It is not a matter of punishment. It is a matter of separation. Since God is the life source of all living things, the further we get away from that life source the more torment we experience. On Eart God's Spirit is at work, and so you are not yet completely cut off from that source. Your torment is small at the moment. Since you reject God, want nothing to do with god, He will give you your wish and remove Himself from you completely, and eternally. That is when the real torment will begin. If you suffer eternally it will be because you are choosing to be separated from God forever. The choice is yours.
Hell is a matter both of punishment and separation. Hell is described as a fiery furnace, and a place that God has prepared for the wicked. Hell is also a place that is away from God. It is in the "darkness." I do not reject God at all. I simply disbelieve in him. I disagree with what I think are human ideas about him. If I knew that there was a God and he was omniscient, then I would assume that there would be a good reason for everything he has done. It is only right, it is only logical. Humankind as a rule will choose to avoid torment and be around those who give them joy, and so will most atheists.
God is giving us an opportunity to reject Him or embrace him. That is why we are sinners, so we can freely choose.
The fact that you have the ability to make your own choices has nothing to do with the kind of choices you make. You can have complete ability to make your own choices and only choose good.
A person with free will has reason, and the mental equipment to choose. If good choices are rational and we have good emotions, then we will always choose good things.
I have some questions for you. Why do people make the choices they do? What is involved in the decision making process? Why do different people do different things?
God is going to give believers a makeover one day and remove our sinfulness so we can be like him.
So God has the ability to make people who can make perfect decisions and yet not violate free will. So why didn't he just do all that to the descendent's of Adam?
It is the only way he could save us unless you have a better plan.
Punishing an innocent willing person for our transgressions does not solve the problem of our nature to sin. A better solution is to make us sinless in the first place or to not punish sin so harshly. Why not give sinners a chance and give them time to be better? Maybe God can simply put up with people who are imperfect.
Having a person tortured and killed does not pay restitution to those we sinned against, it does not stop us from sinning, and does not protect those who could be violated by sinners. Punishment for any other reason is simply revenge.
I will be making an observation on the side and you can read this if you wish but you do not have to comment on this. I am posting this so you can learn about my views on justice can relate to me better and understand where I am coming from.
I have noticed that you seem to have the mentality that if someone does something wrong, someone has to pay for it. For example, if Tony looks at pornography he or a willing person must be punished. This happens to be a personal sin. Another sin is if Jell shouts at is wife because he had a bad day at work. This is a sin against someone else in a way that cannot be payed back quantitatively. Another sin is if Jessica robes a gas station. This is a sin against other people and can be payed back quantitatively. Another sin is if Mary saying God's name in vain. This is a sin against God. I will use these sins as examples. Not every sin has to be punished however.
There are three kinds of punishment: discouragement, restitution, and separation.
If you take something from someone or harm that person restitution is usually the response (e.g. an apology, physical payment, or a favor). Sometimes the person you sinned against forgives you and does not wish for restitution. In other cases you cannot make restitution. In these cases, restitution does not have to happen.
Discouragement is the attempt to keep people from sinning. This can come in the form of helping a person improve or penalizing that person. If at all possible, you want to change that person into something better through some sort of therapy (e.g. drug rehab), but sometimes that cannot really happen. Penalizing is the usual response to sin and can include hurting that person (e.g. a fine) or taking something away (e.g loosing a license).
Separation is when you isolate that person in such a way as to protect others (e.g. jail).
In the eternal scheme of things, we have forgotten most of the sins others have commited against us and we do not care about them anyway so we do not desire everyone who sinned against us to have to pay restitution for them and apologize. For example, there is no need for my little brother to pay restitution for all the bad things he did to me when we were kids and visa verse in most cases.
As you can see, there is no need to pay restitution for many sins. For many others, we have already payed restitution for them or have been good enough to the victim after the fact that restitution does not need to be payed. For many sins, there is no need for discouragement, because we no longer have the propensity to commit them. This all proves that many sins do not require punishment.
God can easily make us sinless and so discouragement is not necessary. When it comes to a sin against others, God can help us with a restitution, but we should still apologize. I hope that you see now that we do not need Jesus to pay for our sins. Having a person tortured and killed does not pay restitution to those we sinned against, and it does not stop us from sinning.
