How Do You MORALLY Justify ETERNAL Punishment?

Because I get the impression that some people do, apparently without even thinking about it.

On another message board, quite some time back now, I put it this way. Consider Adolf Hitler as a purely hypothetical example. Let's say that he made six million people's lives hell on earth for four years (historians please don't chime in—this is purely a hypothetical example, as I said ).

Six million times four is twenty-four million. So an-eye-for-an-eye would mandate that he suffer in hell for 24 million years. That's still nowhere near eternity or infinity.

See what I mean?

So mathematically how do you justify it? And morally too (an eternity of suffering, i.e.) while we're at it.

 

Nobody goes to hell for being bad, and nobody goes to heaven because they're good. Hell is well-populated with good people, and heaven is well-populated with folks who know beyond doubt they don't deserve to be there.

I've read a few stories about people who went to hell, but didn't stay because their names weren't in the book of those who belong there. Yes, there is a book of hell, or death, just as there is a Lamb's book of life in heaven. Lucifer never had an original idea of his own in all of recorded history, which is one reason why he said that he would "be like the Most High". He's an imitator, not an inventor, and all of his imitations are poor and twisted substitute for God's originals. The only reason anyone gets into heaven, according to Jesus Christ himself, is through HIM. Not muhammed; not bhuda, not krishna, sun yung moon, charles taze russel, joseph smith, or any other false christ. If your name isn't in His book of life, you don't get into heaven. Being good or bad never had anything to do with it. Abraham had faith in God, and God counted his faith as righteousness, since without faith it's impossible to please God.

Finally, it's important to realize that God made heaven for those who believe in His only begotten son Jesus. Hell and the lake of fire were made for the devil and his servants. There is no other place to go when we leave these mortal bodies. We don't simplly vanish into the ether and stop living or existing, but we do leave our bodies and go to live somewhere else. You pick.

 

i don't.
but i also live in a universe that has no obligation to justify the birth or extinction of entire species. including one calling itself humanity.

those who commit bias motivated genocides would not be missed for all of eternity though.

i don't justify telling anyone what to pretend about what isn't known either.
just that nothing has to be known to exist, nor have to have physical form to do so.

unending change, and unlimited diversity, are the only things i've observed that seem at all likely to be eternal,
although non-physical things might have that potential. there might be a whole parallel universe of them somewhere.

i don't justify humans claiming to know anything about it, nor telling each other what to pretend that they do.
i don't justify that i sometimes give in to the temptation to say this much about it. i just sometimes do.

maybe too often, because this is all just way too much more narrow then even just what i can observe on a walk in the woods.

 

well I don't think that trying to count up these years one for one is a good way to look at it. but for what it's worth I think your math is a little off. Hitler didn't make 6 million people's live hell for 4 years. He killed 6 million people in 4 years. So then you would have to count up all the years that those 6 million people would have lived if they hadn't been murdered. And that isn't counting the millions of war casualties -- that is just the concentration camps. Hitler did make a lot of people's lives hell for 6 years -- infact all of europe and asia. So that's say maybe around another billion people times 6?

Imagine this. God creates the angels -- but one angel was made more magnificent than all the others. Then God made this angel a ruler among angels. This particular angel was given a lot. Then one day the angel said it wasn't enough and decided to attempt to usurp God. For whatever reason it doesn't happen all at once instead there is this struggle that lasts for tens of thousands of years -- for all we know, this struggle could have been going on for trillions of trillions of years before the creation of man. Still, after tens of thousands of years, the angel seems content on usurping God. And not only that -- this angel is causing a lot of trouble with the rest of creation. He is going to corrupt one third of the rest of the angels -- as well as much of humanity. What is God going to do? Throw the angel in a lake of fire for the rest of eternity. After all -- God is vengeful against His foes. To what degree should the sacredness of life be defended? To the utmost.

"hell" wasn't created for man. It was created for angels. But man can still go there if he follows the fallen angels there.

 

In eastern religious philosophy, there is no eternal punishment as such.

Yes, there is talk of astral dimensions of heaven and hells in the Hindu scriptures but there is no eternal hell as such. This is because the core of a person or entity is considered to be composed of the Self or Brahman, which in turn is supposed to be pure consciousness which is intrinsically blissful and divine by nature. Buddhist philosophy considers this to be the Buddha nature within all sentient beings. In enlightenment or Buddhahood, each human being understands this fact for himself or herself.

So a vicious human being, is more like a good computer infected with the virus/malware of raag-dvesh or cravings-aversions, which results in its malfunctioning. Scan and remove the malware with a good antivirus system, and the virus is gone. Imo, using an analogy, religion is more of an antivirus system supposed to get rid of the viruses, but sometimes even the antivirus system can get affected or corrupted adversely by new viruses or malware, leading to religion itself at times becoming a source of strife.

Eventually, all sentient beings revert back to their original state of blissful Self or Buddha nature. The intelligent ones attain this state faster through wisdom and diligent work, while the ignorant and imprudent will have to go through torturous life experiences to work their way forward.

 

what even is the point of vengence? what is it even good for? anything?
no.
the whole point of morality and law, (which law and law makers too often loose sight of)
is to prevent the dominance of aggressiveness, (which is tyranny, which is as evil as there is any such thing,
and the opposite of civilization, in any positive useful and meaningful sense of the word, and even freedom).

i agree entirely with ajay0 up there. i like to think this parallels my own perspective.

i wish i could avoid being ever distracted from it, as i so obviously sometimes am, by fanatical ignorance trying to force download its malware onto my perception.

 

Happily I don't subscribe to that particular flavor of mythology.

 

the message that Jesus preached wasn't about fear, it was about love.

 

yes, but "christianity" threw christ under the bus when it cannonized saul of tarsus as the so called 'saint' paul.
and the weaponizing of it, i.e."evangelicalism" is more about its own greed.
and christ wasn't god, but a man god choose to be channeled by,
and even the recorded words attributed to him were written by his companions, himself being illiterate, as were most people of his time.
yes his message may have been fine, but its seldom what is preached by those who deny other massages and their messangers were sent by the same god.

 

Jesus's teaching of 'the kingdom of God or heaven within you' also seems to me to be a statement that implies divinity in the human being.

In such a scenario, inner divinity does not exactly equate with eternal hellish punishment.

Imho, most christian scriptures was distorted by poor interpretations which concealed the import of such insightful statements.

This is why most people seems to be conditioned to be paranoid about eternal hell-fire. I think the likes of western spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle, Bernadette Roberts, Adyashanti had given much better interpretations of Christian scriptures that is sensible and wise without any of the fear and control tactics of the earlier intrerpreters.