Why would God send good people to Hell just because they dont believe he exists?

yaddoe said:

God promises that he will and can reveal all things unto us.

"It is given unto many to know the mysteries of God; nevertheless they are laid under a strict command that they shall not impart only according to the portion of his word which he doth grant unto the children of men, according to the heed and diligence which they give unto him.

10 And therefore, he that will harden his heart, the same receiveth the lesser portion of the word; and he that will not harden his heart, to him is given the greater portion of the word, until it is given unto him to know the mysteries of God until he know them in full.

11 And they that will harden their hearts, to them is given the lesser portion of the word until they know nothing concerning his mysteries; and then they are taken captive by the devil, and led by his will down to destruction. Now this is what is meant by the cchains of hell."
~Alma Chapter 12

I believe God makes it possible.

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Great, God reveals all his mysterious knowledge to people that were never veritably documented and that can't actually use their knowledge to help other people, since God told them to.

And then, of course, God sends everybody he didn't grant knowledge to to Hell, because they weren't "perfect". Nice.

This is precisely why salvation by faith is so unfair. Blind faith is unreasonable. You can only live on what you know.

Lets look at the word hell.
It comes from the word Sheol
which means a waiting place of the departed spirits.
What are they waiting for? The resurrection.
Will they be miserable after the resurrection?
No.

what did that scripture say? God grants men knowledge, and as they harden not their heart he grants them more knowledge. Line upon line and precept upon precept. I don't find it a wonder at all that the majority of the 12 apostles today are Ivy League scholars.

DandyAndy said:

Not at all - like I said, God didn't make the choice to allow sin into Creation - He had to make the choice available because true love involves a choice.

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ok so if we are going to equate choice with love
why is it a loving parent would never put their child in harms way?
if you tell your child whom you know is not capable of understanding the dire consequences of their actions and expect them to understand, you are ultimately responsible for that child.

if your argument is that a loving god provided a choice, i would argue god knew they didn't understand the consequences of their choice, therefore god is responsible for a & e's choice.
besides the fact that there was a choice (more like an ultimatum really) to begin with indicates boundaries; love is boundless, freedom is boundless.

We can cure diseases for the same reason a tree can lose some limbs in an ice storm and grow new ones or any other example that I can't think of right now -

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disease, you say is the result of original sin. once sin enters the world sin kills everything. lets look at sin real closely here. knowledge is sin.
we cannot help but know things, therefore we have no other choice than to sin...
a rule man made up.

we can cure the diseases but we can't seem to cure the hatred or the bigotry or the violence and we certainly can't cure death.

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once again this is a rule man made up to make sense of these exact things.

Not sick, lets say a weak immune system. We aren't guilty of sin until we commit a sin, which involves us making a choice. A lot of people don't demand to be healed - they like doing their own thing and don't want anything to do with God. Some people realize they are sick and want a cure.

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are you saying that it is possible for one to live without sin...?

I agree God knew what was going to happen. I disagree that God intended for us to suffer. God intended for us to freely choose to love Him and accept the love He gives us.

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think about that for a second, "freely choose". i see this as an inaccurate way of explaining gods love. 1st off when someone is free they do not acknowledge ultimatums...everything is yes. watch a baby figure the world out...anything goes... 2ndly an ultimatum isn't a choice and it certainly isn't free because it manipulates a certain response. 3rdly how could a & e understand the ultimatum if they didn't understand choice?

I wish I could come up with a good metaphor...Ok, you know that if you have a child that child will suffer, get hurt, probably have its heart broken, get sick and then die - so why would you have the child?

1) Because you have a great love for the child because it is yours - you created it.
2) Because you want the child to experience all the beautiful things in life, you want the child to grow up and be a good person, you want to give life because you have so much love.
3) It's a two way street - if you had a kid just to have a slave and forced it to do everything you say and kept it chained up in the closet until it died and brainwashed it to believe everything you said, there would be NO LOVE. But if you teach the kid, discipline the kid, love the kid and then at 18 or 21 let him live his own life in the world, he can choose to never come back to you or speak to you again - or he could come visit and call and hang out and reciprocate the love you gave him - that is real love.

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this is the god of the bible....
so are you saying a parent does these things based on the hope that their love for their child is reciprocated and if it's not, have nothing to do with them? or do they do it because there is no other choice but to do these things because of their love for their child in spite of the possibility that their child doesn't return their love...a loving parent will always love their child...no time limits involved, no ultimatums and it certainly doesn't depend on it being reciprocated

So why did God make humanity, knowing they would turn from Him, suffer, get sick, get hurt, have broken hearts and then die?
See 1, 2 and 3 above. He hoped they would come back to Him - and He knew that X amount of them would.

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and if they didn't come back to him he would have nothing to do with them...
god is not a loving parent....god is full of ultimatums

DandyAndy said:

So why did God make humanity, knowing they would turn from Him, suffer, get sick, get hurt, have broken hearts and then die?
See 1, 2 and 3 above. He hoped they would come back to Him - and He knew that X amount of them would.

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And the rest would rot in hell, just as he knew they would before creating them.

If I knew that me making sex with a girl is going to create a child that will hate me his whole life and then spent eternity in hell I won´t have him. I will just have the ones that I know will love me at least most of the time and eventually go to heaven by their own free will.

By not creating those who will choose to be bad, God isn´t taking away anybody´s free will, because the people he hasn´t created yet, don´t exist for the posibility to be unfair to them tobe able to arise.

wayward_teen said:

This is precisely why salvation by faith is so unfair.

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Life is unfair, who made the mistake of leading you to believe there is this abundance of fairness on this earth?

Blind faith is unreasonable.

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It is a requirement you can accept or reject. It's your decision.

You can only live on what you know.

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Says who?


I believe your concept of the world is dependant on what you can relate to with your senses. Spirituality and faith require more from you than this tangible world around us can provide.

The thing is, your almost hostile about this. Why do you care what others believe?

Why would an all powerful God give a rats butt what you think?

He is offering a gift you can accept or reject.

Why would any reasonable person worry what a God they don't believe in is going to do with them anyway?

The issue here is, some people don't like what others believe. We have religious freedom in this country, deal with it.

Reverend Rick said:

Life is unfair,

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And God is Life

DandyAndy said:

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crocusj said:

Anyway, this commandment that says I cannot drive at 120mph. We seem to have worked this out for ourselves and if social animals other than us can evolve rules with which to live by without a god why cannot we?

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DandyAndy said:

You are free to believe that but I don't buy it and I don't think it works - at best that would lead to a majority rules and the others that don't agree with it are either excluded or exterminated, at best leading to war and terror and death - which is what we have right now. And that's the BEST case scenario the way I see it - we need some kind of outside morality given us by an outside force to keep us in line and on the same 'level' so to speak. When you put people on different levels, when they determine their own worth and their own right and wrong, you get genocide and the holocaust - but if we make up the rules, I guess that would be ok, so long as the majority go along with it.

That's not for me.

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crocusj said:

Well, I have had penalty points on my licence and nobody has threatened to exterminate me, 120mph is dangerous and therefore anti social. How hard is that?What outside morality is this of which you speak?

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DandyAndy said:

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You can all you like but before you do; if the need and therefore the evolution of morality does not have its origins in human social structure then please enlighten me.
As for outside morality (whatever that is, I assume it would be yours) I see no historical reason to accept that this would put everyone on the "same level". Christianity had an exclusive free run at this in the past and all we got was the brutality, torture and extermination of the Dark Ages. What makes you think it should be given another chance now? There are many theocracies in our world at present, few have an immigration problem. The USA and the UK invaded Iraq at the behest of two devout Christian leaders, indeed Tony Blair when asked about how his conscience would deal with the body bags said that God would judge him - well, no He wont, the people who elected him reserve that right. And that's what democracy means. Majority rule does not have to "lead to a majority rules and the others that don't agree with it are either excluded or exterminated, at best leading to war and terror and death - which is what we have right now." That happens when the majority are ruled,not the same thing.
Good luck on finding agreement between all parties on this supernatural morality code, hope it doesn't lead to a fight. You may need an outside "force" to keep you in line, not all of us do.

crocusj said:

You can all you like but before you do; if the need and therefore the evolution of morality does not have its origins in human social structure then please enlighten me.
As for outside morality (whatever that is, I assume it would be yours) I see no historical reason to accept that this would put everyone on the "same level". Christianity had an exclusive free run at this in the past and all we got was the brutality, torture and extermination of the Dark Ages. What makes you think it should be given another chance now? There are many theocracies in our world at present, few have an immigration problem. The USA and the UK invaded Iraq at the behest of two devout Christian leaders, indeed Tony Blair when asked about how his conscience would deal with the body bags said that God would judge him - well, no He wont, the people who elected him reserve that right. And that's what democracy means. Majority rule does not have to "lead to a majority rules and the others that don't agree with it are either excluded or exterminated, at best leading to war and terror and death - which is what we have right now." That happens when the majority are ruled,not the same thing.
Good luck on finding agreement between all parties on this supernatural morality code, hope it doesn't lead to a fight. You may need an outside "force" to keep you in line, not all of us do.

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spot on

Saying there is no hell is saying there is no spirit world.

yaddoe said:

Saying there is no hell is saying there is no spirit world.

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Why is that?

yaddoe said:

Saying there is no hell is saying there is no spirit world.

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...And? What's the problem?

yaddoe said:

Saying there is no hell is saying there is no spirit world.

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i get it. you need to be coerced into being a good person...

because Sheol (Hell) is the spirit world.

yaddoe said:

because Sheol (Hell) is the spirit world.

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"Hell" really just means the ground.

logician said:

"Hell" really just means the ground.

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Really? Where'd you get that definition from?

logician said:

"Hell" really just means the ground.

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If you can find me somewhere that actually says that, then that'll be the first time I've ever heard that one, ever.

Assuming logician means underground, he is partly correct. There are three different Greek words translated "hell". One of them [hades] is simply defined as a shallow "grave"

i will answer the main question of the thread from my islamic point of view
and sorry for bad english

1-first of all god is totally just
2-when messengers warn you that you will be burnt in hell if you don't believe in god,just think alittle that they maybe telling the truth,because it's impossible that god warned like this while he didn't send enough messengers and enough proofs
3-god never punish who didn't be enough warned and enough messaged
4-it's very important point,we don't believe in god because we like how he treats believers and nonbeliervers,we believe in god according to proofs only,i mean this point shouldn't be important when you are choosing your path,because god clearly didn't tell us all things,there are much things we are not informed,but what we were informed about is totally enough to believe,forexample,when god talked to Moses (peace be upon him) see what happened

AL-ARAF,143
(When Moses came to the place appointed by Us, and his Lord addressed him, He said: "O my Lord! show (Thyself) to me, that I may look upon thee." Allah said: "By no means canst thou see Me (direct); But look upon the mount; if it abide in its place, then shalt thou see Me." When his Lord manifested His glory on the Mount, He made it as dust. And Moses fell down in a swoon. When he recovered his senses he said: "Glory be to Thee! to Thee I turn in repentance, and I am the first to believe.)

so god's appearnce still unknown for Moses (peace be upon him) but he saw the mount collapsing and that's enough to believe,and if he (peace be upon him) insisted to see god for becoming a believer then he was deserving punishment

5-in word,it's god's order not ours,that's not something to disprove god's existence,wisdom,or justice....

mohammed_beiruti said:

do you need God?

I mean, can you handle matters by your self without God?

If so, in the hereafeter , do you think you may handle by your self and avoid Hell.

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and this is a very good point too