Is eternal suffering pointless?

[Aloysium]

Human beings show more love, forgiveness, justice and mercy than a divine being. . . . you glaringly show that there is obviously something very wrong with the attributes given to God and His overseeing a system of punishment that is way beyond barbaric and unjust. You are saying “in so many words” that God’s attributes of love, forgiveness, justice and mercy are **“clearly” **much greater than those of a human being. Therefore, why is there a massive negative disconnect between God’s love, forgiveness, justice and mercy and those of a human?
By the way, I do have an understanding of hell and human nature.

Sin cannot enter into heaven.
What is evil in us fears God.

God is all merciful, loving and just.
The Father sent His Son to us;
and He in total filial obedience died and was resurrected that we might all live.

We have the capacity to throw sin, and the hell that lies at its core, all away.
Some do not wish to let go.

Hell imho is nothing we do not give up on the road to paradise.

I would say that the understanding as expressed in your posts is not in keeping with the techings of the church.
Where it deviates, it falls short of describing and explaining the truth.
Frankly, you sound like the atheists who typically post here, criticizing what you misunderstand.

 

[Michael19682]

Hi Michael!

Yes, I agree. There are certainly interpersonal side effects. Eva Kor was comparing and contrasting forgiveness with pharmacological means of dealing with psychological problems. “No negative physiological side effects” would have been more specific.

It is our doctrine, though, that hell is chosen by the individual. Why would anyone make such a choice, unless it were due to lack of awareness or blindness? And then, would Abba not make every effort in His power not to shed light on the options, on what it means to stay, and what it means to go?

When Jesus says “depart from me” He is confirming the way that our conscience works. When we misbehave, we self-condemn, we feel guilty, we are alienated from our own love of the holy. By observation, such alienation was already present before the misbehavior, because choice to misbehave indicates a lack of awareness, a disconnection from the whole. In addition, Jesus was a bit picky about who he wanted following Him sometimes. There were people who claimed to be righteous, for example, but turned up their noses at the lowly and “least”. Jesus’ call for departure is a call for repentance from this exclusive attitude.

The mothers you describe are lacking in awareness. They do not know what they are doing.

God Bless

Thank you OneSheep and hi to you also!

I agree with your responses. My only concern is that how do we know that some babies are not destined to be amongst those whom reject Christ? Perhaps these are the ones who die before baptism? Such an argument appears fatalistic and unsupported by any evidence, but we should know how to refute that stance.

 

[OneSheep]

Thank you OneSheep and hi to you also!

I agree with your responses. My only concern is that how do we know that some babies are not destined to be amongst those whom reject Christ? Perhaps these are the ones who die before baptism? Such an argument appears fatalistic and unsupported by any evidence, but we should know how to refute that stance.

Well, here is how I refute it, I refute it with anthropology. Humans, in my observations, never reject Christ. There are exceptions, of course, many. However, of those exceptions, all of them have the essential factor of ignorance or blindness. As the crowd crucifying Jesus blantantly rejected Him, He looked upon them with knowing eyes and forgave, “for they know not what they do”.

So we have evidence that God forgives on the basis of ignorance, among other things, and that humans don’t know what they are doing when they do evil. These observations, in my experience can be transferred to all human choices against God. I have yet to find a counterexample. So here is the anthropology: people are well intended, have God-given desires, have a God-given capacity for blindness, and are for some mysterious reason born ignorant. The human is beautiful, and always chooses God when she is fully aware of the choice at hand.

How do you refute the stance?

 

[arte]

It is clear from your answers you are not a Catholic.

Well, I was a Catholic last Sunday when I went to mass and I’ll also be a Catholic tomorrow when I meet a Catholic friend to do scripture reading and prayers.

You have totally ignored the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled by suffering and dying for us to redeem us from our sins.

Animal and human sacrifices are paganism. Throughout the Old Testament, God wants animal sacrifices to remove sins. He even gave the Israelites dozens of commandments telling them in great detail what animals he wanted them to kill for him and how he wanted them killed and burned for “a sweet savour unto the Lord.” In the end animal sacrifices weren’t enough to remove our sins so God needed a human sacrifice. This is vile paganism. Jesus died because He was a problem to the Jews and the Romans. He would still be a problem today if He was to return as a man. Jesus came to preach a message of love, peace, mercy and forgiveness to all mankind. I have hopes that at some stage in the future mankind will realise this message of Jesus. In the Gospels, Pontius Pilate looks like a Christian. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was a Roman governor and wouldn’t have “batted an eye” in passing the sentence of crucifixion on Jesus. The massive amount of antisemitism in the World throughout history is down to us (mainly Christians including Catholics) blaming the Jews for killing Jesus.

You reject the allegorical account of Creation and original sin in Genesis, do not regard the Jews as the Chosen People from whom the Messiah was to come and you ignore the uniqueness of their monotheism.

Symbolic or real, I reject the account of creation in Genesis and with it; original sin. It is a myth. I recognise that Judaism was the first monotheistic religion having started about 3,500 years ago. Personally, I believe all humans are God’s children and therefore we are equal and not specifically chosen. Does it really matter where Jesus came from? If it does really matter that He had to come from a certain tribe in Judah then I’ll accept it but for me it doesn’t matter.

Your faith is based on a private revelation instead of the teaching of the Church.

**I was wrong and I take back what I said previously. ** The personal revelation happened in 2004 after returning to the Catholic faith after an absence of over 30 years. My belief in Jesus as the Son of God is based in part on my personal revelation but mainly on a mixture of the New Testament scriptures, Church teaching, theological books and secular historical books.

You give the impression that Jesus was no more than “biblically literate 1st century Jewish male”

Your quote is incorrect. If you go back and read my post again you will see I wrote: **“The Gospel writers **portray Jesus as a biblically literate 1st century Jewish male who was steeped in the scripture and the culture – he was localized in a time and place”. It was the gospel writers and not Jesus. When you read the Gospels, you can see that this is true.

And attribute all His statements about Hell (of which there are many) to mistranslation or misinterpretation.

I make no secret of the fact that I am a Christian Universalist on the matter of hell. I believe there have been mistranslations of the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. Even if there are no mistranslations or misinterpretation of what Jesus said on hell, I still could not agree with hell. At that stage, I would cease to call myself a Christian and would likely join Judaism - if they would have me.

Your inability to explain why Jesus chose to suffer and die leads you to the hypothesis that He was simply a pacifist who was misguided in telling us to turn the other cheek. No wonder you reject original sin and the need for baptism - and claim eternal suffering is pointless…

In your mind and other people who believe that Jesus died for our sins to put us right with God, it means that God is acting like a pagan god.
“A fair number of modern-day scholars, too, find the satisfaction theology bothersome because of the way it images God. What kind of loving God, they argue, would demand such horrific suffering from his own Son in order to secure divine justice?
What seems to me a reasonable explanation is this: God decided to send Jesus to live among us, to be fully human so that he could teach us and show us the ways of the Lord. Once he became human, death was inevitable; and because his teaching challenged both the religious and secular authorities of his day, a violent death was likely”.
Father Kenneth Doyle

• See more at: catholiccourier.com/commentary/other-columnists/why-did-jesus-have-to-die-for-our-sins/#sthash.9V25rFVI.dpuf
  I have shown that there is no historical evidence whatsoever for original sin. **What point(s) does eternal suffering have? **

“**Human beings show more love, forgiveness, justice and mercy than a divine being” **sums up your rejection of Christianity perfectly.

No, it shows I’m using plain commonsense that God gifted all of us with. No country in the developed World uses torture as a normal practice of law. However, we are expected to believe that a divine being with incredible attributes far beyond what us humans can ever imagine of love, mercy, forgiveness and justice sanctions torture 24/7 for an eternity. There is obviously a massive disconnect there no matter how we cut and dice it.

By the way, I see that you have not commented on the quote I gave from Numbers concerning Moses.

 

[OneSheep]

Arte,

I am wondering if you might respond to this post:

Hi Arte,

There is an option. This need not be an either/or thing. Two visions of God and cosmos can rest side by side.

…

Maybe you missed it? Just follow the link, it is post 486, Thank you for the link to Fr. Kenneth Doyle, I think he is thinking more along the lines of the option you and I lean towards.

These issues need not be divisive, though. What good is it if someone “wins” the argument and the other feels like leaving the Church? What about communion? What about Eucharist? Can you include others with the opposite view into your own idea of “Church”?

A focus on Eucharist can be nothing but inclusive, it takes faith out of our heads and puts it squarely into our hearts.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

Yes. What makes more sense is that

1. hell’s existence is asserted as a threat,
   2.hell’s existence is offered as an ultimate choice of free will, or
2. hell is a boot camp.

The problem with #1 is that unless God is joshing, He has to carry it out. Then we get some bonafide pointlessness, unless #3 is true.

The problem with #2 is, well, it isn’t a problem. It’s like God was so concerned that the human not be a puppet (like all of the rest of the critters) that He created a place where a person really could choose against Him. If a person so choosing would be shutting God out, then such shutting out is its own punishment, like touching a lit match. The counterpoint is that people don’t knowingly and willingly reject God. If “freedom” includes knowing all the relevant information, then much of the time people not have free will.

The problem with #3 is that then it is not forever. Well, there is some debate about whether “eternal” means “forever”. Perhaps not, otherwise, it would have no point.

Right, unless hell is real and some people can go there, option 1 makes God into a liar. Not acceptable.

Option 2 is not distinct from my observation that some argue God essentially has created hell for the sake of allowing people to go there. That still means God desires suffering for its own sake, and would make God appear to be profoundly evil. Not acceptable.

Option 3 is the most reasonable, and similar to what I believe. Hardly anyone is “evil to the core” and deserves to be totally annihilated, in my opinion. But, what do I know? Not much. Anyway, I suppose most of us will go to hell when we die, where we will learn the various lessons we were supposed to learn but failed to pick up here on earth This hell will be temporary, and everything will get “sorted out” there. It is a painful place to the extent we find true learning painful. When we’re ready, we can then live in the World to Come, about which I know absolutely nothing other than it will be perfect and great, and God will reign in plain sight.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

I agree, PumpkinCookie. Consider this, though: all of us are born with the capacity to sin. All of us are born with the capacity for blindness and we are born lacking awareness.

Yes, this is obvious. I agree. We are born morally “blank.” This is innocence.

Well, perhaps some of the prophets missed it a little. Jesus is my savior, in that through Him I found unconditional love (God). “Whoever sees Him, sees the Father who sent Him.” (paraphrased) Now, if we Christians were to all turn and do as we are supposed to do, forgive everyone, feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, etc. as much as we should then that might be some decent salvation, right?

So, are we to succeed where Jesus has failed? Many moral teachers have suggested the same things, none of whom claimed to be God himself. Yes, if we were all to merely do what we’re obligated to do, the world would be a much better place. If we were all to reach beyond that and helps others, it would be heavenly.

People freely choose to be selfish? Such “freedom” is an illusion, right? We get a lot of pressure from our genes to self-serve. If the genes are “God’s fault”, then so be it. God is infinitely well-intended. He has/had our survival in mind. The kids need a savior because of the capacity I mentioned above.

I will agree that we have less moral freedom (or any kind of freedom) than the proponents of libertarian free will suppose. However, if we don’t have moral freedom at all, then morality itself is incoherent and not worth discussing. Children need no savior if they are innocent. Unless, they have been sentenced by an unjust judge. The only judge of a dying child is God himself, who is most assuredly not unjust!

No, we do not need sacraments or wishful thinking to avoid sin. We do need discipline and to follow our well formed consciences, right? But in the Church, we use the Sacrament of Baptism as a sign that the person has been given the ability to overcome the aspects of one’s nature that lead to sin. All sacraments are signs of what has already happened, what is happening at the moment, or what will happen in the future. There is a “magical”, miraculous aspect of this, but that may take us off topic.

I believe we are born with the natural ability to avoid sin. No need for magical sacraments. Doing the right thing is always within our power. To think otherwise is to deny the essence of morality itself.

If we “become” evil, then we are self-creating, right? We would be making some kind of change in ourselves that involves taking on new characteristics. However, we don’t actually create ourselves, right? It is more like people do things that are bad, and the label “bad” represents the negative feelings we have towards the evil-doer. The sinner is unchanged by their actions. What is changed is the way I see the person, I now see a negative where I did not before. The negativity is an illusion.

I believe we co-create ourselves and each other with God. Parents literally physically co-create their children with God. We co-create our bodies and souls by how we act, what we think, what we do, what we eat, etc. God allows us to become evil, and co-creates us in the sense that he supports our freedom and existence at every infinitesimally small moment of our lives, continuously. The sinner is changed by their actions. Ever see a meth-addict? Our souls and bodies decay and deteriorate due to sin. The change is real.

That said, do not take my words as standard Catholic orthodoxy. I agree with a lot of your statements. There is more than one Catholic way of looking at this issue. I can almost guarantee that I am going to get some push-back from others, though.

I can count on one hand the number of posters I’ve interacted with on CAF who both know what the magisterium teaches and accept it. Whenever I quote a council or teaching from a pre-Vatican 2 catechism it is received with shock and disbelief by many here. Why is that???

 

[PumpkinCookie]

PumpkinCookie;13315438:

To be precise, arte isn’t a **Roman **

Catholic. He has explained that his faith is based on a private revelation rather than the teaching of the Church. Most of us on this forum take it for granted that “Catholic” means being a member of the Church of Rome unless we specify otherwise, such as “Orthodox” or “AngloCatholic”. I think it’s important to make that clear so that we don’t make the mistake I’ve obviously made. I’m sorry if he feels I’m being antagonistic because I understand how the doctrine of Hell upsets a lot of people but there is such diabolical evil in the world it seems wrong to reject Christ’s teaching if we claim to be Christians. There seems no reason why everyone will ultimately regret the way they lived at the expense of others. Self-love is deep-rooted and our worst enemy. That is why Jesus condemned the Pharisees so harshly - in stark contrast to His teaching that we should love and forgive our enemies. No matter how much they are forgiven they can never be compelled to repent against their will. They stand to lose too much: total independence and control of their own kingdom. The lust for power is at the root of most of the unnecessary suffering in the world and there is no sign it is diminishing. A happy ending for everyone seems more like a fairy tale than an accurate description of reality if we are to go by what is happening on this planet…

I agree. There can be no such thing as a “forced repentance.” I agree that a happy ending for everyone, even those who absolutely hate everyone and God, is unlikely. That is why I believe God will annihilate some people, or just neglect to resurrect them.

Next, you say that this means God is “diabolical.” Then, I say “certainly less diabolical than one who supports endless torment.” Then, you say "the torment probably isn’t that bad, it entails “compensations.” Then, I say “no way, there is no evidence in any scripture or private revelation anywhere to support that assertion.” Then, you say “private revelations don’t matter, Jesus loved children, and sinners on earth seem to have fun, so why would the fun end in hell?” Then, I say “sinners aren’t actually having fun, they’re miserable. God can’t allow this to endure endlessly.” Then, you say… :hypno: :yawn:

I am done with this conversation, I have to get back to work!!!

Hell is pointless. QED.

 

[Michael19682]

@PumpkinCookie,

The moments of our lives occur in succession. One after the other.
If we are born totally blank, at what point does evil “seep” in.
Clearly a person sins willfully, whenever…
The child’s first sin occurs on what basis, PumpkinCookie?
If there is a basis of “blank”, we would never expect to find individual sin for
evil can not grow from blank or good.
Yet this is obviously not the case, therefore at some subtle level we have
an inner disposition or temperament that is either seeded evil or good.
I’m afraid it looks like an unbaptized can go to hell, though as everyone says,
with unequal punishments.

 

[arte]

Hi Arte,

There is an option. This need not be an either/or thing. Two visions of God and cosmos can rest side by side.

In one view, man is negative in some way, some call it “depravity” others say we are “inclined to sin” others “we are part evil”. All of these versions are understandable in the light that we naturally come to resent certain people, and parts of ourselves. This is all part of the development of the conscience. Yes, the resentment creates an illusion of negativity, but the illusion has a purpose. The purpose is that if we pay attention to those negatives, we will avoid doing those hurtful behaviors. Yes, the idea of infants being somehow worthless or deserving of punishment is an extreme, it is an extreme based in the resentment of human nature itself.

There is a place for this thinking, as there is a place for the thinking that there should be a place for all those people we hate so much to suffer forever (hell). It is a motivator to behave.

When a person has grown in love and empathy to the point that he or she does not need those motivators in order to behave morally, then the illusion becomes obsolete. As evidenced in many places, though, it is rare for a person to reach this state of love so that the motivators attain such obsolescence. People who cling to the motivators probably rely on them, so it may be foolhardy to take them away.

In the second view, If,instead you are seeing God as unconditionally loving and forgiving, and you yourself have followed the command to love and forgive everyone, including yourself, then the whole illusion seems cruel.

If that is the case, here are some definitions that you might consider. They are not “Catholic teachings”, per se, but they reflect the unconditional love of our creator, a purpose for all our natural inclinations, and a view that God holds us very, very dear:

Original Sin: The genetic makeup of the human that gives us the capacity to do hurtful things to others. We are born ignorant, and we experience an automatic blindness due to emotional reactions. These are part of such capacity.

Hell: A place of separation. God never separates Himself from us, as He always understands and always forgives. Separation has to do with our own alienation from our own love of God. Sin itself is defined as “alienation”. It is the illusion of separation caused by guilt, resentment and other factors. Another option: hell is a spiritual bootcamp.

On hell: A priest once told us that in his opinion “the only way a person ever goes to hell is if they go screaming and kicking against God the whole way”. If we use the traditional image of hell, I agree with this assessment.

What do you think, does any of that work?

Yes, it definitely does work. I obviously missed this going through the posts. Many thanks OneSheep.

 

[arte]

I can count on one hand the number of posters I’ve interacted with on CAF who both know what the magisterium teaches and accept it. Whenever I quote a council or teaching from a pre-Vatican 2 catechism it is received with shock and disbelief by many here. Why is that???

When I returned to the Church after an absence of over 30 years, I volunteered to be an Educator in Faith (EIF). I had a good background in adult training so could bring this experience into the classroom. At the same time, being an EIF would allow me to re-acquaint myself with the Church’s teaching. It was a win win. You may be aware of EIF. It is the teaching of the Catholic faith one night a week to Catholic children who do not go to Catholic schools.

I was also “volunteered” by our parish priest to be a member of a committee planning the 2 week visit of a Franciscan monk to our parish. The Chairman of the parish council was also a member of the committee. We were taking about the 7 sacraments of the Church at one point and I was amazed that the Chairman of the parish council only knew about 3 of them. He is a lifelong Catholic. I meet every Wednesday with an elderly Church member (86 years old) who has been a stalwart in the Church all his life and is a fantastic Christian. His name is John and he is known in the parish as “Saint John” because of the huge amount of work he has done for our church and parishioners. He had never heard of the Magisterium! Neither had I until I joined this forum. I think us Catholics learn a lot of information about the Church during our school days and although we may attend the odd weekend seminar on say the Eucharist, I believe we tend to rely on the Church’s teaching from our school days - which we obviously forget over time. This may be the reason why we are not familiar with certain Church doctrine.

 

[hasantas]

Relying on the position that hell serves no purpose since we don’t know of any redemption from its darkness, the pain there would be useless. that argument/reality/position is one of the most prevalent criticisms of our religion, and why the “religion” gets rejected, and Christ along with it. a tragedy of false assumption.

According to Islam:

The punisment of rejecting God is the everlasting stay in Hell. The pain and suffering is the effecient cause of sins.

If someone reject God then he will stay in Hell forever because God is infinite by whole essence and attributions. If someone kill other then the punisment should be lifetime on the world. So if someone reject(rejection means killing all countless evidences, inifinite divine attributions of God) God then the punisment should be infinite.

People in Hell will suffer as much they commit sins on the world. After paying for sins they will not suffer the pangs of Hell anymore and but they will stay in Hell forver. They will be in Hell fire but they will not suffer and get used to fire or pain because they they will had been paid for sins.

Staying in Hell forever is better than being destroyed absolutely. People in prison try to go on living although in bad conditions but they do not want to die. So if we could ask to human’s conscience to choose dissolving forever or staying in Hell forever then it would prefer to stay even in Hell. Ofcourse if that conscience had not been declined.

People who enter into a contraversy in religion are lack of knowledge. Christ never informed any false.

 

[You]

Maybe time passes in hell or maybe time does not pass but just events, more terrible then the next, proceed while the person is in the everlasting now. So perhaps for them, in hell, no time passes, it is always now and eternal suffering becomes just suffering in the everlasting now.

 

[OneSheep]

According to Islam:

The punisment of rejecting God is the everlasting stay in Hell. The pain and suffering is the effecient cause of sins.

If someone reject God then he will stay in Hell forever because God is infinite by whole essence and attributions. If someone kill other then the punisment should be lifetime on the world. So if someone reject(rejection means killing all countless evidences, inifinite divine attributions of God) God then the punisment should be infinite.

Good morning hasantas,

Here is a question for you.

If someone rejects God without knowing what he is doing, that is, he is blind or lacks awareness, does God punish him?

Thanks.

 

[OneSheep]

Right, unless hell is real and some people can go there, option 1 makes God into a liar. Not acceptable.

Option 2 is not distinct from my observation that some argue God essentially has created hell for the sake of allowing people to go there. That still means God desires suffering for its own sake, and would make God appear to be profoundly evil. Not acceptable.

Option 3 is the most reasonable, and similar to what I believe. Hardly anyone is “evil to the core” and deserves to be totally annihilated, in my opinion. But, what do I know? Not much. Anyway, I suppose most of us will go to hell when we die, where we will learn the various lessons we were supposed to learn but failed to pick up here on earth This hell will be temporary, and everything will get “sorted out” there. It is a painful place to the extent we find true learning painful. When we’re ready, we can then live in the World to Come, about which I know absolutely nothing other than it will be perfect and great, and God will reign in plain sight.

I don’t believe in Option 2 either, but I can accept people’s adherence to it, (at least as long as necessary. Option 2 is logical in the sense that an infinitely evil act deserves an infinitely evil punishment. This option does present a much different view of God than I have now, but I used to hold that view, it made sense.

So what do we do, tell the option 2 folks that they are wrong? But wait, it is perhaps the threat of hell that is keeping their behaviors in line! Jesus calls us to love, and says that all the laws are based on love. However, if a person’s empathy has not grown to maturity, then they need all of the threats to keep their behavior in check. In addition, since the threats themselves are what motivated them to behave, they see the belief in the threat as a Good belief; that is understandable, is it not?

Yes, if there is a hell, option 3 makes the most sense for me also.

Oh, is anyone “evil” at all? Wait, that is a topic on another of your posts.

 

[OneSheep]

Yes, this is obvious. I agree. We are born morally “blank.” This is innocence.

Good morning P.C. (hey, are you politically…?)

Yes, but can you see how the innocence remains? I know its tough. See below. I take that back. First, a definition of terms.

So, are we to succeed where Jesus has failed? Many moral teachers have suggested the same things, none of whom claimed to be God himself. Yes, if we were all to merely do what we’re obligated to do, the world would be a much better place. If we were all to reach beyond that and helps others, it would be heavenly.

Jesus failed? What is 2000 years in the realm of time? Patience!

I will agree that we have less moral freedom (or any kind of freedom) than the proponents of libertarian free will suppose. However, if we don’t have moral freedom at all, then morality itself is incoherent and not worth discussing. Children need no savior if they are innocent. Unless, they have been sentenced by an unjust judge. The only judge of a dying child is God himself, who is most assuredly not unjust!

Hmmm. You are not acknowledging the genetic capacity I referred to. People have genetically-coded desires for status, sex, power, wealth, dominance, control, etc., and these desires enslave us. Also, when we “want” very much, we become blind, empathy can be blocked. In addition, empathy is blocked when we have our conscience triggered and we are in punishment mode. When I say “salvation”, I am saying that our faith in Christ, our following Him, gives us the ability to tackle these more enslaving and problematic (but functional) aspects of our nature. It is a matter of saying “Jesus is Lord” instead of “Caesar is Lord”(power) or “wealth is Lord” or “sex is Lord”. Do you see what I mean?

I’m not looking at God as judge. Pope Francis said that God always forgives, I’ll stick with that because I agree.

I believe we are born with the natural ability to avoid sin. No need for magical sacraments. Doing the right thing is always within our power. To think otherwise is to deny the essence of morality itself.

Yes, I believe we are all endowed with a capacity for conscience, but that conscience can be somewhat poorly informed. We are not a “blank slate” in my view, but close to it. A child growing up in a manipulative environment can learn that any expression of love for anyone or anything can be used against him. That child can learn to avoid loving.

Ability and conscience has to be nurtured. Faith, for children especially, is about nurture.

I believe we co-create ourselves and each other with God. Parents literally physically co-create their children with God. We co-create our bodies and souls by how we act, what we think, what we do, what we eat, etc. God allows us to become evil, and co-creates us in the sense that he supports our freedom and existence at every infinitesimally small moment of our lives, continuously. The sinner is changed by their actions. Ever see a meth-addict? Our souls and bodies decay and deteriorate due to sin. The change is real.

Perhaps a bit of definition of terms is in order. When one says a person is “evil”, one is expressing some resentment, correct? So, since resentment is ordinarily such a big part of the word, for our purposes we must either define the word in a way that leaves resentment out, or accept responsibility that we may be instilling resentment in others by the use of the word. So, if the word expresses no resentment, what definition shall we use? Or, if the word “evil” towards people expresses resentment, then we will be using the word in the ordinary sense, and we can take it from there.

I can count on one hand the number of posters I’ve interacted with on CAF who both know what the magisterium teaches and accept it. Whenever I quote a council or teaching from a pre-Vatican 2 catechism it is received with shock and disbelief by many here. Why is that???

Maybe there are some doctrines that we would rather deemphasize?

 

[hasantas]

Good morning hasantas,

Here is a question for you.

If someone rejects God without knowing what he is doing, that is, he is blind or lacks awareness, does God punish him?

Thanks.

Responbility related to suggestion in religion. If someone in any whatsoever had heard knowledges from prophets or messengers then they can be charged. Otherwise God inform in Qur’an that God will never charge anyone to whom admissible notification had not accessed. Those kinds are called to be in fatrat(interval).

Rejection has two sections. The first is to be in a case that has no acceptance but also has no rejection directly. God knows the best about them. But the second part is the acceptance of rejection. These people say God is not exist and they do that knowingly so those people could not be excusable and they deserve the punisment.

 

[OneSheep]

Responbility related to suggestion in religion. If someone in any whatsoever had heard knowledges from prophets or messengers then they can be charged. Otherwise God inform in Qur’an that God will never charge anyone to whom admissible notification had not accessed. Those kinds are called to be in fatrat(interval).

Hello, hasantas,

The problem is that many people teach about God with their actions, right? “I am dedicated to God, according to the Prophet, and because of this, I have permission to kill all of the non-believers”. So, even though a person may have heard many good things about God, the actions of those who kill say more to the individual, and then the person gets the wrong idea about God, right? God is more loving and forgiving than any human, correct?

So, if the person says, “Oh yes, killing of all the non-believers is exactly what God wants”, and then follows this idea of Islam, then they are following a false God. On the other hand, if the person reject this idea of God, and says “this is killing is all wrong”, then would not God forgive him? It is better to show the world, and is better for the individual, that the everyone sees God as one of infinite love.

Rejection has two sections. The first is to be in a case that has no acceptance but also has no rejection directly. God knows the best about them. But the second part is the acceptance of rejection. These people say God is not exist and they do that knowingly so those people could not be excusable and they deserve the punisment.

I understand what you are saying, but if the person says “God does not exist”, they do not know the truth, right? So if they are believing an untruth, then this is far from “knowingly” rejecting God. They do not know reality. If they knew God as we do, then they would accept. Do you see what I am saying?

We are talking about people who see all the evil things that the followers of Christianity and Islam do, and they say “I don’t believe in their God, their God is an evil God”.

It takes more than words to prove them wrong, correct? There are so many people in the world who only know the bad things that believers do, not the many more good things.

Do you see what I mean? Did I miss something?

God Bless.

 

[Good_Fella]

I agree that there is a bit of resistance to forgive, but it is far outweighed by the impulse to forgive conditionally. Here is the proof: The continuation of our tribe-dependent species. Like chimpanzees, we have disagreements and conflicts, they happen pretty consistently. If those conflicts were to go unforgiven, the tribes and groups would not remain cohesive and cooperative, and such cooperation is a matter of survival for our species. Chimpanzees have a compulsion to forgive, and so do humans, in order to overcome the differences and maintain the ability to survive.

For utilitarian reasons human beings might say ‘Okay, let’s forget it,’ but that doesn’t mean they have forgiven the person in their heart. Chimpanzees are unable to forgive, but they can forget or ignore purely out of survival instinct and without deliberation. One chimp is unable to forgive another chimp because mentally it doesn’t have the capacity to know what the meaning of forgiveness is. Mankind has eaten of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil; nor does a chimp have the mental ability to assert to itself that it can forgive. If this weren’t true, then chimps would be able to devise a second language system as verbally intelligible as any human foreign language system could be to those who speak their own first language. What appear to be acts of forgiveness on the part of chimps is nothing but an anthropomorphic illusion.

Both humans and chimpanzees express resentment of uncooperative behavior, and the mechanism itself is a compulsion, it is a natural drive. It is part of the structure of the conscience itself!

But human beings often resent what appears to be cooperative behaviour, if they believe there is a false ulterior motive behind it, and they often judge that the behaviour against them is beyond forgiveness.Chimps, on the other hand, are unable to question the sincerity of other chimps and draw assumptions or measure the moral gravity of their acts against each other. It’s part of the structure of the instinct of survival for chimps to react against the uncooperative behaviour of other chimps. Conscience has nothing to do with it. They can sense what we define to be hostility without knowing what hostility is and making judgments on it. They do not have the mental ability to assert to themselves that they have been personally injured, having no ability to conceptualise. Let’s not propose that chimps have been created in the image of God. Nature, so to speak, does the thinking for them. This is part of the teleological mechanism of nature: to act as an instinctive warning device for the preservation of a species. When we hear a fire alarm bell go off, we react without actually knowing that there is indeed a real fire. I doubt chimps can take things personally in a moral sense. Genesis is clear. Mankind has eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Chimps cannot pass moral judgment on themselves. If they could, then Jesus died for them as well.

We cling to our grudges because we know that it is so “right” to hold the guilty in contempt. Is this “pride”, the desire for status and power? I think not, though such desire is so much a part of us. It is more like the holding of the grudge is part of the holder’s means of not doing the very same behavior that he condemns, which again is part of the conscience mechanism.

I beg your pardon? We cling to our grudges because we are naturally inclined to put our personal interests above those of others. By nature we are more concerned about what others shouldn’t wrongly do to us than we are about what we should rightly do to them. The truth is we often do to others that which we don’t want them to do to us. Those who refuse to forgive by having passed moral judgment against their offensive neighbours normally desire to be forgiven for their own offenses against them if they actually care in keeping with their conscience. But Jesus has warned us that unless we do forgive others for their trespasses against us, our heavenly Father won’t forgive us our trespasses against Him. When Jesus gave his sermon on the mount, chimps weren’t part of his audience.

PAX
:heaven:

 

[arte]

You want a reason to believe in Original Sin. Let me turn this around. In the beginning the world was pure and perfect and was paradise. There was no sin, no death, and no hard labor.
Once sin entered the world (when Adam and Eve sinned Original Sin) they were thrown out of the garden of Eden.
Now you show me how Original Sin never existed, nor sin exists, and how this world is the Garden of Eden.

You are stating the positive in the debate. The onus is on you to show (prove) that original sin existed. Furthermore, the onus is on you to prove that the World was pure, perfect, a paradise, no sin, no death and no hard labor.