Is torture in Hell really eternal?
- Thread starter pluto2
- Start date
No, you see there's this wonderful thing called entropy. Torture is work, work requires usable energy. In a closed system(and hell, by all accounts, would be a closed system) entropy increases thus ensuring that only a limited amount of work can be done as all the usable energy disappears. Therefore the amount of torture that can be done is limited.
This, of course, requires that hell be a physical place.
This, of course, requires that hell be a physical place.
Big Chiller
Registered Senior Member
Who said the physical laws cannot be turned up side down (to express my point). If you don't believe there can be Hell you don't.
It seems like something circumvented entropy in the Big Bang. It seems like suddenly a lot of stuff was happening, a surplus from which we have on a universe level been running down from. Note: I am not making a case for God here.
IOW if the universe goes back in time infinitely, we should have run down entropically already. If the universe does not go back in time infinitely. This means there was a beginning. That beginning seems negentropic to me. Suddenly there was order to run down from into disorder - at universe levels, that is. On local levels we can build up while the overall system heads towards heat death, etc.
It is also an assumption that the universe 'runs' on timeless laws. But some research is beginning to question this. I first learned about questioning this via Rupert Sheldrake's work, but have noticed in recent years that other mainstream researchers are beginning to question this (untested) model - the timeless law model.
it's a kind of neo-platonism that even can be tied to the ideas of the transcendent in JudeoChristianity.
And given how you helped me with Jesus - that sounds funny - here's at least a couple of examples....
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6092-speed-of-light-may-have-changed-recently.html
http://www.physorg.com/news202921592.html
Here's the actual research papers on that one:
http://prc.aps.org/abstract/PRC/v74/i2/e024607
http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3907
and then on another issue....
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html
http://news.discovery.com/space/is-the-sun-emitting-a-mystery-particle.html
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If you go with standard Christian beliefs, then yes, Hell is eternal. How is this so? I have no idea. It's possible that an eternal God, who resides outside of all laws of our known universe and is, in actuality, Being~Non-Being Itself, can simply keep powering Hell-fire through God's mysterious essence.
Historically, people have located Hell within the mantle/core of the Earth. Modern Catholicism (oh, will the irony never end!) gravitates towards Hell being a state of being of the soul in which it is eternally separated from God.
A lot depends on whether you are applying a literalistic lens to the Sacred Scriptures or an allegorical one.
Historically, people have located Hell within the mantle/core of the Earth. Modern Catholicism (oh, will the irony never end!) gravitates towards Hell being a state of being of the soul in which it is eternally separated from God.
A lot depends on whether you are applying a literalistic lens to the Sacred Scriptures or an allegorical one.
Big Chiller
Registered Senior Member
Big Chiller
Registered Senior Member
It's good enough for the topic of this thread. How do we know the universe (or the local part of the universe with the "visible" universe) wouldn't hypothetically expand indefinitely.
@Big --
By "expanding universe" do you mean "the stuff we can see around us" or the spatial and temporal dimensions of the universe. If it's the former then sure, that works, but not for the latter. If it's the latter then you'd have an effectively infinite space filled with a finite amount of energy, and any finite number divided by infinity is so close to zero as makes no difference.
By "expanding universe" do you mean "the stuff we can see around us" or the spatial and temporal dimensions of the universe. If it's the former then sure, that works, but not for the latter. If it's the latter then you'd have an effectively infinite space filled with a finite amount of energy, and any finite number divided by infinity is so close to zero as makes no difference.
The LHC might be changing things.
From what I've heard, it makes black holes,
which migrate to the centre of the earth.
Hell might be freezing over.
Big Chiller
Registered Senior Member
Only if they are immortal, which I think is still in the realm of fantasy.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
You misunderstand the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It says merely that entropy tends to increase. Spatial and temporal local reversals of entropy do not violate the 2nd Law, which also does not specify a maximum size for the reversal. So the sudden appearance of a universe, in which all matter and antimatter is balanced so no natural laws are violated, is nothing more than an increase in organization, which is the same as a decrease in entropy. So long as that reversal is local so the organization attenuates over time (which AFAIK it is doing), there is no conflict with the 2nd Law.
I don't think so. The real physicists here keep telling us that many, most, or all natural laws did not exist during the initial period of the universe's existence.
Not being very familiar with the world's religions, I have been assured by Christian scholars that the contemporary characterization of Hell is rather fanciful and does not really conform to the Biblical description. This puts it in a class with the Rapture, which was blown out of proportion by fringe Protestants in the late 19th century.
But the whole point of the modern models of Heaven and Hell in both Christianity and Islam is that people truly are immortal, because of the oxymoron of "life after death." Jews tend not to focus on an afterlife because they believe that God will leave their bodies in the ground for a long time, perhaps billions of years, before dusting them off, sorting them out, and sending people to Heaven and Hell as they deserve. This is why they reject embalming, cremation, autopsies and organ donation. You wouldn't want to show up in Heaven with formaldehyde instead of blood, as an urn full of ashes, with exploratory gashes all over you, or without your eyes, heart and kidneys. Apparently it's okay to have undergone a billion years of decay so that your atoms have dissipated into worm food.
I never said the Second Law failed. And actually I knew that local reversals can take place and I do realize that some physicists see this as what created our universe, though some of these (most?) place our universe in a larger context, thus allowing it to be local. Without that it means that you are considering everything, the entire universe, local. On what grounds? And not only was this local everything, it created everything. What was the local region that had a reversal of entropy that created the universe? If it was part of the universe, it created itself and somehow had a law which it adhered to? If it was not part of the universe, what was it? What was this region that had a local reversal creating everything? And if the laws applied before the universe was made does this mean laws are not part of the universe?
Another way to put this was 'where did this reversal in the entire system take place?'
And if everything was moving towards order, then there was no tendency, overall or anywhere, towards an increase in entropy.
It seems we have a law that is ruling over nowhere allowing nowhere to have a sudden reversal of entropy and become everything or be everything.
To me your explanation only begs the questions I asked around if the universe has always been here it should have run down by now, or if has only been here for a finite amount of timem then the beginning was negentropic (or this took place in a broader context and the word universe, here, does not mean everything).
yes, but they tend to view this as exceptional. Even your approach above to countering what I said is a defense of a timeless law view. It wasn't that there was something else going on in the Big Expansion, it was simply a local reversal so the Second Law held. The idea of natural universal laws is widespread in science even though physicists refer to these exceptions in the very early stages of the universe.
When possible exceptions are raised these are met with tremendous skepticism. As opposed to simply wanting to see more evidence.
You can see some shifts in this around the links I presented above where evidence is now coming in that some contants and laws appear not to be eternal.
When Rupert Sheldrake presented ideas that contants might not be constant this was considered yet another example of his loopiness. This is no longer the case.
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if God created everything in 7 days he could build anything including Hell.
imagine Hell Island that burns 24/7 and it takes exactly 1 day for a person on the island to be bbq'd to death. since God was well aware of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd laws of thermodynamic, he designed a time-loop machine and used it on this island. so if you get thrown in there, you burn for 24 h then die, then exactly at midnight the loop is restarted and you get thrown in there and burned again and again and again...no physical law is violated.
imagine Hell Island that burns 24/7 and it takes exactly 1 day for a person on the island to be bbq'd to death. since God was well aware of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd laws of thermodynamic, he designed a time-loop machine and used it on this island. so if you get thrown in there, you burn for 24 h then die, then exactly at midnight the loop is restarted and you get thrown in there and burned again and again and again...no physical law is violated.
Gandalf,
Why is it compatible with standard Christian beliefs?
If Hell is a physical place, how is it that it is eternal?
That seems reasonable.
Sciptures must be taken literally to be understood properly.
jan.
Why is it compatible with standard Christian beliefs?
If Hell is a physical place, how is it that it is eternal?
That seems reasonable.
Sciptures must be taken literally to be understood properly.
jan.
pluto2,
Hell seems like torture to us, but to a hellish creature, it's home.
I dare say earth must be torture for a heavenly creature.
I don't se how. Eventually something has to give.
jan.
Hell seems like torture to us, but to a hellish creature, it's home.
I dare say earth must be torture for a heavenly creature.
I don't se how. Eventually something has to give.
jan.