(June 29, 2015 at 11:51 am)SteveII Wrote:(June 29, 2015 at 10:43 am)Tonus Wrote: That doesn't sound like punishment to me.It depends on what the consequences of a total separation from God might be to one's soul.
I think it would have more meaning if there was a consensus on what hell is, and what separation from god means, and so on. The explanations for hell have gone from a fairly straightforward idea (you burn in torment as if suffering from extreme physical pain) to something ambiguous. Where does my soul end up if I go to hell? Is it a literal place, like heaven? What form does my suffering take? What activities are possible?
I ignore any and all gods until one should happen to show up. Am I separated from god now? Because if my life is hell, then it's not a very unpleasant place at all. What is it about hell that would make me turn to god in desperate terror if I ever understood what it was?
"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
