Christians: Is your god all-loving or does he deliver cruel & unusual punishment?
Punishing someone eternally for a thought crime of disbelief committed during a finite lifetime is excessive. If your god is all-loving, he would either punish non-believers in a more humane and constructive way or provide ample evidence of his existence.
2012-10-25T16:36:29Z
It's interesting how one believer says their god is not all-loving and another says the exact opposite.
2012-10-25T16:39:39Z
@ANT BEE
1) I know that there is NOT a hell. It's just a scare tactic used by people with no evidence to support a flimsy story.
2) Overcoming a delusional belief is lazy? Ha. Atheists are immoral? You offend me with your religiously-inspired bigotry.
2012-10-25T17:04:13Z
@NDMA - You don't even know what a straw man argument is.
2012-10-25T17:07:19Z
@Andrew - Yeah... it only took a minute to kill the person, but the person who was killed isn't coming back. That's kind of how death works. 20 years in prison is lenient. A murderer should be put away for the rest of their life with no possibility of parole. If I don't believe a claim that has no supporting evidence, why should I be punished? There are no victims if the only thing I've done "wrong" is not be gullible.
2012-10-25T17:42:45Z
@Reecious - Keep in mind, I wrote "your god" and "their god". I was not referring to him by his pronoun/name God. My capitalization is correct.
2012-10-25T17:44:08Z
@Reecious - And "atheist" is not a proper noun. Capitalization is not appropriate.
Anonymous2012-10-25T16:36:40Z
Favorite Answer
The Christian answer to the question:
"Is your god all-loving or does he deliver cruel & unusual punishment?"
The Biblical God is perfect love, but He is also perfect justice. That means He cannot allow any transgression to go unanswered. Through the sacrifice of the perfect Christ, God was able to satisfy both perfect love and perfect justice.
God entered a covenant with Christ (His perfect Son) that He would receive Christ’s sacrifice as punishment (payment-in-full) for the sins of all those who belong to Christ. So to attain salvation from the just consequences of our own sin requires a faith response to the gospel of Christ (which is much easier than trying to earn righteousness through our actions).
"Punishing someone eternally for a thought crime of disbelief committed during a finite lifetime is excessive"
There are two problems with this statement;
1 What is "excessive" is subjective. We are conditioned from a young age to think "to err is human". And so many fail to consider the severity of committing treason and rebellion against our perfect Creator.
2 No one is technically punished for lack of faith. People are punished as a consequence of our own sin. Faith is merely the mechanism we use to avoid this punishment.
"or provide ample evidence of his existence"
The problem with evidence is that it has to be interpreted by human minds. As a Christian in my final year of a science degree, I am aware that every evidence in the universe can be "interpreted" to be consistent with the Biblical account of the universe. As my university is secular, I am also aware that there are other ways to interpret this same evidence. So the amount of evidence is not really the issue.
The Bible claims that God is explicitly evidenced throughout creation. It also says that God has place knowledge of Himself in every human heart; so that we are "without excuse" (Romans 1:18-21).
If God was all loving and forgiving then why did Jesus do what He did on the cross for then? If someone kills some one in a minute's time he gets caught and is convicted and is sentenced to 20 years in prison. He then spends 10,518,960 minutes in jail for a crime committed in one minute. Would you say that is fair ? Wait, that is what the law say is fit for that particular crime. Gods evidence is right out side your door ( earth ), and He can be found in Spirit In His Word of the bible.
He loves every sinner. He is holy and cannot abide with unrighteousness. He has provided righteousness through His only Son.
God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. John 3:17-19
-- You know there is a Hell -- You know that if there is you are going there -- -You know that the God who sends you there is forced to do so if right now you scorn the punishment.
I say a CULPABLE non-believer should go straight to Hell for all the harm that their laziness has done in the world, both positive in the immoral behavior it occassioned (as the Jew Hannah Arendt said of the Nazis) and negative for the good that went undone by them and hindered by them in others.