
Bottom line: The idea God would seriously entertain the possibility that we would resist his love–to the extent that he would see fit to remind us over and over against about the consequence of such resistance–suggests that he doubts the power of his own love. This kind of insecurity reminds me of Nice Guys. Not a deity who has inevitability on his side.
You can pull out your '45 and step outside and blow his head off. You can think you can reason with him. This is a case of rational decision making, not free will. If there is a 20 cent difference in price between two adjacent gas stations, does this rob you of your free will?
How much information is required to rob you of your free will? If you have any at all there are many cases where one option becomes obvious. It sounds like you think any rational choice is not made of free will, which leaves more or less random choices - and deciding based on the roll of the dice is hardly free will either.
Yes, that is a big problem with the Adam and Eve story. But was their choice with inadequate information any freer than it would have been with understanding? If we learn the difference between right and wrong, and this robs us of free will, then only babies and may sociopaths have free will.
Or at least it would have been a real choice. In the Jewish view I learned the story just explains the world. In the Christian view God set us up. The snake didn’t get there by accident. What God did is like introducing your parent on the edge of dementia to a slick con man, and then being angry at your parent getting ripped off.
How does someone “know the consequences” if they don’t believe the teachings are true? I think Christian teachings and concepts of heaven, hell, punishment, sin, and grace, are factually false. My parents are not Christian and I was not raised Christian. Do I, somehow, “know the consequences” of not believing these teachings?
Again, my issue is not that free will is robbed or reduced or lessened. It’s that the meaning behind my choice loses value when my hand is influenced by the fear of coercive consequences. So your question doesn’t follow from my point.
If the only reason your wife chose to marry you was to get away from an abusive family, surely this truth would have different significance to you than if she married you for love. The influence of the abuse might not negate that she chose to marry you, but it does mean her choice had more to do without escaping harm than loving you.
My problem with God clubbing us over the head of with threats of Hell is that he makes it harder for us to choose him out of love. We might turn to God to escape “abuse”, but this display of free will is without heart-felt meaning.
Wait, what? And I say this as someone who believes in God – what?
Picture an atheist; figure he’s happily married to another atheist; and figure his friends and loved ones all happen to be atheists, and figure he’s living a peaceful and joyous existence here and now: curious and contemplative, with lots of compassion and a wry sense of humor, as an atheist among atheists. Figure that some day they all die in their sleep and wake up in hell; how could he tell the difference?
These statements demonstrate the problem perfectly. You don’t know what hell is like, but those in it are not in it for eternity. Gandhi might or might not be in it.
I won’t ask you for justification for your statements, since you can probably come up with some. I will ask you why your conclusions about hell are more valid than those of someone else.
How can someone make an informed choice if umpteen models of hell are equally likely? Including that of no hell at all - or the Shavian hell which exchanges souls with heaven.
Say I’m a person who for non-evil reasons rejects the existence of God in general and Christianity in particular. I know there is the chance that hell exists. My Pascalian calculation might be very different if hell were short term versus being eternal.
Your vision of heaven and hell is like playing football using a self-contradictory set of rules. You may think you’ve won but you find out only after the game is over that you incurred tons of penalties.
You’re just making stuff up - but in this you are no different from the most educated theologian or the rantiest preacher in the square. Only God could set us straight and he ain’t talking.
This isn’t my opinion at all.
If I open a door and a machete rapist attacks me, this consequence doesn’t naturally follow from the action I’ve taken. It’s been imposed by a mad man. Sure, you can call my choice to close the door “rational”, but that’s doing an injustice to the word. Not when opening a door is normally a perfectly rational action to take when one wants to go outside.
IMO, for a choice to qualify for judgement, that choice has to be a clear reflection of someone’s character, intellect, and values. The more a choice is swayed by outside factors (like a machete rapist), the less it makes sense to judge someone for that choice.
Well, I can’t, either. Actually, I follow the teachings of that great theologian George Carlin.
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I think Skammer’s been pretty clear so far that just being an atheist isn’t enough to get you sent to hell. If you’ve been living a peaceful and joyous existence, with compassion and humor, then per his theology, you’re likely going to end up in heaven, even if you didn’t believe in it before you die.
Apologies to Skammer if I’ve misrepresented him here.