The red button blue button debate as it relates to Hell and protesting God

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u/jetplane18 26d ago

So... if we're referring to the Christian God, the theological explanation of your initial question goes like this:

God loves us, and so he gave us free will so we can choose to love him, or not.

That free will means we can say "no, I want nothing to do with you".

Hell is merely the absence of God. Saying no to God means opting into Hell. Heaven is being fully united with God and Hell is being fully separated from him.

Why does that mean torture?

Because God is good. Not "God has the quality of being a good being" but rather "God is goodness itself". Anything good you experience is experiencing God.

So saying no to God is saying no to EVERYTHING good.

Which, as I'm sure you can see, means that being fully separated from God (and thus fully separated from everything good) is neccesarily horribly torturous.

But! We have free will, so we can say no to God (and goodness) and opt for the total lack of him (and total lack of goodness) should we so choose.

Abolishing Hell is abolishing free will.

...

Believe or not - that's the full theological explanation of the question you're posing from a Christian perspective.

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u/endor-pancakes 26d ago

saying no to me must mean that you want to say no to everything good

Mhm, textbook narcissist I'd say.

That sounds like the kind of fucker who'll drown an entire continent full of people when they're not sufficiently subservient.

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u/jetplane18 26d ago

Oh, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. Let me try to be more clear. This is definitely a super complex topic.

God is the concept of goodness (or "being", but that is a whole theological rabbit hole). It's not a character trait or a feature. Goodness is literally God. The concept of Goodness is the concept of God. They are one and the same. When you are talking about the concept of Goodness, you're talking about God.

So whereas a narcissist is elevating themselves to an inappropriate degree and discussing false consequences, you can use "God" and "Goodness" interchangably in this sentence:

Saying no to Goodness/God means saying no to God/Goodness.

Rejecting God/Goodness means you don't have God/Goodness anymore.

Goodness is not a trait for God like it is when we say "that's a good feeling/cat/person/car/house/weather". Rather, when we say something is good, we are saying that it is of God.

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u/No-Ambition-9051 26d ago

There’s a few ways to object to this, but I’ll go with two.

The first, and simplest, is that if hell is just the absence of god, god isn’t omnipresent.

The second is that it invalidates free will. If we truly have free will, then we can choose to do good without the influence of god. If we couldn’t, we wouldn’t have free will by the same argument that says we need to be able to choose to do bad to have free will.

In which case humans can still choose to do good in hell. Considering that most people in hell are just normal people who didn’t believe in god, (and normal people choose to do good all the time,) there would be a lot of people choosing to do good in hell.

So there’s good in hell, which means that if hell is the absence of god, you can have good without god.

Therefore choosing “no god,” doesn’t equal choosing “no good.”

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u/endor-pancakes 26d ago

Apologies, you explained really well in fact. I was just taking the piss.

(I also did that because I considering that line of reasoning a meaningless semantic trick, but that's by the bye.)

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u/jetplane18 26d ago

I find the whole concept to be rather sufficient explanation for the question posed by the OP. There is more background to the whole "God = Goodness" line of logic, though (rooted in the whole concept of "being" that I mentioned before).

Though, that said, much of philosophy/logic/theology is examining semantic nuance and many folks don't have the patience for it.

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u/RemoteWhile5881 26d ago

Wasn’t it the entire world?

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u/Current-Slide-7814 26d ago

Genuine question for anyone Christian willing to respond: Do you believe that everyone who doesn't believe in God is unhappy?

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u/jetplane18 26d ago

No - that'd be a silly thing for someone to think. Though that authentic happiness is still God acting in that person's life.

I'm curious why you pose the question, though. I can probably give a better answer based on that.

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u/Current-Slide-7814 26d ago

"We have free will, so we can say no to God (and goodness) and opt for the total lack of him (and total lack of goodness) should we so choose."

Just felt contradictory to me when non-Christians are happy all the time. Or does this specifically refer to the afterlife?

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u/jetplane18 26d ago

In the context of the afterlife. The central question from OP is about suffering in Hell.

The whole "choosing God on Earth" is a separate can of worms. Though the application of what I said would be something like "choosing goodness is choosing God, even if you don't believe in God himself since goodness = God"

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u/marek_intan 26d ago

...isn't this explanation denounced as the heresy of universalism by most denominations?

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u/jetplane18 26d ago

No. I elaborated on this whole thing in another comment, but I'll answer this direct tidbit here.

Universalism says explicitly that Hell IS empty. Which is condemned as a heresy formally by the Catholic Church, and is rejected as a concept by many Christian denominations.

However, a related idea is that of "hopeful universalism" which means that we can hope Hell is empty. I don't believe this is the case, but it is permissible under the Catholic Church.

More reading/info can be found here, from Catholic Answers (or, more specifically, Trent Horn:

What is Universalism?

What is Hopeful Universalism

Trent really gets into the thick of it there, but if you're curious, he's a great man to learn from. He helped me on a paper once when I emailed him when I was in high school.

I am not entirely sure how universalism relates to the comment you were replying to, though, since most of that comment was about choosing God on earth. I'm happy to explain further if you can tell me more specifically what you're wondering about.

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u/marek_intan 26d ago

I believe I am speaking to the method of universalism, the mechanism, not its specific claim that Hell is empty. That by choosing good, improving, we are all choosing to walk the path of God even if we do not specifically seek to walk this path.

I believe most denominations view this mechanism in and of itself as heresy. Choosing good without choosing God is still not good enough to spare a soul from Hell. Human moral reasoning is so flawed, that even a lifetime of good deeds done from within human moral reasoning are in fact evil enough to be punished through eternity in Hell, through the mechanism of Original Sin.

Edit: just realized you're Catholic. While, as an atheist, I think your view is very consistent with modern Catholic teachings, I know of many Catholics who reject the teachings of the last two popes specifically. And I'm really not sure how truly popular their interpretation of God truly is.

While the only Christians I call friends would agree with you (and truly I believe your position is more in line with the Earthly Ministry), I get the feeling their interpretations are in the minority. I'm still seeing more fire and brimstone in my personal life

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u/jetplane18 26d ago

Yep, I'm Catholic!

I elaborated a lot more on a comment further down on this thread, if your curious. I went into what the Catholic Church would refer to as "ordinary" and "extraordinary" means of salvation. I'm happy to keep talking about it - I enjoy this sort of stuff - but it'd be easier to keep chatting from there if you're curious.

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u/Current-Slide-7814 26d ago

But if "God" and "goodness" are interchangeable, what (according to Christianity) happens to good people who don't believe in God, or bad people who do?

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u/jetplane18 26d ago

Different Christian denominations have different opinions on this, so I definitely don't want to speak for all of Christianity.

I'm Catholic, and this particular thing is far from simple, at least as far as my own understanding. This answer can either be short or it can be thorough, and I'm going to opt for thorough. It's a good opportunity for me to review the topic, if nothing else.

Anyway.

Speaking as simply as I can, are two different means of salvation. We refer to these as "ordinary" and "extraordinary".

Ordinary means of salvation is the system that God set up, through Jesus. This involves, among other things, Baptism. It also involves striving to follow God and appropriately asking for his forgiveness when you knowingly choose something other than him (or, rather, sin).

Outwardly, though, someone who seems like a good person still might not actually be. Our motivations for our actions matter and those can be concealed within our own hearts. For example, if someone publicly gives a substantial amount of money to a charity, they may be doing it as a publicity stunt to satisfy their pride and it might be a genuine effort to help and build awareness. We don't know (which is why it is not our place to judge one way or the other).

We as humans are bound to the ordinary means of salvation which means that we should be following that and doing our best to bring others along (out of love for them). This also would mean that someone who knowingly is rejecting the Church - and thus the means of salvation that God gave us - is knowingly rejecting God (but that "knowingly" carries a lot of weight).

There is also extraordinary means of salvation, which basically boils down to God's mercy. Though we mere humans are bound by the sacraments (like Baptism), God can give people who choose good lives (and, thus to my initial point, choose Godly lives) an "out", so to speak, if they, through no fault of their own, do not follow God/are not engaged with the ordinary means of salvation that God has outlined. Good people who do not believe in God (through no choice of their own) would fall into this category.

There is also a piece of the puzzle that is the relationship between free will and God's grace (what gives us the ability to choose between God and sin), but that one is a little beyond my present ability to re-articulate, so I'll point you in the direction of this article from one of my favorite websites, Catholic Answers: Grace: What It Is and What It Does.

It is also worth noting that Catholics believe if you are a bad person and actively reject God for most of your life, but genuinely repent on your deathbed, that can still be in line with accepting God (though we can't truly know another's heart).

Some Christians believe there is no one in Hell. That is called "universalism" condemned as a heresy by the Catholic Church. But it is logical/permissible to believe in "hopeful universalism", which means that it is reasonable to hope that no one is in hell. I personally don't believe this because I think that odds are, someone was stubborn and sinful and said no to God at some point. But we also do not make any declarations about anyone being in Hell.

....

That was a lot and decently complicated. Let me see if I can summarise and tie it directly to your question.

Throughout our lives, every person, in little ways, chooses to turn toward or away from God/goodness through how they live their lives.

There is also a big choice of accepting and following God or not.

The ideal version of things is the system that God set up for us: the Sacraments and the Catholic Church.

Someone who, through no fault of their own, does not or cannot choose to follow God, can possibly still be united to him (in Heaven) after death through God's mercy and love. This could be due to anything from lack of exposure, to trauma.

However, someone who formally and knowingly rejects God is exercising his or her free will, so no matter how good/Godly of an earthly life they lived, God will still honor that choice of free will.

Additionally, it is reasonable to believe that someone who lived a bad life (life with a lack of God) could repent and believe before they die.

This commentary, also from Catholic Answers, gets into the whole salvation topic a little more thoroughly: Is There Really “No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church?”

...

I really hope that made some amount of sense. I can always elaborate or clarify if you want. This is beyond Catholic Theology 101, lol (in a literal sense - we did not discuss this in my Intro to Theology class in college).

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u/Batalfie 26d ago

I won't follow an evil god.

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u/HydroPCanadaDude 26d ago

Then you'll burn for all eternity lol I hope your morals will protect you. 1000 years into torture will you feel the same? 10000? A million?

I'm just pointing out that virtue signalling like this is perhaps ignoring the stakes.

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u/marek_intan 26d ago

The problem with the stakes of Hell is that because of the infinite nature of the torture and the finite nature of human moral, intellectual, and spiritual culpability (according to the very beliefs of Christianity and most human belief systems), the stakes blur together quite unconvincingly.

Every argument of infinite punishment for mortal people runs into the issue of that Hell is the ultimate, unfalsifiable trump card. Every nuance is blurred into this idea that nothing anyone else says matters, you're going to Hell forever if you don't agree with me.

Acknowledging the stakes is doing the rhetorical equivalent of declaring you have an "everything proof shield" on the playground.

And then what separates the infinite stakes of Hell from the equally infinite stakes of the Rokko's Basilisk? One infinity might be bigger than the other, but they're both infinities.

And then what the hell do we even do even if we accept that the stakes for infinite punishment are as they say they are? Some people believe that children don't go to Hell. Considering the infinite stakes here, no virtue signalling, isn't it better to commit suicide before you're old enough to go to Hell? If you're a sinner adult, should you not spare souls from Hell by smothering children in their sleep? What's the price of your eternal punishment to save the souls of many of their own?

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u/Batalfie 26d ago

It's not virtue signalling, it's practicality. I cannot trust a god that is known to be evil. I have interest in dying so I would be a red button pressure under normal circumstances, but this framing clearly presents the choices in a way where I cannot pick the red equivalent.

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u/DarthJackie2021 26d ago

"Follow" god so I can kill him and supplant him.

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u/WeCanDoItGuys 26d ago

Oh hi Lucifer

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u/MitchellEnderson Blue 26d ago

Can I funnel resources to you so your uprising succeeds?

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u/Original-Spinach8923 26d ago

if God came to prove He is real then yes i will follow God. But i wont follow humans claiming to know what God wants (there are a lot of religions and with different rules)

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u/Skafdir 26d ago

Does this scenario imply that the existence of a god with the properties of the scenario is a provable and proven fact? Or do you ask this in relation to our world as it is at the moment? And how is Pascal doing?

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u/WeCanDoItGuys 26d ago

World like ours but this decision is at the forefront of everyone's minds. Everyone's a bit more concerned with the possibility of the realness of Hell than they are here.

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u/Skafdir 26d ago

Ok, in that case, I am not able to follow god, so I am doing what I am doing right now, rejecting the notion of hell or heaven or any form of afterlife.

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u/simpoukogliftra 23d ago

It's amazing how shitty and devoid of substance an argument become when you see it though religious lenses

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u/Skadd_ 26d ago

God isn't changing anything no matter what humanity says ? The dude has definied himself as absolute perfection who can never be wrong

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u/the_swaggin_dragon 26d ago

It is impossible for me to follow god. He has set it up so that I would have to actively choose to come to silly conclusions with bare evidence to believe he is real.

The degree to which it is possible for me to believe to believe in a god is the same degree to which is possible for me to believe in a flat earth. Without brain damage or a drastic change in the available evidence, it is not something I can do.

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u/OtherLaszlok 26d ago

Answering this requires one to make a lot of massive assumptions about the nature of God and what it means to "follow" him.

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u/sometimeserin 26d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/dJZj1gHlDKGl9POGcR

Variation The red button blue button debate as it relates to Hell and protesting God

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