HELL

[Fake Messiah]

But which Hell? What if Muslims are right and all this time you've been wasting your time and worshiping wrong doctrine and are going to Islamic hell?!! Muhammad assured his followers that Jesus was not divine (Koran 5:71-75; 19:30-38) and that anyone who believes otherwise will spend eternity in hell. Muslims are certain that Muhammad's opinion on this subject, as on all others, is infallible. Why don't you lose any sleep over whether to convert to Islam? Can you prove that Allah is not the one, true God? Can you prove that the archangel Gabriel did not visit Muhammad in his cave?

Or what if old Greek religion is right? You may say they don't exist anymore so maybe that's the proof - maybe but then again their religion was longer then Christianity, so they were wrong for such long time.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

You know what really sucks?

You're in hell and there's no one alive who remembers you and so you will never get any more hell money.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/0...tival.html

[MTL]

My interest was always in the afterlife in general.  What could possibly entertain one for an eternity?  Would not heaven eventually be hell anyway?

And much in fiction and movies has addressed that;

Agent Smith in the first Matrix movie talked about how the first version of the Matrix was a failure because it was too idyllic for the human mind to accept; we needed challenge and conflict;

and I always found it entertaining to wonder if I was ever offered the chance for Earthly immortality,
IE becoming a vampire, if I would really want it.  In her Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice repeatedly addresses this issue; with ancient vampires bemoaning the fact that vampire suicide (willing death, by sun exposure, of course)
is so frequent among young or new vampires, because the prospect of immortality is such a burden to bear
....and that would be on EARTH, where there is lots happening to entertain you, too...as opposed to Heaven,
where I imagine it would be far more boring.

[MTL]

In a different thread, I once offered my personal take on the concept of "Sin"
...and it applies to the concept of "Hell" too.

I said that, being Agnostic and Anti-Theist,
that I don't believe in the traditional Abrahamic concepts of "Sin".

I don't view 'Lust' as a sin at all, for example;

If God exists,
I would think He would be appalled that we view Lust as a Sin;
it is a gift!!

So is Fear.

And Lust and Fear are supposed to be in balance.

Every living thing Lusts, and Fears.

A dandelion pushing up through the cracks in the sidewalk is "lusting" after the sunlight, if you will;

Lust is the appetite that drives us forward....not just for sex, but Lust for Life.

Fear is the opposite:  It pulls us back, chastens us, keeps us safe.

It is fear of being hit by a car that makes me look both ways before crossing the street
...even though there is an ice-cream parlour on the other side of the road that I might be lusting after.

but when they get out of balance, it can be Hell.

Lust that runs out of check could be called "Addiction".

Fear that runs out of check could be considered "Phobia".

(Note: I always found it very interesting that in its "Seven Deadly Sins",
the Catholic Church makes Lust, in and of itself, a "Sin",
...but very tellingly does not make "Fear" a sin.

To my mind, for a Christian, Fear would be a sin....because Fear could be considered a lack of Faith.

If you really trust in God, you have nothing to Fear.

To me, it is obvious that the Church doesn't want you to even be fully conscious of the fact
that Fear is what they are using to manipulate you;

So the Church will basically allow you to sin against God by Fearing that which need not be Feared
...as long as it serves the Church's purposes.

True, there is the old adage of being "God-Fearing", yes...

...but that runs directly counter to the concept of God being Love and Goodness).

There's an old saying that the door to Hell is bolted from the inside,
meaning, we lock ourselves into it.

Both the concept I have offered,
and the concept that Catholic Lady offered,
agree on this...but from different perspectives.

The only part of what Catholic Lady said here, that doesn't sit right with me,
is where she said,

" ...upon dying, every person gets a final chance to "meet" with God, if you will. And from there they make a conscious and informed decision to either reject or accept Him. (And by accepting or rejecting Him, they are accepting or rejecting love and goodness. So the state of rejection is Hell, the state of acceptance is Heaven.)   "

My issue is this:

If God is simply love and goodness, who would reject that?  Why would they reject it?

Maybe they find God monstrous...so opting for Hell is paradise?

Is is impossible for an Agnostic like myself, to find love and goodness while simultaneously rejecting the Christian God?

(No, it isn't).

And, if God truly loves us, why would He forbid us from finding love and happiness, even without Him?

[robvalue]

As a general comment, it seems to me that some believers feel that what they think hell (or whatever you want to call it) should be like has some bearing on what it is actually like, assuming it exists at all. They say things like, "Well, I don't believe hell would be like that, because..." This is just speculation.

Considering even those who believe it is a real place can't agree on the most basic of details, that's a pretty good indication that either (a) it doesn't exist or (b) no one has any idea about it and is no position to tell others what it is like.

Like all religious ideas, no one can ever demonstrate anything about it is true or false, so people are free to just make up whatever they like as it will go unchallenged.

I'm literally more scared when I open my post than I am scared that my "soul" will end up anywhere at all, let alone some cartoon-like hell.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

And Boru, you hit the nail on the head. It is not meant to be about reward and punishment. That's why I always say that those Christians who act a certain way simply in order to be rewarded in Heaven, or in order to avoid Hell, are missing the whole point. God loves us and He wants us to be with Him because He loves us, not simply for "rewarding" purposes. We "go to" Hell not as a punishment from God, as the article says, but because we chose to be away from Him.

Very well. If Heaven and Hell are not meant as reward and punishment respectively, then one may as well be good and loving for its own sake. Atheists (by and large) already do just that, so it isn't so much a question of rejecting God as it is one of not needing God in the first place.

But I think that rejecting the idea of Hell as a punishment is pretty hard to sustain. Not only Biblically, but the notion of punishing sinners is found throughout Catholic dogma.

If God truly loves us, then it isn't easy to explain why sin (in the sense of the rejection of God) exists at all. This isn't even a question of free will: God could simply not allow the births of people who would reject him. Since there are people who reject not only the person of God but the whole notion of God in toto (Your Humble Narrator, for instance), a fair conclusion is that God either doesn't exist, or that he doesn't love us all that much, or that his desire for us to be with him isn't all that strong. Sort of a disinterested God, wouldn't you say?

Boru

[pocaracas]

Ah.. soft-hell...
It's good to see that people are moving away from the gospel of Peter and Dante's Comedy.

Here's what I think, and what has been explained to me.

---

Since we were made to love and to be loved, existing completely devoid of that is a very miserable existence. Even if you are creating your own misery by refusing to humble yourself before it, you are still miserable. In this life you are able to distract yourself with money, or cars, or drugs, sex, etc... anything to fill the void. But when you don't have those things anymore, you're left alone with nothing but yourself and your feelings of hated. That's a whole other level of miserable, and that's Hell. 

And Boru, you hit the nail on the head. It is not meant to be about reward and punishment. That's why I always say that those Christians who act a certain way simply in order to be rewarded in Heaven, or in order to avoid Hell, are missing the whole point. God loves us and He wants us to be with Him because He loves us, not simply for "rewarding" purposes. We "go to" Hell not as a punishment from God, as the article says, but because we chose to be away from Him.

---

See that bit I left out of the hide tags?
Some person told you this.
How did that person gain this information?

Ah, but you've answered this:

I don't think this is stuff people "decided" over night, but rather, it evolved with years of studying theology and gaining a deeper understanding.

What did these people study?
How did they get data to analyze? Specifically, concerning hell (or even heaven) where does information about it come from?
How would people like Dante come up with his very explicit and twisted view, when whatever evidence would be pointing to your teacher's fluffy version?

Should we invite neimenovic over to see what he was taught?

[robvalue]

Right. There is nothing to study, except the bible. And if you don't even take what it says seriously, you're just totally making it up.

I would rather Christianity dispensed with the whole Hell idea altogether, as it's the most evil idea anyone could ever possibly have. But they are stuck with this embarrassment of a book, and it's too late to just cut bits out of it and hope no one notices. So nice Christians like CL have to find reasons to think the nasty bits of the bible don't really mean what they say.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it. Teaching a better version of Christianity is great. If eventually everyone agreed to just ignore any reference to hell as "metaphorical" and can the whole idea, that would be super fantastic.

Rewrite the bible. Please! More and more, people are taking it less and less literally and seriously. Just rewrite the fucking thing to say what people want it to say! The nice people, that is. Write nice stuff in it. The people who think it is the "literal word of God" are a dying breed. As long as people keep being told it is the "word of God", and it contains such horrific things, there's always the danger someone will actually believe what they are told instead of this nudge-nudge wink-wink not-really idea.

[ignoramus]

I want to talk about something real! like poo or something???

[KevinM1]

I always thought hell was other people. Don't tell me I'm wrong.