Hell in the OT just seems to refer to the grave. In other words you die and it's an eternal sleep where you don't dream, because you have ceased to exist. The NT describes hell in all kinds of abstract ways, either the state of being locked out of god's house or being thrown into a lake of fire (that either consumes you and you cease to exist, or burns you forever and ever). The concept of a hell managed by Satan and his goons seems an outside addition, perhaps because people weren't terrified enough of god.
I like to think that the concept of hell was made more scary by the Devil himself. He figures that the stuck up prudes and whiny pussies will be frightened enough to make sure they end up in heaven, which means that the cool people will wind up in hell. Then he reveals that hell is indeed the party capital of the universe, where the boobs never sag and the drugs are always the highest grade and... the best part... CAN'T KILL YOU! And all the linens have an infinite thread count because when you're doing a line of coke off some hooker's tits, you want to do that shit in COMFORT, baby!
I like to think that the concept of hell was made more scary by the Devil himself. He figures that the stuck up prudes and whiny pussies will be frightened enough to make sure they end up in heaven, which means that the cool people will wind up in hell. Then he reveals that hell is indeed the party capital of the universe, where the boobs never sag and the drugs are always the highest grade and... the best part... CAN'T KILL YOU! And all the linens have an infinite thread count because when you're doing a line of coke off some hooker's tits, you want to do that shit in COMFORT, baby!
"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
