(September 30, 2017 at 1:00 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Arsoo,
Your concept of hell is actually that of the Islamic hell and not the biblical hell. There's a big difference between the two of them.
In the biblical version when people die they go to one of three places = death, the sea, or hell. The good news is that all three are temporary and everyone gets out on Judgment Day. At that time if a person's name has been written in the Book of Life he moves on to the gaudy bejeweled golden cube called New Jerusalem where he bunks with Yahweh (the God of the Hebrews and the God of the armies) and his zoo of weird creatures for eternity. The problem is that you have to pass through one of the twelve gates dedicated to the twelve tribes of Israel so there's no specific guarantee that Gentiles will get in. If you don't make it then you get tossed into the lake of fire, along with death and hell. So you will never go back to hell even if you had been in it.
In the Islamic version everyone just dies and stays dead until Judgment Day. Then everyone gets resurrected and judged. Some people get an express ticket to their own paradise, a 60 mile wide pearl shell with rivers of wine and two 60 or 90 foot tall translucent "women" plus a few assorted human women and a herd of cute boys. It's more of a guy thing because most of the women end up in hell. That's the hell you don't want to end up in because it's permanent and you never get out. And all of the bad things you imagine in your OP is constantly repeated.
The Mormons said to hell with those versions and made up a new one. Each good guy becomes a god with his own planet and a harem and and churn out babies like cockroaches for eternity. They seem to be skimpy on the hell thing.
Yes and no, yes in the details, sure. But no, it is still a bullshit childlike concept of a cosmic parent using either an ice cream bribe, or threat of a belt and spanking.
And as I said before, even the concept of reincarnation is the same concept. Do good in this life, you'll be rewarded in the next. Do bad in this life, you will come back as a lesser life.
It all still amounts to a non existent Santa having a naughty and nice list. The only difference are the details, just like Coke is a drink and so is Perrier. One could argue that the concepts of "hell" in Islam are more like having moonshine and reincarnation is more like a plain beer which is less vindictive.
They are all still human invented gap answers to explain our species morality and behaviors.
