If it's any consolation, Heaven doesn't sound any better. An eternity of anything would be torture.

That's when I lost my fear. I was contemplating eternity and death and hit me. The Universe has been around for billions of years before I was born and it'll exist for billions of years after I die. Not being born didn't hurt me, and not existing after death shouldn't hurt much either.
Now I feel its down right arrogant to think you're entitled to eternal life.

I think I might be sort of lucky that I was never led to seriously believe that there's any kind of afterlife, much less one in Hell.

Though after that last job I had, I'm a firm believer in the concept of Hell on Earth.

I read the Bible. I think of it this way: If this is a moral test, the answer is obviously to reject it. I mean, promises of everything you want, but you have to look the other way while Lot "accidentally" rapes his kids repeatedly? That doesn't sound right. If you were in the Jack Chick scenario and John Quinonez came out to ask you about your answer given that God had just drop-kicked a baby into a lake of fire, would you be proud of how you acted?

The Bible makes a lot more sense as a test of how much evil you'll put up with to get a promise of eternal life and the chance to blame some guy for every bad thing you ever did. If God is half the man Hitler was, you'll be glad you made the moral choice to walk away. It's all bullshit, but I find that thought comforting when I find I can't shut out the fear of hell.

Also, come to think of it, even an eternity of hell wouldn't be the terror that religious people are trying to push. You're already dead. So you're feeling pain unlike anything you've ever felt before? All you are is a mind; it;s not like you can die again, everything is just another atrocity to be endured. Give it a few millennia and you'll have learnt to cope... probably even to enjoy it, as that would be the only truly effective way to cope (and you have all eternity to learn how).

Of the two, hell actually sounds like the least horrible place. Instead of an eternity of undirected, literally NEVER-ENDING loafing, getting every single hting you ever wanted, and having to be happy while knowing that 99.9% of your loved ones are currently being slowly tortured into enormous masochists by a being that is the source of all evil ever, and whom you must love -- you face a never-ending challenge to overcome. A perfect opponent, a point of absolute focus. It sucks like all hell, but so would any sort of eternal existence.

That's a pretty liberal Christian interpretation, if not new-age. Hell, at least in the Abrahamic books that reference it, is not literally there to make people think beyond the concept of self - I doubt the people who came up with anything approaching hell even thought that deeply - that's your, or some other person's idea.

There are conflicting ideas of hell in most if not all of the religious books that have something like it, lots of people even have issue with translations which complicates things further. One of the latest Christian linchpins of hell is that people who reject Christ are going to hell, no matter what - yet if you accept "his divinity" or whatever, despite maybe being a serial killer, you still go to heaven.

So no, your metaphysical explanation isn't accurate the way the concept was intended historically, and in most cases presently. It's your cutesy cuddly contemporary interpretation.

Metaphorical, not metaphysical.

What are the unbaptized babies burning forever in hell a metaphor for?

God's blessed little Whoopsies?

Astaroth could totally kick Beelzebubs ass

Beezlebub may have been defeated, but is SOUL still BURNS.

me too!

For the great soundtrack.

^ :D

^^^ good find.