"Why is it reasonable to believe in prisons, but not in the hell?"

[The Grand Nudger]

This one of those suicide by cop things? Looking to get internet martyred for the murderous cause, or....?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Why should I have had? Was your link in a non-English language or something?

I suspect you suffer from a common misconception - that we ban or edit people for their views and opinions. This is not the case.

Boru

Yes, that link was in... Serbo-Croatian, the usual language of Vukovar Revisionism.

A couple of reasons come to mind:

-That thread is almost three years old, and I may not have been on staff then.

-If I was on staff, I simply missed it.

Boru

[Ex-Muslim]

So, what do you think, what is the best response to the question "Why is it reasonable to believe in prisons, but in the hell?"? My first instinct was to say "Well, there are people who have been to prisons and have come back to tell us, but nobody has returned from hell to confirm us it exists.". However, I think a valid counter-argument to that is "But there have been some near-death-experiencer claiming to have been to hell.".
Another response I can think of to the question from the title is "How could hell ever be a just punishment? Hell is an infinite punishment, and all the crimes we can do on this world are finite.". However, I think a valid response to that is: "How is putting people into prisons justice? Nobody murders unless he or she is insane. And prison is not a place where a sane person will become sane, it is a place from which he will return with even more psychological problems. Besides, how is it justice when you have about 50% chance of getting away with a murder? Around half of murder cases are never solved. Justice means willful actions have predictable consequences. Furthermore, we are living in a society where nobody knows first-hand what is legal and what isn't. The laws we have are so complicated that nobody can fully understand our legal system. That is not justice either."
Another response I can think of to the question from the title is claiming that hell contradicts science, since one needs nervous system to feel pain, but that is all destroyed once one dies. However, it seems to me a valid counter-response to that is to claim that the existence of prisons contradicts one of the basic principle of all modern social sciences, that is the principle of rationality. One of the basic principle of modern social science, which one gets ridiculed for questioning (like Bryan Caplan is being), is that the society as a whole as if every individual was rational, because the irrationality of individuals cancels each other out. In other words, that systematic biases are impossible. But in order for prisons to exist, politicians would have to be systematically biased, since a rational person cannot believe prisons are a good thing.
So, what do you think about that stuff?

The purpose of punishment is to deter the criminal from repeating his crime and deterring other criminals from committing the same crime and not for wreaking vengeance, and non of these purposes is applied to hell. Are you going now to deter people who are already in heaven from imitating this criminal? Nope, they are already in heaven for ever! are you going to teach him a lesson by this punishment in order to not make him repeat his mistake again? nope, because he will be in hell forever. 
So hell is meaningless and prison is meaningful.

[Rahn127]

I would argue the purpose of prison is not to punish but to remove that person from society so they can't repeat the crime or commit future crimes of the same nature.

Those who can't control themselves enough to function within the boundaries of the law may find themselves locked away from society.

Hell was created as a fear to be used against those who didn't believe in a particular religion. It's an empty threat that threatens to send non existent souls to a non existent place in which their non existent soul will be tortured for the crime of not believing in that religion.

Seems kinda silly.

It would be like someone threatening to kill a ghost if I didn't give them all my money. And that was the only threat they made each and every week on the same Sunny Day.

[FlatAssembler]

I would argue the purpose of prison is not to punish but to remove that person from society so they can't repeat the crime or commit future crimes of the same nature.

But prisons don't remove violent people from the society. They are a place from which those violent people return with even more psychological problems. Death penalty removes violent people from the society, prisons do almost the opposite.

[Silver]

So, what do you think, what is the best response to the question "Why is it reasonable to believe in prisons, but in the hell?"?

Simple.

Prison is an extension of reality, punishment in this lifetime when there is zero guarantee that anything exists after death.

[HappySkeptic]

Prison is an extension of reality, punishment in this lifetime when there is zero guarantee that anything exists after death.

Welcome back, Eleven!

I'm not a big fan of punishment for its own sake. Protection of society has more of a moral argument. Deterrence is valid, but problematic, as why should one person suffer so you can deter another?

[FlatAssembler]

Prison is an extension of reality, punishment in this lifetime when there is zero guarantee that anything exists after death.

Welcome back, Eleven!

I'm not a big fan of punishment for its own sake.  Protection of society has more of a moral argument.  Deterrence is valid, but problematic, as why should one person suffer so you can deter another?

But how could prisons protect the society? They are a place from which violent people return with even more psychological problems. I can see how death penalty or gun control could (not to say they do) protect the society, but I fail to see how prisons could.

[The Grand Nudger]

If you can see how killing someone or preventing them from doing something can benefit society, you also see how prison can benefit society.

I'm giggling a little about this one. Imagining a future where someone commits a crime, and it's worse than a fine but not quite hit you over the head with a brick bad. What to do!

[FlatAssembler]

If you can see how killing someone or preventing them from doing something can benefit society, you also see how prison can benefit society.

Not the same thing. Death penalty literally prevents murderers from reoffending. Prisons do not. Prisons are a place from which murderers return with even more psychological problems.