Being saved does not mean dwelling on one’s supposed sins; instead, it is acknowledgement that the ransom for sins has been paid once and for all. Paul does not preach hell fire punishment; he teaches heaven for all.
I’ll take that as a ‘no’ to my question. ← So there is no everlasting hell fire for anyone (even for those who died before the ransom?). That leaves, a temporary hell fire. Does Paul preach that?
It would certainly be exempt from the criticism I’m delivering in this thread–i.e. without the “eternal” bit, a temporary (though possibly still extremely long) punishment in Hell is at least coherent, logically speaking, with God’s love and justice (you’d still have to be pretty damn evil to deserve 1000 years in Hell, but…). 
Your stay in hell is exactly determined by the following equation.
time in hell=(time of pain you caused peopleintensity of pain you caused people)-(time of pain people caused youintensity of pain people caused you)
Is reliable information available about an afterlife?
No. Therefore, an afterlife can’t be used to argue about the nature of God.
One can say something about the nature of God by observing the world. And yes … God created a world where there is death, disease, misery and destruction and also life, love and joy.
The sun shines on the evil and the good.
That doesn’t fit the definitions of benevolence or omnipotence?
It is what it is.
Brilliant!
Did you forget to subtract the pleasure terms?
Truth be told, nothing can be said about God period–whether we look at the world or the afterlife–not until you somehow prove God’s existence.
It’s not about certainty … one doesn’t even know which information to use - which information is true, if any. Any conclusions drawn from speculations about an afterlife will be fiction. And the ones that are not fiction … you don’t know that that they are not fiction. 
God is a hypothesis which explains some phenomenon in the world. So, no, you don’t have to prove the existence of God before using the hypothesis to explain the phenomenon. The hypothesis may be adequate or inadequate. It may also be true or false.
If you had to prove something before proposing a hypothesis, then science could not be done.
Which is why my criticism is conditional on a certain interpretation of Biblical scripture. If you believe that God sends wicked souls to an everlasting Hell to be punished, then that conception cannot be consistent with a loving and just God. And it’s not really anything about God that I’m getting at, it’s the mutual exclusion of the two premises: 1) God is all loving and just, 2) God sends wicked souls to Hell for all eternity as punishment.
I thought we were explaining God, not phenomena in the world. It’s true that, in principle, you can verify/falsify some hypothesis about God’s omnibenevolence by looked at the world for evidence, but there is the contending hypothesis that there is no God and this world emerged purely by accident. What I’m saying is: let’s rule that out first before trying to prove a hypothesis about God’s love.
But that description of the afterlife consists of a few lines. And those few lines are contradicted by another few lines. There is practically no detail. Which is why there are concepts such as purgatory and limbo. And also why there are so many Christian sects.
So if your post is conditional on a particular interpretation then your thread should have be titled : “Why God is inherently wrong if you accept this interpretation …”
What is God if not the explanation for something that we experience in the world?
Omni-benevolence is an absurd idea. If God lets you slip on a banana peel then somebody will claim that it contradicts omni-benevolence. What could omni-benevolence mean in any practical sense?
You can demonstrate that the world emerged purely by accident?
I’m listening.
Welcome to philosophy. 
I typically save the details of what my OP is actually about in, well, the OP. In the title, I go for something catchy.
Oh, God is the explanation.
I have no idea. I’m glad we agree on this. But the same point applies to just a loving God (nevermind an all-loving God)–although I’m not sure how easy that would be to test in the empirical world–a God that was only loving might be said to be limited in his love, or sometimes hateful and cruel, or loving some but not others (enough to sentence them to Hell for an eternity?)
No, I’m saying it should be, in principle, falsifiable (God could just appear before us and tell us that the world is no accident). Until that happens, any so-called evidence for God’s love is moot.
You are still running with this??
Gib,
Regardless of any God issues, do you believe that after death, a person changes from who they were at the moment of death? Do dead people learn and grow? If so, in what sense are the “dead”?
There are consequences for our actions, and the bible tries to map them out. People go to hell when they do things that go against Gods will. That is, when people do things that are inherently destructive, they wind up suffering for it (they’re in hell).
God is not a personality somewhere in the sky. That’s not at all what the Bible is getting at. God is a name for the pattern of existence itself (The Tao). When we deviate from God we suffer, and when we work within and for God we become more whole. Religion and the Bible is not “bad science” or “proto-science”. It’s phenomenology. It attempts to map out causal relationships within the sphere of values and behavior.
I think God’s love is demonstrated by the fact that He set up an environment on earth which allows people to exist, thrive and be happy. We got a bunch of gifts.
I don’t have expectations of what God should be like or what He ought to do. God doesn’t owe me anything.
Should God also come down and say whether the Standard Model of the atom is correct or Special Relativity, quantum physics?
Since God isn’t making a TV appearance, people have to use reason and observation.
(Even if He appeared on TV, there would be people claiming that it was faked. 
)
In principle, if you have sufficient evidence to support the theory that the universe emerged by accident, then you can apply Occam’s razor and remove God as an explanation of our origins.
I believe that we lose our individuality once we die–so there will be no more James per se or gib per se–but experience and consciousness go on. I believe that the whole notion of the eternal permanence of things is nonsense (different from the incoherency under scrutiny in this thread: i.e. that a God who sends souls to Hell for eternity can be loving and just). I believe this is a fundamental principle of existence itself–that if a thing is to exist, it must undergo change. So yes, absolutely a person changes once they die, but they change so much they cease to be a “person” all together, so there is no sense in which they learn and grow.
This doesn’t rule out the possibility of unspeakable torture and pain being experienced, but it does say such an experience must undergo change. However, from a strictly logic sense, even that’s not enough to rule out an eternity of Hell since the quality and the degree of suffering can change without the experience ever ceasing to be suffering.
That’s not a bad interpretation, but it is an interpretation.
Are you sure the evidence for this is really that overwhelming? Sure, there are people on this planet who have lived happy and full lives, but there are also people who have lived miserable lives. There is no question that disease, war, cruelty, and unbearable suffering exist. The question then is which of these is there more of an abundance of. If there happens to be more happiness, then fine–it counts as evidence that God is, on the whole, more loving than cruel. But it still all hinges on whether there is a God or not (and if there is, whether he has the power to exert enough control over the world to determine the quality of our lives).
I don’t need any evidence whatsoever. If it simply hasn’t been ruled out, the hypothesis of a godless, accidental universe is more parsimonious than one which features a God that determines the universe.
In the conceptual (aka “divine” or “spiritual”) sense can the person change his mind about how to behave after he has died?
I didn’t say there was “overwhelming” evidence. If someone asks me what shows God’s love then I say that this is it. That interpretation may be entirely wrong. God may be completely indifferent to humans. God may be growing humans so that He can feed on their energy when they die. ( That would be deliciously ironic.)
I’ve done the math. Everyone is free to do the same and come to his/her own conclusions. That’s what free will means. The sun will shine on them whether they think that God is loving or that God is cruel or that God doesn’t exist.
That’s an interesting double standard.
You require miracles to show God’s existence? I don’t.
Okay, that’s the way you see it.
You don’t need any evidence at all? That sounds like you believe it on faith alone.
Not sure what you mean by this. There is no sense that the “person” continues to exist according to my view. That leaves traditional orthodox views of what happens to the person after they die, and if the question is being posed in the context of those views, then it’s their doctrines that you should be consulting.
But we could contemplate this question just making a few assumptions and looking at the logic of it: so let’s assume that after we die, we just find ourselves in a different place–same person, same memories, same values and beliefs, etc, but new environment. In that sense, sure, I guess, one can change his mind about how to behave.
Well, then we just differ as to what evidence there is in the world for God’s benevolence. You seem to be “sure enough”; I’m less certain.
How do you do the math for a question like this? I think it would be reasonable to say this if the sample data you had to deal with was close to home–i.e. your own life and those around you. But we’re talking about the whole world (including all sentient creatures)–people who live continents away from me and you, people who live in entirely different environments, with different social/political structures, with completely different levels of resources and medicine and protection from harm, etc. It’s true in principle that we are all born with free will and have opportunities to determine our lives in whatever way we want, but in practice, this is very limited for many people, and for a few, it’s even cruel to suggest it.
It’s not a double standard. I’m simply pointing out that there are cases in which one doesn’t need for God to make an appearance to prove something (relativity, quantum physics) and there are other cases in which he does (his existence).
You say you don’t need God to make an appearance to find evidence of his existence. I’m at a loss to imagine what that could be. Maybe if you enlighten me, I’ll agree that the hypothesis of God’s existence and theories like relativity and quantum mechanics fall in the same ball park.
On the contrary, I actually do believe in God (of sorts). But I still maintain that a godless, accidental universe is more parsimonious than a universe created and controlled by God. You brought up Occam’s Razor–the point of Occam’s Razor is that there is a method for determining which of competing theories is more parsimonious when there is no other way of deciding–that is, when there is no evidence either way. So, yeah, I don’t need evidence to bring in Occam’s Razor–in fact, that’s when to bring in Occam’s Razor.
The exact same argument seems to apply to your assessment … you are basing it on your limited experience.
I’m not here to preach or to convince you of God’s existence. I simply pointed out that using brief unreliable accounts of an afterlife is not a reasonable basis for attributing characteristics to God.
If you see no evidence of God in the world, then you ought not to believe that a God exists. That would appear to the reasonable conclusion of it.
You don’t understand the razor. It says that if two hypotheses describe something equally well, then you should select the one with fewer assumptions. But if one theory does not describe something as well as another , you do not select it because it is parsimonious. Evidence is needed to determine how well a hypothesis matches observations. An ‘accidental universe’ hypothesis does not adequately describe the existence of the universe.
Even those who claim that the universe could have come from ‘nothing’, consider ‘nothing’ to be a quantum vacuum. Where did that come from in the first place?
Does the concept of a circle cease to exist if every physical case of it is erased? Isn’t a circle forever and always round (think Plato)?
The idea is that you have a unique fundamental definition, a “soul”. You are a unique concept. Your concept does not cease to exist merely because that concept no longer has a physical representation. But the concept that your spirit represents cannot change after your body dies. Thus if you die as a tormented person, then your concept can never become anything else but a tormented soul. There is a little leeway in that scenario, but not much (aka “pray for the dead to rest their soul”).
Except I’m not making an assessment, I’m only saying that I don’t know how one could make such assessments. There’s just too much data in the world, and too few ways of getting that data, to determine whether or not life is good for the majority of people in the world.
In this thread, I’m not trying to attribute characteristics to God. Like I said, I’m trying to point out that you cannot assert at once that 1) God is loving and just, and that 2) he sentences wicked souls to Hell for all eternity. ← It’s a philosophical point about the logic of certain statements. And yes, there is very little evidence of either of these, and in themselves, they carry very little weight concerning the facts of real life, but there’s a lot of people who believe them, so I thought it worthy to bring up for discussion.
What do you mean “describe something equally well”? Are you talking about explanations that are too parsimonious (as in, explanations that don’t explain enough)?
That’s not what I mean by “accidental”–I don’t mean a universe that popped into existence for no reason, just that it wasn’t on purpose, or according to some grand design. “Accidental” here just means “not intentional”, but I’m not saying there is no (natural) explanation.