If Jesus died to forgive us, then why is there a Hell?

I'm going to sleep now. Wish me luck.

Good luck.

Good luck, Leadfoot! And remember, we're just voices in the night, happy for the communion and exchange of energy.

I was awoken once again this morning. Thank you CI and Glennn for making yesterday enjoyable. Let's do it again sometime.

I think you are dreaming you woke up...this may or may not be a message from the future your getting "last night" wherever that place is...

And maybe the tech tending the brain in a jar with my name on it just turned the power back on...

What brain ? Oh the one something is "dreaming" about in "your" Avatar... got it !

Sorry this took so long:
You have managed to pose the question that caused Kierkegaard to pass into infinite resignation. And, while I believe I can explain the account in accord with divine purpose, were I to have worn Abraham's sandals, I fear I might have failed.

First of all, consider the story according to the writer's perspective. Abraham was a contemporary of Shem, one of the flood survivors. The implication is that he would have learned much about God and his promises at the instruction of such a man. (Josephus identifies him as Melchizedek, BTW.) Abraham's faith was strong enough at age 75 to give up his comfortable life and wealty status in the city of Ur in order to live in tents. Apparently, he continued to prosper in spite of this sacrifice.

Before he left Ur, he was promised an heir that would fulfill the promise of Genesis 3:15 and whose offspring would become a great nation. At the time, Abraham was married to Sarah, but they were childless and both were old. So it would have taken great faith to obey. Time passed. In fact about 25 years went by before Abraham, then about 100 and Sarah, about 90, became parents to Isaac.

The supreme test of Abraham’s faith came about years later, when according to Jewish tradition, Isaac was now 25 years old. (Jewish Antiquities, by F. Josephus, I, 227 [xiii, 2]) In obedience to God’s instructions Abraham took Isaac and traveled to Mount Moriah. There he built an altar and prepared to offer up Isaac, the promised seed, as a burnt sacrifice. Only at the last moment did God intervene and provide a ram as a substitute for Isaac. It was his implicit faith backed up by complete obedience that moved God to reinforce his covenant with Abraham with a sworn oath, a special legal guarantee.

Note that half a century passed between God's initial covenant with Abraham for the seed and the incident on Mount Moriah. Intervening events surely strengthened Abraham's faith that should Issac die, God could certainly bring him back in order to fulfill the promise. See Hebrews 11:19.

The analogy between this event and God's willing sacrifice of his firstborn should be here noted.

Basically, you merely paraphrased the sacrifice story but didn't address the contention at hand. What's more, by referencing this god's sacrifice of his own son you merely reinforced the contention that this god is a cowardly, violent god.

How does this answer cicerone imposter's contention that a god that would even test someone by asking a father to kill his own son is a cowardly god, and that if he wants to control man, he should prove it through love, not violence?

Don't worry. Any father worth his salt would fail . . . to his credit.

This incident, if based on reality, does nothing but show the primitive nature of the god. Furthermore it shows the extent to which indoctrination can affect the mind. The idea of such a sacrifice in this day and age is repulsive, and we know enough to call such a thing exactly what it is. It is extremism, and it is ugly, and no amount of reasoning can legitimize it as an act of love. The problem, as I see it, is similar to the fascination people have with antiques. But in this case, a book has been deified, and as such, the morality of the deeds of the god-character described within the pages are not judged according to the obvious nature of the deed, but rather according to the one committing the deed. In other words, to those who deify the book, the god-character can do no wrong. That’s why you have great difficulty condemning the idea of slaughtering animals and offering up their burnt corpses to the god-character. You need to stop and ask yourself what part of your god was pleased and quenched by such an ugly, ugly thing!

The problem with deifying a book is that, even when the description of the god-character within that book is proven to be inaccurate, thereby calling into question the very existence of the god-character in the first place, the deifiers of that book will nevertheless have great difficulty dislodging the idea of the god-character itself from their minds. Instead, they attempt to apply the concept of allegory and metaphor in a way that will help amend the nature of the god-character and its attitude into something less offensive to their intellect and sensibilities so that they might cling to it; not out of love, but out of fear.

It seems they need to do a whole lot of self deception to accept their deity.
My siblings are Seventh Day Adventists, and their founder is Ellen White. A little bit of google search shows how many errors and omissions can be found on their founder, but I'm sure they don't bother looking for negatives against their founder.

Your opinion is shared by many.
Abraham was asked to do what ordinary loving parents would never consider.
Surely loving parents would sacrifice their own lives before allowing any injury to their offspring.

Apparently you do not see the situation as Abraham did.

You use the term 'cowardly'. Why? He could have zapped the entire human race at any time. So, is he a coward because he has been willing to endure the damage to his creation and the slander of his name? Or, is he powerless?

What thing do you consider ugly? Abraham's willingness?

Perhaps Moses should have declined to recount the event. Or, maybe there is more to the story than meets the eye.

Oh. I already said something like that.

Why are you pretending to not understand what I said in my post? What part of it did you find to be ambiguous?

The god should be willing to endure the consequences of its actions. Why would it not? Who else is responsible for that?

Endure the slander of its name? So, when did you begin assuming that the god shares the human susceptibility to name-calling?

Tis a jealous god.

Yes, and a god that apparently suffers from a victim complex, according to some.

Well, no bloodshed took place. I had to ask.

As an "arheist" I have no problem with this tale of Abraham and his son...
When "God" commands, either there is good reason, or the outcome of whatever was the point invalidates whatever we perceived was the point.
Personally I don't blame Nature for storms and children dying...Eden Universes are dead boring...risk is part of the "deal" of being alive...
The point of this tale is to not outguess "Nature" reasons through our poor reasoning skills...this has nothing to do with fathers n childrens...

Yeah, that's how psychological abusers justify their abuse, too. It would appear that your god is into head-games.

What part of your god was pleased and quenched by the slaughter of animals, and the burning of the corpses?