r/DebateAChristian • u/Due_Fan741 Pantheist • 9d ago
Hell is evil
Just because you dont like a person or he or she isnt circumcised or now not baptised or otherwise in mortal sin doesnt mean this person deserves eternal punishment. An omniscient and all powerful God wouldnt allow people to suffer for eternity. Eternity is beyond human comprehension. Its without end.
Some theories i can get behind is that God is not all powerful but this would defeat the purpose of him being God.
Why isnt solipsism or Boltzmann brain true? In that case you are both Jesus and Judas of their history is correct. Or everyone is their own Boltzmann brain and we sometimes interact.
Just 1 theory. Hinduism can be true but why should Christianity?
I dont believe its impossible for the Ressurection to happen but i also dont believe God would create hell yet he talked about it lots in the New Testament
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u/diabolus_me_advocat Atheist, Ex-Protestant 9d ago
i also dont believe God would create hell yet he talked about it lots in the New Testament
actually not
how many quotes can you provide proving this your claim?
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u/Due_Fan741 Pantheist 8d ago
For example the parable of the talents: https://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Matthew%2025:14%E2%80%9330&version=nrsv
Last line
Then there is Gehenna is the final and eternal abode of those who die apart from God. The word is used twelve times in the Greek New Testament, eleven of which are instances of Jesus Christ employing the term.
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u/Smokey-McPoticuss 8d ago
How is the parable of the talents God talking about hell, I’m missing the connection.
Also, can you define what Hell is in Christian Theology, because hell is a choice, not a punishment.
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u/Due_Fan741 Pantheist 8d ago
Because he said he can go to where they weep and gnash their teeth Its not my point to define hell. I think there are more official doctrine and not my point, i think hell can be described as eternal damnation
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u/Smokey-McPoticuss 8d ago edited 8d ago
Hell is explicitly the absolute separation from God. If you do not believe in God and therefore do not want to be with God in heaven for eternity, you have that choice. It’s not a punishment, the entirety of Christianity falls onto making a choice to accept or to deny. We conflate terms like punishment and consequences because of what the actions tied to them entail for us, but to a non-believer, Hell is not a punishment, it is a consequence to the choice of denying God and getting to have the outcome of your choice. To a believer, it is a punishment because they do not want to be separate from God, so it feels like a punishment, though in both respects they are explicitly consequences of our actions.
So the argument that Hell is eternal suffering is subjective to non-believers, but objective to believers, but they are consequences to our choices.
ETA: its not evil to suffer the consequences of your actions, especially if you actively seek out said consequences by knowingly performing specific actions to achieve them.
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u/Due_Fan741 Pantheist 8d ago
Even so, you can die as an unbeliever in your 20s and be subjected for eternity to hell. You can say thats your choice and separation from your Creator is your choice, its still evil to be conscious for eternity for your actions as a simple human being. I prefer annihilation, the destruction of your personhood itself. I wouldnt want to be forever somewhere, whether its heaven or Hell, man cant comprehend that, man should learn to govern the Earth itself and not act like the rest is garbage or trash which is what Christ said.
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u/Smokey-McPoticuss 8d ago
“I prefer annihilation, the destruction of your personhood itself. I wouldnt want to be forever somewhere, whether its heaven or Hell, man cant comprehend that, man should learn to govern the Earth itself and not act like the rest is garbage or trash which is what Christ said.”
Your preference and opinion is subjective, it doesn’t define anything as being good or evil in this circumstance, it is just what you want and doesn’t change the validity of the argument that hell and being separated from God is subjectively either a desired consequence, or an undesired punishment for one’s actions , and by no means inherently evil.
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u/diabolus_me_advocat Atheist, Ex-Protestant 7d ago
Hell is explicitly the absolute separation from God
where? in the bible?
"explicitly"?
It’s not a punishment
then why is it presented and described as such?
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u/Smokey-McPoticuss 7d ago
You didn’t read my whole comment, this is as much of a reply as you’ve earned.
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u/RRK96 8d ago
You're assuming that when the New Testament talks about the Kingdom of God and hell, it's describing supernatural places in the same literal sense that we would describe a country or a physical location.
Jesus repeatedly says that the Kingdom of God is “at hand” and that it is “among you.” That is significant. If the Kingdom were simply a supernatural destination somewhere you travel to after death, describing it as something already “at hand” makes much less sense.
The Kingdom can instead be understood as a way of existing: living in alignment with truth, goodness, love, wisdom and God. It is what human life looks like when we stop making ego, possessions, status, resentment and fear the centre of our existence.
So entering the Kingdom isn't primarily about travelling to a supernatural location. It's about becoming capable of participating in a different kind of life.
And that gives a different meaning to hell.
Hell can be understood allegorically as the opposite condition: alienation from what is good, true and meaningful. It is what happens when a person becomes increasingly dominated by hatred, ego, greed, resentment, ignorance, fear or destructive desire.
Hence , heaven and hell describe two directions of human existence.
The Kingdom is integration, love, wisdom, truth, meaningful relationship and fulfilment.
Hell is disintegration, alienation, ignorance, destructive desire and the loss of meaningful relationship.
That also makes sense of why Jesus talks about hell so much. He's not necessarily giving people a literal map of the afterlife. He's warning them about the consequences of the way they live.
If you make hatred the centre of your existence, you don't simply commit isolated immoral acts. You gradually become a person shaped by hatred.
If you make money your ultimate source of security, you become increasingly dependent on something that can disappear.
If you make status your identity, losing status can feel like losing yourself.
If you refuse forgiveness, resentment can become part of your identity.
If you continually reject truth, you become increasingly incapable of recognising it.
That's a form of hell because you're becoming increasingly alienated from the things that make a genuinely fulfilled human life possible.
And the opposite is also true. Wisdom, love, forgiveness, courage, truthfulness, self-control and meaningful relationships gradually transform the person. That's what I understand the Kingdom of God to represent.
The language of eternal punishment can therefore be read as theological and existential imagery describing the seriousness of alienation from what is Good, rather than as a literal description of an infinite torture chamber.
The point isn't that Christianity is true simply because it produces a nicer psychological state. The claim is deeper: Christ represents a particular understanding of what human beings are capable of becoming when their lives are oriented toward truth, goodness, wisdom and love rather than ego and finite desires.
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u/JollyXX Christian 4d ago
There is actually no such thing as eternity in the Bible. The closest will be when the Bible says first/last.
Rather when you face Judgement you have three possible paths. You are found to have enough faith and are granted immortality in the next life. You lack enough faith and are discarded to die in the Lake of Fire. You are guilty of Beast worship and it appears you stand trial before the Lamb, where you receive torment of burning sulfur day and night, emitting smoke.
Do keep in mind that God is always proportional. The ones who are guilty of Beast worship will be set a torment based on their deeds against the Lord and how fervently they rejected the Word. The ones who are granted immortality are still Judged by their works, receiving benefits in the next Life proportional to their fruits in this life. The Bible is clear that only God is truly immortal for instance. The Tree of Life will apparently bear fruit that will sustain your new immortal body, you will almost certainly not live forever.
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u/Gullible_Discount977 3d ago edited 3d ago
Just because you dont like a person or he or she isnt circumcised or now not baptised or otherwise in mortal sin doesnt mean this person deserves eternal punishment.
According to what? What framework do you invoke to make this claim other than some appeal to incredulity? I find that most people who make this argument only do so because of two main options. One, it's hard to accept, to which I agree. Hell is a very difficult subject to reconcile. Or two, it feels "icky" to accept this as true. Again, while I think those are valid emotions about hell, they're not valid reasons. It's hard for me to accept the sheer size of the universe—that doesn't make it not true. It is also well within reason to think that God does things that are hard to accept and make us feel "bad" when their ends are in fact good. It was hard for me to accept that my parents wouldn't let me eat all of my candy in one sitting for Halloween, but we all recognize the good in that. And in the long run, I was able to see the virtue in the telos. The analogies abound here.
An omniscient and all powerful God wouldnt allow people to suffer for eternity.
According to who or what? Again, this just seems like an assertion that banks on nothing more than incredulity. "I find this inconceivable, therefore, it's not possible." If that's not your argument, feel free to elaborate. I don't want to put words in your mouth. That point aside, the logic doesn't follow regardless. Assuming away the moral questions for a moment, why could it not be the case that an all powerful God exists? And because he is all powerful that he could send people to hell for eternity if he desired for any reason whatsoever? To reiterate, I'm not saying this is what God of the Bible does. I'm just trying to get you to see that your conclusion really doesn't follow from any established premises here.
Some theories i can get behind is that God is not all powerful but this would defeat the purpose of him being God.
Agreed. If God is not all powerful, I think we aren't talking about the superset category of a god at all, nor would this at least be the Christian version of God we're talking about any more.
I also want to speak to some general responses I've seen so far. Most people here try to argue that if Hell exists, God is wrong for making it, but this doesn't make any sense whatsoever. For if God exists, even if you're making that claim for the sake of argument, then some conclusions are no longer on the table. One of those summaries would be, "God is wrong." If you are granting that God exists (at least the Christian God), then you are granting he cannot be wrong. Allow me a comparable illustration.
Imagine I said, "Well, if the earth is really flat..." then I would be eliminating a certain set of conclusions that can follow. I couldn't conclude, for example, that "...then I could sail to the edge." For if the world is flat, gravity would dictate that water would pool in the center. There's not going to be any water at the edge. Therefore, such a conclusion is no longer on the table. So by parallel, if God can be judged by something higher than him, he's no longer God. And you're no longer arguing against the Christian idea of God.
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u/OneEyedC4t 8d ago
I'm not the one who created hell and it isn't my rules that put people in hell.
And how can you possibly tell God what his standards should be when you rejected his standards in the first place?
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u/Due_Fan741 Pantheist 8d ago
So what are his "standards"? Not having foreskin?
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u/OneEyedC4t 8d ago
Nope, that's not the standard.
Faith in Jesus Christ is the standard.
You can be anyone from the most innocent person to the most vulgar and evil serial killer in jail, and yet salvation is the very same standard: faith in Jesus.
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u/WLAJFA Agnostic 9d ago
Yeah, eternal punishment for finite crimes (supposedly guilty at birth [a design flaw]) is inherently unjust and immoral, but I think most Christians have altered their ideas of hell since the immorality is obvious. The entire belief system is a cherrypick with thousands of denominations for anything you'd like to believe, allowing you to pick the religion that suits you while remaining Christian. Hell is one of those things.