Bzzzzz, wrong, at least for Islam and Christianity. I'm an ex-muslim, and I read alot about christianity.
I'm a christian, and I've read a bit about islam. There are muslim parables where allah lets people out of hell (sometimes after they've been there for years/centuries), because they have learned from the experience.
None of those parables (of the ones I've seen) have indicated that a non-believers are
prevented from learning and converting after death. Can you give an example of a muslim parable that says the ability to be redeemed after death is limited to believers?
In both, the only people who gets out of hell are the believers of the respective religion. Satan, atheists, and even the majority of other religions' followers have a permenant visa for hell, usage is mandatory.
The qur'an recognizes the people of the book (jews, christians, others). Are you claiming that the people of the book are all damned to hell? That appears to be a debated topic among islamic scholars. I guess all the islamic scholars need to do to resolve the question is ask you (an ex-muslim), and you'll be able to set them straight about what
their religion means.
I was able to find numerous christian sources (including protestant sources, catholic sources, the conservative evangelist Billy Graham, and the bible) which state that non-christians
can go to heaven. For example, the bible explicitly states that Elijah (a jewish prophet who predated Jesus) was taken to heaven. Or look at the book of Job, which closely documents Job's life (he was another person who predated Jesus) and struggles. Job was favored by god ... and he wasn't even jewish.
I'm talking about mainstream religion, not what 14 out of the 3 billions followers of these religions.
Proof by hyperbole?
Christian universalist theologists believe that
most christians were universalists up until the 6th century CE. (They may be right, or they may be biased. I'm in no position to tell.)
Currently, there are a couple hundred thousand active members of universalist churches in the U.S. That doesn't begin to cover members of mainstream denominations who have adopted universalist beliefs. (The universalists went into decline during the last century, because christian belief in universal reconciliation became sufficiently mainstream that there was nothing to distinguish them from larger, liberal denominations.)
Outside the U.S., there are large universalist populations in India and the Philippines. There's one
church in the Philippines which has over 10,000 active members.
As for the jews, I honestly don't have the slightest clue.
You don't appear to have a clue about most christians either. You just have opinions which seem to be drawn exclusively from the fundamentalist minority.
I did a little research. Most jews believe in an afterlife. There's not much doctrine about it, so there are a wide variety of beliefs which are accepted (including reincarnation). In general, they're more worried about
this life.
Bzzzzzz, wrong again. God can be both merciful and just at the same time, I think the sole notion that god is not both perfectly just and merciful is herecy, lol.
Now
there's a potential paradox. Justice is
giving someone the punishment they deserve. Mercy is
sparing someone from the punishment they deserve.
How can anyone be perfectly just and perfectly merciful at the same time? (Remember, this wasn't part of your initial premises.)
Of course, this potential paradox might have a simple solution: "perfection" might not be "to the maximum degree possible." This may be one of those cases where the "perfect" amount is not too much, not too little.
Your opinion about the "perfect" amount of justice and mercy isn't automatically right.
By the way, when did christians begin relying on
you for our definition of heresy?
Here is a solution I came up with in under 3 minutes, god rewards the believers with eternal pleasure. As for the guys who chose to defy his well, god snaps his fingers and goes like "Because you were naughty, you will vanish and you will not be granted eternal pleasure", pop all the others just vanish to NOWHERE, as simple as that, god surely had more time than me and could have came with a better idea than mine or hell anyway.
Again, the doctrine of annihilationism is not a new idea. It has appeared throughout the history of the christian church.
The traditional jewish belief is that the dead go to Sheol (literally translated: "the grave").
I've heard many christian ministers describe hell as "eternal separation from god." That's not exactly the torture
you seem to be expecting.
The roman catholic church
defines hell as "a state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed." There's
no mention of eternal torment.
God has sent his fury countless times on non-believers in the bible and quran, he only lost this habbit recently, aka when people started using their heads to rationalise, instead of their toshies.
What are toshies?
You're discussing a concept of "god in the gaps." In pre-scientific cultures, god is used to explain any natural phenomenon that people can't explain. Why was there a tornado, hurricane, drought, famine, plague, earthquake, tsunami or volcano? God must have been angry. Once people understood tectonics, meteorology, bacteria and viruses, they no longer claimed god was responsible for these events.
Except for fundamentalists (people who believe the torah/bible/qur'an is literally true), members of these religions
don't necessarily consider these accounts to be stories of god sending "his fury countless times on non-believers" as you claim.
Among U.S. christians, fundamentalists are a minority.
Example:
According to the bible, when Joshua led the jews into the promised land, god destroyed knocked down the walls of the city.
Would you be surprised to learn that Jericho is located in an earthquake-prone area? In 1927, that spot was hit by an earthquake which measured
6.2 on the Richter scale.
Did god unleash his fury on the city of Jericho? Or did the jews benefit from a natural disaster, which they later credited to god?
Many modern christians and jews have a different understanding of god (and science) then people who lived during the biblical period. We're quite aware of those differences. Therefore, when we hear of a natural disaster which is explained as an example of god's punishment, we assume that it's a natural disaster ... which has been transformed into a morality tale after the fact.
'We need evil to define good', what a genious piece of wisdom.
That's
not what I said. That's not even what I implied.
Do you really have to stoop to misquoting me, just to support your ideas?
I was talking about
pain, not evil. You're implying that pain is evil, which is something that I
don't believe. I'm not aware of any doctrine which suggests that pain is evil. Your suggestion that pain is evil strikes me as being ignorant in the extreme.
Pain is often necessary for us to grow and improve. (Train for a marathon. You'll see what I mean.) Pain is an effective teaching tool.
Consider this, do you want to KNOW your kids are healthy, or do you prefer for polio to be non existent. [...]
Consider this, do you want your children to grow up to be productive, independent, self-sufficient adults, or do you prefer to provide their every need (and want), even when they are in their thirties or forties? (At the age of 20-21, when I was first on my own, I lived well
below the poverty line, including not having enough to eat. But I learned a lot of lessons about managing my resources which have served me well in the decades that followed.)
Do you prefer that your children grow up to be law-abiding, ethical individuals, or do you prefer to avoid punishing them, even when they do things that are obviously wrong, hurtful or illegal?
Would you accept a world where war was unknown, if it meant surrendering to a totalitarian government that forbade most freedoms? Or would you rather fight against that type of government even if it meant a bloody war?
Pain (and other unpleasant circumstances)
aren't evil. Your "logic" is completely without basis.
Both judaism and christianity see god as a father who disciplines his children and allows his children to endure hardship when necessary. (I realize islam may be different in that regard.) My parents disciplined me (and my siblings); they allowed us to endure a significant amount of hardship. They took no pleasure in disciplining us. They didn't enjoy seeing us struggle. But they recognized the necessity of both. It was necessary because of our human nature.
God could have created us with a different nature, but then we'd no longer be human.
Your "paradox" only works for certain conservative/fundamentalist followers of those religions.
If you want to use your paradox against people who believe that god/allah is going to condemn all non-believers to eternal torment, go ahead. But you come across as really silly when you (a non-beliver/ex-believer) tries to tell believers that
they're being heretics because they hold beliefs that are outside the pigeon-hole you've created for them.
But to go back to my earlier post, you're going to need to tighten up your premises in order to make this into a paradox (even for the fundamentalists). You left a lot of alternate explanations open.
