WOW, did this thread take off.
On what grounds did you reject God? Did you truly search your soul for any trace of the divine, or was it based on a materialistic desire to reject anything that couldn't be directly observed? Did you even give the concept of God serious thought at all, or did you just disregard it on the grounds that you could lead an earthly life perfectly well without it? Did you look down on people who did believe, or mock their beliefs?
If there is a God, these (and more) are all questions that the righteous atheist may have to answer for when he dies.
a) Why should I bother rejecting that which does not appear in any fashion to exist? It's not an open denial, it's simple lack of belief.
b) Why is it "materialistic desire" and not "sensible" not to believe in that which does not appear to exist?
c) It's hard to be an atheist in this society and not give God serious thought from time to time, since religion is pretty pervasive and you're instantly an odd duck if you don't have one. The more I think about theism, the less sense it makes to me. An omnipotent, omniscient being is impossible to prove or disprove, so I don't really bother with trying to do either. With no positive evidence, I simply lack belief.
BEFORE I gave the matter serious thought, I called myself an agnostic.
d) I do not look down on people because they believe, but I do look down on those who use religion to avoid rational thought. I'm sorry, but fundamentalists are a serious pet peeve of mine. (Not that you appear to be one.) That said, I have no problem with religious friends as long as they have no problem with me. (I also tend to rub religious people with no sense of humor the wrong way.)
I try to only be intolerant of intolerance.
e) I don't walk up to people and mock them, because that's just being a tool. But, if I engage in a philosophical discussion, I'm not likely to pull any punches.
Any other questions? FYI, if God did judge me worthy of punishment SOLELY because I did not believe in him, my last act would be to call him a jackass to his face. It would be wonderful if there was an ultimate good in the universe, obviously, but it's more likely that a being with absolute power would be corrupted absolutely, and while we're all screwed if that's the case I'd at least tell him what I think of him before being sent on to a) watch basic cable or b) be driven mad by an eternity of torment.
If you don't believe that you have an eternal soul, the question "Is eternal torture good or bad" is moot.
No, it's not, because a lot of people believe in it and we are abstractly discussing the morality of the concept. You said it yourself, this is a hypothetical and we are making certain assumptions.
In effect, this is the topic scenario:
Certain Christians are right after all. God exists and he is ready, willing, and able to torture people eternally.
Is this moral for him to do to anybody?
And then my question assumed a scenario more along the lines of:
You, Sean Gray, are right and the evil seperate themselves from God in the afterlife. Suppose you've got a virtuous atheist (perhaps one of the fine individuals in this very thread. Does his evil seperate him from God? If so,
is it evil just not to believe in God?
You said you didn't know, which is fair. The point was to get you to think about it. As an atheist, I like to look at the strange bits in others' theology.
The question posed by this thread was "is eternal torture just?" I answered from a Christian perspective. What's the problem?
Because you gave the stock Christian answer "anything's okay if God does it." That scares people like me because it can be used to justify anything. Absolutely anything.
I for one am glad that we have a Christian perspective here who is patient and not a wackjob, but for obvious reasons a non-religious individual might be saddened or frustrated with your answer.
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