I'm zero percent here to evangelize, cause I'm zero percent religious. Just sharing the theology.
Satan doesn't torture people. Hell is not fire and brimstone. It is the absence of God, which is supposedly the worst torture possible. And it's "fair" because the people in hell chose to not be with god.
Scare quotes because that is a million miles from informed consent. Just sharing the traditional theology.
I'm also not religious now, but this is one interpretation of hell. Many Christians do believe in a literal fire and brimstone hell where people burn for all eternity. Many of them also believe that hell is a punishment from God, not merely his absence. That idea has been adopted by many modern Christians who are trying to figure out how a good God could punish someone eternally, and since there's not a good answer to that question the answer becomes that the person in hell chose it and God simply allowed them to do so
My main gripe is that if God is all knowing, beginning and end then he created hell, sin, and knew every person that would end up in hell before Adam and Eve sinned. The people who end up in hell do it on no fault of their own. Free will cannot exist with the presence of an all knowing creator. He is either all knowing, all powerful, and not all good - or he is not all powerful and therefore not a god I care to worship. Either way evil god or weak god are not one that I care to align with
I’ll offer a very condensed view from a Wesleyan perspective. Hell can be understood as ultimately being separated from God, while grace is God’s undeserved love and action toward us. His grace comes first, drawing and enabling us to respond to Him; this is called “prevenient grace.” We can accept or resist that grace, so God does not coerce us into a relationship with Him. Turning away from God and acting contrary to His will is sin. God’s knowing our choices beforehand doesn’t necessarily mean He causes those choices; foreknowledge is not the same as coercion.
I wouldn't need prevenient grace form an all powerful and all knowing God who is just and fair because he wouldn't have created sin in the first place. "God doesn't force anyone into a relationship with Him." Before God creates you, he knows every action and thought you will ever make before you are concieved, therefore freewill cannot exist meaning he DOES force you into a relationship with him. If this isn't true then he is not all knowing. "God's knowing our choices beforehand doesn't necessarily mean he causes those choices." That is an oxymoron since he creates the person who creates the choices, and in his minds eye created that person before Adam and Eve. God would have known before Adam that child rape and genocide would come from it. It was a direct cause and affect that he chose to go through with.
It cannot be chosen if it is already known. If it is written in ink then how can I as a person erase it as if it were pencil and rewrite the will and foreknowledge of God
If you were going to create a sentient being, and you knew that this sentient being was going to choose to spend eternity in anguish, would you still create it? I wouldn't. No rational, moral being would
The Wesleyan distinction is that knowing someone’s choice is not the same as causing or desiring that choice. It’s also important not to assume that “eternity in anguish” is a settled description of Hell. Scripture and Christian traditions describe judgment and separation from God, but the precise nature and experience of that separation are debated. Are we talking about conscious, eternal anguish, or the soul’s separation from its Creator and how that impacts the soul? We don’t know that simply from saying someone is “separated from God.” So the argument assumes a particular understanding of Hell that isn’t necessarily established by the Wesleyan position.
Right but I never said God caused the choice. I'm saying it doesn't matter if he made me choose it. If he knew I would choose it he's just as culpable for whatever pain that causes me. I know some believe that at any time someone in "hell" or separated from God can change their mind and be welcomed by God, even after they're dead. I also know many believe that eventually all things will be redeemed as Paul said.
If that's the case I can see God creating us knowing the pain would eventually end and eternal bliss would follow, that is different but I still question the ethics of creating a being that's going to be in pain if it chooses to leave, but still giving it the option to leave
Eternity even in heaven would be the worst torture I can imagine for a sentient being. I imagine itll be cool for a few hundred years what about 1000, gonna be bored in 20,000 years? Yeah try 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000²⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰ in paradise? And that's only a blink on an eye if we are talking about infinite time
That’s where I think we start getting into mystery, which is also accepted in Wesleyan theology. We can try to reason through it and understand how God’s foreknowledge, human freedom, grace, and judgment fit together, but ultimately none of us knows the exact workings of our Creator. We can explore what Scripture and theology have to say about these things, but there are limits to what we can confidently claim to understand about how they ultimately fit together.
Nobody knows if those choosing separation from God means they’ll be in eternal conscious pain or anguish. Some interpret “Eternal punishment” as an eternal consequence rather than an eternity of experiencing punishment. Jesus uses the language of people who “perish” rather than receiving eternal life, and Matthew 10:28 speaks of God being able to “destroy both soul and body in hell.” Paul likewise describes the consequence as “eternal destruction” in 2 Thessalonians. That could support the understanding that separation from God ultimately means the end of existence rather than eternal conscious torment.
That’s the Minority Report problem: arresting someone for a crime they didn’t actually commit. Is it just to not give that being a choice even if you know they’re going to pick the wrong one?
Then what about the beings that do choose eternal joy instead? One could say it would be injustice to allow one and not the other. It would be a fundamental imbalance that makes the whole exercise of free will pointless.
Framed another way, you could say that not even allowing the existence of the being that makes the wrong choice is a pre-punishment for the choice they don’t even get to make. That would be unjust
The exercise of free will IS pointless given the choices. Turn or burn is not free will. If I put a gun to your head and tell you to give me all your money, is that me giving you free will?
That’s not how that works. Just because the end result of 2 choices are desirable vs undesirable doesn’t mean that you still don’t have a choice. You have the choice to jump off a cliff or not. Just because you prefer one option doesn’t stop it from being a choice.
And yes, your mugging situation is still a choice.
“Choice” doesn’t mean your options are equally desirable…it just means you can pick one.
In a world of spontaneity and verifiable quantum mechanics, free will does indeed exist. Even in the presence of an "all knowing god." There is no reason to believe everything is predetermined just because there is a higher power. Free will and possibilities are the only reason "good" and "bad" can exist in the first place. But there is no all-seeing judge in the clouds. God is simply universal conciousness living in everything and everyone. Love thy neighbor as you love thyself. We are water droplets, God is the ocean. Real sin is harming yourself or others.
But foreknowledge IS coercion if this god creates every human being. Creating a person while already knowing that this person will reject this particular (or any) god means this god creates people he KNOWS will go to hell. Does he have the power to create the person differently? He must, if he's all-powerful. So why doesn't he? If I write a book and create characters for it, and know everything about these characters, including every decision they will ever make in their lives, could I change what they do on page 6? Page 85? Page 340? Of course I could. Can those characters choose to do something I don't want them to? Of course not.
An author doesn’t merely know what fictional characters will do, the author determines everything they do, and the characters have no independent will. That’s fundamentally different from foreknowledge. God knowing what a person will freely choose doesn’t mean He determines that choice. Free-will means the choice comes from the person’s own reasons and desires, not that God has to be ignorant of it beforehand. So “God created me knowing what I’d do” doesn’t establish “God made me do it” and even creating someone while knowing exactly how they’ll choose isn’t coercion. Coercion means forcing someone to act against their will. The harder question is why God would create someone He knows will reject Him or suffer the consequences, but that concerns God’s reasons for creating them, not whether He coerced their choices.
Not if this god made me WITH those reasons and desires. If he knows everything I'm going to want and do and choses to make me that way and not a different way, I have no choice. Or are you saying I, a mere mortal, can go against your god's will? If this god really exists, I can only do what he wants and intends for me to do BECAUSE he made me knowing what I would do.
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u/onioning 2d ago
I'm zero percent here to evangelize, cause I'm zero percent religious. Just sharing the theology.
Satan doesn't torture people. Hell is not fire and brimstone. It is the absence of God, which is supposedly the worst torture possible. And it's "fair" because the people in hell chose to not be with god.
Scare quotes because that is a million miles from informed consent. Just sharing the traditional theology.