GOD CANNOT DAMN EVEN IF HE CAN OR IN SOME WAY SHOULD FOR IT IS TOO RISKY TO DO IT
Christians teach that if you die without being in a spiritual relationship
with Jesus you will never be saved but will be punished forever. There is
a potent philosophical proof that even if God feels he ought to put sinful and
rebellious people in the place of everlasting punishment he cannot.
Descartes held that the only thing I can be sure of 100% is that I exist because
I am aware. I can doubt everything else but I cannot doubt that I have doubted.
All God can be sure of is that he is a conscious being and nothing else. The
reason he would be sure is because his experience of himself as existing cannot
be wrong but his intelligence could be wrongly programmed. Therefore it cannot
be really verified by intelligence. You know that if you experience one apple
and another apple making two apples that it is stronger proof that reasoning
that one apple and another apple is two.
There could be an evil demon that makes God merely think he is God when he is
not God at all. God is sure he exists but he is not sure he is God. So, if God
puts people into Hell it is because he believes that he is God and should put
himself and his principles first.
He is just as unsure that he is God as he is that the people he is sending to
Hell exist. When he is unsure of the divine creative power he is equally unsure
of the product of the power.
If God sends a person to suffer forever in Hell he is doing wrong. When he is as
uncertain of being God as he is of the person being real he has to ask which of
these facts is the most important. He can live without acting like God and
damning people which would hurt nobody therefore it is better not to damn for
that hurts people that may exist. Thus we have found that if Hell is true then
God is irrational and dense. The doctrine maligns God if it is merely man-made.
It might occur to you that I can’t send a person to jail because I am not sure
they exist and did wrong. But that is illogical for I can cause justified and
temporary damage. Hell is permanent and never-ending damage and is wrong for
that reason.
If God can be sure that he is God then God can do what is logically impossible
for he can know what is impossible to know which makes the whole situation with
the damned worse. Then, if reason commands God to put people in Hell, like some
religions say, he can go against it and still be good. A God who can do the
logically impossible or the illogical and who sends people to everlasting
punishment would be vicious and cruel.
God ought to consider all sin to be venial if venial sin exists. The Catholic
Church says that venial sin is not serious and cannot deserve Hell. Even if sin
is mortal God should not treat it as such in case he is being deluded. So, if
God considers us to be mortal sinners God is committing a mortal sin. It is a
mortal sin to impute mortal sin when you think you should not or need not.
Protestants don’t believe in venial sin but when their Jesus atones for us even
if we don’t want him to after we have been saved, he could have atoned for the
entire human race and paid enough to make the mortal sins venial without
necessarily saving all from sin and Hell. Let me explain. Mortal sin is
unlimited in it viciousness as far as its consequences are concerned. If Jesus
can atone for sin he can prevent it being too serious. An analogy is needed.
When you push your granny knowing she will fall on a mattress it is not as bad
as pushing her when she will fall on a concrete floor. Jesus could deal with
many of the consequences of my sin as can any person so that it is less bad. By
atonement, Jesus can prevent too serious sin.
Any Christian or Muslim or Mormon who believes in everlasting punishment is a
fanatical fundamentalist to some degree and has no right to complain about the
excesses of fundamentalism. The pure evil of the doctrine is clearly seen when
nations go to war and there is a great loss of life. How could it be right to go
to war on when you have no idea if you will be increasing the numbers going to
Hell or not? Jesus had the nerve to preach everlasting punishing and then
approve of the war-mongering in the Bible and he looked forward to his own war
Armageddon. What Hell believers should be doing is this, instead of defending
themselves and spending money on war, leave it to the hands of God and
evangelise harder to bring people to the gospel even in the face of an unjust
aggressor. When death looms, converting sinners matters more than saving lives
for Hell is worse than death, infinitely worse.
God represents imprudence and stupidity and cruelty and if there is a Devil then
he must be a wise philosopher who was right to turn against him. The believers
in God should not be learning philosophy or trusting reason for their belief
says that unreason rules and should rule.