u/Gaussherr

It is difficult for me to express my thoughts, but I will try nonetheless.

I have noticed that the religious consciousness is always dominated by the idea that "God is always justified, but man is not." A religious person will attempt to justify almost any action taken by God. This is essentially why theodicy exists:

- Yes, God could remove suffering, but it is necessary.

- God has some justification that we are unaware of.

- God is justified because He could not have done otherwise.

- God is justified because the "best of all possible worlds" requires evil.

- ...and so on.

In fact, the formula for theodicy is "God is justified because X." An omnipotent being requires justification so that we can continue to consider Him God. Note that theodicy attempts to find justification for the most powerful being in the universe—a being who exists outside all our known concepts of the universe. A being who far exceeds man—I would say that God infinitely exceeds man.

However... for some reason, when it comes to man, the thoughts of theologians often immediately take on a strictly accusatory tone, turning into a blazing fire:

- Man is vile; man is an abomination of original sin.

- Man deserves death even when he has done nothing.

- Man is justified by nothing; he can only beg for mercy.

- Man is a cursed being who is responsible for the decay of the entire world.

- People do not deserve universal salvation; they do not deserve anything at all.

My question is: Why? Do you not think, my friends, that this approach is completely devoid of justice? Why is an omnipotent being, who never suffers, absolutely justified, while a weak, broken, and vulnerable human is always at fault?

Often, this is explained by free will, but does God not have free will? If free will makes you guilty simply by the fact of your existence, then God is even more guilty.

Man is a very weak being who suffers his entire life and is constantly breaking. Is this, in the opinion of proponents of eternal hell, a just view? Does man not deserve justification? Is man truly guilty for not being as perfect as the angels, or, even more so, God?

If we consider biology, determinism, and the laws of causality, this unfair asymmetry becomes completely absurd.

If God is truly just and truly good — and only such a being can be God — then... God must justify man. Since God understands all of this. If God is truly good, then He must agree with my thought, however arrogant that may sound on my part. If God is justified, then man also deserves to be justified.

I must say that I absolutely do not understand and have never understood the very idea of punishment for disbelief in God, whether it be the God of Christianity or the God of Islam. Perhaps this has been discussed here already, and my post might be deleted for being a repetition, but I will write it anyway.

Faith is not an act of will. Faith is an irrational belief in something without evidence. People believe in many things. Some believe in conspiracy theories, some believe in gods, some believe in Taoism, and so on. Two people believing in different gods cannot verify which of them is right. And it is impossible for me to convince my own mind of something that feels unconvincing to it.

Therefore, I do not understand why God would send people to hell (even a temporary, non-eternal one) whose only fault is that they do not know (agnostics). It is the same as sending those who do not believe in the existence of extraterrestrials/are not sure of their existence to hell, while rewarding those who fiercely believe in their existence with paradise. Where is the justice in punishment for feelings?

In such moments, one truly thinks that religion is a fiction created by ancient and cruel people who built dogmas based on their own irrational feelings.

Modern neuroscience generally suggests that determinism is true. Free will is an illusion.

If determinism is true, then eternal punishment in hell is absolutely unjust. A God who created beings and programmed them onto the trajectory of fate they followed cannot punish them with eternal hell. For then it would follow that He created some for eternal bliss and others for eternal torment. This is the image of a tyrant, not a God. God must desire to save everyone. So hell must eventually disappear, and all people must enter paradise.

If I am not mistaken, the Muslim Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi essentially argued that the blueprints of all people are already contained in God's mind as pre-eternal entities – like designs. Hence divine foreknowledge. God foresees what you will do because He already knows your nature. A person's will stems from their nature. A person cannot be eternally punished for being what they are. A person did not choose their nature. As Martin Lings put it – "God knows that sinners are innocent of their existence." Ibn Arabi was also a proponent of Universal Salvation, but in a rather specific form (he argued that non-believers would remain in hell forever, but hell itself would transform into paradise).