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What a delightfully deviant question for a topic that I am uniquely equipped to speak on. The conventional understanding of hell is dreadfully misinformed and, as it happens, existentially boring in comparison to the genuine article.
Hel goes by a generous spread of names: Gehenna, Sheol, Tártaros, Uku Pacha, Yomi, etc. Every culture and faith succeeds in identifying tendrils of the larger baroque structure and by studying all of them, some manage to gain a rough idea of the infernal silhouette.
In the Christian context, Gehenna is simply the absence of God. There is eternal damnation for the very worst of humanity (eg Reagan, Pat Robertson, Falwell, Mussolini, Gonzalo, etc), but it is almost exclusively those who abused power and/or failed to use the power they did have to benefit the downtrodden and better the world. Ironically, this means that anyone threatening you with fire and brimstone is the one condemned to hell, while the subjects of their vitriol are not. "Talk shit, get the pit" as I've been heard to say.
For those who want to take part in delivering justice and retribution against the sanctimonious, the corrupt, the prideful, and the negligent, we have an open door policy. We're also always throwing some sort of depraved bacchanal with (of course) an open bar. After all, there are no hangovers in hell unless you're a capitalist.
i like how hell basically doesnt even exist in the bible. technically everyone gets thrown into limbo (re: you kinda just dont exist) until the end of days where you pop up in front of jesus and hes like 'yo im jesus your lord and savior so heres your options, get thrown into that pit of fire over there and have your soul get annihilated and not exist anymore or you can come to heaven to suck my cock for eternity'. theres also an implication that if you are rich that fire will burn and hurt while destroying your soul which implies that the fire doesnt hurt otherwise
though hel existed in norse mythology, and i will always simp for my queen who is dead on one half of her body and a beautiful woman on the other half
I think the idea of hell is completely irreconcilable with the concept of a loving God. Likewise the concept of sin itself is irreconcilable with the idea that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and fundamentally good. In order for him to have created a universe in which sin can exist he must not be at least one of those things
Technically hell is the absense of God, so inevitably it becomes as brutal and removed as possible
The Jewish idea of hell is the absence of God, most of the Christian idea of hell comes directly from Jesus and is explicitly a place of fire that you are cast into eternally
Arguably Jesus was linked to a tradition within Judaism that went exist, what's left is not what existed 2000 years ago, and even what existed two thousand years ago was influenced by the zoroastrians and the greeks. (We can go into sheol vs gehenna, the talmudic hell etc later) Also i stan the book of enoch, homie.
Sorry, I should have clarified that it comes directly from Jesus as written in the new testament; with all the translation, curation, and political baggage that comes with that
You're right, I should have been more clear about that; comes directly from Jesus according to the new testament
One argument I've heard is that it's because God values free will
Then he would create a situatiom in which people had it. Decisions made under duress do not count.
Going to church to avoid punishment is not a free choice.
It's just, why would you make beings that you know, with all specificity are going to do the things that you will punish them with the worst possible thing imaginable for and then let them do it, knowing you will punish them, if you also love them?
If you love em let em go, live laugh love
also the gays burn in perpetuity
But exercising your free will independently of God's own desires will damn you to eternal conscious torment; therefore while such a God can be said to be omnipotent and omniscient, he can't be said to be loving or fundamentally good
Kind of like the "capitalism is voluntary association" argument. It's not voluntary if you are coerced
Edit: I'm sorry, I see you kind of got dogpiled here, that wasn't my intention
The idea of hell I grew up with — sort of combination of folkloric Chinese beliefs and Buddhism — was that there are eighteen levels. Depending on your sins you get sent to the appropriate level upon death. You have to spend anywhere from 10,000 to 180,000 years to pass from a lower level (more sins) to the higher level (fewer sins), except that, additionally, one day in the first, lightest level is 3,750 earth years, second level 3,750 times 2 years, third level 3,750 times four years, etc … So it’s gonna be hellishly long to get out you get sent to the lowest level (longest than the history of the entire universe, I guess), but there IS an end! And once you get out to reincarnate or something.
Plus, in a hillariously stereotypical fashion, each level is administered by a bureaucrat, as if in the real world, whose primary job is to keep the records of names, both past, current, and future.
I love Chinese mythology I'm so mad we literally never covered any of it or even acknowledged it exits when learning mythology in school in the us
Hah yin yangs are in fact very cool. There are different types and sometimes they contradict each other, which create ample opportunities for people to argue with each other, thus it was always an evolving body of ideas, never just a static thing
Yeah! the twelve months, for example. Which ones are yin, which ones are yang? if you follow the odd and even numbers, you'd say odd numbers are yang and even numbers are yin; hence month 1 is yang, month 2 is yin, etc. yet if you follow the weather patterns, month 11 is where Winter Solstice always is and month 5 where Summer Solstice always is (in the Chinese calendar, that is). So you'd say months 11-4 are yang, because after winter solstice things gets brighter and brighter (yang is related to brightness and warmth), and months 5-10 are yin, because after summer solstice things get darker and darker (yin is related to darkness and cold). Figuring out how to map the yin and yang was important because of the various political and ritual ceremonies tied to the calendar.
There's a plot in a very famous 16th cent drama, where the protagonist goes into hell and the hell bureaucratic is like: nah, your name isn't here. Please go to the next window — I mean, please leave and find your lover and finish your romance business
This is a new one for me, but Minos was Greek and they are very... preoccupied with putting things into butts.
Oh my dear, sodomy is any form of sex that doesn't result in conception. The majority of the world are technically sodomites.
You would be surprised how judgemental the holy father was when he wanted humanity to "go forth and multiply".
He has since realized he may have thrown too much kerosene on the bonfire of that edict .
They really did run with the concept and made it their own. I tried to correct them, but some people get their hearts set on an idea and refuse to give it up no matter how many goiters I inflict on them.
Nothing should be denied the blessed that belongs to the perfection of their beatitude. Now everything is known the more for being compared with its contrary, because when contraries are placed beside one another they become more conspicuous. Wherefore in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned.
Thomas Aquinas
:comfy: :blob-on-fire:
Even fascists don't deserve to be tortured forever, just for 10,000 years
no, no, they're the sort I built the lake of fire for to begin with. The powerful need to suffer for their arrogance and corruption either in life or in death. Both outcomes make good dinner theater depending on the mood for that evening.
We were all created to perform our roles in the celestial masquerade and can only act within our own nature.
How else are you going to scare pre-modern people into doing the right thing when nobody's watching?
Hey, the real version is coming soon. Just wait until they implement Digital ID, followed shortly by digital currency. Then everything you do, everywhere, can be tracked and you will be assigned a social credit score (it won't be called that though). Fail to take the knee when it's made clear to you you must do so, and you will be cut off from being able to buy and sell, just like the Canadian truckers. Or Russia. You're going to do what they want you to do, but it will be an AI watching over your shoulder and not an invisible sky fairy.
Daily reminder the luddites were strikers doing praxis, not technophobic
I can't remember if every major religion has a concept of hell or not. Anyway I think it's silly and was created to try and coerce people into being good and look how that turned out. Bad people don't give a shit about it.
The concept doesn't really exist in Judaism, it's something Christians came up with and also carried across into Islam IIRC
There are also a whole bunch of incredibly weird and fucked up hell dimensions across various Buddhist traditions but no one spends an eternity in those, though with Indian religions you deal with ludicrous cosmic timescales so I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes
The christian hell doesn't exist in Judaism, but Sheol (שְׁאוֹל) generally does. There's of course the matter of whether it is only a metaphor for the grave or, in fact, a place of darkness and shades that one drifts into following death.
We created hell here on earth when we started putting fences everywhere. Oblivion is whatever.
Honestly if you think about it as a place where your enemies go, not really. Beyond that, good luck navigating its implications.
