In that case, then I think this implies something that contradicts your position from before.
How so? How does it contradict my previous position? which position?
Depending on how you look at it, sin is either action or choice. If all our actions and choices take place in life, then all our sins must take place in life as well. Our lives are finite, therefore our actions and choices - including our sins - must be finite as well.
You don't make the rules, God does. You been created by him, your body, soul, belong to him, and you are living on his land, planet earth, so you can't say God should do that or that. God said this life is a test and you either pass and enter heaven forever, or fail and enter hell, forever. There are consequences for your choices in this life. What you are claiming is similar to an argument which can be made by a thief "It took 1 hour to steal, why should i stay in prison for 10 years?" or like a murdered when he says "i killed that person within 20 minutes, why should i be locked up in prison till i die?".
You said that infinite punishment is warranted because God knows that the person will continue to reject him forever. But this is predicated on the idea that the person (or his soul) will exist forever. Who chose to make that person's soul immortal? Who chose to sustain that person's existence? Not the person himself; only God.
I can appreciate (though not necessarily agree with) the argument that responsibility for the initial sin falls on the sinner himself. However, the responsibility for the infinite nature of that sin must fall to God, since it was never in the power of the sinner to change that aspect of the sin.
What kind of argument is that? This argument is the weakest one ever made by you.
This is like a murderer saying, my mom chose to raise me instead of dumping me, leaving me to die alone out of hunger, that's why i blame her for growing up and becoming a murderer.
You think it's justice to leave evil people get away with what they have done in this life? To live on earth then just die?
God promised that every soul which has done something, will be judged accordingly. I think it's you who doesn't want for God to be just. It's not an act of justice to let people just die after what they have done in life. Good people will be rewarded and evil people will suffer in hell.
That's fine. I wasn't trying to say that these purposes were necessarily the purpose of Hell; I was only trying to illustrate that the purposes for earthly punisment that we normally consider to be just wouldn't apply in Hell.
True, and that's irrelevant because in Islam, we believe that anything which have to be done, must be done during this earthly life. No more work in the hereafter, whether it was good or evil. Also, i already have told you, God would punish some people in this life and give them a chance to repent and think, to change themselves, and believe in God, and do good.
The question remains, though: what's the purpose of punishment in the hereafter? Why would it be just to make a person - any person - suffer in Hell?
All this discussion and you still don't know why people will go to hell?
Well, yes and no. I know enough for me to be sufficiently responsible for my decisions and actions that it's just to punish me for making the wrong ones, aren't I?
Not yet, you are still alive and kicking. You still didn't finish your trip in this life.
If judgement after death is just at all, then despite all our human failings, we must have at least a certain ability to tell right from wrong. If my moral sense is so unreliable and useless that I think that I would call something perfectly evil when it's actually perfectly good, then how would it be right to use that same useless moral sense as the basis of judgement against me in the afterlife?
I think that if our moral senses really do work, then we can recognize the concept of Hell as unjust. And if they don't work, then it would be unjust to punish us for their failings, since we would have never had a proper basis to avoid sin by choosing right from wrong. Either way, Hell is an unjust concept.
Again, your parents, society and yourself make your moral senses, not God. And you keep repeating that hell is unjust as if this repetition would make your stance correct out of the blue.
Like I said, the choice to make a person's soul immortal is God's. If God had chosen to give a sinner a finite soul, then there would be no way that his sin could ever have been infinite.
I already answered that.
Modern psychology disagrees with this. However, I do agree that this doesn't necessarily imply that our moral sense has to have a divine source.
Fair enough.
We're getting into an area where I'm not too sure of the Muslim theology, but maybe it'll help if I lay things out from a Christian perspective (Catholic, specifically) and you can tell me how the Muslim view differs.
According to Catholic teaching, for a sin to be capable of sending you to Hell by God's judgement, it has to have three necessary elements:
- grave matter: the action has to be serious. Since I know some people say that offending God in the slightest degree is a very serious matter, I'll take as given that for whatever sin we're talking about, this requirement has been met.
- deliberate consent: the person had to wilfully choose to commit the act.
- full knowledge: the person had to have committed the act knowing it was wrong and knowing that it would have a negative (or "evil") effect.
Before we go further, do the Muslim ideas of sin and judgement agree with this? If not, what's the Muslim view?
Muslims do not accept that there is anything called 'original sin'. They strongly reject the idea of God begetting a son for this purpose: To them God is one and one only; He does not beget, nor is He begotten; and there is no one like God.
Sin, from the point of view of Islam, is a conscious and willful act that violates a commandment of God or the right of a fellow being. We cannot consider a person to be a sinner if he or she acts under duress or out of ignorance. Because, human accountability is an important aspect of justice as envisaged in Islam. And no one can be truly held accountable for an action he has no power to avoid. Because, God does not lay more burden on a human than he can bear.
Islam teaches that sin is an avoidable act that harms the perpetrator's own soul. This means that there is no innate or inherited nature that prompts a person to disobey God. That is to say, it is a person's free choice whether to sin or not; and one's disposition to sin is only as much as, if not less than, their inclination to do good.
I've got to jump in here: don't these two points imply that God is not all-powerful?
Nope.
God could change anybody's mind if he chose to, couldn't he? If he's capable of anything, then he's capable of giving even the most ardent non-believer a perfectly convincing argument or demonstration, right?
True. That's why God said in the Quran:
13. If We had so willed, We could certainly have brought every soul its true guidance: but the Word from Me will come true,
"I will fill Hell with Jinns and men all together." (Quran 32:13).
Which word? it's the promise he had made which i have mentioned earlier ...
39. (Iblis) said: "O my Lord! because Thou hast put me in the wrong, I will make (wrong) fair-seeming to them on the earth, and I will put them all in the wrong,-
40. "Except Thy servants among them, sincere and purified (by Thy Grace)."
41. ((Allah)) said: "This (way of My sincere servants) is indeed a way that leads straight to Me.
42. "For over My servants no authority shalt thou have, except such as put themselves in the wrong and follow thee."
43. And verily, Hell is the promised abode for them all!
44.
To it are seven gates: for each of those gates is a (special) class (of sinners) assigned.
45. The righteous (will be) amid gardens and fountains (of clear-flowing water).
46. (Their greeting will be): "Enter ye here in peace and security." (Quran 15:39-46)
He made a promise that those who disobey him would enter hell, if it wouldn't for that promise, God says, he would have guided all humanity.
