If you take an atheist. Convinced at this core that God doesn’t exist. During his life, he doesn’t feel like doing anything wrong. If he dies, are you saying he actually changes his mind and wish he would be with God ? And that this regret is actually Hell ?
Please note: I am not placing myself as a Catholic interlocutor. I am placing myself in the shoes of a thinker. I am not talking Catholic theology or apologetics, just reasoning.
An atheist is not an agnostic. An atheist is a member of a religion that has faith in the nonexistence of God - something unsound and unreasonable, since the only thing we can affirm from the standpoint of intellectual knowledge is that we do not know whether or not there is a God. An argument according to which this premise leads to the conclusion that there is no God (because there is no evidence) is a fallacy known as
argumentum ad ignorantiam. Absence of evidence is a condition in which no valid conclusion can be inferred, period. In short, the very fact that he calls himself atheist and is convinced that God doesn’t exist is already wrong - that is, it is an offense against intellectual honesty. But ok, that’s his faith, so let’s move forward with your argument.
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He doesn’t fell like doing anything wrong”. Ok, fair enough. It is still wishful thinking - for anyone who stops and thinks for a second can acknowledge that we do wrong even when we are not doing anything - by omission, that is. However, from the standpoint of justice (divine justice, that is) this person seems to lack what we describe as full knowledge. That is, person did X, but is not sure or does not feel like X was wrong. We could also say this person lacks deliberate consent to doing wrong - a direct consequence of ignoring that X was wrong.
Let’s assume he’s an average human being living an average life, who thinks he’s done pretty well.
You ask:
If he dies, are you saying he actually changes his mind and wish he would be with God ? And that this regret is actually Hell ?
In a sense, that’s partially correct. Partially. For instance, let’s assume you are right, and this person was so virtuous that he actually did not commit major wrongdoings, and he actually did what was very good in his life, unselfishly. Then my argument is quite simple: this person always believed in goodness, in justice, in charity, in love, in forgiveness. This person believed in God. Still I’m not in the shoes of the Catholic apologetic! I am just referring, f.ex. to the already mentioned quote by Thomas Aquinas, in which he shows in a sound argument that what we call God is indeed the fullness and ultimate goodness, justice, charity, etc.
From the standpoint of Catholic theology, this teaching would be found allegorically when Christ talks to the woman by the well and tells her: “you worship what you don’t know”, or when Isaiah says: “you have eyes to see, but you do not see”. Or further when Christ tells the teachers of the law: “if you were blind, then you would not be guilty; but since you claim that you see, then your guilt remains.”
So what I am trying to get to is that ultimately what we call God is the cause of all things that are, and therefore when we tend to those things, we ultimately tend to God. Even when we seek happiness, comfort, satisfaction, pleasure, we are ultimately seeking God, though perhaps in the wrong way.
So the regret you mention is not the state of hell.
The state of hell is this: a person does something unspeakably evil with full knowledge and deliberate consent. Ex. he sells drugs to kids. He knows what he is doing, and he does it. Something always bothers him for the rest of his life, though he tries to forget or quench the sorrow by different means. However, as soon as he enters the afterlife (which, mind you, is eternal, which does not mean infinitely long but outside of time) he realizes in an instant the depth of the evil he has committed
as if he had been a good person, that is, he feels the same sorrow that his victims felt, that their parents felt, that their friends felt. In the same instant, he sees what we cannot see here, namely God. He realizes that (a) God exists and (b) he is infinitely good, and he realizes just what it means to hurt someone who is infinitely kind and good. And since he lived and died without ever repenting of what he had done, that is, convinced that his doings were right, he is
unable to repent (that would take time to reason things out and understand and experience contrition and try to do reparation) then he experiences (a) something that hurts (b) the desire to escape from the cause of that something which is not possible, for that something is omnipresent, and it is the infinite goodness that is God and (c) he hates that something, that is, he hates God.
That is Hell.
But anyone who does not do evil with full knowledge and deliberate consent, and anyone who learns that an action is wrong and repents, and wishes he’d never done it, and wishes to never do it again, and tries to repair to the harm done, and tries to do the opposite, that is, what is right, then by the same standard of justice this person is moving towards that ultimate goodness rather than away from it.
At the same time, this person may still be unable to bear the infinite goodness. However, he won’t reject it or hate it. Simply be unable to bear it, requiring a “purification”. But his whole self has the will to approach that infinite goodness. It’s like an athlete who trained to run 400 meters and realizes, having lost all strength and breath, that the finish line is at 500 meters. Perhaps he can’t quite keep going, but heck his whole self wants to get there. It’s like a student who studied really heard and found that the test included an extra chapter. Perhaps he cannot answer those questions, but hey his whole self wishes he could!
So I did because who wants to live in a lake of fire?
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