The Beauty of Hell

[Chikirin]

 

Buncha bullshit

 

If God as so concerned about people dying and going to hell why didn't he mention hell in the old testament?

 

Also how come he would tell Noah to be fruitful and multiply? All that does is make more souls destined for hell.

 

Of course this guy doesn't have comments enabled, wonder why,

[1989]

Not only is Hell not really mentioned in the Old Testament, but by the nature of his ministry Jesus made certain that plenty of people still went to Hell by speaking in parables that apparently only he understood.  You'd think that if God wanted people to go to Heaven then he would have made Himself clear.

[DarkFlash]

Well said. And so clear that we needn't have a slew of religions warring against the other. In fact, i'm still trying to figure out how prayer changes things when we've yet to see where it all started to begin with. 

[mymistake]

As I understand it the Jewish people don't believe in Hell because the concept was invented by Christians.  Excellent points you make, Chikirin. 

[theyownyou33]

Thank you Chikirin. It's amazing how the one true religion can be torn apart so easily with just a  couple minutes of critical thinking. This is the type of stuff that led me to deconvert. Especially when I brought it up to other believers who either told me to move on from the thought if it bothers me or told me to stop questioning God's authority.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

4 hours ago, mymistake said:

the concept was invented by Christians

 

Kinda, mostly borrowed from Zoroastrians, Romans, and Greeks and then modified to fit the new religion.

 

[mymistake]

1 hour ago, Fuego said:

 

Kinda, mostly borrowed from Zoroastrians, Romans, and Greeks and then modified to fit the new religion.

 

 

 

Yeah, you're right.  I should have said "stolen by Christians".

[mwc]

     Hell is indirectly in the old testament and really right out of the gate.  I'll prove it.

 

     Go read the first few chapters of Genesis and see if you don't find yourself asking "What the hell?"

 

     The OT is chock full of these sneaky references and you didn't even know it.

 

          mwc

 

[superbrady]

IIRC, there's a few different words for hell used in the Bible and each author probably had a different idea of what hell is. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but what we were told about hell in church and at home when we were Christians is probably not what the original authors meant. It's what people like Augustine, Dante Alighieri, and later popular literary and church figures thought it meant. In fact, the word "hell" is used in English translations of the Bible in place of a number of different terms that mean very different things. Sheol, hades, gehenna, and tartarus are all terms used that are translated into "hell". It seems like the Bible itself doesn't even seem to have a clear consensus or description of what hell is, which suggests to me that our modern understanding of hell is an invention more recent than the writings in the New Testament.

 

Sheol is basically a dark place Jewish mythology where it was believed that all humans went, good or bad. Hades is the realm of the god who shares the name in Greco-Roman mythology where, like in Sheol, all souls go, regardless of merit, to rest until they are forgotten. Gehenna is described by Jesus as a place where the body is utterly destroyed and is distinct from and not a synonym for Hades... Gehenna the name of a cursed place where children were sacrificed by fire to pagan gods. I have also heard theories that Gehenna in Jesus' time was a place where trash was burned and the fire burning said trash never went out (because it never ran out of fuel). Tartarus is another place from Greco-Roman mythology where pesky titans who played a big part in some of the Greek creation myths are tortured. These are all gross oversimplifications but the point is that much of our current understanding of hell is from extra-Biblical literature, pop-culture throughout the centuries, imported religious beliefs, and folk tales. What early Christians believed hell was like is most definitely not what we imagine hell is like... with pitchfork-wielding demons with red skin, hooves, and pointy tails and all. And if you think about it, hell is a useful concept to manipulate the emotions of churchgoers to get them to stay in church and get the religious movement to survive.

 

Who knows what the hell (no pun intended) the authors of these books were trying to say, but I think we should consider it to be as nonsensical as we pretty much unanimously agree the Norse, Greek/Roman, and Egyptian tales are. However, I gotta say... I think the pantheons and stories of these polytheistic religions are far more interesting than anything that the monotheistic religions have to offer, at least as far as I have seen.

[ShotoManhattan]

The afterlives of the other religions are intriguing to say the least.

 

If there was a Hell, it probably would resemble Dante's from the Inferno.