Why is there a "Hell"?

Hi all - firstly, I’m new here … looks like a good forum so i thought I’d join. I studied philosophy at uni a few years ago, and throughly enjoyed it.

Anyways, here is my question: If God is omnipotent, why does hell exist? That would mean that God wants Hell to exist … right? As He has the power to do anything, if He didn’t want Hell to exist, then He could just make it so …

As I said, I’ve been out of the game for a while … however I’m looking forward to seeing what people think about this.

Simply put, because we allow hell to exist.
If there’s a god, there is no power within to change that.
Only we can do that.
The question is?
Do we want a hell or do we want a heaven?
The deeper question is…
Why would we prefer to be in one or the other?
Answer that we might eliminate one or the other…
hopefully the hell.

Here’s how I have been told to think about it:
Think of Hell as being “away from God”. God gave human beings the ability to choose freely whether to follow him or not. This makes Hell the product of our own choices. God allows us to turn away from him.

The real question is why did God create us at all? For amusement, apparently.

So, is the way you have been told to think about it in perfect harmony with the way in which you actually DO think about it, Fuse? :stuck_out_tongue:

Is that how you see your relationship with others - as something for amusement?
Are we clowns, Fuse? :laughing:

Nah, not for amusement but that that little worm that crawled out of the ashes becomes a great big beautiful phoenix.

Yep.

Yep.

But realize what you just said;
“The real question…”

Remember that it is a question. It doesn’t elude to a presumed answer, but a question that obviously takes a lot to address, else it wouldn’t still be a question after thousands of years.

Well, I usually don’t think about it because I don’t believe in it. What do I think? I think we made God up and have been using Him for a long time to suit ourselves in various ways. I think maybe it’s time for a religious paradigm shift. Let’s have divinity stem from this world and not a God.

Partly, but not completely. There are deeper more serious aspect of course. But what about deciding to have your own children? Why do we bring babies into the world? I’m not asking for an explanation of evolutionary interpretation, I’m asking for peoples’ personal reasons. Is it not mostly for our own amusement?

True. It’s just my irreverence bleeding through.

Fuse…

Actually I think we are all clowns to one another. That’s another way in which we serve one another.
Have you ever gone to the circus and watch how the clowns make the childen laugh…make all of us laugh if they’re any good, that is?

Aside from that, if the purpose of bringing children into the world were for our own amusement, we would be so sorely disappointed. We each have our own answers to that question and perhaps that might be one for some.

the way I look at it though the purpose, the sole purpose of bringing children into the world, the only purpose ought to be so that THEY THEMSELVES might have their own life…grow into their own sense of purpose and becoming…become the clowns and make others laugh and laugh themselves because they are able to see the clowns in others.

That takes being able to love and nurture that human being we’ve placed ourselves as responsible towards and also having the capacity to accept love from them - and when those little arms wrap around you, you need to have the capacity to show love and gratitude for that little human being. That is the only way in which they are able to become…well, it isn’t the only way but it is the most conducive to being happy and stable children.

But that is just my own personal reality…

Why? It’s impossible for them to want anything before they exist - so why would you want to create them?

Clowns are fine for toddlers. Amusement can be more than “clowning around,” you know. Most of art seems to be one kind of amusement or other. Philosophy can be an amusement, although many consider that to be a vulgarization of philosophy.

Hell exists to keep people afraid. Fear is one of the most useful tactics when it comes to controlling the human mind and religion has clung to that concept for thousands of years in order to maintain its stranglehold on the people it wishes to save from intellectual freedom. Hell exists so that you will allow yourself to be submissive to someone else and be grateful for it in the process.

Happy hunting.

Correct.

God wants hell. It gives him a place to torture for eternity those people who grew up never having heard of him. Or those babies that died before they even learned to speak. Gotta have a place to send 'em all, they sure don’t deserve to be in heaven, after all they actually had the audacity to die without a certain belief in their head! What sinners! The horror!

But don’t worry, if it all seems absurd and insane, just remember, god knows best.

god god god god god god god god god!! ! Enough already.!

The ONLY real hell that exists is the one which we have created within our own human, suffering fragile minds and/or the one which has been created for us by humans and/or circumstances.

Time to stop blaming a NON-EXISTENT god, or at the very least, the silly archaic feeble-minded one which we have fashioned through our own narrow projections and which dwells within our minds.

Why is there a LIVING hell - the ONLY TRUE HELL?

Because we utterly refuse - many of us refuse - to take that giant leap into the darkness and BECOME loving gods to one another and at least try to pull one another out of our living hells.

Down with God - down with Hell - BE THE LOVING ENERGY WHICH WE ARE ALL CREATED TO BECOME…

Is hell too hot for a god to enter into? That is the question!

Who could find this a place of heaven if only one person remained in hell?!
HP

Good question, Is hell too hot for a god to enter into? It seems that hell is the prescribing of the limits of our own being, as determined by us, of course. We create hell, and why? Do we need it? Wherein is the utility of this perspective? I think it resides in the need to hate and blame, in otherwords, the instinct of justice - retribution. Also, as you point out, this becomes the limit of our own inability to rise above and continue growth in an upward direction…

True justice, in my book, is not retribution! There is cause and effect - there are the ramifications of our actions. But the need to have created a place to suffer, a mythical hell, is I think, like you think, a part of our desire to be judge, jury and executioner. The need for retribution.

Hell can never be too hot for one who wants to love and to reach out a helping hand. That kind of a loving god carries within him/her more fire, heat and passion which is capable of totally eradicating any living hell within. It just takes time.

But sadly, we don’t have time for that. We are too too busy using our energy to create a mythical god and hell in which to damn other humans like ourselves. After all, it takes far far more loving energy and light to take upon ourselves the responsibility of being gods towards one another and pulling one another out of that hell.
[size=50]tmsu[/size]

I kind of hate to get into this, but I guess its my “Hellish fate”…sigh…

Space Ship Hell
Imagine that you were on board a spaceship traveling across a vast distance; a distance so vast that it took many generations to complete the journey. The original architects of the ship provide instructions on how to maintain and operate the ship. But early in the flight, a few crewmen discover that they can cheat the game a little and get a lot of people to serve them personally rather than merely maintain and operate the ship (a serpent is discovered in the tree of knowledge of good and fuckingup).

Many generations go by and the rumor that bad things will happen if the instructions aren’t followed is common place but people are beginning to wonder if they are really true or just there to make people obey the crewmen. In an effort to emphasize the importance of maintaining the rules, one of the crewmen explain that if they disobey the rules, the ship is likely to fall into a star and burn up or maybe even worse, go drifting off into oblivion; the abyss of nothingness or possibly just get thrashed around continually forever lost in a cloudy maze of shifting gravitational pulls and hot gases.

After a few more generations, everyone has pretty much accepted that explanation for why it is important to maintain the rules. No one wants to go into a burning star, go off into oblivion, or be thrashed about for their entire lives. But then again, there are those young who aren’t so sure that such places even exist. How do we know, they ask? And in an endeavor to gain more out of their little confined lives, they find that by playing on that thought, they can get more freedom to not obey the rules, especially if they can get everyone else to accept them for it.

Their parents try to explain, “but it is right here in our book, if we do not obey, we will go into oblivion and be eternally thrashed about and lost forever. You don’t want to be suffering and lost forever do you?

But as fate would have it, eventually the great ship approaches a truly awesome cloud of mesmerizing lights and dazzling possibilities for excitement. The passengers and crew are thrilled at the prospects All they have to do is cheat the rules a little and all of the bedazzling wonder can be theirs for their enjoyment.

The End… really… seriously… THE END of the history of the homosapian, soon extinct.

=============================

Watching through a telescope from a great distance on a peaceful planet named “Heaven”, the architect shook his head as he watched the ship veer off course toward the bright cloud in the dark sky;

Architect: “Well, God knows I told them. I guess your homosapian didn’t pass your survival test. They just can’t follow instructions.”

God: “Don’t worry. I figured as much. Those naked apes were always a little obnoxious anyway. We have plenty of time to come up with a better species. Look what I have here. It obeys instructions perfectly every time and requires very little maintenance. I call it an “Ann Droid”. I got the idea from a film about something they called, “Cy-borgs”. We can even get some of the remaining apes to build them for us. They can dispose of the rest of the apes once their done. Did you really want a bunch of whining apes in Heaven anyway?”