The JW explanation seemed sensible to me: hell is just the common grave of mankind. "Going to hell" simply meant dying, entering a state akin to unconsciousness. That fit in with the concept that "the wages of sin is death." If you turn from god and never find a way to reconcile, you die and that's that. The concept of such an over-the-top punishment for everything from being Hitler to occasionally jerking off simply doesn't compute.
Of course, the JW concept isn't suitably terrifying, which might be one of the many reasons that they have so much trouble retaining converts. Hellfire just sounds so damned sexy!
Of course, the JW concept isn't suitably terrifying, which might be one of the many reasons that they have so much trouble retaining converts. Hellfire just sounds so damned sexy!
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
