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The Question Islam and Christianity Can't Answer

C

Comradio251

Member
Yes, I have created a question that I have been pondering about for many years which no Christian or Muslim could possibly answer if God is loving. Here is my question to those Muslims and Christians that strongly believe in their faiths.

Question:

Why would an omniscient and loving God knowingly create many people he knows he will one day throw into hell after they get done living out their lives?

Argument:

So, he creates a bunch of people he already knows will go to hell before they even die. What's the point? It's like setting up someone for failure from the very beginning for your own sadistic pleasure and the thrill of it! Why believe in such a God?

Thank you.
 
Saint Frankenstein

Saint Frankenstein

Wanderer From Afar
Premium Member
Comradio251 said:
Yes, I have created a question that I have been pondering about for many years which no Christian or Muslim could possibly answer if God is loving. Here is my question to those Muslims and Christians that strongly believe in their faiths.

Question:

Why would an omniscient and loving God knowingly create many people he knows he will one day throw into hell after they get done living out their lives?

Argument:

So, he creates a bunch of people he already knows will go to hell before they even die. What's the point? It's like setting up someone for failure from the very beginning for your own sadistic pleasure and the thrill of it! Why believe in such a God?

Thank you.
Click to expand...
You can know something will happen without directly causing it. We all exist in a complex web of relationships. In Christianity, the individual soul is given the choice as to how they respond to God's love. In Christian theology, God creates because that is within his nature, as God seeks to be known and have relationships with his creation. God is love, and since love is inherently relational being based on close social bonds, God had to create something other than himself. But as I stated, the soul is given the free will as to how it will respond to God. As with any community, we can refuse relations.

Anyway, that's my understanding of it from Christian theology.

As for Islam, it does not posit that God is "loving" or rather "love" as in Christianity. They approach God from a different paradigm. God is more the Ultimate Reality in Islam and, because of their theological reasonings, they are much more concerned with shirk or putting anything on remotely the same level with God.
 
danieldemol

danieldemol

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Saint Frankenstein said:
You can know something will happen without directly causing it.
Click to expand...
I think you may have missed the subtlty of what the OP was saying.

If you know person A is going to hell before creating them it seems unnecessarily cruel to create them anyway wether there is such a thing as freewill for example existing or not.

If a person new in advance that bringing a child into the world would be the cause of extreme suffering of the child many people would choose not to have a child even if they weren't the cause of the child's suffering.

So the question appears to remain, why would God knowingly do it?
 
C

Comradio251

Member
Saint Frankenstein said:
You can know something will happen without directly causing it. We all exist in a complex web of relationships. In Christianity, the individual soul is given the choice as to how they respond to God's love. In Christian theology, God creates because that is within his nature, as God seeks to be known and have relationships with his creation. God is love, and since love is inherently relational being based on close social bonds, God had to create something other than himself. But as I stated, the soul is given the free will as to how it will respond to God. As with any community, we can refuse relations.

Anyway, that's my understanding of it from Christian theology.

As for Islam, it does not posit that God is "loving" or rather "love" as in Christianity. They approach God from a different paradigm. God is more the Ultimate Reality in Islam and, because of their theological reasonings, they are much more concerned with shirk or putting anything on remotely the same level with God.
Click to expand...
Well, I'm pretty sure God directly caused all of those certain people he already knows will go to hell before they die to exist anyway but for what reason though? God created them, right? If he's omniscient my question still remains. He knowingly did it. I have yet to hear someone tell me God is not omniscient though.

EDIT

As for Islam, I mentioned it because hell exists as well in their religion but for a different reason of course. Yet, both Christianity and Islam have a pretty similar idea. Christianity believes unbelievers go to hell for not acknowledging Jesus and Islam believes unbelievers go to hell for not acknowledging the Prophet Muhammad. If God is omniscient my question applies to both of them.
 
Last edited:
I

Ignatius A

Active Member
Comradio251 said:
Yes, I have created a question that I have been pondering about for many years which no Christian or Muslim could possibly answer if God is loving. Here is my question to those Muslims and Christians that strongly believe in their faiths.

Question:

Why would an omniscient and loving God knowingly create many people he knows he will one day throw into hell after they get done living out their lives?

Argument:

So, he creates a bunch of people he already knows will go to hell before they even die. What's the point? It's like setting up someone for failure from the very beginning for your own sadistic pleasure and the thrill of it! Why believe in such a God?

Thank you.
Click to expand...
Do you think this has never been asked before? Lol

God doesn't throw anyone in hell.
 
I

Ignatius A

Active Member
TagliatelliMonster said:
Right.


Like when I stop you in the streets, put a gun to your head, command you to give me your wallet and then say "don't make me shoot you"

If you refuse to hand over your wallet and then get shot, then you in fact committed suicide. And that was "your choice".

:shrug:
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That's some of the most confused logic I've seen in some time.

If you hold a gun to my head my choice is give you my wallet or not. Your choice is to shoot or not. They aren't dependent on one another.
 
T

Tomef

Active Member
Comradio251 said:
Yes, I have created a question that I have been pondering about for many years which no Christian or Muslim could possibly answer if God is loving. Here is my question to those Muslims and Christians that strongly believe in their faiths.

Question:

Why would an omniscient and loving God knowingly create many people he knows he will one day throw into hell after they get done living out their lives?

Argument:

So, he creates a bunch of people he already knows will go to hell before they even die. What's the point? It's like setting up someone for failure from the very beginning for your own sadistic pleasure and the thrill of it! Why believe in such a God?

Thank you.
Click to expand...
Calvinists (and maybe others) believe our eternal destination is predetermined, most Christians afaik believe it’s the responsibility of the individual to ‘choose Jesus’, and that it’s the choice that determines the outcome. From that perspective, although God can see the ultimate destination of each person, he does his best to encourage them to make the right choice and be ‘saved’.

It hinges partly on the idea of free will that the bible seems to take for granted, at least to some extent, i.e. that God created us with free will so that we could choose to love him, or not. At least that’s how some modern Christian writers interpret it. With that in mind you could say that God created people because he values the relationship he could have with some of them, or something like that, but that the kind of relationship he wanted was contingent on their being free to choose that.

Then there’s the perspective in Job that, well, God is God and we just have to accept that we don’t understand him, on the one hand, and that he will do whatever he thinks is best.

More generally, ideas of what it means to say God is loving seem to vary a lot over time, religion and from person to person. It could be argued that he values personal relationships so much that he’s willing to cause huge suffering in order to have them with the elect few, which makes him kind of wild at heart you could say, and maybe a bit crazy.

Nb. I don’t believe in God, but a lot of people ask these kinds of questions and I think the answer is a bit more complicated than it might seem, especially once you understand that the concept of hell in the bible isn’t all that clear cut.
 
I

Ignatius A

Active Member
Tomef said:
Calvinists (and maybe others) believe our eternal destination is predetermined, most Christians afaik believe it’s the responsibility of the individual to ‘choose Jesus’, and that it’s the choice that determines the outcome. From that perspective, although God can see the ultimate destination of each person, he does his best to encourage them to make the right choice and be ‘saved’.

It hinges partly on the idea of free will that the bible seems to take for granted, at least to some extent, i.e. that God created us with free will so that we could choose to love him, or not. At least that’s how some modern Christian writers interpret it. With that in mind you could say that God created people because he values the relationship he could have with some of them, or something like that, but that the kind of relationship he wanted was contingent on their being free to choose that.

Then there’s the perspective in Job that, well, God is God and we just have to accept that we don’t understand him, on the one hand, and that he will do whatever he thinks is best.

More generally, ideas of what it means to say God is loving seem to vary a lot over time, religion and from person to person. It could be argued that he values personal relationships so much that he’s willing to cause huge suffering in order to have them with the elect few, which makes him kind of wild at heart you could say, and maybe a bit crazy.

Nb. I don’t believe in God, but a lot of people ask these kinds of questions and I think the answer is a bit more complicated than it might seem, especially once you understand that the concept of hell in the bible isn’t all that clear cut.
Click to expand...
I tend to disagree. The biblical concept of hell is pretty clear. Matt 25:31-46. The last two lines summarize it pretty well,

"45 He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you failed to do for one of the least of these brethren of mine, you failed to do for me'. 46 And they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous will enter eternal life."
 
shunyadragon

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Comradio251 said:
Yes, I have created a question that I have been pondering about for many years which no Christian or Muslim could possibly answer if God is loving. Here is my question to those Muslims and Christians that strongly believe in their faiths.

Question:

Why would an omniscient and loving God knowingly create many people he knows he will one day throw into hell after they get done living out their lives?

Argument:

So, he creates a bunch of people he already knows will go to hell before they even die. What's the point? It's like setting up someone for failure from the very beginning for your own sadistic pleasure and the thrill of it! Why believe in such a God?

Thank you.
Click to expand...


The problem of the description of Adam and Eve as responsible for the "Fall" of all humanity and all the death and suffering in the world along with the billions condemned for their sins is elephant in the room question.

Created to be condemned.
 
T

Tomef

Active Member
Ignatius A said:
I tend to disagree. The biblical concept of hell is pretty clear. Matt 25:31-46. The last two lines summarize it pretty well,

"45 He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you failed to do for one of the least of these brethren of mine, you failed to do for me'. 46 And they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous will enter eternal life."
Click to expand...
Taken all together, all of the references, with their potential differences in translation, and especially given that it only begins to appear with any clarity in the NT, it’s not so clear. It’s quite rare that you can get a clear idea of anything in the Bible from just one verse.
 
I

Ignatius A

Active Member
Tomef said:
Taken all together, all of the references, with their potential differences in translation, and especially given that it only begins to appear with any clarity in the NT, it’s not so clear. It’s quite rare that you can get a clear idea of anything in the Bible from just one verse.
Click to expand...
You said it's not clear but the passages I posted are quite clear. I'm amazed at how people seemingly look past such clear wording with such ease.
 
T

Tomef

Active Member
Ignatius A said:
You said it's not clear but the passages I posted are quite clear. I'm amazed at how people seemingly look past such clear wording with such ease.
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The passage you quoted, singular. It amazes me when people somehow remain unaware - or choose not to acknowledge- when cherry-picking quotes to justify what they want to think.
 
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