An interesting interpretation of Hell

[GUNWOUNDS]

And what is the spiritual difference between us two right now that affects us on Earth? Or does the awakening of the spirit only have its effect in the afterlife?

Your allusion to what the spirit is, describes to me just that of created hope. The more you "communicate" or pray to God, the more you become hopeful of his existence and relationship with you.

The awakening of the spirit can affect you on earth .... if it allows you to communicate with God and receive His will then you could do all the things that you complain never gets done such as missionary work, etc, etc.

[Faetarius]

So in your opinion 65% or so of the world's population is being stupid by not being christian or atheist? Wow, I didn't think there was a way to slight that many people at one go...

And before you come back with a comment on how I'm simply denying the facts or similar, may a point out that yes there are religions that believe in a god sans the personal side of him. However these religions also allow that god to exercise mercy. He may be a FULLY GOOD god, but surely mercy to his creations is love, not a breakdown of the principle of his very existance.

Also, the Buddha did say thata there was a higher power. However, he did not ever say that there was a "divine being" that we should all revere and worship. That is a crucial distinction to make. Just because you believe that there is an intangible substance which bninds the world, doesn't automatically mean that there must be a god.

[Caid Ivik]

Gunwounds is always extreme in his opinions  ;)

Buddha was a brahman, so he had many gods to worship. To be exact, mahayana buddhism, which we can consider as "mainstream", works also with terms of infinite God, altough without inherent goodness or love; these are only its emanations, presented ie also in form of avatars and bodhisattvas. But the main thing which Buddha teached was not to worship this God, very similar to the judeochristian concept, but to find its pattern in your soul. I would say, it is a worship of holy spirit - invocation of the "divine spark" (to use a cabalist term) residing within us.

[GUNWOUNDS]

So in your opinion 65% or so of the world's population is being stupid by not being christian or atheist? Wow, I didn't think there was a way to slight that many people at one go...

And before you come back with a comment on how I'm simply denying the facts or similar, may a point out that yes there are religions that believe in a god sans the personal side of him. However these religions also allow that god to exercise mercy. He may be a FULLY GOOD god, but surely mercy to his creations is love, not a breakdown of the principle of his very existance.

Also, the Buddha did say thata there was a higher power. However, he did not ever say that there was a "divine being" that we should all revere and worship. That is a crucial distinction to make. Just because you believe that there is an intangible substance which bninds the world, doesn't automatically mean that there must be a god.

Showing mercy to his creation arbitrarily would violate his ABSOLUTE GOODNESS and therefore he wouldnt be Absolutely Good.

[Caid Ivik]

God is primarily absolute, not good, Gunwounds. Goodness is an effect of absolution, not vice-versa. In that case, human individualization wouldn't occur, and thus that wasn't a christian formulation.

[Spectral Paladin]

2 things:

Let's see it this way: you present undeniable proof that either christianity is true or we 're all screwed (whether there is an impersonal God or no). Just because we 'd be screwed though, Jesus doesn't magically become the Son of God.

Secondly, the God in many religions is not presented as ABSOLUTE GOOD. In fact, many religions have gods with human characteristics. In other cases, God is merely the creator of the wolrd, sometimes with the power to interact with it. He doesn't have to be absolutely good or evil. He doesn't have to love, but can show mercy and forgive without violating his very nature.

[GUNWOUNDS]

[Spectral Paladin]

Fine, let's put aside the gods with human traits etc. That isn't all I said though. I said that in other cases God is not good (but absolute), like the creator of the universe who has the power to interact with it, forgive people without violating his good nature (because he doesn't have one).

Also, as far as I know satanists are basically atheists and they use the name of Satan as a reaction to christianity. Of course lots of people who call themselves satanists wouldn't know this (just as many christians don't know as much as you do).

[GUNWOUNDS]

God is primarily absolute, not good, Gunwounds. Goodness is an effect of absolution, not vice-versa. In that case, human individualization wouldn't occur, and thus that wasn't a christian formulation.

I never said God was "primarily" anything.

[Faetarius]

Gunwounds: All your arguements are, at least in theory, technically sound. You can argue until the cows come home about whether god exists, if he has a personal side, and whether he actually cares about his creations of not. However I feel that you're missing the basic principle of religion, which I might add is man-made. The reason for it to exist is to bring comfort and purpose to people, and also to provide a guide when people are in trouble. Taking christianity to your extreme, and saying that christianity is the only "true" religion is foolish. Not only are you alienating yourself from most of the world (who believe in a compassionate god), you are removing part of the purpose itself.

And a thing you might like to consider. The people who first thought of religion did not try to stretch it beyond its practical limits. They accepted the image of an omnipotent yet merciful being, and didn't sit down to think about whether it is a logical possibility. You really need to think about the way you see the world; cold logic in place of humanity is not reasonable.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Fine, let's put aside the gods with human traits etc. That isn't all I said though. I said that in other cases God is not good (but absolute), like the creator of the universe who has the power to interact with it, forgive people without violating his good nature (because he doesn't have one).

Also, as far as I know satanists are basically atheists and they use the name of Satan as a reaction to christianity. Of course lots of people who call themselves satanists wouldn't know this (just as many christians don't know as much as you do).

Ok lets see... a creator of the universe who has lots of power and he can interact and he forgives people without violating his good nature because he doesnt have one... let me think about that....

Ok well the flaws i see here are that you are saying that he is forgiving people .....yet he doesnt have a good nature.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Gunwounds: All your arguements are, at least in theory, technically sound. You can argue until the cows come home about whether god exists, if he has an impersonal side, and whether he actually cares about his creations of not. However I feel that you're missing the basic principle of religion, which I might add is man-made. The reason for it to exist is to bring comfort and purpose to people, and also to provide a guide when people are in trouble. Taking christianity to your extreme, and saying that christianity is the only "true" religion is foolish. Not only are you alienating yourself from most of the world (who believe in a compassionate god), you are removing part of the purpose itself.

And a thing you might like to consider. The people who first thought of religion did not try to stretch it beyond its practical limits. They accepted the image of an omnipotent yet merciful being, and didn't sit down to think about whether it is a logical possibility. You really need to think about the way you see the world; cold logic in place of humanity is not reasonable.

[Caid Ivik]

I never said God was "primarily" anything.  I said he was ABSOLUTE GOOD. To sit there and play with semantics is pointless.  And it has nothing to do with human individualism... because we humans are neither truly Good (holy) nor Absolute.  So whether God was primarily Good or primarily absolute doesnt matter as neither one of those qualities is one that would effect our individualism.  And its really unnecessary to to say that he is primarily one or the other because they really mesh together as one.  I really should only have to say he is "Good" or he is "Absolute" and you should understand what i am saying. I shouldnt have to say both terms together but i do so because people can read it and understand it better.

This is not a game, I found your attempt to somehow define an undefinable God as a too courageous. An "absolute" is useful adjective here, as it has no negation (well...ontologically) and no quantitative definition (as it is infinite), but good? Goodness occur only with acts, or on God's scale, as a perfect existence. But evil also occurs, so you would have to accept a second, evil God. If "absolute" and "good" were equal terms, then individuality and freedom - as a base of moral difference - would be an effect of this evil God, as all creation (of the time-bound world), exactly how like manichees teached. Disrupting perfection into imperfection. Ability to perform evil is inherent to us, if we would categorize, it is same as ability to be good; so either you are a dualist or you ignore logic, enforcing this ignorance on the others as well. And yet a hypocrite if we compare this with your last post...

[GUNWOUNDS]

This is not a game, I found your attempt to somehow define an undefinable God as a too courageous. An "absolute" is useful adjective here, as it has no negation (well...ontologically) and no quantitative definition (as it is infinite), but good? Goodness occur only with acts, or on God's scale, as a perfect existence. But evil also occurs, so you would have to accept a second, evil God. If "absolute" and "good" were equal terms, then individuality and freedom - as a base of moral difference - would be an effect of this evil God, as all creation (of the time-bound world), exactly how like manichees teached. Disrupting perfection into imperfection. Ability to perform evil is inherent to us, if we would categorize, it is same as ability to be good; so either you are a dualist or you ignore logic, enforcing this ignorance on the others as well. And yet a hypocrite if we compare this with your last post...

Caid you like to play games with words and ideas... but the fact remains that an EVIL GOD cannot exist as evil things cannot exist without dependance upon good things to corrupt.... therefore if you had an EVIL GOD you would have a GOD that was DEPENDANT on a GOOD GOD.. and that is a OXYMORON... a PARADOX.  Its very simple to understand.  Maybe an example you can understand is rape and sex.  Chronologically.... sex had to come before rape.... ingestion had to come before gluttony....  Good things come before the evil... as evil has to steal things that are good and pervert them.  God existed before Satan.... God states many times in the bible that nothing existed before him and that everything owes its existence to him.  He is the Alpha and the Omega.  Therefore since Good items precede Evil items  you can say Good is an attribute of being absolute and therefore you can say God is Good.  You may think my explanations are courageous but that doesnt stop them from being logical and true.

[Acriku]

Caid you like to play games with words and ideas... but the fact remains that an EVIL GOD cannot exist as evil things cannot exist without dependance upon good things to corrupt.... therefore if you had an EVIL GOD you would have a GOD that was DEPENDANT on a GOOD GOD.. and that is a OXYMORON... a PARADOX.  Its very simple to understand.  Maybe an example you can understand is rape and sex.  Chronologically.... sex had to come before rape.... ingestion had to come before gluttony....  Good things come before the evil... as evil has to steal things that are good and pervert them.  God existed before Satan.... God states many times in the bible that nothing existed before him and that everything owes its existence to him.  He is the Alpha and the Omega.  Therefore since Good items precede Evil items  you can say Good is an attribute of being absolute and therefore you can say God is Good.  You may think my explanations are courageous but that doesnt stop them from being logical and true.

Your conclusions are flawed. What you require of EVIL can be said the same for GOOD. GOOD cannot exist without EVIL. Sex and ingestion aren't inherently good, so your analogies are very flawed. Nothing is inherently good. Things are good when we have something to compare them to - EVIL. Good does not precede evil. Not to say that they exist, but for us to consider if something is good, we must have an evil to compare it to. I still don't see how being absolute equates to being good.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Your conclusions are flawed. What you require of EVIL can be said the same for GOOD. GOOD cannot exist without EVIL. Sex and ingestion aren't inherently good, so your analogies are very flawed. Nothing is inherently good. Things are good when we have something to compare them to - EVIL. Good does not precede evil. Not to say that they exist, but for us to consider if something is good, we must have an evil to compare it to. I still don't see how being absolute equates to being good.

You are splitting hairs and being purposely dense in order to resist logic.

[Acriku]

From what you're saying, good is nothing of a comparative term. Is this correct?

[Faetarius]

This arguement really can't be concluded. All our views/opinions and resultant conclusions are personal. Gunwounds has one view, I have another, and every other person has their own. None of them can be said to be "the right answer". It just depends what you believe, and producing logical arguements only works if the other person's views see the data in the same way as the one producing it.

[GUNWOUNDS]

The thing that CANT be concluded is whether or not he exists.

[nemafakei]

"As far as concluding whether or not god exists.... i agree that is a personal issue.... that is a matter that boils down to Pascal's Wager.  (people try to make it a complicated issue but all those types of arguments have the wager at their core)"

That's not a question of whether or not a god exists, that's a question of whether or not you should worship. What's more, given that your conclusion is that any real God must be moral is valid, Pascal's wager won't work.

[Mahdi]

I forget, is Pascal's wager the "I don't know if God exists or not, but if he does and I don't worship him I'll be sent to hell and if he doesn't and I do worship him nothing's gonna happen anyway so I'm gonna worship him whether I beleive in him or not, just in case" thing?

'Cause that always seemed awfully cheap to me.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Nema i think Pascal's wager does have to do with whether or not someone believes God exists.... because obviously someone isnt gonna worship God if they dont believe he exists.

[Acriku]

Nema i think Pascal's wager does have to do with whether or not someone believes God exists.... because obviously someone isnt gonna worship God if they dont believe he exists.  So if someone chooses to worship God then they are obviously gonna take the assumption that he exists.  I never met a person who said they worshipped a God they didnt believe existed.

A simplfied version of Pascal's Wager is:

"It is better to worship God and die and discover that there was none .....than to NOT worship God and die and discover there was one."

It may be cheap Mahdi ....but its sweet and to the point...  in the back of everyone's mind that simple wager exists.  And at the core of every "Does God exist?" argument that is the final word.

I am not saying that is why i believe in God (cuz i agree mahdi thats cheap).... i believe in God because i honestly do want there to be an afterlife where i can serve God and perhaps discover what this whole universe was made for.. what were his plans ?, etc, etc.  All i am saying is that if you really want to boil down the argument to cold lifeless logic.... Pascal's Wager is what you would end up with and its where most people start.

And it's completely fallacious. Should I spend an entire post describing what's wrong with it? Maybe I'll just boil it down to this: It is better to worship my God because by definition my God has a worse punishment than your God. It is clear that my God will throw you into a deep, dark pit and have your worst fears realized over and over again for eternity, while being burned to death over and over. Your god is vague on what Hell is and what he does to those who sin. Perhaps you may burn. Perhaps not. But my god is clear in his punishment. Therefore, it is in your best interest to worship my God, named Vilion, just in case he exists.

That turned out to be longer, but oh well. Point is given.

[GUNWOUNDS]

[Acriku]

    That really doesnt make any sense at all Acriku.  This is about whether God exists..... not "which God exists".  And its not a contest about who can "punish" you more.  Thats pretty irrelevant.

You are supposed to use Pascal's Wager to understand that it is more logical to worship God whether he exists or not.... as far as YOUR dilemna as to which God to choose... well thats your own personal problem.  Even if you pick the wrong God its still better to atleast pick one.  And thats what the whole point is. 

The whole point of Pascal's Wager is that he'll punish you if you don't believe.