Hell and the Heavens: SJT takes on Erastothenes

Introduction

The next two responses are fortunately short.  I'm not even sure SJT was reading my objections at this point in her "rebuttal".  The topics are hell and god's odd trait of knowing as little science as the average ancient slave-owner of the era. 


Kaimatai writes:

7. Baby I call Hell

My original: Like everything to do with the afterlife, Hell is difficult to pin down. Is it a place of heinous torture as described by Dante and other evangelical pastors?  Or is it an eternal separation from this deity?  Given the wide-spread dogmatic belief that it is torture (and I’ve been threatened often enough with it), then it’s irreconcilable with a just and loving deity.
The infraction against this god is transitory in nature. All I have done is not believe it existed. That merits an infinite punishment- one that is unusually cruel, barbaric and inhumane.
Hell and a loving, just deity cannot both exist.

Hell is the punishment for independence

SJT: What we know of God is that (1) He is the source of our absolute moral standard;

 You're not rebutting. You're preaching. You haven't established there is a god yet, and you're making up his properties already! There isn't even an absolute moral standard. That's why Christians didn't have a problem with slavery for 90% of its history.  And even if there was an absolute standard, it wouldn't be based on the infant-killing, genocidal bloodgod some ancient pastoralists invented.

(2) He is the source of fairness and justice and

 Not according to the OT.

(3) He is love (1 John 4:8).

Not according to the OT or the existence of Hell.

Accordingly, we know that the punishment will fit the crime.

No we don't. We don't know your god exists first. So you're committing a massive 'affirming the consequent' fallacy. We don't have anyway to verify what happens in an afterlife, if such a thing really exists. And given Sabbath stick-gatherers are supposed to be executed, we can be certain punishments don't fit crimes. Pick up sticks... and you fucking die. 

We also know that God wants all of His children to be with Him as demonstrated by the lengths to which He goes to celebrate the return of His prodigal sons and to bring back His lost sheep.

That's a parable and not a real event you know? And if he really wanted all his children to be with him, he'd supply me with the evidence I needed to be convinced he exists. He hasn't. So either you're wrong, or I'm right and he's made up. 

What we know of hell is that (1) hell is the separation from God’s love and (2) people have a choice not to go to hell. The people who voluntarily choose separation from God’s love are those who rely on themselves and their egos. Such people have more faith (trust) in their own beliefs than I have in mine.

If I really knew there was a loving deity who could give me an escape from mortality, why wouldn't I choose it?  There's no voluntary choice because that option isn't credible. Basically your only defense of hell, is to say, "yeah, well people who go to hell shouldn't be all independent". You haven't touched the imbalance on the infraction and punishment at all.


I never heard of Erastothenes

Kaimatai writes:

8. She blinded me with science

My original: I appreciate that ancient people could not have had with their knowledge, the language of concepts to describe the world in scientific terms. Nonetheless, it seems odd that many ideas about the world are simply and blatantly wrong.  The microscopic world, the scale of the universe, that earth is not its centre, that life originated billions of years ago and then evolved are in conflict with many religious dogmas.  It’s not a good advertisement for these beliefs to be true.

S.J. Thomason responds:

Around 2,200 years before Copernicus proposed a heliocentric system in which the planets revolved around the sun (and hence, the earth was not flat),

Umm, heliocentrism and the shape of the earth isn't the same thing. About 3 centuries before your magic carpenter appeared, Erastothenes had proven the earth was a sphere, and estimated its circumference, with just a stick. A stick.  

The dominant geocentric model of the solar system before Copernicus was the Ptolemaic. This isn't a flat-earth model! By the way, one of the reasons Christianity has not managed to rid itself of flat-earthers is stories like Satan taking Jesus to a mountain top to show- and promise him- all the kingdoms of the world.  Which only works if the earth is flat.

Isaiah (40:22) called attention to the “circle” of the earth. The Hebrew word he used to describe this circle was khug, which appears in Proverbs 8:27 and Job 22:14. The word translates to either a sphere or a vault, which implies dimensionality and not flatness.

It translates to circle, which is why biblical experts who translate the bible use "circle" and not "sphere"... Isaiah also describes the earth has four corners. And is atop pillars. So first, you're obviously cherry-picking.  Second, this has nothing to do with heliocentrism. Which is why for roughly 80% of Christianty's history teaching heliocentrism was a heresy. Third, it's a pretty mundane claim. Anybody looking toward horizons can see them curving away. You don't need to be told by the super-intelligent, all-knowing ruler of the universe to deduce a sphere. Apparently just an ancient Hellene with a stick...

I will give you partial credit for actually taking on one of my objections. But you obviously didn't do any research at all if you confused flat-earth with geocentrism.