Dear PumkinCookie,
You needn’t reply if you have not the inclination or if you feel you have answered this already in the other thread.
For example,
That the SAT is necessary for college admission at a given college or university is not something made unnecessary by the provisions of an arbitrary reasonable alternative. Unless you are represented by a powerful advocate, you don’t get admitted, period unless you submit the scores. If you admit the existence and actions of a powerful advocate, then the possible scenarios open up considerably. Relatedly,
This Advocate is not your doting parent. The advocate pleads your case and shows your worthiness; magnifies it to the exclusion of all fault. If fault is found, the Advocate continues to dwell on the good. But if you stand before the judge and ask for annihilation, the best the Advocate can do is plead for you to live. If the judge allowed annihilation and if there was no advocate, everyone would see justice in it and freewill too. There would be no difference between annihilation and Heaven. All cases could be resolved by the new default, annihilation.
Penitent: I do not repent despite what my advocate has said. I freely want annihilation?
Advocate: Judge please annihilate my friend?
Judge: If I should annihilate him, why did we give him life to begin with? For me to destroy him? Why annihilate him now? Why not when he was 20 or 30 years old. Answer these questions.
The SAT is not “necessary” for college admission in the strict philosophical definition of the word “necessary” which is how I’m using it here.
“Necessary:” A proposition such that the denial of it would be a self-contradiction.
If you were to say, for example, that the SAT is “necessary” for college admission, it would mean this (to me):
All colleges require the SAT, and if anything claiming to be a college does not require the SAT, then it is not a college. There are no examples of colleges that do not require the SAT.
All I have to do to show that “the SAT is necessary for college admission” is not a “necessary” truth is give a single example of a college that does not require the SAT, even if that college is merely logically possible. Since no colleges whatsoever before the 20th century required the SAT, I have ample proof that the SAT is not “necessary” or “intrinsic” to “college-ness.”
So, all I have to do to show that hell is not “necessary” for life, existence, justice, etc, is to give a logically possible alternative. All I have to do is show that hell is not “intrinsically required” to blow a giant hole in the idea that God’s “hands are tied” and he “has no choice” but to create endless, eternal hell. Annihilation is one such possibility. Now, hell could still be “arbitrarily required” by God, just like the SAT is “arbitrarily required” by many colleges, but neither is certainly necessary.
Penitent: I do not repent, but acknowledge my guilt.
Advocate: My client refuses to repent.
Judge: I sentence you to death.
Advocate: Why didn’t you sentence my client to death years ago? After all, you have always known this would happen? In fact, why didn’t you prevent his birth in the first place?
Judge: Well, he hadn’t committed the crimes yet. I can’t punish someone for something they would certainly do if given the chance, only for that which they have actually done. Also, I am exceedingly generous in that I want to give everyone a chance to repent. Many do repent in the time given to them. This one chooses not to repent, and so my sentence is death.
). If we wake up in the afterlife with God and the Angels, their love for us would help us endure it, amd move pass it, but if we wake with the demons, their malice will cause us to become like them, and unable to move pass it: and no other metaphor seems fit to describe this state of the soul other than Burning.