Sunday, March 20, 2011

An Atheist Faces God

Rob Bell seems to think that in the afterlife, human suffering will eventually devolve into soft-hearted acquiescence on the part of suffering (and in Bell's case, he would use the word "suffering" very sparingly) unbelievers. To such sentiments, I present exhibit Z: "What every atheist should say to god... if judgment day actually happens!" This post by an unbeliever pretty well sums up what I imagine the sentiments of a condemned immortal to be:
You know, even if almost everything had been perfect, a world free from pain and death where everyone would freely choose to spend an eternity with you – except for one person, and yet you made him anyways… then you would still be infinitely more evil than all the worst of humanity combined. You’re going to judge me? On behalf of all that’s good and decent in your creation, I judge you. I may have been a willful child, but you were a terrible father.

I can’t say I’m really inclined to beg for my soul now, given what I said about you knowing me perfectly. Even so, supposing mercy’s still an option (and that last rant didn’t kill my chances), I guess it’s worth a shot. I can’t pretend I have any love for you, but no principle is worth being damned over if it can be helped. What shall I say in my defense?
It gets worse. But I'll let you read it for yourselves. It does say something about Bell's view of human nature that he seems to see some scenario where someone's free will would just lift them out of hell someday when, in reality, hell (real hell, mind you) will produce nothing but hatred of God and hard-heartedness.

PS: This is just an add-on to the post, but here is a post written by a universalist on how he categorizes Bell's view. To save you the click, he calls Bell's view "hopeful universalism."

1 comment:

  1. I dont get the part where he says he would not want to understand hunger etc. So, your pissed at God for all the evil in this world but you dont want to know the purpose for the evil? Really, you wouldn't like to know why history happened as it did... I mean the actual reason for the earths history? Thats hatred.

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