hell

[twoblacknines]

I am at a point in my life where I am not sure what I believe. It's a funny feeling, asking yourself what you truly believe, and only recieving an "I don't know" I have had points in my life where I felt christian, then points where I felt atheist, then agnostic (insert joke about nostics being atheist with no balls).

My main problem with Christianity is the idea of hell. The bible seems to teach forgiveness, but the idea of going to hell for eternity for doubting God seems very contradictory to this teaching.

After being in hell for 1 million years would God not find it in his heart to allow an atheist to repent and be accepted into heaven? I would really like to hear some believers answer to this.

Say a scientist has doubts about God and never truly believes, but creates a cure for HIV and saves literally millions of lives. He dies and is then sent to hell? What about the Christian who attends church every sunday without fail, but never saves 1 human life? He is given a VIP pass into heaven while the scientist burns eternally? This I cannot accept.

Maybe man just has God wrong. But if we are to look solely at the bible then we must take it as God's word, and cannot just say well everything is true except the whole hell part.

If my only options were to believe in:

1) God+our notion of hell or

2) No God

Then my logical side can only come to conclusion #2.

I have liked some of John's posts, and the idea of looking at the bible in metaphors. It at least makes some of the things in the bible make more sense. Some people say hell is simply an absence from God. This seems more acceptable than burning forever (literal interpretation). But even then I still think if God exists, that he would be RATIONAL and compromise on the whole sending good people to hell thing. I still feel that God may exists, but maybe he is not like the strict christian definition.

** Sorry for the long post. I have been wanting to make this for awhile and everything just kind of came out at once, so it may not be very well thought out or organized.