A decent god should not send people to hell for an eternity for merely not believing in him.

Time to close things up. "My opponent has decided to debate about a minor portion of the topic. The simple reality is that even if he is to prove sending to hell those who have zero chance of being saved is not decent, I believe I will still win because the vast majority of people within this topic do have a choice to accept or reject god. Since it effectively conceded that it is just to punish these individuals, then I believe I have already proved a decent god can send to hell those who do not believe. Again, we must focus on everyone, and not simply a small portion of people. Having said this, for the sake of debate I will engage my opponent on his arguments." Here is why I should win this debate. My opponent thinks he can win the debate merely by ignoring my points but I believe my points are valid. The topic is "A decent god should not send people to hell for an eternity for merely not believing in him." I chose to focus on the people who do not believe due to not being able to believe and my opponent thinks that because god gives most people a chance to be saved it is ok to simply ignore those who have no chance at all. I would also like to point out that although my opponent keeps referring to these people as a minority and therefore unimportant EVERY soul is important and nobody should suffer eternal damnation over something they have no control over. Also I am not talking about small groups of people here because if people truly are sent to hell for being unable to believe take a moment to think about just how large that number would be. "As for the tribes argument, I would again like to point out this is a incredibly tiny portion of the population. And, with the spread of Christian missionaries across the world, there are few if any who no longer are aware of Christianity. If a tribe chooses to reject these missionaries, then it is right for them to face the consequences, which in this case is hell. Also, as stated earlier, if accepting Jesus and god is the only way to reach heaven, and if the tribe has not done this, then god is right to reject them." My opponent thinks that number is smaller than it really is. Sure the Christian bible has made it to a lot of places but this was not always the case. MANY people for MANY years have lived their lives completely unable to access a bible. People have been around waaay before the bible was even created and when it was first created it took a long time to grow and spread to what it has become today. Think about how many people really had no chance to know God. "On the argument about people from other religions, some major religions are closely tied to Christianity, and by embracing the same god, they may still be saved. Having said this, free will solves back for this argument. Even if one is raised to follow one religion, they still have the ability to embrace Jesus. If they do not embrace the correct path to salvation and instead embrace a false belief, then god has no reason to save them or offer salvation since they had every chance to embrace the correct path." Some major religions are closely tied to Christianity yes but many of them are not. And I do not believe that free will just "solves" this problem. Lets pretend for a brief second that Christianity is all wrong and religion number 2 is correct and because all Christians did not fulfill the requirements of religion 2 they all went to hell. Next lets look here in America. A person is born and raised by Christian parents in a Christian community. Most likely that person will remain a Christian. There IS a decent chance because of this being the wonderful America that it is that the person may choose to adopt another religion but the chance that they will end up following the correct religion 2 is fairly small considering the vast amount of choices. So reverse this. Chances are greater if you are raised non Christian you will be non Christian. Just because the chance to be saved exists does not mean the chance to not be saved isn't higher which is why my point with other religions is valid. "As for infants, while I can not say with absolute certainty, I am relatively certain that most sects of Christianity would send them to purgatory. I think reasonability factors into this, if Jesus washed away our sins, then infants and aborted fetuses who never had a chance to sin have no reason to be punished, meaning they would either go to purgatory or heaven. Only the most extreme sects of Christianity would argue otherwise, and we are not discussing those." Would just like to point out that although you say they have no reason to be punished according to original sin they do. Original sin is believed by more people than you think and purgatory is also not that big of a Christian belief. Being raised as a Methodist and having friends in other various flavors of Christianity some of us were told to believe in original sin and not in purgatory because that is what our bible told us to believe. So my point here is merely that Methodist is by no means one of the most extreme sects and yet we were still made to "argue otherwise". "My opponent contends that hell is an excessive punishment. But why? Those in question have rejected their creator, shown no gratitude, and lived a life detached from the road to salvation. Hell is a just punishment for those who did not seek salvation in life. God should not reward those who do not live a just life in service to him. Purgatory is also a potential destination for many in question, though I can not speak intelligently on who goes to hell and who goes to purgatory. To conclude I believe it is clear that not embracing salvation in life justifies punishment in death. I believe I am winning that nearly all people we are discussing in this debate are justly sent to hell because they have a choice. I also believe I have shown how those my opponent discusses are either not sent to hell or are sent to hell for just reasons." My opponent is trying to say that those in question have rejected their creator. For the purpose of this debate I have focused on the people who have done nothing wrong. I am talking about people who have had either little or no chance to know that the Christian god even exists. And I would very much like for my opponent to try and justify eternal torment for people who have done nothing wrong but instead he just tries to ignore them and say that it's ok because most people have a chance to get into heaven. It's not ok. It's not ok to pick and choose who has a chance to get into heaven. A decent god would not give out such a cruel punishment to so many innocent people. I personally would like to believe that this is not the case. I would like to believe that all people have a chance to go to heaven but in the least I would like to believe that just because someone can't get into heaven then they wont be sent to hell. I would rather just god leave me alone and not put me in hell or heaven. Just let me die in peace. Wrapping this up this argument is about all of the innocent people God has given the worst possible punishment to. If any god really has sent countless good people to eternal torture merely for not knowing about him than he is not a decent god. That sounds too evil to be something that a loving god would do. You cant justify putting such a harsh punishment on so many people who had no chance to be saved. That is all. Thanks for the debate.