I know there are wide swaths of the country where this is normal but I still am stopped short when I come across people who believe in Hell. It’s so infantile. It’s stunted, like someone who breathed gas fumes as an infant and never developed a normal mental capacity. Hell is a useful concept, and we all experience our own private hells of mourning, loss, addiction, disappointment, anxiety, or just bad luck. Much of this is unavoidable, at least for most of us. We’re all broken or breakable. But believing in Hell as a geographical place like Santa’s North Pole? That’s a torment of your own making. It’s so unnecessary.
You know, we all worry about things, but the promise of forgiveness is supposed to be the salvation for this kind of anxiety. When you’re saved, you’re saved. And if that isn’t enough for you then Christianity isn’t going to be your salvation. In cases like this, the belief in Hell is its own hell.
http://www.satelliteviews.net/cgi-bin/g.cgi?fid=243344&state=CA&ftype=locale
Checkmate, atheists!
There is a Hell, Michigan too. It’s not far from where I live.
There is even a website for it that looks like it was pulled straight from 1995.
I guess the damned spend winters in Hell, MI and summers in Hell, CA
Perhaps in the distant past such things as Heaven/Hell were necessary to keep folks in line. Now we have 120 channels and streaming music to pacify people.
Difficult to let go of a notion that provides comfort to those that have been harmed by those that have engaged in horrendous acts.
We need the Hitlers, Stalins, McVeighs, etc. to be in hell because their crimes exceeded the possible limits of punishment and atonement on earth. But even in our minds were selective in who we send there.
There is nothing that anyone can do in the span of a human lifetime that should require eternal punishment. The need for that level of revenge is more damaging to the ones wanting it than the ones suffering it. We need to move past such thinking.
“Eternal punishment” for a human being is also imaginary. Along with eternal life, heaven, and god.
Absolutely. It’s our need to hold onto such hatred within our lives that is so damaging.
Not if you believe in ReIncarnation.
Hitler reincarnated as an abused child … 7 million times.
Seven million cockroaches perhaps, but not as children.
Not as children because we’d actually feel bad for children who were being abused seven million times, even if they did share a soul with Hitler; and that would point to the incompatibility of reincarnation/karma with actual human kindness. It’s just as brutal as hell with the added benefit of theoretically justifying child abuse.
The belief in both heaven and hell don’t work for me; can’t figure out how they would work even with boatloads of drugs and who would power up the fires everyday for hell.
Besides, why waste time on that when the Star Trek philosophy urges us to go where no man has gone before. It’s the adventure, not the afterlife stupid!
Harris Poll 2013: 58% of Americans believe in Hell. (42% believe in ghosts.)
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/Ar
ticleId/1353/Default.aspx
Lifeway Research: “About 6 in 10 Americans (61 percent) say hell is a real place. Black Protestants (86 percent) and Evangelicals (87 percent) are most likely to say hell is real.”
http://www.lifewayresearch.com/2014/10/28/americans-believe-in-heaven-hell-and-a-little-bit-of-heres
y/
Gallup 2004:
“The 2004 data reveal that 70% of Americans overall believe in hell.”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/11770/eternal-destinations-americans-believe-heaven-hell.aspx
The concept of hell is terribly useful, and proven so by all the rubes who will do anything, hate anyone, to avoid going there for, you know, eternity. Doing the bidding of the church in every way.
Hell is what human beings had to invent, because we needed some way to perpetuate the hate and loathing of “The Other” beyond this mortal coil. Now those frustrated people can imagine an eternal torment for those who are deemed insufficiently qualified to be members of the self-designed elite tribes.
It’s such a perfect formulation for today’s conservative ideology.
It is amazing how persistent the imagery of a three-story scientific model of the universe is. And how many layers of connections are plastered on that model.
The overworld and the underworld. The processes of transformation.
The underworld of volcanic forces and fiery punishment, but also of the generative sleep of the seed awaiting rebirth.
The overworld of controlling stars and significant times, but also the transformative fire that transforms matter into spirit.
There is a fundamental symbolism of consciousness going on in most mythologies structured as a three-story universe.
It is not the imagery that is troubling about the Christian Fundamentalists assertions about hell, it is their idolatry of those images. They worship them by allowing the symbol to be transformed into the literal, and in that allowing it to rule their lives.
All of this legislation to the true believers is their escape for the private hell of living in an immoral society (according to their terms of immorality, which conspicuously typical is so circumscribed as to avoid their own necessity of confession. And it also masks traditions of family abuse. Which is why the Republican party sometimes seems like one huge closet of various dirty laundry.
I’m with you, TD. The problem is not religious mythology but those who fail to recognize it as such. As a Sufi on an outwardly Islamic path, I’m familiar with many teachings about hell and shaytan (Arabic for satan). I find those teachings really profound. They talk of how easy it is to be caught by ego and how, when we try to pass into a state of bliss, we’re caught by whatever within us is impure. When the impurities are annihilated, what’s left is our true essence, which is pure and blissful. Thus, the fire followed by the garden.
These are not children’s stories but deep and profound spiritual teachings that apply to real life. It’s a mistake to treat them as true in a scientific sense or to write them off as nonsense. They have huge value when one looks deep within the stories to find the illuminating wisdom. Fundamentalists misuse religion to manipulate and control. That’s hypocrisy. There’s nothing religious about it. And they should be called out for it. So little of what they stand for bears any resemblance to anything Jesus or Muhammad or any other spiritual master would have done.
Hell, see also Gehenna
One four-word sentence in that Red State post absolves us of any responsibility to take the argument seriously, either as politics or theology. Here it is:
Anyone who seriously believes that the Bible is clear about anything is not worth taking seriously. Of course, this is Erick Erickson, who we already know isn’t worth taking seriously anyway…
Hell is far less than necessary in any context. It is a stupid idea, certainly a concept to control people. More to the point it is a silly idea. It’s sad that so many believe in it.
I suppose that there are many silly folk. I wish that those people believed in Monty Python sketches instead of crazy visions of heaven and hell. Silliness with art and humor.
aren’t these the same folks who are insisting this isn’t about gay marriage?
I am struck by the contrast between the thoughtful comments on this site and the hate-filled rantings of the comments on the original article by the Redstate crowd…and they have the nerve to call themselves Christians!
Very late to this conversation, but it is rather interesting that Pope Francis recently made the statement that there is no real place called Hell, that the entire concept of a Hell goes against the whole concept of a merciful God. Not one of his more widely reported utterances, but, in some ways, from a theological point of view, one of the more interesting.
It’s called cognitive dissonance – fundies can hold two mutually exclusive/contradictory concepts in their minds at the same time. After all, WHO in a post-NASA age still thinks there is a physical heaven? However, the religious right is constantly posting all sorts of nonsense about the place, even though Mark Twain thoroughly debunked the idea over a hundred years ago. Same with H-E-DOUBLE HOCKEYSTICKS. It’s only a threat if you stick with the idea that a “soul” – whatever that is – can still feel physical sensations … a paradox in its own right.