Is God Omnibenevolent?

[InTheMoment]

If so, why does God have to make a Hell? I mean, couldn't he just wipe the non-believers from existence, rather than torture there souls for eternity?

[MarthaM]

Looks like you are assuming too much.

[Malkav]

God doesn't wipe out non-believers for one beautiful and powerful reason: Free Will... It's our choice to stay on God's Righteous Path or to step aside. So, my humble answer to your question would be: Yes, God IS Omnibenevolent. BUT, He will not bother with those who doesn't want His Benevolence Bye

[Universal Mind]

Originally posted by Malkav God doesn't wipe out non-believers for one beautiful and powerful reason: Free Will... It's our choice to stay on God's Righteous Path or to step aside. * So, my humble answer to your question would be: Yes, God IS Omnibenevolent. BUT, He will not bother with those who doesn't want His Benevolence Bye If he is real, I want his benevolence. The problem is that his existence seems in all honesty like a contradictory concept to me. I understandably do not think he exists. An infinitely intelligent being would understand where I am coming from. If he is omnibenevolent, he will not let me be tortured forever for missing the fact that he exists. I wouln't allow anybody to burn forever, not even Hitler or Hussein, not even for the outrageously horrible things they did, much less for an honest miscalculation in logic. I say that, and I am not omnibenevolent. I am not even totally good. Therefore, by the transitive property of inequality, an omnibenevolent being would not allow me to be tortured forever for not believing he exists. Would you allow somebody to be tortured FOREVER for not believing you exist when they have never met you or seen verifiable pictures of you? If you say you would not, then how can you logically say an omnibenevolent being would? An omnibenevolent being would not allow somebody to be tortured forever even if they begged for it. Would God give somebody crack if he begged for it , or would he say, "You are confused. You need to stay away from that stuff."? People go to prison all day every day for not having that stance on crack, and eternal torture is infinitely worse than crack. An omnibenevolent being would say, "I am not going to let you be tortured forever. It would be infinitely horrible, and as soon as the torture started you would know that you don't want to be in that position." No omnibenevolent being would even allow Hell to exist. If there is a problem with the absence of Hell, which there would not be, an infinitely powerful being would cause those problems to vanish. If there is a problem with making those problems vanish, then he would make such problems vanish, etc. Hell is not necessary. Also, you didn't answer his question. Why wouldn't an omnibenevolent being just have death for people who "don't want" his benevolence? If my next door neighbor doesn't want my benevolence, does that justify raping her? I don't think so. Even if she tells me that if a rapist ever breaks in not to call the cops, I can assure you, I will call the cops and then run into her apartment with a gun. If just sit there and say, "Well, she doesn't want my help," then I wouldn't be omnibenevolent. I wouldn't even be benevolent. Rembember, we are talking about eternal torture. All talk about "if you want to" is out the window. Nobody would actually want that if they were experiencing it. Nobody! Do you think crack should be legal? Well, some people actually enjoy crack and never have a problem with it. Hell wouldn't have such qualities. But it should be peoples' choice? And it's not even a choice when you are talking about atheists.

[kimpossible]

I'm omniambivalent - does that count?

[Universal Mind]

Originally posted by MarthaM Looks like you are assuming too much. You say that too much. How about trying to clear up the illogic we see?

[MarthaM]

If he is omnibenevolent, he will not let me be tortured forever for missing the fact that he exists. I wouln't allow anybody to burn forever, not even Hitler or Hussein, not even for the outrageously horrible things they did, much less for an honest miscalculation in logic.[/b] There are individuals on this planet that appear to have an infinte capacity for evil. I for one would allow Hitler or Hussein to \"burn forever.\" But then I'm not omnibenevolent. By the way, \"honest miscalculation in logic.\" Please elaborate. Therefore, by the transitive property of inequality, an omnibenevolent being would not allow me to be tortured forever for not believing he exists.[/b] I for one need the chapter and verse reference on that one.

[Leo Volont]

Originally posted by InTheMoment If so, why does God have to make a Hell? I mean, couldn't he just wipe the non-believers from existence, rather than torture there souls for eternity? God does not 'make' a Hell. God simply puts a boundary around Heaven. You see, Hell would be a fine place, except for the people who go there. You see, Hell is a place where only very selfish and ambitious souls go. Think about it for a second. In Hell we have an entrenched power structure of individuals who would certainly feel as though their power and positions would be under threat by any new comers. Just think, what would you do if Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, or Attilla the Hun suddenly walk into your little Community. Would you extend them every freedom to do anything they would like? Or would you come down like a ton of bricks in order to protect your own position in the relative Hierarchy? Hell is the way Hell is because of the Souls in Hell. They punish themselves. also, we need to consider that these people choose Hell. They wanted Selfishness and Personal Ambition for themselves. Nobody held a gun to their heads and made them Register to Vote Republican. They chose to be Enemies of Humanity of their own free will. So, when they die, they are allowed to continue to pursue their own Individual Ambitions, in a Hell where they are entirely free to make it as pleasant as they would like, considering how everybody is only out for his or her self. When a Community has absolutely nobody who is Community Minded, then Communities are not very pleasant affairs. Situations like as what Thomas Hobbes described where life is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short', except nothing is very short about Eternity. But the Meak and the Humble and those who had always placed Community before Self, and a Love of God and Spirit above the animal impulses, these people, by their Choice, will be admitted into Heaven. We all have a choice. We go where we have always wanted to go. Have you read "Paradise Lost"? Milton's Lucifer would rather Rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. Certainly there are many souls who would forego the Ranks and the Hierarchies of Heaven -- the One for All spirit -- and would really prefer the open contest for Power which Hell provides. Lucifer may keep one bound to a rock and scourged with fire, so as to impress you with who really is in charge, but in the Span of All Eternity there is always the chance that one can still pull off that Rugged Individual Thing of working one's way up from the Bottom, to perhaps someday rival the Very Devil Himself. What True Blooded Republican would want anything Less. I'm sure they would not find Heaven quite Manly enough for themselves. Whatever the Meak will inheret, they would want no part of.

[Rakkantekimusouka]

I hate to make a long post right after Don Vol-Vol's, but here's something I wrote a while back that touches on this subject -- I think I may have even posted this here before! Anyway... [A]ccording to The Philosopher’s Magazine (TPM) Online’s Do-It-Yourself-Deity program, if you check only the boxes labeled “Omniscient”, “The Creator”, and “Perfectly Free”, the resulting plausibility quotient is a rather “perfect” 1.0, meaning that said God “is internally consistent and could exist in our universe”. (If you check also, “Omnipotent”, “The Sustainer”, “Eternally Existing”, or “A Personal God”, the plausibility quotient drops to 0.9) The text goes on to say that “...but they are less sure that what you have described deserves the name of God. She is not, for example, all-powerful. A God which knows everything or is totally benign may be a wonderful ideal, but is she really a God unless she has ultimate power?” This is where the conflict between belief in God and disbelief really lies. There is this notion that God is “all or nothing”, and that part of that includes personification. Recall, however, that the scientific origins of life, i.e. the amoeba, and other such organisms, do not have much of a persona either, however, they are, according to science, where life as it is now all originated from. Is it so terribly hard to believe that the same concept could be true, only in a more spiritual form? That God is the ultimate amoeba? From which our ancestors all spawned, and eventually evolved into us as we are now? There is one other thing: if you check “Omnibenevolent” as the fourth box, the plausibility quotient stays at 1.0. Now, given that God, as an amorphous mass of energy, has roughly the capacity of a modern Central Processing Unit (CPU), it doesn’t make sense that such an entity would be capable of any emotion, let alone love. However, as is widely speculated in the science-fiction genre, there arises a so-called “ghost in the machine”, so to speak, meaning that robots and other advanced machines do somehow acquire the capability for what we would recognize as human emotion: sentience, even sapience. If we have already established that God is omniscient, then we acknowledge that it is actually sapient. Therefore, we can infer that God can discern feelings, emotions. That it can and has an amiable and protective feeling toward the universe, its asexually conceived child. … Note TPM’s use of pronoun in relation to God; it calls God a “she”, and only a “she”. Building on the notion that the universe is like a child, should we not then automatically graft typical feminine attributes, even somewhat, to this entity? Perhaps in lieu of analogizing the universe’s creation as a bud emerging from an asexual being, instead we should envision it as parthenogenesis, as a child indeed born from a being with feminine attributes.

[R.Carter]

Martha, I believe the " honest miscalculation in logic " he's referencing is the one us atheists will be guilty of making if proof of God is ever substantiated . I also believe an omnibenevolent creator would not sentence us to burn forever because of it. Also, demons like Hitler and the rest deserve to lose their lives, without question; yet torturing them for an eternity would place us perilously close to their mind set.

[Universal Mind]

Originally posted by R.Carter Martha, I believe the \" honest miscalculation in logic \" he's referencing is the one us atheists will be guilty of making if proof of God is ever substantiated . I also believe an omnibenevolent creator would not sentence us to burn forever because of it. Also, demons like Hitler and the rest deserve to lose their lives, without question; yet torturing them for an eternity would place us perilously close to their mind set. That's how I see it. I don't think any humans are infinitely evil. Hitler and so forth deserve terrible things, even long periods of torture, but FOREVER? That's insane. If I think that's insane, then an omnibenevolent being would of course think it's insane, especially over a miscalculation in logic. Martha, the transitive property of inequality says that if A > B and B > C, then A > C. I used that property to back up my point that if God is more benevolent than I am, and I am more benevolent than someone who would allow somebody to be tortured forever (for anything) for not believing I exist (when my existence is verifiable), then God is more benevolent than someone who would allow someone else to be tortured forever for not believing he exists. To put it in shorter form, in terms of benevolence... If God > Me and Me > Eternal Torture Allower, then God > Eternal Torture Allower. So God is more benevolent than what would qualify as an Eternal Torture Allower, so he is not an Eternal Torture Allower. Since I am in the inequality, then I can truthfully make the point that God would not be an eternal torture allower even for Hitler, Stalin, Khan, Hussein, Bin Laden, Zarqawi, Dhamer, Bundy, Jack the Ripper, or anybody else. So I am nowhere near agreeing with the idea that an omnibenevolent being would say, "Woops, that was the wrong religious conclusion. You will now be taken to the eternal torture room, and I will not save you, even though I could save without there being a problem with it."

[eXistenZ]

Actually "omnibenevolent" does not mean that God is always good and smiling in every occasion. This would a simplistic reading of sacred texts. Omnibenevolent is a neologism born just to complete omnipresence and omnipotence. It is used to argue about God, but it is not religious jargon. The “omnibenevolence” of God can be better described as a posture of eternal justice and equanimity in each circumstance. But again, it’s more a concept born from speculation than from the sacred texts. Universal Mind God as described in Christianity does not punish someone because he does not believe in him. For instance, Dante Alighieri in his “Divina Commedia” - where he describes the souls in Hell, Purgatory and Paradise – do not put those who didn’t have the occasion to know Jesus in Hell. Non-believers can go to Paradise just like believers. eXistenZ

[InTheMoment]

Originally posted by eXistenZ God as described in Christianity does not punish someone because he does not believe in him. Not according to most Protestants. Non-believers can go to Paradise just like believers. [/b] I'm sure Awaken would disagree with that.

[Awaken4e1]

Originally posted by Malkav God doesn't wipe out non-believers for one beautiful and powerful reason: Free Will... It's our choice to stay on God's Righteous Path or to step aside. So, my humble answer to your question would be: Yes, God IS Omnibenevolent. BUT, He will not bother with those who doesn't want His Benevolence Bye This assumption is based upon hearsay, and not on fact It is a common misconception that man has ‘free will’ when the word does not substantiate that as fact, but only an assumption. God wills what He will upon whom He will. Rom 9:17 for the Writing saith to Pharaoh--`For this very thing I did raise thee up, that I might shew in thee My power, and that My name might be declared in all the land;' Rom 9:18 so, then, to whom He willeth, He doth kindness, and to whom He willeth, He doth harden. Rom 9:19 Thou wilt say, then, to me, `Why yet doth He find fault? for His counsel who hath resisted?' Rom 9:20 nay, but, O man, who art thou that art answering again to God? shall the thing formed say to Him who did form it , Why me didst thou make thus? Rom 9:21 hath not the potter authority over the clay, out of the same lump to make the one vessel to honour, and the one to dishonour? The Rev.

[AirRick101]

Well, people who are ok with themselves shouldn't worry about God being omnibenevolent. In a scary way, a lot of religious people are ok with a God who is not always benevolent. But, a lot of people ask for a pushover when they ask for an omnibenevolent God; of course not to say that either answer is correct.

[Nirvana Starseed]

In the moment. Why are you asking questions about god all the time. And why do you always speak as if its a male entity. When will you get this idea about a male entity as god, with a white beard up on cloud 9, with infinite power of omnibenevolence or whatever, out of your head? why does god have to be a certain being that is a male all the time to you? Maybe when you bring him down to your house and meet this actual being that you are calling god and asking all these question about, then we can all ask him ourself ey? But don't be suprised if I don't hail him as god only. I will only consider such a being as part of god. Wether or not he be in touch with its will. or speaks any sense, or has any power. That god which is apart of this entity is a part of myself. And understanding of adversay is that which is not part of yourself but "outside", and god inside. Meanwhile when you don't have a subject, it's poitnless asking questions about that non existent entity or subject which you are labelling 'god'. If you are talking about a religious god of your perception from some religious material. You should atleast speak in a logical context out of that religious perception and discuss god in the proper context. (eg, not just a male entity) If so, why does God have to make a Hell? I mean, couldn't he just wipe the non-believers from existence, rather than torture there souls for eternity?[/b] First what are you talking about when you say 'non-believers', non believers of what? of your concept of god? Do you mean non believers of the truth? Or non believers of your concept of god? Who would wipe these non believers from existence? This is your concept of god is it? a entity who can do this.....who tortures souls for enternity? Sounds like you are borrowing religious material into the context of your beliefs, or your discussion or something. I cannot begin to discuss this without pointing out the illogic here, in the way in which you have asked the question implies you believe god is a certain person or entity who creates a place called hell and eliminates people who do not believe in him....by perhaps sending them to this place which they then burn in some fire for eternity. It's a bizzare thing to talk in this context throughout the dicsussion, as if you are speaking as if it were true....and then ask, why does he do this or this? Why does who do what? You are creating not only a entity from inside your head. But an entity with qualities and powers of your own imagination as well. From religious preconcieved notions most likely.

[bradybaker]

^ Nirvana, quit being a jackass.

[InTheMoment]

Originally posted by Nirvana Why are you asking questions about god all the time. And why do you always speak as if its a male entity. Well he is referenced quite a bit as \"Father,\" in the Bible. Originally posted by bradybaker ^ Nirvana, quit being a jackass. I was going to say a fucktard, but close enough.

[Chainsaw Kitten]

Hmm.. the whole heaven and hell thing always has struck a nerve with me. It's the escapists dream, no? We can avoid reality for as long as we live because we assure ourselves the afterlife will be wonderful. Heaven is supposed to be "eternal bliss". Well personally, I'd rather live a life with mixed emotions. I will live my life happily and well, ignoring what people tell me is "sinful". I will love and respect myself, as oneself is one's greatest virtue. I will be human, relying on instinct and reason... Not some fabrication I'm told to believe. Instead of this monotonic blissful eternity why not just enjoy the beautiful things in life and do away with the horrible?

[Awaken4e1]

I think that one of the most misconstrued assumptions about hell is that it is for punishment. ‘It is not, it is a place, or should I say state of correction…’

[bradybaker]

Originally posted by Awaken4e1 I think that one of the most misconstrued assumptions about hell is that it is for punishment. ‘It is not, it is a place, or should I say state of correction…’ So one you're 'corrected' you join God and all of his fancy friends in heaven?

[Awaken4e1]

Originally posted by bradybaker So one you're 'corrected' you join God and all of his fancy friends in heaven? Death, Hell, and the grave give up their dead...because their use is complete...no longer needed. So, Hell can't be eternal, can it?

[bradybaker]

Originally posted by Awaken4e1 Death, Hell, and the grave give up their dead...because their use is complete...no longer needed. So, Hell can't be eternal, can it? I don't know, I was asking you. Here's a question for you. If I continue living my life the way I do (ie. strong atheist, anti-religious, blasphemous), do you think I will go to hell? Don't give me bible passages, do you, personally, think I will go to hell.

[Awaken4e1]

Originally posted by bradybaker I don't know, I was asking you. Here's a question for you. If I continue living my life the way I do (ie. strong atheist, anti-religious, blasphemous), do you think I will go to hell? Don't give me bible passages, do you, personally, think I will go to hell. You're already in torment i.e. Hell, and that is why you are atheist, blasphemous, but that doesn't mean you can't get out...

[Darkmatic]

If you ever ask that questian to a so called "True Christian" or one who utterly and completely takes the bible to be truth , im sure they will tell you that you will go to hell . About hell being eternal , i personally find it completely stupid that if you dont meet the certain criteria you go to hell . Basically if you want to go to heaven as a christain , you have to throw away the majority of your free will , thats how i see it . So the whole thing that makes us what we are , the ability of choose condemns us to hell if we exercise our choice on certain things . I can understand that if there was a God and heaven , and if you were a killer or something , a very bad person , then you shouldnt go to heaven . But if i dont believe in God , i have simply used the brain that this God gave me , but god would have me not use this gift of a thing called thought and choice and prefer me to deny certain facts we know about our species and history in general . That is the underlying thing i dont like about the whole heaven /hell condemning thing . It just doesn't make sense from a creators point of view .