Like Papillon Noir said, our current Western concept of Hell has evolved, & taken left & right turns. From the Torah or Old Testatment, 'Sheol' is a holding place for all the dead. Then there's Jerusalem's Gehenna, where trash was burned, is the root for Hades, as translated Hell in the New Testament. As Aperion says, there is often poor translation & understanding of the texts & context. Then Dante introduced a whole new paradigm of Hell & the Devil.

I'm drawn to study major belief systems, listen & respect others' beliefs, perspectives & rights.

Personally, I think Hell is in some ways close to the book Novakru referenced: The Great Divorce. I believe I didn't create myself, others, or existence, nor do I sustain it; & that God did, & does. I believe God will resurrect everyone, & our lives accounted. I believe those that acknowledge & honor God as creator/sustainer of existence, life, love; & honors God as God, they resurrect to a new life, body & home with God's presence, love, peace & joy. There we continue to mature, learn, love & live life. I think those who decide to reject God resurrect without benefits God provides. This is Hell.

'Hell' is 'forever' in the sense it will remain the same without God. God will not allow one to forever take the benefits from God without honoring & establishing a good love relationship with God, & while choosing to do all manner of cruelty & evil. I believe God places limitations & establishes justice. It's 'torment' in the sense it's without God's benefits, presence & love. Not Dante's view that someone is physically torturing someone for eternity. (Incidentally, that's not in the Bible.)

Exactly all that is, when & how, I don't know. I believe all this is out of my control, & I trust my God who created love & justice will work it out with love & justice. I derive my beliefs from sources & experiences.

Is it really a quandry that is necessary to resolve through a leap of faith though?


What are the benefits you believe 'God' would provide?

In the context of the theory Cheebacheeba was describing, I explained how I figured it contradicted a mutually exclusive logic, which I called a quandary. The logic I lay out is objective reality is constant because it's from a single constant source.

I'm applying my life long experience, the evidence of this existence, to our speculation of what lies after death. It's odd you would label that a 'leap of faith', but Cheebacheeba's speculation that it's different that current reality (as I understood it) you did not consider a 'leap of faith'. Is it because I mentioned 'God' that makes 'leap of faith' come to mind?

I mean, clearly stating there's no hell or no god, when we can't know if either exist, is a blunt statement of faith/belief. Obviously we all come to conclusions based on the totality of our life experiences. I take it 'leap of faith' didn't enter your mind when you read those responses. Or did it? Kind of interesting, if I was understanding you correctly. = )

I'll try to be brief with a huge subject. The benefits God would provide are: life and love itself; the ability to love; resurrection after death to a home God created for me; a continued loving relationship with God; God's protection from various evils, inabilities or shortcomings of others that would otherwise result in my destruction, corruption, isolation, etc; reunion with family and friends; continuing to discover the nature of reality, God, maturing in love, knowledge and wisdom. My life long experiences, God, inward recognitions and numerous sources provide me understanding and faith in these things. Numerous sources describe God's character (I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness, for in these I delight.) (And we know & rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way love is made complete among us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgement.), and God/Yeshua's promises (I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand), and that God has the power to fulfill what God declares.

Not believing in a god isn't something that requires any leap of faith though, there's no evidence to suggest there is a god that is tangible or quantifiable. By believing in a god there is a leap of faith or an attempt to fill in the gaps that science can't.

Sounds awesome but I would need some sort of evidence to support any of those claims... If someone offered me all that I'd assume it was some sort of dodgy pyramid scheme and I was gonna get fleeced when it was time to cash out.

*I know religion is a bitch of a subject and incredibly emotive so no offense is intended with anything I say.*

No offense taken. I often learn the most when I speak with someone with different views. We should all be able to talk about important things with good will. Free marketplace of ideas. Belief systems are emotive, I've noticed, both for and against things.

What I describe does sound good. You want proof? I think the most important thing to remember is it's not about information or about what I state I believe. It's about relationship, trusting in who God is. Relationship begins with recognition, then trust, then experience.

Think of a loved one: wife, mother/father, friend. How can you know if they really love you? Can you know? If they love you, and you don't believe it, does that make their love false? If they love you, and you don't trust it, you can't receive it. If there's no trust, forgiveness, there's no relationship. I have experience with a stone outside, but I don't have a relationship with it.

There's evidence everywhere. You could ask for proof, and some powerful being, or illusionist, could perform these amazing things before you. But after you saw it, you'd realize there's other ways to explain it. And it doesn't mean you can 'trust' that person. There's a trust in someone, through relationship, through experience.

Yes, not believing there is a God doesn't require a leap of faith... believing there is no god does requires a leap of faith. Those are two distinctly different things. Please don't confuse with semantics.

An agnostic says he doesn't know if there is a god or not. He neither believes there is, nor isn't, a god.

Both a theist and an atheist believe in something they can't prove empirically. Experiences can lead one to conclude one thing or another. In the way you can't see the wind, but can see the effects of the wind -- one may believe there's a God based on what they perceive are the effects of God, or the artwork as evidence of the artist. But can a human, who cannot know everything, know God doesn't exist? I think you have to believe God doesn't exist. Which the bigger belief leap?

That seems like a long winded way to say you have no empirical evidence to back up the idea of a supreme creator... You compared God to the wind but where we can quantify and measure the effects of the wind we have to deal in perception and feelings when trying to measure the effects of god. I'd say that comparing god to the wind simply because we can see neither feels like a weak argument considering we have so much evidence to demonstrate the existance of wind.

In terms of the whole leap of faith, I think I used a poor term there since by your logic everything we do is a leap of faith unless it can be proven to the nth degree. I would simply rather work on weight of evidence. An atheist believes there is/are no god/s. There is no tangible evidence to support the idea of a creator and there is no more reason to believe in a god than there is to believe we are all figments of our own imagination. Could atheists be wrong? Of course, but the acceptance of that doesn't make one an agnostic.

There is as much eidence to suggest we are all living in the Matrix as there is to believe in a supreme creator, but if I were to postulate that as a legitimate theory people would rightly call me a muppet...

Stalker, from your last post, I can see you'd like to debate the subject. I was just trying to answer your questions. As you can tell, I do like to exchange ideas and apply critical thinking to subjects oftentimes. Regarding this particular subject (God, or my belief in God), I'm spirited to answer anyone's questions, but specifically not compete in a debate (especially cause it's off the thread's hell topic).

If anyone would prefer, on any subject (or debate) I am happy to respond to anyone's PMs (Private Messages).

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Wasn't really looking for a protracted debate either, and any observations weren't really directed at you specifically. Just trying to throw another opinion into the dialouge that was unfolding... Don't think we drifted too far off the original topic anyway.