Why should a man have to suffer painfully so we can go to he

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Why should a man have to suffer painfully so we can go to heaven? That just does not make sense. It's ridiculous. Why do so many people believe this crap? It's stupid. I sure wouldn't want someone to have to suffer badly being hanged on a cross so I can go to heaven.

I don't believe it myself, but I think maybe I can give you an approximation of the "official" answer.

The "official" answer is that God isn't actually "omnipotent" in a naive sense. He can do everything which is logically possible, but he cannot do things which are logically impossible. Also, to a Christian, there are "moral laws" built into the fabric of the universe, just as unbreakable as the laws of logic. One of these "moral laws" says something like: "To atone for an infinite crime, you must pay an infinite price."

Man's rebellion against God is an infinite crime because the "victim" of the crime is an infinite being.

So, God needed us to pay an infinite price to fix the situation. However, we are finite beings, and so we cannot pay an infinite price. So God decided to pay the price for us. In order to pay an infinite price, the plan had to involve the destruction of something infinite. So, since God is an infinite being, he came up with the idea of destroying himself.

Basically, God was using cosmic lawyering skills in order to get us off the hook.

And to think that finite beings could offend an infinite being with their finite deeds.

Well, that's how infinity works, I guess.

Think of it like this: written into the fabric of the universe, there is an equation something like this:



Infinity multiplied by a positive finite number is infinity. So, if the victim is infinitely important, then it doesn't matter if the thing done was actually not all that bad. It's still an infinitely terrible crime.

And infinite crimes have eternal consequences and implications.

Best Regards,

Jake

Something is terribly wrong when you have to apply mathematics to make any sense out of moral and legal standards.

Who would put any person you care about in an infinite hell of fire because he/she stole a piece of candy from a store some years ago as a little kid and did not put his/her faith in Jesus for salvation due to lack of evidence?

Well, that's the thing. In the official theology, God doesn't want non-believers to go to Hell - it's out of his control, and he has done all he can by allowing some people to not go there.

All people "deserve" Hell because of their infinite crime, but only Christians have been "paid for". God is surprisingly impotent in the official Christian theology. He's a "jobsworth", basically. Apparently he is even quite restricted in his ability to provide additional proof that Jesus was divine, since it would break some rule about free will or something.

Hell isn't officially anything to do with fire anymore, though. It's an "infinite separation from God".

That's just a very modern rendition of hell. Hell is traditionally eternal fire and worms and all. But even if there is no fire, it is believed by many Christians that eternal separation from God is much worse than being burned by the fire. And suffering is still intense. And for eternity.

This would still be sadistic of a supposedly loving God to do.

There are infinite possible worlds God could've created in which he didn't have to send anyone to hell. And yet this is the world Christians believe we get. Which is really horrible for a God to bring into existence.

I don't know, it just isn't consistent with modern mankind's moral standards generally. In the past, yes. But not today.

Actually, no there aren't (from the Christian perspective). The key is the word "possible". Remember, God can't do just anything, he can only do anything which is possible. According to Christian theology, the moral law is necessary, which means that it holds in every possible world. And it is the moral law which demands hell for people who perform an infinitely terrible crime. So God didn't have a choice. We did. Or rather, Adam and Eve did.

If it seems silly to you that there is a moral law written into the fabric of reality, you can at least get a glimpse of what it might be like if you replace "moral" with "logical" or "mathematical". For example, if you were God, would you be able to create a world in which green things are not green, or a world in which 2+2=5? No, you wouldn't.

Obviously, Christians are going to argue that this is the only possible world. But that's only because they have to.

Logically speaking, however, that doesn't have to be the case. God could've easily created a world in which no man would be triggered to rebel against God in any way (just like the other animals and objects) and so not send anyone to hell.

He can love them, and they can love him, without the need for anything like hell.

Of course, this is from a logical point of view.

From Christian perspective, since Christians see that it's a horrible world we live in (with earhtquakes and tsunamis and serial killers and rapists and child molesters and greed and suffering, etc.), the best that they can do is to argue this is the only possible world because God wants us to have "free will" out of love and respect, and with our "free will", this is the best that God can make.

But of course, "free will" itself makes no sense. So this makes the Christian position even more ridiculous.

As for whether God can make 2 + 2 = 5 and such, maybe ... in a different universe with different laws and all.

Free will makes rationality possible. If there is no free will, then no one is capable of choosing to believe something because of good reasons.

Best Regards,

Jake

Actually, they say that there are infinitely many possible worlds, but all of them have the same moral laws (as well as the same laws of logic, the same laws of mathematics, etc.) They only differ in less important things, like laws of physics, the list of things which exist, and the properties of the things which exist.



Nah, I agree with Christian theology on this one (and so do almost all philosophers, whether Christian or not). There are definitely such things as necessary truths (things which are true in every possible world), and "2 + 2 = 4" (however you interpret it) is definitely one of them. It's not true by accident, it's true by definition.

Last edited by Declension on 22 Dec 2012, 1:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

As far as I can see, "Free Choice" is an illusion. There's always something that led to you "choosing" something.

That's what they say.



How do you know? It depends on the laws at hand.

Yep, not saying anything more than that. But you said that they say something else, so I was correcting you. I personally don't have a strong opinion about moral laws.



Because possible worlds are accessible to the imagination. My imagination can access a world in which the physical laws are completely different (e.g. gravity repels). It can access a world in which there are no physical objects at all. But it cannot access a world in which "2 + 2 = 5".

Is this deal retroactive all the way back to Adam and Eve?

Were they cast into Hell and then offered Grace by the sacrifice of Jesus?

If so are we basically off the hook for this original sin crap?