Published by The story of “Little Sucker Thumb” by Dr Heinrich Koffman is a cautionary tale about a boy named Conrad who is warned by his mother not to suck his thumbs while she is out. Because it wouldn’t be a cautionary tale if he did what he was told, the thumb goes in, and the great red long legged scissor come in and chops off his thumbs. Now Dr. Koffman isn’t suggesting that children who suck their thumbs be mutilated, I think most people would agree that is a rather excessive punishment.However many people seem to feel that eternal torture in the blistering fires of hell is a reasonable punishment for not believing in a god who refuses to provide evidence for his own exsistence.
There are clearly some people out there in the world who have not liked some of the things I have written on Christianity and have decided to let me know that i’m hell bound. While hell itself is not what made me angry it is the people that threatened me that hurt my feelings. However since then I have had some christian friends who have made me feel better and i’m glad i’ve talked with them. I have had a chance after finals to finally gather my thoughts about Hell.
Before I start talking about hell it’s important that I point out that biblical scholars have shattered the whole concept of hell as spoken about today by many modern christians. It is really a gathering of other concepts from around the world. The word Sheol- in the old testement which was replaced by the word hell in later times simply meant grave and had nothing to do with any notion of an afterlife. Gehenna- was a literal burning garbage dump outside jerusalem where the courpses of poor and sinners were often thrown.Then we also have words that were borrowed from Greek and Norse Myhtology such as Tartarus, Hades and Hel from which the actual word hell originated.
I’ve been told ever since i could remember that the God of the bible will abandon those who don’t believe in it to this relitively recent concieved place of eternal torture. I can’t imangine eternity, I don’t think the human brain can, but I have heard several versions of the following to gain an understanding of what that would feel like: Picture a solid bronze planet as big as the sun, every century a bird flys past brushing it’s wing against the panet once as it goes past when the bird’s wing has finally worn the planet down to nothing that will be the end of the first day of eternity. Now that first day sounds long enough to spend in tourment to me.
In the movie twelve angry men one of the jurors admits to wanting to pull the electric chair switch himself. Upon him saying so another juror calls him a sadist. For me a god who would abandon people not just to something fleeting as the electric chair but to infiniate torture is infinetly more sadistic and vindictive than the juror. Of course some theist would say that going to hell would be the non-believers choice, not god’s.
Firstly, no one would choose eternal torture. Secondly if god is omnipent, then he has the power to retrive people from hell and an omnipent being who does not retrive people from hells means he is content to let them suffer in hell. That is not a god of mericiful love or infinite love, only an unjust god would hide his presence from people then send them to everlasting torture for not believing. The bible tells us that even the disciple Thomas did not believe in jesus’s resurection, but it also says that he was given proof. If that’s true then why isn’t the same proof available for me. I didn’t choose to be born into a world where there would be no convincing evidence of a god, and since it is no more in my choice to believe in gods as there is to believe in flying spagetti monsters. If there is an all knowing all powerful god and i’m bound for hell then that means that god allowed my creation knowing that hell would be my final destination.In other words I was created already doomed.
A third point is although some christians excuse god’s lack of intervention with crime and disease on earth by saying it would be going against mans free will. They seem to have no problem with mans free will being taken away in the afterlife which would last an eternity. The afterlife is a conveniently untestable relm where you can say anything happens. If a god intervienes only in a relm that by definition no living person has had experiance of, then we have no proof that a god intervines at all here on earth or after death.
Now there are some christians who love to tell non-believers they are going to hell. How they square their enjoyment of other peoples suffering with the whole ethos of christainity is beyond me. I think it is fair to say that they are not very christian at all. Genuwine christians disasociate themselves from them. It would feel like progress if they realized telling a person who doesn’t believe in hell, that they’re going to hell is about as futile as saying santa won’t bring them any presents. You can’t feel threatend by something you don’t believe in.
I believe that both christians and atheist love and cherish the people around them based on their behavior rather than on their views on god exsistance. This leads me however to an insurmountable paradox involved in a belief of heaven and hell. That is how could heaven be experienced by anyone who knew their loved ones were in hell? If I was a devout christian destined for heaven the knowledge that any of my loved ones were in hell would leave me in a psycological hell seperating me from the experiance of heaven. The only I see around this is god keeping the knowledge of who had been sent to hell away from the people in heaven. And if the bible is true then god has proven to be quite capable of keeping knowledge from people.
I think the popular concept of hell is full of holes.
it is concerned with physical pain in a non physical relm.
It’s exsistance doesn’t tally with a just and omnipent god.
It would present an unsoulable paradox for the people sent to heaven.
It would drive you mad in a short amount of time (think about the stablity of animals who are confined to harshly) making eternal punishment pointless.
Most importantly it’s a mistranslation of the bible’s oringinal meaning.
I imangine that for people who believe there is such a place as hell, it might loom very much in their lives and influence much of their thinking. Like someone with an intense phoiba of heights or spiders they might find it impossible not to live with those anxious thoughts. That’s the real tragedy to me is that some peoples lives are immobialized by this concept constructed by humans that has no proof behind it. As always I encourage especially if you’re afraid of going to hell to study the cultural evolution of it in the cold light of day and it might unravel before your eyes. I don’t beileve in hell I believe when we die there is nothingness, some people can’t wrap their minds around it but large chunks of nothingness happend before we were born. As alway, stay rational.
