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[Bohandas]

I believe that in Latin the term used was "Infernus".

[GlyphGryph]

Edit:  Ninjaed by a functionally equivalent but briefer post.

The original Sheol of the bible is a bit different from the modern hell, though. It was a place to which both the wicked and righteous went after death, and wasn't really that bad.

This quote
"And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
explicitly refers to Gehenna, though, not Sheol - and Gehenna was explicitly a place for the wicked. Of course, biblically, everything related to Gehenna is up in the air. For one, it's an actual physical location people were physically able to visit. Two, it is stated that god will NOT condemn you to Gehenna for eternity, and that the maximum sentence is a year. Though I think that's only Jewish tradition, not something necessarily applicable to Christians. Of course, this might have meant that sinners could be punished by literally keeping them in Gehenna for a year before returning to society, I'm not sure. Your other quote refers to the same place.

However, the bible makes clear this is not so much a place for the dead (that's Sheol) as it is a place for the wicked.

Not really going anywhere with this, I just enjoy discussing christian mythology.

[Bohandas]

And then add into the mix this passage from Ecclesiastes:

"1 For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God: no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them. 2 All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath. 3 This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.  4 For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5 For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. 6 Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.[/i]"

[EnigmaticHat]

I'm... honestly not sure if my original post was clear or not.  There seems to be much not getting of what I meant, but mainly by one person, so I can't be sure.  Looking back, I may have stated my idea in a weird way, it was worded as a question but didn't really work as one, and the whole thing was pretty roundabout.  So I'll try to be direct and just state the issue that I'm wrestling with.  I have too many research projects to do one here, I have done some cursory searches on each of my points and they seem to rate at least plausible.

As I understand it, Christians believe the ultimate source of morality and truth and the authority of their religion is god.  Yet they have fairly simple evidence that many aspects of their religion were defined by men, not god.  So for example, all of Protestantism.  The reformation was a movement created in response to the action of human Catholics.  Its not like god came down and gave additional information (some protestant movements may have claimed this, but I'm pretty sure many of them didn't).  This means that the religion took a step forward without the intervention of god, aka all the priests that teach the new religion aren't teaching the word of god, they're teaching the word of, say, Luther.  Not civil rights Luther, helped kick off the reformation Luther.  Or maybe they're spreading the word of King Henry, who separated from the Catholic Church to create his church of England, because the pope wouldn't grant him a divorce.  The Church of England that translated the English bible.  Although I believe the bible Lord Bucket quoted was the King James bible, which was the third translation created by the Church of England, and was influenced by the "god is harsh, most of humanity is going to hell, we're going to burn a lot of people to death in the future" Puritans, who very much had a motivation for the bible to include hell.

Or the transition from Judaism to Christianity.  As others have pointed out, there was no hell in the Jewish religion.  Yet they both explicitly worship the same god, and Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism.  Christianity does not explicitly teach that hell was created at some point around the birth of Christ, and the bible you're (probably?  You didn't specify, but it seems like the best bet) using as evidence has references to hell in the old testament.  So either god randomly changed his mind around the point Christianity emerged, or he just randomly only told half the truth to his Jewish followers, or they were for some reason mostly correctly about the whole god thing but wrong about there not being hell.

The basic point I'm trying to make is, it seems clear to me that a lot of modern Christianity was created by humans.  Yet humans don't really have a say in how reality works under Christianity, AND the bible is explicitly true.  And always has been.  Even though it has observably been translated, influenced, derived from at least one other religion, and I'm like 90% sure the catholic church routinely modifies it.  I just don't get it.

Spoiler: disclaimer (click to show/hide)

I was, not really angry, but certainly worked up when I wrote that.  So hopefully it was all coherent and relatively inoffensive.  Oh, and I'm not entirely done confirming everything I remember from history class about King Henry and Judaism, but I'm tired and it all sounds reasonable enough, so I'm hitting post.

I don't normally attach vaguely apologetic notes to things I write, but I'm not sure how I'm coming across here, and would just like to say that I am neither raging nor posting poorly thought out stuff (at least if time spent is a measure of how well thought out a post is).

[Grek]

According to most kinds of christian theology, when you die you are either judged worthy, in which case you go live with God in heaven, or you aren't in which case you don't get to go live with God and end up in hell (aka sheol) instead. This is consistant with the jewish tradition that every person that dies before the messiah comes waits in sheol (aka hell) until the messiah comes and God starts judging the dead. Supposedly living in sheol as a sinful spirit forever and not being let into heaven on the day of judgement is equivalent to eternal damnation.

The big contention between christianity and judaism and is over whether Jesus was in fact the messiah and, therefore, whether the judgement of the dead has begun. The jews claim the Jesus was not the messiah, while the chirstians say he was.

[Starver]

Although that does make one wonder why God would create us with a different natural inclination to morality than His own.  If you do subscribe to the idea that He's not the nicest guy around then that has unfortunate implications.  Setting us up to fail, basically.

I'm a page behind the current final posts, at this point, so apols if I'm out of turn...  However.

If a Creator set up a perfect society that did not have the possibility of disappointing Him, then would the end result be worthwhile?  (In the grand scheme of things, where He has a purpose beyond the wit of His agents on Earth.)

There are some varieties of patience (the card games) in which success is guaranteed (and yet don't even handily reshuffle the deck for you to play a different game of patience with).  And you don't play SimCity (or especially DF) with the expectation that all will turn out fine.  Scale up to another meta-level above our own, and maybe this is similar to what it's all about.  (Sorry, just realised I'm still stuck on the "Universe is a game, played by <Whoever>" meme, but it just works for the analogy.)

Anyway, he's not setting us up to fail, but obviously he'll work with our foibles (which are necessary in order to get the best result in the end), and necessarily there's risk (or even certainty) that these foibles can create failure conditions (at least as regards individuals).


Another reason why I'd say that if there is a creator, something like evolution is something He'd create.  Because setting all creatures up in perfect and perpetual balance (while possible, for Him, although it really doesn't look like He's letting it stay balanced) isn't as 'neat' a solution as letting the dynamics and (unstable) equilibriums happen.  Even if He already knows how it will end up.  But that's another line of philosophy, separate to this thread's original premise.

[Starver]

It doesn't make sense to claim that the Bible plagiarized material from them, when it had been written a thousand years earlier.

Although severe editing was done to large parts during eras that were definitely post-Christ.

(OTOH, it doesn't invalidate it, or mean that totally new concepts are necessarily imported (translation biases aside).  It does mean that there's room for any divine qualities to the work to have been remoulded by human agencies with less than divine purpose in the interim.  And this is NT only.  OT works were themselves doubtless refined and collated over the time leading up to some arbitrary point where they were made immutable (again, translation issues aside).)

((OTOOH, it is also possible to point out that any God worth his pillar-of-salt is going to be able to direct (and mis-direct, as necessary) the mortals concerned into creating the work He wants.  Secondarily, that He knows (or causes) what social and linguistic changes will occur to invalidate or bring into validation a given moment in time's interpretation of the current set of Holy Words.  Personally, I'd go for the various OT (and Koranic) dietary restrictions and the like being relevant for the times in the desert, but that we should realise that this is behind us now, with modern food preparation and storage technologies, etc, whether they were the words of God or of wise men who had worked out some things and derived workable (if obscure of purpose) practices in others.  As an example.  But of course the devout (or those still living in such conditions) are free to continue to obey these as far as I'm concerned.))

[Starver]

The jews claim the Jesus was not the messiah[...]

...just a very naughty boy?

(Sorry, couldn't resist!  )

[Telgin]

If a Creator set up a perfect society that did not have the possibility of disappointing Him, then would the end result be worthwhile?  (In the grand scheme of things, where He has a purpose beyond the wit of His agents on Earth.)

This is generally the justification I see, yeah.  For a human, setting up a world where everything is perfect would probably be boring.  Testing something in this manner is also reasonable for a human: we don't know the outcome and thus need a means of testing a "creation".  God does know, but that's getting sidetracked a bit toward a later point you make.

There are some varieties of patience (the card games) in which success is guaranteed (and yet don't even handily reshuffle the deck for you to play a different game of patience with).  And you don't play SimCity (or especially DF) with the expectation that all will turn out fine.  Scale up to another meta-level above our own, and maybe this is similar to what it's all about.  (Sorry, just realised I'm still stuck on the "Universe is a game, played by <Whoever>" meme, but it just works for the analogy.)

Maybe?  A scenario in which everything was guaranteed to turn out alright for everyone eventually, but for which some people took longer, would be one more acceptable interpretation of Christianity for me.  If you make some mistakes in life, you pay a proportional penalty for it later but in the end no finite sin here ends up with infinite punishment.  I could sort of live with that.

And while I don't play SimCity or DF expecting things to work out perfectly, I play them for entertainment because I don't know what the end result will be (although I do my best to get the best result for my citizens as possible) and the twists along the way are interesting and refreshing.  God does know the ultimate outcome of everything, which casts doubt in my mind on why He even bothers.

Anyway, he's not setting us up to fail, but obviously he'll work with our foibles (which are necessary in order to get the best result in the end), and necessarily there's risk (or even certainty) that these foibles can create failure conditions (at least as regards individuals).

Well... He's arguably been setting us up to fail since the Garden of Eden.  There was absolutely no need to put the Tree of Knowledge within the grasp of humans if He didn't want us messing with it.  He knew what would happen.  Then He tossed us out and punished us for it.

Is there an ulterior motive for it?  Perhaps.  Maybe it's like you say:

Another reason why I'd say that if there is a creator, something like evolution is something He'd create.  Because setting all creatures up in perfect and perpetual balance (while possible, for Him, although it really doesn't look like He's letting it stay balanced) isn't as 'neat' a solution as letting the dynamics and (unstable) equilibriums happen.  Even if He already knows how it will end up.  But that's another line of philosophy, separate to this thread's original premise.

Who knows?  Maybe the entire point of this is to test individuals or humanity as a whole for some other purpose that we can't comprehend.  Maybe the entire purpose is to drive humanity toward some set goal.  I don't really buy the explanation though, since it falls back onto the premise of blind faith.  It's irrefutable however.

Yet, there is one thing that does bug me about it all, and that's what you mention in your second to last sentence: determinism.  If God really does know the ultimate outcome of everything, why does He bother?  He really ought to just skip over these parts, you know?

[Cthulhu]

I don't really understand why a transcendent and omnipotent being would have a need to make a universe with flaws and foibles.  I really don't understand why a transcendent and omnipotent being would have a need to make anything.  It's a funny ontological trick you can play on those logic-parlor-trick apologists to point out that a perfect being by definition wants for nothing, and has no reason to do or make anything. 

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Indeed. A perfect being would, by definition, want for nothing.

[Telgin]

I've used that argument in the past, but really I've just come to the conclusion that God can't be perfect if half of what is in the Bible is true.  Mostly for the reasons you mention.  He is definitely lacking in some quality if He found a need to create us, put us through this test of life, and show other qualities that I would consider imperfect (jealousy for example).

One might could argue that He is perfect in a sense we can't comprehend, but... I don't really think so.

[GlyphGryph]

"perfect being" is an utterly meaningless term, so I'm having trouble understanding how you can make claims about such a being (though I find it easy to understand why you wouldn't understand his behaviour).

But seriously, what is a perfect being? Or even more basic, something that should be far else contentious, what is a perfect shape? A perfect animal? A perfect rock?

God is by definition perfect if he is unique. But the word doesn't really hold a lot of meaning in that situation. He is what he is, he is complete, he is the ideal.

None of this implies he couldn't get kicks out of creating the universe, does it?

[Starver]

Can I just make a minor correction to what I said (removing an apparent equivalence between two paradigms that should not have been there)....

There are some varieties of patience (the card games) in which success is guaranteed (and yet don't even handily reshuffle the deck for you to play a different game of patience with), but you don't tend to play those very much or very often.  And you don't play SimCity (or especially DF) with the expectation that all will turn out fine. [...]

Other than (or, perhaps now, because of) that minor correction of (intended) meaning, I think we're umm.. singing from the same hymn sheet?   Something like that.  The same nitpicks basically apply (from my side, as well as yours), but then we are talking about the ineffable, so I won't even pretend to know how to eff what it's all about!


(Can we also say that where we perceive God to be imperfect, it's possibly because we are imperfectly understanding what it means to be God, and how His actual perfection is manifest?  Although that's introducing something non-Occam to the equation.  Or, like I may have said, the Holy Book (whichever one is correct, or whichever subset of the entire collection of possibilities is supposedly correct at the very most) is probably mired by mortal imperfections in interpretation and propagation.  [Yes, I'd go along with GG's "perfect being" being meaningless, if only because that's a human term for something that aint human, "us being 'in his image', etc" aside...])

((NB: I still go by the Universe As Dumb Machine theory, in case anyone thinks I've gone all spiritual.  But I won't let that stop me considering the possibly existing 'Him' when discussing His hypothetical nature.  And, no, that isn't me going all Pascalean, either, and hedging my bets.  He/She/It should still take me as I am, and I'm aiming no further than having a decent living legacy.))

[GlyphGryph]

If the ideal is god, and we are based on him, he is by definition perfect and we are imperfect, no matter what his actual traits are.

He can't become any more god.

That is the simplest possible way to interpret his perfection, really.