What about the Void that was theoretically there before this universe expanded into it, wouldn’t that Void always be there as it is also infinite?
We could be “separated” in the sense of “estranged from” or “alienated from” God as we can be from other people. How can you be healed by a medicinal relationship with your conscience? It’s an interesting idea. Healing can come in a variety of ways that’s for sure.
I understood Mikey to be asking why God would do something unjust. The essence of that injustice is that God punishes people in ways that their offenses (if they even are offenses) certainly don’t deserve. Sending people to Hell “for not believing in Him” is just a way of saying that, but actually that IS what Christians believe, even if they also believe there is a layer of complexity underlying that simplistic statement: God has set up a situation where everyone goes to Hell by default; God has provided an escape clause in the contract; the escape clause requires that people believe certain things intellectually; those who do not believe those things – for whatever reason – go to Hell. Thus, the proximate cause for sending people to Hell IS that they don’t believe in Him, even if the ultimate cause is something else.
I think if you were to put it to Christians that God had no choice other than to issue the Commandments He did, you would not find much agreement. But here’s the essential problem: God is said to have made humans according to one nature, and to have made rules for them to follow that would only make sense if humans were of a different nature. It is this which mandates that God, not humans themselves, is responsible for sending people to Hell.
The usual answer to this involves free will, but according to Christian doctrine there is no relevant free will in this matter, because we CANNOT avoid sinning. As such, any punishment for sin is automatically unjust. There can be no moral responsibility where there is no volition, no possibility of doing good.
I think that Mikey didn’t think the implications through, or make enough distinctions in his own mind between various meanings of the word “immoral.” Let’s take a look at the list you presented:
Very well. If we define “immorality” as any falling short of perfection, then it is true these things are “immoral.” However, it does not follow from this, that either (1) they are “immoral” in terms of a standard that takes human nature into account, and does not expect human perfection, or (2) they are deserving of infinite punishment.
In fact, I would disagree that these things are “immoral.” I think that is the wrong word to use. They fall short of perfection; they are tendencies in human behavior that we should try to overcome. But since it is unreasonable to expect human beings not to do these things, at least without a great deal of work on themselves, the word “immoral” is not a good one to apply here.
In any case, please bear in mind the title of this thread: Hell. Even if I were to apply a standard that would make these unavoidable shortcomings “immoral,” I quite frankly cannot think of ANY transgression – not even one far, far more heinous than these, that I would happily call “immoral” with no quibbling whatsoever – that is deserving of an eternal life of torture. Hitler does not deserve that. Nobody’s sin is infinite, and therefore nobody’s sin is deserving of infinite punishment.
As I pointed out above, it isn’t even a question of people lacking the ability to do wrong. What we have instead, according to Christian theology, is people lacking the ability NOT to do wrong. Free will, therefore, doesn’t enter the question.
Well, as I said, I can’t think of any standards that would include any sins deserving of eternal torture. The punishment should be proportional to the crime, and only an infinite sin (which is impossible for finite beings such as ourselves) could possibly merit infinite punishment.
But setting that aside, my feeling is that it is important for any standard to apply appropriately to the creature to whom it is applied. The bar should be set so that it is possible to jump over it. If we are judging whether a person is a good MAN, we must not do so according to standards appropriate instead to a good GOD. We do not look at a monkey-wrench, discover that it is incapable of accelerating from zero to 60 in 15 seconds, and conclude that it is not a good monkey-wrench (although we might reasonably conclude from this that it is not a very good car).
I am a good man because I am generally benevolent towards others, help others out when I can, contribute to the society in which I live, do no violence, respect other people’s rights, etc. All of these are reasonable expectations of people’s behavior and serve to distinguish good men from bad ones, as bad people are unkind, unhelpful, violent, etc. If your moral standard is such that there ARE no good men, then it is not really a moral standard but something else, being improperly applied as if it were a moral standard.
I’ve never heard of such a void. There may be confusion in the sense of infinite. The universe prior to the big bang may technically have been spacially infinite, in the same sense that the perimiter of a circle is infinite in one dimension.
There was no void. The sigularity was everything. ‘Outside the sigularity’, as I assume you mean to indicate with “the void”, is incoherent, the space outside of space.
Felix,
It doesn’t seem that ‘god’ is necessary for our moral healing, unless it is an arbitrary, buraucratic rule.
No, technically the way I can understand it is that this is a new separate dimension and the space or Void this physical dimension expanded into was the lack of anything physical.
Right, but we’re not talking about the way you can understand it, we’re talking about the actual Big Bang theory. And in that theory, it did not expand ‘into’ something, like a balloon expands into a room, but it was space itself expanding, like the surface of a balloon expands relative to itself.
Or, we’re talking about god, who is taken to be everywhere and everything, and therefor cannot not be hell as well. There is nowhere that is any nearer or farther from god. (Unless you don’t hold that god is everything, in which case I’ve got a slew of other questions for you).
Navigator
Again, that everybody falls short of moral goodness isn't a Christian invention, it's just a matter of observation. Unless a person thinks the 10 commandments (or even half of them!) aren't good moral rules, or unless a person can say they haven't broken any of them, God's having 'set up a situation' isn't even an issue- we all know we violate good moral behavior, each of us, no reference to God required. There is no "going to Hell by default"- because [i]we did these things[/i]. Yes, you can say that man inevitably falls short of moral perfection, but each sin we committ is still us committing them. There is nothing about "Thou shalt not steal" that makes it inevitable that we take things that don't belong to us. And yet we do.
As far as the escape clause is concerned, that's not to escape Hell, it's to escape the miserable existence of someone who knows what's right (dimly) and yet can't do it. Christianity exists to repair the relationship between a Holy God and fallen man. A person sends themselves to Hell through their actions, not God. I think the idea of a judging angel that reads off a list of crimes, weighs them, and then chooses your fate is a little too popular right now, and I'm not at all sure it's Scriptural. And sure, there is an intellectual belief requirement, but that's only common sense- in order to love my mother, I have to believe intellectually that my mother exists. In order to except a charitable donation, I have to believe that money exists.
We have the Government laws- almost everybody has broken them at least once in a while. We have people who make up their own moral standards, and they fall short of them even with the flexibility of design on their side. If there is such a thing as evil, then it must be acknowledged that people do it, and not just once in a great while. So what's the solution? For God to declare that there's nothing wrong with stealing, or for God to create creatures that are physically or mentally incapable of taking things they don't own?
Assuming people are even ‘sent’ to Hell at all. A lot of Christians would say that Hell is simply the natural fate of creatures when they die imperfect, and such creatures cannot exist in the presence of God.
Which sin can’t we avoid? You believe in free will, so tell me- speaking for myself, every time I’ve done something sinful, I could have done otherwise. What we can’t avoid is a sinful nature.
Well, I think you’re mixing theologies a little bit. Christians who teach we don’t have volition don’t teach that Hell is a punishment, it’s more like a dump. You live an unregenerate life, God has no want or use for you in the afterlife, you get annihilated in Hell. I don’t subscribe to that because I believe in free will, but it’s a consistant set-up.
But immorality must be any falling short of perfection: stealing doesn't become wrong because of the number of times you did it, it's wrong because of the nature of the individual act's stand-alone qualities. So, I disagree on your point 1: Stealing is wrong regardless of who is stealing, or how often they do it. The nature of the act defines the morality of it. But as to your point 2, I happen to agree with you. If acts deserve punishment, there's a concept of punishments being on a grade: the worse of a wrong you commit, the worse of a punishment you should recieve. If the punishment for one one human performs is finite, then no human with a finite lifespan doing a finite number of things could earn themselves an infinite punishment. So, either there is no hell, or hell isn't an infinite punishment, or the concept of immorality and punishment being on a quantifiable grade is flawed somehow.
OK, but what makes them imperfect? When you use the statement “we should try to overcome” that throws it right back to morality for me. ‘Should’ statements are moral statements, as far as I can tell.
Agreed, as far I can see right now. To be honest, I have to read more about Hell from the perspective of the religion I’m being absorbed by these days. Respond to this, I’ll do some reading, and let you know what I discover.
Excuse me for not using words you approve of ole high and mighty one.
What is the WORD for that which time/space expanded into, I already tried Void which is to say nothing but you rejected that, I’ll let you fill in the blank since you seem to be the God of words here.
In a number of posts, the Ten Commandments have been metioned as if they are some sort of life code that will result in the reward of going to “Heaven” if you follow them.
Where does this belief come from?
The Commandments were given excluseivley to the children of Israel, so how can anyone claim they apply to others?
Furthermore, I can’t find any evidence in the Old Testament that if even Israelis keep the Commandments they will receive entry to Heaven. I am wrong in thinking this?
THOR
If you think there’s something wrong with stealing, then apparently that Commandment, at least, applies to you.
You won’t find any evidence of it in this thread, either. 
That “falling short of moral goodness” is a crime worthy of infinite punishment, however, IS a Christian invention.
All right, let’s talk about that. As a matter of fact, I don’t agree with some of the Commandments, though I do agree with others. So if we look at the ones I do agree with, which are basically: Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not bear false witness, then no, I have not done any of these things. But come on, the Ten Commandments aren’t Christian law anyway, they’re Jewish law. Jesus promulgated a far stricter code, one which required people not merely to control their actions, but their very thoughts and even their feelings. It’s certainly possible to avoid committing adultery, but quite impossible to avoid feeling a desire to do so; virtue (or anyway loyalty to one’s partner) consists of overcoming that desire, not of not having it in the first place. It’s certainly possible to avoid committing murder, but quite impossible to avoid being angry at times; virtue consists of overcoming anger, not of not having it in the first place. Not, however, in Christian moral thinking.
Since a code is presented to us in the form of a divine expectation, and it is impossible for any human being to live up to that code, yes, this is God setting us up.
That’s true of your mother, but it ISN’T true of God. I have known atheists who loved God far more than some others who did believe in Him.
Either of those, while not ideal, would be better than assigning an infinite punishment to a finite crime.
If God is the creator of the universe, then “natural” is another way of saying “according to God’s will,” and so it comes back to the same thing.
Nonsense. First of all, I don’t believe in infinite or unlimited free will; I do believe we have some freedom of choice within parameters assigned by nature – I don’t believe in determinism. Nevertheless, I cannot exercise my free will to do the impossible; I cannot, for example, flap my wings and fly like a bird. No more can I exercise it to stop feeling normal human emotions. Nor can you, and if you think that, the last time you felt angry with someone, you could have avoided that, then you are deceiving yourself.
And yet, as Hell is usually conceived, it’s still an absurdly excessive penalty. If Hell is conceived differently, as simply annihilation, a kind of death penalty in which one does not suffer but simply ceases to exist – that would be different. But you know very well that’s not the usual run of thought.
However, I’m not arguing that free will does not exist, merely that it has limits, and that the demands of Christian morality exceed those limits. As such, applying any punishment whatsoever (let alone something as preposterously out of proportion as eternal torture) for failing to live up to it is unjust.
You misunderstand me. By “falling short of perfection,” I do not mean anything to do with the number of times one transgresses reasonable prohibitions. I mean, rather, transgressing unreasonable ones, ones that are impossible NOT to transgress. One may never steal and still fall far short of perfection.
Well, goodness, I didn’t expect that! 
OK, which do you think is probably the case?
I understand the confusion. I suppose I’m speaking as a mystic here, as a Yogi and a practitioner of magick. Overcoming hurtful feelings is part of what the Work is about; these feelings keep us from Union and pull us back into separation and the illusion of individuality. Also, purely on a practical-magick level, they can result in self-harm and harm to others, once certain levels of power are awakened. So I “should” work to overcome these feelings, not in the same way that I “should” respect other people’s rights of person and property, but in the same way that I “should” work on my French this evening: it’s something I have set myself up to achieve, and if I want to achieve it I have to work at it, and believe this will be a good thing.
However, when I say that something is immoral, I don’t just mean that. I also mean that if I do it, I will feel guilty for doing it. I don’t feel guilty for being angry at times, I just work to transcend those feelings but don’t believe I deserve any punishment when they occur.
Excellent. I will be very interested to hear from you.
Hell is the English translation for the Greek word Hades. Greek mythology is rich with stories characterizing Hades. In the Septuagint Hades was the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Sheol which meant death. According to the Greeks, Hades was split into two regions, a place of suffering, a place of pleasure. Several passages in the Gospels reflect a similar picture of Hades. In Luke 16 the rich man is portrayed being in torment in Hades lifting his eyes and seeing Lazarus in the “bosom of Abraham” interpreted as the pleasant section. When Jesus tells the criminal “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise” in Luke 23 he is apparently refering to the pleasant part of Hades. Elsewhere Jesus speaks of Gehenna which is also translated as Hell. In any case, the dead are said to remain in Hades until the last judgment. At that point some are consigned to the Lake of Fire others to The New Jerusalem. Thus, it appears that Hell is a temporary not an eternal place. Perhaps those sentenced to do time there will find their way to a better place ultimately. After all Christ has the keys to Death and Hades [Revelation 1:18], and so has the power to free souls from them. Interestingly, Paul, who frequently gets a bad rap here at ILP, never uses the word Hades.
Navigator
As it turns out, not all Christians, not the early ones.
Well, they were delivered to the Jews, but again as I said to THOR- if you think there’s something wrong with murder, then apparently “thou shalt not murder” is a law for you, too. Are we to say that non-Jews are free to steal and kill in the eyes of God?
Yes. He revealed this code, as an excersize to show the impossibility of it’s being achieved. People were thinking they were perfect because they hadn’t stolen, killed anyone, slept with another man’s wife, etc. Jesus was pointing out that their hearts were still wicked.
Well, each to their own measure, I suppose. I think that a good man, seeking to be godly, certainly tries to control his desires. To lust after adulterous relationships, to have one’s head filled with corrupt thoughts all the time, that can’t be good, and it’s within our power to reduce that.
Impossible. If they don’t think God exists, then the object of their love isn’t God, but something else they are calling God, be it a cultural symbol, concept, or some creation of their imagination. That seems rather basic to me, I don’t see how you could sway me on that.
Well, the first one (declaring that stealing isn’t wrong) might well be impossible, but on the second, I agree with you.
Let me skip ahead. As my understanding of hell evolves, some things become more relevant, and some things I can no longer stand behind.
It is seeming to be that the correct answer is a combination of A and B. There is a hell, but it’s not a place, not even metaphorically so. Even the softened-notion of Hell being a place in the absence of God is a mistake, in fact, it’s a worse mistake.
From my recent studies, it is seeming that
God as a being of infinite love, and created no location in which to cast sinners to torment them.
The torment that some will experience in the afterlife is entirely self-inflicted, or rather, as a result of their own nature.
To the extent that Heaven and Hell are places, they are the same place- the presence of God. The self-same presence of God simply affects some differently than others, on the basis of how they have lived, and their relationship to God.
OK, I get your usage of ‘should’ now, you’re saying you ‘should’ avoid these things in order to obtain some pragmatic goal, not in a sense of morality. I have two things I need to say on this.
1.) Lying and stealing were on this list. Understanding what you mean, I cannot accept that one avoids lying and stealing for purely pragmatic reasons, they seem to be actually immoral.
2.) Second, you said ‘we’ should try to overcome them, not ‘I’. Assuming you meant ‘we’, you appear to be claiming that all people have the same non-moral, pragmatic goals. Now, either this is a knowable fact that you can indicate to me, or you’re saying we ‘ought’ to have these goals, and morality risks creeping in again.
One further question- if we work to transcend wicked behavior to avoid guilty feelings, why not simply work to avoid guilty feelings? We ultimately need to appeal to something outside ourselves, right?
Anyways, my ideas on Hell are in turmoil, just starting to reevolve. I hate to do this to you, but I’m really not qualified to present what I’m only now starting to learn. If you really are curious, this would be the place to look:
I don’t mean to coopt this thread with physics, but Uccisore seems to have put somewhat of a period on the hell discussion, so I won’t loose sleep over it.
Kingdaddy, I’m not talking about a word. It’m not saying that you can’t call what is outside of the sigularity a void. I’m saying that there’s nothing there to call. There is no ‘outside the singularity’.
I’m guessing that when you hear the term ‘sigularity’, you picture a tiny ball floating in infinite blackness, or something similar. But that concept of it is incorrect. The singularity is space-time itself, not just everything in it. The space outside of space itself is what you want to call a void, but that would mean that the singularity is in space and then you’re not outside of space at all.
At the big bang, the singularity didn’t expand ‘into’ anything. ‘Into’ is a spacial expression that requires the existence of space outside of whatever you’re talking about. But space itself cannot expend into anything. The expansion is in relation to itself.
Thank you Navigator, you were able to understand me. I’m not a very good writer, and I usually fail at most of my attempts to bring an idea across.