The "people Send Themselves To Hell" Argument

[mymistake]

We keep trying to find the internal logic of this imaginary character. It's like literary criticism. Rather then argue along those lines I would rather attack the foundation and say the Bible isn't true, therefore what the characters in it say or do is moot.

 

 

Yes, the only facts found in the Bible pertain to geography; either physical geography or the political geography of that time.  The rest of the Bible is rubbish.

[megasamurai]

I've heard this argument before even though the Bible explicitly says that God sends people to hell. Why lie about the Bible if "thou shalt not lie"? I've also heard the "God does send you to hell because you want to go hell argument" in which all non-believers are presumed to want to go to go to hell.

[MySockSmell]

I've heard this argument before even though the Bible explicitly says that God sends people to hell. Why lie about the Bible if "thou shalt not lie"? I've also heard the "God does send you to hell because you want to go hell argument" in which all non-believers are presumed to want to go to go to hell.

Yeah, they pretend God's still the good guy in the horrror story because he lovingly does people a favor by giving them the hell they want to be in.  It goes along with the claim that hell's door not locked from the outside by God but on the inside by its inhabitants.  Once again, If I could damn myself without God's help, then logically, I should be able to do the opposite and un-damn myself without God's help also.  Otherwise, the choice between heaven and hell is just an illusion.   

[ShackledNoMore]

Your friend tells you there is a sniper lurking that will kill you if you don't hire a bodyguard, pay him a salary (10% of your salary, in fact, plus whatever bonuses you want to give him), regularly read the bodyguard agreement contract, incur a bunch of overhead in your life to employ the bodyguard, including regular staff meetings, inconveniencing yourself in terms of schedule and being able to do what you want, when you want in order to accommodate your bodyguard, putting up with your bodyguard's invasive demands, and doing him regular favors to keep him happy.

 

You live in a neighborhood as safe as any, with low crime, and there's absolutely no evidence for this supposed threat other than your friend's crazy doomsday warnings.  "WTF?" you say, "That's absurd.  I'm not doing all that because of your crazy warnings!"

 

What if six months later, you go out one day, unsuspecting, and you're unfortunate enough to get a bullet through your head from the gun of a lurking sniper?

 

By that reasoning, the sniper didn't kill you: you committed suicide.

[Jedah]

We are going to start needing a cut and paste response for this particular apologetic argument, because the reason it doesn't make sense is fairly easy to understand.

 

The christian God is reported to be the omnipotent creator of all things, including the laws. Very unrealistic laws that no human being can possibly follow, unless of course by the Russian roulette of picking the "correct" religion and thus being "saved".  People who go to hell in Christian theology therefore do so because of the laws God created. Defending the amorality of this God by saying the people "send themselves to hell" is thus reversing cause and effect, a casual fallacy known as "Wrong direction".

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrong_direction

 

This is pretty much the same thing as a madman setting landmines everywhere, killing a bunch of children, and then defending himself by saying "I didn't blow the kids up, they blew themselves up by stepping on my mines!".