Malcolm

The issue of hell was the biggest factor in my deconversion. It worried me for many years as a Christian, and when I brought it up in Bible Studies and general discussion I usually received the same answer - "we don't understand, but God will one day make it plain". When I pushed the point a little and read some of the bible passages describing hell, people generally tried to change the subject. As I became bolder and started using comments like "the only person who could conceive of eternal, unrelenting torture must be sadist" I was accused of over-emotionalising the issue. For me it was both the first and the last straw.

I lived the first 30 years of my life with the terrible thought of hell in the background all the time. No matter how much "assurance of salvation" I was given, I could never be sure that because God was such a sadist he may just throw me into hell by mistake - or even on purpose. Deconverting released a massive amount of tension in my life, precisely because of the issue of hell.

ManM

K,
No. I'm saying that heaven and hell can be the same place. What will be heaven for one person will be hell for another. Hell doesn't have to be Dante's Inferno.

K

ManM:

Even if Heaven and Hell are the same place, it sounds like it doesn't matter what we do on earth. We're all going to the same place anyway.

Philosoft

And, assuming God exists and that it's possible to be separated from God, how it would be different from my current state of affairs.

Amos

You have to be lukewarm to feel the burning sensation of hell. It like eternity spend repenting at the foot of the cross with the burning desire to ascend but without the power to do so.

Amos

No-no without God hell could not be conceived to exist because heaven and hell are opposites and both must exist to make the other known.

Hell is to have seen [only] the face of God while heaven is to have met God face to face.

Eternity ends with our physical death.

Hell is not of God but religious perversion. Spiritual fornication gets you to hell in a hurry (Songs 2:7 "Do not arouse Love (capital L) before its own time").

Marcion

This appears to make the statement that for any object that exists, it's "opposite" is also necessarily required to exist.

Is this what you are saying? If so, you have certainly not supported this assertion, which seems intuitively false to me. I think that this opposites idea could lead to some thorny logical and philosophical problems.

What is the opposite of God? Traditional theology seems to claim that evil is the absence of good, but if your theory is problematic in that it would require an evil anti-god, the mirror opposite of God. The devil does not fill this role as he is extremely limited in his power.

ManM

K,
Exactly. However, our experience of this place depends on what we do and who we are. The self-righteous fundy who desires sinners to be roasted will be completely dismayed to see everyone in paradise. Because he desires evil (torture for sinners), he may find paradise to be hell.

Amos

Hello Marcion, objects do not need opposites and God as the source of life has no opposite in itself. Heaven and hell are opposite and can be juxtaposed because both are eternal and describe our relationship with God. Heaven is when we have full knowledge of God and hell is when we have only a partial knowledge of God.

K

ManM:

I like your definition of Heaven. I'm not a secular humanist, but I'd probably fare pretty well also. It almost makes me wish I could believe in it.