"A good God wouldn't have a Hell"

That seems to be a somewhat ambiguous or disingenuous statement.

The Jewish belief is that of a Resurrection, where there will be a future physical kingdom where everything will be great and run by God, and not everyone will get to live again. (To discuss various Jewish beliefs concerning the afterlife for the wicked would be much more complicated)

Sheol could just be translated as "death", possibly. So does not necessarily indicate an afterlife.

 

You are free to dismiss God's chosen.

 

Okay, what do you claim to be the Jewish belief about the afterlife for those who were bad?

 

I disagree. Imagine you know that you can go on living forever, and your body will not break down. Would everyone in that situation still choose permanent death, knowing that their life was going to have a lot of suffering?

Maybe we might just be talking about light suffering, or intermittent suffering, rather than excruciating suffering. Maybe the type of suffering comparable to people living in Third World countries or parts of the world with totalitarian control.
I've read many stories about them suffering some very horrible things, and they don't kill themselves.

 

But that's not necessarily unjust though. (For reasons that were already explained to you in the linked thread)
Especially in the case if they could have an opportunity to accept Christ after death. (This assumes several things were in place like their deeds were not too evil, and/or their heart was close to repentance)

If only one religion can save them, and if they are not saved they only get what they deserve, or what is a natural consequence of their own actions/desires, why do you have a problem with that?

 

I don't make any claim.
God's chosen people's belief of Sheol is well documented.

 

But ambiguous.

Do you have any particular links?

 

Try a Jewish source and search on Sheol.

 

I agree. The problem is that one of your three justifications for eternal suffering is that it could be considered preferable to death, which contradicts the point you just made here and would weaken the whole point of the suffering being punishment.

I think the eternity aspect would render the nature of the suffering somewhat moot (I actually think that's a key element of the myths, which is why it is a ubiquitous factor across most of the different versions).

Maybe because suicide is a mortal sin that would lead to an eternity of suffering in Hell.

 

Yes, it's unjust and it's a pity you can't see that, but then you will rationalize it as just in your mind.......somehow.

 

How does one punish or reward a dead person? Early Christians believed that everyone who had died would be resurrected and judged when Jesus returned.

That didn't happen, so Christians adopted the view that the soul would go to heaven or hell. What is a soul? If it exists, can it experience pain or pleasure?

Is my hypothetical soul going to be tormented because I reject Christianity? Isn't this a crazy idea to believe in the 21st century/

 

I think it comes down to intention. If one tries to be, "good," to his fellows, & to serve the will of what he or she has always been taught to be God, is it Justifiable to punish them terribly for eternity (or even for a few lifetimes) merely for having been mistaken, the same way billions of others-- in your scenario of only One True God/Religion-- would likewise have been misled?

In this case, it should also be pointed out that not everyone starts out w/ anything like an equal chance for Salvation (does fairness play any part in being, "good?"). Despite that there might be a sprinkling of Christians (if I can assume those are the ones you feel who've chosen correctly) in one's country of origin, most people, if they adopt a religion, will make it the faith of their parents and neighbors.

 

Why is "serving God" being equated to being good?

I see a major flaw there. Obedience is not morality.

 

As I understood it, Sheol was a very narrow, tight/cramped place, much like a Coffin for many souls.

 

I'm only replying to the precepts as our glorious leader deigns to lay them out.

 

Just as a kind of palate-cleansing sorbet, before the next discordant course in this theological meal, I'll share with you all that when I was very young (like 8 or so), I used to lay in bed at night thinking about, "eternity." I would hope that maybe God would think well enough of me to let me out of heaven to go back in time & watch the unfolding of Earth's history: see the dinosaurs, & so forth. But no matter how many millions of years I could figure out a way to occupy, there always still remained an eternity more to go-- & that idea, that my existence would continue forever, without end, I found more terrifying than anything else.

 

I don't think that is necessarily automatically equated to being good.

If laws are all just, then obedience to those laws would go a long ways for maintaining good morality.

 

Most likely there would be a video for you to watch.

Would it make you feel better if you knew you had the choice to end it at any time? And then knowing that, you would not choose to end it?

 

That's funny. But when I was 8 (in 1973), there were no, "videos."

Would you be surprised to know that not everyone thinks the same way as you? I don't know, myself, how I would handle that choice you propose, but I've heard a similar idea quoted before, though w/ the opposite conclusion. I don't recall the author, but it was a person of some renown, who was cited in the book I was reading as having postulated that if all human beings came with a button on our arms that, if we wanted to end our lives, all we needed to do was push it, it would be a much less crowded world. Again, I'm not agreeing w/ that way of seeing life, I'm just noting that there are others-- & that the author both knew of & decided to quote this idea in his own work speaks to the reality that others are in sympathy with that feeling-- who must experience life in a way that is foreign to you, as perhaps my point is being lost on you. I'm not saying that one view is right and the other is wrong; I'm saying that no ONE way of looking at life is suitable for ALL people. We're too different.

 

There is no reason to believe a God's laws are just.

 

I've seen it described as a shallow grave. So, yes, that fits your understanding.

I think at one time, a while ago, one description meant being separated from God. Don't know how many believe that one. But Sheol is often referred to as the Jewish Hell by Christians. Not some firey lake of torture.

 

It was 3000 yrs ago.

 

According to most Christian religions, they are absolved from God's laws. Jesus was to see to that.

Or is wearing clothing of mixed fabric still bad.

Leviticus 19:19
'Keep my decrees. "'Do not mate different kinds of animals. "'Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. "'Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

 

Heaven and hell are just metaphors like the carrot and the stick. Religion is nothing more than an older version of government designed to control the actions of others. They were created when the world was believed to be flat so heaven is up and hell is down. They didn't know that it would reverse 12 hours from now!

There is no possibility that heaven or hell can exist except for in our imagination.

 

While the first part of your post (which deals w/ the earthly, self-professed, representatives of Divinities) sounds like a reasonable perspective, the thing that there TRULY is no reasonable possibility of, is that you could know-- from amongst all things unknown &, to date, unproven/unprovable-- which ones are at all, "possible." Surely any rational thinker would have to admit this. Science discovers things, on a regular basis, which beforehand, nary a logical-minded believer in the conventional, "scientific," viewpoint would have considered credible.

Dark matter, for instance, is now believed to constitute 85% of the mass of the universe; yet until that idea was proposed (w/ supporting evidence) in 1933, none of our most brilliant scientific minds would have considered it credible that all of the, "empty space," of the cosmos was actually full of the preponderance of its matter-- and we still don't know what comprises it!

For a very long time, any logically-thinking adherent to the scientific status quo used to be certain that we understood the physics of nature, & the nature of physics, until Niels Bohr and the other quantum physics trailblazers came along to show that, beneath a certain scale, all the contemporary expectations of physics got turned on their head.

Humans' limited technical abilities, as well, have long restricted our ability to ascertain truths. Before electron microscopes, we had no, "proof," of the existence of atoms, the foundation of all matter. Interestingly, a couple of thousand years ago, the Greek Democritus speculated on just such a concept: that all things were made up of the same basic thing, only in different configurations. Mainstream science, however, went with Aristotle's theory of, "humors," which held sway for more than a millennium.

Likewise, when it was initially shown that microscopic, "germs," caused illness, the idea-- because they could not be seen-- was first dismissed, then, later derided. Even after European physicians had adopted hand-washing, before & after surgery, I have heard that the AMA forbade American doctors from following this protocol, since it would demonstrate that they gave credence to this idea of, "invisible bugs," spreading disease. Though I honestly haven't found it easy-- not surprisingly-- to yet find documentation verifying this AMA policy, I DO know, that long before this, a Hungarian Dr. Semmelweis had this same thought & proved the efficacy of hand-washing at preventing the spread of disease; his were the findings that were disregarded. This, however, is easy for anyone to verify; in fact, there is an accepted scientific principle known as The Semmelweis Reflex," meaning a knee-jerk reflex to reject new evidence
contradicting established norms.

So, Doofenshmirtz (I honestly love the name, by the way), that leaves you 2 choices. No one is asking you to support any unproven concept. But you can follow the lead of the majority of the scientific community which poo-pooed Democritus, fought Gallileo, dismissed Semmelweis, & on and on, in an unbroken tradition through today (including having little if any initial appreciation of the important discovery of fractal geometry), by stipulating that, although, in the past, science had ignored important truths, because of its attachment to erroneous beliefs, NOW, however, we finally know enough to make definitive statements about things of which no conclusive proof or disproof exists;
or you can actually embrace the true scientific principle of basing judgements solely on observable, reproducible, definitive/conclusive evidence, of which-- in the case of there being some (Dark or Light) unseen force in the universe, called by many, "God--" the data is insufficient for you to state (even if you are not aware of any compelling evidence to suggest its reality), factually, that it is, "impossible," that such a thing could turn out to be true.

Come on, would you categorically deny the possibility of the speculative, unproven/provable scientific theories about multiple universes, holographic realities, & so forth? Then what's the difference, other than your personal impression? And since when has that been an unbiased, scientific measure?