# hell and heaven **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 22, 2003, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986 "2003-10-22T22:35:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Susma\_Rio\_Sep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/35a633/32.png) [@Susma\_Rio\_Sep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susma_Rio_Sep)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/1 "2003-10-22T22:35:52Z")
Anyone with the straight dope on hell and heaven? Seeing that religion is with us and affects our existence no end, and considering that it ultimately has to do with people getting to heaven and avoiding hell, please tell me about hell and heaven, anyone out there. I certainly want to get to heaven and avoid hell, of course. Susma Rio Sep ---
**Author:** ![Joe\_Random](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e8c25b/32.png) [@Joe\_Random](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joe_Random)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/2 "2003-10-22T22:46:01Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Susma Rio Sep \* > **Anyone with the straight dope on hell and heaven?** There is no straight dope on heaven and hell beyond the fact that their existence has not (and probably _can_ not) be demonstrated. > [@](#): > > **Seeing that religion is with us and affects our existence no end** Well, it doesn’t affect my existence beyond my having to interact with religious people. However, since religion is rarely the topic of interaction, it’s safe to say that religion does not affect my existence very much at all. > [@](#): > > **and considering that it ultimately has to do with people getting to heaven and avoiding hell** Not all religions believe in a heaven or hell. > [@](#): > > **I certainly want to get to heaven and avoid hell, of course.** That’s only because other people have told you that heaven is desirable and that hell is a Bad Place. The question is, where did they get their information from? Where did their source get _its_ information from? If, for the sake of argument, we assume that heaven and hell are real, then, by their very definitions, no one has ever seen either of them first hand and lived to report back to the mortal realm. I would guess that the only Straight Dope on heaven and hell would be concerning the origins of the belief that they exist. ---
**Author:** ![Susma\_Rio\_Sep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/35a633/32.png) [@Susma\_Rio\_Sep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susma_Rio_Sep)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/3 "2003-10-22T22:55:38Z")
That’s very instructive, Joe. Thanks a lot. And God bless you (even though a lot of churches tell people that He’s the author of heaven and hell). Susma Rio Sep ---
**Author:** ![slipster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@slipster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slipster)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/4 "2003-10-22T23:21:26Z")
It has been a long time since I read it, but IIRC, in his book Heaven and Hell, Aldous Huxley speculated that after death a person comes into the presence of God and sees and understands things as they truly are, with delusion or distraction. In consequence a person feels remorse and shame for their moral shortcomings but, so long as they weren’t so steeped in sin that they actually severed their ties with God, His all-encompassing love permits one to overcome such feelings, and enter into a perfect, peaceful harmony with Him. If, on the other hand, one has actually become removed from the love of God, this rejection results in an unendurable wretchedness. These, then, are the states of Heaven and Hell. Although Huxley was a Hindu, he acknowledged that this theory was consistent with the views of Roman Catholics and some other mainstream Christians. One point of interest is how widely different denominations which accept the existence of Hell vary in their opinions as to how many people end up there. The principle fun of religion for some people lies in figuring out who is going to Hell, and in feeling smug about it. One of the outstanding trends in American religion during the 20th Century was the growth of acceptance in a belief called Dispensationalism by Evangelical Christians, and the growing consolidation of Pentocostals and Evangelicals. A result of this, so near as I can interpret, was a religious movement in which a good many adherants had pretty managed to develop a strain of Christianity in which God does not value or reward ethical good and holiness is seperate from morality; for an example, recall Larry Flynt’s period as a pornographer–but a Born-Again one. With the Born-Again a distinct minority in society, the people at least some of their number figured were bound for Hell were truly legion. I recall that shortly after actor Henry Fonda died I was speaking to an Evangelical Christian who worked at a local homeless shelter. She said she found it sad that, despite all of his talent and success, Henry Fonda had not “died saved”–that is, was burning in unending torment in Hell for eternity. I asked her how she knew this. She repled: “well, he couldn’t have been saved, or his daughter wouldn’t have all those opinions she does”. Scripture advises that God judges by His standards, and not Man’s. If so, maybe we should be grateful. Sometime back in the 1990’s a report drafted by the Southern Baptist Convention was leaked to the press. It was a census of sorts, calculating how many people in The United States were going to burn in Hell forever. IIRC, among other things, it counted how many Jews lived in the country. The final number ran into the many tens of millions. In a similar vein, prior to his involvement in sex scandals, religious broadcaster Jimmy Swaggart devoted two whole episodes of his national TV show to explaining why Mother Theresa of Calcutta was going to rot in Hell forever. The sex scandals–giving money to unattractive whores and then not actually having sex with them–ruined Swaggart. His denunciations of Mother Theresa for merely being moral and not affiliated with the right team–hardly raised an eyebrow. This emphasis on affiliation over actions helps to explain why Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, the adherants of Ayn Rand, and a great many extremely conservative Evangelical Christians can hold remarkably similar on issues such as welfare. By contrast, The Roman Catholic Church, it is said, has only twice expressed an official opinion that somebody has probably been damned for eternity. One was an Italian nobleman in the Rennaissance who was notorious as a murdering pervert–I don’t recall his name, and he is no longer a particularly well-remembered figure in history. The other was Judas Iscariot. By contrast, some Orthodox Churches list Judas as a saint, figuring that his suicide was by way of an act of contrition or atonement. Mark Twain once said that whichever he was going, he was sure he knew a lot of people who were already there. ---
**Author:** ![gypsymoth3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/85e7bf/32.png) [@gypsymoth3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gypsymoth3)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2003, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/5 "2003-10-23T00:10:08Z")
from another [message board](http://66.28.62.228/boards/showthread.php?threadid=46649&highlight=outer+AND+darkness). > [@](#): > > This is from [http://www.icr.org/newsletters/btg/btgoct01.html](http://www.icr.org/newsletters/btg/btgoct01.html) > > “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (John 1:5). > > The Outer Darkness > by Dr. Henry M. Morris > > Astronomers have guessed that there are possibly as many as ten thousand billion trillion stars out there in the observable universe, of which perhaps five thousand can be seen without a telescope. If the universe is expanding, as many astronomers believe, there is an outer limit to this vast population of stars, as defined by the distance thus far attained by the expansion. This limit might be considered the boundary of the universe. > > This boundary is also, practically by definition, the limit of the so-called background radiation, presumably a cosmos-filling remnant of the postulated primeval Big Bang which its proponents believe must have started the expansion. > > No matter where astronomers point their telescopes, they see a distant sheet of light surrounding us. Beyond that enormous shell of radiation, astronomers can see nothing. We are caged in by this surface; the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the faint afterglow of the big bang.1 > Since there is no radiation beyond this limit, there are no stars and no light either—only outer darkness, so far as we can tell. But even within the known cosmos, evolutionary astronomers seem increasingly obsessed with the idea of darkness. Even with the tremendous mass of those possibly 1025 stars, these theorists believe that there are still vast amounts of certain mysterious kinds of matter which cannot be seen or measured. They call this dark matter, the gravitational influence of which somehow holds galaxies and galactic clusters together. > > For several decades, astrophysicists have postulated the existence of dark matter—objects that have mass but don’t interact with light very well. . . . scientists have calculated that baryonic, ordinary matter—the stuff of stars and of people—makes up just over 4% of the energy and matter in the universe. What about the rest? Combined with observations from galaxy surveys and other sources, the CMB measurements give some rather troubling numbers. They show that about 30% of the stuff in the universe is dark matter.2 > The unobservable matter in the universe is greater than all the observable matter—7.5 times greater. Amazing! > > Dark matter even comes in two flavors, hot (HDM) and cold (CDM). And all the while, astronomers and physicists have refined their dark matter theories without ever getting their hands on a single piece of it.3 > However, that still leaves about 66% of the universe’s “stuff” to be accounted for beyond that! In particular, there is strong evidence now that the “expansion” of the universe is accelerating near its boundaries. The gravitational influences out there seem to be driving it apart, and this would require some kind of tremendous energy whose source and character are unknown. So cosmologists just call it “dark energy”! > > Astronomers have dark imaginations. They’re already obsessed with another phenomenon that they call dark matter, which is entirely separate from dark energy. Dark matter is the invisible material that . . . gathers into vast clumps and exerts an ordinary gravitational tug on its surroundings. . . . The proposed dark energy, in contrast, would inhabit empty space and would be evenly distributed throughout the universe. Moreover, dark energy would exert a repulsive force—what might be called antigravity.4 > This strange universal anti-gravity field has been given the name “quintessence” by some astronomers. No instruments have been able to measure it, or even record it, but they believe it must be there on the basis of the intensity of light from very distant supernovas, which to them suggests dark energy. > > Where would such a strange field come from? . . . An exotic possibility is that quintessence springs from the physics of extra dimensions.5 > Some six extra dimensions (in addition to length, width, depth, and time) have been mathematically predicted in string theory, but this also is quite an illusory concept to many. > > And although the theory of super-strings is now causing great excitement in the physics community, there is to date not a shred of experimental or observational evidence to support it.6 > In any case, the picture now occupying the minds of many evolutionary cosmologists is that of an immense universe with multitudes of stars and other objects in great variety, but which actually comprise only a minute part of the matter and energy of a very “dark” universe. > > Dark energy would complete a picture of the cosmos in which more than 98% of the matter and energy is of some exotic, unseen form.7 > And, since the law of entropy apparently is of universal extent, even the visible stars will eventually disintegrate into darkness, or worse. > > To be sure, approaching gravitational equilibrium (in addition to thermal and chemical uniformity) would mean a Universe full of black holes.8 > Dark matter, dark energy, and ultimate black holes everywhere certainly sound foreboding—if true. And that’s just the known universe! What about the darkness outside of that? > > It is well to remember that a great deal of modern cosmology, especially when its practitioners are trying to predict its destiny and retrodict its origin, is sheer mathematical manipulation and evolutionary philosophical imagination. “It ain’t necessarily so!” > > But it is significant that these speculations lead so often to words like “darkness” and “blackness.” These are Biblical terms too. > > Speaking of those teachers and leaders who would promote anti-Biblical doctrines of God and His great salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostle Peter warned that “these . . . speak evil of the things that they understand not; . . . to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever” (II Peter 2:12,17). > > Similarly Jude compares them to “wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever” (Jude 13). > > The Lord Jesus Himself referred to “outer darkness” as the ultimate home of the lost. In His familiar parable of the talents, the judgment on the servant whose unfruitfulness had proved he was not a true servant was to “cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:30; see also Matthew 8:12; 22:13). > > This ultimate home of the lost is also called “hell,” of course, and the Lord called it “the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone” (Revelation 21:8), the sea of “everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). > > As to the location of this fiery lake, we know only that it is not on the earth. The “beast” and the “false prophet” will be dispatched to the lake of fire before the disintegration of the present earth (Revelation 19:20; 20:11), and all the unsaved not until after that event (Revelation 20:15). The new earth will be one “wherein dwelleth righteousness” (II Peter 3:13). The obvious inference of all this is that hell will be a vast lake of fire somewhere far out in the “outer darkness” of the created universe, possibly in a dark nebula, or even a black hole. > > The fire will be real and easily able to destroy bodies, but it cannot annihilate spirits. All men and women have been created in the image of God and God is eternal. He is the Creator, not the de-Creator, and “whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever” (Ecclesiastes 3:14). The outer darkness will be “a world of iniquity . . . set on fire of hell” (James 3:6), where all vestiges of goodness and love and light are gone forever. No wonder Jesus urged men to “Fear Him, which . . . hath power to cast into hell” (Luke 12:5). > > God’s created universe is also eternal with all its multitude of stars, and the lake of fire will occupy only a small, probably remote, region in comparison. > > Praise ye Him, sun and moon: praise Him, all ye stars of light. . . . He hath also stablished them for ever and ever: He hath made a decree which shall not pass (Psalm 148:3,6). > And all who are saved—those who believe His word and have received His great salvation through faith in Christ—shall live and praise Him for ever. > > And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever (Daniel 12:3). > Although many have chosen the way that leads to outer darkness, there will also be many living forever in the Holy City on the new earth. “And there shall be no night there; . . . for the Lord God giveth them light” (Revelation 22:5). okay, i’m guessing i’ve sent this thread on its way to Great Debates. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Kentzel-Griffin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ccd318/32.png) [@John\_Kentzel-Griffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Kentzel-Griffin)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2003, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/6 "2003-10-23T00:15:47Z")
General Questions is for questions with factual answers. Great Debates is for debates. Please read the forum descriptions. I’ll move this to Great Debates for you. Off to Great Debates. **DrMatrix** - GQ Moderator ---
**Author:** ![gypsymoth3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/85e7bf/32.png) [@gypsymoth3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gypsymoth3)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2003, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/7 "2003-10-23T00:21:42Z")
woo-hoo! go me! ---
**Author:** ![FriendRob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecc23a/32.png) [@FriendRob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriendRob)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2003, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/8 "2003-10-23T18:57:12Z")
The ancient Egyptians were possibly the first to suggest that the worshippers of the (right) God would get preferential treatment in the afterlife, i.e., the best real estate (near the river). The Greeks originally held that only supernatural beings or great heroes/sinners were punished in the afterlife. The Titans were imprisoned in the deep pit of Tartarus for rebelling against Zeus, Prometheus got his liver gnawed eternally for bringing fire to humans. Ordinary folk died and became “shades”, pale shadows of humanity. In the Odyssey, the shades are unable even to speak until Odysseus has some animals slaughtered and the shades come and drink the blood. In the later Aeneid of Virgil (1st century BC IIRC), there has been some “damnation creep”, and even ordinary folk who were bad boys and girls get punishment after death. The up side is that philosophers and/or those who get the proper initiations into mystery cults while alive get to go to the Elysian Fields, where they hang out with Plato and Socrates and drink the good stuff. If you didn’t qualify for either category you took a bath in the river Lethe, which made you forget everything, then you got reincarnated for another try. (Sounds very Buddhist, no?) Jews borrowed some of these ideas, and probably some from Zoroastrianism, and came up with the Last Judgement, when God would bring the righteous (i.e., the Jews) into power and torch everyone else. Christians took over this concept, which the Jews later dropped. (Actually, only some Jews had ever subscribed to it. The Sadducees, for example, didn’t believe in life after death at all. ) I hope this helps you avoid one, or attain the other, **Susma Rio Sep**! ---
**Author:** ![Ashleigh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4bbf92/32.png) [@Ashleigh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashleigh)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2003, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/9 "2003-10-23T20:14:31Z")
Personally, I rather like the idea of breaking back down into my constituent atoms and dispersing into the universe. Becoming coffee beans and cats and stars and all those other things I love. The idea of heaven being a place of virgins and earthly pleasures (ala Islam) seems cheap to me. Why bother, just be a slutty glutton now. The idea of closeness/knowing God (ala Christianity) scares me, because there’s no way in my mind to make “God” a legitimate existance with all the crazy characteristics that get assigned to it. Especially if there’s Hell! What?! What is that, from our all powerful all knowing benevolent God? O\_o A big turnoff when I was in Catholic schools was when I asked (and I was… 11 maybe?) “If someone I love goes to Hell, and I go to Heaven, doesn’t that mean Heaven will be imperfect for me because they aren’t there?” and the priest flippantly replies “No, because you’d see the error of their ways” and continues on to the next kid asking if God has a beard. Nevermind the impending religious crisis that question should have signaled him I was going to have! (please, don’t anyone feel the need to explain his answer to me- I know what he probably meant in his Christian Love, and it still sounds like a load of bullsch.) So really… what I’m riding on is being a good person. I don’t cheat on my boyfriend, I don’t kick puppies, I didn’t work for Enron. If there is somewhere I’m going after this, I sure hope the judging goes on how I lived my life, and not what beliefs I held. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2003, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/10 "2003-10-23T20:35:42Z")
Is this the same Henry Morris who knows squat about evolution demonstrating that he knows the square root of squat about cosmology? To start with, what is this distant sheet of light? The CBR is hardly that, but just the remnants of the big bang, just as predicted by theory. (And the lumps in it are just as predicted by the inflation theory.) I’d say only those who have trouble adding to 20 without taking off their shoes would talk about “sheer mathematical manipulation” as if this were not valid. String theory, by the way, does not claim that there should be observational evidence, in fact it says that the energy needed to break things down enough to observe strings is far greater than we can now generate. I don’t see how that is a negative. Sheesh, I thought we were fighting ignorance, not embracing it with both arms and giving it a big wet kiss. ---
**Author:** ![Ashleigh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4bbf92/32.png) [@Ashleigh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashleigh)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2003, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/11 "2003-10-23T20:42:43Z")
Yeah, Voyager, I meant to say something about that article… thanks for reminding me 😉 when people NEED to stick “Dr.” in front of the authors name, it’s usually a sign the article is… to put it politely… to be taken with a grain of salt? ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2003, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/12 "2003-10-24T13:08:22Z")
\>Anyone with the straight dope on hell and heaven? Heaven is any place with the straight dope. THere is no straight dope in hell. ---
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2003, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/13 "2003-10-24T16:00:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by slipster \* > \*\* The other was Judas Iscariot. By contrast, some Orthodox Churches list Judas as a saint. \*\* I’m an Orthodox Christian and have never heard of this. What specific “Orthodox” Churches list Judas Iscariot as a saint? He is not honored by the Greeks, the Russians, the Romanians, the Serbs, the Cypriots, the Syrians, not by Jerusalem nor Alexandria, nor have I ever come across any Copt nor Ethiopian who would venerate Judas Iscariot. There is St. Jude, who is also called Judas, Thaddeus, and Libbeus, but he was not Judas Iscariot. There is Judas the Son of James, who is also not Judas Iscariot. So what “Orthodox” Church considers Judas Iscariot to be a “saint”? ---
**Author:** ![dal\_timgar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@dal\_timgar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dal_timgar)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2003, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/14 "2003-10-24T16:04:46Z")
The word HELL is not in the Bible. The Old Testament is Hebrew, the New Testament is Greek. The Bible actually says SHEOL, HADES and GEHENNA. See Cruden’s Concordance, look up HELL. This underground fire and brimstone crap sounds like it comes from a people that lived near volcanos. There are volcanos in Italy, the center of the Roman empire. No volcanos in the Holy Land. try OLD SOULS by Tom Shroder Dal Timgar ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2003, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/15 "2003-10-24T17:50:23Z")
As we say in the Church of the SubGenius, “The difference between Hell and Heaven is which end of the pitchfork you’re on!” [www.subgenius.com](http://www.subgenius.com) Praise “Bob”! ---
**Author:** ![Ninas\_grandpa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/54ee81/32.png) [@Ninas\_grandpa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ninas_grandpa)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2003, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/16 "2003-10-24T21:09:18Z")
There ain’t no heaven and there ain’t no hell. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2003, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hell-and-heaven/208986/17 "2003-10-24T21:18:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ashleigh \* > \*\*Yeah, Voyager, I meant to say something about that article… thanks for reminding me 😉 > > when people NEED to stick “Dr.” in front of the authors name, it’s usually a sign the article is… to put it politely… to be taken with a grain of salt? \*\* True. Especially true when the degree is fishy, as in this case.