Greatest I am
I do not want to be treated as God treats others just for not believing in him.
That eternal hell idea is quite vile.
When scriptures show God living by what he says then I will listen.
For now, a God who says do as I say and not as I do is not worthy of my spit.
As above, so below.
Would you condemn your children to eternal punishment just for not following you?
You will if you are as vile as your God.
If you do not think that the idea of a good God is consistent with this idea of eternal hell then you don't have to accept it. You are allowed to disagree with other theists; plenty do.
But if you ditch the idea of the good God altogether you just leaving yourself in a purely material universe. In that case, what are you doing when you use all that Old Testament language and describe the idea of Hell as being '
not worthy' or
'vile'? Do you think those descriptions are
true? That they refer to transcendental values that are
real? (Or are you just expressing your psychological state, with no suggestion that anyone else need agree with you?)
Ideas like eternal Hell are the consequence of people like yourself making judgements. If you assert there is something more than the material 'what is', i.e. if there also exist transcendental
values like 'good', then (unlike the material world) they will be eternal. And since within this transcendental value 'good' (i.e 'in heaven') there can be no evil, then those that aren't good can't ever be there. (As to what 'not being in heaven' would be like, that is a matter of speculation, sometimes involving fire and demons etc., sometimes not.)
Maybe you don't like that argument, but you need to come up with an alternative if you expect people to take your moral judgements seriously. Maybe you can do so - maybe you can't.
Meanwhile, I cannot tell if you have thought this through. Reading through your post as it stands, you just come across as a meta-god issuing a thundering condemnation of an inferior god of your own creation. But this is philosophy; you need to show your reasoning!
-- Updated December 11th, 2014, 5:48 am to add the following --
Fanman
God warned man that there would be consequences for knowing good and evil.
No he didn't.
He said not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil '
for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die' (which didn't happen).
He did not tell man the
consequences of knowing good and evil, he couldn't since before they ate the fruit they would not have understood what he was talking about!
The actual consequences were two; what God did to them (expel them from Eden) but also:
And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil
(He expels them from Eden so they did not become entirely like God by eating from the Tree of Life and living forever.)
So man has the knowledge. He does not require God's instruction book. Whether he can learn to live by that knowledge is another matter.
How and why he deals with those who commit evil is clearly evident in the Bible.
That just isn't true either.
First, the way God deals with those who commit evil is highly variable, it ranges from forgiveness to floods and fire. As such, it reflects different ideas amongst humans about how
we should respond to evil.
Second, that evil deeds have evil consequences is a tautology, and not a helpful one. The problem we have in real life is that we do not necessarily recognise
which deeds are evil. We can be mistaken or deceived, we can fool ourselves, often
all our available choices seem to involve evil.
If the Bible just told '
clearly evident' stories it would be no use, because real life isn't '
clearly evident'. Instead, it provides a rich mix of stories - not always consistent - which we can use as tools when reflecting on our own situations. But the point is that
we have to do the work.
So, that the BIble isn't '
clear' is blindingly obvious, from page 1. I think that those who refer most often to the Bible often trust that those they are talking to have never opened one, so they will be in no position to dispute their claims. I think that sometimes it is the other way round; those that most quote the Bible have rarely actually read it.