Averroes
Active Member
I'm sure this has been discussed here already, but I wanted to discuss the issue I personally have with the concept of Hell. This ethical issue is perhaps one of the ethical issues the Abrahamic faiths have concerning God's love and compassion for humankind. With the exception of Judaism, which from my understanding does not have a conceptual belief in hell, my main focus will be towards Christianity and Islam.
Because this is about the problem of hell, it is therefore impossible to not discuss the issues of predestination and freewill but I would hope for the duration of this discussion/debate we can not go so deep into freewill/predestination argument and stay focus on the topic. One of the most peculiar things that occur to me about hell is that hell is considered a "just punishment" for those that transgress against God. However, one of the main issues that I find in hell is that because humans have a limited lifespan, humans therefore can only do a finite number amount of sin yet, upon death humans who transgress greatly, suffer infinite torment. I believe there was a philosopher who coined the term " La duración del Infierno" or that no transgression warrants infinite punishment because, there is no such thing as infinite transgression.
In this particular ideology shouldn't punishments in their duration fit the actual transgression, and not some unchanging present {e.g. infinity}?
Both Christianity and Islam postulate that sinning is avoidable, thus is the reason why God shows mercy upon sinning and since this is the case this is where we come to the problem of determinism. Since God knows before we do when, where, and why we are going to sin and knowing that Hell is very painful why doesn't God stop us? Violation of freewill? Well, if determinism is true then we never had a will to be free to begin with. But because Islam and Christianity defines "righteousness" not by simple moral acts of altruism but through simple moral acts along with the theological cognizance that there is One God, and that the person must too, acknowledge their respective prophet be it Jesus or Muhammad.
Another problem with the aforementioned two divine figures is that what defines true belief, and if this is defined how does this belief equate to morality? I see divine mercy not only as a conditional setting by which those of us who wish to not be eternally tortured forced to choose but a conditional setting by which these two famous religions deity sets. How is this god merciful when I am essentially forced to do good since I know hell is unpleasant? Basically, I am neither free to do right or wrong and the actions that I determined to be free are nothing more than a chain of determinants based on previous influences. Basically I am doomed whether I like it or not.
I apologize if I kind of covered several topics at once in several paragraphs but without trying to sound wordy I was trying to cover all my points. Please let me know if there is any confusion.
Because this is about the problem of hell, it is therefore impossible to not discuss the issues of predestination and freewill but I would hope for the duration of this discussion/debate we can not go so deep into freewill/predestination argument and stay focus on the topic. One of the most peculiar things that occur to me about hell is that hell is considered a "just punishment" for those that transgress against God. However, one of the main issues that I find in hell is that because humans have a limited lifespan, humans therefore can only do a finite number amount of sin yet, upon death humans who transgress greatly, suffer infinite torment. I believe there was a philosopher who coined the term " La duración del Infierno" or that no transgression warrants infinite punishment because, there is no such thing as infinite transgression.
In this particular ideology shouldn't punishments in their duration fit the actual transgression, and not some unchanging present {e.g. infinity}?
Both Christianity and Islam postulate that sinning is avoidable, thus is the reason why God shows mercy upon sinning and since this is the case this is where we come to the problem of determinism. Since God knows before we do when, where, and why we are going to sin and knowing that Hell is very painful why doesn't God stop us? Violation of freewill? Well, if determinism is true then we never had a will to be free to begin with. But because Islam and Christianity defines "righteousness" not by simple moral acts of altruism but through simple moral acts along with the theological cognizance that there is One God, and that the person must too, acknowledge their respective prophet be it Jesus or Muhammad.
Another problem with the aforementioned two divine figures is that what defines true belief, and if this is defined how does this belief equate to morality? I see divine mercy not only as a conditional setting by which those of us who wish to not be eternally tortured forced to choose but a conditional setting by which these two famous religions deity sets. How is this god merciful when I am essentially forced to do good since I know hell is unpleasant? Basically, I am neither free to do right or wrong and the actions that I determined to be free are nothing more than a chain of determinants based on previous influences. Basically I am doomed whether I like it or not.
I apologize if I kind of covered several topics at once in several paragraphs but without trying to sound wordy I was trying to cover all my points. Please let me know if there is any confusion.
!!!
