is there a hell i think not
let me elaberate i think there can not be hell because if god is so good he would not dam us to an eternail place of pain if he forgives all no matter what
While I agree that divine mercy would never allow the existence of everlasting torment, what about the idea of temporary hell?
The balance of one life full of mistakes, no matter how terrible does not quite balance against an eternity of suffering. What about a lifetime of mistakes getting punished by an equal lifetime of hell? After which the soul can attain closeness or unity with the divine.
Does the divine care about justice and fairness, or are these only human-made concepts? An interest in justice might create the dimension of Temporary Hell.
Is there a religion forum on this site? Yes there is.
Philosophically speaking, hell exists in form proportionate to heaven…
Is there a heaven?
hahhahahahahha LOGO …that bugs me too.
anyway, there ain’t no hell that i’m aware of.
i like to apply the good ol’ “principle of verifiability” to matters like this. but i am NOT some freak “logician gone wild” (aka analytic maniac).
from the University of Durham (UK) philosophy dept. website:
let that sink in, my friend. in short, there is absolutely nothing meaningful to say about “hell” (or heaven for that matter). so let’s not even talk about it. 
I am going to begin my argument with the assumption (for the sake of argument) that:
a. There is a God
b. This God is a Being of conscious decision-making ability
c. God is Perfect
(I do want to note however that the leap from a to b is a HUGE anthropomorphical leap, but let’s go for it anyway.)
Now taking these assumptions (because without them this entire argument is pointless), let’s try to figure out whether Hell makes any sense:
a. And an All-Powerful, All-Knowing God would thereby have perfect judgment.
b. Sins are context-dependent and thereby are subjective. Let’s take a couple of major sins as examples and let’s make them really bad:
- A person murders another person. Perhaps the murderer is insane and was unable to understand the sin of killing. Let’s say the person was hallucinating at the time and thought the victim was a monster attacking him. There are people in the world who would have sympathy for the murderer. No Person is more compassionate than God.
- Let’s say the murderer is not insane. However, the murderer kills another person because of hate. The murder victim had been abusing the murderer systematically and grossly for years. The murderer has been haunted by the existence of his abuser and cannot live with the knowledge of this person abusing others as he had been abused. There are people in this world who would have sympathy for the murderer. No person is more compassionate than God.
- Let’s say a person steals. The person steals out of hunger or out of desperation. Again, some people might understand.
In other words, for almost any crime, no matter what - from lies to adultery to murder to Hitler - the wrongness of the crime is at some level subjective. There are so many factors involved in what drives a person to commit a sin, that there may always be a compassionate explanation to forgive the sinner.
c. If all sins can be forgiven by some human, then all sins will be forgiven by God.
For example, I can forgive someone who has stolen from me or has raped me. It has happened in the history of the world that people have been forgiven by other people for such crimes.
If we have but a drop of God’s Mercy, then we can never be more compassionate or able to forgive than God.
d. THEREFORE:
If there are humans who would never torment any other human NO MATTER WHAT with eternal Hellfire, then no God would agree with that torment.
To disagree with that statement is to say that humans are capable of more compassion and more forgiving judgment than God.
sweet baby jesus you’re good! for me though, i still wouldn’t even delve into it at all. on account of my scientific/analytic tendencies. i’d quarrel with ya on those initial assumptions …they’re not exactly “experimentally or empirically verifiable”. not that that’s the only way to know things.
but i’d have to maintain that if you can’t know whether or not god exists, you can’t know any of god’s attributes. ya know?
I completely agree that the initial assumptions are total bull. However, those are the assumptions of people who ask, with a tormented heart, whether Hell exists. I start with those assumptions to say, EVEN IF THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS IN THE SKY, Hell still doesn’t exist. Even if there is a big daddy up there looking down on us, then he’s looking down at us with the most perfected attributes of humanity, because that is how he has been defined. The perfect attributes of humanity do not include punishment and mean things.
There is a hell. It is called “Jersey City, New Jersey.”
i didn’t really think you actually thought that! its amazing that you can still put forth the effort to flesh out that argument even though you don’t buy it in the first place. i have a hard time doing that… i really have to get good at it though… if my dreams of becoming a prof. of philosophy are to be realized!
I’m moving this to the religion forum. Please pm Ben, myself, or any of the staff with any questions.
molelove,
But do we accept humans as imperfect? If humans are imperfect then perhaps the abundance of mercy in certain individuals actually qualifies as a flaw.
How does the perfect god balance mercy with justice, compassion with fairness? How does it qualify as fair or just for the perfect god to completely forgive all mistakes?
Or perhaps do the values of justice and fairness qualify as human flaws?
Or perhaps does the perfect god exist at a level of morality so advanced at to render our sense of morality meaningless?
(I know you don’t believe in this, but I was just wondering what you think.)
It’s not that I don’t believe it - I am not an atheist. But I do agree that we certainly cannot make the initial assertion that God is a conscious being as if it were a truism because it is not only not provable, it is also unfalsifiable - meaning that from a scientific perspective, its a pointless assertion.
I make that leap and start with that assertion anyway for the sake of considering its logical implications.
Anyway, one of the initial assertions made is that God is Love. The definition of love is according to Webster’s dictionary: A profoundly tender passionate affection for another person; a feeling of warm personal attachment or affection as for a parent, child, or friend; the benevolent affection of God for His creatures
benevolence is defined as desiring to help others; charitable.
Taking these two definitions, we could say that God/Love is benevolent and tender toward us, which would imply an acceptance of our imperfection - and certainly not an unfair judgement due to an expectancy of perfection, especially not if it is a perfect morality that is above even our own understanding. That would not be fair. A parent expecting a sort of perfection from her child that is beyond the developmental ability of that child is not an act of love, of tenderness, of fairness…
A God of Love would never judge according to a morality higher than human capabilities. A God of Love would actually only have compassion and tender acceptance of whatever we are or whatever we do.
Yeah, its called procrastination. 
I’m amazingly good at pretending to be working… I am not meant for the 9-5 office job AT ALL!
molelove,
That is a beautiful responce. I like it very much. I find it both thoughtful and wise.
the best (and by this I really just mean “most compatible with my thoughts”) view on hell taking into consideration a Loving God is a neo-platonic Augustinian view: Hell is simply distance from God. Heaven is closeness to God. They are terms rather than physical places. Basically, God creates us and gives us free will which was necessary in creating a world with moral good [if he was going to create a world at all] (for an interesting take on this, as well as a “Why is there evil in the world if God is all good and all powerful” check out Alvin Plantinga’s “Free Will Defense” essay) Further God does everything he can do to help us get closer to him (sending down Prophet’s, commandments, himself… depending on your point of view) without taking away our ability to choose. So this Loving God tries to bring us closer to him because he knows that this is the best thing for us. We use our free will (and foolishness/fear etc) to stay away. The condition of hell is one of being burdened by sin, etc etc. It is not a punishment from God, simply our choice of where we want to be and he does alot to help us in the right direction.
i probably didn’t explain that very well as i am pretty outta it, but that should give you the gist
An interesting thing to note is that hell is very different in the bible than of what we know about it. The idea of a devil, fire and such are human made. All the bible does is mention that if one does bad things, they go to hell. Well then hell can be anything, an interpretation of hell could simply be the shame of doing wrong things, and therefore being distant from God. What if there was only one next world, and if you pleased God, you would feel great and be in heaven, and if you’ve dissapointed him, you would feel soo bad, it would be like hell. Many christians probably wouldn’t like this interpretation, but i does work with the bible. We all know the bible is very metaphorical, so why wouldn’t hell be?
As I understand it, those who are in hell are those who want to be there, so in that sense it really isn’t hell, except for those who are not predisposed to being there. 
I was reading a E-book, and here is a quote:
I am not any expert, but I do think this is a book with trustworthiness, since it refers to other sources in the Bible ,etc. several places.
It is a free online book, and can be read here:
yahwehsnewkingdom.com/yahweh-book.htm
The quotation was from Chapter 14; “THE KINGDOM RE-ESTABLISHED”.
Your viewpoints about this is absolutely welcome.