Suzie Que #fundie

Suzie Que #fundie answers.yahoo.com

Help Christians! I need a quick answer for someone.
She said God is immoral because no loving being could punish anyone forever. That even Hitler isn't that mean.

How do I explain to her that eternal punishment is really justice?

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old comment by

@James-- If you've got a truly Omniscient being (impossible), you can then make a lot of "what if" calls for punishments. In my lowly mortal opinion, the MAXIMUM fair punishment is to punish him one year for every year he took away from someone, which we can calculate if we've got someone who's Omniscient (impossible). First you must figure out how many people he actually killed. Not EVERYONE killed in that time period was really Hitler's fault. Most? Arguably. But not all. Then you have to determine how long all those people would have lived, had they not been slaughtered. Then you have to figure out all the POSSIBLE family trees that Hitler wiped out and how long all those theoretical people would have lived (following the trees until they eventually would have ended). Then you have to figure out if any of those people (or theoretical people) would have killed enough people to justify ending their bloodline. What if, a few generations down the road, someone WORSE than Hitler would have been born? Someone who may have ended up single-handedly wiping out the entire planet in nuclear war? Then Hitler would have done us (our and every other Earth species) a favor. That obviously wouldn't absolve him of punishment, but it would be worth considering. Anyway, effectively, you could possibly justify punishing him for trillions of years or more, though only a truly Omniscient (impossible) being would be able to make a fair call. But even 1000 years is excessive even for Hitler, IMO. I mean, that's a LONG FUCKING TIME from a human perspective. Maybe I'd even cap it at however long you lived. If you lived 60 years, you can't really do more damage than what 60 years of Ultimate Suffering will balance out, right? Yes, what Hitler did was horrible, but is it bad enough to make him suffer for eons? No. He was Human. Humans make mistakes. Besides, if we're assuming the afterlife is real, wouldn't the Holocaust victims be THANKING him for bringing them to eternal bliss or whatever? Isn't that what the fundies go on about all the time? Oops, LOL, I just realized I'm ranting. Post over.

old comment by Typhon

From the answers:

"God is kind; He gives us what we ask for.

"If we ask for eternity with no relationship with Him, He gives us that.

"Why blame God for man's choices?"

Using the "God as parent" analogy, and assuming this specific God, if any, exists - are you telling me that if a child (which we all are compared with God) tells his parents "You're not my parents and I never want to talk to you again" following a horrible misunderstanding and a fight, they should "accept his wishes", never talk to him again and kick him out of the house, unless he relents within, say, 3 minutes? 3 minutes is a lot of time, considering a lifetime compared with an eternity =~0.

old comment by David B.

It's worse than that.

You can't justify an eternal reward for finite good either. Heaven is equally as 'unjust' as Hell, but in the recipient's favour.

Imagine an atheist and a theist die and go to Heaven, the greatest theme park imaginable with infinite rides, sublime refreshments and absolutely no queuing. Both are given guides, gifts and the obligatory halo and wings.

Only the atheist's halo is only 99% as shiny than the theist's, and her wings carry her between rides only 99% as fast as her friend.

So she now gets to spend eternity being fed, watered and entertained by sights and thrills beyond imagining, but with fractionally longer gaps between them, while fractionally less brilliantly dressed (halo fashion is a big thing in Heaven).

In comparison to the theist, our hypothetical atheist in Heaven is being infinitely punished. An eternity of minute delays and miniscule unfashionableness sums to infinite deficit. She starts off slightly less favoured than her friend and the gap only ever grows, over an eternity her reward will grow to become infinitely less than his. Even the mildest punishment times infinity is an infinite punishment, to have someone burning forever, in unimaginable torment, forever, is just a childish revenge fantasy.

Hell could be a paradise beyond comprehension, just as long as Heaven was a slightly better one.

Eternal Punishment is an oxymoron.
A ‘punishment’ is applied to a person to curb future behavior. When i did things my parents did not like, i got punished. And eventually stopped doing those things. Or i stopped getting caught, one or the other.

Spanking, grounding, loss of allowance, loss of trips, loss of presents, on through loss of liberty, loss of privileges, garnished wages, even jail time are all applied so that you can rejoin society (or class, or the crew, or the team) and not do bad.
The afterlife is eternal. We don’t come back to Earth. We will never again have a chance to commit most sins.
We’re in the afterlife with God, we’ll never have a chance to worship in a hindu temple or a mormon tabernacle.
We are celestial beings, we will not be able to make idols.
There’s no way to lie about worshiping God.
There’s nothing different about the Sabbath to keep it holy. We don’t do work, we don’t eat food, we don’t need a potty. Our immortal being is not going to be subject to murder. I doubt we’ll have the equipment to commit adultery.
Why are we being punished?
I mean, sure, i questioned God’s existence, but once i woke up in front of him, I never did that again.
I killedthe neighbor for practicing the violin, but I’ll never be able to kill again.
Whether i’m in Heaven or Hell, it’s permanent and i’ll never be tested to see if i ‘learned my lesson’ and the punishment was successful.

Suzie Que #fundie answers.yahoo.com

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