He creates a possibility of suffering not merely to satisfy His own interest, but rather to satisfy the mutual interest shared by Him, as well as all of humanity. Therefore in my opinion, it is something an benevolent God would do, being that the result is the eternal happiness of every human ever while the cost at which this happiness comes, is merely temporary suffering.

If I didn't need to eat then the absence of food wouldn't cause any suffering. — TheHedoMinimalist

Be that as it may, you still need to eat, which means you still need food, which means the absence of food will still ultimately result in suffering. Being that you need food to avoid this suffering, the absence of food is still arguably the cause of suffering from starvation.

God gave us needs to give us purpose. Our ultimate purpose being, to be loved by Him. Whether or not you choose to view that as malicious is up to you, much in the same way the choice to fulfill this purpose is up to you. I don't feel this is cheating because in this scenario, unlike the love potion scenario, God faces the same risk of suffering that we do. Meaning that He suffers without our love, just as we suffer without His. He already chose us, now its our turn to choose Him.

I completely agree with you, minor oversight on my part.

Just edited my comment to reflect the fact that it's more of a re-union with God, rather than an initial joining.

To respond to your first question, yes your supposition is correct, God gave us free will in order to give us the ability to reject His love. And ultimately, yes God could do those things. However, that just seems like cheating to me.

To illustrate just exactly how this is cheating, let's imagine that you have a significant other with whom you are in love dearly.

As a man who's has been in love with a woman, I can tell you that, personally, one of the best parts about it is the fact that this person makes you feel so special. They make you feel so special because somehow, out of everyone this beautiful girl could've fallen in love with, somehow she fell in love with you.

Now let's imagine that somehow, before you actually met this beautiful girl you slipped her a love potion, making it so she would only love you for ever and ever, regardless of what you did or said. At first it might be great, however, eventually, wouldn't you begin to question the legitimacy of her love? Wouldn't you begin to wonder if she would love you had you not slipped her that potion? Would that not suck this "special" feeling out of the relationship leaving you ultimately feeling empty inside? Knowing that it's not natural love, but rather fake love that you induced by yourself?

Essentially what I'm trying to say is, yes, God could give us a love potion effectively giving us no choice in the matter, and we'd never be the wiser. And yes, that would ultimately be in our best interest. But I imagine, being that we are made in His image, God wants real love much in the same way that we want real love.

God wants us to choose Him too. After all He is a God of love, and while that would ultimately be in our best interest, God isn't interested in being some cosmic dictator, forcing His will upon all of his subjects, regardless of whether or not that's what's best for us.

Now to respond to your second question.

It's hard to imagine how an absence of something could produce something with a presence like that of suffering. — TheHedoMinimalist

I can name an absence of many things which would result in our imminent suffering. Let's start with the basics, how long could you go without food or water before you begin to suffer? How long could you go without sleep before beginning to suffer? How long could you go without human interaction before you end up suffering from insanity?

Now I realize this may be ever so slightly fallacious reasoning as that was probably the weakest part of your objection.

However, my response will ultimately be similar to my initial response. I think lack of God's love manifests itself as negativity because somewhere deep down, we want God's approval. Much in the same way we seek the approval and validation of those around us. Not only do we want His love, but we need his love to be complete. Maybe not in our earthly existence, however ultimately sooner or later, we are all going to seek His love. This is because sooner or later, everyone will get tired of suffering through the dark, sad, lonely, painful Godless existence waiting for us in Hell, and therefore seek re-union with God.

I have recently become an advocate of the notion known as Christian Universalism, due to the exact reason many are debating in this forum. How could an all-good, all-powerful and all loving God sentence his most beloved creations to eternal damnation? I don't believe He could.

sinners must, eternally, suffer in hell.

I have an argument that I'd like to purpose that further develops this idea of temporary damnation rather than eternal damnation.

1) If God is all-good, all-powerful and all-loving, then he has the ability as well as the desire to ensure that none of his creations suffer eternal damnation in Hell.
2) God is all-good, all-powerful and all-loving.
3) Therefore, God will ensure that none of his creations suffer eternal damnation in Hell.

Essentially, what I'm proposing with this argument is an elaboration on the quote listed above. Think of our earthly existence as a trial run of sorts, where we get to live in a world made up partially of good stuff and partially of bad stuff.

The good stuff that we experience is the manifestation of God's love, while the bad stuff is the absence of His love. In this trial run we are to decide if we want His love or not.

If we decide that we do in fact want his love, we die and subsequently go to Heaven, where we get to experience a world made up entirely of His love, the good stuff.

However, if we decide that we don't want his love, we die and subsequently go to Hell, where we get to experience a world made up of the absence of His love, the bad stuff.

Part of the pain and suffering we experience in Hell, is the result of a Godless, sinful existence. However, once we accept God and His love into our lives, we will subsequently be granted permission to enter his kingdom of love, Heaven.

I believe we can choose to accept His love at any point, even after we die. Meaning that even if we do end up in Hell, we will probably have some time to serve. However, we will still have the ability to accept His love and eventually join Him in Heaven.

I object to premise 1.

As someone reading this argument in the context of the Christian faith, I feel as though premise 1 completely overlooks, at least, my own reason for worshiping God. I don't worship God simply because He is this great being, even if he is the GCB, that wouldn't be what makes Him worthy of my worship.

What makes Him worthy of my worship is the fact that I have love for Him as my creator. The relationship between a creator and his creation is much more intimate than the relationship defined in premise 1.

To help illustrate my point further, imagine a scenario in which the God that is worshipped by Christians, is not actually the GCB. Let's assume that in this scenario God, is the creator of our universe. However, perhaps he has a boss.

I would feel inclined to worship God out of love for having created my entire universe and everything in it. As opposed to God's boss, who is still ultimately still the GCB in this scenario, however I would feel much less inclined to worship him over the God, because of the fact I bare no real connection to him.

First off, I would like to start by establishing the fact that, all killing is bad.

When soldiers come home from overseas, and people thank them for their service, the soldiers are not being commended for committing "good" murder. That is not what people thank them and look up to them for.

However, I see what you are getting at with the concept of "situational deviation."

I don't believe that our view of morality is a product of natural selection, because of essentially everything you said in your post. What evolutionary factor could possibly account for the conflict between our survival instinct and our morality?

Personally, I attribute the cause of our morality to be Divine Command Theory, or the view that morality is somehow dependent upon God.

However, the idea of Divine Command Theory raises some new questions regarding the concept of objective moral truths.

When creating humans, did God create us with a moral compass pointing in the direction of certain pre-existing moral truths? Or did God create moral truths, specifically for us?

If mankind were created without the ability to sin, free will would not exist. — Brillig

I agree with everything you have to say up until this point.

I have to agree with Iwanttostopphilosophizingbutikant when it comes to the subject of free will and evil. Humans do in fact need the ability to sin, otherwise we aren't free willed beings.

Free will does not require any specific ability besides the ability to choose. — Brillig

I think you may be overlooking one small crucial factor here. Free will does in fact require the ability to choose. However, free will is the ability to choose from what exactly?

Well, if you wanted to, you could walk out your front door and go do literally anything you want to do. You have the ability to choose to have sex outside of wedlock, commit murder, get high or whatever your sin of choice may be. That is free will.

If God were to make it so we couldn't sin, how could we be free willed?

We might think we were free willed because we wouldn't be exposed to any sinful behavior. However ultimately, we would just be going about life blissfully ignorant of the existence of sin.

We would essentially be living our lives with a divine safety lock, much like the one a parent may put on the family computer to make sure their child isn't exposed to illicit content.

I like the idea of the Greatest Conceivable Being, GCB or God, existing separately from time.

However I would like to challenge premise 5, as well as propose some adjustments.

I also have some questions about premise 3. You essentially say that since the GCB is omniscient, he knows everything, since he knows everything, his thoughts are not susceptible to change. I see where you're going with this, but I'm still having some trouble accepting this line of reasoning as is, due to the idea of attention mentioned by Brillig in the above comments. However, I don't believe I'm at all qualified to speculate as to the inner-workings of the mind of God, does he even have an attention span? Does his mind never change because he is paying attention to everything equally all the time?

Next is my challenge of premise 5. This premise, in my opinion, weakens the argument, because of the fact that it hinges on a semi-arbitrary definition that was established at the beginning of the post. As Brillig points out, time can be scientifically defined as "the fundamental unit measured by a clock."

While time and change have become almost interchangeable in this context, I think it's important to differentiate the two.

Let's say you are sitting in an empty room. The only thing in this room is an analog clock, just ticking away. Is the clock ticking as a result of it experiencing change due the passing of time? Or is it ticking due to the fact that it was designed to measure the fundamental unit we know as time?

I prefer to think that it's ticking because it's measuring the passing of seconds, and not because it's experiencing a change induced by the passing of time.

What if you were to establish the definition of time as simply the passing of seconds?

Then you could keep your argument in tact by establishing that the GCB resides in a realm outside of time. A realm where every moment that has ever happened and ever will happen, is happening currently.

Hi All sight,

To answer your question, yes. I believe some people have more willpower than others. Additionally I think that belief plays a role in the amount of willpower someone possesses. I think a person’s level of belief is determined by their universal outlook on life.

In my opinion, willpower, circumstances and belief all play into one another. I believe they all play into one another because they all have a common denominator, the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction states that you will attract into your life the things that you focus on. That is to say, the things upon which you choose to focus your thoughts and energy will come back to you.

To elaborate, if you have a goal and you choose to focus on how you are making progress everyday towards the completion of these goals, you are much more likely to meet this goal than if you were to focus on how lofty and unrealistic it is.

It should be noted that the law of attraction is not a shortcut to the universe. One cannot achieve completion of a goal simply by waking up each day and thinking “I’m going to do this today,” then proceed to make no progress towards the goal and still expect it to happen.

Allow me to use an illuminating example. Let’s imagine a man named Gerald. Gerald has a test coming up at the end of the week. He was thinking about studying, however he just heard of this new thing called the Law of Attraction. He heard that if he only thinks positive thoughts, he doesn’t have to study. Gerald believes that the universe will reward him for his good vibrations. This is not how the law works. Gerald will still fail if he fails to prepare. However, if Gerald sets a goal to ace the test, focuses on it all week while he is studying, acknowledges that every time he studies he is making progress towards the completion of his goal, Gerald is infinitely more likely to ace the test.

While some might say “well obviously if he studies all week and focuses on his goal of acing the test he is likelier to ace the test. The Law of Attraction had nothing to do with it.” This is where I would say some are wrong. This is where I would say willpower, belief and circumstances all play into each other via the Law of attraction.

If Gerald didn’t have the willpower to sit down and grind out hours of studying, he wouldn’t have studied and he would’ve failed. If Gerald didn’t believe studying would help him ace the test, he would have not studied and he would’ve failed. Or perhaps Gerald is in circumstances which don’t allow him to study or believe in himself and he would be more likely to fail.

Hi Empedocles,

I may not be exactly the Judeo-Christian worshipper of God you are looking for, nonetheless I am Christian, and was raised in a Christian household. However it wasn’t forced upon me, my parents allowed me to make my own decisions about whether or not I was to believe in God. As a result of my upbringing I have developed my own personal views of Christianity, and more specifically this concept of a loving God who also supposedly created hell.

I was never comfortable believing that my God would send a good person to hell simply because they don’t believe in him.

To elaborate, picture a good person. A person who has led a fruitful, loving life full of positive influence, motivation and charity. Now imagine that person is an Atheist. I was never able to believe that my all loving God would sentence this atheist to an afterlife of eternal damnation simply because they didn’t believe in him. After all, if God is love, shouldn’t God be more concerned with his creations inspiring and spreading love amongst each other rather than simply holding a belief that he exists? Shouldn’t my all loving God recognize that, even though this person was an atheist, they spread love and left the world a better place than it was when they entered it?

This is the belief that I grew up with, because I couldn’t picture a God who was all loving, as well as a God who would heartlessly send the majority of his creations to hell simply because they didn’t believe in the right deity.

To clarify, I believe that, regardless of religion, God sends genuinely good people to heaven. People who, in their time on Earth, inspired, cultivated and perpetuated love.

However, that still leaves us with the existence of hell, as well as the question of who gets sent to it. Well if those who inspire, cultivate and perpetuate love are sent to heaven, I believe it would be logical for those who do the opposite to be sent to hell. That is to say, those who inspire, cultivate and perpetuate hate are sent to hell.

To me, perpetuators of hate are people who leave the world worse off than it was when they entered it. To elaborate, the people who get sent to hell are people who absolutely deserve it. People who, in their time on Earth, left a wake of destruction in their path. I believe hell is a place for genuinely bad people who have violated the humanity of God’s precious creations. Hell is a place for rapists and other sexual abusers, senseless murders, abusive and violent people who took the precious gift of life bestowed upon them by the Almighty, and wasted it.

Now that you have the context of my religious faith, I would like to offer my interpretation of your above argument.

1) Heaven was created by God, who is love (1 John 4:8 ).
2) If heaven was created by God, who is love, then heaven is for people who inspired, cultivated and perpetuated love while on Earth.
3) Heaven is the antithesis of hell.
4) Therefore, hell is a place for people who inspired, cultivated and perpetuated hate while on Earth.

The only issue I take with this form of the argument is, I couldn’t directly account for God having created hell. However if you accept the fact that God created hate as the antithesis of love, it stands to reason that you should also accept the fact that God created hell as the antithesis of heaven.

If you don’t accept that fact, well you should.

There can’t be light without darkness.

There can’t be good without evil.

And there can’t be love without hate.

Thank you for reading!(: