Debate: Can Mercy and Hell Coexist?

Comments · 146

• HA

  @hazok4351 · 1 month ago

  When someone asks, “What is justice in an atheist worldview if most people will never face retribution for what they’ve done?”, it really shows how much religion is about hope, about what you want or expect the universe to provide. From an atheist perspective, justice isn&apos;t a principle of reality or something we&apos;re guaranteed to receive. It&apos;s a concept, an ideal we&apos;ve developed about people being treated according to their actions, and we even see rudimentary forms of fairness and reciprocity in some other social animals.<br><br>Of course we&apos;d like everyone who does wrong to face appropriate consequences, but reality doesn&apos;t promise us that. Sometimes terrible people get away with terrible things. That&apos;s unfortunate, but what I believe about reality can&apos;t be determined by what I hope reality will be. It has to be determined by what we can observe and what survives logical and epistemological scrutiny.

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• HA

  @hailsagan8886 · 1 month ago

  Short answer,no. Long answer, nooooooooooo

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• WA

  @wagsman9999 · 1 month ago

  The recurring punishment of the innocent is one of the most glaring problems in Christian theology. &nbsp;No child deserves to be drowned. No child deserves to be eaten. No child deserves to be executed as part of a genocide. I don&apos;t care what the book says.

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• HA

  @hazok4351 · 1 month ago

  I think it’s great that you consistently make the internal critique, engaging with Christianity on its own terms. But I think the external critique is important too. For example, instead of only asking why God would set a price that he himself had to pay, it’s worth exposing Christians to another possibility: from an atheist perspective, the whole theology of sacrifice looks like a post hoc rationalization. A religious leader was executed, and his followers later developed a theological explanation for why his death had to happen. From outside the Christian worldview, that seems far more likely than the creator of everything deliberately establishing a system in which he has to sacrifice himself to himself in order to forgive people.<br><br>I know you basically said this already. I just think what’s missing is the explicit invitation to step outside the Christian framework for a moment and look at the same events from a different worldview. Christians almost never seem to do that exercise, and I think making that perspective explicit could be really valuable.

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• HA

  @hailsagan8886 · 1 month ago

  The girl in the hospital doesn&apos;t care if her beliefs are true. &nbsp;She seemed nice,though

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• EL

  @eldritchzora · 1 month ago

  The black and white “good people and bad people” ideology always unnerves me. It’s the purest form of indoctrination, I think, to be able to write off entire groups of people as “evil.” To the point where imagining an “evil” person not being 100% totally evil all the time and thinking 100% evil thoughts seems ridiculous to Christians.

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• AL

  @Alaskan_Arlo · 1 month ago

  How has the woman in the hospital never asked herself those questions regarding Hell?

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• DA

  @danielpaulson8838 · 1 month ago (edited)

  Heaven and hell are metaphorical constructs, but all mean our current life and its capacity to be aware and have inner peace. That&apos;s heaven. If living with inner turmoil, then you are living unaware and in hell. People who wait till they die to figure it out will simply RIP like everyone else. Heaven and hell is on earth now. Not after we die.The problem is, people who tend to believe it is after life, are great at making this real life into hell on earth for innocent others.

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• PE

  @peaceofminds3 · 1 month ago (edited)

  Sin nature flows out off being &apos;alive&apos; or conscious, awake and aware and , having a free wil or &quot;having the gift off deciding for yourself&quot;. You are ,you see ,you hear ,you feel and experience. &nbsp;<br>When one see a toy but don&apos;t have money to buy it you have a choice to make ... Either you walk away and stop thinking about it tormenting yourself about not getting it , or you can make a plan and you &apos;steal&apos; it , or you start planning how to get that amount it costs ,save and then go and buy it . Some chose to steal it , others don&apos;t. &nbsp;<br>If while walking to a place where you see a long line off people standing in a cue you see a old lady who want to cross the street and is struggling, &nbsp;you have a choice to help her and risk the possibility that that long cue may become longer . So you can be selfish and only think off you and your time &nbsp;, or you can decide to forget about yourself and help another individual, even if that person might not even thank you . That would make one selfish and ,as God isn&apos;t selfish for He shared &quot;Life&quot; with you , it would make you not off His nature . Which means not part off or like Him . Outside off Him . <br>As one can go on and on with small little examples, &nbsp;the idee here when people talk about sin nature is the propensity to think only about yourself and disregard other human beings , but that comes with a &quot;choice&quot; that one makes .... <br>That is what makes one not like God but off rebellion against the nature off God . Outside off God .... Not like or as Him . That is what puts you outside off Him . Jesus came and took all the &quot;unlike&quot; God things you and i did as if He had committed it so you can stand clean before God and , now you are able to enter into heaven . <br>It doesn&apos;t matter if you smile friendly to my mom , nor open the door for her infront off me , if you carry drugs on you or you are &nbsp;a known house burglar i wil not allow you into my home , because off what you are in your heart and mind or because off what you are carrying on your person .<br>The same so in God&apos;s kingdom , heaven . Not anyone can or wil enter heaven even if God wants it , because you wil bring all the evil and wickedness you carry or &apos;are&apos; in your heart and mind instead His place where His children wil be with Him &nbsp;no matter how much He Loves you . &nbsp;I mean , how can you expect His children to ever trust Him in eternity if He would just change His mind suddenly and let anyone and anything enter heaven , just because someone who wants nothing to do with Him, even blaspheming Him continually thinks in their mind He should ..... <br>Really ? If He now suddenly adhere to one&apos;s such as that and give heed to their false cries for mercy after they heard what Jesus did for them ... <br>If you steal or murder people , don&apos;t cry and plead innocent and unfair when you end up in the place made for hearts and minds such as those there in that prison......

• ZE

  @zenncatt · 1 month ago

  Mercy is an option that you can bestow or withhold when staunch theists realize they were wrong about everything they believed in.

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• IS

  @istvansipos9940 · 1 month ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BOxvWAPWss&amp;t=1497">24:57</a> &quot;It is messed up.&quot; AND also &quot;I love jesus.&quot;<br><br>That&apos;s what indoctrination does to the human brain.

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• BR

  @brbrofsvl · 1 month ago

  Exvangelical here. I had a brief stop in orthodoxy and had similar universalist beliefs as the first caller. A couple of sources for those interpretation: <br>Alexander Kalomiros: River of Fire<br><br>There&apos;s a book by David Bentley Hart, the title of which escapes me, which has a similar take. There&apos;s an idea that eventually even those who experience the presence of God as suffering will eventually have their hearts softened, but it&apos;s a little like healing in rehab.<br><br>Eventually I was unable to hold onto those beliefs

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