Re: ArkivCD's don't seem to sound very rich

On Jul 20, 7:56 pm, "Simon Roberts" <s...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Bob Harper" <bob.har...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

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Simon Roberts wrote:
"Bob Harper" <bob.har...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Simon Roberts wrote:
"Bob Harper" <bob.har...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Simon, with respect it is *you* who is missing the point. Hell is an
option precisely *because* we are free.
Oy.  It wouldn't be an option if god didn't make it one.  To repeat yet
again: I'm not talking about whether we have free will but the range of
options with which we're presented by the god you believe in.

 Free to make choices for good or
for evil. If God had excluded the possibility of bad choices, we would
simply be His little robots.
Why?  As I said above, there could be a wide range of "good" or neutral
options to choose from.  How would being put in such a position make
someone an automaton?

 But He didn't want robots; he wanted
creatures free to choose Him. Or, alas, not. That doesn't mean that He
*wants* people to make the wrong choice. He most emphatically does
not.
Assuming that's true (you can't possibly know, certainly not to the
extent to make "emphatic" pronouncements), why must the consequence of
making "the wrong choice" be hell?

Simon
Sigh. To limit choices to 'good' or 'neutral' means that we are not
really free.

Only according to a definition of "free" which includes "free to choose
evil" - but of course that begs the question.  There may be options in
addition to good and evil which we are being denied.  Perhaps that also
means we're not free.

Nope. On the moral continuum choices range from good to evil, with all
degrees in between. Is there another continuum I'm missing?

I've no idea.  If evil weren't a choice, would you know you were missing it?







And if we are not *really* free, then we are something else--robots,
automatons, whatever. What's so hard about seeing that?

You seem to assume that we all share this peculiar understanding of the
concepts of "freedom" and "automaton" etc.

No, I don't assume that, but I do believe it to be true.

As for the consequence, well, if one rejects the Good, then he is stuck
with the non-Good. In the broadest sense, Hell is the eternal absence of
the Ultimate Good, which is God.

If that's all hell were, it wouldn't be much of a threat, would it?

Oh yes, it would. As I suggested to someone else, try the last chapters of
Williams's Descent Into Hell for as brilliant and terrifying a literary
description of such a state as I've ever seen. Dante's tame by comparison.

Why is that what a mere absence of god would resemble?  Why couldn't it be
mere nothingness?

Simon- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

For non-believers such as myself, that's exactly what it is; "mere
nothingness", and I'm more than content with that situation. This
isn't an attack on Bob Harper. Indeed, I admire anyone whose faith
remains intact after such a sustained and vile onslaught. Not from
you, Simon, but from that disgusting German sonofabitch.
.

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