(March 14, 2011 at 2:32 pm)Rayaan Wrote: Assuming that Hell is a man-made idea, why do you think someone would invent such a thing?
I don't see a good reason why someone would simply make up the idea of Hell if they want more people to convert to the religion. For example, if I was told to invent a religion which includes the belief in an afterlife, and if I said that the non-believers will be punished in Hell for eternity according to this particular religion, then I obviously know that a lot of people won't like the religion because of the idea of eternal punishment. So, I would've made the afterlife a lot more nicer than eternal punishment if I wanted to increase the chance of converting people into my invented religion instead of making them feel threatened by the religion.
To keep people in, once you've convinced them that mother goose is real you can threaten them when they have doubts and let their fear cloud their judgement.
Maybe it's just a good way to threaten people who don't agree. Maybe preachers get pissed off and vent.
There are plenty of conceivable reasons, all of them more likely than Hell being real because they're all based on things that we can demonstrate to be real, greed, oppression, fear, threats etc.
.
