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WillowOne's Positions

Hell

My Positions

  1. The concept of Hell is inherently irrational.
  2. The concept of Hell is incompatible with the idea of a benevolent god.
  3. The concept of Hell is a tool of social control, and its persistence is better explained by its usefulness than by its truth.

Notes

  • Why it is irrational
  • Infinite punishment for finite wrongdoing is disproportionate by any standard of justice humans have ever devised. No act committed in a few decades of life could merit eternal torment.
  • Punishment that is eternal cannot be corrective, since there is no future in which the corrected person could behave differently. It cannot be a deterrent to the person being punished, for the same reason. It can only be retributive, and infinite retribution is simply cruelty.
  • The most common criterion for damnation in Christian theology is not wickedness but incorrect belief. Punishing someone for failing to be persuaded by insufficient evidence is punishing them for honesty.
  • Why it is incompatible with benevolence
  • A being that creates people knowing in advance that most of them will be eternally tortured, and that could have done otherwise, is not benevolent. The "free will" defence does not help, because a benevolent being could simply not build the torture chamber. See Freewill vs Determinism.
  • If Hell exists, the god who maintains it is responsible for more suffering than every human tyrant combined.
  • The concept in the Bible
    The concept of Hell appears in various forms throughout the Bible, though the terminology and theology vary considerably between the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament. The doctrine of eternal conscious torment is a late development, largely absent from the Hebrew Bible.
  • Sheol (Hebrew): the grave, or shadowy abode of all the dead, good and bad alike (Psalm 6:5; Ecclesiastes 9:10).
  • Hades (Greek): the underworld, used in the Septuagint to translate Sheol; neutral or negative (Luke 16:23).
  • Gehenna (Greek, from the Hebrew Ge Hinnom, the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem): a place of fiery punishment (Mark 9:47; Matthew 5:22).
  • Tartarus (Greek): borrowed directly from Greek mythology, used once (2 Peter 2:4).
  • Lake of Fire (Greek): the final judgement (Revelation 20:14).
    English translations historically rendered all of these as "hell", which obscures how different the underlying ideas are.
  • Comparable concepts in other religions
  • Duat: the Ancient Egyptian underworld, through which the soul journeys after death to be judged by the weighing of the heart.
  • Naraka: in Hinduism, temporary hellish realms for the purification of the soul before rebirth.
  • Naraka (नरक): in Buddhism, realms of torment caused by karma, likewise temporary.
  • Chinvat Bridge: in Zoroastrianism, the bridge separating the world of the living from the dead, which widens for the righteous and narrows to a blade for the wicked.
  • Barzakh: in Islam, the intermediate state between death and judgement; Jahannam is the Islamic Hell proper.
  • Hel: in Norse mythology, the realm of those who did not die in battle, ruled by the goddess of the same name, and not primarily a place of punishment.
    Notably, most of these are either temporary or not punitive at all. Eternal conscious torment for incorrect belief is a comparatively rare and recent idea.
  • Hell within Christianity
    Not all Christians accept eternal conscious torment. Annihilationism (the damned simply cease to exist) and universalism (all are eventually saved) have had adherents since the early church (for example Origen). That the doctrine is contested within the religion itself undermines the claim that it is clearly revealed.

Also see