I was sitting with my wife last night waiting for a concert to begin. I started telling her about this thread: I finally told my oldest daughter I'm an atheist. Now she's upset and crying. - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board and conjectured that the probable reason the daughter ran screaming from the room was that she is convinced that her father—whom she obviously loves—was going to burn in hell forever. (Damn those priests who teach such a despicable doctrine!) An elderly woman in the row ahead of ours turned around and said something like, “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but overhearing what you said. You know hell has been discovered in Siberia [I immediately thought Gulag] when they dug a hole and heard the screams of the damned coming up.” I didn’t answer, but she turned around a few seconds later and said, “And heaven is real too. I have a friend who died and went to heaven and they told her that her time hadn’t yet come and sent her back to earth.”
My wife and I just stared at each other. Can she be for real? We avoided further conversation on the subject.
I wish I could meet more people like that. It’s always nice to meet a kindred spirit. And by ‘kindred spirit’ I mean, of course, someone who’s out of their effing gourd.
Well, that would sure let the Russians upstage Obama. Obama kills Osama bin Laden? The Russians kill the Devil! “Americans, Americans…always thinking small!”
Any baseball player who has ever played for the SF Giants at AT&T park will tell you that it is heaven, and that if you are a bad player, you get sent to down to Fresno, which is hell.
I like that (at least on my browser) the Snopes article about the discovery of Hell is accompanied by an ad saying “Visit Myrtle Beach South Carolina - Summer Vacation Deals”!
Here’s what gets me. Suppose, for the moment, that you, personally, really had discovered an underground chamber full of people in horrible pain. Regardless of your religious beliefs or lack thereof, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to get them out again?
Heck, more than 3 months and twenty million dollars were spent to get the Chilean miners to safety, and they weren’t being actively tortured.
During his periodic attempts to convert me (back) to Xtianity, my father brings up that story, which has been circulating on the net for years. The worst part is that his memory is going, so each time he does it he thinks it is the first time.
Hell is real. The Bible teaches Hell, Hades, the grave; these are one and the same. The only place meant for eternal damnation or torment is the lake of fire. This is the place where Satan, the False Prophet and the Beast will be thrown into at the end or the Great Day of the Lord; and all whose names are not found in the book of life. (Revelation)