Damn it to hell!

I’ve got to go look that up … Hades going to Hell? All manner of things ARE going to be well!

Oops, I didn’t see the rhyme until after I posted… I should have made it a limerick
Anyway, Fred, I love your post.

Christianity’s cousin/uncle/something Judaism concerns itself with the afterlife even less.

You must have been reading the good doctor in the previous post!
This is a brilliant exposition.

Interesting post. I wonder if there are many more preachers out there with similar beliefs to Pearson, yet keep them to themselves for fear of the sort of fate that befell him. Reminds me of Brian McLaren’s book, The Last Word and the word after that. Also there’s a guy called “Gregory MacDonald” who wrote a book on universalism under a pseudonym because of concern about it’s effect on his evangelical cred … would love to know who that guy really is??

I think I understand the psychology of those Christians who obsess over Hell, because, in a way, I’m just like them. During the darkest days of the Bush (mis)administration, I used to cling desperately to a belief in Hell, which seemed much more important to me than the existence of Heaven. The world seemed to be such an evil place, where the wicked flourish like the green bay tree and the likelihood of your becoming rich and successful and loved by all seemed to be directly proportional to how big of an utter bastard you were to everyone around you. I don’t think I could have made it through the last eight years without the belief that all those awful people did so much to make the world a shitty place were going to get some kind of divine justice.
Of course, the difference between me and the fundie-Christian types is that I wanted Hell to for war-mongers, mass-murderers and torture lovers, instead of for people who declined to believe every little thing I told them to believe.

God bless you, Fred Clark. A beautiful article.

I could never wish eternal torment on anyone, no matter how nasty a piece of work they were in life. Luckily, I grew up in a religious tradition that was pretty mellow about who’d be going there. Like, Hitler was there, but your sister wasn’t going there for wearing a short skirt. I don’t know how people cope with the belief that most of the people they meet will be tortured forever.

Along the same lines, Real Live Preacher went into some of the main bible-based reasons for skepticism about the traditional doctrine of hell in a series of four videos. He also created this useful .pdf compilation of hell-themed scripture. Well, I’m sure Slacktivist knows all this already, but I found it useful.

Christianity’s cousin/uncle/something Judaism concerns itself with the afterlife even less.
A bummer, too. I was raised at a Reform synagogue and I remember repeatedly asking my teachers what the Jewish afterlife was like, mostly because I was very much into that sort Bangsian fantasy and would act out all sorts of angelic and demonic intrigues with my (Catholic) friend. I only recall getting some very distinctly disappointing answers – I would have even settled for “you’ll see your grandparents” but I got the subject changed on me every time with a “we don’t really focus on that.”
I wound up growing up without any fear of hell but with a distinct nervousness that some kind of entity (either God or a dead relative) was watching me do whatever shameful things I was doing, a belief that I invented whole cloth. Kids can make their own hell.

Don’t be sad, aw. Judaism’s vagueness means it doesn’t get into the same trap as Fred illustrates here. Speaking of retellings of Exodus, this sort of thing always reminds me of Passover. I’m an agnostic from a long, long line of freethinkers, but I still love me some Passover. God telling the angels to shut up is definitely the highlight (I don’t know if this is a traditional part or a synthesis like the orange, but it seems to fit with the overall theme), but maybe more important is the strong implication, though it isn’t written as such, that before all the crimes and sins that come later in the Big Document, there is one thing you must never do, and that is forget and thus to not honor the stranger, widdow, yadda yadda in your midst. All the later stuff gets you killed and brings misfortune unto the nth generation and all that jazz, but not saying to your child on that day gets you torn out of God’s address book. You tell me which is worse.
And since I started reading this blog/whatever for the hot spicy LB analysis, I just gotta say it burns me that LJ and sons missed such a perfect analogy for their final scene. Brave Hero Buck remembers what happened, so he gets doctored out of the photo by the antichrist. The Antichrist is doing the opposite of what God does why is this not played with at all in the book?? Secular Jews shouldn’t have to write Evangelical fiction for hacks too lazy to do it themselves, but this was such a juicy bit of religion that even I had to bite.

but…but.. if there’s no hell, where does the Hellmouth go _to_?

I don’t know how people cope with the belief that most of the people they meet will be tortured forever.
Cope with it? They love it! They’re expecting to be able to pull up a chair and pass around the popcorn while they watch.

Something I was never able to figure out about the concept of Hell was how to reconcile it with the existence of a loving God. I finally found a passage that cleared it up for me, to the point where it was like a light switch turned on. The passage wasn’t in Matthew, Luke, or John but Clive. As in, Clive Staples Lewis.
A loving God will not cast us into torment. But since we also have free will, there will always be some who insist on sitting in the middle of a beautiful garden and see only a dark, smelly, crowded shack full of manure.
In other words, damnation is the absense of God, but it is not God who turns away from us, but we who turn away from God.
Of course, “The Last Battle” is not official scripture, and since I’m relying on Clive’s metaphore over that of John the Relevator, I guess that means I’m going to Hell.

I like the vision of Hell in “The Great Divorce,” as a rather nasty industrial city where it always rains. The damned aren’t subjected to torments from the “Saw” movies, they are allowed to wallow in their own self-centeredness. (Lewis put Napoleon alone in a mansion far out into the suburbs of the city, continually complaining about how Everyone Failed Him.) It illustrates that all sin starts with thinking of ourselves first and foremost. Also, people can be saved even after death. As Lewis put it “Scripture says “after death, then the judgment; but it doesn’t actually say when.”

In other words, damnation is the absense of God, but it is not God who turns away from us, but we who turn away from God.

Or, from another perspective (the Eastern Orthodox one, if I remember correctly), Heaven and Hell are the same place, and the difference hinges on whether you like being there or not.

@ saffi and Ka-wren:
I always rather appreciated (as much as one can…) the version of hell in What Dreams May Come – a place that the “wicked” dead condemned themselves to because they couldn’t imagine anything better for them.

To me, Hell would be having to spend my eternal afterlife with the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, etc. *shudders*

More importantly, if there’s no Hell, what happens to child molesters and people who talk at the theater?
Third vote for the C.S. Lewis version – which I suspect owes something to Tolkien’s even better afterlife story “Leaf by Niggle.”

When I heard that particular episode at work a few years back I was struck by two things; first, the conversation Carlton Pearson has with God while watching the African famine victims (or war refugees, my memory’s a little hazy) was achingly beautiful. That THAT was Hell. The things we allow to happen to each other are Hell. That we invented it and sentenced each other to it leaves open the possibility uninventing and, indeed, issuing clemency. My second thought was, I wonder what Fred Clark has to say about this. Thank you for answering that.

Ka-wren, I had to read The Great Divorce for my C.S. Lewis class in college. It was one of my favorite books in that class. Like you, I really liked his take on Hell, but in my case I was heavily influenced by having previously read its depiction in the Johnny the Homicidal Maniac comics. As in Lewis’s book, Hell is portrayed as largely the creation of the people there who constantly build new towns and abandon the old ones. Everyone goes around worried about being seen as trendy by the one giant eye in the sky and focussing on stupid matters like having to pay fifty cents for extra cream cheese (Hell makes a yummy bagel). Basically Hell is what we make it.
Heaven, on the other hand, is a pretty run-down, drab place (aside from angel bunnies) with a squat, sleepy, detached God in a Laz-e-God recliner, where the saved sit around in chairs completely content and with no need or desire to do anything, including using their awesome, destructive mind-powers. So, I guess the message is that contentment, bliss, and non-violence are good, but look a bit boring.

If X gets you sent to Hell isn’t it ultimately God’s fault for giving humans the ability to do X in the first place?
Why punish us for a mistake God made?
*The value of X being your sin of choice.

@shayguy
The lack of afterlife in the standard Jewish doctrines (except for the folklore we picked up from living around Christians for years) is the one thing I love and the one thing one of my best Christian friends hates about my theology. Because every time he starts freaking out about going to Hell, I can point out that my religion doesn’t think there’s a Hell at all, and my personal belief is that we simply become one with the Godhead. Selfless bliss everlasting and all that. And for some reason that concept freaks him out even harder. He’s scared of the idea that he might go to hell, but the idea that he *doesn’t know* what’s going to happen terrifies him more.

I have a lot of sympathy for your friend, Ryuu. When I was younger, I could get myself into a state of pure terror by remembering that I didn’t know what would happen when I died. This, coupled by a belief in Hell that was in my very marrow* made for some very bad nights.
*I abandoned an intellectual belief in Hell at a very young age. My emotional belief that it existed and that I would go there remained for another decade or so, and I’m still not completely over it.

It barely needs pointing out by now that they’re all up in arms about his not believing in Hell, while they don’t say a word about his opinions on Heaven. The central focus of these guys’ theology is Hell, not Heaven. It’s tied inexorably to their subtractive ideas of virtue, their overwhelming obsession with “The Antichrist” at the expense of paying any attention to Jesus, and their overall theology being based around fear and hate.

A very good post, Fred!
It is a bit baffling how central the idea of Hell (which as you point out isn’t a core concept of Christianity, unlike frex. Resurrection) has become to a lot of people, on both Christian and atheist “sides”.

A religion and it’s texts only have a tenuous relationship; what matters is the religion in practice.

I don’t see how it’s baffling that hell is central in atheists’ discourse about Christianity, since it’s the club that’s so often brandished over their heads.
(Flashback to highschool, being followed down the hall by a mob chanting “[Subject Name Here]‘s going to he-ell!”…)
As for the Christians who center hell, I think– not necessarily by the design of nefarious theologians, but by the evolutionary pressure to adapt and compete in the marketplace of ideas– the doctrine of burning forever in hell has been encouraged because it instills a desperate motivation to convert others using the believer’s own humanity and compassion, twisted in an inhumane direction: if the suffering of unbelievers will be infinite, then *any* temporal means, no matter how ugly or extreme, are justified in bringing them to belief.

I don’t see how it’s baffling that hell is central in atheists’ discourse about Christianity, since it’s the club that’s so often brandished over their heads.
I would think that the same would be true in Jewish discourse about Christianity, since that club is often wielded on their heads as well.

I could never wish eternal torment on anyone, no matter how nasty a piece of work they were in life.
I agree.
I don’t think I could have made it through the last eight years without the belief that all those awful people did so much to make the world a shitty place were going to get some kind of divine justice.
I suspect that many non-fundamentalist believers in Hell simply want that justice and don’t necessarily focus on the eternal torment part.
Now I wonder if one thing fueling the growth of fundamentalism in the past century is the widespread influence of movies. Too many of them are simplistic morality plays with white hats and black hats, and at the end the former are rewarded and the latter are punished. The medium is so emotionally powerful that this arithmetic may have a subconscious influence on even people who consciously realize that life offers no justice.

I would add TV to my theory as well.

Wow. I had noticed that most people conflate the Bible and Dante’s Inferno, but I never noticed the context. Amazing.

The modern conception of Hell is a convoluted version of Dante’s vision, except without the political and moral allegory.
They took whatever good aspects of Hell out
It’s sad that most don’t realize that, atleast in my reading, most Christian theologians don’t focus on the subject of Hell; it’s only the preachers that need money that do.
God I wish theologians instead of scam artists were the face of Christianity.

Thanks, Fred! It’s interesting to see the progression of “hell” from the abstract to some real place. Just look at how we have it written “hell” in the Bible, but in common vernacular it’s now “Hell” — a proper noun, just like, say, Pittsburgh (a lovely place renowned for even-tempered residents who know how to take a joke…hopefully).
Anyone here ever read Dan Simmons’ short story “Vanni Fucci is Alive and Well and Living in Hell”? It’s a fun little tale about televangelism and taking ideas from the abstract to the concrete. More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayers_to_Broken_Stones#.22Vanni_Fucci_is_Alive_and_Well_and_Living_in_Hell.22

Hmmm…the url didn’t work right. Let’s try it this way:
“Vanni Fucchi is Alive and Well and Living in Hell” at Wikipedia

Dangit.
*gives the computer the fig*
*gives his own lack of computational skills the fig*

Or, from another perspective (the Eastern Orthodox one, if I remember correctly), Heaven and Hell are the same place, and the difference hinges on whether you like being there or not.
I’ve read bits from a couple of Catholic mystics who said basically the same thing- that some people perceive the love of God as a toasty, warm fire, some as a purifying flame, and some as a horrible burning. It fits nicely with the concept that nothing can separate us from the love of God. I’m Greek Catholic, but since Eastern Christian literature is in short supply in Catholic bookstores, plus I went to a Baptist School for a couple of years, I’ve got the Western conception (that Hell is in a separate part of the universe) firmly ingrained in my brain and it won’t go away. There’s something about the Western mind that needs to divide things up into categories, and separate them.
I’ve long been of the opinion that everybody in Hell went there voluntarily, and the torments of Hell are self-inflicted.
To me, Hell would be having to spend my eternal afterlife with the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, etc. *shudders* There is a (possibly apocryphal) story that just before Montezuma was executed, a priest came to him in one last ditch effort to convert him and told him, “If you are baptized now, you can still go to Heaven.” Montezuma, having seen the assorted horrors the Spaniards had inflicted on his people asked, “Will there be Spaniards in Heaven?” The priest said, “Of course there will be.” Montezuma then said. “Then I prefer to go to Hell.”
I can almost picture Montezuma arriving at the Pearly Gates, and St. Peter taking him aside and saying, “Look, Monty, those Conquistadors are truly f’d up, and if they don’t change their conquistadoring ways real fast, they ain’t getting in here. Now, come on, I’m going to introduce you to Jesus. I think you’ll like Him a lot, He’s actually very cool, but if you decide you don’t, well, the escalator down is over there. Oh, and there will be Spaniards in Hell, too, by the way. Your choice.”
Of course if you subscribe to the Eastern Orthodox view, then you can picture John Hagee, Jerry Falwell, et al, wandering around, angry “Hey, what’s this guy doing here, he was a homosexual? What do you mean, he fed the hungry and clothed the naked? What’s that got to do with whether you get into Heaven or not? He was a homosexual, he’s not supposed to be here? And hey, what are all these Muslims doing here? And how come all these liberal Democrats got in? Oh, that stupid feeding the hungry and clothing the naked thing again. And how come the black people are milling around with everyone else? I started Liberty School so white parents wouldn’t have to send their kids to school with black children, now you’ve got them all together in Heaven with the decent white folks, instead of shut away in their own separate section…”

Old joke: Bob dies and goes to Heaven. St. Peter is showing him around, and it’s all overwhelming, heart-achingly beautiful, amazingly, devestatingly glorious, and Bob is utterly overwhelmed for a time. Eventually, however, he notices that one section of Heaven is walled off from the rest. This is weird, because there are no barriers in Heaven. So he asks St. Peter about it, and St. Peter says, “Well, I’ll show you what’s back there, but you have to be really quiet.”
St. Peter shows him to the wall, and gives him a boost so he can peak over the top. Behind it is basically a set from Leave it to Beaver: a bunch of nattily dressed white folks, milling about the streets of a bland suburb, identical houses perfectly evenly spaced on the perfectly straight streets lined with perfectly manicured lawns. He watches for a while, but it’s really boring — yet they all seem completely content, even cheerful.
Returning to the glorious explosion of infinite art that is the rest of Heaven, Bob says, “Who are those guys?”
“Shh!” says St. Peter. “Keep your voice down. Those are the fundamentalists, and if they knew anyone else was here, they’d storm out in a heartbeat!”

Anyone here ever read Dan Simmons’ short story “Vanni Fucci is Alive and Well and Living in Hell”? It’s a fun little tale about televangelism and taking ideas from the abstract to the concrete.
Yeah, I’ve read it – in Swedish translation, even, ages ago now. It was funny and judging from the wiki page, I’d like to read some more of Simmon’s early stories. Apparently he’s gone a bit nuts lately.

some people perceive the love of God
I wonder what those Catholic mystics would say about people who believe in gods without perceiving love or anything else, such as the deists.

Of course if you subscribe to the Eastern Orthodox view, then you can picture John Hagee, Jerry Falwell, et al, wandering around, angry…
I was struck by this image a few days ago, while reading about Rev. Fred Phelps. He and his brood at Westboro Baptist believe that God hates, not just “fags”, but pretty much everyone. And that led me to wonder: when Phelps finally kicks the bucket, if he goes to the afterlife and finds a kind and loving God, what then? It seems like a no-win situation for the good reverend: the nicer God is, the more miserable he’ll be. I don’t believe that anyone deserves eternal torment — not even Fred Phelps — but I have a hard time imagining a heaven for him that he’d actually enjoy. Some people bring their own Hell with them, I think. What do you do about them, other than invoke some sort of heavenly mindwipe/lobotomy (which itself is morally problematic)?

Like, Hitler was there, but your sister wasn’t going there for wearing a short skirt.
I never found much reassurance from this. Perhaps because it left a lot of ambiguity in my life, such a the fate of my (Nazi, atheist) grandparents.
Plus, it seems suspicious in that the examples chosen are always those who are “other” to the people making this type of distinction. If they’re in the US, they’ll mention Hitler or Stalin, but not the leaders behind the US genocide of Native Americans. It always feels as if the message is not “hell only happens to you if you’re really bad”, but rather “hell is what happens to our enemies because they’re really bad.” Hitler and Stalin are the examples of who goes to hell – but not, say, Presidents Jackson and VanBuren as the masterminds of the Trail of Tears.
As used, in the US, the explanation seems to be laced with American exceptionalism, and to make an uncomfortable theology acceptable, not by addressing the source of the discomfort, but by pushing the potential for discomfort onto strangers. It effectively says there is no reason to be concerned about hell, if you’re one of us, and that there is no reason to be concerned about the injustice of the doctrine of hell, because it isn’t really our problem.

Anyone else read Larry Niven’s Inferno? An SF writer winds up in Dante’s version of Hell (and like several other versions discussed here learns it’s not necessarily Eternal).
One thing which I’ve noticed about the RTC view of Hell is that for all they talk about how you’re saved by faith, they spend most of their time dwelling on the sins that damn you (you’re gay! you had an abortion! Etc!). Or freaking out over Wicca and how witchcraft will damn you to hell when by RTC standards Muslims, Jews, atheists and large numbers of “pseudo Christians” are just as damned.

Anyone else read Larry Niven’s Inferno? An SF writer winds up in Dante’s version of Hell (and like several other versions discussed here learns it’s not necessarily Eternal).
One thing which I’ve noticed about the RTC view of Hell is that for all they talk about how you’re saved by faith, they spend most of their time dwelling on the sins that damn you (you’re gay! you had an abortion! Etc!). Or freaking out over Wicca and how witchcraft will damn you to hell when by RTC standards Muslims, Jews, atheists and large numbers of “pseudo Christians” are just as damned.

OOps. ‘pologies for the double post.

I found Niven and Pournelle’s “Inferno” fascinating, enough so that I intend to read the “Purgatory” sequel when it comes out in upcoming months. I still have to start the first “Fleet of Worlds” paperback to see if it’s any good, though. And, actually, there’s a certain werewolf novel I strongly desire to finish… Once, I read two or three new books a month; but I’ve not kept that up lately. I did not make enough time to read in 2008, and I intend not to repeat that failure in 2009.
Niven loves puzzles, and “Inferno” is one such: assume Dante’s Hell, and then answer the question, “Why?” What use is Hell to God, Satan, the religious, or the areligious? There’s not much new in there that we haven’t discussed on Slacktivist – I think the book came out in the mid-70s – but “Inferno” gave me plenty of ponderin’ material when I first picked it up.

the explanation seems to be laced with American exceptionalism, and to make an uncomfortable theology acceptable, not by addressing the source of the discomfort, but by pushing the potential for discomfort onto strangers.
Perhaps they’re really trying to rationalize the exceptionalism and not the theology. Or at least, they might be attracted to the theology because it appears to justify the exceptionalism.

Agreed with MikhailBorg: Not much new in Inferno for slacktivists, but it was definitely interesting when I first read it. I am not, however, planning on reading the sequel, because Niven has written nothing good in going on a decade now. And because Purgatorio and Paradisio are intrinsically less interesting than Inferno.

His sin was something that to a lot of people is far worse: He stopped believing in Hell.
From outside the congregation, that sounds like an SNL skit. Sound effects would include theatrical gasps of shock, plus the doom sound effect from Ren & Stimpy.

You know, reading the summary of the report, one thing jumped out at me: his church has “dwindled” from 5,000 congregants to a couple of hundred.
“Only” a couple of hundred? The synagogue I was Bar Mitzvahed in never failed to muster a minyan (the minimum of 10 adult males needed to hold services) on Friday night or Saturday morning, but it came darn close a couple of times, and at least one weekday service per week would have to be canceled for lack of attendance. I think maximum capacity, after we moved to the larger space, was about 50 people.
Two hundred people is, to me, a very large congregation. The rabbi’d be kept very busy by the constant stream of people needing to talk to him. 5,000 is just unimagineable. I mean, how would you *ever* get in to talk to the preacher? You know, so he can do the important part of his job?
It’s never really hit me before that, mixed in with the devestating social consequences of megachurches (namely, insulating believers from contact with people who don’t share their worldview), there’s a crippling spiritual flaw as well: the supposed leader of the flock is actually just an entertainer. A spectacle in front of a large crowd takes the place of the one-on-one interaction with a guide and mentor that we all need in difficult times.

Perhaps they’re really trying to rationalize the exceptionalism and not the theology. Or at least, they might be attracted to the theology because it appears to justify the exceptionalism.
Perhaps. I don’t think they’re trying to justify exceptionalism. I don’t think I’ve even noticed a conscious thought about the exceptionalism involved. But I could see the doctrine being attractive because if you assume exceptionalism as natural, it solves the emotional problems of the doctrine of hell perfectly.
But the way I’ve seen this theology used (people like Hitler go to hell, not people like you) it tends to be very much as a comfort for people disturbed by the idea of hell. Particularly children frightened that they, their families, or their friends may go to hell. The exceptionalism seems to be unconscious – they’re looking for an example of “really bad, really not like us, really, you don’t have to be scared.”
It’s practically universalism, by narrowing the application of hell to something so evil and so foreign that the person spoken to can take the comfort of universalism without actually facing the implications of rejecting the concept of hell. (Including, as Fred pointed out, the social consequences.)
Exceptionalism is the unconscious assumption, it is applied to the doctrine of hell as a way to remove personal fear. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this doctrine as an explanation/justification for exceptionalism, only as an explanation/justification of the doctrine of hell.

Oh, snap! There’s a sequel to Niven/Pournelle’s Inferno coming out? I gotta watch for that. I read Inferno in high school, and looking back, it was one of the intermediate steps on my road to atheism. It was one of my first grapplings with the concept of hell vs. a benevolent God. All this effort to maintaining a gigantic torture chamber and bringing dead people back to life, and for what? To make them suffer more? Didn’t make sense. (And even in the book, when Carpentier ultimately works out a theory for how Hell may have a purpose, he’s still not convinced it’s good.)
Still, I wonder what ground can be covered in Purgatory, given that the first book concluded that Hell is already kind of a purgatory, since you can eventually leave. Purgatory’s basement, in a way.

the person spoken to can take the comfort of universalism without actually facing the implications of rejecting the concept of hell. (Including, as Fred pointed out, the social consequences.)
I re-read his entry but didn’t pick up on his point about social consequences. And what are the other implications?

…A spectacle in front of a large crowd takes the place of the one-on-one interaction with a guide and mentor that we all need in difficult times.
I hadn’t thought about those particular pitfalls with megachurches, but they make sense. My concern was that the environment would cause the supposed leader of the flock to develop a messiah complex.

I re-read his entry but didn’t pick up on his point about social consequences. And what are the other implications?
Well, the pastor who rejected the idea of hell found himself excluded by his peers, the other pastors in his denomination’s organization. That’s a social consequence.
It can also be mentally challenging to reject an idea you’ve been taught is a key part of your faith. It is comparatively easy to continue to embrace the idea, while bypassing the unpleasant aspects.

Fred, I hardly ever comment because the threads are so long but this is a great, great, post–like all the others. I, too, was very moved by and provoked by the Carlton Pearson story. One of the big issues for his former flock and friends is that when he stopped believing in a literal hell he also, of necessity, started querying the notion of a god who freely damns people for various petty failings. That was the intolerable part for his former congregation because if god wasn’t watching and condemning *other people*–if he wasn’t standing in judgement during this life and the next–then on what would they base their conviction that they, alone, were saved? Pearson’s epiphany comes when he sees footage of the massacres in Rwanda and he realizes that lots of people were had lived in hell, unsaved, during their lifetimes. That they had lived and died “in hell” and he simply couldn’t believe that god was so unmerciful as to then go on to condemn them to more hell after death. If god wasn’t going to do that for mere spiritual failings or errors of theology then Pearson discovered, he didn’t have to keep trying to convert people to his brand of christianity. They were going to be saved anyway. Pearson found that a huge relief but others of his flock found that a huge loss. After all, they’d been propping up their egos for a long time thinking that they were saved and were saving others by proxy. If they weren’t interceding for god with the unsaved, or for the unsaved with god, then each of them was being stripped of a very pathetic but very real social power. Now what?
aimai

It’s never really hit me before that, mixed in with the devestating social consequences of megachurches (namely, insulating believers from contact with people who don’t share their worldview), there’s a crippling spiritual flaw as well: the supposed leader of the flock is actually just an entertainer. More than an entertainer – a tribal leader. Given enough time, they could even start producing their own divinely-appointed hereditary rulers. Domininionist theology probably covers this eventuality.

It can also be mentally challenging to reject an idea you’ve been taught is a key part of your faith.
Thanks for the clarification. I thought you were suggesting that the pastor’s critics might see the theology as collapsing without Hell. Or that they might believe that human life or human nature didn’t make sense without Hell.

That was the intolerable part for his former congregation because if god wasn’t watching and condemning *other people*–if he wasn’t standing in judgement during this life and the next–then on what would they base their conviction that they, alone, were saved?
Wow, I didn’t think of that.
It was one of my first grapplings with the concept of hell vs. a benevolent God. All this effort to maintaining a gigantic torture chamber and bringing dead people back to life, and for what? To make them suffer more? Didn’t make sense.
I never assumed from the outset that the god would be benevolent. When I was old enough to ask those questions, they lead me to question the motives of the people who created the theology.

You have some very excellent points about megachurches Frobarr. Most synagogues tend to be small even if the attendance rate is high. I have never heard of a syngagogue whose membership exceded two hundred or three hundred people and even this is rare. Why would someone want to be a member of a congregation where one is going to be very distant from the religious person in charge because of the high attendance rate? Is it that important to attend a congregation with a famous preacher? Religion is not a status symbol.

My favorite descriptions of Heaven and Hell were from the novel “Waiting for the Galatic Bus” by Parke Godwin. Or Godwin Parke.
Hell was a place of drearyness. Mindless work in factories, mindless paper shuffling bureacracies, pointless jobs and drinking yourself stupid after work, with clearly marked exits… you didn’t have to stay if you didn’t want to. No actual torture. All run by what appeared to be a man in a silk suit of the latest style.
Heaven was a place of pleasantness. Green fields with the occassional shade tree, philosophical discussions and pick up baseball/soccer/football games. All run by what appeared to be a man in workman’s coveralls.
(The discussions between the man in coveralls (Baryon), Jesus, and Saint Augustine is classic… and goes like…)
Augustine: (to Baryon) You seem to be in charge here. I demand to know where my Lord and Savior is!
Jesus: I’ve never seen him.
Augustine: And what this dirty Jew is doing here!
Baryon: Now, Augustine, there’s no need for slurs.
Wonderful characters, all of them. Jake the cabdriver (Judas), Augustine, John Wilkes Booth (I should have stayed out of politics)…

I’ve never attended a megachurch, but I gather a lot of them handle pastoral duties (as opposed to preaching) by breaking the group up into smaller chunks. While there’ll be one well-known, charismatic (in the sense of stage presence, not the religious use of the term) “head” pastor (to a large extent an entertainer, but typically expected to set the tone for the church as a whole) there will also be a “pastoral team” who will lead side groups – bible studies, men’s group, Knitting For Jesus, you name it, and individual members will be strongly encouraged to attend several of these side groups every week. So while you might enjoy Pastor Bob’s preaching on Sunday morning, you might have the kind of individual interaction Froborr and Lee are talking about with Pastor Tim, who leads your bible study.
I’m guessing another part of the appeal might be the sense of validation that comes from being part of a large group, and the low-grade anonymity might actually be a bonus to some people.

TheManeki: “Just look at how we have it written “hell” in the Bible, but in common vernacular it’s now “Hell” — a proper noun, just like, say, Pittsburgh (a lovely place renowned for even-tempered residents who know how to take a joke…hopefully).”
Calvin: Where do you think you go when you die?
Hobbes: Pittsburgh.
Calvin: You mean if you’re good, or if you’re bad?

My favorite descriptions of Heaven and Hell were from the novel “Waiting for the Galatic Bus” by Parke Godwin. Or Godwin Parke.
It’s Parke Godwin. It appears to be out of print (none available directly from Amazon, at least).

Huh. I’ve read The Snake Oil Wars, which I believe is a kind-of-sequel to Waiting for the Galactic Bus. I didn’t like it much, but the library didn’t have WFtGB. I should check again. TSOW seemed kind of like Heinlein’s Job, but without the Tasty Heathen Goodness.

Hawker Hurricane, thank you for the Parke Godwin ref. Abebooks (www.abebooks.com) seems to have quite a few copies available. (I just ordered mine, so y’all can now have at it.)

Spalzani, good job. I thought of that too, but don’t have any C&H references here at work.

And because Purgatorio and Paradisio are intrinsically less interesting than Inferno.
Hey, Purgatorio is great fun, especially when Beatrice shows up in the flesh and ticks Dante off for being such a Nice Guy all these years. Paradiso is rougher going, but deserves some credit as a work of proto-SF, with Dante including his bleeding edge explanations of optics and the spots on the moon and coining the word ‘transhuman’ (‘trasumanar‘).

‘Transhumanize’, rather. It’s a verb.

Also, yay apocryphal Montezuma story! I’ll see that and raise you Radbod of Frisia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radbod,_King_of_the_Frisians
about whom I wrote a poem:
Frisian freemen, lords of lowlands
Forseti’s fellows in elder age
Wade now in the White Christ’s water
Faith of fathers wash away
It’s not letting me put the extra spaces between the half-lines, oh well.
Righteous Radbod heard of Heaven
Wondered whether kin come there
Priest said pagans burn below
In Savior’s solace none may share
King could not forsake his kinsman
Would not walk the White Christ’s way
Put the priests out from fair Frisia
Ancestors honored to dying day

Gack!
I didn’t mean to comment in the middle of the @#$%& poem. Also, I have a name, and that was me talking about The Snake Oil Wars and Calvin and Hobbes. They made us disable cookies at work.

There’s some scholarly work that shows the concept of Hell might actually be based on a combination of bad translation and an imported idea from European Pagan religions.
This site has some details about the bad translations. Basically, there were a half dozen different words referring to different things, Sheol, Tartarus, Hades, and Gahena being the most common used in the Greek and Hebrew originals. Basically:
Sheol is the same thing as the Greek Hades or underworld and refers to the grave. it’s basically an eternal graveyard, devoid of light and warmth, just a bone yard for the deceased.
Tartarus was the Greek place of torment in the underworld, where The God Hades tortured the malefactors in ironic and elaborate ways. That’s where Sisyphus has to roll his boulder. It was imported into Biblical teachings during the greek revival in the middle ages.
Gahenna is the most interesting, as it turns out to be a real geographic place: “…Gehenna was a well-known valley, near Jerusalem, in which the Jews in their idolatrous days had sacrificed their children to the idol Moloch, in consequence of which it was condemned to receive the offal and refuse and sewage of the city, and into which the bodies of malefactors were cast and where to destroy the odor and pestilential influences, continual fires were kept burning.”
Hell is a sewer, and there is fire there because they incinerated the offal and bodies to keep plagues in check.

I’ve become fond of Terry Pratchett’s hell. Not the one in Faust Eric, but the desert. Alone, with nothing but you’re beliefs you must cross the desert. And it is a place not where a century seems like a few minutes, but where a few minutes seems like an eternity.

Leum,
I’m down with that. Hell isn’t other people; Hell is your own lonely mind. Not that I believe in Hell, but if I did…My search for, and attempted maintenance of, spiritual and mental well-being is a protracted attempt to escape that Hell.

I have never understood the purpose of hell. What’s the point of punishing someone after it’s too late for them to learn anything from it?

Froborr, I never asked that question for some reason. It didn’t occur to me that the actual punishment (as opposed to a threat of punishment) would have a purpose other than simply being a penalty. I might have assumed that the punishment of one person might serve as a warning to others, like a theological version of “Scared Straight.”

When I read the Bible, I was surprised at how little any of it – Old or New Testament – mentioned Hell or the Devil at all. I was also surprised at just how many things that caused misery and suffering – even for those who the reader is supposed to consider as good examples – were squarely and unequivocally attributed to God. And the Bible clearly states that God is the one whose works are dominant in the world, not Satan.
Taking these facts to their logical conclusion, you have to wonder, just a little, if those of God’s followers who believe so fiercely in him were to use internally consistent arguments, who they would be forced to believe for their unhappiness? Unfortunately, so many people only believe things that makes them feel better about the world they live in.

I find the modern revulsion to the doctrine of hell fascinating. Why is it that for centuries, people pretty much accepted the idea of eternal torment but now so many people (myself included) find it scandalously immoral? So much so that many people refuse to believe in God at all before they could believe in hell?
I’m not saying no one ever felt this way before, but it seems so much more widespread now. All but the most fundamentalist theologians feel the need to soft-pedal and qualify and generally apologize for this doctrine (when they don’t just throw it out entirely).
Why the difference? Part of it, surely, is that our standards for what’s an acceptable and humane punishment for earthly criminals has changed drastically.
I wonder if another part is that few of us rich people have suffered the kind of injustice that might tempt us cry out for eternal judgment for our oppressors? Maybe it’s not surprising that African-Americans would cling a little tighter to the idea that evildoers who escape accountability in this life will have to answer for their deeds in the next.
One of the most interesting ideas I’ve heard on this subject is comparing the doctrine of hell to God’s declaration to Moses (in Exodus 32, following the incident with the golden calf) that he was going to kill all the Israelites and start over, making a new nation out of Moses and his children. Moses tells God that it’s a horrible idea, and God changes his mind! (The line for traditionalist theologians who hate this story starts waaaaay over there…)
Perhaps the most biblical response for Christians scandalized by the doctrine of eternal damnation is to tell God they think it’s a horrible idea. Maybe God will change his mind.

I think that question is the first thing I think of because I’m in the (apparently rather unusual) position of not believing in justice. I don’t care in the slightest about punishing people who do bad things just for the sake of punishing them. I’m not interested in people getting what they “deserve”, because that’s an utterly meaningless concept. As far as I’m concerned, the only use punishment has is as a deterrent (“Scared Straight”, as you mention) or as an educational tool (on the “once burned, twice shy” principle).
Many people, however, seem to think that the world is somehow made better when people who did bad things suffer, regardless of whether it actually works as a deterrent or educational tool. I admit freely to not understanding this attitude at all, and I have yet to meet anyone who can explain to me how justice differs from vengeance.

who they would be forced to believe for their unhappiness?
In my experience, many of them blame their god by not blaming him. They assume that the god has a purpose behind the misery and suffering, a purpose that we cannot know or understand. Others seem to use “God” as a synonym for “fate,” which is not strictly a concept that involves blame.

straight: God has a tendency to be quite rash at times. He’s very hot-tempered and occasionally violent. Fortunately, he has us Jews to talk sense into him when he gets too far out of line.

So much so that many people refuse to believe in God at all before they could believe in hell?
I hope you’re not resorting to the simplistic fundamentalist argument that atheists simply don’t want to be judged by a god. I maintain that a rejection of the doctrine of hell is not a rejection of the god concept, otherwise there would be no universalists.

Hell was a place of drearyness. Mindless work in factories, mindless paper shuffling bureacracies, pointless jobs and drinking yourself stupid after work, with clearly marked exits… you didn’t have to stay if you didn’t want to. No actual torture. All run by what appeared to be a man in a silk suit of the latest style.
Having lived in Las Vegas, and also been inside a few shopping malls, my perception of Hell (assuming the Western version, in which it is a separate place than Heaven) is that Hell is a shopping mall where the “anchor stores” are largish casinos.

(you know, the Epistle to the Ghibelines or something)
Those Ghibelines…when will they listen?

Hawker Hurricane,
Thanks for the WftGB reference! I first read it about 20 years ago (half my lifetime ago), and it was my introduction to American evangelicals/fundamentalism. I’m from Chicago, and was raised Catholic, so I’d never met anybody like Charity or Roy. Years later, I married a nice boy from Kentucky, raised Southern Baptist, and realized he “got” Charity and Roy’s issues in a way I don’t think I *can*. Not for lack of trying, I just don’t have the worldview, or the upbringing, necessary. I have 16 years of stories of (to me, incomprehensible) get-togethers with the in-laws to prove it.
I learned a metric ton of interesting, useful ideas from that book. One of my very favorites. Speaking of which, I think I’m overdue to re-read it…

This was an excellent post, Fred! Now would someone just explain all this to Jack Chick?

What puzzles me is how many Christians, even often ones who describe themselves as “literalist”, seem to have accepted Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, a highly allegorical work written in the 1660s, as part of Christian canon. I with some frequency find Christians passing off some minor detail that I’m quite sure was invented by Milton as a part of their faith. For example, does the bible ever specifically claim that Satan was an ex-angel who rebelled against God?
Really in general I have a lot of trouble understanding how, why, when and on what basis Satan got elevated to the incredibly central position he holds in Christianity today. Satan seems to barely even get mentioned in the bible except in passing, and those mentions he does receive are usually ambiguous and seem vaguely contradictory with one another– I’m not even sure if one can even totally justify the idea they’re all referring to the same entity.

mcc: And imagine what the fundies would think if they actually read Paradise Lost! Sex in Eden? Work in Eden? Christ as a most decidedly inferior, created being (albeit the highest of all created beings) next to God? Christ volunteering to be sacrificed on the cross to undo Adam’s and Eve’s sins, rather than it being a preordained cosmic function of the Son?

Is hell just one of those opposite things in western christian philosophy, like black/white, good/evil? You have a god, you must have an adversary (satan); you have a heaven, there must be a hell?
Also, who knows anything about medieval astronomy/geography? Didn’t they create maps that included places like eden and hell?
Regardless of what the bible says about hell (which, to be honest, no one in the western tradition really read for comprehension until the last 550 years or so; assuming they could read Latin, of course), I think it was helpful for the powers-that-be in medieval Europe to have a very big stick to keep the little people in line; hell as a concept did very nicely indeed. To make my point, let me refer to Milton’s Paradise Lost (hey, it’s only been 20 years since I read any of it), which starts, of course, with disobedience making God sad and subsequently damning the angels to hell.

and yet again I have missed the thread train.

For example, does the bible ever specifically claim that Satan was an ex-angel who rebelled against God?
“The Bible Story” series gives Satan’s origin as something like this – the serpent Satan was originally Lucifer the light-bearer, guardian of the angels. He was expelled from Heaven for rebelling, and set out to ruin God’s plans for a good world. When I actually read Genesis a few years later, I was surprised that none of this was in the story.
Anyone remember the Phantom Stranger story that Alan Moore wrote? He relied somewhat on Milton.

Is hell just one of those opposite things in western christian philosophy, like black/white, good/evil?
Maybe it’s a simple force/counterforce concept that transcends any specific religion.

Tonio: It’s not just not in Genesis. It’s not anywhere.
Hell is a Zoroastrian concept. It derives, in other words, from a religion in which there were two opposed, equal deities, one good and one evil, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman. Ultra-simplified to the point of near-wrongness: They fought for possession of both the world and of individual human souls. If you did good, you were helping Ahura Mazda take both the world and your soul; if you did evil, you were helping Ahriman. If Ahura Mazda got your soul, he’d treat it well; if Ahriman got it, he’d mistreat it horribly, because, well, he’s evil.
During the dominance of the Persian Empire, the Jews adopted a number of ideas (like, oh, the soul, the duality of good and evil, and so on) from the Zoroastrians. Notably, the prosecutor-like Satan got blurred with the persecutor Ahriman. Well after the fall of Persia, the Christians then took this blurring and ran with it, creating the Christian notion of Satan and Hell (Judaism by and large eventually abandoned most of the more obviously Zoroastrian elements.)
Of course, at the same time, both Christianity and Judaism were absorbing the monistic Neo-Platonist notion of the transcendent God, which did not sit comfortably with the dualistic Zoroastrian elements. The result, of course, was centuries of complicated theological maneuvering to reconcile the two, especially the entire field of theogeny.

Cowboy Diva: TypePad seems to have eaten my rather lengthy post about Zoroastrianism. Short version: Hell and the Christian version of Satan come from a dualistic tradition, while the notion of a transcendent God comes from a monistic one. So it’s no surprise they don’t quite mesh.

Froborr,
Justice can also serve as an example to others. (That might fall under “education”.) That said, I find the idea of capital punishment on the grounds that it gives “closure” to the victim’s family to be the equivalent of blood vengeance, and hence incompatible with my religious views.

pat greene: Agreed. The only argument for capital punishment I find valid is that, if there is truly absolutely no hope whatsoever that a criminal will ever be able to re-enter society or be rehabilitated, it is less cruel to kill him then to keep him in solitary confinement for decades. But that requires a lot of knowledge which would rarely, possibly never, actually be available at sentencing.

“I have never understood the purpose of hell. What’s the point of punishing someone after it’s too late for them to learn anything from it?” — Froborr
Eternal salvation is the carrot, eternal PAIN is the stick. And you need to hand over your soul NOWNOWNOW, before the Hypothetical Bus gets you!!!@1!two!

The idea of Satan being a cast-out angel originally named Lucifer comes from misreading Isaiah 14:12ff (“How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star [Lucifer], son of Dawn!”), which is really a threat or taunt against the king of Babylon. There’s also Luke 10:18 (“He said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning’”) taken out of its context, which seems to be Jesus poetically congratulating his disciples on their success in casting out demons.

5012: Well, yes, that’s the meta explanation. But what’s its in-universe purpose, so to speak? Within the fiction of RTC-ism, what was hell made for?

The result, of course, was centuries of complicated theological maneuvering to reconcile the two, especially the entire field of theogeny.
What a mess. Another reason to abandon theology in favor of allegory.

I’ll have to remember to pick a nome-de-plume here in a bit, but for the meanwhile, my real name will do.
I started to rationally think about hell, and came up with this. Given a God in the Christian tradition, it must (to steal a march from Anselm of Canterbury) possess all qualities of Good and None of Evil.
Such a god must be the perfect idealization of good. And thus he must not only possess good qualities, but (and this is critical) in the proper porportions. Thus, god might be logical (as a Good thing) but he need not be infinately logical. More to the point, the question of Hell turns on the issues of Justice and Mercy.
How can we explore what God is like? Well if Man was created in God’s image, what we find, at a visceral level to be “good” and “bad” seems to be a decent guide to the nature of God.
If God is more Just than he is Merciful then there can be such a thing as a hell. If God is more Merciful that Just, then there cannot be such a thing.
If then we can use humans as a guide-who do we find to be better people? Those who are just, or those who are merciful? In other words (To use two extreme examples) Judge Roy Bean was just, but not merciful- A life for a life is the simplest form of justice. The Lord in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant (Matthew 18:21-35)is more merciful than he is just. Or MLK, or Ghandi, or Joseph who forgave his 12 brothers. In other words, we find it better, more good, to be merciful than just. Thus, logically, we can conclude that God is more merciful, and thus, that there can’t be such a thing as hell-a permanent hell at any rate.
Thats really only a rough outline of the whole idea, but I find it incredibly comforting-that God is really more merciful, and that the idea of eternal hell, anthema to any merciful person would be anthema to God himself.
(Sorry if someone has already posted something similar, I’m in a rush and haven’t read through the entire thread.)

Alone, with nothing but you’re beliefs you must cross the desert.
You got to walk that lonesome valley, I think you mean. Pratchett appropriated the idea, but let’s give credit where due.

You got to walk that lonesome valley
Now I imagine the Fairfield Four singing Fred’s posts.

“God has a tendency to be quite rash at times. He’s very hot-tempered and occasionally violent. Fortunately, he has us Jews to talk sense into him when he gets too far out of line.”
One of my all-time favourite books, Disobedience by Naomi Alderman, has this story in it: some Rabbis are arguing over some abstruse point. One of them starts to try to prove himself by, essentially, appealing to God to help him out. He says things like, “If what I say is true, let this tree uproot itself!” and “If what I say is true, let the walls of this room bend inwards!” and they do. And the other Rabbis – this is so brilliant, I love this – don’t go “Woah! Miracles happening just to prove your point, guess you must be right.” They just keep going, “Yeah, that’s not actually an argument y’know. Engage with the issues, why don’t you?”
And eventually, the first Rabbi decides he’s going to settle this once and for all, and says, “if what I say is true, may Heaven prove it!” And this voice comes down from heaven saying, “Yes, he’s right, as it happens,” or words to that effect.
And – I so love this – one of the other Rabbis stands up and says (and this time I’m quoting directly, not paraphrasing) “It is not in Heaven! It is not for a divine voice to decide the law, for in the Torah it is written that the majority opinion shall prevail.” And they all decide to go with the majority.
I love that story more than I can tell you. They know what God wants, they know for a fact it’s God telling them to do this, but they still keep arguing back. That’s just brilliant.
My favourite part, though, comes right at the end, where we find out that, when the Rabbis decided to go with the majority, God didn’t get cross. No, “God laughed with joy, saying, ‘My children have defeated Me, My children have defeated Me.’”
And – okay, just one more quote and I’m done, I promise – the final paragraph of that section goes like this:
“God has given the world to us, for a spell. He has given us His Torah. And like a good parent, a loving father, He has joyfully set us free. It is not in Heaven.”
A friend of mine told me a story, I don’t know if it’s apocryphal or not: the great atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell was once asked “Mr Russell, what would you do if you died and found yourself face to face with the God whose existence you have always denied? What would you say to Him?” And Russell said, “I’d say, ‘Sorry, God.’”
I love that, too.

For Christians, heaven should not be understood as pie in the sky, or not only that anyhow. It is here, now. After all, Jesus said “the Kingdom of God is within you” (17:21) Yeah, that’s the good stuff.
Of course, the parallel implication is that hell is already here as well. The most chilling description I know:
You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”. The Christians describe the Enemy as one “without whom Nothing is strong”. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of
the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature
is too weak and fuddled to shake off… The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. (C.S. Lewis, the Screwtape Letters)
Been there. Actually, I’m there now. Ah, depression. I still feeling the pull of heaven though, which makes all the difference between where I am now and “abandon all hope ye who enter here.”

I always rather appreciated (as much as one can…) the version of hell in What Dreams May Come – a place that the “wicked” dead condemned themselves to because they couldn’t imagine anything better for them.
That always horrified me. To the point where it’s somewhat colored my perception about the whole “You condemn yourself to Hell” idea. Because I’ve seen zero correlation between people thinking they deserve punishment, and actually being deserving. And while an afterlife where depressed and self-loathing people are left to inflict infinite torment on themselves is an interesting fictional idea, it’s a long way from either justice or mercy. Some guy who will happily torture and kill others for his own comfort because he thinks that he’s important and other people aren’t can end up with a world full of pleasure and comforts, and someone who devoted their life to helping others, but suffers irrational self-loathing can suffer forever, because they don’t think they deserve any better, and there’s nothing driving them to.
I liked it better in Small Gods, though. There was at least the sense that people had their illusions stripped away, then had to live with themselves. Take Vorbis, the way he was when he died, don’t change anything, give him a world of his own making, and he ends up with an eternity of basking in his own righteousness and the love of God.

I was raised Buddhist, and though there was the occasional mention or cool artistic depiction of a variety of hells, I was told in no uncertain terms that these were metaphors for earthly psychological states people inflict on themselves. And that these people often hurt other people, but we should still feel sorry for them because they’re so screwed up. The concept overlapped a lot with the idea of a “hungry ghost”, which is a creature who’s starving and/or obsessed with eating filth, not because some external entity has punished it to exist like this, but because it’s so messed up it’s turned itself into such a pathetic creature. We had a ceremony every fall to symbolically invite them in and offer them good food to eat. It was my favorite cause it had lots of gongs and afterwards we got to eat the leftovers.
Ages ago I read a story about heaven and hell, I think in a book of Chinese folktales. A man asks some mystic figure to show him heaven and hell, so it takes him to hell, and they see a huge dining hall set with a delicious feast, but everyone has to sit way back from the food with three-foot long chopsticks. The chopsticks are so long they can’t get the food in their mouths and they’re all hungry and angry and miserable.
So then they go to see heaven, and it’s exactly the same. Big feast, seats way back, long chopsticks. But the people are happy and well fed, for one reason – they’re feeding each other.

And Russell said, “I’d say, ‘Sorry, God.’”
Dawkins has the quote as “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence,” so I don’t know who is right. (My quibble with atheist writers like Dawkins and Hitchens is that they seem to assume that “God” is the only alternative to no gods. They might distinguish between the common noun and the proper noun, since “God” is a name, but that’s not obvious from what they write.

Being an Episcopalian, I’m not too worried about Hell. I mean, even if the Fundis are right, how bad will it be? I’ll get to be with everyone I love, there’ll be plenty of amazing authors, poets, actors, directors painters… and of course brewers. I imagine that my fellow Episcopals will really nice up the inferno, you, set up some good libraries, bars, theaters, used book stores, churches, all that. And what with all the drinking and sinning…
Well, who do we all know who enjoys drinking, hanging out with sinners, and descending to the dead?
That’s right, I’m sure Jesus’ll come hang out. I mean, how long could you stand to spent with the fundis once they were smuggly aware of their acceptance into Heaven? I give our Messiah ten, fifteen minutes at the outside and he’ll be down there tearing the gates off their hinges and producing *awesome* barrels of wine…
It’ll be nice.

I don’t believe in Hell myself.
Being a fairly vengeance-minded person, I’ve often wished I did: post 9/11, post-Columbine, post-VT, it would have comforted me immensely to believe that the fuckers who did those things would spend, at minimum, a couple hundred years burning alive, being sodomized with cacti, whatever. You’re not scared of death? Fine. Eat *this*.
But the way I see the universe, it just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t give me much joy to think that I’ll end up sharing a worldmind with Hitler and Bundy and so forth, but at least:
a) the way I see it, they won’t be themselves anymore, and I won’t be myself, so I don’t have to worry about it,
b) my religious views don’t say *I* shouldn’t hate people like that right now.

…three-foot long chopsticks…
I remember a similar story from a sermon in church when I was little (not sure if it was one of the Fundie ones, but definitely Protestant), only the restriction was everyone had their arms stuck through pipes to keep them from bending their elbows. Seemed pretty uncomfortable either way. It also seemed like it would unfairly penalize introverts– people’s tastes differ, so you’d have to stay in constant communication about what everybody wants to eat, and that could get wearying pretty quick for some of us. But hey, most analogies break down under excessive scrutiny…

Either that, or introversion is itself a sin.

See, that’s the problem with literalism. As a metaphor, the story beautifully tells us that paradise is found in community and love, but take it strictly factually… well, there are always problems.
Seriously, given eternity, it seems like folks could perfect the art of dropping food into their own mouths from three feet about their heads.

A friend of mine told me a story, I don’t know if it’s apocryphal or not: the great atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell was once asked “Mr Russell, what would you do if you died and found yourself face to face with the God whose existence you have always denied? What would you say to Him?” And Russell said, “I’d say, ‘Sorry, God.’”
It would be even better if God says, “Nah — my bad!” (Related to, but turned 180 degrees from the Dawkins quote).

Terry Pratchett is good with the punishments that aren’t exactly hell (and leave some space for learning). There’s also a good one in The Truth, if memory serves, with the bad guys being shown their misdeeds from the victims’ points of view, and the one who shows at least some remorse being allowed to come back as a woodworm.
I wrote a short story a couple of months ago that had heaven as a really happening party and hell…
Hell turned out to be a lot like the housing office, before they put the comfy chairs and TV screens in. It smelled as if someone had pissed in the corner long ago and no-one had ever bothered to clean up. There were two chairs: one had three legs, and the other had a broken bit in the back that stabbed you between the shoulder blades however you tried to sit. There were posters on the walls, but none of them made a scrap of sense. I read them all to make sure – it was that sort of place.
There was another set of double doors, but no music came through these. I expected screams instead, but no screams came through either. Just an empty silence.
All the same, I wasn’t in any great hurry to find out what was happening on the other side. If it really was Hell, it wasn’t going to be anything fun. So I sat on the three-legged chair and waited. I’ve no idea what I thought I was waiting for, but there wasn’t a lot else to do in that place.
There’s only so long that you can wait. I read the posters a couple more times, but they still meant nothing. I counted the cracks in the wall – all thirty-seven of them. I went through all the rotten things I’d done in my life and tried to work out which one was bad enough to have got me sent here. After a few minutes of that, I decided whatever was the other side of the doors couldn’t be any worse.

Nice post, Fred. I have always appreciated Lewis’s understanding of hell as a place you put yourself. As a Catholic, I have also always liked the idea that if I die with sins on my conscience (bound to happen, me being human and all) that I can spend some time in Purgatory. I have always pictured Purgatory as a place where we pray eagerly, firmly, constantly — for other people.
In my parish church, our pastor talks a lot about what we have to do to end up in heaven. It mostly has to do with loving God, asking forgiveness for what we have done wrong, forgiving other people who may have wronged us, and feeding, clothing, sheltering, etc. our neighbors. Seems pretty clear. I honestly can’t remember when I’ve heard him speak about hell.

After a few minutes of that, I decided whatever was the other side of the doors couldn’t be any worse.
Which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that, whoever your narrator is, he is not as stupid as the characters in Sartre’s No Exit.

“is attitude at all, and I have yet to meet anyone who can explain to me how justice differs from vengeance.”
Vengeance is something a person does. Justice is something a society does.
Vengeance is an unrestrained response to evil and is done for the sole purpose of making the guilty suffer. The pain, the torment is the point.
Justice is a measured response to evil in the hopes of stemming further evil. The pain and imprisonment and sometimes death is the tool used–the point is help ease the suffering of the wronged, and as I said, is used to show others within the society that such acts will not be tolerated.
Vengeance tears a society apart–Justice is one of the glues that holds it together.
In a sense they are the same thing, on the surface at least. But the real difference is the purpose behind each, who is dealing out the punishment, how far one goes to ensure that it is only applied to the guilty, and how severe the punishment is.
Waterboarding = vengeance.
Imprisonment = justice
Love. Peace. Metallica.

Sorry Fred. A friend asked me to read this and I just can’t follow your logic as to why these passages do not support the doctrine of Hell.
Nowhere do you show these passages as not supporting the doctrine of Hell. In fact you even support the doctrine of Hell.
You want to point out WHO Hell is for over WHAT Hell is like, OK, that’s fine. But you can’t separate the two. Actions bring consequences. To not believe in the “WHAT” would make the “WHO” irrelevant.
If a child believed in Santa Clause but no naughty list or lump of coal what would happen? They would know their actions don’t really have consequences and they would unleash to do whatever they wanted.
Are we much different?

As a Catholic, I have also always liked the idea that if I die with sins on my conscience (bound to happen, me being human and all) that I can spend some time in Purgatory.
It cleanses, it purifies. There may be scrubbing bubbles.
The Orthodox don’t believe in Purgatory as such, but they also don’t regard the belief as heretical.
I’ve posted on a few Eastern Orthodox forums asking what they believe happens to souls of people who are Christians, did their best to live a Christian life, but, well, were less than perfect. I basically ask if there is some means by which the process of sanctification is completed. I haven’t been able to get a straight answer yet, aside from “we don’t believe in Purgatory.” They do seem to believe that there is a middle state where the “not quite ready for Heaven” folks hang out while they’re waiting for the Final Judgement, and apparently it’s rather pleasant, but they dance circles around the question of whether there are scrubbing bubbles.
Greek Rite Catholics technically believe in Purgatory, it is dogma after all, but they don’t seem to regard it as a place where sins (well, actually, sinful attitudes, in particular selfishness) are burned away in painful flames- that seems to be a Western idea. We just see it as a place where the “not quite ready for Heaven” crowd gets the sanctification process completed, but we don’t know how it works, and it’s silly to speculate about it.

As a Catholic, I have also always liked the idea that if I die with sins on my conscience (bound to happen, me being human and all) that I can spend some time in Purgatory.
I’ve always found the idea of Purgatory far more satisfying than a simple Heaven/Hell dichotomy. The idea of being able to atone after death is appealing, and it makes obvious allowances for human imperfections, unlike a simple Heaven/Hell dichotomy.

This thread needs some Rabia:
I carry a torch in one hand
And a bucket of water in the other;
With these things I am going to set fire to Heaven
And put out the flames of Hell
So that no one worships God
for fear of hell or greed of heaven.

“Are we much different?”
Yes, we are. You see, we’re what I like to call “adults”. As an adult, you understand your actions have consequences for both yourself and others. You understand you don’t want to hurt others because, at the most basic level, you know it’s wrong because you yourself would not like to be treated that way.
That is not a Christian belief–it shows up in many different religions.
Besides, those who argue there is no morality without some out of sight father figure waiting to punish you are either tyrants, or the sycophants of one. Morality out of fear of punishment and not out of the desire to do the right thing leads to the kind of fucked up theology we discuss here every day.
Love. Peace. Metallica.

…and KnightHawk got there first.
Honestly? If the only reason that you aren’t doing something is because you’re afraid that you’ll burn in hell, I encourage you to go ahead and do it anyway. Really.

Why is it that for centuries, people pretty much accepted the idea of eternal torment but now so many people (myself included) find it scandalously immoral?
I think it could be because we have bigger worlds. If everyone you know and ever expect to meet is Christian, then hell is just for those Other folks, who are probably bad people due to not being Christian anyway. But when it’s your coworker or neighbour or friend who you have to imagine in hell, it becomes harder to justify.

Froborr, you forget that revenge can feel good. But this seems like a pleasure to enjoy in moderation, if at all. “Imprisonment” as we know it (with attendant rape) probably goes too far.

Jake : If a child believed in Santa Clause but no naughty list or lump of coal what would happen? They would know their actions don’t really have consequences and they would unleash to do whatever they wanted.
Because children are good only because they believe Santa might punish them if they aren’t ?
I hope you’re not teaching that to any christian kids, cause it’s kind of blasphemy isn’t it ?
Anyway, belief in Santa Claus or not I’m pretty sure no child believes naughty children get a lump of coal, simply because no child has ever received a lump of coal for Christmas, or heard of one who did. Even in stories it’s pretty rare for it to happen. And while adults can waffle on “good” and “evil”, children know what “naughty” and “nice” mean : whatever their parents say. And by that definition, all children have been naughty during the year and know it.
That was always the point of Christmas to me, actually. Unconditional presents.

Slightly off-topic: as I understand it, coal used to be a desirable gift, since it was what you burned to keep warm. Mary Cook, in the stories about her girlhood in rural Ontario, mentions herself and her siblings getting pieces of coal at Christmas (along with other gifts), and solemnly accepting them in that spirit. What’s objectionable is that it’s a useful present — and not even a lasting one, at that. The modern equivalent, I guess, would be getting warm-but-ugly socks.

I’ve only read What Dreams May Come once, some long time ago, but I had the impression that Matheson plagiarized Life in the World Unseen by Anthony Borgia quite shamelessly. Matheson’s self-punishment visions were far more intense, though.

I seem to have missed the big party. *amused*
I find it really interesting that several of the objections Fred mentions to the RTC doctrine of hell are specifically addressed in Church-of-Christ teaching. For instance, the story in Matthew 25 is our standard depiction of the “end of the world” (and is commonly used as a proof-text against PMD, in conjunction with some other passages). Likewise, salvation partly by works is considered sound teaching, and by faith alone a false doctrine, so there’s no incongruity about particular sins sending people to hell. Not helping the poor is usually taken representatively, as it happens–one of a number of sins that can damn you, and perhaps the one that was most problematic for the audience Jesus was dealing with.
Some people have asked about how you come to terms with the idea that people you know are going to hell; some others have suggested that hell gets deflected onto Hitler and Stalin and the like. But it’s really simpler than that–you just…do. Especially if you’ve lived with the idea your whole life.
Early CoC literature is full of discussion about the subject, because we were once the “new cult on the block” in a time period when family loyalty and belief in hell were both strong. Large numbers of people were desperate to understand what would happen to their parents who had been around and in many cases died before the Restoration Movement began. The most common response–surprisingly, if you know what we’re like now–was “trust God to do the right thing”. It usually ran along the lines of “God may well take into account the amount of information we have available, but he hasn’t said so, so we can’t be certain of that. You, however, do know what God wants, so for you to act as though you were still in ignorance would be damnable. Certainly, if your parents do go to hell, the last thing they would want would be for you to join them.”
Over the years, the doctrine has tended to harden. Most preachers and authors will tell you that people had an obligation to seek out the truth and that, if they failed to do so, it’s their own fault. You might think that folks would freak out about their unsaved relatives or else leave–and some do. But in general, the idea just sort of settles in. You do what you can to convert them, but if they won’t, that’s their choice, and since all coercion can do is make people pretend to believe, it does no good to launch crusades or inquisitions. God will do what God will do, and you can’t stop him. And in heaven, you’ll see clearer than you do now–the best analogy I can think of is the stereotypical mother of a serial killer who just can’t believe her boy did those horrible things, but to everyone else it’s plain as day that he did. In the same way, in the eternal realm we’ll be able to see the ways that our relatives failed in their obligations to God and to their fellow humans in an objective manner.
Froborr, the Consumer Unit was, in fact, telling you the in-universe purpose. Hell is God’s Big Stick–a threat by which he tries to get people to obey. Yes, he could just mind-control them into doing the right thing all the time, but there wouldn’t be much left of our free will if he did.
In recent years it’s become fashionable, not to deny the existence of hell per se–respect for literal reading of Scripture is too strong–but to deny that punishment there is eternal. There was, for instance, a book a few decades ago called The Fire That Consumes. More recently, F. LaGard Smith lost his favored status among conservatives by writing a similar book–hell lasts forever, but individual sinners eventually cease to exist when they’ve suffered adequate punishment.

I also have to add that I’ve never understood the desirability of “merging with the Godhead”. Maybe I’d think differently after a long enough life, but I value my individual existence far too much to see why this is a good thing. Early in my ISCA days, I committed a major faux pas by saying that the concepts of Nirvana I’d heard all sounded like “eternal death” to me; I understand why people were upset, but I still don’t get the rest of it.

Posted by Froborr: Old joke: Bob dies and goes to Heaven. St. Peter is showing him around, and it’s all overwhelming, heart-achingly beautiful, amazingly, devestatingly glorious, and Bob is utterly overwhelmed for a time. Eventually, however, he notices that one section of Heaven is walled off from the rest. This is weird, because there are no barriers in Heaven. So he asks St. Peter about it, and St. Peter says, “Well, I’ll show you what’s back there, but you have to be really quiet.”?St. Peter shows him to the wall, and gives him a boost so he can peak over the top. Behind it is basically a set from Leave it to Beaver: a bunch of nattily dressed white folks, milling about the streets of a bland suburb, identical houses perfectly evenly spaced on the perfectly straight streets lined with perfectly manicured lawns. He watches for a while, but it’s really boring — yet they all seem completely content, even cheerful.?Returning to the glorious explosion of infinite art that is the rest of Heaven, Bob says, “Who are those guys?”?”Shh!” says St. Peter. “Keep your voice down. Those are the fundamentalists, and if they knew anyone else was here, they’d storm out in a heartbeat!”
Yeah, I know that one. They must’ve ended up here.

A touch off-topic, but I know quite a few of the regulars here read “Shortpacked!”, and today’s strip basically condenses a fair bit of Fred’s criticism of Left Behind into one lovely cartoon strip.

It cleanses, it purifies. There may be scrubbing bubbles.

The blood of the Lamb is disrespectful towards sin!

It’s worth noting that the word “hell” attempts to translate the ancient word which transliterates to “sheol.” In ancient Jewish thought, “sheol” is the place to which those who die go and await the coming of Messiah. “Sheol” does not appear to have the connotation of punishment for evil – that concept emerged most prominently during the time of the plague, and its medieaval sense of our evil ways leading to God killing so many of us off is what the evangelical tradition tends to draw on.

ako: To the point where it’s somewhat colored my perception about the whole “You condemn yourself to Hell” idea. Because I’ve seen zero correlation between people thinking they deserve punishment, and actually being deserving.
That is heartbreaking in some “Sandman” stories, especially in Jill Thompson’s “At Death’s Door”. One can only hope [or fanwank] (and it’s suggested) that hell is, for most, purgatory, and that at some point everyone will feel that they have been punished enough, justice is served, and are ready to go on.
Which leaves open the question of utter bastards in heaven, but in that universe, it seems to be more feature than bug.

C-Ara-velle: I’m pretty sure no child believes naughty children get a lump of coal, simply because no child has ever received a lump of coal for Christmas, or heard of one who did.
Where I grew up, it was that naughty children would get beaten by Santa’s nasty servant, or put in his bag and taken away. You don’t want to see what happens when a 3yo who honestly believes that does when his grandmother disguised as Santa comes in with the presents… I’ve seen 5yos slink out of the room when “Santa” came in, because even though they didn’t really believe in Santa anymore, better safe than sorry.

Mabus: In all honesty? The concept of a heaven/Summerland/whatever where I retained my individuality is more appealing to me too. (And I wouldn’t mind reincarnation, either, if I either got a reasonable next life with video games and non-crazy parents or we ended up going to totally different worlds when we died, a la some of S. King’s books.) But, like hell, I just can’t believe in it. Maybe I’ll be convinced someday.
ShifterCat: The warm-but-ugly socks for naughty kids thing came up in Pratchett’s “Hogfather”, I believe. Awesome concept.
Me, I believed in Santa–or pretended to–until I was thirteen, because I’d worked out that your folks had to get you extra presents that way. Then again, I *also* “believed” in the Tooth Fairy until I could get more money straight from my parents: the teeth had to come out, and it was $10 each to me or $200 to the dentist, so.

Whenever I think of Hell, I think of a sentiment expressed by Lewis, Pratchett/Gaiman, and other writers in various words: Experienced Devil smiling condescendingly at Apprentice Devil, and saying, “Really, now – what could we do to them that’s worse than what they do to each other?”

Mabus: The Big Stick approach is inherently coercive. A god who truly respected free will would offer people a choice without threatening them.
KnightHawk: I understand your point in principle, but I see no difference in the application in practice, and thus I reject both justice and vengeance as unworthy of a civilized society. Rehabilitation and deterrence are the only approaches to crime I accept.

That’s because you’re a stubbron bastard who’s arguing semantics and won’t admit “Rehabilitation” and “deterrence” are just smaller facets of Justice.
But hey, we love you anyway.
Love. Peace. Metallica.

KnightHawk: Ah. I was thinking in terms of philosophy of law, where justice is defined more narrowly as “people getting what they deserve”, and “rehabilitation” and “deterrence” are presented as alternative rationales for the legal system, not as subsets of justice.
I think it’s actually a mistake to include rehabilitation and deterrence under justice, particularly rehabilitation. Take for example a serial rapist and murderer who is suffering from a previously undiagnosed mental illness, and is a completely harmless, even productive member of society when medicated. Justice would demand that he suffer for his crimes. Rehabilitation requires only that he be monitored to ensure he takes his medicine.
Now, in reality, it’s never quite that simple, but do you see my point? Justice is about paying back suffering with suffering. I’m saying that, unless the suffering of the criminal serves some kind of constructive purpose, it’s nothing but vengeance and unbecoming of an enlightened society.

Izzi: Me, I believed in Santa–or pretended to–until I was thirteen, because I’d worked out that your folks had to get you extra presents that way.
Your folks bought that? (Or were willing to pretend they did?) Wow.

Me, I believed in Santa–or pretended to–until I was thirteen, because I’d worked out that your folks had to get you extra presents that way.
Really? In most of the Christian families* I know, kids got one gift from “Santa” and one or more from the parents until the youngest child stopped believing in Santa, and then the number of gifts from the parents went up by one. (Or size of the gift, sometimes they’d get only one really big gift). It’s not like the gift budget got smaller based on the child’s beliefs, after all.
*At least one of which would strenuously object to being called a Christian family, but they celebrate Christmas and Easter, but not Ramadan or Samhain, so…

Now I can’t help but be reminded of “Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me,” that comedy episode of Millenium that focused on four world-weary demons chatting in a donut shop. (They’re disguised as people.) It’s funny (written by Darin Morgan), but it’s a bittersweet kind of funny, and at the end actually very sad. But anyway, it’s full of Screwtape-style sentiments. A full transcript of the episode is here. Choice quotes:
BLURK: You know, we were so envious when Man was given free will. But what has it brought them? The belief that their lives are determined by everything other than their own will.
ABUM: They sin so often, it’s just become another part of their routine. And whatever passion first compelled them to commit such acts, has long since passed away.
ABUM: They’ll spend a third of every day in a place that they can’t stand, doing stuff they don’t wanna do! All in the name of earning a living. I’ve seen places in punishments in Hell less severe.

Inge: It meant they could hold the “Santa is WATCHING YOU!” threat over me, at least a little, which probably saved their sanity around Christmastime. My sister and I were hellions right up through our teenage years, so having the “…and you miiiiight not get a SNES this year if you keep calling her a moron” thing helped a lot.
Froborr: See, now that I’m older, I think it actually *did* (and does) work that way. My view of the world at ten or twelve was slightly flawed: I saw my parents getting fewer individual presents, didn’t take relative price into account as much, etc.

“I also have to add that I’ve never understood the desirability of “merging with the Godhead”. Maybe I’d think differently after a long enough life, but I value my individual existence far too much to see why this is a good thing. Early in my ISCA days, I committed a major faux pas by saying that the concepts of Nirvana I’d heard all sounded like “eternal death” to me; I understand why people were upset, but I still don’t get the rest of it.”
I agree. Sounds pretty much the same as what atheists believe happens to you when you die, just in more mystical language. I don’t see a huge difference between my soul merging with the Oversoul and my body decomposing and merging with the Earth. Either way, there’s no more ME.
But just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not true. I find belief in an afterlife even more difficult than belief in some sort of deity, which can really get me down if I allow myself to think about it too much.
The Buddhist idea of reincarnation being a punishment, and if you’re good your reward is to die permently seems to come from a people who didn’t like life very much. Though I’m sure I don’t understand the subtleties of Buddhist thought.
I think I like the idea of reincarnation the most, because then I’ll get to have another go at this “life” thing, but if reincarnation is true, but you obviously don’t remember your past lives, so that doesn’t help much either does it?
I just hope that when my time comes, I’ll have better accepted the fact that I will cease to exist. Maybe if people live long enough, they become tired of existing.

I agree with Froborr about justice and vengeance. The fact that life has no justice seems to offend our moral sense on a subconscious level, challenging our desire for fairness and for a balancing of the scales. One could arguably use “justice” to refer to circumstances of balanced suffering, such as a murderer being eaten by a shark. “Vengeance” would apply if the attempt to balance suffering was caused by humans with no constructive purpose. Such attempts are pointless – they do nothing to repair the original suffering, and often the original suffering cannot be repaired.

Caravelle,
When my grandmother was a child (1920s), she actually did get coal as a Christmas present one year, but for misbehaving – it wasn’t seen as a nice gift at all. My mother mentioned the story to her own kids occasionally, so we wouldn’t forget it was a real possibility, although none of us ever got anything like that.

BTW, the justice versus vengeance debate sounds great if one imagines the debaters as Amerigo Bonasera and Vito Corleone.

On damning ourselves: In James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen, the eponymous hero visits Hell and learns demiurge who really created the universe hadn’t planned to create Hell but so many proud Christians showed up convinced they deserved damnation for their great, horrifying sins that he gave them what they wanted out of respect for their feelings (“He can’t feel pride because he created the universe–and every day he has to look at it.”).

Holy crap, Izzy, ten bucks a tooth?!? I might have been knocking my teeth out at that rate. (I didn’t get an allowance.)
Froborr, your understanding of both justice and vengeance is completely foreign to me. I sort of think of justice as a mid-point between vengeance and mercy, but really that’s a huge oversimplification. There’s not a single conception of justice; it’s defined differently among cultures and people.
I don’t think justice implies making anyone suffer. It does necessitate recompense that’s deserved, but as someone said elsewhere, strict “eye for an eye” is only one system of justice; most are more nuanced, or have different objectives. Justice is “making things right” and usually involves some form of compensation. The entity in the wrong pays in some way and the community redresses the wrong in some way.
The murdered/rapist receiving mandated medical treatment and having to live with his actions certainly fits into this. To argue otherwise seems to imply that whenever anything bad happens, it results in injustice. I don’t think that’s a tenable proposition.

Hey Slacktivists, have you folks read Pullman’s “The Amber Spyglass”? I just am reading it now and am absolutely blown away by his imagination of Hell.
I saw this letter today which brought Fred’s post about HELL to mind even though it’sn’t that closely related: DMV Request for surrender of plate “GO 2 11″ — Request for hearing.

Justice is “making things right” and usually involves some form of compensation. The entity in the wrong pays in some way and the community redresses the wrong in some way.
That’s an admirable concept. It seems to recognize that some wrongs can only be redressed and not undone.
I had read Froborr’s post as addressing only the penalty and consequence concept of justice, as a criticism of treating justice as a matter of win-and-loss columns.
To argue otherwise seems to imply that whenever anything bad happens, it results in injustice. I don’t think that’s a tenable proposition.
To me, the argument seems to be that an injustice results when someone does something bad and there are no natural consequences, or when such consequences affect people who have not done bad things. That’s the viewpoint of “Farther Along.”

The Buddhist idea of reincarnation being a punishment, and if you’re good your reward is to die permently seems to come from a people who didn’t like life very much.
For most of human history, life for the majority of people has basically been struggle, work, uncertainty, and things getting progressively worse, in the sense that if you live long enough you lose your physical vigor as well as many of the members of your personal community. (Still is, for an enormous percentage of the earth’s population at present.) Take away a lot of our medical knowledge, including wonder drugs to manage pain, and life looks basically like a lot of work, except perhaps for a few years when you’re young and more or less carefree. I can see why people would long to be released from going back to do it again and again and again.

Why is it that for centuries, people pretty much accepted the idea of eternal torment but now so many people (myself included) find it scandalously immoral?
I think it could be because we have bigger worlds.

I don’t have any hard evidence, but I think that’s part of it in a different sense as well. Our worlds have gotten a lot bigger in scope over the centuries, and we have some idea of the vastness of time and space in our universe. We can’t emotionally conceive eternity, but we can conceive of scales much larger than our ancestors and the idea of what eternal punishment would be gets much harder to accept.
Also, it was quite a while in Western thought before philosophers and mathematicians had a handle on infinity as essentially distinct from a really large number (the Indians were far ahead of the game). Zeno’s paradoxes got tossed around for centuries before Newton’s and Leibnitz’s treatments gave satisfactory answers. Once you can understand the distinction between an infinite amount of time and just a really long time, you start to wonder who could possibly deserve an eternity in Hell.

My mom’s uncle got coal in his stocking one year – and yes, it was a punishment, not something useful. When she was little, she also had a friend who really did trip over an untied shoelace and break out all her front teeth. Sometimes I can understand why my mom is such a literalist*.
I don’t remember ever believing in Santa – I do recall pretending to when I was four, because my parents obviously believed and I didn’t want to hurt their feelings.
We’ve never pretended that Santa or the Tooth Fairy was real with our daughter, and she’s good all year ’round anyway. (She’s just an exceptionally good kid; I’m not at all saying it’s BECAUSE we told/refrained from telling her any particular set of morality tales.) We’ve also pointed out that people like pretending about Santa/tTF, so she doesn’t turn out to be the kid that ruins it for everyone else. And she hasn’t – I think never believing in it in the first place, she’s never felt the need to “save” others from their pitiful ignorance. (The opposite of the convert being the greatest fanatic?)
*Not in the sense we generally use it here; she’s always been areligious as far as I know. I mean, literally literalist; metaphor is not in her vocabulary, and she believes that what people say is what they mean.

Why is it that for centuries, people pretty much accepted the idea of eternal torment but now so many people (myself included) find it scandalously immoral?
We’re also exposed to more ideas. For most of history, people lived where they were born, and would only be exposed to the ideas of their immediate neighbors. A peasant in Europe in the late Middle Ages would hear of the faith of their community, and they might hear second-hand accounts of other faiths – but those probably only through the point of view of others of their faith, not directly. So even if they’d heard of, say, Islam, it would not be of Islam as practiced, only of Islam as stories brought by Christain travellers and fighters.
But we have enough exposure to other ideas and cultures that we’ve all heard of faiths which don’t believe in judgement, or don’t believe in hell, or do believe in reincarnation, etc. And we’ve heard a lot about them, and probably from people who believe those faiths. Pascal’s wager makes no sense to us, because we’re not choosing between believing or rejecting a single faith option, we’re choosing between many different faiths.
We also see that cultures that don’t have the threat of hell to make their people behave manage to function just fine, and we see cultures where things that our culture would consider a hell-worthy offense are allowed, and those cultures seem to function fine.
So hell no longer becomes a necessary enforcment measure for essential social rules in the only philosophical system we’ve heard of, it is instead something arbetrary and without benefit, and just one of many good cultural options.

Surely justice is basically the same thing as fairness? If there is a cake and there are four people who want it, all things being equal, each should get a quarter of the cake. Anything else would be unjust.
But what if all things are not equal? What if one of the four is the person who baked the cake? Having put more into the cake, they are entitled to get more out of it — the whole thing if they want it. Taking cake that they earned away from them would be unjust. Or if they had agreed to split the cost of buying the cake, but one person refused to shell out when the time came, so that someone else had to pay more than they could afford, surely the person who did not pay would not be entitled to any cake?
In this sense, “justice” is about people getting not what they “deserve” in some moral sense, but what they have earned by investing their own resources.
What does this have to do with the criminal justice system? The person who does not contribute to the cake should get no cake, and the person who doesn’t contribute to society should not get the benefits of society, perhaps. That would be a kind of justice — if you steal, the police won’t protect you. If you don’t pay your taxes, you can’t drive on the roads. But that’s kind of hard to implement in practice. Incarceration is a rough approximation, a way of denying some of the benefits of society to those who don’t contribute or active sabotage it. It is only to this extent that the criminal justice system has anything to do with justice, I’d say. Incarceration can also serve the other purposes others have mentioned — deterrence, rehabilitation, containment — practical purposes intended to lower the crime rate in society. But those practical purposes have little to do with justice as such.
Vengeance is sort of the flip side of justice — not only are we going to deny cake to the jerk who didn’t bring his money, we’re going to exile him from our group, because we’re angry that he made us spend more than we could afford. Vengeance has everything to do with anger and justice, ideally, has nothing to do with it. (Mercy, of course, is giving someone more than they’ve earned. Giving someone a piece of cake even if they can’t/won’t contribute anything toward it.)
The unfortunate thing is people that the “criminal justice system” is expected, by various groups, to do all of these things at once — justice, vengeance, deterrence, rehabilitation, containment, and just occasionally mercy. So we imprison all of these marijuana users because voters want there to be some kind of deterrent for marijana use… But does that serve justice, really? Or contrary-wise, the death penalty and solitary confinement are best and second best from a “containment” point of view — they prevent re-offences. But isn’t there room for mercy? And counselling and treatment programs are great from a rehabilitation and crime-reduction point of view, but aren’t really about justice. The system doesn’t do any of its jobs all that well, in the US, unfortunately.

Mary, you raise an interesting point. Namely, the question of what is fair is highly relative. For the person who baked the cake, it seems only fair that they should get more. But to the others, that seems unfair — shouldn’t each get an equal share of the cake? If three people split the cost, you say the fourth shouldn’t receive cake. But what if he’s destitute and starving? Is it mercy to give him a quarter of the cake and fairness to let him starve? Or is it justice to give him a quarter of the cake and cruelty to let him starve? After all, it’s not his fault he didn’t contribute — he had no money to chip in!
I don’t think these questions are really answerable, which is why I think that, ultimately, we have to abandon the notion of justice as a primitive barbarism, like slavery or feudalism.

neohippie: The Buddhist idea of reincarnation being a punishment, and if you’re good your reward is to die permently seems to come from a people who didn’t like life very much.
Dash: For most of human history, life for the majority of people has basically been struggle, work, uncertainty, and things getting progressively worse, in the sense that if you live long enough you lose your physical vigor as well as many of the members of your personal community. (Still is, for an enormous percentage of the earth’s population at present.) Take away a lot of our medical knowledge, including wonder drugs to manage pain, and life looks basically like a lot of work, except perhaps for a few years when you’re young and more or less carefree. I can see why people would long to be released from going back to do it again and again and again.
Dash, that strikes me as a pretty simplistic and patronizing explanation for Buddhism. It’s about on par, to my thinking, as explaining all of religion as “Well, long ago we didn’t have a better explanation for why lightning happened expect that God was having a temper tantrum. Now we have science, so belief in God isn’t necessary anymore.” It’s an explanation that infantalizes all religious people as fearful, ignorant, and unsophisticated in their thinking – and my experience of other religious people includes folks who cannot justly be described that way.
It’s also pretty simplistic to describe Nirvana as “the goal is to die permanently,” or reincarnation and Nirvana as a system of punishment and reward.
neohippie, you ended with a caveat that maybe you just don’t understand Buddhist thought. I’m going to borrow that caveat, because what follows is my own understanding of original Buddhist teachings, and they may be mistaken. Bear with me.
Buddhist thought on suffering is bigger than just “life sucks in third world countries.” If that’s all it were, a more comfortable standard of living would render Buddhism superfluous. One of big tenets of Buddhism is that suffering is caused by desire. That can be desire not to be in constant pain or desire to own that big pretty house or even the desire that all human beings experience peace and joy. The suffering comes from not having the object of one’s desire, and getting it, you find other things to desire and suffer from not having. The only way out of the cycle of desire and suffering is to not be attached to the “maya” (illusion) of this existence. Unattachment is a huge part of enlightenment.
When we are sufficiently unattached, even from the idea of individual personalities and ego, we no longer desire to be reborn into an existence full of illusions. And so we aren’t. Thus we reach Nirvana–we aren’t given it as a reward, we reach it by becoming enlightened. We put ourselves there, or put ourselves back into the reincarnation cycle.
I am probably oversimplifying this myself, so my apologies in advance for any misrepresentations.
I’m also a little confused as to how Bodhisattvas, who become enlightened but choose not to get off the reincarnation cycle “until every blade of grass knows Nirvana”, aren’t themselves acting on a desire (that of universal attainment of enlightenment) and therefore aren’t actually enlightened after all…?
In any case, though, Buddhism isn’t simply a death wish of a religion, and the Buddhist idea of suffering is a lot more sophisticated and larger in scope than the idea that living in poverty, in a war zone, or with inadequate medical treatment.
And I’m thinking that while I, too, generally fear the death of self and enjoy being an individual person, there are times when I do find “being me” to be an exhausting thing with no break in sight. At those times, the Buddhist ideas that “all things are maya” and “self is another attachment; let it go” come a little closer to my comprehension. It’s like, don’t I ever get to leave the stage, go back into the dressing room, and take off the make-up? Stop performing for a little while? Maybe get to play a different role, or even just leave the theater and go home for the night, wherever that is?
Times like that, sleep is nice.
So, yeah, I do tend to believe that as a wiser being whose perception is not filtered through the limitations of this existence, I may well lose my desire to remain an individual ego, and realize the joy of “merging with Godhead”. I am not yet that wiser being, and am not likely to become so while encased in this body, but I have faith that one day I’ll see things a lot more clearly than I do now.
Come to think of it, my religious faith is a lot like my “faith” in science – we’re always learning, and there’s always more to learn, and one day we’ll know the answers. Where my religious faith goes further is, I believe there’s even more to learn than our current perceptions and learning methods will allow us to learn. Which means science itself is limited. It’s incredibly valuable, science, and I rely on it as our best beings of learning about the physical world, but not for those things our physical senses can’t touch. There’s a lot we can’t know simply because we’re humans, and humans are only human.
And that makes me happy. I like the idea that “there is more in heaven and earth, Horatio”; Gods know “my philosophy” is depressingly limited at this time. I like the idea that the world’s bigger than me, bigger than humans, bigger than what humans can perceive. I like that I don’t have to know, or be able to know, “what’s it all about” in order to have faith that there is, indeed, something that it’s all about. And that’s where a lot of my religious belief comes from–the need for something more than what humans are limited to.
I’m not Buddhist, but I think there must be a lot of overlap.

Once you can understand the distinction between an infinite amount of time and just a really long time, you start to wonder who could possibly deserve an eternity in Hell.
THIS.
An infinite punishment/reward for a finite life is inherently unjust. Also wasteful. So I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell or any other changeless state.

Sometimes, you just amaze me. This is perfect. Brilliant. Exactly the explanation that is called for. And you’d better believe it’ll be sermon fodder for me at some point (nearly everything is at some time!). Thank you.

Another important aspect of justice is that it is predictable and pre-established. In a just system, one knows what is allowed and what is forbidden, and one knows, in advance, what procedures will be used to determine guilt if one is breaking the rules, and what punishments/consequences will be imposed if one is found guilty.
So, with the cake, a just system may say that if one person provides the goods and bakes the cake, the cake belongs to that person, to distribute as they see fit. If someone takes the cake, or a portion of the cake, without permission of the person who provided the goods and did the work, it is theft, and will be punished. But if the person who took the cake can demonstrate that they were destitute and starving, and took no more cake than was needed to meet their desperate need, the punishment will be waived (and perhaps the person who baked the cake will be recompensed out of the community’s supplies.) If three people provide goods and one of them does the work to bake it, then it is their obligation to agree in advance how the cake will be divided, and in the event of a dispute, there is an impartial mediator to whom they can go to have the cake divided.
The ancient Israelite temple system was an example of this – there was a list of rules, and there was a list of sacrifices needed to make things right if the rules were broken. One didn’t need to fear hell, because one knew what to do to make things right if one broke the rules, and had the assurance that God was quite satisfied with the sacrifices as listed in the rules. It’s not clear how you get from this to the fear that if you unintentionally tell a small lie that does no harm, you’re going to be condemned to hell forever. And I’m not sure that the idea of a Jesus-sacrifice is an improvement – the temple sacrifices were on a human scale, and gave people control over their own redemption when they did wrong, while relying on Jesus takes away individual control and agency.

Hell is for Children.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxYsi5Y-xOQ

Mary, you raise an interesting point. Namely, the question of what is fair is highly relative. For the person who baked the cake, it seems only fair that they should get more. But to the others, that seems unfair — shouldn’t each get an equal share of the cake?
This is actually a big real-world problem in resource allocation, and gets hairy pretty quickly. Are we trying to be fair to everyone in the room, or should we share it with our neighbors too, and why or why not, and which ones? Do we allocate it per family, or per person? How about the six month old who can’t eat the cake; does he get passed over, or does his family get the cake instead, or does he get the cake to smear over the rug? Should the hungry people get more cake than the ones who just ate dessert, or is that unfair?
If you’re ever grumbling about how slow your work email is downloading, while the bozo across the hall is using all the network bandwidth by opening twenty different peer-to-peer connections from two computers to download every episode of Lost, then you’ve got some exposure to the problem.

Jake: ”Nowhere do you show these passages as not supporting the doctrine of Hell. In fact you even support the doctrine of Hell.
You want to point out WHO Hell is for over WHAT Hell is like, OK, that’s fine. But you can’t separate the two. Actions bring consequences. To not believe in the “WHAT” would make the “WHO” irrelevant.”

Fred’s point, as I understand it, is that the description of hell in those three passages is merely as rhetoric flourishes, not to be read literally. He says:

“Which is the entire point of the story. It’s not about who goes to heaven or who goes to Hell. And it’s certainly not intended to provide cartographic detail about the afterlife. It’s about ethics — about the obligation we have to the beggars at our gates. Heaven and Hell appear in this story only to make this point more emphatic.”

According to Fred, Pearson was condemned for not interpreting these passages literally in their descrption of hell, but Fred argues that it is impossible to interpret them literally in a coherent way:

“But it’s not just the bad guys who get thrown into “the lake of fire” here. “Death and Hades” are cast in first. (Yes, the same “Hades” in which the rich man received his fiery torment in the first story.) So if you want to insist that this reference to a “lake of fire” must be interpreted “literally,” then you’re going to have to explain to me what it means for the abstract concepts of death and Hades to be literally thrown into it.

So there you go. Fred’s not talking about who does and doesn’t go to hell, and he doesn’t think the Bible really is either. It’s all just a metaphor for emphasizing our duty to those in need, one which has been taken too literally and altered considerably from its original purpose.

In my family, my parents went on labeling gifts as being from Santa long after me and my sister stopped believing, just for the fun of it, I guess. I’d actually help my mom wrap gifts and label presents to my dad and sister as being from Santa. We’d also label some gifts as being from the pets. One year, my mom labled a present as being from God, so I labled another as being from the Devil. I can’t remember what the present from the devil was or who it was for though.

Froborr, why is that question unanswerable? Do you really value “cake” or an abstraction of “fairness” more than “life”?
The biggest problem with ideology is that what that word really means, when applied by most people, is an appeal to some random abstraction that even they don’t understand, sans any pragmatic benefit. When people appeal to “fairness” in the context that you’re describing, they don’t use the term to promote any social goal or rational result at all. They simply say, as you have, that fairness somehow means that “making cake” is more important than “human life”.
If you stop to realize how stupid, how selfish and pointless and destructive, that formula really is, then the ‘question’ isn’t hard to answer at all. Making a cake is a wonderful thing, but its paltry compared to making sure life, even the life of others, is sustained and enjoyable. And the analogy spreads. If I till the soil and grow the crops, that’s excellent. But it doesn’t warrant me trying to declare that it has then become my right to let others starve to death.
This is, in fact, a really really easy question to answer. I would argue that this is why, as Fred points out, the Bible has answered it. Selfishness that causes suffering is bad. In fact, its so bad that its the only thing the bible ever specifically describes as “hell worthy.” So no, the question of “selfishness hiding behind ‘fairness’,” vs. “trying to reduce suffering and needless death,” is actually almost absurdly easy to answer.

Lonespark: Heh. Yeah, I recall some string-and-doorknob-style antics. I did get an allowance, but it was $5 a week at the time, so.
Nicole: I like that explanation, and you remind me that I want to read more about Buddhism.
I have a friend in his sixties who seems to quite enjoy life, and isn’t at all miserable or anything…but has said that he really *doesn’t* want an afterlife at all. He’s looking forward to living long enough to finish up a few specific things, then getting an eternity of rest. And my grandmother felt the same way before she died–albeit she was extremely Christian and looking forward to Heaven, she was also pretty ready to just *stop*, from what I heard. So the dissolution of self is an idea that can work for some people, even those for whom life isn’t entirely or even mostly pain.
Vendor Xeno: So…you’re saying that the cake is a lie?
Sorry.

The Montezuma story reminds me of a bit from the Mahabharata: Arjuna, or one of the Pandevas, outlives the rest. He eventually winds up in the afterlife, but is shown that his brothers and all his friends are suffering in hell, while all his enemies are enjoying heaven. So he says that he’d rather be with his brothers and friends in hell. However, this all turns out to have simply been a test, which he passed by choosing to be with his brothers, even in hell. It’s been a long time since I read that story, so the details might be a little off.

Vendor Xeno: So…you’re saying that the cake is a lie?
Well,
We do what we must because we can,
For the good of all of us except for the ones who are dead.
But there’s no sense crying over every mistake,
You just keep on trying ’till you run out of cake.
GLaDOS 1:2

An infinite punishment/reward for a finite life is inherently unjust. Also wasteful.
why would those be reasons to reject the existence of heaven or hell?

A pair of tangentially related comics:
http://angryflower.com/bobdie.gif
http://angryflower.com/afterl.html

Froborr: The Big Stick approach is inherently coercive. A god who truly respected free will would offer people a choice without threatening them.
Granted, but there are degrees and degrees of coercion. I’d respond at more length, but must run off to work.

Nicole: I’m also a little confused as to how Bodhisattvas, who become enlightened but choose not to get off the reincarnation cycle “until every blade of grass knows Nirvana”, aren’t themselves acting on a desire (that of universal attainment of enlightenment) and therefore aren’t actually enlightened after all…?
Not that I’m an expert on the subject by any stretch, but (according to Wikipedia) different flavors of Buddhism have different viewpoints on this. For instance, the Dalai Lama says it’s impossible to delay enlightenment for altrustic reasons, because altruism itself moves you closer to buddhahood.
It also appears to be the case that not all desires are recognized as bad by Buddhism. For instance, it’s not helpful to deny yourself the desire for food such that you starve to death. Buddha himself urged a “Middle Way” between destructive indulgence and destructive austerity; though, again, where exactly that path lies varies with the branch of Buddhism you look at.
Then again, I’ve also heard that the real trick to enlightenment is that to reach it, you must extinguish the desire for it. I suppose to get that last inch, you need to stop swimming and let the current carry you, so to speak. Or there’s a knack to it, like throwing yourself at the ground and missing. I think Zen koans are intended in large part for this very purpose: to detach the mind, flex it, and render it capable of handling the contradictions of existence.

Tonio: why would those be reasons to reject the existence of heaven or hell?
Because if God is so aggressively unfair, then there’s nothing to be gained by accepting the existence of heaven or hell. We might as well reject them and live as though we were in a better universe.
Nicole: I’m also a little confused as to how Bodhisattvas, who become enlightened but choose not to get off the reincarnation cycle “until every blade of grass knows Nirvana”, aren’t themselves acting on a desire (that of universal attainment of enlightenment) and therefore aren’t actually enlightened after all…?
Keep in mind that Bodhisattva-ism is a distinctly Mahayana idea, so Nirvana in the classic sense is not really the goal. The goal is to become the Buddha, and the Buddha’s desire is universal enlightenment.
As I understand it, the reason Bodhisattvas aren’t slaves to desire like everyone else is that it’s not their desire that they’re acting on, but the universe’s desire. If you’re a Bodhisattva, you do good for others entirely for their sake, with no concern for your own reward, and therefore it doesn’t matter whether there’s any such thing as “you” or not. That’s the escape from illusion.

From what I recall from a college course long ago, Mahayana Buddhists believe that it’s possible to “pull” someone toward enlightenment, and have the Boddhisatvas do precisely that. From what I understand, the Boddhisatvas are not quite enlightened, and their desire to pull others to enlightenment is precisely what’s holding them back. Alternatively, compassion, rather than desire, may be their motivation. Theravada Buddhists, on the other hand, believe that each person must follow the path to enlightenment on their own, and that it is therefore impossible to be a Boddhisatva.

Because if God is so aggressively unfair, then there’s nothing to be gained by accepting the existence of heaven or hell. We might as well reject them and live as though we were in a better universe.
I understand and don’t understand at the same time. I was treating the question of whether those locales exist as a separate issue from how humans should live, which may not be a good idea. I wouldn’t want to reject their existence if they do exist, and I wouldn’t want to accept their existence if they don’t.

Taking the cake analogy a bit further.
You’ve got a person who put up the money to buy the ingredients for the cake.
You’ve got the farmer who produced the ingredients for the cake.
Then you’ve got the guy who actually drove to the farm to pick up the ingredients.
You’ve got the person who cleaned and repaired the oven to make the actual cake-baking possible.
Then you’ve got the person who actually baked the cake.
So, five people who contributed to the creation of the cake. Do you divide the cake up equally between them? Or, do you determine that some people contributed more to the cake, and are entitled to a greater share- in our Capitalist System According to Rush Limbaugh, the guy who paid for the ingredients would be entitled to the entire cake, because the people who did the actual work didn’t contribute anything (there is a reason I quit listening to Rush about a year after he first hit the national airwaves- he actually put forth the question of why minimum wage should be raised, and why workers should be paid well. He said, in so many words, “the workers didn’t contribute anything”. Eventually, chronic nausea set in, and I became physically incapable of listening to his show. I can’t even listen to “My City Was Gone” anymore, since he co-opted it as his show theme song. I think Chrissie Hynde actually buried herself alive just so she could roll over in her grave.)
In our current capitalist system, the person who paid for the ingredients would be entitled to four-fifths of the cake, with the remaining fifth going to the people who actually contributed to making the cake, because capital is considered to be a much more valuable contribution than labor. Hey, didn’t you know? Capital creates wealth, (in the form of cake, in this case), labor doesn’t. Of course, the smallest crumb would go to the guy who fixed the oven, because he didn’t actually participate in the creation of the cake, even though the cake would not have been possible without his work. Oh, and the lady who cleaned the kitchen, so there would be a safe, clean environment for the cake to be baked in? No cake for her, she didn’t contribute…
Well, somebody mentioned cake and justice in the same post. I ran with it.
Y’all can go back to talking about Hell now.

Heaven and Hell are metaphysical, rather than physical, concepts. Thus, the question of whether or not they exist is normative, and has no “true” answer. It’s entirely a matter of what works for you.

Ericblair: That particular verse has, in fact, been bizarrely inspiring lately, as I handle job search/agent quest/health insurance struggles. The fact that I’m drawing my sayings from GLaDOS may indicate something about me, the state of the world, or both.
Or possibly just that I’ve been playing a whole lot of video games.

Me, I believed in Santa–or pretended to–until I was thirteen, because I’d worked out that your folks had to get you extra presents that way.
My brother pretended to believe in Santa and the Easter bunny until he was fourteen, and I convinced my mom he really believed until then for that very same reason. My mom was famous for saying “if you don’t believe in Santa, you won’t get presents from him,” but she’d never ask my brother; she always asked me if he really believed. I always said yes, and the Santa presents kept coming. By the time he reached 13, my mom was starting to get worried about him, lol.
Of course, when we finally acknowledged the truth, the presents didn’t stop. We still get a stocking with candy and gifts every year, but as kids we had every reason to believe we wouldn’t.

Thus, the question of whether or not they exist is normative, and has no “true” answer.
So when a particular believer asserts that they are actual locales, that believer is mistaken? What’s the distinction between a normative concept and a metaphor?

Tonio: why would those be reasons to reject the existence of heaven or hell?
To my mind, those would not be reasons to reject the concepts of heaven or hell, but rather reasons to reject a God who created/enforced such a system. As Huckleberry Finn said, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”, and then go about doing the best you can as a decent human being.
The immorality of something doesn’t prove or disprove the existence of that something. But if something is fairly clearly unjust/immoral, it tells you something about whatever made that something, and whatever tries to enforce that something as good or necessary. So you reject L&J’s god’s heaven and hell, and L&J’s god, simply because such rejection is the right thing to do.

So when a particular believer asserts that they are actual locales, that believer is mistaken?
That would require that they not exist. This is not the case; they neither exist nor do not exist. Like God, they have been defined such that the question of whether or not they exist is utterly meaningless in any empirical, factual sense.
It is akin to the question of whether freedom exists, or whether a tasty Hershey bar exists (both normative questions).

then go about doing the best you can as a decent human being.
Sure, but that doesn’t answer the question of whether those locales exist or whether the god exists. Sounds like your point is that the question is not all that relevant. I’m interested in that question because I’m interested in knowledge for its own sake.
So you reject L&J’s god’s heaven and hell, and L&J’s god, simply because such rejection is the right thing to do.
Wait…”reject” in this context means something other than “deny the existence of”? That’s how I had understood the term.

Ericblair: That particular verse has, in fact, been bizarrely inspiring lately, as I handle job search/agent quest/health insurance struggles. The fact that I’m drawing my sayings from GLaDOS may indicate something about me, the state of the world, or both.
As long as you don’t get any funny ideas about becoming the boss of your own people-testing laboratory, that’s OK I think.
And with the people-testing laboratory and subsequent disposition of said people, we now return to the Hell discussion. Thank you.

Like God, they have been defined such that the question of whether or not they exist is utterly meaningless in any empirical, factual sense.
Why they have been defined that way is a mystery to me. Freedom and tastiness are human-created concepts, although the latter has a biological basis. So it would seem that either a god is purely a human-created concept, or a god has physical existence like a planet or rock. And if someone asserts both, I might have to break my lifelong promise never to try weed.

So it would seem that either a god is purely a human-created concept, or a god has physical existence like a planet or rock.
Not necessarily. A god could, for example, live in an alternate universe with differing laws of physics and make alterations to this universe by some means indistinguishable from the normal operation of (our) laws of physics, including inserting the concept of godhood into chosen human minds. In that case, it would be neither a human-created concept nor something that physically exists in our universe.
Indeed, though it’s rarely put in such terms, this seems to be the belief most theists I’ve encountered have.

Not necessarily. A god could, for example, live in an alternate universe with differing laws of physics and make alterations to this universe by some means indistinguishable from the normal operation of (our) laws of physics, including inserting the concept of godhood into chosen human minds. In that case, it would be neither a human-created concept nor something that physically exists in our universe.
Except that if it’s possible for one to affect the other, they’re not actually separate universes at all (at least for any sensible definition of “universe”) – it just means the universe is larger than we realize. Furthermore, if the alterations are indistinguishable from the ordinary operation of the universe, then they’re not alterations at all.

Frenchroast: My mom was famous for saying “if you don’t believe in Santa, you won’t get presents from him,” but she’d never ask my brother; she always asked me if he really believed. I always said yes, and the Santa presents kept coming.
And I thought my quarreling and vindictive relatives gave the best training in subterfuge a child could hope for…

Except that if it’s possible for one to affect the other, they’re not actually separate universes at all (at least for any sensible definition of “universe”) – it just means the universe is larger than we realize.
If the alterations are entirely undetectable (see below) and the effect is entirely one-way, then I think it can be reasonably viewed as a separate (or possibly containing?) universe.
Furthermore, if the alterations are indistinguishable from the ordinary operation of the universe, then they’re not alterations at all.
Unless said god is able to make the alterations retroactively, such that it was always going to have happened that way.
Put another way: There is no difference between a god construed thus (call it Ghu), and no god at all. Thus, when someone says “I believe in Ghu!” and someone else says “I’m an atheist!” they are actually agreeing. They are choosing two different, equally valid ways of perceiving the same underlying truth, and thus (just like two people who say “Chocolate is yummy!” and “Chocolate is gross!”) both right.
On the other hand, a Young Earth Creationist, like someone who claims chocolate is made from space-dwelling weasel-monkeys, is not choosing a different interpretation of the same facts, but making up their own facts, and therefore wrong.

If the alterations are entirely undetectable (see below) and the effect is entirely one-way, then I think it can be reasonably viewed as a separate (or possibly containing?) universe.
Hm, so going by strongly connected components instead of just connected components? I guess that falsifies with what I said… except it’s not quite how any actual god is thought to act, barring deist ones. This god can presumably detect and image at least certain parts of our “universe” – all of it if he’s omniscient! There’s an information flow back from “our universe” to “his universe”; it’s not a one-way street at all, especially if the god in question is supposed to answer prayers. But even without answering prayers, his action on the world would presumably still be influenced somehow by the state of the world; otherwise he’d necessarily be acting in a fashion that’s quite close to random, unless he’s just that good at working out what will necessarily happen in “our universe” from how it was when he made it, plus all further alterations he made. Admittedly, acting retroactively would make that influence impossible to observe directly – but not impossible to observe indirectly (see below), as long as you don’t distinguish between “acting in reaction to the conditions in our universe” and “acting on what he knows will occur in our universe” (and after all, we can’t really tell the difference, can we?)
Unless said god is able to make the alterations retroactively, such that it was always going to have happened that way.
Put another way: There is no difference between a god construed thus (call it Ghu), and no god at all. Thus, when someone says “I believe in Ghu!” and someone else says “I’m an atheist!” they are actually agreeing. They are choosing two different, equally valid ways of perceiving the same underlying truth, and thus (just like two people who say “Chocolate is yummy!” and “Chocolate is gross!”) both right.
On the other hand, a Young Earth Creationist, like someone who claims chocolate is made from space-dwelling weasel-monkeys, is not choosing a different interpretation of the same facts, but making up their own facts, and therefore wrong.
Well I agree entirely with the “there’s no difference” thing but not the “retroactively” thing. If the god in question exists, and does not act entirely arbitrarily, then even if he makes changes retroactively – say by altering the outcome of “truly” random events, so as to not actually violate physical laws – his action introduces some bias into the outcomes. I admit that such a pattern would probably not be detectable in any reasonable timescale, but if he exists, it should in theory be possible, given sufficient resources, to measure this god-bias and eventually formulate a theory of what outcomes this god prefers and where and to what degree he acts, such that we can even possibly predict this god-bias. Well, OK, not necessarily. If he’s any sort of omni-whatever god, such as the “blind but omni-predictive” sort I postulate above, then it would almost certainnly be impossible due to insufficient computational capability of our universe.

If he’s any sort of omni-whatever god, such as the “blind but omni-predictive” sort I postulate above, then it would almost certainnly be impossible due to insufficient computational capability of our universe.
This is indeed the problem. No experiment can detect a transcendent (I’m using it as shorthand for omnipotent and omniscient) god, because no matter how good a God-Detector you build, the god’s omnipotent, and can therefore choose not to register. On the other hand, no amount of demonstration on a purported god’s part can reveal it to be omnipotent or omniscient, only powerful or knowledgeable enough to fool us, which is still finite.

Dash, that strikes me as a pretty simplistic and patronizing explanation for Buddhism.
Nicole, did you really think that little paragraph of mine was an attempt to explain Buddhism? Seriously? All I was trying to do was point out that, to people who understood life as a series of reincarnations, there might be good reason to view getting off the reincarnation wheel as a good thing.
(Actually, I had some coursework on Buddhism years ago and learned just enough about its astonishing depth, richness, and variety to not trust my own ability to explain it to anyone.)

catching up. I liked Froborr’s comments about megachurches and missing the one-on-one contact. Coming from a mega-church myself, I’m very familiar with that one. I had a girlfriend in college that asked about popping in to see my pastor since we were going to be in the neighborhood. It took me a while to explain that he wouldn’t have known me from Adam (or Eve, as it were). Things were quite a bit different in her church, which was probably less than 1/10 the size.
There is a certain nicety about the anonymity of a big church, but also no community tie or roots, which is weird. I’m much happier at my current church, where we actually get one-on-one time with our rector.
@Combat Queer: if we *do* wind up in hell, I’m opening a tiki bar. I’ve already got all the ol’-devil-rum that we’ll need. Between that and the good wine, I think it might be a good bit better than whatever stuffy crap they’re doing up country club way.
@whoever was asking about the devil and Milton, etc:
Yep, Genesis has nothing interesting to say about the devil. And neither does the rest of the Bible. Most of the current “mythology” about Satan is PMD-ist interpretation of the book of Revelation. Satan is portrayed as a dragon, who swept a third of the stars (angels) from heaven at the time of his rebellion (the angels who rebelled with him). This interpretation might be backed up by a statement in the gospels about the lake of fire prepared for “the devil and his angels”.
You can sort of see what they’re getting at with it, and if you want to interpret the metaphor to mean something actual, it’s as good a way to interpret as any, I guess.
Too, Nicole’s explanation of buddhism is right on with everything I can remember, and even stuff I had completely forgotten! Great job!

“When we are sufficiently unattached, even from the idea of individual personalities and ego, we no longer desire to be reborn into an existence full of illusions. And so we aren’t. Thus we reach Nirvana–we aren’t given it as a reward, we reach it by becoming enlightened. We put ourselves there, or put ourselves back into the reincarnation cycle.”
Ah, I see. That makes sense. Thanks Nicole.
I’m still pretty attached to the illusions. Nirvana sounds incredibly dull, even more dull than Heaven.
But I do understand how excessive attachment, especially to the wrong things, like material wealth, can cause a lot of problems. I guess one could look at that fact and extend it to believe that ideally, one shouldn’t be attached to anything, even one’s own self.
I’d still like to reincarnate and have another go ’round at life, but maybe once I’ve reached senescence I won’t feel the same way, and will prefer a long dirt nap.
The really unfair thing is the people who never reach that point in their lives, but here we go with the justice thing. Which, for the record, I think does have to do with fairness, and how humans seem to have an innate sense of fairness, and seeing that the universe is unfair, try to impose some sort of fairness onto it. An afterlife is useful for cases in which someone’s life is, as Fred says, “nasty, brutish, and short” so at least they’re in Heaven now and finally getting to relax and have a good time.
On the other hand, I don’t see eternal Hell as particularly useful (or fair, since no human being could be infinitely bad to deserve infinite punishment). A Purgatory type situation seems better, but then I think they should have to reincarnate and make up for their sins by living again and Doing Good.
But that’s all pure speculation. What I am more sure about is that an innate sense of justice/fairness, like empathy, is probably something built into any social animal, without which social groups wouldn’t be able to function very well. The afterlife stuff comes into play when humans notice things happening that no one can make fair, so they hope some more powerful being, or the universe itself, can do it for them.

it is therefore impossible to be a Boddhisatva
Then who is going to “take me by the hand”? (I’ll take obscure 80′s music for $800, Alex.)

I’m really on the side of Sniffnoy on this. If a being can affect this universe, he is part of it. If he lives in hyperspace, but he can reach from hyperspace into Einsteinian space to make changes, than hyperspace is part of our universe too. (And it can’t really be one way, since there must be a way for him to know what changes he’s making, otherwise he can never know if he is making changes at all.)
It’s turtles all the way up.

Or, for that matter, come and show me the shine in your Japan
the sparkle in your China…

About the turtles-
Do they get breaks, with other turtles being rotated in so the other turtles can get a rest from supporting the weight of the Universe (or for that matter, the weight of the other turtles on which the one standing on the one standing on the one standing on the one that the Universe is actually sitting on), or is it the same stack of turtles that has to stand there until the Big Crunch, or the Big Rip, depending on whether they find that there is enough dark matter to create sufficient gravitational pull to hold the Universe together instead of it flying all to pieces.

So you have to shed all desire to become a Boddhisatva, but choosing to stay behind implies that you still have the desire to help others shed theirs?
Does that make “How do you become a Boddhisatva?” a koan?

A god could, for example, live in an alternate universe with differing laws of physics and make alterations to this universe by some means indistinguishable from the normal operation of (our) laws of physics, including inserting the concept of godhood into chosen human minds.
Or, our universe could be the result of some pimply alien’s high school science fair project. He/she/they/it gets good marks for star formation and a nice stable set of elements, but screwed up the expansion factor. Better luck next semester.

Do they get breaks, with other turtles being rotated in so the other turtles can get a rest from supporting the weight of the Universe
There is no weight in space, so your question is meaningless. There’s not much direction either, so one turtle’s position to another is pretty pointless, too.

To join the collective caveat: I am not a Buddhist nor am I well-versed in Buddhist philosophy.
The idea that Nirvana/Enlightenment means the end of rebirth is not universally agreed upon in Buddhist thought. Having been stripped of illusions, there will no longer be the delusion of “you,” but that doesn’t mean your aggregates won’t continue. I think some Buddhists expect the original Buddha to be eventually reborn as a sort of Messiah-like figure.
Then again, the idea that the Bodhisattva is Enlightened is also not universal. Zen Buddhists take Bodhisattva vows (essentially saying they will act as Bodhisattvas do*) regularly regardless of how far they may be on the path that both leads, does not lead, and neither leads nor not leads to Enlightenment.
Also, not all Buddhists are that into caring about issues like that. The Zen priest I’ve heard speak viewed rebirth as purely metaphorical and said something along the lines of Enlightenment being a minor part of what Buddhism’s about.
*And in Zen thought, you are indistinguishable from your actions.

Zen Buddhists take Bodhisattva vows (essentially saying they will act as Bodhisattvas do*) regularly regardless of how far they may be on the path that both leads, does not lead, and neither leads nor not leads to Enlightenment.
How many Taoists does it take to change a light-bulb? Two: one to change the light-bulb and one not to change the light-bulb.
How many Zen masters does it take to change a light-bulb? Two: One to change the light-bulb.

The concept of Nirvana is a tricky one, and in popular understanding it’s been heavily tainted by improper associations with ideas like “paradise” and “salvation”. I don’t claim to wholly understand it myself, but it’s definitely not a place, it’s more like a psychological state of being attained by a living person. In the tradition I was brought up in “Enlightenment” (or the much better translation “awakening”) is the process of achieving that state.
It goes beyond what you might think of as perfect psychological health and mental clarity. I guess the key point is that it’s not so much about learning as unlearning, which is much harder for people to do. The mind fights to defend the integrity of its weltanschauung as bitterly and reflexively as the body fights to defend the integrity of the flesh. Both absolutely necessary from an evolutionary perspective and both capable of being disastrously, fatally wrong. So a koan isn’t a riddle to figure out and learn something from, it’s a piece of antisense tailored to shake up a component of a specific mindset, to induce metanoia. Most of the old ones don’t work all that great for us so far removed from their cultural context, but people still stumble across their own all the time. “Why?” is always a good one – the key is to never decide you’ve answered it, because that’s the moment that living thought becomes dead belief.
So what happens when you’ve unlearned everything? You’re not an empty shell, all the concepts are still known to you, but you’re not attached to any of them. You can still accept some of them provisionally, but it wouldn’t upset you if your keys weren’t where you thought left them, or the sky was green, or someone held a gun to your head. And most importantly, you’ve let go of that concept of self – which doesn’t mean rejecting the idea that your mind and body are things, it means letting go of that pernicious barrier that divides “you” from everything else. A mind exists, a body exists, each one of many. Or not. All things might be illusion, and no suffering is derived from this or any other possibility.
At this point, what can the ideas of rebirth or afterlife even mean? If some element of this current pattern were to be repeated in another time and place, well then, so? It will be something, or something else, or nothing, like any other thing, and of no greater concern.

Woops, that was me.
Or maybe it wasn’t.

Hello,
I’d like to make a few comments from a theological basis, but I won’t be too long, so I hope people will not fall asleep.
First, I don’t think there’s any problem with the danger/terror of Hell having a central theme in Christianity. After all, Jesus alluded to it several times. He warned people of the danger of Hell in an effort to get them to repent. To suggest hell does not exist at all (which I realize you are not doing) would make Jesus look quite similar to those who make up fables or bogeyman stories to get their children to act right. For whatever reason, Jesus felt the need to appeal to the danger of hell to reach those He spoke to, and my guess is that times have not changed much in that regard.
Second, it turns out to be a feast of irony that evangelicals cling to Jesus’ words about hell and judgment so much, for a close reading of Christ’s teachings shows that the vignettes He describes are very much at odds with the version of Judgment the reformed church describes. Jesus warned people about hell to get them to repent, not to get them to “believe.” If you want a much more extended discussion of that, see the excerpt on my site.
Third, the parable of Lazarus has nothing to do with Hell. Hades is very different from Hell. The Parable of Lazarus describes the grace of God moving from the Jewish church to the gentiles. I’ve written up a short discussion of that parable as well as the Prodigal Son [which similarly has nothing to do with what most people would call "the gospel."]
Fourth, while I disagree with efforts to make hell more palatable, I do agree that it is not part of the gospel message…and neither did the original apostles. The evangelism described in Acts [by far the most prolific discussion of preaching by the early apostles] shows no interest in Hell at all. In fact, the word does not even show up anywhere in the entire book! I think it is very illuminating to take a look at what the gospel described in Acts is.
Fifthly, a nitpick: Paul did talk about hell. 2nd Thessalonians 1:9 and Romans 2:8 [given the comparison between Romans 2:7 and Romans 2:8, and the concluding verse Romans 2:16, it would be hard for this wrath not to be the eternal destruction Christ speaks of.] However, just as in Jesus’ teachings, while the content of hell vaguely matches what evangelicals preach, the question of who goes there certainly does not.

Y’all ran away without me, but I gotta ask:
Gahenna is the most interesting, as it turns out to be a real geographic place: “…Gehenna was a well-known valley, near Jerusalem, in which the Jews in their idolatrous days had sacrificed their children to the idol Moloch, in consequence of which it was condemned to receive the offal and refuse and sewage of the city, and into which the bodies of malefactors were cast and where to destroy the odor and pestilential influences, continual fires were kept burning.”
Hell is a sewer, and there is fire there because they incinerated the offal and bodies to keep plagues in check.
Does anybody know a Bible translation in which those terms are properly translated, such that the English version of a case in point actually reads something like “But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of throwing their life away“?

As I recall, there’s an NSRV Study Bible (two-thirds text, one-third footnotes) that carefully notes after each mention of Hell “or Gehenna.” But that’s probably the closest you’ll get. The sort of people who care about translating things according to the original Greek rather than the traditions read back into it later are probably not the sort who will try to incorporate their own theology into the translation, and explicitly stating that that’s what Jesus meant would certainly qualify as incorporating theology. That’s why you have to analyze the text. It’s fun, cheap, and at very little risk to your immortal soul*.
*Your soul’s condition may vary. Contact your local priest/pastor/rabbi/imam/wizard/theologian/professor/blogger for further information.

A god could, for example, live in an alternate universe with differing laws of physics
“Physical existence” may be the wrong term. “Existence outside the human mind” more accurately captures the sense I’m going for, although the phrase is clunky. That type of existence wouldn’t be limited to our universe, but it would be outside the mental pseudo-universe.
it just means the universe is larger than we realize.
Good point. The key is the distinction between thoughts and ideas on one hand, and objects and phenomena on the other.
There is no difference between a god construed thus (call it Ghu), and no god at all.
Do you mean no practical difference?
They are choosing two different, equally valid ways of perceiving the same underlying truth
I don’t understand what underlying truth would they be talking about. Neither reflects my own position of skepticism.
No experiment can detect a transcendent (I’m using it as shorthand for omnipotent and omniscient) god, because no matter how good a God-Detector you build, the god’s omnipotent, and can therefore choose not to register.
To me, that suggests that the concept of gods has no usefulness. If the universe would look the same to us whether or not gods exist, I don’t see a need to have the gods concept in the first place. (I’m not necessarily talking about how the god concept originated.)

There is no weight in space, so your question is meaningless. There’s not much direction either, so one turtle’s position to another is pretty pointless, too.
Then what is the point of the Universe (or even just the Earth) being supported on the back of a turtle in the first place? I mean, if there’s no weight in space, then the Cosmos itself has no weight, so there is no need for a turtle to support it.
If I were the turtles, I’d quit and go find something more meaningful to do, like feed the hungry, clothe the naked, maybe learn to play a musical instrument, rather than pointlessly standing under a Cosmos that doesn’t actually need me to stand under it.

If I were the Turtles, I’d just try to be Happy Together.

If heaven and hell locales exist, and if admission to the first or avoidance of the second involves rules or preconditions, then it’s in one’s best interest to follow those rules. I wouldn’t see this as obedience, but as the equivalent of safety rules. Whatever the rules would be, we couldn’t assume that they would have anything to do with decent human behavior.
That last brings up a hypothetical moral dilemma – suppose the Huck Finn situation was real. How many people would accept eternal torment for the sake of another person’s life or freedom?

If heaven and hell locales exist
That, of course is the problem.
We have exactly as much proof of the existence of any Heaven or Hell variant as we do of Nirvana, Valhalla, Sto-Vo-Kor, or the giant holodeck which is actually running the “Universe” program. So, the question is, which set of rules do we follow, and in what fashion? In the absence of clear directives from any Supreme Beings, that decision tends to be up to the individual.

that decision tends to be up to the individual.
Precisely my point. It’s purely a normative question; there is no “true” answer.
To me, that suggests that the concept of gods has no usefulness. If the universe would look the same to us whether or not gods exist, I don’t see a need to have the gods concept in the first place.
Comfort? Sense of meaning? Tradition? Help in comprehension? If there is truly no difference between a theistic and an atheistic cosmos, then it becomes purely a matter of which way you prefer to think about it. It’s like asking whether the cup’s half full or half empty — they’re logically equivalent, it’s just a matter of attitude and personal preference.

Mikhail, any assertion about an afterlife has to be treated like any other proposed hypothesis. We can say that they don’t qualify as hypotheses since they don’t allow for the possibility of evidence proving them wrong. However, any one of them may still be factually accurate.
Deciding which set of rules to follow in this case is dangerous because of the enormous costs if one decides wrong. That’s not the same as Pascal’s Wager, which errs in assuming that one can choose to believe something. I’m talking simply about the problem of making decisions based on incomplete information.
And if those afterlives are metaphors or normative concepts (and I’m still hazy on the definition of the latter), that doesn’t explain why some (not all) believers in them assert that they have sorta-kind actual existence, or at least talk about them as if they had that type of existence.
the giant holodeck which is actually running the “Universe” program.
Has anyone written God-is-Barclay fanfic?

Froborr, the cup analogy is excellent, and is part of my point. I’m trying to separate what is factual about the universe from what humans think or feel about the universe. The level of water in the cup has no intrinsic value – it exists independently of such human-created concepts as “half empty” or “half full.” Science is interested in the level and not the emotional value humans assign to that level.
Comfort? Sense of meaning? Tradition? Help in comprehension?
I’m suggesting that the pursuit of those things should be done independently of any factual aspect of the universe. If I owned a Toyota and drew comfort from believing that it was a Porsche, my comfort would be an illusion. For all practical purposes, I would be rewriting the universe to suit my emotional agenda.

Deciding which set of rules to follow in this case is dangerous because of the enormous costs if one decides wrong.
Actually, if you analyze it logically, any set of rules you choose has an equal probability of resulting in Hell or the equivalent thereof. This gives them all an equal expected value* of d (for damnability). However, some sets of rules will make you happier and more fulfilled than others. Others will make you miserable. Which is which, of course, depends on the individual. Thus, for each individual, each option has a unique happiness value (h).
The true expected value of each choice is thus equal to the sum of the damnability and happiness value (d+h). However, since d is exactly equal for every option, all that matters in making the decision is h.
In short: pick the rules that give you the best life, and worry about the afterlife if you get there.
*For those unfamiliar with probability, the expected value of a gamble is what you can expect to get out of it, equal to the value of the payoff times the probability (as a decimal) of winning. So a gamble that gives you a 10% chance of winning $1000 dollars and a 90% chance of winning nothing has an expected value of $100. It is therefore, in general, worth taking if the cost of joining is less than $100.

Ahh, but the ‘enormous costs’ are as unproven and varying as the afterlives involved. How do you know there are ‘enormous costs’? I suspect the people pitching that have a certain agenda, after all.
What if Hell just means you have to sit at the kids’ table in Heaven and get Chicken McNuggets instead of manna and ambrosia?
What if Hell is like a minimum-security federal prison, where you still get cable and a comfy bed, you just don’t get to visit your loved ones in Heaven until your sentence is served?
What if Hell is a place where everyone you ever mistreated gets to enact eye-for-an-eye, and then the scales balance and you’re free?
What if Hell means you have to live out another life on Earth, well known as the most unpleasant place in the Universe, and if you get it right this time you get to move to Earth Level 2, where your stats are better but you’ll have to get a good group together for the mini-boss at the end?
We don’t know. I for one am not going to worry about imaginary Hells, any more than I worry about the enormous costs of the Atlantean take over of Washington D.C. next week.

Tonio: If heaven and hell locales exist, and if admission to the first or avoidance of the second involves rules or preconditions, then it’s in one’s best interest to follow those rules.
That assumes that the rules are not contradictory. As the famous “Hell: Endothermic or Exothermic” essay says, “Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, then you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and souls go to hell.”
Agreed with the rest: If heaven, hell and the rules concerning them were a) consistent and b) known, following them would be a standard safety precaution. Has anyone reasonably competent writer explored that in fiction? I’m possibly overlooking the obviuos, as I cannot think of an example now.

Froborr, while your points about probability make sense, I don’t understand why an individual’s happiness and fulfillment would be part of the arithmetic. Rules aren’t about any one person’s happiness. (One could argue that societal rules are about allowing room for people to pursue their own happiness, but that’s a different concept of rules.)
My point wasn’t really about probability, but simply that eternal torment would worse than any other afterlife. So one might be more motivated to avoid it.

If I owned a Toyota and drew comfort from believing that it was a Porsche, my comfort would be an illusion.
Because your comfort is drawn from a false statement (namely, that your car is a Toyota). The danger is, first of all, that you will derive other false beliefs from your first false belief, and apply them in ways that are harmful to others or restrict others’ pursuit of knowledge. There is also a danger to you, that you will encounter evidence that disproves your false belief (for example, the Toyota logo on your trunk), and either have your illusion shattered or be forced to detach from reality.
However, in the example of the cup, drawing comfort from it being half-full is entirely valid, because it is not drawn from a false statement. You will never encounter evidence that disproves the glass being half-full, because no such evidence exists. At the same time, however, you are not justified in trying to impose your half-full-ism on half-empty-ists, because their belief isn’t false either.
I’m arguing that the same is true about many (not all) statements regarding the divine. If your god is (as most mainstream modern theists believe) both unprovable and undisprovable, it is equivalent to no god at all in the same sense that the half-empty glass is equivalent to the half-full glass. If your sole goal is knowledge, then it doesn’t matter which you believe. However, if you derive some emotional benefit from one belief over the other, go for it. It’s not like you’re believing something false.

What if Hell just means you have to sit at the kids’ table in Heaven and get Chicken McNuggets instead of manna and ambrosia?
(chuckle) While those are all possibilities, the difference is that no one appears to believe in them as factual, or assert that they’re factual. Such a belief or assertion constitutes a proposed hypothesis, as opposed to a hypothetical possibility.
“Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and souls go to hell.”
I disagree. Either none of the sets of rules are factual or one set is factual, but the sets cannot all be factual. Do you mean that each set on its own is contradictory, or that the sets contradict each other?

That last brings up a hypothetical moral dilemma – suppose the Huck Finn situation was real. How many people would accept eternal torment for the sake of another person’s life or freedom?
I wouldn’t. If I believed in Hell, there is no atrocity I would not commit to avoid going there. It’s one of the reasons I disagree with (I think) Mabus that the doctrine is necessary to scare people straight. The doctrine scares people to do whatever the preacher says, no matter how vile, immoral, and evil it may be.

At the same time, however, you are not justified in trying to impose your half-full-ism on half-empty-ists, because their belief isn’t false either.
I agree. I was arguing against treating half-full-ism or half-empty-ism as factual. I was arguing for people recognizing that either term is a value they are applying to the cup. A self-awareness of one’s values.
However, if you derive some emotional benefit from one belief over the other, go for it. It’s not like you’re believing something false.
To me, believing in something unprovable/undisprovable (and this would include the absence of gods – another reason I’m not an atheist) would feel like a gateway drug that would get me hooked on believing in something false. It would feel like I was giving my own comfort a relative importance that it didn’t deserve.

While those are all possibilities, the difference is that no one appears to believe in them as factual, or assert that they’re factual. Such a belief or assertion constitutes a proposed hypothesis, as opposed to a hypothetical possibility.
I get what you’re saying, but just because a large number of people believe something as factual does not mean much with no evidence. Lots of people believed the Earth was flat. Lots of people believe that the stars were mounted on enormous crystal spheres. Lots of people believed that time was a universal constant, no matter what one’s velocity.
And, while many people do assert the existence of a Hell of eternal suffering, lots of people assert there’s no such thing (and not just humanists and atheists, either). In fact, there may be more people on the planet who do not believe in a fundamentalist Christian Hell than do: I’d love to see plausible numbers. In the absence of evidence, why should I place more weight on one side’s claims just because what they claim is bad? It would be like deciding that, since I might die in a car crash, I should never get in a car again.

In the absence of evidence, why should I place more weight on one side’s claims just because what they claim is bad?
Not weight in terms of credibility. It’s really an emotional reaction.

Froborr, while your points about probability make sense, I don’t understand why an individual’s happiness and fulfillment would be part of the arithmetic.
We’re trying to work out which ruleset to choose to follow on the basis of what amounts to a cost-benefit analysis. Presumably, the reason to pursue Heaven rather than Hell is because you’ll be much happier in Heaven. This goes into calculating d — it’s the sum of the awesomeness of each Heaven, times the probability of the rule choice getting you there, minus the suckiness of each Hell, times the probability of the rule choice getting you there*. Since d is the same for every option, it’s useless for helping us pick a ruleset; we must therefore look at other costs and benefits to the ruleset, namely, how much happier each will make this life.
To me, believing in something unprovable/undisprovable (and this would include the absence of gods – another reason I’m not an atheist) would feel like a gateway drug that would get me hooked on believing in something false. It would feel like I was giving my own comfort a relative importance that it didn’t deserve.
This is a legitimate response to any half-full/half-empty debate, and I respect it. However, I would like to point out that you do believe in some normative statements: that some things are good and others bad, for example.
And I agree with you on the importance of never treating one’s opinions as if they’re facts. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t continue to hold them as opinions and act on them!

we must therefore look at other costs and benefits to the ruleset, namely, how much happier each will make this life.
I can imagine the hypothetical rule-maker(s) to be suspicious of that, to accuse people of caring only about their own happiness.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t continue to hold them as opinions and act on them!
Sure. I wasn’t suggesting that. I simply don’t want to lose my ability to recognize the opinion-ness of my opinions.

Sir Terry Pratchett on the half full/Half empty question…
“Excuse me? Is this *MY* glass? I don’t think so. *My* glass was full! And it was a bigger glass than this!”

I can imagine the hypothetical rule-maker(s) to be suspicious of that, to accuse people of caring only about their own happiness.
Well, yes, but the rule-makers’ opinion is already folded into d. Since we have no way of knowing if there are any rulemakers and what they want, all choices are equal as far as that’s concerned, and therefore the question of what the rulemakers think has no bearing on the decision.

Not Really Here: “Then what is the point of the Universe (or even just the Earth) being supported on the back of a turtle in the first place? I mean, if there’s no weight in space, then the Cosmos itself has no weight, so there is no need for a turtle to support it.”
“If I were the turtles, I’d quit and go find something more meaningful to do, like feed the hungry, clothe the naked, maybe learn to play a musical instrument, rather than pointlessly standing under a Cosmos that doesn’t actually need me to stand under it.”
I think it’s a plan to keep the turtles from wandering around and causing trouble. I mean, these turtles are all about a trillion times larger than any other lifeform in existence; if they tried to feed the hungry or clothe the naked, they’d simply crush them and everything in a 1,000 km radius. We’re all better off with them just staying put.

“We’re all better off with them just staying put.”
Or, what MikhailBorg said @ 09:11 (drat him, althought not to hell).
Now I need to go find some music. ‘Tis better to play a single tune than to curse the earworm.

Since we have no way of knowing if there are any rulemakers and what they want
No argument there.
therefore the question of what the rulemakers think has no bearing on the decision
“Opinion” is the wrong word. I was trying to suggest that if there are rules, then any rulemakers would likely have expectations that would have to be fulfilled. Since hell is an extreme penalty for violating such rules, it’s reasonable to expect (as opposed to assume) such a rulemaker to have extreme expectations of humans. The rulemaker might expect humans to go to extremes to weasel out of the rules.

Put another way, if a being sees eternal torment as a necessary or appropriate punishment, it’s reasonable to expect the being to be impossible to please.

I think I get what Froborr is saying about the (h+d) thing. Basically what he’s (sorry, I thought you’re a he, maybe from previous conversations. apologies in advance if I’m wrong) saying is that you can cancel the (d) out of the expression. So what you’re left with is happiness.
The idea is that if we compare (h1+d) and (h2+d), since d is the same whether I choose to be a Christian or a Muslim, then I should pick the rule set that results in a maxiumum value of h– in other words we discriminate only against h, and d basically drops out of the expression.
The reason for this is that regardless of my set of rules (Christian or Muslim) I (ideally) have an equal probability of going to hell either way. Since I can get to hell just as easily, no matter what I really believe, we can drop damnation out of the equation, and the thing to worry about is whether you’re actually happy living under the rule set that you’ve chosen.
Have I got that right?

Ten points to Spalanzani.
I for one am not going to worry about imaginary Hells, any more than I worry about the enormous costs of the Atlantean take over of Washington D.C. next week.
But what about the insurrection in El Kañsas?!!
On d+h: Seems pretty straightforward to me. (I keep forgetting that not everyone thinks in terms of algebra.)

Since I can get to hell just as easily, no matter what I really believe, we can drop damnation out of the equation, and the thing to worry about is whether you’re actually happy living under the rule set that you’ve chosen.
That isn’t enough for me. I would drop damnation out of the equation only if I had conclusive evidence that it didn’t exist. Otherwise, the possibility that it exists is the elephant in the room.

Tonio: Do you mean that each set on its own is contradictory, or that the sets contradict each other?
I mean that the sets of assumptions that currently exist about who goes to hell and who goes to heaven contradict each other. That does not mean that some or all sets contradict each other internally, too.
So, either there are no rules, or no rules anyone could follow, which makes your hypothetical example hypothetical. (Note that I agree with you, it’s just that I find it hard to come up with a realistic scenario where rules about what-to-do-to-not-go-to-hell work as safety measures and not as, at best, a gamble.)

where rules about what-to-do-to-not-go-to-hell work as safety measures and not as, at best, a gamble.
A better metaphor for my point would be planning for natural disasters, where one anticipates the worst.

Tonio, I think you are missing the point Froborr and I are trying to make.
Which hell are you worried about going to? Why do you think you might go to that one instead of someone else’s? Since you are almost certainly going to hell in someone’s belief system, and you have no way of knowing whether that belief system is the correct one or not… what’s the point of worrying about it?
Put another way: You are absolutely going to Hell in the belief system of the Screwedites. You’ve never heard of them, but they are devout. Your ONLY hope of avoiding Hell is to send the posters on Slacktivist all your money and property. And let me tell you, the Screwedite Hell makes RTC Hell look like Candyland.
Are you worried about going to Screwedite Hell? No? Are you worried about going to the Greek Hades? Not really? Okay, are you worried about going to Gret’hor, the Klingon destination of the dishonored? Not losing any sleep over that one, eh? Are you worried about going to the Islamic Hell? Calvinist Hell? Russian Orthodox Hell?
That’s what he meant by dropping damnation out of the equation, because as far as someone in the world is concerned, you’re already damned.

Which hell are you worried about going to?
It’s not really worry. I suppose I’m concerned about the possibility of ending up in any horrific afterlife. If any belief system suggests it, no matter how the afterlife is constructed, then the suggestion is a possibility.
That possibility is different from the possibility of dying in an accident because hells are about a being’s wrath. It’s not so much the eternal torment itself as the wrath that would be behind it.

I would drop damnation out of the equation only if I had conclusive evidence that it didn’t exist.
But which damnation are you keeping in your equation? You can’t keep them all in, and keeping one in knocks another out. For example, you scoff at the Chicken McNuggets “hell”, but why isn’t it as valid as any other (since number of believers is not a good determinant)?

It sounds like you are implying that you are worried about the possibility, however remote, of going to any or all of the afterlives I’ve mentioned, and the dozens or hundreds I haven’t.
At this point, all I can suggest is that you try to stop. Until we know which (if any) afterlife exists, there’s nothing you can do about the problem. As I said, any action you choose will damn you to somebody, somewhere. Worrying about things you can’t affect is common… but useless. There are much more constructive things in life to worry about.

Jessica: You are completely correct, that’s exactly what I was trying to say. (And yes, I’m male.)

As I said, any action you choose will damn you to somebody, somewhere.
Yes. You’re right that there’s no point in worrying about that. Perhaps my real objection is the anti-human ideology behind damnation, where some people believe that others deserve eternal suffering. Fred has done an excellent job in dissection L&J’s particular version of the ideology.

The unfortunate thing is people that the “criminal justice system” is expected, by various groups, to do all of these things at once — justice, vengeance, deterrence, rehabilitation, containment, and just occasionally mercy.”
Well put, Mary. And an interesting thought.
” So we imprison all of these marijuana users because voters want there to be some kind of deterrent for marijana use…”
Actually polls indicate most voters would like marijuana decriminalized to the point the penalty is just a running-the-stop-sign sort of fine. I assume the reason this hasn’t happened is that a)the people who are passionate about anti-drug are more likely to vote/bitch to their congresspersons than the tolerants; b)there’s a whole lot of money invested in our war on drugs infrastructure which means a lot of people—DEA officials, prison guards, for-profit prisons, etc.–have a vested interest in keeping up the crackdown.

Despite believing myself that C.S. Lewis’s point about Hell is the important one (i.e. that it’s not a place, it’s the state of being entailed by one’s rejection of God), I’m not so sure that saying “Hell and Heaven are not the point; what we are called to do is the main point” is really a sufficient way of looking at it.
The entire *point*, after all, of fulfilling our Christian duty is so that we can join God in Heaven; and if we did not fear the loss of God and the pains of hell, why *should* we honour these obligations?
It seems to me more that the actions and duties that make us worthy of Heaven, and the Hellish consequences of failing in those duties, are like two blades of a pair of scissors. As with faith and good works, or food and water, to ask which is “more important” seems to be a fundamental mistake. Both are necessary and equally balanced, and we should emphasize one only to the extent that the other has already been overemphasized.
Deciding what is “really” important is all too often a way to discard any concern for anything else as “unimportant” and therefore “unnecessary”, usually with bad consequences in the end. Prioritizing is a valuable survival skill in a fallen temporal finite world, but it’s a bad habit of thought to apply to eternal truths.

Dash: Nicole, did you really think that little paragraph of mine was an attempt to explain Buddhism? Seriously? All I was trying to do was point out that, to people who understood life as a series of reincarnations, there might be good reason to view getting off the reincarnation wheel as a good thing.
(Actually, I had some coursework on Buddhism years ago and learned just enough about its astonishing depth, richness, and variety to not trust my own ability to explain it to anyone.)
Fair enough, and I’m sorry for misreading you. I suppose I must have assumed that if you had an explanation that was more coincident with the point of view of the believers, you’d have posited that one before resorting to one that sounded, to me, a lot like “well, the people who made up the religion were living in a constant state of Life Sucks, so…” I’m sorry to have come to the wrong assumption.
Neohippie: I’m still pretty attached to the illusions. Nirvana sounds incredibly dull, even more dull than Heaven.
If Nirvana is no longer being limited by my self to illusion and ephemera, and instead perceiving the entire Truth exactly as it is… well, I guess I don’t know enough to say whether that might be boring. It’s beyond my comprehension. In any case, I suspect that enlightenment is such that finding the concept of Nirvana dull *or* incomprehensible is a symptom of not yet having reached enlightenment. *g* Considering that I’m still enjoying the heck out of all the illusions, too, I’m in no danger of transcending any time soon.
Apologies all around for my overly Mahayanist take on Buddhism – I did learn about the difference between Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism, but I think that only the one that most closely resonated for me was the one that successfully imprinted on my brain.

Spiders Everywhere: Your explanation of Nirvana and Enlightenment was wonderful. Enlightening, in fact. (ha! ha! see, it’s funny, ’cause… Errrr. Sorry.) Thank you.

Leum: I wouldn’t. If I believed in Hell, there is no atrocity I would not commit to avoid going there. It’s one of the reasons I disagree with (I think) Mabus that the doctrine is necessary to scare people straight. The doctrine scares people to do whatever the preacher says, no matter how vile, immoral, and evil it may be.
This seems to be something that varies with the individual, though. For instance, Huck seems quite obviously to be acting as an “Author Avatar”–when Huck says “I’ll go to hell, then!” we’re really hearing the voice of Twain saying “Better to go to hell, if we have to enslave people to avoid it.”
For my part, it seems to me that a God who would order atrocities is not likely to be a trustworthy God anyway–I cannot be certain doing as he says will benefit me, so I may as well keep my integrity. That may not be a rational perspective, since God could be radically different in psychology from the sort of human I’m imagining as I say it, but it is my real, “natural” response.
To me it seems that the more pressing issue is of a God who forbids certain activities that have no obvious, immediate downside (say, for instance, certain kinds of sex). Is there an inobvious downside that we’re not seeing? Or is God just being an asshole? And even if God is, in fact, being an asshole, is it worth the brief and temporary pleasure if it puts us out of his good graces? (Such a God seems less likely to be untrustworthy than the previous one, IMO.) Of course, given my previous posting record, most of the regulars can probably guess my provisional answers on these questions.

Fraser: Actually polls indicate most voters would like marijuana decriminalized to the point the penalty is just a running-the-stop-sign sort of fine. I assume the reason this hasn’t happened is that a)the people who are passionate about anti-drug are more likely to vote/bitch to their congresspersons than the tolerants; b)there’s a whole lot of money invested in our war on drugs infrastructure which means a lot of people—DEA officials, prison guards, for-profit prisons, etc.–have a vested interest in keeping up the crackdown.
I confess my bafflement about the anti-anti-drug position.
I keep seeing this as an analogue of Manchu China’s situation re: opium (except that the Manchus had made other mistakes that might have screwed them anyway by that point). Allowing people to take psychoactive drugs that make them less productive can’t not wreck our whole society, and for another country to supply us with them is practically an act of war. Almost any measures needed to prevent such an outcome are justified because of the immense cost to America and to all of us individually of lettting such a thing happen.

I cannot be certain doing as he says will benefit me, so I may as well keep my integrity.
I find that strange based on my own expectations. I would expect a god to be indifferent to whether I trusted it or whether I would benefit from its orders.

Mabus, while I agree about the social costs of drug abuse, I cannot agree that almost any measures are justified to stop it. Prohibiting drugs by law has done little to stop the problem, a lesson America should have learned more than 80 years ago. It’s matter of not just any measures, but the best measures, ones that address the reasons people turn to drugs and the need to break the addictions.

Thanks, Nicole. Despite my upbringing I don’t consider myself Buddhist as a religious affiliation – I don’t believe in rebirth or karma except as a rather more sophisticated metaphor along the lines of “what goes around comes around”. But I don’t think those more mystical ideas were really that central to the ideas Gautama Buddha was trying to get across. I have immense respect for his insight into the human mind – I think he understood it in a way that even today neuropsychologists are still groping their way towards. Looking at something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankhara and remembering that these ideas were developed by one guy 2500 years ago sitting under a tree just blows me away.
So I guess I’ve been exposed to the idea of Nirvana enough that I fell like I can sort of see it, like a mountain on the horizon that you can travel towards for hours and never be sure how far it is, or even if you’re really getting closer. I know I’m not ready to let go of everything, but even so it helps to remind myself that anything could be let go of. I can’t control whether my body or mind feel pain, but it is within my power to choose whether I suffer from it. It’s an oddly hard thing to remember, but when I do I know it helps.

Tonio: I find that strange based on my own expectations. I would expect a god to be indifferent to whether I trusted it or whether I would benefit from its orders.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here… I’m about to have to leave for work, so let me skip to the other comment.
Mabus, while I agree about the social costs of drug abuse, I cannot agree that almost any measures are justified to stop it. Prohibiting drugs by law has done little to stop the problem, a lesson America should have learned more than 80 years ago. It’s matter of not just any measures, but the best measures, ones that address the reasons people turn to drugs and the need to break the addictions.
It seems to be working for cigarettes, and the last I heard nicotine was considered an unexpectedly powerful addiction.
As for the reasons people turn to drugs–the only remotely comprehensible one I’ve heard is that “some peoples’ lives suck”. But there’s really no fix for that–some peoples’ lives are always going to suck regardless of what measures we take.

It seems to be working for cigarettes, and the last I heard nicotine was considered an unexpectedly powerful addiction.
That’s not outright prohibition. The legal approach with cigarettes has been incremental, limiting the areas where people can smoke. I would be curious to know if this has helped produce increasingly negative attitudes toward smoking, or if this was the product of those attitudes. (My state used the settlement from the tobacco company lawsuit to pay tobacco farmers to grow other crops for 10 years.)
But there’s really no fix for that–some peoples’ lives are always going to suck regardless of what measures we take.
I would be more specific and describe it as self-medication. The question is what can be done to encourage people to find healthier ways to deal with their issues.

Even though they did the “See? No wires!” pass with the hoop?
There’s two parts to this: The hoop has a slight gap, just big enough to pass through the wire; and pass doesn’t go over all the wire (just watch the strange route the hoop takes.
Full “Preview” of all comments is back! We must have pleased our God!

I confess my bafflement about the anti-anti-drug position.
I keep seeing this as an analogue of Manchu China’s situation re: opium (except that the Manchus had made other mistakes that might have screwed them anyway by that point). Allowing people to take psychoactive drugs that make them less productive can’t not wreck our whole society, and for another country to supply us with them is practically an act of war. Almost any measures needed to prevent such an outcome are justified because of the immense cost to America and to all of us individually of lettting such a thing happen.
So one presumes you consider France and Italy to be at war with us then, given their repeated attempts to ship wine into our country? And doubtless we should question the merits of Christianity, which claims drinking wine can bring us closer to God? Is this not the very essence of devil-worship? To say nothing of the insurgents in our very midst in California and the Midwest, growing grapes, hops, and corn to be turned against their own countrymen.
Given this grave scenario, our only hope is to outlaw Christianity, cut off all trade with the rouge states of the Mediterranean, and send our troops home from Iraq to quell the domestic enemies of our nation.

I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here…
I was trying to explain my own expectations if gods existed. I don’t know if they would match my own expectations of humans. It wouldn’t occur to me to see gods as beings to be either trusted or not trusted. I would expect such gods to care about me only to the extent that I followed their orders.

Posted in the wrong thread! Sorry!

On the subject of marijuana prohibition…
There are three types of people who benefit from Marijuana being illegal.
1. Politicians who rail against it rather than having to rail against something important, like white collar crimes.
2. Police, who get promotions based on arrest records. Also prison guards, DAs, and a big chunk of the legal system.
3. Smugglers, whose profits are based on it being illegal.

“I don’t see a huge difference between my soul merging with the Oversoul and my body decomposing and merging with the Earth. Either way, there’s no more ME.
But just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not true. I find belief in an afterlife even more difficult than belief in some sort of deity, which can really get me down if I allow myself to think about it too much.”
I’m really not sure why, but it doesn’t really get me down that I might (and IMHO will) cease to exist some day. It’s certainly nothing to do with a lack of attachment to the material trappings of this life, or with dissatisfaction in my existence – I’m really very happy with my life, and I certainly hope to go on living for at least another 40 years.
There’s a stock expression in my language that I haven’t found an equivalent of in English. Literally translated, it means something like dying “full of [as opposed to "hungry for"] days”. I’ve attended a lot of funerals in my time – I make part of my living singing in a church – and I’ve come to the conclusion that if I get to die “full of days”, I don’t want anything more than that.
I think the only thing that might make me truly wish for the existence of an afterlife would be losing a loved one. That is something I fear much more than my own death, really.

Hawker Hurricane- you left a few people out
4) The pharmaceutical industry, which would stand to lose a lot of their profits, since cannabis is useful in treating a wide variety of illnesses, including glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, cancer pain, as well as the nausea caused by chemotherapy, AIDS wasting syndrome… oh, and let’s not forget the gajillions of dollars they make off on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications when a lot of the people currently being prescribed them could easily relieve their symptoms with a few puffs of da kind.
5) The petroleum/petrochamical industry. Hempseed oil can be used to make diesel fuel, and the rest of the plant can be used to make either ethanol or methanol, which can be used to make cars go, among other fuel uses. The plant cellulose can also be used to be make biodegradable plastics. The fibers can also be used to make high-quality clothing, which might take a serious bite out of the synthetic textile industry, which is made from petroleum.
6) The timber industry. The core of the hemp plant can be used to make high-quality paper without the nasty chemicals needed to turn wood into pulp for paper. Also, the hemp plant can be used to make high-quality fiberboard that is as strong and durable as any wood- you could build houses out of the stuff.
7) Big Agri-business. You really thing they want competition from the family farm? Hempseed is edible, high in protein (second only to the soybean), and Omega 3 and 6, and linoleic acid, and can be made into a wide variety of foods, including bread, cookies, and even ice cream. Well, I don’t know how good the ice cream would taste, but I have had a hempseed cookie, and it was mighty tasty. Do you really think Monsanto et al are going to sit by and watch the market for their genetically modified Round-Up ready corn and canola seeds with the suicide genes so you keep having to buy seed from them every year go up in smoke (sorry, Messers Marin and Chong) instead of farmers being able to save seed from last years crop to plant the following year, and a crop that can be grown without the use of pesticides or herbicides to boot? Then, there are the huge corporate farms who would face serious competition from family farms who would have a multi-use crop that was cheap and easy to grow (you don’t need pesticides to grow hemp), including possibly setting aside an acre or two to grow the smokeable varieties. Right now, most of the major crops are so expensive to grow because the farmers need to buy seed, and pesticides, and herbicides, that small-scale growing on family farms is cost-prohibitive,since often the price they can get often does not cover the cost of production. They wouldn’t have these sorts of problems growing hemp. The alcohol industry. I personally know a few drinkers who have told me that if cannabis were legal, they’d quit drinking and smoke ganja instead. It probably wouldn’t amount to a huge market share, but it might result in a 5% decrease in alcohol use, and even that small amount would be unacceptable to them. Any competition is bad competition, and competition must be eliminated, using the force of law if necessary.
There are just too many corporate interests who would stand to lose too much money because so many of the profits they make are from products that could easily be made from cannabis hemp. And they’ve got our Congresscritters in their back pockets.
Here’s an interesting documentary on the many uses of the cannabis plant, many of them not inhalable

Mabus, I don’t know if I even understand what your words mean, but it looks like you need to read this.

Nicole, thanks for your kind words. I’m just pleased that anybody thinks I could competently explain anything (except one variety of RTCism).

NRH: I gave the short form. I adopted it from my GrandDad’s description of who benefitted from Alchohol Prohibition: Preachers, Police, and Bootleggers.
Cannabis was banned because DuPont’s Rayon couldn’t compete with canvas (Hemp was used to make canvas) and William Randolf Hearst owned the biggest wood pulp paper mills and didn’t want to compete with hemp paper. So, one of the world’s richest families and the owner of the biggest U.S. Newspaper chain decided to get rid of it… over the objections of the AMA (Extract of Cannabis was a common medicine for ‘nervous disorders’). Hearst papers printed outlandish lies about ‘marijuana’ (using the Spainish name to avoid people pointing out that it was just hemp and cannabis). My favorite involved a teenage boy, allegedly high on ‘marijuana’ who took an ax to his grandma, mom, dad, and little sister. All the people I’ve ever seen high on MJ didn’t have enough energy to use an axe on someone.

Posted by MikhailBorg: What if Hell just means you have to sit at the kids’ table in Heaven and get Chicken McNuggets instead of manna and ambrosia?
What if Hell is like a minimum-security federal prison, where you still get cable and a comfy bed, you just don’t get to visit your loved ones in Heaven until your sentence is served?
What if Hell is a place where everyone you ever mistreated gets to enact eye-for-an-eye, and then the scales balance and you’re free?
What if Hell means you have to live out another life on Earth, well known as the most unpleasant place in the Universe, and if you get it right this time you get to move to Earth Level 2, where your stats are better but you’ll have to get a good group together for the mini-boss at the end?
What if Hell is a summer festival? What if Hell is a city much like Newark?
(An internetz to anyone who gets the reference[s].)

Hawker-
Have you ever seen the documentary Grass? I think you can stream it on Netflix, and a bit of searching will find a few documentary websites that have it. It’s more entertaining than the one I linked to, plus it has Woody Harrelson.
My first awareness of the history of cannabis prohibition (I try to avoid using the word ‘marijuana’ because of the instant emotional reaction to it) came from reading Jack Herer’s The Emperor Has No Clothers. I actually saw him lecture at the University of Notre Dame many years ago, and among other exhibits, he brought a sample of hemp fiber, apparently from a fairly young plant, that was incredibly soft. I wanted a sweater knitted from it.
AFIC, cannabis prohibition is the most extreme example of large corporations getting the gummint to make laws that make it possible for them to put smaller operations that compete with them out of business.
And most of the Congresscritters who voted for “marijuana” prohibition had no idea that “marijuana” was, in fact, cannabis. At least one said that if he had known, he would never have voted to prohibit it.

How common is it for churchgoers today to understand the implications of “purple”?
I mean, it wasn’t just a color of fabric back then. It was *the* luxury item back then, which is why it’s associated with emperors and popes.

Neohippie wrote: “The Buddhist idea of reincarnation being a punishment, and if you’re good your reward is to die permently seems to come from a people who didn’t like life very much. Though I’m sure I don’t understand the subtleties of Buddhist thought.”
Well, no. If you’re bad you might be reborn in a hell realm, but that’s only temporary (for large values of temporary). Eventually you die in hell and are reborn elsewhere depending on how much bad karma you’ve worked off. If you’re good you could be reborn in a heaven-realm, but that’s only temporary too, which makes the pleasure of heaven bittersweet. You die in heaven eventually and are reborn elsewhere. (In some Buddhist cosmology even the deities grandfathered in from Hinduism are going to die, someday, to be reborn.)
The goal of Buddhism is to opt out of this cycle.
I personally see this as a metaphor for life, with nirvana being the extinction of the stupid mistakes and unwise behaviors you keep doing (the temporary hells) and not letting yourself get swept up in too much unthinking pleasure (the temporary heavens that never last) and settling into a pleasant equanimity, not freaking out too much over the inevitable bad things that happen, and not lusting too much after the pleasures that never last and can come back to bite you.

@Froborr: Mabus: The Big Stick approach is inherently coercive. A god who truly respected free will would offer people a choice without threatening them.
Remember that the Bible was written at a time when the emperor of Rome was seen as an _incarnate god_, and during the middle ages, failure to obey your betters resulted in a whipping (or worse). “Free Will” as something important and sacrosanct seems like a modern conceit to me.
(There must be Free Will in Heaven, if the Fundamentalists are right, since Lucifer got tossed out for (ab)using it. Which leads me to believe that Fundamentalist Heaven will be EMPTY within three weeks after The Final Judgement, as people would get ejected for various trivial offenses. Fnord.)
—-
@Tonio: BTW, the justice versus vengeance debate sounds great if one imagines the debaters as Amerigo Bonasera and Vito Corleone.
In my cynical moments (ie, ALL THE TIME), the “Jesus Saves!” thing combined with the obvious Big Stick of Hell makes me imagine Him in a pinstriped suit. “Nice eternal soul y’got there…be a REAL SHAME if something were to HAPPEN to it.”

NRH, no, I haven’t seen that movie, but I read “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do” by Peter McWilliams. Its available online.
Peter McWilliams died of complications from the AIDS virus. Unable to eat, he pretty much starved to death. When he self treated with “cannabis” he was able to eat, but that was illegal and he was forbidden to use it. According to William F. Buckley jr., he died by that court order.

@Not Really Here: Then what is the point of the Universe (or even just the Earth) being supported on the back of a turtle in the first place? I mean, if there’s no weight in space, then the Cosmos itself has no weight, so there is no need for a turtle to support it.
Ah, but in the infinite stack of turtles, each turtle does have mass, which means that each turtle IS bearing the weight of the smaller turtles (and the Earth) on top of them! And without the turtles, the Terrestrial Disc wouldn’t have enough gravity to keep the atmosplane from drifting off into the vacuum! Stop laughing, this IS SCIENCE!!!
—-
@inge: Agreed with the rest: If heaven, hell and the rules concerning them were a) consistent and b) known, following them would be a standard safety precaution.
I remember reading somewhere that one quality of a police state is that you can never be sure that you won’t get arrested/brutalized/killed, no matter how hard you try. I suspect a similar social model is at work here.

@Mabus: Allowing people to take psychoactive drugs that make them less productive can’t not wreck our whole society, and for another country to supply us with them is practically an act of war. Almost any measures needed to prevent such an outcome are justified because of the immense cost to America and to all of us individually of lettting such a thing happen.
We _tried_ outlawing the most damaging drug in American culture–alcohol. All that happened was that some people went blind drinking bathtub gin, a lot of cops developed a taste for bribes, and Al Capone became one of the most powerful men in America.
Those who forget the past, etc., etc.
My personal metric for drug laws: “Will letting this person take this drug screw them up WORSE than tossing them in prison for X years?” Very few drugs make the cut, and pot isn’t even CLOSE.

Consumer Unit: I suspect the quote is from the Discworld book Small Gods. Certainly it’s well in keeping with the themes of the book. I can’t say for sure, though.
konrad: I agree completely. There’s a similar concept in Judaism, the toast “May you live to be 120.” You never wish someone more than 120 years, because that’s seen as being enough. I don’t think there’s a specific number, but I agree with you: I want to die full of years. Once I’ve established a purpose for myself and fulfilled it, isn’t it time to clear the way for someone else to take their turn? I am not afraid to die, only afraid to die with my life’s work (whatever that is) unfinished.

“Nice eternal soul y’got there…be a REAL SHAME if something were to HAPPEN to it.”
How about an the Gospel According to Puzo?
“Judas…what have I ever done to make you to treat me so disrespectfully? If you had come to me in friendship then this scum that ruined your Apostolic aspirations would be suffering this very day…”

Hawker- “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do” by Peter McWilliams.
And if I want to go to church on Sunday
and lie in bed with you all day Monday,
ain’t nobody’s business if I do.
I loved that book. I owned a copy of it for a while, can’t remember what happened to it, I probably loaned it to some flake.
By “available online” do you mean I can order it, or download it as a (hopefully free) e-book?
I was saddened when I learned McWilliams died. I didn’t know he had been treating himself with cannabis. Death by court order, indeed.
Mabus- Allowing people to take psychoactive drugs that make them less productive can’t not wreck our whole society, and for another country to supply us with them is practically an act of war. Almost any measures needed to prevent such an outcome are justified because of the immense cost to America and to all of us individually of letting such a thing happen.
Ah, yes, the myth of the Amotivational Syndrome, long since disproved, yet still raised as a banner by the drug warriors. There is no evidence that smoking cannabis makes people less productive, unless you count the lost productivity that happens when you put people in jail for using a natural plant-based substance that is less harmful and addictive that the cup of coffee most of us non-LDS folks start off with in the morning.
CU5012- Ah, but in the infinite stack of turtles, each turtle does have mass, which means that each turtle IS bearing the weight of the smaller turtles (and the Earth) on top of them! And without the turtles, the Terrestrial Disc wouldn’t have enough gravity to keep the atmosplane from drifting off into the vacuum! Stop laughing, this IS SCIENCE!!!
Ah, but they have mass, not weight, which means that the turtles aren’t actually bearing one another’s weight, let alone that of the Terrestrial Disc. They’re simply being held together by the gravitational forces created by their collective mass. I see your point about the atmosplane, though. I am rather fond of air.

but in the infinite stack of turtles
No one has dubbed this the Yertle Theorem??

E-book, I’m told. Hold on…
Here you go
http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/toc.htm
I want my obit to read: Died at 110, shot by a outraged father and a jealous husband.

Not Really Here: If my TOTALLY SCIENTIFIC theory of Geo-Terrapinism appears to have flaws, it’s only because you’ve been BRAINWASHED by Secular Spherism. Obviously, The fact that there’s only an infinite number of turtles in _one_ direction causes them to generate a gravitational field in the direction of Absolute Down.
(And yes, I hereby dub this the Yertle Theorem, since Tonio didn’t.)

Eliza DoLittle:
You, dear friend, who talks so slick
You can go to H-E Double Hockey Sticks!

CU5012- The concepts of “up” and “down” are metaphysical constructs, defined by their relationship to the pull of gravity. You could just as easily say that the turtles are being pulled in the direction of Absolute Up by the mass of the Terrestrial Disc.
As to “Secular Sphericalism”, Geo-Terrapinism is a scientific theory, not a religious belief. I myself am both Catholic and Geo-Terrapinist. You have fallen into the trap of the false dichotomy between science and religion.
Also, many Geo-Terripanists believe theorize that the Earth is, in fact spherical. Sphero-Geo-Terrapinists spend many drunken evenings arguing about what keeps the Earth from rolling off the back of the “topmost” turtle, but the general consensus is that the atmosphere is actually part of the mass of the Earth, but is flexible enough to mold itself to the shape of the turtle’s carapace.
Oh, and Hawker, thanks for the addy. I’ve got it bookmarked.

Spherical Geo-Terrapinists have obviously fallen for Ferdinand Magellan’s fraudulent, anti-Biblical propaganda. After all, if the world were a ‘globe’, how could Satan have shown Jesus ALL the kingdoms of the world from one mountaintop?
THIS IS SCIENCE!

These theories are all clearly ludicrous. None of them makes any mention of the important roles played by elephants in the support of the Earth. Mere turtles are clearly inadequate, how could balance by preserved?

CU 5012- Satan is a supernatural being with supernatural powers, so it is safe to assume that he was able to show Jesus all the kingdoms of the world by some supernatural means, perhaps in a sort of holographic vision.
Leum- there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support the hypothesis that the Earth is supported by elephants. That silly notion was relegated to the realm of superstition years ago.

The fibers can also be used to make high-quality clothing.
Really? I’ve seen a **LOT** of hemp clothes, and I wouldn’t call any of it “high-quality” (unless you’re talking about the contact kind![grin]).

All right then, Mister Roundhead–why don’t people in Australia or South America see the topmost turtle?

Jeff-
All I can say on that matter is that the only hemp clothing I have ever seen up close and personal was sold in head shops, and generally tended to be t-shirts with pictures of pot leaves on them.
Now, if by “high quality” you mean designer-type clothes, I see your point, although in one of the hemp documentaries I’ve watched lately (or maybe it was a YouTube clip) a pro-hemp activist being interviewed was wearing a rather nice suit made entirely out of hemp fiber. I’ve also seen footage of a fashion show where all of the clothing was made of hemp fiber, and included hemp linen suits and dresses that were almost indistinguishable from flax linen. And hemp cellulose can be processed into rayon.
However, that hemp t-shirt may actually be of higher quality than the ones you buy at Evil Soulless Mart, being made of a stronger, more durable fiber.

CU 5012-
Because of the curvature of the Earth, people in even the most Southern parts of the Southern hemisphere would not be able to see the turtle by looking straight up.
The turtle would only be visible to people in Antarctica, and the people who go there are usually too busy taking ice core samples or studying penguins to look up and see the turtle.

On the subject of Buddhist reincarnation beliefs, I found this diverting:
The Game of Rebirth
–which isn’t really a game so much as a dice-rolling exercise, but it’s supposed to represent the Tibetan Buddhist view of reincarnation.

Arrant nonsense. The turtle cannot be seen from Antarctica either. Light bends around the atmosphere, hiding the turtle from view. Its existence must be inferred. If there were no turtle, what would support the Earth? This should be clear to anyone who bothers to think about it.
I confess, I am disturbed the lack of faith shown by my fellow commenters.

I’ll just toss in my personal experiences with hemp clothing, since the thread is veering in that direction:
Surprisingly comfortable (looks rougher than it feels), breathes well and harder-wearing than cotton. Makes good shorts for casual wear, and I’ve had a couple of decent hemp t-shirts that were good in autumn and spring when it’s a bit cooler.
And for the record, I’ve no personal interest in recreational or medicinal cannabis usage. Mind-altering substances aren’t my thing.

The whole concept of “justification by faith” and “judgment by works” is hardly irreconcilable. It’s just that “justification” needs to mean what the word actually means. If we declare Jesus to be Lord and therefore join God’s kingdom project, we are automatically considered not guilty (justified) during the judgment by works. Otherwise, our works are subject to judgment.
The actual content of the judgment is somewhat up for debate.

I imagine stoners trying to buy hemp clothing on the assumption that they could get a contact high from wearing it, or that they could smoke the clothing. I also imagine the US drug authorities banning the clothing on the assumption that it’s merely a front, a disguised way of selling drugs.

Haven’t read all the comments, but I’d like to point out one thing. In the Revelations story, “Death and Hades” get thrown into the fire, and Fred wants to know “what it means for the abstract concepts of death and Hades to be literally thrown into it.”
You may not know this, Fred, but Hades is a person as well as a place. Hades is the Greek god of the dead, and the name was given to his realm as well, where ALL the dead go. The good dead go to the Elysian Fields, where all is sunshine and happiness and wine, and the bad get tortured with incredibly clever torments. (Remember Sisyphus and his boulder? Tantalus and his flaming wheel?)
So the quote actually does make sense, if you know the mythology of the ancient world. These days, I suppose, it’s not that likely that people would get the original meaning, which is the truth for so much of the Bible. Once context is lost, you can make anything you damn please out of it. Sad.

It is outrageously weird that some fundamentalists call Christian universalism and open theism “heresies” (especially when one considers that open theism is more in keeping with the concept of a dialectical God found in Judaism—Judaism being the religion of Jesus !)
Nowhere do any of the verses of the bible state that universalism , nor open theism are any “heresies” .
As a NON-fundamentalist Christian , I will always hope and pray that eventually every person will be redeemed by Jesus –or if not redeemed perhaps remediated). There may be some people who persist in some immoral behavior so tenaciously and severly that their souls may have to be destroyed partially and then have the elements of their souls reconstructed later –or their spirit somehow redeemed without the soul ..(perhaps serial killers and such might be included in such a prospect) .
Thank Jesus for universalist theologians !
Here below I am posting two articles that make the case that the use of terms like ‘heresy’ and ‘heretic’ in the New Testament epistles–should NOT be interpreted in the broad way that many ultra-Fundamentalists do…
The case is made that since in the epistles of Paul , where words such as ‘heresies’ and ‘heretic’ appear in the text…nowhere does Paul state explictly which specific doctrines are to be considered heretical , and since the only place in the bible scriptures where there is anything close to a definition of “heresy” is in the epistle of 2 Peter, where the author refers to people , ‘denying the Lord that bought them’ and NOT to Christian Universalism , open theism , or every form of unusual doctrine , but specifically to denying the Lord…and so the broad accusations that such and such a doctrine is “heresy” (that many ultra-Fundamentalists like to cast around) are playing fast and loose with the text .
Furthermore, the doctrines of Fundamentalism are not on every point “orthodox Christianity” . True orothodox Christianity is more in keeping with the Eastern Orthodox sect—NOT the doctrines promoted by lousy theologians like John Calvin, Charles Spurgeon ect. Gregory of Nyssa and a number of the early church fathers supported universalism .
I see that some have posted words to the effect that they were going to pray that Carlton Pearson stop supporting universalism and support a fundamentalist outlook . That is disgusting !
In light of how Jesus taught that ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive’ and how that applies even to salvation , please do not pray that I become a fundamentalist. If it turns out that an ultra-Fundamentalist deity is running the universe (a different Deity than the Father of the Jesus who gave us the sermon on the mount)—then me becoming a fundamentalist and going to a fundamentalist heaven while other people (even nice people) are being tortured endlessly for not praying a Christian prayer prior to bodily death ..I would regard as a worse state of affairs than me being sent to a hell of fire and brimstone . It would be outrageously selfish for me to go to a fundamentalist sort of heaven —if there are people being tortured for an endless period of years .
If an ultra-Fundamentalist wants to send people to a fire and brimstone hell (or “allow” them to go there) where people are endlessly tortured —even nice people—then I’d just as soon rather try to persuade such a deity to to torture me instead *in the fire brimstone forever , rather than them and let the other people out of such a hell. If such an ultra-Fundamentalist deity maintains that such persons who have died without converting to Christianity are unworthy of heaven because of their sin or belief , then they could still be let out of that hell and sent to some other place that is *neither heaven nor a painfull variety of hell —that does not have any of the pleasures of heaven and yet does not have the pain and sufferring of hell—a neutral place of endless tedious boredom , or embarassment maybe .
Those ultra-fundamentalists, who would be disappointed in Jesus, if Jesus eventually saved everyone, remind one of the weird atitude by the people in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard who were disappointed that the people who were hired at the last hour were given the same wage as those who worked all day long and endured the heat of the day .

NOTE: Thogh I am defending Rev.Pearson, I lean towards a different version of Christian universalism then he does —one that does have the hope that eventually all will make some sort of confession in Jesus —that every toungue shall confes that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father .
THE PERILS OF HUNTING SO-CALLED HERESY [Part 1 ]
In this present era especially , there is a lot of talk in some sectarian groups–especially Fundamentalist protestant groups and in some anti-progressive factions of Catholicism about so-called “heresy” and “heretics” . What’s odd is that in some of these religious factions –especially Fundamentalist factions to label some notions “heretical” apparently because these notions seem way too exotic or way too unusual , even though some of the beliefs supported by such Fundamentalist pundits and theologians were, at one time in history, themselves called “heresy” by many of the other earler dominant churches when these religious movements, to which these Fundamentalists belong, emerged .
An example: the practice of the Baptist denomination to baptize people as adults when they had made more of an inquiry into what Baptism meant about 3 or 4 centuries ago –when the Baptist sect was young–was condemmed as a heresy by the earlier dominant church denominationsin Europe.
It is also quite hazy as to whether a lot of the hunters who object to so-called heresy have any fixed criteria for deciding if some notion is heresy or not. Calvinists and those factions of Arminian /Protestants who believe in free will (and are ALSO fundamentalists) tend to regard the doctrines promoted by each other as alternative forms of Christianity –the Calvinists disagree with Arminian doctrine and vice versa (but with perhaps a few odd exceptions) don’t call each other heretics, yet might call other doctrines so-called “heresies” like open theism (to give an example) or say elements of the Charismatic movement -to give another example .
Jesus in the gospels never uses the word ‘heresy’ . Jesus denounces some people for being NON-consistent.. having internal contradictions in beliefs and attitudes, and/or for being petty , superficial , venal /greedy, NOT for having some exotic theology ! Though Jesus is fond of pointing out internal inconsistency in the beliefs that some people express , he does NOT in the gospels show any desire to support some doctrinal ” correctness” as any goal for its own sake .
Jesus criticizes the false prophets not for teaching unusual doctrine , but instead for fostering unethical conduct . The difference between a true prophet and a false prophet was a true prophet produced good fruits and false prophet bad fruits .
St.Paul uses the term ‘heretic’ in the epistle to Titus , but does NOT define a list of doctrines that make a person a heretic or make up ‘heresy’. Thus it is presumptuous to claim support from St.Paul for the broad use of the term ‘heresy’ that many Fundamentalists and some factions of Catholics like to bandy around .
The only time the word ‘heresies’ gets anything almost like a definition is when in the New Testament epistle called 2 Peter chapter 2 verse 2 which describes heresy as ‘denying the Lord that bought them’, and NOT in the broad sense that the word ‘heresy’ is used today. Thus, according to 2 Peter chapter 2 verse 2, the term ‘heresies’ specifically refers to denying the Lord. It does NOT in that verse have a broad application of applying to each and every exotic or unusual doctrine or belief .
In the book of Revelation, there is a particular doctrine that is villified called ‘the doctrine of the Nicolotaines’ (Revelation 2:15) . However, according to many of the early church fathers like Iranaeaus , the doctrine of the Nicolataines was rejected and opposed by the author of Revelation out of an objection that was more basic , inasmuch as the Nicolaitaines were anti-nomians (i.e. hedonists) of a sort who espoused wild sexual promiscuity and also eating foods set aside to be devoted to polytheistic pagan idols . Hence, the opposition in the book of Revelation was NOT based on some sort of doctrinal groupthink which sought to reject notions because they were too exotic–but, instead, out of ethical objections having to do more with personal conduct and also a disapproval of accepting polytheistic practices .
It is interesting to note that in Phillipians I :15-18, St. Paul acknowleges that those in the Christian community which were against Paul as leader were, nonetheless, preaching the same Jesus and rejoiced in that they were doing so .

SOME ADDENTUMS
Furthermore, some of the previous comments that offer partial defense or an attitude of resignation towards the prosepct of people even nice people being left in a place of suffering in the afterlife for endless periods , is quite disturbing .
One of the worst fallacies of all time is the appeal to resignation fallacy . The appeal to resignation fallacy is the sort of weird thinking that concludes if you cannot or are not likely to change a situation then that somehow allegedly means the situation is somehow for the best. The if you cannot change the situation then defend it mentality which is quite weird; quite
ANTI-logical .
One person who expressed misgivings about the notion of people —even nice people—being left in some place of torment , then with an atitude which seemed like unto resignation —-entertained the weird notion that somehow the idea of a benevolent , kind Deity could somehow be found compatible with the notion of endless torture for all people who did not become believers prior to being sent to a permanent “hell” .
He went on to conjecture that somehow in another era yet to come such contradictions would be shown by some higher way of thinking to not be contradictions —though he still expressed that he would not be comfortable with such a situation .
Yet even that claim that somehow what is a contradiction according to the rules of logic , would somehow turn out later to somehow not a contradiction in some Future yet to come , is ridiculous !
It is a contradiction and will *always* be a contradiction . To suppose that in some epoch yet to come it would be revealed to not be a contradiction according to some magical new so-called knowledge , is , indeed, a mendacious cop out .
The laws against internal contradiction are pre-existent , having not been constructed by man but discovered .
In the gospel according to John chapter 1 verse on teaches in the beginnign was the Logos . As the original New Testament greek of John chapter 1 verse 1 proclaims en arche logos . In the beginning was the logos .
The logos —which is loosely translated word , refers not to a spoken word as the term ‘rhema’ does in New Testament Greek, but , instead, refers to an organizing principle . It is the root term of the term ‘logic’. What’s all that have to do with what we have been discussing? (the reader may be now asking) .
It is but more indication that the weird doctrine popularized by fundamentalists that God has some inscrutible , other kind of logic or reasoning that is allegedly somehow different from the logic / the reason that humans use —is a false doctrine. God in His infinite Greatness does use the same deductive logic as humans do , he is just more committed to using it .
The verse in Isaiah ,’My ways are not your ways ,
‘ my thoughts are not your thoughts ‘,
does NOT mean what a number of ultrafundfamentalists have claimed it does .
After all, Isaiah 1:18 has God say to the human prophet , ‘Come and let us reason together. ‘
The verse ‘come and let us reason together ‘ indicates that God and humanity use the same type of deductive reason , otherwise there would be no common frame of reference by which a human and God could come and reason together .
The upshot of such considerations is that claiming that there could be some magical sort of so-called knowledge in the future that would show that the torture of people in the afterlife, for a neverending span , could somehow be shown to be somehow compatible with the notion of a God of infinite kindness , is a false notion . A Deity of infinite kindness , would NOT leave people to be tortured for a neverending span . No more than a God who has endless patience , give people a finite amount of chances to repent !
The notion that a God who is kind to all –even to the unthankful (as Jesus reported in the Gospel of Luke) , would allow people to remain in a place of unending torture (if they did not come to believe prior to physical death) is a contradiction and remains a contradiction . No future knowledge could ever make it other than an internal contradiction .
And though the epistle to the Hebrews states ,’It is appointed unto men once to die and after cometh judgement’ , the verse does *not* say that *immediately* after death cometh judgement, nor does it say that the judgement is irreversible .
Some postmodernists have wrongly claimed that the so-called Godel Proof of mathematician Kurt Godel , somehow allegedly shows that logic is somehow “up for grabs” , that logic can somehow supposedly be in error even when applied perfectly, but that claim is also quite false .
Actually , the claim that logic as it applies to mathematics supposedly cannot be both complete and consistent, was shown to be a false claim by another mathematician named Gerhard Gentzen, who apparently demonstrated with transfinite induction that logic CAN be BOTH complete and consistent . Don’t let the people who tell you that there is some sort of magical knowledge where in the future Divine Kindness is somehow compatible with a neverending torture of the dammed , fool you .
Fundamentalists are sometimes wont to claim that God could not allow a person who refused to believe and repent into heaven, for, according to many of the Fundamentalists, such people are undeserving of heaven . Well even if one accepts the premise that the people who die unbelieving / unrepent are undeserving of heaven even at a much later date —if they were to repent and believe later—then why not send them to some neutral place say , a place of everlasting tedious boredom that has just the bare minimum ..a place that has neither the suffering of an endless hell , nor any of the rewards and pleasures of heaven ? Why not send them to a place like that instead, even if universal salvation isn’t in the proverbial cards !
Furthermore, to the person who proposed that ‘you just do’ when one is asked how does one go on looking forward to a heaven when loved ones one has known one thinks are likely in a hell , that is NO grounds for justifying the selfish desire to enjoy a heaven when one’s relatives (including the ones who were nice people but may have failed to have made a Christian confession, previous to bodily death , are thought to be in a hell ) .
Jesus taught that it is more blessed to give than to receive , that would apply to salvation too .
If it turns out that my Grandparents who have died were sent to a hell , then if I went to a heaven despite the prospect of them being in a hell then I would have become horribly selfish !
It is not that I love them more than Jesus . It is that I love them more than myself . And well I should , as the precept of Jesus quoted in the book of Acts teaches , ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive. ‘
Woe betide me if I ever become so selfish as to accept myself going to some sort of heaven if my Grandparents aren’t there , or at least if not in heaven , then some place more comfortable than any sort of hell !

The notion that a God who is kind to all –even to the unthankful (as Jesus reported in the Gospel of Luke) , would allow people to remain in a place of unending torture (if they did not come to believe prior to physical death) is a contradiction and remains a contradiction .

buy propecia ,
I applaud the post that you just posted . This website has been a blessing .
It saddens me that there are people that talk or think themselves into mendacious thinking telling themselves that somehow it could be anything other than a contradiction …such as fundamentalists who claim that somehow it merely seems a contradiction to us and that in some future era to come it will be shown to us in eternity not to be a contradiction ..I’m glad that you are unhestating in stating that it is indeed a contradiction and remains a contradiction .
Often people will dress up internal contradictions with fancy misnomers like “paradox” …but the term “paradox” remains a misnomer …There is no authentic paradox ..what seem at first glance to be such are either just contradictions or statments that seem to be self -referential but aren’t or other fallacies in interpreting language .
The notion that there is some sort of separating between divine reason and some so-called “human reason” or “human logic” that could somehow reconcile contradictory propositions …is misleading and runs contrary to Isaiah 1:18 which indicates that God does use the same sort of deductive reason that humans use…albeit with greater committment and that the notion that there is somehow a mysterious “insucrutible” Divine reason separate from human logic …is a false logic for if God had a mysterious logic different from the logic that human beings use …then there culd be no reasoning together.
The supporters of the weird doctrine that God has an inherently mysterious other sort of logic than the logic of humans may cite the verse in Isaiah that states ,
.my ways are not your ways / my thoughts are not your thoughts’ ,
claiming it supports that thesis , but that verse would be more plausibly interpreted NOT that God has some sort of mysterious other sort of logic than the deductive logic that humans use.
Instead, that verse would be more plausibly interpeted that God is more thourough in using the same deductive logic that humans do …NOT that he has some sort of mysterious other logic . Furthermore, the verse that comes before it indicates that the proposition at stake is that God is willing to show mercy, unlike humans who tend to bear grudges and are less likely to show mercy, For the proceeding verse states ,
‘Let the wicked man forsake his ways and the unrighteous his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and he will abundantly pardon ‘…thus indicating that the verse is more of a statement about God being unlike people in willing to show mercy …and NOT the prooftext for the doctrine that God somehow has some mysterious other sort of logic or reason different from reason that humans have …as some people (especially those influenced by Calvinism would be wont to interpret it) .
There are other verses that some might misconstrue to claim they support the notion that God has some mysterious inscrutible type of thinking different from the logic that humans are familiar with such as one in Romans that states ,
For who hath known the mind of the Lord ?Who hath been his counsellor ? and adds , ‘His ways are past finding out’, yet that could be plausibly interpreted to mean that God is *more resourceful* than humans are
…*NOT* that God is mysterious , inasmuch as it relates how the *partial* fall from grace of Israel at the time allowed for Gentiles to be grafted into the New Covenant faster .
And hence the statement in the letter to the Romans where St.Paul states , ‘He hath declared them all in unbelief, so he might have mercy on all .’
Speaking of the letter of Paul to the Romans Paul writes a statement in that letter that is quite *contrary* to the notion that God’s Will is some sort of mysterious affair .
He writes that the ‘hidden and invisible things of God are clealy understood by the things that are made and the things that do appear even his invisible power and Godhead’ . That verse is quite a contra-indication ….if Paul was right when he wrote that verse…that the will of God is a mysterious affair .
IF I should ever sell out and accept the state of affairs of people being endlessly tormented with no possiblity of another chance at redemption …which is what many Fundamentalists maintain is going to happen …then woe betide me .
If it so happens that there is Fundamentalist Deity running the cosmos , then it would indeed be quite selfish for me to go to a heaven if some souls are being forever endlessly tortured with some sort of agony ..be that agony physical or spiritual for all of endless time .
If the Fundamentalist sort of God is running matters and considers the people who died in some sort of unbelieving or “unsaved” state undeserving of a heaven…then why not send them to a place that has none of the pleasures of a heaven and yet none of the tortures of an endless hell …say an alternate hell or other place of perpetual tedium with nothing to do ? (for example).
Again the prospect of other people …even nice people who meant well , but may not have made a christian confession prior to bodily death being sent to a place of unending torture ..I find far more gloomy, and far more disturbing than the prospect of myself being sent there to suffer forever . (Even though I am a Christian albeit a
non-fundamentalist Christian) .
Like Moses in Exodus 32 petitioned that God show mercy to the Israelites that mercy be shown them when they sinned in the wilderness and were tenatively scheduled to be consumed from wrath from up above , and persuaded the God of Israel not to consume them , if there is an endless hell of agony we should continually pray for the dammed to be let out of that hell and transferred if not to a heaven at least someplace that does NOT have the privations of hell .
Sincerely ,
Jason L.

FIXING SOME TYPOS
PREFACE: In the post I posted above there are some typos in the sentence construction that could lead to misunderstandings . Here in the space below, I will rework one of the paragraphs to fix the typos . The insight that I was trying to convey is that the weird doctrine that alleges that God has some sort of mysterious other sort of logic than that which humans are familiar with is a a false doctrine …and that God uses the same sort of deductive logic that humans do …and there is NOT some sort of dichtomy between any so-called “human logic” and the logic that God uses …
Often people will dress up internal contradictions with fancy misnomers like “paradox” …but the term “paradox” remains a misnomer …There is *no* authentic paradox ..what seem at first glance to be such are either just contradictions or statements that seem to be self -referential, but aren’t, or other fallacies in interpreting language .
THE REWORKED PARAGRAH (with better punctuation , and sentence construction than the previous version)
The notion that there is some sort of separation between divine reason and some so-called “human reason” or so-called “human logic” that could somehow reconcile contradictory propositions …is misleading and runs contrary to Isaiah 1:18 which indicates that God does use the same sort of deductive reason that humans use…albeit with greater committment, and that the notion that there is somehow a mysterious “insucrutible” Divine reason separate from so-called human logic …is a false *notion*, for if God had a mysterious logic different from the logic that human beings use …then there culd be no reasoning together…since the frames of reference would be different .

FIXING ANOTHER TYPO
Here is another version of another paragraph from the texts shown above with better sentence construction from the earlier version .
R$EWAORKED VERSION (with hopefully better sentence construction and punctuation)
There are other verses, that some might misconstrue, to claim such verses support the notion that God has some mysterious inscrutible type of thinking different from the logic that humans are familiar with such as one in Romans that states ,
‘For who hath known the mind of the Lord ?Who hath been his counsellor ? and adds , ‘His ways are past finding out’, yet that could be plausibly interpreted to mean that God is *more resourceful* than humans are and
…*NOT* that God is mysterious , inasmuch as it relates to how the *partial* fall from grace of Israel at the time allowed for Gentiles to be grafted into the New Covenant faster .
And hence the statement in the letter to the Romans where St.Paul states ,
‘He hath declared them all in unbelief, so he might have mercy on all .’
Speaking of the letter of Paul to the Romans, Paul writes a statement in that letter that is quite *contrary* to the notion that God’s Will is some sort of mysterious affair .
He writes that the ‘hidden and invisible things of God are clealy understood by the things that are made and the things that do appear even his invisible power and Godhead’ . That verse is quite a contra-indication ….if Paul was right when he wrote that verse… of that doctrine of some the will of God is supposedly a mysterious affair .
(A TEXT ADDED FOR CLARIFICATION)
Which is to say that it runs contrary to that doctrine .’