What is the point of eternal suffering?

@fmf said
Present but not seeing? There but looking away?

Why would Jesus do that?

Oversee means to look at something?

So when I go to the soccer game this Saturday, I'll be overlooking it?

If that is the definition, then, sure, what you say makes sense.

@fmf said
Does "God" have a plan to torment them - some of them, many of them, nearly all of them - in burning flames for eternity even though you say he loves them?

No, there's a different form of judgment that will occur as I understand it.

@fmf said
This inflicting of pain and the rebuking have no moral purpose? Are you sure?

What do you suggest it is?

@fmf said
If whoever wrote it comes here and reposts it and is willing to fight his or her corner, I will read it.

Lol, you won't read my source?

Why? What's the deal with that?

@fmf said
These assertions are simply narcissistic.

This is beyond the scale of our debate, but how is it narcissistic?

@philokalia said
No, there's a different form of judgment that will occur as I understand it.

Why do you think there is not one single jot of credible evidence that torment in burning flames for eternity is actually real?

@fmf said
So... Non-believers send themselves to a "Hell" that was "created by circumstances" where they are deliberately and cruelly brutalized forever and ever for no moral purpose with Jesus present for the torture but not looking at it.

Gosh.

It just gets convoluteder and convoluteder.

How so?

I think the argument has been pretty concise and tightly wound.

How is it convoluted?

@fmf said
I am sure there are Muslims and Hindus who also exhibit a malignant and preposterous form of narcissism comparable to that of Christians like you.

How would a Muslim or Hindu who believes I'm wrong and he himself is right he a narcissist because of that? That seems like an abuse of definitions

@philokalia said
This is beyond the scale of our debate, but how is it narcissistic?

If you don't understand how the word "narcissistic" might apply to your point of view about what fate people deserve for not believing the same things as you, then I'm fine with that. Don't worry about it.

@fmf said
@fmf said
People cannot repent to a god figure they do not believe in.

@philokalia said
I can see how an atheist cannot do this...

What is the moral purpose of the non-credible threats of eternal torment then?

It might be actually quite transparently what people say it is: a warning.

If you don't think it's credible, would you like to tell me why?

@fmf said
This sounds like sheer nonsense.

Your god figure is not going to torture me. I am not going to torture me.

How is it you think I am going to end up getting tortured, assuming that I am.

I refer you to the previously shared description of the process that... I guess you're refusing to read?

Why is that?

@philokalia said
How would a Muslim or Hindu who believes I'm wrong and he himself is right he a narcissist because of that?

It'd also be narcissistic and malignantly so if it involved them believing it was somehow morally right for you to be subjected to a ludicrous form of unending violence after you die.

@philokalia said
I refer you to the previously shared description of the process that... I guess you're refusing to read?

Why is that?

What description?

@fmf said
But I realized after some years that being a Christian didn't mean knowing God. It just meant I had been emersed in one of several manmade "revealed" religions.

This is an honest and sincere belief and it hasn't prevented me from living my life broadly in accordance with the Christian principles I was brought up with.

Perhaps if it had been more convincing or more credibl ...[text shortened]... d figure to punish me for my honesty, open-mindedness and perhaps even my spiritual courage, surely?

I don't know you and can't judge this at all and will make no attempt to do so. That's a trap. No way I'm falling into it.

But, I can say that people who looked at the gospel of Christ and rejected it are not in a good position regardless of how sincere they are. It's an interesting topic but beyond our own topic to some degree.

I cast no judgment.

@fmf said
Burning flames kill and destroy life.

How can the humans still be suffering the torment in burning flames in 800 years from now, 25,000 years from now, 6,000,000 years from now, and so forth, if the flames killed and destroyed them soon after the punishment began?

Have you never sat down and had a proper think about your ideology?

Oh, you think it's literal flames on literal flesh?

We're talking about immortal souls and the fire of the Lord, and so that is quite a leap to say that my model actually behaves like literal flames on literal flesh.