Hell is immoral and unjustified.

Pro believes that "The purpose of punishment is usually to reform the criminal"s behavior so that they will not commit the crime again." This is not true. That"s the purpose of a rehab program, not the punishment. When a judge sentences a person death, how does this punishment reform the person? When a person receives life in prison, what use is reformation to him when he will never re-enter society? Locking up a person by itself doesn"t reform anybody, unless a program of teaching is put in place to help the person see a better way of living. Pro is confusing discipline with punishment. Punishment is there simply to give the sinner what they deserve for what they have done, to satisfy the requirements of justice. So hell"s inability to reform doesn"t make it unjust. Pro argues that hell has no room for empathy or compassion, so does a lifetime prison sentence have any room for these qualities? What shows Pro is wrong, is the fact that there are different degrees of punishment in hell. (Luke 10:12-14) Some will experience a part of hell known as "the outer darkness." (Matthew 8:12) I have argued that there will actually be more relief from the fires of hell for some than for others, how is that not compassion? But Pro"s problem with hell is that it lasts forever. But I never said that people who go to hell couldn"t be freed from this place if they didn"t repent. They are the ones who choose to hate God and continue to reject him. Maybe Pro imagines that in hell, they are chained to wall, unable to move, but that"s not necessarily the case. They may very well be able to move around to continue their evil deeds. Lucifer in Isaiah 14 was met by others in hell who came to meet him and speak to him, so who knows what other sins they continue to commit in hell. Pro is just ignorant of Christian doctrine concerning hell. I never argued that the purpose of hell is to eliminate sin; that was Pro"s idea. Pro argued that many people can"t find God because of the lottery of religions, to which I replied that if God exists, he would know who would accept him and would be able to reach them with sufficient evidence " it"s only logical. Furthermore, I said there are exceptions to every rule. God can judge the unreached on the basis of what they did with the little truth they knew based on conscience or even nature. (Rom 1:20; 2:7, 14-15) To this Pro claimed that by preaching Christianity God then seals the fate of people who reject that message to hellfire. He prefers God keep all in ignorance by not preaching about himself so he can save more of them. But if a loving God exists who wants a relationship with us it"s only logical that he will try to educate us about himself and his ways, and won"t leave us to ourselves. What kind of father hides himself from his children? Pro is the one who wants God to show himself. If God exists, living by his ways would be the most beneficial way of living. To deprive us of that knowledge on behalf of those whose hearts would have rejected it is absurd in the extreme, and to bring people who don"t love God or his ways into heaven contradicts the very definition of God as being a morally perfect being. So while Pro argues that a morally perfect God would not send people to hell, he believes that a morally perfect God would fill his presence with sin by rewarding evil people with heaven. If wicked people are going to heaven, why bother to live holy lives? It all ends up the same, so lets rape, steal and kill. My rational for hell being eternal involves the eternality of God"s qualities. It seems to me that for any being to be God, he cannot be limited. He must be eternal in his attributes, for example eternal in power, no end to his wisdom, no end to his love, etc. But if the depth of God"s love for what is good is eternal, so that he rewards the righteous with eternal bliss in heaven, it seems logical and necessary that his hatred of evil, of sin, must also be eternal, and must be reflected in whatever punishment he inflicts on the guilty. So eternal retribution would be in harmony with divine justice, but since we are finite beings we may not comprehend just how much God hates, anymore than we comprehend just how deep he loves. When God hurts, he hurts infinitely more than we do. So sins against God deserve infinite punishment. Add to this the fact that they continue to sin in hell, and I can see why God would punish them forever. Now Pro claims that at least one person would become a real Christian if God revealed himself and that would be worth it. Pro seems to be an expert on what"s in people"s hearts, so let me do an experiment with his. So, you are an atheist, and let"s say you think there is nothing wrong with fornication, homosexuality, and you believe in evolution; but given enough evidence you would believe in God"s existence. God appears to you and then you believe he exists, then what? Do you suddenly abhor fornication, homosexuality and evolution? No. You"re heart condition and beliefs have not change! So you ask God to give you reasons why he says these things are wrong. He says sex is primarily for reproduction to create a new family, and I desire families to be made only in the context of marriage. Homosexuality is unnatural, that"s not what I made you for, and I created mankind, they didn"t evolve. In reply, you say to God, but when I have sex outside of marriage with a consenting adult, and I use protection, I"m not hurting anyone; and I could say the same thing about homosexuals, and I actually have good evidence for evolution, so why should I take your word against all the science I know? All the world"s scientists can"t be wrong, could they? "They are," God said, and you rejected him. Either because you think he is a liar, or, more likely, you simply don"t agree with him. You see, you must understand they are millions of people who will never prefer God"s ways over their own. Just believing in God"s existence won"t make anyone a Christian, nor will it stop people from putting other things at the centre of their lives, which amounts to worshipping other gods anyway " gods of sex, money, and fame. If God himself came down on a cloud and told you to accept his authority to make the rules, and even told you that as your Creator he doesn"t owe you an explanation, you are the one who owes him an explanation for why you didn"t live up to his requirements, would you humble yourself to him? Honestly, I personally believe that if God appears in US Air Space unannounced the government would send fighter jets to shoot him down. Further, Pro keeps talking about an "unintentional mistake," but a mistake is something accidental, it"s not a well informed choice. Most people who reject God have been informed about him and choose not to believe. Pro says that God must "use logic and empathy to arrive at the right moral conclusion," but I don"t believe God uses the same KIND OF LOGIC Pro uses, because just like I use logic which disagrees with Pro, God can use logic which also disagrees with Pro. I have shown examples of how logic has been used to justify behavior Pro calls immoral, so logic does not produce empathy. The logic used in court in favor of keeping the blacks in slavery in America was that the money they would need to compensate the slave owners would break the treasury. Here was a logical argument, was it empathetic? Further again, God doesn"t decide morality based on logic, but on his own character. Whatever his character is, that sets the standard for morality. So if God was evil, we would have a different set of morals from if he was loving. So my argument is that to know the kind of morals God would imbue in this world, would require knowing what kind of God he is to begin with. If there was no God, we would not have evolved morality, period. How do I know? Because there is no morality in the animal kingdom. When a lion eats a zebra, he does not murder her, he eats her. When a male white shark forcibly copulates with a female shark, it isn"t rape, its just doing what comes naturally to him. So I have no reason to think that animals would evolve a sense of faithfulness in marriage, when multiple partners takes presence during mating season for most species. I wouldn"t expect anyone to care about cruelty to animals, because in the animal kingdom no species cares about the wellbeing of a different species. If, as atheistic scientists claim homosexuality is natural among animals, there would be no natural reason for this taboo against gay acts to arise. Justice and morality cannot be decided by logic, because many logical reasons have been given against the death penalty, such as the fact that sometimes innocent people are convicted, and when their case is reviewed and they are found innocent, they can't benefit if they are dead. However, logical reasons have been for the death penalty, such as taking away the victims right to live demands an equal punishment on the killer, which is death - only one life for another can balance the scales of justice. The punishment fits the crime. Both claims are logical, but only one decision can be morality, and just! One could aim to reduce suffering by rejecting the death penalty so the criminal doesn't suffer the pain of death, but others could argue that being locked away with other criminals is lots of pain too. Horrible things happen to people in prison. Some would prefer death than go to jail. So logic, reducing suffering, all of it is no way to make moral decisions. Something which transcends human opinion is the source of morality, God's character. I close my case.