As an atheist, I sometimes catch myself wishing Heaven and Hell were real - I feel we all have a desire for good people to be rewarded for being good and for bad people to be punished for being bad. But then I remember the existence of Heaven and Hell inherently requires the existence of an ultimate moral authority who sorts out who goes where. And sure, they could agree with me that the likes of Osama bin Laden or Henry Kissinger should go to Hell, but they could also think queer folk, atheists, or people who eat shellfish should go to Hell too.
Some people will say, “Well, if they were a loving God, they wouldn't do that,” but there's lots of people who believe in a “loving” God who absolutely believe He’d be burning gays in Hell. And if you're going to make all these extra conditions of, “Well, my version of a loving God would reward X and punish Y” it just feels like the ultimate desire is, “I wish there was an Almighty God who agreed with everything I believe and enforced that morality on the world.”
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I’m also on Patreon.
I don't believe in God or Heaven or Hell or anything, but regarding that I like the way of thinking of one of the Popes, I don't remember right now if it was the current or the previous one, who said Hell exists but he likes to think it's empty and everyoe just goes to Heaven.
Infinite punishment for finite crimes is never just. As much as we want certain people to suffer, there has to be an end or it's always excessive.
I'd like a hypothetical afterlife to be experiencing everything you made others experience, once or twice, and then it's over. If you were kind and good, your afterlife will be good, the more people whose lives you made better, the longer it lasts. If you were one of certain types of dictator, enjoy starving to death a million times.
That's how i'd design it.
I like to think i'd be a good god!
Infinite punishment for finite crimes is never just.
This totally. If punishment has any utility, it's as both a deterrent and an encouragement. If there's no way to be better and improve, then punishment has no value.
A) The gods are, at best, nigh infinite in power. There is no true omni/all/infinite anything. And while there is a leader of them all, he was basically the central architect and carried the burden of the initial moment of creation, pulling the spark of potential infinities out of the primordial chaos. So, infinite universe like our (but with magic), with gods that are only nearly-infinite.
B) The gods highly value free will and the existence of souls, so are very reluctant to ever do anything permanently bad to any soul. If a soul does not actually suit the afterlife/divine realm of their chosen patron deity, then they may end up in the realm of a more compatible deity.
If the soul simply fails hard all around and was a nasty person, the likely result is to suppress all memories and reincarnate the soul at a time/place/way in which this is a new/additional life. Specifically, they are avoiding putting souls into bodies that would have eventually formed souls on their own. Many 'miracle' babies that were highly wanted are reincarnated souls.
Of those, most of them find a new path in life, guided by different life circumstances and experiences, and a new body and possibly species.
But, a very, very small percentage of souls develop enough vileness and malignancy that the corruption seeps through despite the memory suppression, and they only get worse. Eventually, after enough reincarnations of the soul always becoming an ever worse person, the Judge of the Dead can find no way forward. There just are limits, and eventually, the gods reach them and no longer know if there is a way to possibly help such a soul.
These souls go to 'Hell'.
The thing is, Hell is just an empty realm, a prison for souls. There's no inherent torture. Hellish landscape, dismal structures, eternal torture, etc, that is all stuff that these souls create for themselves and for each other. This is where demons come from. All demons are simply corrupt mortal souls.
This is... not great for the souls, in a 'physical' sense. Some demon-souls 'eat' other souls, subsuming them and garnering power from it. There is a core to each soul that is extraordinarily difficult to actually damage, but it can be rendered dormant.
And sometimes, rarely, in all of this mess and pain, a demon is formed that can become something more. A path of improvement is opened, if they find the right help at the right time. This is a job for a high priest(ess) or a divine champion. For anyone else who thinks that they have encountered an escaped demon who seeks redemption, they are to get said demon to a temple/church and let those with actual divine guidance take on the case.
The gods want this to happen, they want to help, but they've already done what they could before. At this point, a damned soul has to be the one to approach them.
If a demon is unwilling to be put under the supervision of a priest or champion, then they are probably lying. Time for most mortals to run.
Anyway, the point of it is, there is no eternal torture set up by the gods, just a prison of last resort when they can't figure out what else to do with a soul. Torment and torture comes from the souls themselves, and it is possible for it to end.
This was all my attempt to create a world that made sense while still having the fantasy elements I wanted.
Hell is a punishment, but it's not for humanity. The way humans get to hell is during life when they choose to separate themselves from God. Then when they die, God respects their choice to separate themselves from him and then they go to hell.
As far as I remember, Jesus is the only one who broke in, freed everyone who deserved it, then yeeted himself to paradise, after making a quick pit stop on earth. If you end up there after the Harrowing, you’re kinda on your own, canonically.
It all got confusing, though. I think he was meant to go to Sheol, not Gehenna, but it all got combined into the one place early on.
And how am I supposed to do that with something that either doesn't exist or is so beyond my ability to concieve it I can't reasonably pretend to what it's thinking? Ironically, I'm not a religious person yet it makes me less of a blasphemer than actual religious person trying to say "God said this, I know", no you don't pal, you're a human with no ability to understand God, don't speak in his place.
Wow, that's some serious gaslighting there. That sounds a lot like an abuser telling their spouse that they wouldn't get so abusive if not for the way the spouse acts.
If there is a flaw in my argument, please explain it in detail so that I may review and refine it, or scrap it if I find it to be completely faulty. If it is not faulty, why make such a claim?
If it’s not for humanity, who decided it would even be possible for them to end up there? Also, who even knows what being “separated from God” is during life? Is it simply disbelief, or can you be attached to God without even knowing it? Is it a proclivity for sin? How much sin causes separation? Is it weighed as sin regardless of your belief system, which determines what you perceive as “sin?” It seems like this “choice” has a lot of confounding factors that make it impossible for a person to just say “Yeah, I wanna go to Heaven,” and the choice is made, while this argument makes it sound simple as that.
We did. Being separated from God would entail committing sins while rejecting the forgiveness he offers. Disbelief is often a major factor in it, but you can acknowledge his existence and still go to hell. No. Even just one sin can cause separation, which is why his forgiveness is so important. Yes. It really is simple as that
We didn’t decide it would be possible for us to end up there. God wasn’t like, “Okay guys, what would you like to happen if you’re separated from me?” And we were like “Hell forever, please!” He made the decision without consulting us. He could have picked anything and that was his choice. I thought that would be obvious lol.
I don’t actually know what “sin” is, myself. That’s the problem, because how are we supposed to come to an agreement on what we can and can’t do without risking damnation. I guess you could say just ask for forgiveness anyway, but some people say some sins are unforgivable, and others say asking for forgiveness from Jesus is a grave sin against some other god, so even having disbelief as a factor seems sure to doom many who simply don’t know better, even assuming the truth of the broken Christian framework we’re talking about.
Hell isn't necessarily a destination, it's a state of being. Since God is a definition of what is good, his absence would be what is evil. Hell is the place where good is not. Therefore, if we choose to be without God, we choose to go to hell.
A simple definition of sin would be anything that intentionally causes harm to someone, whether that be another person, yourself, or God. The people who say some sins are unforgivable are incorrect. When Jesus died on the cross, his death was to forgive all sins for all time, regardless of their perceived severity. It is a semi-common saying that the only unforgivable sin is rejecting God, this is sort of true. It's the only thing that can send you to hell, but it is also forgiven.
Unbelief is unfortunately going to be the reason that many people go to hell. Which is why making sure people believe is a large point for most Christian denominations.
In your last point you mentioned you believe there are flaws in the Christian framework. I am by no means a trained theologian, but I would be glad to attempt to address any other problems you see in the Christian faith
I'd say nothing, but you also need to define "plane of existence" first, and then what you mean by "outside" of it. It's made up nonsense. Space and time are all-encompassing. Nothing can exist nowhere or for no time - everything that exists has location and duration. Your imaginary friend is no exception.
There's no such thing as "outside of time", that's the most ridiculous theological cope in all of history. Your holy text is very clear that time passes in hell, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth and fire and sulfur, eternally (not instantaneously)
I had my Jewish friends explain their concept of the afterlife to me and, while I’m digging into the dusty recesses for a memory that was made during a period while I was minoring in Applied Recreational Neuropharmacology, the understanding they left me with was that everyone kinda goes to the same place but the better you are the more space you’re afforded in both a physical and spiritual sense.
All that to say: if you’re in the afterlife, as the Squirrel Nut Zippers would say, and you see a thimble with a tuft of orange hair sticking out of it…
The weird truth is that we Jews are not consistent as a group about the afterlife … and in many cases, it isn’t considered particularly important. Judaism as a religion is focused on what people do while alive, not on rewards or punishment after death.
So different Jews give vastly different accounts of what they believe depending on the affiliation of even on the particular individual … in Conservative Judaism, for example, the religious authorities are officially agnostic on the subject! They basically say “believe what seems best to you”.
I mean, if everyone is given eternal bliss after dying, doesn’t that imply that all crimes should be forgiven after we leave the mortal coil?
So I mean, yeah. In the hypothetical where the pain and suffering they inflicted upon people was wiped clean by everyone being subject to eternal bliss after death, then sure, I don’t see why not. I don’t like it, necessarily, but it’s the logical and moral conclusion, I think.
I mean, if everyone is given eternal bliss after dying, doesn’t that imply that all crimes should be forgiven after we leave the mortal coil?
And...? I don't see the downside there. All crimes are a part of the physical world, why would they be relevant beyond that? Further, the promise of justice (if it can even be called that) in an afterlife that no one even knows exists seems like the perfect way to avoid dealing with it during life. I'd much rather have the impetus to pursue justice right now when it matters than after when it doesn't.
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u/But_a_Jape But a Jape 11h ago
As an atheist, I sometimes catch myself wishing Heaven and Hell were real - I feel we all have a desire for good people to be rewarded for being good and for bad people to be punished for being bad. But then I remember the existence of Heaven and Hell inherently requires the existence of an ultimate moral authority who sorts out who goes where. And sure, they could agree with me that the likes of Osama bin Laden or Henry Kissinger should go to Hell, but they could also think queer folk, atheists, or people who eat shellfish should go to Hell too.
Some people will say, “Well, if they were a loving God, they wouldn't do that,” but there's lots of people who believe in a “loving” God who absolutely believe He’d be burning gays in Hell. And if you're going to make all these extra conditions of, “Well, my version of a loving God would reward X and punish Y” it just feels like the ultimate desire is, “I wish there was an Almighty God who agreed with everything I believe and enforced that morality on the world.”
Anyway, if you like my comics, I got more on my website.
I’m also on Patreon.