The Good News is better than that, indeed!
Great article, Melch. Thanks for sharing it. 
thanks mate i enjoyed that
This guy has got some really good stuff on this blog. Thoroughly enjoying it.
Yes, I love Richard Beck’s blog! I don’t read it regularly, but check in now and then. He always has something worth reading.
Sonia
The challenge with such considerations is the appeal to emotions and logic. Traditional Evangelicalism rejects both as viable considerations. Just because something doesn’t make sense, doesn’t seem or feel right, doesn’t mean it’s not true. So just because love and endlessly torturing one’s loved ones just doesn’t make sense to any rational person, doesn’t really matter, because faith is not suppose to be rational or based on knowledge. True “faith” is suppose to transcend logic, reason, knowledge, experience, and emotion. Of course, I disagree with these sentiments. I believe that faith, trust, is built upon understanding and experience. I have faith in my father because of what I’ve experienced of him all my life and because of the character that he possesses.
Sherman,
You’re right that Evangelicals will often appeal to the idea that God’s ways sometimes “transcend” logic (quotations because, frankly, ECT doesn’t “transcend” logic; it transgresses it, and ECT-ists sometimes appear unaware of the difference). The issue is that the moment they do that, they expose a glaring inconsistency in the structure of their own theology by going on to attempt to explain why ECT really makes perfect sense–justice and infinite demerit and free will and all that. So which is it? Is it an absurdity with which we must live because God has declared it to be true (supposedly)? Or is it the most rational way a deity might act (supposedly)? Seems to depend on which side of the mouth is most convenient to argue from.
Sherman, snitzelhoff, i hear what your saying and i agree. I like to refer back to…
Romans 2:15 who do shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also witnessing with them, and between one another the thoughts accusing or else defending
From a commentary on Romans 2:15 :
"Written in their hearts - The revealed Law of God was written on tables of stone, and then recorded in the books of the Old Testament. This law the Gentiles did not possess, but, to a certain extent, the same requirements were written on their hearts. Though not revealed to them as to the Jews, yet they had obtained the knowledge of them by the tight of nature. The word “hearts” here denotes the mind itself, as it does also frequently in the Sacred Scriptures; not the heart, as the seat of the affections. It does not mean that they loved or even approved of the Law, but that they had knowledge of it; and that that knowledge was deeply engraved on their minds.
Their conscience - This word properly means the judgment of the mind respecting right and wrong; or the judgment which the mind passes on the morality or immorality of its own actions, when it instantly approves or condemns them. It has usually been termed the moral sense, and is a very important principle in a moral government. Its design is to answer the purposes of an ever attendant witness of a man’s conduct; to compel him to pronounce on his own doings, and thus to excite him to virtuous deeds, to give comfort and peace when he does right, to deter from evil actions by making him, whether he will or no, his own executioner"
So from that, i believe it is in mans conscience to know right from wrong. Our God given common sense. We are all still made in His image, even tho it’s been corrupted by sin, we still all have a God given conscience. Otherwise we’d all be mass psycho murderers who would kill at the drop of a hat with no conscience or guilt what so ever. We’d be worse then animals. We’d be insane monsters. Obviously we are not all like that. We still bare a fair amount of love, along with an inner conscience designed by God. ECT makes no sense because it is not from God. I dont think our common sense on that is wrong and should never be depended upon…like the ECT crowd thinks. God’s ways are higher then ours. Yes, more loving and wise. If anyone thinks ECT is fair, then their ways are not matching up with God’s ways. They are instead being filtered thru the flesh/carnal/sinful nature…If one is perfectly honest with themselves, and look deep down inside to their inner most hearts, one will know that ECT isn’t part of God’s love.
I hope i made sense here. 
You’re making sense to me
Thanks edward.
I had made that post after waking up in the middle of the night, then deciding to go to the computer, so i may have still been a bit groggy. 
Yep. I’ve even heard an anti-universalism sermon that raised that very issue. The trouble was that the pastor then turned right around and used an emotional appeal in support of eternal hell! 
It cuts both ways…
You all are making me think . . .
Atheists and agnostics and the like constantly insist that they and their fellows are often more moral and loving than Christians, and while I suspect they’re exaggerating perhaps a little bit, they do have a point. Mankind has this witness within ourselves that this is wrong and that is right. Unless we corrupt it and overrule it by societal and doctrinal falsehoods, we do innately know, in our hearts, what is unacceptable. We have a native desire to nurture small humans and even small animals, for example. This is quite a delicate sense and can and often is overpowered, twisted and distorted (as at the close of Romans 1), but it’s there. We ignore it at our own peril.
Logically, the atheist has no reason to desire to help the weak. This goes against evolutionary principles (as far as I understand them) in encouraging the inferior specimens of our species to survive and procreate, take up resources from the more fit specimens, etc. Yet they, by and large, still understand “common decency” quite as well as anyone else does. It isn’t a survival trait. It is God’s law written on our hearts, however imperfectly. So imperfect that He is obligated to give us a new heart, but yet it’s still there to at least some extent.
Blessings, Cindy
Hi Cindy,
This is probably way more than you wanted to know about biological altruism but if you’re interested this is a good page describing altruism within evolutionary theory…
plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/
Jeff.