Samsara would suit a just, loving god's purposes better than Heaven and Hell.

Welcome, Daley, and good luck. The purpose of this debate was that the Christian god should have made better choices in order to fulfill his own goals that are determined by his loving, just character. I have clearly stated that in creating Man, I believe (based on my Catholic education) that the Christian god's ultimate intention was that someone would become conscious of his infinite glory and that someone would be able to share in it (as in, become divine and loving and just and creative and all-seeing just like him) and ultimately attain oneness with him. If you disagree that this was the original intention of the Christian god, then my argument will not work. So, we are discussing a different path, a different plan for what is still in essence the Christian god. Since he'd be doing things differently according to my model, he would no longer be well described by the Bible, and since he never would have personally condemned anybody, he would not have needed to sacrifice his son, Jesus Christ. I would like to point out that my view even of the Christian god is that we must all ultimately be sons and daughters of him, just like Jesus, but perhaps less mature. I see Jesus as the son of the Christian god that has most fulfilled God's purpose for Man (because Jesus has attained divinity and oneness with God). Anyway, the point is that in this model God would need no sacrifice and at most would have sent Jesus as a spiritual and moral teacher. In short, God would still be the Christian god, but he would have done almost everything differently, so you might say that his Holy Will must be different from the god of the Bible, so technically you could argue that the god I speak of must be somewhat different. From now on, God is defined as an omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omnipresent personal deity whose ultimate purpose for man was that man would attain full consciousness of and oneness with the divinity of God. Therefore, he may (or may not) come off as being closer to a different god than the one in the Bible. The subtle differences in the Samsaric models across religions are very complex and largely irrelevant to my argument. I am most familiar with the Buddhist model of Samsara, however. I want to explain how the basic ideas behind Samsara are better than the basic ideas behind Heaven and Hell, so I will define Samsara rather simply. The attributes of Samsaric existence are: 1) Souls are not defined as the essence of any one person in particular, because they are reincarnated. My soul cannot be the essence of me that sets me apart from everyone else, because that same soul goes into another being. So a soul is defined as the fundamental inner subjectivity of all beings that is recycled and connected to all other souls. This soul is made of exactly the same immaterial substance as God. 2) The law of Karma is one of the most important attributes of Samsaric existence that states that the actions of any soul are the primary determinants of the nature of its future incarnations/existence. In this case, the closer you are in character to God, the more bliss-filled your existence becomes and the more powerful and free you become. If you do bad things that are against the character of God, the more full of suffering and impermanence and helplessness your existence can become. Note well that since nobody does infinite actions, no soul can reach full divinity or full severance from divinity by accumulating Karma, but that does not mean that a soul cannot rejoin God. In order to do that, a soul must stop accumulating Karma altogether and lose its personal existence (and therefore become full of, and one with God). As long as you create, so do you continue to be created. Therefore God, here, only created instances of inner subjectivity that create their own existences until they decide to stop creating anything and again become one with the all-encompassing subjectivity of God. Because only individual, created souls accumulate karma and create their personal existence, it stands to reason that God does not create Karma: he does not interfere in Samsara after creating it. Samsara is like a machine that helps God to actualize (fulfill the purpose of) his souls because if he did worldly Samsaric things himself he would limit his all-encompassing-ness. God does not act within Samsara because the entirety of Samsara is within him (as all of his creations are: if it comes from God, it emanates, or unfolds from him). Anyway, on to explaining why creating Samsara is more prudent for God (as defined above) to create than Heaven or Hell. Samsara is so effective at teaching moral perfection because beings are directly creating their own realities through their actions. What this means is that any being can choose to remain forever separated from God through his own actions, but as soon as he grows weary of this separation he will seek God's law through the guidance of Jesus and any other possible actualized souls (who share the character of Jesus) and through his own inner light that is his esssence and never dies. When, through experience, the soul has fully understood God's law of put good (as defined by God's essential loving character) in, get good out and vice versa, he will be able to understand that if he stops acting in his personal interests at all but speaks for the collective (like Jesus) then he can attain oneness with God (and full realization and sharing of His greatness). Heaven and Hell could never hope to accomplish what Samsara does. People fail to act according to God's law almost all the time because we're too immature. As individuals, we identify with the personal self and not the collective, eternal Self of God (all-encompassing subjectivity) and we treat others badly and are motivated by personal gain. One life is by definition, not enough to stop identifying with the personal self, because only one personal self has been experienced. How is anyone supposed to deny the self if it is all they know? I'm not saying it's impossible, just unreasonably difficult. One life is not enough to realize God's law which is a deep love and compassion for all beings. By sending people to hell, God has created the experience of eternal suffering, which is the antithesis of his Goal that we agreed on when you accepted my opening statement. God didn't create beings so that eternal suffering would be known, but so that Love could become known by someone who was previously ignorant. Forgiving mere believers in Christ and rewarding them with eternal bliss is just as pointless if we keep the Goal in mind. The only way that Love can be authentically realized is through personal experience and free choice. If someone has not realized the ultimate by themselves, then they have not realized the ultimate at all, and they need to realize themselves before entering the meaningless perfection of eternal bliss (because we find meaning in life only through overcoming suffering). In conclusion, sending people to Heaven and Hell leads to no definite self-realization of God's love and of God's laws. I argue that eventually, everyone must come to this realization themselves, because that is the purpose of their Soul (subjectivity, inner light), and the only way for the Soul to do that is to keep returning to worldly, karmic, imperfect existence until the individual can transcend his individuality and truly relate to God and enter His perfection in the most natural, organic, and righteous manner possible.