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First we had the liar on the fundie side telling us that "God is Love" isn't in the Bible and now we have a liar on the universalist side telling us that "eternal torment" isn't in the Bible. This is an excellent demonstration of the problem with hard headed ideologues. They indulge in willful ignorance and refuse to see the evidence which is there for everyone to find.
The question which neither of these groups will apply themselves to is how these two facts can be reconciled.
1. God is love.
2. There is eternal torment.
Both of these are in the Bible and the can be reconciled if you are willing to make the effort. And here is the key: stop looking to power as the solution to everything. This is easy for God to do because He has all the power He could ever want and thus knows very well that power doesn't do anything of real significance. But we humans from the moment of birth have pretty much done nothing but accumulate power -- the power to walk, the power to talk, the power to fight, and the power manipulate and deceive. Each gain tells us that power can get us what we want and so we seek for more. But God is telling us that this is a path that eventually goes nowhere.
God is omnipotent by nature but power is not what He chooses to be. He chooses love and freedom rather than power and control and that is why He created life. He created others who make their own choices and decide for themselves what they want to be. So by His own choice, He is not in control anymore. And that is why there is eternal torment, because this is what some people choose for themselves. Yes, it is precisely because God chose love rather than power that hell exists.
That you THINK this reconciles the two reveals that you do NOT know what agape love IS and what significance there is to the fact that God IS agape love. You are correct that all consequences are of our own making and NOT God's punishment. But if you think God would allow eternal torment for ANY reason, you simply do not know or understand agape love, period. We will reap what we sow and ONLY what we sow and that will not be pleasant but the torment will be all self-imposed as "weeping and gnashing of teeth" at our ignorance, arrogance, obliviousness and selfishness.
That you THINK this reconciles the two reveals that you do NOT know what agape love IS and what significance there is to the fact that God IS agape love.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jerwade
Agape (ἀγάπη, agápē) is the highest form of love: charity; the love of God for mankind.
Not to be confused with brotherly (philēo) love.
Agape embraces a universal, unconditional love that transcends.
And serves regardless of circumstances.
You must have used an invisible font on the part where it says that agape love means ignoring the choices of others and forcing them to be the way you want them to be.
But not only do I not see this definition of yours but I think it is an logically inconsistent fantasy that cannot exist. If tacking on the prefix "agape" makes it a power to force people to be what you want them to be then it changes it to something which is not any kind of love. Love is NOT a way to get what you want! Love is not a means of achieving your ambitions. Love is not a way of making people do things your way. Real love recognizes that there is another person there who makes their own choices about what they want and doesn't try to erase them and replace their life and will with your own.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
You are correct that all consequences are of our own making and NOT God's punishment.
But you don't really believe this, not all the way. Ultimately you think everything has to be the way God decides it should be. You apparently think if anyone suffers it is ultimately God's fault for letting that happen. It is the only way you could think it is up to God in the end.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
But if you think God would allow eternal torment for ANY reason, you simply do not know or understand agape love, period.
It is hard for many people to understand God's choice for love and freedom over power and control. A little love and a little freedom they can understand, but for them real love is power and must be use to force people to do the right thing, because nobody can be allowed the freedom to choose evil and torment. The only problem is this just doesn't agree with the facts of the world we live in. Things are happening around us which cannot be explained if God is only playing at love and freedom and never really letting people make their own decisions.
Sorry, but when it comes to your god, I am an atheist. It just doesn't match up with reality. It looks like a total fantasy to me which can only exist in the inconsistent world of dreams.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
We will reap what we sow and ONLY what we sow and that will not be pleasant but the torment will be all self-imposed as "weeping and gnashing of teeth" at our ignorance, arrogance, obliviousness and selfishness.
Yeah I get it that this is the way you would like it to be. Where everything has the happy ending that you are ok with. But I don't think it is real life when someone else makes all the decisions that really matter.
You must have used an invisible font on the part where it says that agape love means ignoring the choices of others and forcing them to be the way you want them to be.
But not only do I not see this definition of yours but I think it is an logically inconsistent fantasy that cannot exist. If tacking on the prefix "agape" makes it a power to force people to be what you want them to be then it changes it to something which is not any kind of love. Love is NOT a way to get what you want! Love is not a means of achieving your ambitions. Love is not a way of making people do things your way. Real love recognizes that there is another person there who makes their own choices about what they want and doesn't try to erase them and replace their life and will with your own.
But you don't really believe this, not all the way. Ultimately you think everything has to be the way God decides it should be. You apparently think if anyone suffers it is ultimately God's fault for letting that happen. It is the only way you could think it is up to God in the end.
It is hard for many people to understand God's choice for love and freedom over power and control. A little love and a little freedom they can understand, but for them real love is power and must be use to force people to do the right thing, because nobody can be allowed the freedom to choose evil and torment. The only problem is this just doesn't agree with the facts of the world we live in. Things are happening around us which cannot be explained if God is only playing at love and freedom and never really letting people make their own decisions.
Sorry, but when it comes to your god, I am an atheist. It just doesn't match up with reality. It looks like a total fantasy to me which can only exist in the inconsistent world of dreams.
Yeah I get it that this is the way you would like it to be. Where everything has the happy ending that you are ok with. But I don't think it is real life when someone else makes all the decisions that really matter.
Power is not control when it serves you. I really cannot understand your problem with love being a force or power, a force or power that is on your side and always willing to work on your behalf.
There is no God playing at love and freedom,we become and live out of those things as we become consciously aware of them.The things you see in the world that you say cannot be explained is the creation of man's imagination, for there is nothing created that is not first imagined.
Agape (ἀγάπη, agápē) is the highest form of love: charity; the love of God for mankind. Not to be confused with brotherly (philēo) love. Agape embraces a universal, unconditional love that transcends. And serves regardless of circumstances.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mitchellmckain
You must have used an invisible font on the part where it says that agape love means ignoring the choices of others and forcing them to be the way you want them to be. But not only do I not see this definition of yours but I think it is an logically inconsistent fantasy that cannot exist. If tacking on the prefix "agape" makes it a power to force people to be what you want them to be then it changes it to something which is not any kind of love. Love is NOT a way to get what you want! Love is not a means of achieving your ambitions. Love is not a way of making people do things your way. Real love recognizes that there is another person there who makes their own choices about what they want and doesn't try to erase them and replace their life and will with your own.
You can choose not to love someone or something, that's your choice. But you cannot speak for that of another who may love you, unconditionally or without all the restraints you seem to impose on them. My daughters do not need to love me in order for me to love them. And I have seen love overcome the most difficult obstacles in life - when it reaches out to others. It has nothing to do with your thoughts of power and control.
Quote:
But you don't really believe this, not all the way. Ultimately you think everything has to be the way God decides it should be. You apparently think if anyone suffers it is ultimately God's fault for letting that happen. It is the only way you could think it is up to God in the end.
It is hard for many people to understand God's choice for love and freedom over power and control. A little love and a little freedom they can understand, but for them real love is power and must be use to force people to do the right thing, because nobody can be allowed the freedom to choose evil and torment. The only problem is this just doesn't agree with the facts of the world we live in. Things are happening around us which cannot be explained if God is only playing at love and freedom and never really letting people make their own decisions.
Sorry, but when it comes to your god, I am an atheist. It just doesn't match up with reality. It looks like a total fantasy to me which can only exist in the inconsistent world of dreams.
Yeah I get it that this is the way you would like it to be. Where everything has the happy ending that you are ok with. But I don't think it is real life when someone else makes all the decisions that really matter.
I'm fairly new here and a recent convert to Atheist. Before becoming an Atheist, I struggled with the doctrine of ET. I discovered that ET was not biblical, yet, I'm shocked at how many pastors and Christians believe this doctrine to be biblical and even worse, reasonable. I cringe when I here Christians say that another human should burn in hell for eternity. I found the bible to clearly support annihilation.
My question is: Do you believe in ET and do you consider it just punishment? If so, have you really considered what that means?
maa, let me give you the TRUE skinny on the doctrine of eternal torment and how it wormed its way into Christianity. Don't listen to any fundamentalists telling you otherwise because they have been "programmed".
Originally, eternal torment didn't exist in the OT and in the early years of the Christian religion. The people who started the belief originally were the Zoroastrians and from there it migrated to the Greeks. One famous Greek philosopher states very clearly that the threat of eternal torment in fiery hell is a powerful tool to keep the masses under subjugation to the authorities. By the time Tertullian and Augustine came on the scene roughly 400 AD the church needed an effective tool to give pagans a "push" to convert. They saw how well the threat of eternal torment worked for the Greeks so they adopted it into their theology by way of Tertullian and especially Augustine's writings. By the time the Medieval period rolled around around the doctrine was so entrenched in Roman Catholicism that the Protestants kept it after rejecting nearly everything else RC. Hence nuts like Jonathan Edwards continued to preach hellfire and brimstone because nothing scares a crowd of parishioners like a good threat of burning forever if you don't accept Jesus.
There's nothing Biblical about eternal torment. Jesus' warnings have been deliberately completely misinterpreted by church leaders to mean eternal torment. All this is fully documented and available on the Internet if you just google "How doctrine of eternal torment originated" . The King James has been so jimmied to include the word hell (from Scandinavian word "hel" meaning helmet) that it became obvious it was a deliberate effort by the King's translators under orders from James himself to include as much hell as possible to frighten people into not even thinking of rebelling against James or any subsequent royalty under pain of eternal torment. This done by way of Paul's "Submit yourselves to rule of leaders" in Hebrew's 13:17.
That argument has been debated on this forum many times. You do realize that there are theologians who know the Greek language and believe that the Bible teaches eternal torment. Depending on the context, the word aionios and its cognates can refer to a limited amount of time, or to an endless period (eternal).
It's not a matter of my rationale or of how I feel about it. It's a matter of revelation, of what the Bible says.
So what you are saying is that the fact that something was written in an ancient foreign language is proof that it is true.
If the Bible supports annihilation then why are the beast and the false prophet shown to be alive and in torment even after having been in the lake of fire for a thousand years, and then have it said of them that they will be tormented day and night forever and ever? Compare Revelation 19:20 with Revelation 20:1-10. That doesn't exactly qualify as annihilation. Both the beast and the false prophet will be sent into the lake of fire when Jesus returns at the end of the Tribulation. They will still be there, and in torment, when they are joined by Satan at the end of the Millennial kingdom a thousand years later at which time those members of the human race who appear at the great white throne judgment will also join them.
But you are now an atheist and don't believe any of this anyway, so . . .
Why am I laughing? Well, partly from reading this guff, but the main reason is because I had my cursor on "been" in the second sentence which was blocking the 'n' and it looked like an 'r' so I was reading "alive and in torment even after having beers in the lake of fire for a thousand years" and I thought to myself "Well, if we can drink cold beer in the lake of fire for a thousand years it can't be that bad, can it?
Power is not control when it serves you. I really cannot understand your problem with love being a force or power, a force or power that is on your side and always willing to work on your behalf.
There is no God playing at love and freedom,we become and live out of those things as we become consciously aware of them.The things you see in the world that you say cannot be explained is the creation of man's imagination, for there is nothing created that is not first imagined.
Excellent distinction.
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