What good does burning in hell do? OK, I’m punished for eternity. I’m burning, this sucks. No one on earth can see me, so it’s no more a deterrent than just saying you burn in hell for sinning. I’m not returning to earth, so I can’t say ‘Whew! Don’t want to burn in hell this time so I’ll do good’. What’s the point of eternal punishment? Does Satan get off on the sound of screaming? God knew who’d be burning in hell eternity ago, so why’d he even bother? He felt like creating a species that would be weak minded enough to land in eternal agony? Makes no sense whatsoever.
It only makes sense if you are going to create a religion that keeps its followers loyal.
The concept of hell makes people cower in fear and go to their church and give it money so they won’t have to (burn in hell). Hell (or some similar bad thing that happens to evil and nonbelieving people after they die) is what keeps people religious. Although most people will say it’s a half empty / half full type of thing in the sense that they will claim they aren’t religious out of fear of hell, but rather reward of heaven. Yeah right. Even so, couple the desire to avoid hell with the desire to reach heaven, and you have very loyal customers.
I said ‘For those that believe in hell…’.
You’re starting to get into Free-will vs. Predestination here, which is a whole nother arguement that’s been going on for a long, long time.
No, I think it’s a damn good question. What is the purpose of an eternal Hell?
It’s not a deterrent, because you don’t know the nature of Hell until you get there,
It doesn’t reform, because you never leave.
As a punishment it is absolutely stupid, because if get the same punishment for stealing an apple as I do for mass murder why, once I steal the apple, shouldn’t I murder the grocer I stole it from? I’m going to Hell anyway, right?
As I understand it, God done made everything: Heaven, Hell, You, Me, France, grocers, apples…all of it.
I was taught that our presence on earth is a gift. Once we are here, we have the opportunity to do pretty much what we want, so you get all kinds of lifestyles from Mother Teresa to Larry Flint. Hell exists apart from our business here on earth, and in our final judgement we are offered a chance to look upon the face of the creator and say, “What was I thinking? Guess I strayed a bit from the path of righteousness. Forgive me, old bean?”
The unpleasantness of Hell is described differently depending on what culture you come from–could be fire, could be rings with various kinds of nastiness with a frozen Lucifer in the middle, could be something like the Japanese “Hell of Foul Excrements,” or it is even sometimes…just a place your soul ends up when it is disinclined to be with God. Dante’s comedy shows some folks happily enduring torment in Purgatory cuz they genuinely feel bad about squandering their time on earth. And there is also a place for the hopeless sinners…and they’d rather be where they are as opposed to in the company their Heavenly Father.
The argument was posted earlier that Hell is a tool used to threaten the masses into submission. This is a valid point, but I don’t think God is behind that interpretation, I think the horror that is the Catholic Church capitalized on that one.
I profess to know none of the above, cuz I’m just a guy, not a divine spirit who can visit the planes as he chooses. I was just throwing out an answer, from one mortal to another, addressing a mortal’s attempt to understand the divine. If you want answers, you might just as well ask “What is the difference between TAB and DIET COKE?” Cecil has that one NAILED!
I’ve heard a fundamentalist preacher say that God created hell for the demons, but man became eligible for entry as a result of the fruit incident, but this seems to paint a picture of a rather bumbling, incompetent God who is unable to see past the end of his own nose (although arguably, his nose and every other part of him may be infinite in size…), sort of like:
Create a bunch of angels…
Whoops! 1/3 of them don’t like me, I didn’t see that coming.
Create mankind
Put a tree in their garden that is capable of killing them (spiritually)
They ate the fruit? Whoops! I didn’t see that coming.
That means I have to cast them into hell, which I never intended… Whoops! I didn’t see that coming…
Lee Strobel, author of The Case For Christ, offers the viewpoint that hellfire isn’t literal – that it signifies torment, but not torture. This is discussed in the aforementioned book, and in the article listed here.
I guess his viewpoint is just as valid as anyone elses, seeing as how it is based on pure speculation.
**
Well, first of all, you’re incorrectly making the assumption that everyone who believes in Hell believes that people who go there are consigned there for eternity. That is emphatically not the case in Judaism.
Perhaps you should have asked "For those that believe in an eternal Hell…
Zev Steinhardt
Perhaps not. If you accept two fundamental tenets of Christianity, that man has free will and that God is omniscient, then you could argue that while man indeed has free will, God knows in advance what free will choices man will make. God’s knowing it doesn’t lock man into his choices; rather, God’s omniscience allows Him to know what choices man will make beforehand. So the argument could be made that zwaldd’s statement in the OP has some validity.
Mangetout,
HAR! You rule, dude!
I’m sorry for intruding in this thread, as I do not consider myself christian anymore, but in a way my current view of hell is consistent with the one I had when I had a bit more faith.
There is this famous Zen anecdote that goes this way:
A general once asked a Zen master if there was heaven and hell. The master replied: “Did you just say you were a general. I didn’t know they made generals in such puny sizes these days.” This obviously infuriated the general, who drew his sword. The master shouted: “Open the gates of hell!” The general was taken aback and sheated his sword. Upon which the master said: “and now, open the gates of heaven.”
The Catholic church describes hell as a state of being separated from God. That is to say, God isn’t sending you to hell, you are causing hell to yourself. Or at least that’s how I saw it.
One of my favourite passages from the Gospels is Luke 17: 20-21.
And the same thing could be said about hell. If you are a bitter, self-loathing, unhappy, joyless person now what reason is there to think you would be any different after you’re dead? (Assuming there is life after death.)
I’m very well aware that I’m conveniently skipping over issues of judgement, but I find that describing hell as a symptom rather than a punishment is a much more useful way to address the concept.
That is not the only possible interpretation of Hell. Likewise, the idea that Satan “runs” it absolutely contradicts Scripture.
I suggest, if you can find it, an essay titled “The River of Fire” for a different perspective.
Dogface:
You’re right. Care to put some others on the table?
Why’s that?
Do you have a link to an electronic copy? Or an author? Or at least a summary?
There is also another camp that maintains that “hell” is the destruction of the soul, as in Matt 10:28 “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
If you read other passages carefully, you will note that it is the fire of hell that is described as being everlasting, not that you will experience the fire everlastingly. The actual Greek word that is translated as “everlasting” or “forever” really means “without beginning or end,” another reason to interpret it as applying to the fire (which is itself a metaphor) rather than to the soul’s experience of the fire.
This view is more positive in that is implies that only those who are “saved” get to live forever. The rest of us are snuffed out. Personally, this position agrees more with my own sense of justice.
There are only two passages that I could find which unambiguously refer to everlasting torment, Revelation 20:10
and Revelation 14:9-11, which seems to contradict those who say that Hell is the condition of being separated from God
I assume the OP is referring to an eternal hell, but I thought I’d just throw these out there:
Not that I really care for the movie (and I haven’t read the book), but I always thought the notion of hell presented in “What Dreams May Come” is rather interesting. Here, hell seems to be a self-created state of torture, which a person could escape from (albeit with great difficulty). That somewhat removes God’s judgment, replacing it with a self-inflicted judgment. I think.
In Hinduism, there is no eternal hell. You may have to exist in a hell-like state for a time because of your Karma. Of course, many people can find themselves in a hell-like state on Earth. In some Hindu texts, there are mention of several layers of hell and heaven. I’ve always interpreted this to mean that there’s an infinite continuum from the very worst hell to the very best heaven (with Earth somewhere in the middle). Your Karma determines where you wind up when you are reborn. At the infinitely best heaven, you never have to be reborn again, since it is a state of perfection and bliss. (This is not the specific branch of Hinduism I subscribe to, though).
Dear Matchka:
I might be mistaken, but I think you show yourself to be a very obvious and conspicuous and definitely and absolutely and certainly vacillating mind.*
Now, I want you to really think, and tell us here afterwards, is there hell as in is there Iraq?
Or is it your your belief?
If it is your belief, is it essentially a belief like belief in Shangri-la; and the belief, is it essentially like the belief of kids in Santa Claus?
Ok, now do some real thinking and tell us your answers here.
Susma Rio Sep
*PS: If I appear to be harsh, I am just doing an act. But I am always after people doing thinking and coming up with their own conclusions based on their own thinking, instead of repeating hand-me-down locutions.
Read my next post on something about hell’s fire.
Annex:
I related this observation already somewhere here. But I will repeat it here for all of us, to keep our feet on solid earth.
Jesus says when you get to hell, you will burn, and you will scream for sheer agony, and gnash your teeth. For guys without teeth, God will provide.
Belief in hell has a lot of practical purposes to keep people well-haved in accordance with others to whom they unknowingly kowtow, and never do any serious challenge to themselves as to why they kowtow to these latters.
As for me, I will be honest: hell does worry me – unintelligently though. But I believe in God; and I also believe that He can do better than me and a lot of us guys here, who do not adhere to the idea of cruel and unusual punishments for whatever wickedness of the most heinous kind perpetrated by any fellow humans.
Susma Rio Sep
So the accommodation may not be comfortable, but the dentistry is first rate?