Hell might not be eternal

[Nobody]

Someone who first accepts an infinitely knowing being exists, and then believe that being created an eternal Hell for those it judges worthy, have already condemned themselves to the masochistic worship of a sadistic invisible fiction.
After that, there's no room for reason to ever change a thing about it.

The story is very long. We just don't worship a sadestic figure without a reason the whole story of creation, the existence of humans on earth & everything else makes sense.. with hell being "a star" that might cool down & vanish makes the story of Islam stronger..

Especially if hell was a star. You should check that out, because no other religion was able to make sense about these events.

God doesn't torture those people because he's evil. God is just ; he doesn't play games. One of the rules he put in this universe is "gratitude" ; which is pure justice.

I love my mother because she carried me for months, fed me, raised me, taught me. That's why the right thing to do is thank her, do what she asks at least.. it's justice ; she deserves it.

The same with god. If hell was a star, simply god is telling people who didn't believe in him or in heaven : you didn't show your gratitude.. I shouldn't show mine.. meet your fate. Believe in this physical world only ; and you would stay in it while it's consuming itself -which is a natural phenomena- that happened many many times.

More like -you will get what you believe in-.

Hell as a star? So,then when it goes supernova that's mercy?

Thing is, if you believe in a deity that bears the 'omni' characteristics, and also believe he is sovereign, then your life from the moment it began until the moment it ends and all that occurs thereafter is predestined.

Ergo, you think you have free will. But in truth given those aforementioned characteristics of that deity, you do not. Therefore, you're simply living your destiny while no matter what you do, your fate is set.
It's like the ancient Vikings who imagined life was a skein already woven as the story of their individual life. Nothing in the picture wherein they're presence helps to make the 'big picture' will ever change no matter what they do. So why worry? When it's all unfolding as was laid out long before they arrived.
That's the exact copy that follows with all monotheistic sovereign god myths that speak of a reward for the compliant, and a punishment for the rebellious.

And by the way, why would a supreme being need to have lesser beings obey it's will so that it is pleased? It's like asking an ant to live up to our expectations that it be more than an ant, else we'll squish it and teach it a lesson for being just an ant.

[Cyberman]

Hell as a star? So,then when it goes supernova that's mercy?

Well our star won't do that - far too small on its own - so mercy doesn't really apply, at least on those lines. Mind you, all this red giant stuff is a huge retcon anyway, as Atlas recognises. There's no way anyone can get such an interpretation just from reading the text, only by taking what we have discovered independently from any supposedly holy books and plugging that information into them. If we're going to go down that road, I could be equally justified in saying that hell is a black hole, or some future antimatter experiment gone wrong. I'm guessing it's something to do with tribbles.

[Nobody]

Hell as a star? So,then when it goes supernova that's mercy?

Well our star won't do that - far too small on its own - so mercy doesn't really apply, at least on those lines. Mind you, all this red giant stuff is a huge retcon anyway, as Atlas recognises. There's no way anyone can get such an interpretation just from reading the text, only by taking what we have discovered independently from any supposedly holy books and plugging that information into them. If we're going to go down that road, I could be equally justified in saying that hell is a black hole, or some future antimatter experiment gone wrong. I'm guessing it's something to do with tribbles.

Re: that.
I've actually read something that says as much. i.e. Hell is a black hole.

I think people who feel they are personally worthy of such an eternal punishment, being that as believers they've already proved they're fond of self-deprecating rituals, will accept anything that promises they'll suffer for being what they most dislike about themselves in life forever once they're dead.

How else could Heaven have been sold so convincingly to the peasant class over 2000 years ago? Suffer now, but when you're dead you'll be a better person and want for nothing. If you only believe.

[Cyberman]

That's always been my take on it as well. Don't complain about all the shit you have to put up with in your life, because when you're dead (and conveniently can't report back) you'll have all the riches that the ruling and priestly elite deny you now and infinitely more. In fact, not only should you be thankful for all that shit, you really should be demanding more, you ungrateful sinner. And if you aren't content with your lot, give in to your dirty natural human urges, or simply don't believe this stuff, well then there's a place for you and I hope you remember to pack your asbestos long johns. And don't even think about mentioning all the wealth, fine food and luxury that your betters have to endure. Not only is envy one of the worst of the sins you'll be punished for, don't you realise what these people are doing for you? Denying themselves a place in heaven just so you don't have to? You ought to get down on your knees and beg forgiveness, you godless heathen! Actually, while you're down there...

That's basically it, in a nutshell. People in, say, the fourteenth century can be forgiven for falling for the con; after all, theirs was a world rife with superstition. I genuinely can't think why anyone in this so-called more enlightened era, the information age, would wilfully chain themselves.

[WinterHold]

Hell as a star? So,then when it goes supernova that's mercy?

Thing is, if you believe in a deity that bears the 'omni' characteristics, and also believe he is sovereign, then your life from the moment it began until the moment it ends and all that occurs thereafter is predestined.

Ergo, you think you have free will. But in truth given those aforementioned characteristics of that deity, you do not. Therefore, you're simply living your destiny while no matter what you do, your fate is set.
It's like the ancient Vikings who imagined life was a skein already woven as the story of their individual life. Nothing in the picture wherein they're presence helps to make the 'big picture' will ever change no matter what they do. So why worry? When it's all unfolding as was laid out long before they arrived.
That's the exact copy that follows with all monotheistic sovereign god myths that speak of a reward for the compliant, and a punishment for the rebellious.

And by the way, why would a supreme being need to have lesser beings obey it's will so that it is pleased? It's like asking an ant to live up to our expectations that it be more than an ant, else we'll squish it and teach it a lesson for being just an ant.

Yep..might be :p I try to think about all possibilities actually ; and this is one..but yes it is mercy, compared to infinity.

But allow me to "fix" some of the wrong concepts you have about god in Islam .
sovereignty is what humans way of being "territorial" but on a country scale. Actually we are being sovereign about god not the opposite.

Earth is ours according to Islam, it was given it to us especially, with a promise from god that this earth is going to end after a certain duration. So when a religion comes ; actually god is the visitor & you are being sovereign -as a human-.

Also, put in mind that god in Islam is not a person ; he's not a "humanoid" who owns a magic staff like his description in many other religions, he's something else ; totally else.
Notice that we live here without any intervention from the outside.. why ?

About the free will, everybody has it actually, if god is divine he would know your fate. But he will never force it on you, but to some extenct yes, we don't have full free will.

We don't chose how we look like, where we are born or who our parents are. This is the "cycle theory" which I concluded after studying Islam ; I'll open a topic about that soon.

This life is nothing more than a test ; each of us has a different exam paper.

---

Well our star won't do that - far too small on its own - so mercy doesn't really apply, at least on those lines. Mind you, all this red giant stuff is a huge retcon anyway, as Atlas recognises. There's no way anyone can get such an interpretation just from reading the text, only by taking what we have discovered independently from any supposedly holy books and plugging that information into them. If we're going to go down that road, I could be equally justified in saying that hell is a black hole, or some future antimatter experiment gone wrong. I'm guessing it's something to do with tribbles.

umm, I think it might do that ,stimbo. The link says that the sun will expand into a red giant & absorb the surrounding planets..sun's size is perfect to fit a possibility of turning into a red giant.
But yes,that's gambling to be honest, and the argument is more Sci-Fi than religion

---

ok so we have a hell where people dwell there for as long as there is an earth and sky, and we have a heaven which people will dwell in for as long as there is earth and sky with the exception of what?

---

so theres a heaven which people dwell in for as long as the earth and sky exist except what allah have wished, what does that mean?

with the exception of what

God's wish & will.

so theres a heaven which people dwell in for as long as the earth and sky exist except what allah have wished, what does that mean?

It means they would last for the same duration as the skies -outer space- . But that duration can be ended or stopped or even extended according to god's wish.

For hell, god said after the wish : "god does what he wishes". which means : you'll never know if it's going forever or not.

For heaven, god said after the wish "unstoppable bestowal", which means : the wish of god for the people of heaven is actually unstoppable bestowal -eternal bestowal- which is a promise that heaven is eternal, and god will wish only unstoppable bestowal for the people of heaven.

Don't hesitate to ask again if you didn't get it

[paulpablo]

the noble quran
2.81
Sahih International
Yes, whoever earns evil and his sin has encompassed him - those are the companions of the Fire; they will abide therein eternally.

Muhsin Khan
Yes! Whosoever earns evil and his sin has surrounded him, they are dwellers of the Fire (i.e. Hell); they will dwell therein forever.

---

2.162
Sahih International
Abiding eternally therein. The punishment will not be lightened for them, nor will they be reprieved.

Muhsin Khan
They will abide therein (under the curse in Hell), their punishment will neither be lightened, nor will they be reprieved.

---

3.197
[It is but] a small enjoyment; then their [final] refuge is Hell, and wretched is the resting place.


Muhsin Khan
A brief enjoyment; then, their ultimate abode is Hell; and worst indeed is that place for rest.

---

4.121
Sahih International
The refuge of those will be Hell, and they will not find from it an escape.

Muhsin Khan
The dwelling of such (people) is Hell, and they will find no way of escape from it

[Angrboda]

That's basically it, in a nutshell. People in, say, the fourteenth century can be forgiven for falling for the con; after all, theirs was a world rife with superstition. I genuinely can't think why anyone in this so-called more enlightened era, the information age, would wilfully chain themselves.

Children make easy marks.


I'm reminded of the tale of a bunch of disembodied souls standing around amidst the fire and brimstone of hell, and one disembodied soul says to the other, "You know, I don't think they thought through this hell thing..."

Why does hell need to be anywhere? Is it because we will be some "thing" that needs some "place" to be? If so, where is the some place where these somethings currently are, and why can't we find them anywhere around the actual living, nor any evidence of a link between my "some thing" and the bodily me that I know exists?

(Which always made me wonder, if Christ was resurrected with all his bodily injuries intact, is a woman with a blastoma in her brain going to be resurrected with maddening headaches and delirium? A person with bone cancer resurrected with continual excruciating pain? Maybe Christ was just showing off, as in, "I don't have to appear as I did in life, but I choose to do so for the sake of your belief." Which leads to some rather uncomfortable questions about whether Thomas' doubts weren't, even then, rather justified.)

And why does God need a starship?

[Cyberman]

Well our star won't do that - far too small on its own - so mercy doesn't really apply, at least on those lines. Mind you, all this red giant stuff is a huge retcon anyway, as Atlas recognises. There's no way anyone can get such an interpretation just from reading the text, only by taking what we have discovered independently from any supposedly holy books and plugging that information into them. If we're going to go down that road, I could be equally justified in saying that hell is a black hole, or some future antimatter experiment gone wrong. I'm guessing it's something to do with tribbles.

umm, I think it might do that ,stimbo. The link says that the sun will expand into a red giant & absorb the surrounding planets..sun's size is perfect to fit a possibility of turning into a red giant.

Except it won't; supernova, that is. Our Sun will indeed eventually swell into a red giant and consume the inner planets out to at least as far as Mars. But a red giant is not the same thing as a supernova. The two are not even similar. Islam may be your bag, astronomy's mine.

Supernovae, just for edification, are classified into two types. Type I supernovae - subclassified into a, b and c - occur in close binary systems with a white dwarf star orbiting a less massive main sequence partner. The white dwarf accretes material from its companion and accumulates it into its own mass, compressing the star until it crosses the mass threshold called the Chandrasekhar Limit, about 1.38 times the mass of our Sun. At that point a catastrophic core collapse is initiated and the star explodes, destroying at least itself and often both stars if they are close enough. Type I supernovae can also occur from the merging of two white dwarves, which event pushes the combined mass above the Chandrasekhar Limit.

Type II supernovae happen to main sequence stars of at least eight solar masses once they reach the end of their lives. All stars burn by converting hydrogen into helium. Once they start to run out of this fuel, they undergo a crisis which they resolve, temporarily, by contracting through gravity, raising their core temperatures and allowing the fusion of higher elements. Once the energy thus produced is exhausted, they contract again and so on. Eventually, there is nothing to stop gravity collapsing the outer layers of the star onto the expanding core and - well, bang is an insult by comparison. Stars of at least eight solar masses have enough mass to fuse elements all the way up to iron; whereas our Sun will never get past carbon.

This is all an extreme simplification and I know I've butchered the subject horribly for the sake of that, but either way you look at it our Sun will never have anough mass by itself to supernova. In fact, after its red giant phase, it will blow off its outer layers and look like this:



but we'll be long gone, one way or another.

[Nobody]

I gained enormous insight into the why of people living in faith at a mini-market.
No kidding. I'd forgotten my debit card was on the dresser after laundry day, and without realizing it rolled up to the pumps on fumes. I had to pay with the cash in my pocket so I could get back the couple of miles and retrieve my card, so leaving was not an option until I had something in the tank.
I get in the store and there are two people ahead of me standing at the counter waiting their turn, as the one and only attendant working was in the midst of serving a man who was ultimately to buy $125.00 worth of Power Ball Lottery Tickets! Using one's!

The things that ran through my mind as I stood there as number 3.
What if I took the shot and did run out of gas? I'm healthy, I could walk home, get the spare gas can, walk to this mini-market station, the closest gas in the area to my house, and walk back to the truck.
Certainly by then Lottery optimist would be served and gone and I could buy 5 gallons and be on my way after I walked back to my car.
But that would give me a lot of headache I didn't need if I didn't find patience and just wait it out in an air conditioned store.

So, I did.
And standing there I had that moment. That opportunity to realize what faith really looks like.
I studied this guy at the lottery side of the counter. Modest shoes, clean, looked nearly new. Nice pants, casual, no holes, looked clean. Fresh tee shirt that looked fresh out of the package, because there was a fold across the back that I could see that appeared as if moments before he arrived he'd unfolded it out of the package and threw it on. Clean shaven, good looking profile, clean long hair that still bore a slight scent of herbal essence shampoo, which wafted across the short distance between us and smelled quite familiar from when I use to use the brand many years ago.

I started to wonder. How's a guy with a solid $125.00 in his pocket think to blow it all on little sheets of paper with random series of numbers the machine picked out, hoping to win what was then the largest pot in the history of the game?
He reminded me of that bumper sticker: Lottery is a tax on people who fail at math.

And how, if you're going to spend that kind of cash, do you happen to do so with 125 one dollar bills?

But there he stood. Handing over his hard earned, however he came about it. Hoping when the drawing happened that night he'd win huge and never have to work again.

That's quite like the god proposition I think. Work, live, make mistakes, beg forgiveness, suffer, pray for relief, fail to get it, make excuses for why not, keep the faith. Give to the collection plate because god's got overhead, watch your step so as not to break too many rules, hope god appreciates a good try after you've dunked or sprinkled your carnal nature away being baptized into a tradition that condemns carnality, while avowing there's a carnal eternal presence stalking the world that wants to draw you back in. Live a long time, give to charity when you can, and on your death bed hope that something has mercy so that in the end you'll live without fear, worry, want, for eternity.

Just believe it.
It's there.
No, you can't see it but like unto that Power Ball lottery, the money is waiting if you've got the right numbers.And if you don't , oh well maybe next time.
Only with most religious traditions there is a next time, but that depends on how well you did this time. And that decision will afford you either a new life on earth as something or someone else. Or in a fiery pit where you'll reunite with all the best people.

I find Islam's afterlife myth fascinating, speaking of fables.
Strict ultra-right wingers are forbidden all sorts of earthly pleasures while a practicing Muslim. Alcohol, pork, women, etc... But, if they are allowed into paradise, it's all good and it's all allowed. Women, any kind of food, alcohol, etc...

Promise!

The one thing about that is, Muhammad wasn't even sure he'd see paradise.
But the Koran says, the one guarantee that gets you there is martyrdom!
Goes a long way to explain exploding faithful landing in meaty pieces, no?

Now that's faith!
With a question.
Where do the 72 virgins come from?

That's always been my take on it as well. Don't complain about all the shit you have to put up with in your life, because when you're dead (and conveniently can't report back) you'll have all the riches that the ruling and priestly elite deny you now and infinitely more. In fact, not only should you be thankful for all that shit, you really should be demanding more, you ungrateful sinner. And if you aren't content with your lot, give in to your dirty natural human urges, or simply don't believe this stuff, well then there's a place for you and I hope you remember to pack your asbestos long johns. And don't even think about mentioning all the wealth, fine food and luxury that your betters have to endure. Not only is envy one of the worst of the sins you'll be punished for, don't you realise what these people are doing for you? Denying themselves a place in heaven just so you don't have to? You ought to get down on your knees and beg forgiveness, you godless heathen! Actually, while you're down there...

That's basically it, in a nutshell. People in, say, the fourteenth century can be forgiven for falling for the con; after all, theirs was a world rife with superstition. I genuinely can't think why anyone in this so-called more enlightened era, the information age, would wilfully chain themselves.