If God exists, do non-believers get sent to Hell?

Question for you, Bubba: Do you believe that all a person has to do is believe that Jesus died for us and rose from the dead on the third day in order to get into heaven?

Or do you believe that we have to make an effort to avoid sinning?

I'm asking because I have known so many Christians of many different denominations (I live in the Bible Belt) and this is a conflict I have seen in their beliefs.

I can accept a God that asks us to love and believe in him. However, I have difficulty accepting a God who says that we must believe in a certain set of platitudes (example: homosexuality is wrong) or get sent to hell to be roasted over an eternal barbecue pit.

I believe there is a loving God up there. What particular religion he belongs to I couldn't tell you. I also believe that he asks us to leave the world a better place than we found it, to take care of the earth, to take care of our fellow creatures. My problem with mainstream Christianity is that the concern has seemed to be more with elevating oneself morally over the rest of society than it has been with taking care of the world as we see it.

But that's me. Maybe you have a different perspective and I'd love to hear it.

 

Bubba:

You make it quite clear that you haven't actually read the Bible.

In point of fact, I have. It's why I'm no longer Christian.

As Adam and Eve were cast out of paradise, God promised redemption (Genesis 3:15).

"And I will put enmity between thee [the serpent] and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." can be interpreted any number of ways, and at no point does it equate to Adam and Eve returning to Eden; they were cast out for life.

God does stay faithful to his chosen favorites, but everyone else gets the shaft; by the time his chosen people start looking for a homeland, everyone else and their children are fair game. I notice you skipped over the middle paragraph of my previous post; what do you have to say about it? God orders the slaughter of millions, just because they happen to be on the land he wants for his "chosen people" (coincidentally enough, the authors of the story) and because he never bothered to reveal himself to them in the way he did with the Israelites.

Even to his own people, God performs acts of petty cruelty on a regular basis. When they beg for something other than manna to eat (having lived on it for decades--and the book goes out of its way to describe its oily, flavorless texture), God sends them quails (just shy of 29,000,000,000,000, if one does the math--apparently, the Israelites gather and prepare them at a rate of 98 per second per person), then kills whoever eats them. At one point, Moses has to talk God down from one of his rages; a human advises God, and God defers to his wisdom.

As for evidence against other Biblical stories besides its account of creation, consider the flood; for the rain to have covered the tallest mountains in forty days, it would have had to have fallen at a rate of 12.5 feet per hour. That's not rain; it's hydraulic mining. It would have pounded the continents into crystal and washed all sediment into the sea. (There are plenty of other holes in flood story, many of which you're no doubt familiar with, but that discussion's best left for another thread.)

As for the gaps in history, you say they're irrelevant, but how did Jesus go completely unnoticed by every established historian in his own time? Surely such spectacular miracles, in front of thousands of witnesses, would have earned him at least a bit more than a couple of vague, passing references a hundred years down the road (neither of which, if indeed they refer to him, mention anything more than his crucifixion).

As for the issue of the burden of proof, the reason our courts operate on the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is because a lack of disproof is meaningless in itself; it doesn't constitue evidence of anything. You'd be hard-pressed to disprove the existence of unicorns, mermaids or leprechauns, but does that even begin to suggest that they actually exist?

Back on the issue of morality, are humans or are we not capable of moral perfection?

Any way you slice it, under the Christian worldview, nothing we do is good enough for God. Any way you slice it, he sets the bar higher than humans can reach.

Now, this quote isn't mine, but I think it applies here:

"Why does God make the ultimate test of the eternal value of our souls an infintismally brief stay on Earth, where He gives us only a vaguely written, unprovable, "seemingly" contradictory book to show us the true way? A world where some don't even get a chance to see His book, and so never got a fair chance at salvation in the first place. A world where "sin", which He made instinctually appealing to us, is not only the predominating condition but the very criteria on which we are judged. Why, if this is our one shot, does he weigh the odds so heavily against us? Why does He not at least prove his existence to us so we can at least KNOW we have a choice, rather than playing a little game of hide and go seek with us where if we don't find him, we get to be It forever in hell, wondering where he wa

 

Bubba So basically when we die, it is checkmate. So we do not have free will when we die? We have no choice as to what happens to us when we are dead. Why is the ability to choose taken away from us when we could use it most?

I'm honestly not sure whether free will vanishes the moment each of us dies; it's possible that those who did not have a sufficient opportunity to choose in this life is given that opportunity in the hereafter.

There is, though, some point in our existence where we've been given more than enough opportunity to either accept or reject God's gift of forgiveness. Because God's sense of justice cannot be permanently postponed (and because, honestly, some of us would choose reject to God given even an infinite amount of time), the window of opportunity will eventually close for each of us.

Whether that window closes with one's dying breath is an open question, but I do believe that many if not most of us actually have a more-than-fair opportunity to accept God's grace in this world, so hoping that God will leave the window open for even a little while in the next world is a very big gamble.

(It's doubly dangerous: we don't know whether the window will be open, and we don't know whether we would still choose to accept God's forgiveness if we've spent a lifetime rejecting it.)


"In other words, we can be held responsible for not being morally perfect."

But haven?t you said that we cannot become morally perfect while we are alive? That, although how hard we try, we can only get so far until we are dead at which point we will then have the ability to be perfect.

The key lies in the belief that we start out morally perfect. (Here Catholicism and much of Protestantism disagree strongly, but I can speak only of what I personally believe.) So we can be held responsible for losing moral perfection, even though we cannot regain that perfection on our own.

There are reasons we cannot regain moral perfection. First, it is possible (in the strict sense of the word) to abstain from bad moral choices and thus make good moral choices from some time X onward, but none of us actually pull that off in real life because those prior sins (which caused our original fall from grace) have tarnished our souls, making moral goodness even harder to do.

And even if we did make all the right choices after time X, there's still the matter of the effect of those old sins on our eternal souls. Our soul is tarnished; the image of God in which we are made has been defaced. There is no way that our own power can undo that corruption.

To respond to your last sentence, indeed I do believe the perfection of man is only possible after death, but with three provisos. First, this perfection only occurs for those who have accepted God's free forgiveness; we won't all be made perfect. Second, the perfection occurs not because "we will then have the ability to be perfect," but because God personally brings us up into His perfection. Third, this isn't an immediate transformation; it's a long-term process that begins the moment one accepts God's grace.

And in all of this discussion, I may be using to much of a shorthand when discussing moral perfection. I do believe that none of us are morally perfect, but there is one and only one notable exception: Jesus Himself.


EDIT: (Want to reply to one more thing before moving on to page 22.)

Well, we can somehow survive without Him, since we still somehow exist when we are in Hell.

Or maybe we will wink out of existence when we go to hell since God was never there or something like that. That would be a lot more loving than forcing us to regret what we did in our short life for eternity.

Some people actual hold the idea of annihilationism, the idea that souls do not spend an eternity in Hell. Unfortunately, it's unsupported by the Bible; even Jesus's own words (particularly Luke 16:19-31) weaken the case for annihilationism.

Neither belief is an essential tenet of Chr

 

this may have already been stated (it's a long thread, i admit i haven't read all of it...yet) and if so feel free to ignore me
but why would non-believers want to be with God for eternity? basically hell is separation from God, whitch is the right that non-believers assert their whole time on earth, so God allows them to continue with that right after death
as for the idea in the origonal comment regarding "being a good enough person"...well, if it were possible for us to be good enough, there would be no need for Jesus (yes, i am speaking from the view of Christianity) and also, can any of you honestly say that you are good enough? have never stolen, lied, lusted, wanted... "we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God"

 

So basically God created the universe to stroke his ego?

 

Bubba

But when we die, we will know for a fact one way or another if there is a God. Well, more or less. We will either know there is a God, or we wont be able to care.

With knowledge, I doubt anyone in a rational mind would still choose to reject God. Assuming we have ample chance in life to accept God, we would have to loose free will when we die in order to be sent to hell. I would imagine for those who did not have the chance; they would get it then. Those people however are few I think as well.


And the stuff about being morally perfect... I was trying to say that if we cannot become morally perfect in life, then Darth Geist has a point. His point, at that point of his argument, seemed to be that we cannot be morally perfect, and if we cannot, what good would forgiveness be.

We all choose to sin at some point or another and that leaves a stain on our Stuff Of Unending Life that will not come off until well after death if at all. If we cannot get it off in life, if we cannot be perfect in life, then I still see his argument as valid.

 

anakin_girl:

Question for you, Bubba: Do you believe that all a person has to do is believe that Jesus died for us and rose from the dead on the third day in order to get into heaven?

Or do you believe that we have to make an effort to avoid sinning?

That may be a false dilemma. It may possible for one to accept God's free gift of forgiveness without knowing how that gift came to be offered (the Crucifixion and Resurrection), but -- as I've asserted before -- this is mere speculation on my part.


I can accept a God that asks us to love and believe in him. However, I have difficulty accepting a God who says that we must believe in a certain set of platitudes (example: homosexuality is wrong) or get sent to hell to be roasted over an eternal barbecue pit.

(Not sure that "homosexuality is wrong" counts as a "platitude.")

The idea is that we truly, deeply accept God's free gift of forgiveness, and that acceptance leads to gratitude. Our recognition of God as Savior leads to our recognition of God as Sovereign.

At that point, gratitude should then motivate us to earnestly seek His will. Being honestly mistaken in our search is no sin, but I believe being lazy in our search is a sin. More germaine to this discussion, I believe it is also a sin to reject what we find simply because we find it not to our liking.

If we have indeed rebelled and are being restored back into a relationship with God, one would imagine that at least parts of His will are going to seem difficult or even initially offensive. For me, I have trouble with turning the other cheek. You might have trouble with what God has to say about sexuality.

But if you reject what He has to say simply because you don't like it, you're not seeking His will. You're still seeking your own.


Geist:

"And I will put enmity between thee [the serpent] and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." can be interpreted any number of ways, and at no point does it equate to Adam and Eve returning to Eden; they were cast out for life.

Right, but redemption means a restored relationship with God, regardless of whether that actually involves Eden.

And I know of no other way to interpret that passage in light of the rest of the Bible. Even in Genesis, it's not a stretch to conclude that this promise about Eve's offspring and the covenant to bless all nations through Abraham's descendents point to the same event.


God does stay faithful to his chosen favorites, but everyone else gets the shaft; by the time his chosen people start looking for a homeland, everyone else and their children are fair game. I notice you skipped over the middle paragraph of my previous post; what do you have to say about it? God orders the slaughter of millions, just because they happen to be on the land he wants for his "chosen people" (coincidentally enough, the authors of the story) and because he never bothered to reveal himself to them in the way he did with the Israelites.

First, not "everyone else" gets the shaft in the Old Testament. Those non-Jews who try to earnestly seek God's will -- including Melchizedek and the Egyptian Pharaoh during the time of Joseph -- were blessed as a result. Not to mention Ruth and Job.

"Just because they happen to be on the land he wants" is an inaccurate description of the reason the Midianites and the Caananites were utterly destroyed. According to the Bible itself, they were both severely corrupted people. The Midianites led Israel into idolatrous pagan worship, and the Canaanites practiced all sorts of wicked acts, include sacrificing children. You can surely question this account of events, but that's bringing in your beliefs about what actually happened while ignoring the Biblical account.


Even to his own people, God performs acts of petty cruelty on a regular basis. When they beg for something other than manna to eat (having lived on it for decades--and the book goes out of its way to de

 

"The Midianites led Israel into idolatrous pagan worship, and the Canaanites practiced all sorts of wicked acts, include sacrificing children."

So the Midianites were killed for spreading their religion(oddly reminiscent of what some theocracies today do to missionaries). And the Canaanites sacrificed children. Children which died anyway when the Israelites sacked their cities.

 

So the Midianites were killed for spreading their religion(oddly reminiscent of what some theocracies today do to missionaries). And the Canaanites sacrificed children. Children which died anyway when the Israelites sacked their cities.

If one accepts that there is an objective morality, than one can also accept that some religions may be immoral to the point of wickedness.

(If you deny the existence of objective moral truth, why the complaint about the actions of ancient Israel? After all, they're just practicing their beliefs; who are we to judge?)

As for the question of killing children, Norman Geisler has a few thoughts:

(1) Given the cancerous state of the society into which they were born, they had no chance to avoid its fatal pollution. (2) Children who die before the age of accountability go to heaven. This was an act of God?s mercy to their souls to take them into His holy presence from such an unholy environment. (3) God is sovereign over life (Deut. 32:39; Job 1:21) and can order its end according to His will and in view of the creature?s ultimate good.

As I continue to assert, Biblical difficulties vanish under closer scrutiny.

 

""And I will put enmity between thee [the serpent] and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." can be interpreted any number of ways, and at no point does it equate to Adam and Eve returning to Eden; they were cast out for life.

I know of no other way to interpret that passage in light of the rest of the Bible.

Other Christians have called it a prophecy of Christ, and others still have interpreted it simply as a mythological means of explain the enmity between snakes and humans. Myths across the world do as much.

Also bear in mind that the Bible wasn't written all at once; at the time of the book of Genesis' authorship, there was very little to mesh with, and very little of that had anything to do with forgiveness.

First, not "everyone else" gets the shaft in the Old Testament. Those non-Jews who try to earnestly seek God's will -- including Melchizedek and the Egyptian Pharaoh during the time of Joseph -- were blessed as a result. Not to mention Ruth and Job.

Granted--and, all things considered, Joseph's brothers turned out all right--but for every individual God favors, there are millions he smites with impunity.

The Midianites led Israel into idolatrous pagan worship, and the Canaanites practiced all sorts of wicked acts, include sacrificing children.

Hence, slaughter their infants and mothers, rape their virgins, and everything'll turn out okay, so sayeth the Lord. Somehow, I don't see the moral perfection here.

It's worth mentioning that the Jews led themselves into idolatry; their divinely appointed religious leader Aaron, when pressed by his people, fashioned a golden calf and led them in its worship. 3,000 people died for following his commands, while he himself got off scot free. If you don't think the Old Testament God plays favorites, look no further than that.

You can surely question this account of events, but that's bringing in your beliefs about what actually happened while ignoring the Biblical account.

Both history and mythology are written by the winners.

It is not that [the quails] were piled up two cubits deep, but that they flew at an elevation of about two cubits -- well within arm's reach.

Then divide the number by, say, ten. Hey, let's be generous and say fifteen. A "day's journey," in the ancient Hebrew system of measurement, was 22.5 miles. Pack a 22.5 mile radius with birds, and you've got hundreds of billions of them. Even if the Hebrews spent the entire day collecting and preparing them, as the book states, a conservative estimate would have them doing so at a rate of four per second per person.

As an aside, Exodus 16:31 says that manna tasted like wafers made with honey, which actually sounds quite palatable if the alternative is starving to death in a desert.

For years upon years?

But the real issue -- God punishing the Jews -- can be addressed. They did not merely "beg" for other food, they complained. In modern terms, they b**ched, a lot.

They had a right. You're no doubt familiar with the story of Korah; God sends down fire to kill a single heretic, scorching 250 bystanders in the process, and when the people voice their objections, he kills thousands more on the spot. For this, he deserves their gratitude?

He didn't shove the birds down their throats.

Neither did he warn them about the birds' lethality.

They even chose to gorge themselves and further brought punishment onto themselves.

Yes, punishment for eating the food that he provided.

If a parent feeds a child nothing but bread for, oh, fifteen years, finally gives into their complaining about it, takes the child to the buffet, then shoots the child dead at the first bite, where's the love? Once again, the petty Old Testament God deals out mass death just to prove that he can.

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the

 

"(1) Given the cancerous state of the society into which they were born, they had no chance to avoid its fatal pollution."

So we should just kill kids born into abusive families?

"2) Children who die before the age of accountability go to heaven. This was an act of God?s mercy to their souls to take them into His holy presence from such an unholy environment."

Oh, so it's ok to kill any kids, not just the ones born into abusive families? I mean they go to heaven, so what's the problem?

"(3) God is sovereign over life (Deut. 32:39; Job 1:21) and can order its end according to His will and in view of the creature?s ultimate good."

Oh, I get it now. It's ok to kill babies if God tells you to.

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I apologise in advance for the sarcasm if it offended anyone, but it seemed the best way to express my feelings. No disrespect is intended.
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Look, whether a kid dies under an Israelite sword or on Dagon's altar, you still end up with the same thing, a dead kid.

I do believe in an objective morality, and the God of the Bible does not meet the standard.

 

God's people rebel and suffer for their rebellion, but God restores the relationship.


Funny, reads like the opening book of the Koran (the Cow) too...

But Muslims are wrong aren't they Bubba?

E_S

 

I'm heading to bed, so I'll be brief in focusing on one quote:

"It is not that [the quails] were piled up two cubits deep, but that they flew at an elevation of about two cubits -- well within arm's reach."

Then divide the number by, say, ten. Hey, let's be generous and say fifteen. A "day's journey," in the ancient Hebrew system of measurement, was 22.5 miles. Pack a 22.5 mile radius with birds, and you've got hundreds of billions of them. Even if the Hebrews spent the entire day collecting and preparing them, as the book states, a conservative estimate would have them doing so at a rate of four per second per person.

The passage doesn't imply that the Israelites collected every bird. If you're going to assume that it does just to point out how silly the Bible is (supposedly), I see no reason to continue this discussion.

If the most obvious interpretation damned the book, we'd have a lot to discuss. Problems that arise through less obvious interpretations would no longer prove your case, but they would at least lend support.

But, at least here, you're inferring things that the text does not imply. That's dishonest, and it makes discussing Scripture with you futile.

 

E_S:

But Muslims are wrong aren't they Bubba?

I quote myself, from another thread, in a reply addressed to you:

...just because one religion may be divinely revealed truth, it doesn't mean that all religions are wrong through-and-through. We all have the ability to reason coupled with an internal moral compass. It's not surprising then that many relegions agree on many points; I just happent to believe that where they disagree, one religion may very well be completely right.

Read that quote and re-read it until you can comprehend.

 

What, so I can change my name to Ender_Sai_The_Genius?


ES

 

this has fast become a debate on the beliefs of christianity

i have a question

for those of you who are athiest, or from another religous backgroud, or simply think christians are messed up and wrong....what does it matter?

don't get me wrong, i'm currently working on a BA in religion, am a devoted Christian, and plan on spending my life as a minister. i'm enjoying these comments thoroughly, my hobby is looking into what people believe and why they do

but still, for those who don't beleive, why does it matter to you what Christians do believe? i'll be the first to admit that christians, jews, and other people have done horrendous things "in the name of God", but then again, so long as people are human, they have the ability to be wrong. as for the judgements being referred to in Exodus, the people knew better, God was saving them, and they were in a constant disposition to rebell. Judgement was swift. God can not dwell with sin...and when it is time for the final judgment on the world, many more will be sent from earth into eternity, and if they choose against God, it will be eternity away from Him. No, i'm not saying i know why God did what He did, but i'm sure He does....

 

What, so I can change my name to Ender_Sai_The_Genius?

Hah.

Look, I grant that many of my beliefs are controversial. But the belief that all other religions are completely wrong is not among them.

I'd rather not have to deal with complaints about things I don't believe.

 

So I can't nail you over the murderous goddess Kali?

Damn!

E_S

 

I personally do not believe in hell for a few reasons, first of all Jesus says in the bible that satan died, so if there's no satan, hell does not have much purpose. Plus hell comes more from indiginous religions in Israel and they used the image of burning trash dumps to describe hell. But the main reason I don't believe in hell is that since God is suppossed to love everyone, not matter what their differences, then no one should go to hell, because if God truly loves us all, God would not want us to spend eternity in a place like that. Now I know a lot of people wonder how bad people can get in or what the incentive is to be good, well I believe that God does use some sort of "judgement" on people who are bad. Perhaps in heaven everyone is enlightened and realize why what they did was wrong, and God kinda lets them relive their past for awhile so they can remember what they did and ask for forgiveness and get into heaven, that's kind of my theory anyways.

 

first of all Jesus says in the bible that satan died

WHAT? Where?

But the main reason I don't believe in hell is that since God is suppossed to love everyone, not matter what their differences, then no one should go to hell, because if God truly loves us all, God would not want us to spend eternity in a place like that.

No, He doesn't. The problem is, there are people (there are representatives in this thread alone) who want nothing to do with God, and after being that way long enough, their hearts are hardened and even if the archangel Michael came down and handed them a flaming sword, they would not come to God.

It's not a matter of believing (Satan, who is alive and well and can never die because he is not mortal, believes in Christ; in fact Satan knows better than all of us that God exists and Jesus is His son); it's a matter of following Christ and allowing His love and His will into your heart and life. And some people will never be able to do that.

God COULD let everyone into heaven, but He doesn't want to force anyone into anything they don't want. And people who reject God don't want to be with Him. So He allows them their separation, and that is Hell.

Your theory about God letting everyone in is a nice one, and perhaps it helps you sleep at night, but the fact is, if God allowed everyone into heaven, He would be unjust, and untruthful, and those are two things He cannot be. Jesus (who is God) said very cleearly that "No one gets to the Father except through me," so if we reject Christ, there is no other way to get to God, because we have rejected God. We will be separated from him for all eternity, and again, that is Hell.

M. Scott

 

So you say, DorkmanScott, but understand: That entire line of reasoning relies on assumptions piled on assumptions.

 

Your theory about God letting everyone in is a nice one, and perhaps it helps you sleep at night, but the fact is, if God allowed everyone into heaven, He would be unjust, and untruthful, and those are two things He cannot be. Jesus (who is God) said very cleearly that "No one gets to the Father except through me," so if we reject Christ, there is no other way to get to God, because we have rejected God. We will be separated from him for all eternity, and again, that is Hell.


How do you know that wasn't just Jesus' pickup line at a bar?

 

Jesus (who is God) said very cleearly that "No one gets to the Father except through me," so if we reject Christ, there is no other way to get to God, because we have rejected God.

So, does that mean the Jews, God's Chosen People, are going to hell?

 

How do you know that wasn't just Jesus' pickup line at a bar?

"Hey baby...why don't you just order a glass of water, because that's free, and I'll change it into a fine glass of Cabernet for you."


OK, in all seriousness:

Bubba: It sounds like you and my mother have the same views, in that good works aren't necessary but we should want to do them because of what God did for us. This is definitely an easier pill to swallow for people like me who have a hard time living with guilt, if that makes sense.

 

One time, I read a book, and the meaning was lost on me. I interpreted as "Stupid book, never read again" though others thought it was quite grand.