Hell

[filkertom]

On the previous thread, ericcoleman mentioned Hell.

See, to me Hell is one of the biggest reasons why I don't believe. It makes no sense at all.

Let's examine it for a moment, with a particular and straightfoward presumption: God exists, and He created humanity to be as we are. The whole Adam & Eve thing is legit. Cool?

Recall that one of the very first lessons of Eden is to be ashamed of knowing too much.

So. Hell.

First thing is, after you're dead, you're judged. Good enough score? Heaven for you. Not so good? Maybe Purgatory (the Catholic plan). Bad? An extradimensional torture chamber of infinite size, filled with demons of unspeakable evil and exquisite perversion, for torturing people after they're dead.

And part of the fun in Heaven is being able to watch friends and family members suffering in Hell.

Many of the sins that put you in Hell involve following the hardwired instincts that God gave us. Trying to resolve the conflict between Free Will and Original Sin gets you five-to-eternity in one of the Bolgias.

And let's be clear on that, as well: Screw up during your threescore and ten, and you go to Hell for a gazillion years. Eternal torment.

No wonder they had to write the New Testament. Jesus Christ might as well be called Jehovah: Extreme Makeover.

See, I'm quite convinced there is no afterlife. No evidence, apart from some grainy photos in the Weekly World News, which may have been taken by Batboy. The Christian God is a sociopathic megalomaniac (and I did once point this out to a street preacher, who countered that it was different from just any insane person acting like that, because, well, he was God) who rules through terror, intimidation, and ignorance. The good teachings of Jesus (who I doubt was an historical figure -- again, no evidence for, lots against) get lost in the grim need to celebrate death and torture.

How can a god of love say "be fruitful and multiply" and "sex is Original Sin"?

How can a god of love say some kinds of love are forbidden because of a chromosome? Or are unnatural when they are performed by His creations? What is "unnatural", anyway?

How can a god of love let criminals renounce their acts at the last moment just so they can get into Heaven, but not (as a for-instance) let unbaptized babies in?

How can a god of love basically say to every single person, "Don't follow the instincts that I gave you or I'll punish you for eternity"?

To me, these are not the works of any kind of god who deserves respect or worship at all. These are the works of the nasty old men who perpetuate the superstition of God, to keep their flock afraid, ignorant, and in line... and to hold them with the carrot of eternal life. Don't be afraid of death -- be afraid of Me.

Because, no one really knows what happens to your intellect after you die.

Perhaps it dies as well, lost in the degenerating biochemistry of your brain, and that's it.

Perhaps it becomes part of some cosmic All, assimilated into the aether, a soft grace note in the Music of the Spheres.

Perhaps you are reborn, with or without knowledge of your prior life, or lives.

Perhaps you end up on the banks of a river, age 25, with food provided in tubes every day. Perhaps you recline in a marble palace, fed ambrosia and nectar. Perhaps you sit in a mead hall, waiting for the battle that will decide the universe. Perhaps you float in an endless, quiet stream with all the other souls, guarded by a three-headed dog. Perhaps you get seventy-two virgins and your own palace. Perhaps you're seated with everyone at a huge table covered with food, and you can't raise your hands to your own mouth, and the difference between eternal glory and eternal suffering is whether or not you can learn to feed each other. Perhaps there's a watchmaker, a sculptor, an artist, a metalworker, crafting new life and letting it free. Perhaps you go Beyond The Veil, or Beyond The Rim, or Beyond The Fields We Know.

Perhaps there is a Christian Heaven, and a Christian Hell.

But no one knows.

It's what they believe.

Reference links: The Skeptic's Annotated Bible, and The Internet Sacred Text Archive.

So. Very serious question here, and I of course compel no one to answer it:

If you believe in an afterlife, what do you believe, and why?

Comments

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Well, no, I don't think the eating was the sin. I think the saying he wouldn't and then doing it and then lying about it was the sin. Actually, there doesn't even have to have been anything special about the apples: just knowing what he had done to someone who had given him life would pretty much clear up the whole good and evil issue. The knowledge mentioned was specifically "the knowledge of good and evil"; the only way you learn that is by trying both. So no, God didn't want us to be ignorant, just honest, which is something we still have a dim, outdated kind of respect for. And as for being naked, he would have been happier if we weren't fussed about being naked, but we are, so I guess we have to live with it.

[arcane-k.livejournal.com]

I think it has less to do with honesty than obedience. It's like putting a biscuit on a dog's nose and then telling her not to eat it. If you're not trying to teach the dog obedience, then don't put the biscuit on her nose.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

One of the most... sorry... fundamental human instincts is to want something we can't have. My problem with this particular parable is that what we can't have is one of the strongest biological imperatives, i.e., sex. Again, the effect for me is making God out to be a cruel psychopath.

And Adam and Eve were newly created. They didn't know what naked was, or why they should be ashamed of it. Again, God put that there.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

(Please do note that I don't buy into any of this myself: I am not a Christian fundamentalist, or even a Christian particularly, and I do not believe the Bible to be literally true. I'm just trying to make sure that what is condemned is actually what's there, at least in the much-translated, much-reinterpreted version we have.Actually, I much prefer orawnsva's interpretation myself.)

The story of the tree and the apples and so on does not have any sex in it, unless one reads it in as a somewhat strained metaphor. There is no mention of sex. I've just gone back and re-read it to check. No sex. Nothing to do with sex. The first mention of sex is afterwards. The McGuffin here is the knowledge of good and evil, pure and simple: the awareness that it is possible to do bad things, and that there are good and sufficient reasons why one shouldn't. (Which is where the shame came from, and the need to hide. God didn't do that: it followed from the act.) And, as with children, the only workable way to get that lesson into the head of a newly created man and woman is by punishment. And given that when God told them not to eat the apples he said "or you will surely die," you might think they got off lightly after all.

And yes, we have a fundamental instinct to want something we can't have. Should that instinct then always be gratified? Or do we need to learn that stealing is not only against the law, it's a cruel and hurtful thing to do to somebody? Should we always act on instinct, or do we need to learn to use our reason and our instinct in tandem? And is someone who tries to teach us that a cruel psychopath?

You can see it as teaching obedience, as I said before, or you can see it as teaching honesty and common sense. God could have said "You can eat of all the trees in the garden, but don't try and eat of the fruit of the hot bright orange tree that flickers and gives off smoke, or you'll burn your hand," and Adam would still have tried it, and that would have been a more obviously stupid thing to do. But I guess God would still have been a cruel psychopath for putting it there, or not putting a fireguard round it, instead of teaching Adam to respect fire so that he could control it later.
Just as we have to be taught to respect our instincts, and to be aware that they can lead us to do things that have unpleasant consequences, so that we can control them later.

Except of course that it didn't work; we still steal, and we still lie about it, and we still think it's not fair when we get caught and punished. Bit of a failure all round, really.

[arcane-k.livejournal.com]

"Mommy's going to leave this can of Drano on the floor while I go talk on the phone. You be good and not touch it."

God *invented* curious hairless monkeys, then he invented a specific temptation for the hairless monkeys, then he defied the hairless monkeys to resist it. That doesn't seem like the action of a God who truly wanted us stay in the Garden of Eden, but by doing it this way, it's *our* fault for getting kicked out, not *his* fault for setting up a situation we were likely to lose. And *we* are supposed to feel guilty for this "sin."

Goof grief. Right off the bat, God's laying on a passive-aggressive guilt trip.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

I seem to have lapsed into Old High Martian again, or else the points I'm making are just too transparently infantile to be worth paying attention to.

You view the myth your way, and I'll view it my way. How about that?

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

My theory is that the commandment not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was a test — and we passed.

"Free will: check. Okay, out of the kiddie pool!"

I expand on this interpretation, in which Eden is a test environment we were always intended to leave (and Satan is an overworked graduate student), in my song "Experiment 45" (http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/01/bnewman/songs/lyrics/Experiment45.txt).

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I love it.

Make sure you perform that for me the next time I'm around you, okay? :)