Topic: Hell,.. the Lake of Fire,... brrrrrr...Your Thoughts

[snyprrr]

Surely it has already been determined that there are those, who, given an infinite amount of time to repent of their _____, wouldn't. Or,... whatever...

Personally, I've been thinking about eternal torment a lot lately (and not only when I see Karl Posting in MY Threads!!),... what happens the moment after you take your last breath, and all things like that.

ETERNITY.

THE POSSIBILITY OF GOING INTO THE INFINITE UNREADY... EXTRAPOLATE THAAAT, M@%#3rFUU*KKP*#...


Anyhow, so, do you have anything of interest to add? Frankly, a simple "There's no such thing as eternal torment/hell/lake of fire/whatever" isn't going to be received as an intellectual answer in this Thread. I need something more,... come on, admit it, it's the only reason you hate the Bible, right? I mean, that's what I gather from everyone who's ever expressed this opinion. It just isn't, ... cause,... it can't be,... that's it, right?

I mean, what if there was no God, but there was a Hell,... I mean, why not even divorce the two concepts,... I just want to know how you you feel about a Cosmic Black Hole That Sucks Up All You Are And Traps You In Your Doubt, Forever, Whole, and Fully Formed.



And then, you who believe in this, what of you? Are you so Saved that you have no thoughts on the matter? Or what?




I mean, eery spiritual system known to man has a hell, so, why pick on just the Bible? And, if so many traditions espouse one, why is there no modern credence? Why has not the modern world been able to translate this?


Oh, and in this Thread "Hell is here on earth" won't cut it either. It sure isn't hell for the ones grinding us all under their fiscal slavery thumbs. No, there is no justice on this plane of existence,... it does appear that a Cosmic Dump is needed.


And what of the Biblical despictions of the lake of fitre sounding an aweful lot like a black hole- who really knows WHAT's in a black hole, maybe the souls of the damned???

I dunno


I'm asking your thoughts,... your DEEP thoughts on the matter,... no sarcasm allowed, no cynicism allowed, no mocking allowed, just the most intellectual and/or visceral thoughts on the matter.



I'm personally terrified of the possibilities, especially given the new Elon Musk AI fears- that they could go back in time and torture people who didn't realize their existence quick enough,... maybe the lake of fire is being made right now? maybe hell is something we create in the future, unwittingly, CERn?, open portals,...

eternal suffering

it sounds like it would suck



anyhow

[snyprrr]

Cato will have something to say I'm sure

[Cato]

Greetings!

I am so happy that you have arrived at a deep area of contemplation! 

Ultimately, there is no definitive answer to your curiously posed question.  I assume you know this already.   

Science will tell you not to worry: your atoms will be reabsorbed into the Universe, and you will have no consciousness, no existence.  Of course, in one sense, you have already not existed, since the you from e.g. 5 years ago is not the you right now.  Science has no comment on whether your life has meaning.  However, you can create meaning for it right now...or refuse.   Science seems to indicate that your moral life is of no interest to the mathematical factors involved in operating the Universe.

Black holes seem to be an area of infinite gravity, or maybe the buddings of Big Bangs creating other universes, or maybe severe warps of the space-time continuum folding it back upon itself, or maybe all of these are wrong.  It may also be possible that they evaporate.  Black holes would not seem to be involved with death.  Pope Gregory the Great thought volcanoes were entrances to Hell, but as you know, that is wrong.

So calm down about black holes! 

However, if you sense that Science is not correct, you may consider the following.

If some sort of Divine force exists, and if it allows beings who can discover (some would say "create") the concept of Divinity, and if it allows those beings to choose the directions of their lives freely, and assuming that such a Divine force is not illogical but follows - so to speak -  a mathematical imperative, then it would make sense for consequences to exist for said beings when they commit evil, especially the worst crime of taking Life away, outside of self-defense. 

There are objections to the concept of a Divinity who micro-judges the moral life of every morality-capable creature in the Universe, i.e. that Divinity worries about your thoughts to steal cookies at age 10.  A consideration not without merit: to use a specific example from religion, recall how Jesus ignores various Jewish laws, speaks of them as distractions from a proper path for life, and boils things down to the basics.

Something else to consider: if a kind of evolution is at the nature of the Universe, i.e. that nothing stays the same because it cannot, since change is the basis of the Universe, then it may be that the elimination of evil is the purpose of the Universe.   Now this would seem to violate basic duality, i.e. that the existence of Good means that its opposite (Evil) must be allowed ("He who says 'A' must say 'B'.")  However, one could argue that an endpoint is reached in the history of the Universe where only Good exists, and Evil still exists, but only as an intellectual possibility which is never chosen.

Such a situation is assumed to have existed with the angels, or pure spirits, if you allow their existence.


In one sense, however, there is an answer to your question: if you are worried about this, don't commit evil, don't be unprepared to "shake hands with Divinity," and you have nothing to worry about.  Your life will be less anxious.     If the scientists are correct, it will not matter, except that your life was better because you chose The Good (at least more often than not). 

You may want to examine Teilhard de Chardin for further contemplation, and here is an essay by a Catholic Cardinal giving an overview of the problem:

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/05/the-population-of-hell



   

[(poco) Sforzando]

Dante depicted the innermost circle of hell as a lake of ice.

[ibanezmonster]

Well, there's three possibilities in the afterlife.

Either you go to hell and train with these losers:



Or you make it past Snake Way and have to put up with this guy's corny jokes forever.




Alternately, you can also be revived if you are saving the world from a massive threat...

[Jo498]

One of the most fascinating things of the last years is how in the nerdy fantasies of transhumanism, Evil AI and so on, technologically advanced (but otherwise often fairly naive) versions of philosophical and religious concepts pop up again. That they are often fairly naive seems partly due to the almost complete ignorance these very smart AI speculators show with respect to the history of philosophy and religion. (This does not only concern religious ideas. A transhumanist, all-knowing AI sounds very similar to Hegel's Absolute Spirit.)

In any case, as far as I understand (very little) some of the karmic religions (Buddhism and some versions of Hinduism and Jainism), one does not need a personally judging deity for a hellish fate: Doing evil literally stains/hurts/destroys one's soul and it is a quasi-natural Law that such a stained soul will suffer in a following existence (although it usually has the option for some kind of cleansing as well).

At least in some passages, e.g. in "Gorgias" and the "Republic", the Platonic Socrates seems to hold a similar position: Doing evil hurts your soul already now and even worse in some afterlife. Not because some judge condemning you but because the nature of one's soul is such that evil doing stains it or prevents it from "functioning properly". Therefore suffering evil is better than doing evil.

[david johnson]

I have no interest in spending any time in any hell.

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

L'enfer, c'est les autres.

[Cato]

From the essay by Cardinal Dulles mentioned above:

All told, it is good that God has left us without exact information. If we knew that virtually everybody would be damned, we would be tempted to despair. If we knew that all, or nearly all, are saved, we might become presumptuous. If we knew that some fixed percent, say fifty, would be saved, we would be caught in an unholy rivalry. We would rejoice in every sign that others were among the lost, since our own chances of election would thereby be increased. Such a competitive spirit would hardly be compatible with the gospel.

My emphasis above, and I point it out specifically, because it is interesting that the Universe seems to be at least partially predicated upon inexact information, or a denial of information.  I am referring to the concept of Quantum Physics called "weirdness" wherein we are denied knowing both the specific charge and place of a particle.  As far as I know, it has yet to be demonstrated why such a quality or property must exist for the Universe to exist.  All we know is that it does exist, or seems to according to our understanding of the phenomenon right now.

So, one can say that our inexact knowledge about the existence of God is in the same company.  Divinity appears to give us only possibilities rather than exact facts about His/Her/Its existence.  Knowing too much may interfere with our absolute freedom of choice in Life: we are free to accept the possibility that God does not exist, and follow other ideas where the Universe is eternal, or where there are an infinite number of Universes, or a Multiverse.  We are free to ask "Where did God come from?" and hit a wall, or "How does the Universe just arise by itself?" and hit a similar wall.

The old idea, that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, has faded somewhat, as the essay shows.  Still, even without such a threat of a judging God, Life shows that the good person always seems happier than the person who tends not to be good.  The energy expended to do good things: is it always more than for doing evil?  I would say no.

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

What of energy expended in ranting? 

[Cato]

What of energy expended in ranting? 

I shudder to think of the punishment involved!   

[kishnevi]

From Cardinal Dulles
the one being everlasting happiness in the presence of God, the other everlasting torment in the absence of God.
Heaven of course the former,Hell the latter.

But the direct inference from such a definition is that Hell does not exist, since God is present in all places, and absent in no place.

Jewish thinking is rather hazy, but normally thinks of the afterdeath state as something like Purgatory followed by a place in Paradise  appropriate to the good deeds performed in life. Certain souls are so wrapped in evil that they can never gain Paradise, but the details are puposely obscure.  The Torah speaks of the soul being cut off, which is usually taken to mean not eternal punishment but ceasing to exist, a literal second death.  Cut off the link to God and the soul withers to nothingness, a natural result of sin.  I believe 7th Day Adventist teaching adopts the "cease to exist" view.

Also to remember:  eternity means not time without end, an infinite succession of seconds, but being outside Time altogether.

[Cato]

From Cardinal Dulles
the one being everlasting happiness in the presence of God, the other everlasting torment in the absence of God.
Heaven of course the former,Hell the latter.

But the direct inference from such a definition is that Hell does not exist, since God is present in all places, and absent in no place.

Jewish thinking is rather hazy, but normally thinks of the afterdeath state as something like Purgatory followed by a place in Paradise  appropriate to the good deeds performed in life. Certain souls are so wrapped in evil that they can never gain Paradise, but the details are puposely obscure.  The Torah speaks of the soul being cut off, which is usually taken to mean not eternal punishment but ceasing to exist, a literal second death.  Cut off the link to God and the soul withers to nothingness, a natural result of sin.  I believe 7th Day Adventist teaching adopts the "cease to exist" view.

Also to remember:  eternity means not time without end, an infinite succession of seconds, but being outside Time altogether.

Or the inference is that a different definition of the word applies.  As you point out, eternity is the absence of time, but also of space.  How one is supposed to imagine that...?   A Russian mathematician claimed he could imagine 4 dimensions, and of course one aspect of physics claims that there are many dimensions which have collapsed down into our visible 3.  But what that would be like...?

And yes, the "ceasing to exist" is an interesting interpretation.  In other religions, of course, ceasing to exist is the idea of bliss. 

[jochanaan]

Ultimately, we don't know, since no one has returned from any further within Heaven or Hell than the threshold.  I am counting near-death experiences here.  Many describe light and peace; a few describe darkness and torment and terrifyingly evil beings; but none seem to have returned from the deep circles of either "destination."  We only have enough information--ancient literature, modern fears and desires, and so on--to postulate that they are probably real places, although not in the four dimensions in which we now live.

(It is amazing how Dante's Divine Comedy, originally a political satire, became looked upon as a legitimate source of information! )

[Purusha]

You may want to examine Teilhard de Chardin for further contemplation

Or not:

http://www.studiesincomparativereligion.com/public/articles/Teilhard_De_Chardin_and_the_Christian_Vision-by_Philip_Sherrard.aspx

[Purusha]

It is amazing how Dante's Divine Comedy, originally a political satire

You may want to rethink that:

http://www.sophiaperennis.com/books/christianity/the-esoterism-of-dante/

[Cato]

Or not:

http://www.studiesincomparativereligion.com/public/articles/Teilhard_De_Chardin_and_the_Christian_Vision-by_Philip_Sherrard.aspx

Chardin is an acquired taste!     Some would say his name should be Charlatan.   

[ZauberdrachenNr.7]

Kübler-Ross said that in her experience two kinds of people face death with strength : believers and unbelievers.  Those of us who are on the fence have the most difficulty in the end game.  I can readily sympathize with believers of whatever faith : Life is complex, ambiguous, enigmatic.  Answers are few and the questions innumerable.  Wouldn't it be extraordinary if Death were any different?  Alas, it's not, but it is a measure of the depth of our fear (and presumption) that religions purporting to provide "the truth" exist.  Unfortunately, religions also invoke fear to gain converts and some of Snipe's worries are the result of those efforts.  Personally, I wish humanity could get to a place where 1.) we realize that we are in this world together with others of our kind and after us our accomplishments and deeds, kin, friends, fellow humans and the music we love continue on (does that sound like Death to you? It doesn't to me, or as a character on Red Dwarf quips "death is not the handicap it used to be").  Frankly, our obsession with self borders on the obscene.  And 2.) that we learn to embrace ambiguity (life inc: death), willingly, gracefully, experientially.  And also, as for science, while one respects and rejoices in its tremendous strides, "let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.”  Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science:

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

THE POSSIBILITY OF GOING INTO THE INFINITE UNREADY...

The Infinite Unready . . . I surely don't want to go there! 

[North Star]

There's a Zen koan that illustrates my view on the matter but I don't remember it well enough now. In the meanwhile, some quotes from Milton:

'The mind is its own place, and in itself
 Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.'

'Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.'

 

Also from Emily Dickinson:


"Captivity is Consciousness -- so's Liberty"


Parting

MY LIFE closed twice before its close;
     It yet remains to see
 If Immortality unveil
     A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
     As these that twice befell.
 Parting is all we know of heaven,
     And all we need


E: Here is the koan:

A soldier named Nobushige came to Hakuin, and asked: "Is there really a paradise and a hell?"

 "Who are you?" inquired Hakuin.

 "I am a samurai," the warrior replied.

 "You, a soldier!" exclaimed Hakuin. "What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? Your face looks like that of a beggar."

 Nobushige became so angry that he began to draw his sword, but Hakuin continued: "So you have a sword! Your weapon is probably much too dull to cut off my head."

 As Nobushige drew his sword Hakuin remarked: "Here open the gates of hell!"

 At these words the samurai, perceiving the master's discipline, sheathed his sword and bowed.

 "Here open the gates of paradise," said Hakuin.