Hell is the deepest and most spiritual concept of religions. It portrays the worst possible universe, a universe where beings experience extremely intense pain for a prolonged time. What is more mind boggling than that ? This is the begining of the “Fear of the Lord” some religions talk about (hint, hint…). Now this state, the thought of this state makes everything else look meaningless, totally irrelevant, totally UNIMPORTANT. And it is exactly this feeling that this concept is trying to provoke, a feeling that even some suffering is actually paradise compared to hell. And in fact the concept of paradise is redundant, paradise is simply THE ABSENSE OF HELL AND WE ALL LIVE IN THE MOST EXTREME PARADISE IMAGINABLE ONLY FOR THIS REASON.
We are infinitely grateful to god for everything and anything in life for not letting us experience hell, we find everything an amazing infinite gift, we appreciate everything infinitely. Religions need hell to be religions.
DreamCasters actuate the process of ultimate tourment, and their projections actually make it sort of “real”. That’s not a healthy habbit, but allot of people do that because they like the thrill of extremism, and then they get addicted, so they prepetually DreamCast the process that creates the extreme emotion.
Another problem is the revenge thirst. All strong feeling, even the feeling of craving or lacking–is a power that can change “reality” in some way. It’d be sad if DreamCasters really did mannage to send their enemies to a hell somehow, after death. But disbelief in hell would probably protect from that sort of psychic attack…
Not all religions contain ideas of hell. Much like a holywood horror movie, some humans have a way of projecting even the most painful things, for the sake of a cheap thrill.
Fear is the greatest tool of any tyrant or oppressor.
Fear was also said to be Satan’s main tool during all of his action [yes, people being affraid of each other makes them get all jumpy and extreme, it’s like a timebomb, and war can start. “He turns man, against his brother.”]
Fear can also be induced along with certian psychic or energy vampire’s practice, in which all of the self-defence energy is released, but also the idea of helplessness is induced into the victim, so that the victim does not use the fear power to fight back, and the psychic or energy vampire gains the power.
Bullies at school often practice this, in which they abuse and scare others–and they feel a “boost”/“thrill” from their actions, because they are steeling energy.
Methods of fear inducing have many varieties, but remember that almost always the fear inducers are also the parasites or harvesters.
Hell (and paradise to some extent) is based on the idea that PAIN IS THE ULTIMATE CERTAINTY. When feeling extreme pain, nothing else exists, it becomes an extreme emergency, all theories ideas and ultimately your own mind becomes worthless and not even real. Only pain is real. And so it would be with ultimate pleasure, but pleasure is rare to come by for most, life deals plenty of pain, god likes it that way, he likes pain alot.
The point is once everything is said and done, you have been bad, god punishes you got to hell, end of story. The real story becomes interesting when you are in hell. Revenge, good and bad and all else are no longer the issue. Only pure pain is the issue. And why is this the issue ? because it is the only thing we can be 100% certain of. Except for maybe TAO-Buddha monks who can defeat all pain, but I am not sure if they can.
Both believers and non believers have one thing in common, that is DOUBT. There is 1 chance in a trillion that a religion may be true, you get hosed. Absolute truth of religion is based on absolute DOUBT. And only pain defeats doubt and is 100 % ABSOLUTE.
One interesting consequence of hell is that the entire universe disappears, only that very small limited space time of your experience really exists, all else is an abstraction. Is pain/pleasure another way to decode reality instead of space/time ? Religion is the mother of all abstractions, but we have many kinds of abstractions, starting from numbers to atomic theories all which cannot be touched.
You see, everything in a sense is religion. Everything is denotation, indirection, abstraction. What is a memory of the past ? can you touch it or feel it ? NO. It is simply a painting that generates a feeling - emotion, it is simply a connection between a drawing in the mind and a sequence of emotions. Then what is real ? What is suspension of disbelief when you read a novel or see a movie ? It simply fires a sequence of feelings, its content is a painting-drawing, a symbol, a combination of bits just like a DVD is a combination of 5 billion bytes (40 billion bits).
Hell was never thought of like that until Dante wrote the Inferno. We can go as far as to say hell was never really mentioned in church until up to that time period, the churches seeing that as a good excuse to gain some recruites added on to the horrors of hell. We can also go as far as to say hell was made up to scare people into religion, better be safe then sorry.
But really when you put your mind to it things don’t add up. First, why spend eternity(lets see here take the biggest number you can think of and times it by itself a million times and you still wont cover eternity) in a absolutly horrible place because you sinned only for 70 years on earth? We arnt talking about a million years per a sinning year, we are talking about every single day for all time you will suffer. maybe I’m shallow but this seems to make no sense to me, thus the reason I believe religion is a large excuse for people to gain power.
Dante added some color, but it is absolute nonsense to suggest that “hell was never really mentioned…up to that time period”. Hell has always been an integral part of Christian theology.
Jesus himself said…
Luke 12:
4"I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. 5But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
He also described hell as a firey place of torment…
Luke 16:22
22"The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
The early church fathers spoke about it…
Ignatius of Antioch
"Corrupters of families will not inherit the kingdom of God. And if they who do these things according to the flesh suffer death, how much more if a man corrupt by evil teaching the faith of God for the sake of which Jesus Christ was crucified? A man become so foul will depart into unquenchable fire: and so will anyone who listens to him" (Letter to the Ephesians 16:1–2 [A.D. 110]).
Second Clement
"If we do the will of Christ, we shall obtain rest; but if not, if we neglect his commandments, nothing will rescue us from eternal punishment" (Second Clement 5:5 [A.D. 150]).
The Martyrdom of Polycarp
"Fixing their minds on the grace of Christ, [the martyrs] despised worldly tortures and purchased eternal life with but a single hour. To them, the fire of their cruel torturers was cold. They kept before their eyes their escape from the eternal and unquenchable fire" (Martyrdom of Polycarp 2:3 [A.D. 155]).
Just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. And the reason you think it is an unfair punishment is that you don’t understand how offensive sin is to God. Whatever he decides is fair.
Ned, do you think you are not going to hell ? We are all going no matter what we do, we are all lost forever. Even if you follow the christ, the real god may be Allah, and you will get hosed. And a god that creates a hell is a HELL OF A GOD! That means he could have furnished humanity false religions where we all get it wrong and then when we die he says, I TRICKED YOU ALL, YOU ALL GOT IT WRONG, ONLY A SPECIAL QUIRK TAO GOD RELIGION WAS THE RIGHT ONE. NOW ALL GO TO HELL!
You don’t have 100 % security you will be saved, after all we are all horrible sinners, if you were 100 % sure you would have to be god. I have a feeling we are all hosed.
I think the major point is that god is not a mathematician. It is not one sin, one hour of fire, no, it is one sin, thousands of hours of fire and for each. So then what kind of logic is god using ? Some kind of quirky revenge logic ? I mean the meanest person on earth could enjoy torturing people for at most a few years, but hell, sooner or later the guy would get bored and move on to something else. But god’s ways are mysterious and evidently non logical so we can expect anything at all.
If a religion is true, then it must be the most restrictive and oppressive brand possible. Many religions consider thoughts themselves a sin. God says, you had that sinful thought at 3 years old, hence you go to hell. Because if it weren’t like this then he would have to somehow measure how many sinful thoughts end up putting you to hell or not. But he is not a mathematician, he must simply satisfy his WRATH. So we can’t really know how he thinks, this has something to do with the structure of the universe. If we die in the secular sense, that is we go to oblivion, then we really go to heaven because compared to hell anything is heaven. GOD’S WAYS ARE MYSTERIOUS.
Flanders,
Read:
Ecclesiastes 9:5,10
You will see here specifically the message that dead people are unconscious and cannot think or act. This was the Jewish belief, but things changed allot later on in the church.
No matter how distorted or corrupted it all got compared to the original ways, it’s not my problem, it’s not even my problem.
=)
People now have made up their own versions of the ancient ways.
Those who are in hell, are ruled by the love of evil. The fiery flames that we see, is just an appearance that we see, when viewed from afar off. Those who are in hell have no awareness of this whatsover… albeit hell is place full of strife and torment which, everyone inflicts upon each other. This is the only way hell can be maintianed, through the fear of punishment.