The Psychology Behind the Belief in Heaven and Hell

It is but one single act of rebellion (shooting that dirty dawg between the eyes) and one single act of surrendering (fully accepting the act as a wrongdoing). Both occur without believing God exists - and are but an example to show that there is no problem in principle with total surrender to a God not yet believed in.That, remember, was the context of your question: - If God has indeed installed in you a knowledge of good and evil and you do evil you are in rebellion against the restraint placed on you by your knowledge of good. And given that God = good you are in rebellion against God.And when it comes to Hell, it is your rejection of goodness that sees you sent to an environment were no good is.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

What about all the times the average person doesn't feel remorse or regret? What about all the times they excuse themselves with self-justification?- See above.Also, whilst a person might consider having done wrong at or after the point of having done wrong, they frequently don't continue feeling the effects of wrongdoing. Time passes and the pain of guilt and shame diminishes - but the wrongdoing stays a wrongdoing. There is a central figure in event person who can accomplish the trick of dispensing with the price for the wrong done. And that person is the offender.Which would indicate their suppressing guilt and shame. Or their suppression of the truth ..to put it another way. Or their refusal to love the truth .. to put it yet another way.All of which is something used by God in the mechanism of our salvation. He knows that guilt and shame will be suppressed. And he knows we will keep on doing wrong. Which means there is the potential for an explosion at some point - with all that buried truth bursting to the surface of our consciousness and overwhelming us.If it does we will be convinced we are indeed rotten. And so we will be saved. If it doesn't it will only be the result of a persons continued suppression preventing the truth surfacing. And so they will be lost.They did it to themselves they did.. and that's what really hurts.

Sure.. Given the golden rules we'd have to conclude yes. Unless those carrying out the mutilation are willing to have done unto them what they do unto others.- People of Abrahamic faiths clearly don't see it as wrong. People of Abrahamic faiths are no different to atheists: they need saving too - both Jew (religious) and Gentile (irreligious) need saving. People of Abrahamic faiths are, in other words, sinners.- Not at all. I think you underestimate how sinful man actually is. This isn't a question of breaking a law here or there, this out and out godless living we're engaged in here. The broken, crippled world around us: at war, destroying itself, destroying the people in it, ever putting own interest above the interest of others testifies to that fact.These days it's even easier to see than before.- It's only sinners that get to heaven. It's only sinners who can be convicted that that's what they are. The only difference between the sinner in heaven and the sinner in hell is that the former became convicted of that fact. Not in some half-hearted intellectual way I might add - the conviction will have reached all they way down to their boots. Utter and total conviction.All sinners all the same.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

God is the ulimate creator of evil - but in one-step removed fashion resulting in evil not impinging on his goodness. He creates a free will with potential and the free will creates the evil (which we might simplify definitionally as "doing something outside the permissible boundary set by God") Precisely what kind of divine quantum fluctuation enables God to remove the sticky toffer paper from his fingers so as to produce a non-determined and independent will is beyond me - but that's what all the indications are as to what has occurred.One reoccuring error is our attempt to rise above God so as to look down on his actions and pronounce good/evil. But if we are supposing Gods existance then we must consider our sense of good and evil as somehow derivative from who he is and it strikes me as a lunacy of sorts to figure to be able to consider him evil when he says he is good. Just where do we suppose we'd have derived the ability to judge this? How do we shake the derivative toffee paper from our fingers?The best that we can do, it seems to me, is look at what God says is good/evil and see can we understand the justifications made given our own perspective on good/evil derived somehow from his. It seems to me that the argument for God=evil is made on sentimental / emotional grounds but that when a higher moral plain is viewed the objection evaporates.- Given our definition of evil above we can say that creation of a free will is the creation of potential for evil. Which in turn points the question to whether or not the creation of a free will is a good thing.Do you think having a free will is a good thing - given the alternatives you see around you (in say the far more instinctually led animal kingdom).

It might be more loving but it isn't more wrathful. Is there some reason why his wrath shouldn't find expression and that only his love should?To destroy a person utterly would be an admission-of-sorts that to create a free-willed being was an error of judgement. Better that God is vindicated in his creating those beings and one way for him to be vindicated is to let each being exist subject to the conditions promised for it as a consequence of it's expression of own will.Although appreciating your appeal, I'd see it as an appeal based on sentimentality. Most would (or should) suppose a God who doesn't deliver on the promised consequences of our choices to be one who doesn't actually value free will.-The environment of hell would appear to be one in which a persons evil is throughly bound up - so that it cannot manifest (other than against itself by way of self-hatred and self-disgust). Evil will have been, for all practical purposes, eliminated* whilst at the same time permitting Gods wrath against that which is evil to be expressed.The issue has to do with God being vindicated and just, fair, right - not our comfort. To think the later is to be, in my view, man-focused and thus wrongly focused. *if we define evil as 'that which runs counter to Gods will', then a persons willful expression in self-loathing and self-disgust wouldn't be evil - for it would be the will of God (in his wrathful expression) that a person be self-tormented so. They are in hell because they loved the consequences of evil and rejected a love of truth. The consequences of evil, even though evil itself is destroyed in hell, is that which the occupants of hell spend their eternity.

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Not for nothing the warning to flee the wrath to come.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

I'm not one who holds to predetermination (in the sense of God predetermining who will be save and who will be lost).I see no problem in God foreknowing who would be saved and lost if those who are saved and lost are the deciders in their own eternal destination without being determined to decide as they do.- There are lost people in the Old Testament and found people there too. Just like in the New Testament. Just like now. Nothing much has changed over the centuries. Man sins, Gods love attempts to forgive and save. God wrath eventually destroys the wicked.Picture a rescue helicopter hovering over a stricken vessel which lists terminally in rampant seas. A winchman is lowered and strains his utmost to reach those clinging to the stricken vessel.God is the winchman. He's also the rampant sea.And nothing in the Bible, New Testament or Old, describes him as anything other than that.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

You seem to have missed out on something I said: the lost are the one's who decide on their eternal destination - their decision not determined by God to be the decision they make.Precisely how God foreknows their decision is irrelevant so long as he is not the one determining what it is.- And?Succumbing to a rampant sea in our realm signifies a removal from what we consider 'life'. And in our world the sea tends not to give up it's dead so it serves to model forever/eternity in terms we understand.- Salvation necessitates a person being brought to a position of desparation - such is the pride of a man who refuse to bow as he should. I mean, what possible reason (bar pride) have you got for not submitting to your Creator/Sustainer? What possible rational have you for pulling out the tubes that feed you life?When positing that reason perhaps you might add the source to which you attach the rightness of your reckoning. Remember, iIf found to be a bootstrap reckoning, a self-generated reckoning, then you'll land right back at Pride. Your Pride.You do it do yourself you do, and that's what really hurts.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

The potential for evil exists the moment free will is created and options placed before it. The potential for evil is an option associated with the existance of a free will. Without a free will there would be no potential for evilThe creation of free will necessitates and begets the potential for evil (with evil being defined as "doing what God says not to") Potential for evil is what makes free will free - so long as potential for good forms the alternative option.The (reframed) question was "do you think being given the potential to go in either of two directions (free will) is a good thing. Better than any other option you can think of (which involves a degree of robotics in our response)- God doesn't tell us how your supposed to know (although the delivery device is called 'conscience' but we'd probably argue as to what that's telling us).He just says we do. What does it matter how we know, so long as we do?Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

You are correct in saying that a free will could be contrained to operate within a boundary called 'good' and get to choose only from options within that boundary (such will heaven be, btw). My apologies thus. I should have said the free-est of wills.It would seem apparent that; the greater the extent of the options available to it, the more free (or the 'bigger') the will is. If a possible option exists - but a will is contrained from choosing it - then the free will is a 'constrained free will' - and not a free in the free-est sense.So let me re-phrase my remark: the potential for evil is created in the creating of the free-est of wills .. and presenting options before it. The free-est of wills can opt to do something God doesn't want and in the very process of exercising it's option so, creates evil (evil being defined, ultimately, as that which God doesn't want/forbids)- God says you do know. That your conscience bears witness to you.It shouldn't be too hard to spot occasions where you do something you know to be wrong whilst detecting that you know it to be wrong. You should also be able to detect yourself moving goalposts so as to convert what you know to be wrong, if not into a right, then at least into something less wrong. Sufficiently less wrong enough to permit the remaining restraint of conscience to be brushed aside.Now that's only the stuff - which is so obvious that we can't miss it. There's the other stuff we do easily, as if falling from a log. We've so dampened the conscience in those cases, that it's voice has receded to the point of being inaudible. We're responsible for suppressing it so. Responsible for the fact it doesn't apply detectable restraint anymore.It doesn't matter if your intellect can't figure out whether it's conscience or some contra-conscience conditioning doing the talking in whatever the case happens to be. This gig isn't played out in your intellect (primarily). It's played out in a spiritual aspect of yourself called 'the heart'. The heart knows the difference. That is to say: you know in your heart what's right and what's wrong.Sufficient for you answer to God to be made apparent to God.- The above should clear most of this objection up.I would remind you that the point isn't that you have made available some absolute moral code in order that you can adhere to it. The point is that you're a sinner who couldn't adhere to the absolute moral code even if it was written up in the sky in large letters. The point of the moral code being issued to you is to convince you that you're a sinner). The point of it's being issued to you in such a way as to be deniable is to make available to you, the option of denying it.One way to avoid the conclusion of a moral code knowable by you, is to claim the waters so muddy that you can't actually tell. As you seem to do here - I'd agree that different people will act in different ways to each other. Even different ways at different times in the case of each individual. Which is to be expected.- If pride is the core motivator of a person then what's good for one person achieving their own ends can be expected to be different to what's good for another person achieving their own ends. Both will naturally claim themselves to be in the right. Both the Allied and the Axis forces claimed God on their side.- The West recoils at the habits of the cannibalistic tribe. There are many ways to consume other people however - some of which the West are culinary experts at. The differences on the surface might not be so different afterall.- There is no safety in numbers. It's you, what you know to be right and wrong. And God. Both you and I will face him to his face. One to one.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Supposing a God of unwavering right and wrong (which would allow for him considering eg: our killing of another right in one case and wrong in another. Or our 'stealing' right in one case and wrong in another, etc.).What another claims may or may not be the will of God. If it is, it might well be that you don't know all the facts concerning that case, and are applying a God-given conscience - but inappropriately. We can look at an example in which background facts are known to you. Take the example of your condemning (if you do) the Israelites for slaughtering the Midianites. You'd likely be driven by a God-given conscience which causes you to recoil at the idea of such slaughter. Yet in this case, you can see that it is the will of God that these particular sinners be removed from the game at this particular time.There is also the case where someone claims to be doing the will of God and are convinced that they are so doing. When their not so doing. In this case your conscience is in line with the facts of the case (although you can't know it in this case either)None of which has any bearing on what you do with what you know to be the case. If you do actual evil and do it on the basis of it having the same sense of 'rightness' that God says actual good has attaching to it (ie: a guilty vs. clear conscience) then you have a defence against the Judgement of God. Somehow I'd doubt he'd leave that option open. Somehow I think God will attach different flavours to what's good and what's evil. In much the same way as he attaches different flavour to fresh and rotten food. You might have to get up close to give it a good sniff - but if you do I'm sure you'll find rotten motivation behind the apparently good act.Which is why Jesus described the Pharisees as white washed tombs. Clean and bright on the outside but when you scratched n' sniffed...

I think you need to read the post again.- The free-est of will was able to create evil. That is the giant leap which cannot be trumped. After that, all that's left is for evil to be develop upon, for layer upon layer to be added to that first breakthrough.The scale of mans subsequent wickedness is curtailed in various ways. He can be wiped out so as to set the development back x number of years. There is also conscience which has a restraining influence.Left completely to his own nature, mans evil would indeed develop to an extent that would cause our jaws to drop. We've seen instances of what's possible when the shackles of restraint are shrugged off- Hopefully the above will have answered this. Evil is the hole in the bucket. Making the hole bigger is a relative trifle compared to that first development.

Funnily enough, this hasn't been my experience. The person/people that led me to Christ are considered by me/them as but tools of God. The glory has gone to God for my salvation - from both them and me. Not them.-

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"Many people today do not care about helping other souls. They waste their time watching worldly tv, series, movies, playing video games and only searching for earthly pleasures rather than saving their own and other people’s souls. They do not spend even an hour a day on trying to save their own selves and others from the eternal hellfire."

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Given time spend trying to save yourself is time spent digging a hole for yourself I'm inclined to thank God for that. That said: those not working to save themselves are in the same peril as those who feverishly do so.- Yet the effects of "Our Ladys" intercession is:- rightful mockery from one quarter: given the wisdom of ignoring wild sounding claims. Like, if you believed Jacinta, you'd have to believe anyone who claimed anything.- folks working themselves into a lather to get into Heaven..both of which are but sides of the same satanic coin: one side for the Jew (ie: the religious unbeliever), one for the Gentile (ie the irreligiuous unbeliever)