A question for those of you who believe in an omnibenevolent God but also in hell: How do you reconcile the two?
Some believers invoke the “free will defense”, but this makes no sense to me. It seems that God could easily save everyone, sending no one to hell, without violating anyone’s free will. Here’s how I described it recently:
It’s similar to a technique I’ve described in the past whereby God could have created a perfect world sans evil without violating anyone’s free will.
Here’s how it works:
1. Before creating each soul, God employs his omniscience to look forward in time and see whether that soul, if created, would freely accept him and go to heaven or freely reject him and go to hell.
2. If the former, God goes ahead and creates that soul. If the latter, then he doesn’t, choosing instead to create a different soul that will freely accept him and go to heaven.
Simple, isn’t it? Any omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God could easily come up with something like this or better, rather than sending billions of souls to hell with no chance of a reprieve.
Theists, how do you respond?
LoL. Typical keiths. Behind the times. Bringing up the rear.
Reminds me of the time he accused me of starting a thread to avoid some post he made, even though I started the new thread before he made his post. Just another reason why keiths questions go to the end of the queue.
Probably upset that responded to Elizabeth but not him. Maybe take a lesson.
Mung:
That didn’t happen, of course.
Sorry. Some times I forget that you get to make up your own facts.