I am greatly familiar with the trilemma. I didn't need to quote the entire trilemma argument to make the point that I needed to make. That doesn't render the quote inaccurate or inappropriate in the least. The entire trilemma argument supports me in every way.

Forgiveness, obviously, is a big part of the New Testament message, but it too is backed by the threat of hell and the reward of heaven. Jesus ultimately offers motivation in nothing but these two forms: punishment or reward, hell or heaven.

Jesus rarely uses punishment as a motivator and I wouldn't consider motivating people with reward as very "fire and brimstone" preachy. The Acts of the Apostles are significantly more "fire and brimstone"-y, but even those have the ultimate message of salvation not damnation, and it is an important difference.

[color="#1C2837"]You're being awfully unclear and vague here. Please tell me, precisely, how you interpret his mentioning of hell. Is he, or is he not, threatening you with hell? And if you think not, please provide your justification for ignoring his explicit mentioning of hell and "fire that never shall be quenched."
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He isn't threatening anyone with anything.

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[quote name='nilkn' timestamp='1303514262' post='4801787']
I am greatly familiar with the trilemma. I didn't need to quote the entire trilemma argument to make the point that I needed to make. That doesn't render the quote inaccurate or inappropriate in the least. The entire trilemma argument supports me in every way.

Forgiveness, obviously, is a big part of the New Testament message, but it too is backed by the threat of hell and the reward of heaven. Jesus ultimately offers motivation in nothing but these two forms: punishment or reward, hell or heaven.

Jesus rarely uses punishment as a motivator and I wouldn't consider motivating people with reward as very "fire and brimstone" preachy. The Acts of the Apostles are significantly more "fire and brimstone"-y, but even those have the ultimate message of salvation not damnation, and it is an important difference.

[color="#1C2837"]You're being awfully unclear and vague here. Please tell me, precisely, how you interpret his mentioning of hell. Is he, or is he not, threatening you with hell? And if you think not, please provide your justification for ignoring his explicit mentioning of hell and "fire that never shall be quenched."
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He isn't threatening anyone with anything.
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I must admit I am not fond of being told that I read the Bible with a blindfold, then turning out to be the only one going out of my way to provide support for my arguments. You haven't quoted anything. You haven't explained any of your assertions.[/font]

You say that "Jesus rarely uses punishment as a motivator," yet I provided numerous examples where he does just that. How do you respond to my numerous examples?

By "fire and brimstone" I meant that all his ethical pronouncements are made in the binary environment of heaven and hell, where hell is a place of "fire that never shall be quenched," as Jesus describes it.

By "He isn't threatening anyone with anything," what *exactly* do you mean? Are you claiming that the Bible does not support the idea that there is a hell? Are you saying that sinners who do not seek forgiveness do not go to hell, in contradiction to almost all Christian teaching? Please greatly clarify, citing justification.

You seem, at the very least, to have a very symbolic interpretation of every quote I've provided. Please provide justification for this interpretation. Why is it to be preferred over a much simpler interpretation that takes the words at face value, as they are written?

My thoughts on religion:














*do note, not my actual opinion but I thought it was funny.

You say that "Jesus rarely uses punishment as a motivator," yet I provided numerous examples where he does just that. How do you respond to my numerous examples?

none of your examples are threatening punishment any more than me telling a child not to put their hand on the stove or they might get burned is me threatening punishment.

Your analogy is obviously false. A more accurate analogy would be telling a child that you will whip them if they perform action X that you don't want them to perform. They will only refrain from the action out of fear of your beating them. It's a shallow morality based on nothing but the fear of punishment and the hope of reward.


But at this point it's clear you indeed are way too lazy to care. In the future, please do not initiate a debate with someone if you don't want to deal with the possibility that the person may request that you provide justification for your assertions. It's rude.

Your analogy is obviously false. A more accurate analogy would be telling a child that you will whip them if they perform action X that you don't want them to perform. They will only refrain from the action out of fear of your beating them. It's a shallow morality based on nothing but the fear of punishment and the hope of reward.

None of your quotes say anything about punishment. As far as I can tell you heard something bad and saw it as a personal affront from the Christian God and started seeing what you wanted to see in the scripture rather than what is there.

But at this point it's clear you indeed are way too lazy to care. In the future, please do not initiate a debate with someone if you don't want to deal with the possibility that the person may request that you provide justification for your assertions. It's rude.
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And I was the rude one?

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[color="#1C2837"]None of your quotes say anything about punishment[/quote]

[color="#1C2837"]So please answer the question I've been asking you all this time. What exactly is hell if not punishment? How exactly is one supposed to interpret the descriptions of hell without... interpreting them as descriptions of hell? What happens to a sinner who does not repent? Does he not go to hell? How is this not punishment? How are the quotes I provided motivating the reader to defer from a certain actions through anything but fear of having their body cast into a "fire that never shall be quenched"?

[color="#1C2837"][color="#1C2837"]What *exactly* do you think? You keep talking in mysteries, I keep asking for clarification, and you keep writing more obtuse statements without any explanation.

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[color="#1C2837"]And I was the rude one?[/quote]

Let's get this straight. [color="#1C2837"]First you snidely remarked that you and I had read "different Bibles," immediately opening our interaction on a somewhat unfriendly tone. I did some work and provided some scriptural evidence for my position. You ignored the individual quotes and just said that I read the Bible "blindfolded," which I naturally interpreted as fairly rude. So I did even more work and provided an analysis of the Sermon on the Mount, explaining my position and requesting that you explain how I had taken anything out of context. You provided a very vague and short response that ignored the multiple mentions of hell, so I requested that you clarify. You wrote one mysterious sentence saying "He isn't threatening anyone with anything," deliberately not explaining your position even though the quote you responded to was a request for explanation. At this point I was justifiably frustrated with the way you had somewhat snidely initiated a debate with me and then weren't putting any effort at all into helping me understand your position, so I requested again that you elaborate on a number of points. You elaborated on not a single one of them and instead provided an obviously false analogy in a single sentence without capitalization. [color="#1C2837"]And now you have yet again failed to elaborate on any of the points I have expressed confusion about.

[color="#1C2837"]I am almost certain there's a rather memorable line in the Sermon on the Mount about this sort of thing. Perhaps you've read it.

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[color="#1C2837"]None of your quotes say anything about punishment

[color="#1C2837"]So please answer the question I've been asking you all this time. What exactly is hell if not punishment? How exactly is one supposed to interpret the descriptions of hell without... interpreting them as descriptions of hell?
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It's consequence. You don't get sent to hell; you put yourself there.

Is that your entire reasoning? The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines punishment as "[font="sans-serif"]the imposition of something that is intended to be burdensome or painful, on a supposed offender for a supposed crime, by a person or body who claims the authority to do so."[/font]

[font="sans-serif"]I do not have the power to send myself to hell. I'm trying right now, but I'm still sitting in this chair. If I am to end up in hell, it can only be because an entity external to myself rerouted my soul so as to end up in hell, since I myself cannot seem to control wherever it's hurdling towards right now. There's certainly no scriptural evidence that upon death one is faced with two doors and one can simply pick the door one pleases independently of one's Earthly life. There is a system in place which, it is claimed, makes only one door available to you, and which door is a function of whether a certain entity, God, approves or disapproves of moral actions undertaken by you during life on Earth. Hell is clearly burdensome or painful, as I can only imagine having one's body cast into fire that never shall be quenched must be.[/font]

[font="sans-serif"]This fits the definition of punishment word by word. The Bible lays out certain actions that one is to avoid and certain other actions that one is to perform. If one does not avoid these former actions and does not perform these latter actions, then the door to heaven is closed off and you are routed to hell upon death by a celestial theocracy external to yourself at the helm of which is the omnipotent and all-controlling architect according to whose will all things happen, one component of which is nothing but the action of the system so as to reroute your soul directly to hell (and not to mention the existence of hell itself can be attributed to none other than that entity to whom all must by definition be attributed).[/font]

[font="sans-serif"]Would you really say that jail is not punishment but mere consequence for the common caught thief? Would you really say that a father whipping his son for disobedience is not enacting punishment even if the actions which would yield the whipping were known to the child prior to his having committed them? All these are simply and undeniably punishment according to the above uncontroversial definition.[/font]

My serious question is this:

Why can't we all just agree to be nice to one another and try and spread good cheer amongst everyone and even the undeserving?

Why must we banter about what exists and what doesn't. I mean, if we practice good virtues to our fellow man, if a God does exist, I think it would satisfy him greatly. And if one doesn't, then we still come out as good people and a happier future generation for it.

It's a win-win.