Jewish faith has it that god is not evil and does not do evil (as in inadequate punishment, suffering etc.), hence the unanswered question of theodicy. What answer does Job get? In a nutshell, “Don’t you see I’m so much superior than you and beyond your comprehension? So stop asking.” One of the psalms (got to look up the number later) quite clearly states that we will not understand god and why humans suffer before we’re dead.

Why would I end up in a place I see no purpose in? Wouldn’t it be an entertaining notion that everybody ended up in the hereafter in what he believed in here?

And are you still saying that Catholics don’t believe in an eternal hell when the catechism says exactly that? Sorry, but I think there’s something wrong with you. As you know, of course Jews don’t have any such thing.

Ask Erasmus how there can be evil in the world if G-d is who he’s supposed to be. There is evil in the world. Just look out your window. Saying G-d won’t permit it is sort of like believing the Europeans when they say that it is “unacceptable” for Iran to get the Bomb.

And if you want to believe in the Jewish god, even if you admit punishment for transgression for educational purposes (as explained in apocryphal texts), it does not sufficiently explain inadeqate evil like the Shoah or child abuse. There is neither educational value nor educational context in that. In Judaism as well, god does not stand for a dualism of good and evil – that clashes with the ideas of creation as well as salvation. That is also the issue of the list of scholars referred to in the article. That dualism is a popular explanation, but it’s nothing but pop-culture theology. Judaism as well believes that only the end, death, will reveal how evil can be understood (a topic recurringly referenced in the Psalms) in the context of an all-loving, omniscient and omnipotent god. Rabbis that claim such dualism need to get back to their books again pretty quickly; it’s a heathen concept – abodah zarah much.

From the Jewish Encyclopaedia:
He is the father (Isa. lxiii. 16, lxiv. 7); and like a father He taketh pity on His children (Ps. ciii. 13; see Compassion). Therefore, love is due to Him on the part of His children (Deut. vi. 4-5). The demand to fear Him, in the light of the implications of the Hebrew original, is anything but in conflict with the insistence that the relations between God and man are marked by parental and filial love. The God of the Bible is not a despot, to be approached in fear. For “yir’ah” connotes an attitude in which confidence and love are included, while the recognition of superiority, not separation, is expressed (Nietzsche’s “pathos of distance”).

Again, Christians do not believe that god is wrathful no matter how your take on that might be, so they also don’t believe that god permits evil (which would outrule omnipotence and an all-loving nature), AND THAT IS WHY they have problems explaining how evil comes about. Their hell (purgatory as explained above as they understand it; I didn’t switch topics, but did not get repetitive and responded to your claim that Judaism does not believe in eternal damnation in hell. The entry from the Jewish Encyclopaedia referencing the norm-giving treatises by sages clearly says that damnation in hell is eternal and that negative impulses, such as anger and mockery, not just cardinal sins, make for eternal punishment. That catechism was issued by authority of John Paul II. BTW, so he’d be the official author) is a transitory place of “cleaning” of the souls.

Let’s just note, conveniently enough for me, that if you get angry at me or you mock me, you’ll go to hell. Forever. You’ll be in there with the leftists that didn’t like my criticism of Obama and the person that didn’t like my penis post, and that guy doesn’t sound fun, so beware.

But it is more than a little disingenuous of you to claim that a statement by a Jewish “hardliner” (Satmar in this case, the hardest of the hard) proves that “Judaism believes” that Gehinnom is eternal while pooh-poohing the statements by Catholic hardliners about the existence of Hell, saying that the Pope doesn’t believe it and then changing the subject to “well, the Jews believe it too” when I quote chapter and verse from the catechism that Ratzinger himself edited, at least according to Tom. Sauce for the goose, etc.

Again, you’re missing the point of my original objection to what you said. I have never said, nor have I ever heard a rabbi say, that G-d is “pure love”. There may be some that think this way; I am sure we could get into a pretty good argument about it. G-d has a mixed nature: he is equal parts love and punishment. What side he shows depends on what you do. I only objected to your statement that the god of Christianity isn’t wrathful, when it is plain that he is. There is simply no other explanation for Hell.

Unless, like I said, you want to define love in such a way that it allows for a god that does this. This is always a possibility, I suppose.

The dilemma of the inability to answer the question of theodicy still exists. Christianity wouldn’t have its finest scholars concerned with that dilemma if it did believe in a wrathful god.

It is not that the Christian god is not wrathful, is is that Christianity just DOESN’T WANT to believe in a wrathful god, in spite of the fact that their theology demands it. That is, they start out from the philosophical premise that G-d cannot be wrathful. He must be pure love. But then they are stuck with the problem of evil and, as you say, put their finest scholars on the dilemma, where they promptly tie themselves in knots trying to figure out what caused all the trouble and explain away the plain evidence of their own texts. Ignoring reality and trying to fit it into a preconceived idea about what you want it to be always causes problems.

This is just plain silly. A god that condemns non-believers to a burn forever (forever! think about that for a second)in a lake of eternal fire must be, by definition, pretty pissed off about something.

Again, AFAIK, the Jewish “dogma” about Gehinnom, if here even is such a thing, holds that the punishments to which you refer are limited in duration. Like I said, not a pleasant thought, but nowhere near as bad as eternal damnation, I would say.

The reason I don’t have a problem with this, at least from a philosophical or structural point of view, is that I have never questioned the obvious fact that sin pisses G-d off (makes him “wrathful”) and that he punishes people for it. The classical metaphor, of course, is the father who loves his child but has to offer correction in the form of punishment, when the child fucks up. But there is never any doubt about the fact that the father loves the child.

Now, if you want to say that in the Christian conception the threat of eternal damnation for sinners (and that is exactly what the catechism says it is) is proof of G-d’s love, go right ahead. I just don’t buy it.

Again, if you had said “in Christianity G-d is just as wrathful as he is in Judaism” we wouldn’t have had to waste all this time.

If you care to read the entry from the Jewish Encyclopaedia, which I’ve posted in full text above, you’ll see that it says in the entry on Gehenna:
It is assumed in general that sinners go to hell immediately after their death. The famous teacher Johanan b. Zakkai wept before his death because he did not know whether he would go to paradise or to hell (Ber. 28b). The pious go to paradise, and sinners to hell (B. M. 83b). To every individual is apportioned two shares, one in hell and one in paradise. At death, however, the righteous man’s portion in hell is exchanged, so that he has two in heaven, while the reverse is true in the case of sinners (Ḥag. 15a). Hence it would have been better for the latter not to have lived at all (Yeb. 63b). They are cast into Gehenna to a depth commensurate with their sinfulness. They say: “Lord of the world, Thou hast done well; Paradise for the pious, Gehenna for the wicked” (’Er. 19a).

So in Jewish doctrine, there is eternal hell for sinners and only tsaddikim make it into heaven. The sins that lead to Gehenna are listed further below in the encyclopaedia entry, anger being one of them.

Furthermore, the free-will line of explaining why there is evil in this world does not explain how evil can come about by natural disasters or animals (which, according to Jewish theology, do not possess free will). That line of argumentation has been refuted by many Jewish as well as Christian scholars of standing as it basically outrules that god is either omniscient, ominipotent or all-loving. The dualism of good and evil in a monotheistic theology is regarded an impossibility and illogical. If there were an evil force as able as a loving god to create, then that would make more than one deity. If evil solely was caused by man, the question would arise why god has given man the gift of free will without an inclination to do others harm. Still, any attempted answer on that question would ignore the existence of evil and suffering that isn’t “manmade”. So if god’s abilities are limited, he is theologically turned into an anthropomorphic deity, an idol. This is not about biblical narrative but about THEOlogy at its purest. The dilemma of the inability to answer the question of theodicy still exists. Christianity wouldn’t have its finest scholars concerned with that dilemma if it did believe in a wrathful god. Since it, however, doesn’t, the existence of evil in this world becomes inexplicable and the question of theodicy arises.

This article, while focusing on the Shoah, reflects Jewisch scholar’s attempts at making up a theodicy; alas, theologically and philsophically they just remain that, attempts, as at some point they all are in for a logical lapsus or shift from a theodicy to an anthropodicy: terrynewman.co...
Still, the article clearly demonstrates how the historic reality of the Jewish people clashes with the Jewish theology of an all-loving, omnipotent and omniscient god.
[The notion of the original of the intention of the Inquisition is not quite historically accurate; it started mostly to rid Spain of Muslim influence and the eventually changed directions.]

I usually go to bed between midnight and 1am and get up between 4am and 5am.