That wasn’t what I was trying to get it with my questions. God doesn’t even enter into where I was going with my questions. If you answer the questions, you’ll see where it leads to, though I don’t exactly know where it will lead to, it depends on your answer.

You already know what I believe about Hell. I believe it’s a very obvious absolute contradiction to believe in an all-powerful all-merciful Creator and at the same time believe that an all-powerful all-merciful Creator would allow anyone He has created to be trapped forever in an eternal Hell. You don’t want me to go into all that again, do you? Don’t get me started!

I answered your questions.

You left out the part where He is our Judge. When He returns He will judge the living and the dead. Explain how that works.

I don't think you answered my question about whether or not you think anyone deserves to feel good, instead of feeling miserable, to feel loved instead of feeling unloved, or do we all deserve to feel miserable, do we all deserve to feel unloved, in this life. But that's okay, I can't make you answer it. I'll answer it myself tomorrow.

I absolutely answered you, and I don't take kindly to you calling me a liar about it.

I didn’t call you a liar, Signum, I’m not calling you a liar, but please don’t call me a liar when I tell you honestly that having twice asked you, “do you think anyone deserves to feel good, to feel loved, in this life?”, I honestly don't know whether you do or not.

I answered you. Thoroughly.

Okay.

I think that there's a significant thing that is being left out of this discussion as to what it is about the natural human condition that is absent God's grace that "deserves" or "merits" the spiritual death of hell. And that's a deep misunderstanding of just what sin really is, and more importantly how it causes us to persistently and even irrevocably reject God's cure.

Second, hell doesn't exist as a contradiction to God's love. It exists precisely because of God's love and God's power. The only reason hell exists at all is because of free choice. If you love someone, you don't treat them like an Oedipal mother and smother them with "love" by giving them everything they want and walling them off from all danger in the hopes that they'll never leave. For starters, that's not love, that's torture and tyranny, and you'll only end up making them hate you for it.

Second, you can't protect people, you can only encourage them to make them strong enough to protect themselves. Which means that they're going to make all sorts of bad and immoral choices, which they either learn to overcome, or rather that they allow themselves to become nihilistically enslaved to.

IOW, if you love someone, you allow them to be free to choose love on their own. Which necessarily leaves open the real possibility of them not choosing love, but rather egoism, possession, and domination-all which necessarily lead to hell.


The point of this is that while we're all created objectively good(not because we are morally good, only because we exist and that to exist is better than to not exist), we also have in ourselves a spiritual disease that in and of itself consigns us to hell because it dominates and ravages our souls to the point that someone who has allowed themselves to totally succumb is not even recognizable as an individual human being anymore.

I truly believe that this is where the admonition that Christ makes comes from when He says, "depart from me, for I never knew you."

There is an offer of a cure. And all that is required of us to receive this cure is "faith" and "repentance".

It is our choice to either accept the cure or reject it.

You don’t give up on anyone you truly love, you wouldn’t allow them to suffer for ever. If someone you truly love wanted to seriously harm themselves, you wouldn’t say:

“Go ahead and harm yourself, I love you so truly that I want you to be free to harm yourself, therefore I’m going to do nothing to help you once you’ve made the decision to harm yourself. And by the way, never try to contact me again, because you didn’t have the good sense to listen to my wisdom, we’re cut off for ever now”.

That would not be love.

And when your love for them is to them unbearable torture and torment because they despise you and everything that you stand for, your good intentions are precisely the cause of their suffering.

Trying to force someone who won't love you to love you isn't love. Its you trying to possess and dominate them to make yourself feel better.

You're not doing it for their objective good, rather just to make yourself feel better.

Authentic love has to be free, or else it's not authentic. Yes, God could have made us all perfectly obedient robots and no one would ever wind up in hell, yet there would be no love. To have free creatures capable of love necessitates the existence of hell.

You can't have it both ways.






You're either missing the point or trying to cleverly dodge the issue by this concocted strawman fallacy.

For starters, God doesn't say, "Go ahead and harm yourself."

God says, "don't harm yourself."

We tell God, "but we want to because it will make us happy."

God tells us, "No, it will make you miserable."

We tell God, "You're lying! You just want to oppress us, yo keep us from having fun, to keep us from being free."

Then God lets us have it our way.

Hell isn't God saying no to us, it's us saying no to God. And God just letting us have it our way.

Suppose the President or King of some country somewhere in the world suddenly introduced a law with immediate effect ruling that anyone who has reached the age of 30 who has not chosen to practice the correct religion and anyone over 30 who has committed sins, such as being in a sexual relationship without bothering to get married, without having repented, will automatically be sentenced to life in prison, where they will be tormented for the rest of their lives, even if they live beyond 100, with no opportunity to ever be released, and not allowed to have any visitors, not even their family unless they too are imprisoned - could you possibly make the case that this President or King is behaving in a loving, compassionate, merciful way?

As human beings with humanity , what we would think of such a President or King?

How much worse for people of the wrong religion, or having a sexual relationship while unmarried, to be tormented for ever and ever, rather than about 70 years at the most?

I don't see how you could expect me or anyone to believe that that's love and compassion.

This is precisely what I would call a great illustration of my initial point about how people who object to the existence of hell really don't understand or grasp the reality of the problem of sin. Your analogy is a very poor one and is not at all the Catholic position on the matter and completely misconstrues what I said.

And I don't see any reason, given your remarks, why trying to explain it would be anything other than a great waste if time. Because you seem to have a particular aim behind your remarks which seems to indicate to me that you're in an ideological position as such that you already believe that you have all the answers, and that you're going to be necessarily obstinate in your particular perspective and only interpret any remarks in light of that ideological opinion.

Why bother even having such conversations if you're apparently only interest in hardening yourself into your own ideological corner rather than looking at this from another angle that you've clearly not considered before?

According to traditional Catholic teaching, does God love the people he sends to Hell?

God doesn't send them there; they choose to go there.

God does judge and punish them, but they choose to do the acts that make them merit the punishment.

God keeps the damned in existence.

Again, wrong question.

It's not that God's love that "sends" them to hell, it's their own lack of love-for themselves, and others, and God-that sends them to hell.

You seem to keep thinking that for (the doctrine of) hell to exist must mean that it's due to some fault or blame on God's part. Like the creatures who populate it are not at all responsible for their state, that they're just victims and not active participants in their own damnation.

That is what seems to me the error in your thinking that you need to alter.

Does God love the people he judges and punishes for ever in Hell?

God loves us so much that He allows us to make the choice to love Him or not ... some do, most don't for one reason or another

God loves us so much that He allows us to make the choice to love Him or be punished without mercy for ever and ever. Do you really think that could be described as love in any sense of the word? It's an Orwellian reversal of the meaning of love. It's absurd.

It's like bringing children to the edge of a cliff and saying to them "I love you so much that I am allowing you to walk to the safety of my arms or walk over the edge of the cliff". And when some children fall over the cliff edge, you say "That happened because I love my children so much that I allowed them the freedom to suffer the consequences of falling over the cliff.

It's not just me who finds such arguments absurd, most people have rejected the absurdity of trying to reconcile the obvious contradiction of eternal punishment and God's supreme love.