The specifics of burning in hell for all eternity

Pete said:
Advanced considerations of hell tend to focus on regret, sorrow, and despair. Eternal sadness, rather than eternal physical punishment. The word-picture presented to me by my mother (a Roman Catholic, well-educated in theology, philosophy, and the sciences) was distasteful, but enlightening (I've embellished it a little):
Hell is like going to a party... the best party ever. You've been looking forward to it for so long, you've thought about nothing else for ages, and now it's here! Everyone will be there, everyone will be happy, and there will be every kind of fun thing to do.
But when you get there and step through the door, just as your heart is swelling up with so much happiness that you think you might just pop... you look down and realize that you are naked and covered in your own filth. Shit from head to toe, in your hair, your fingernails, between your teeth... everywhere!
Horrified, you can only think of getting away, hiding away where no one can see you while you clean up. So, you dive through a convenient door on your left, and begin searching for cleaning facilities... but there are none to be found. You keep trying to get clean, but make no progress. You can hear the party going on, and sometimes even see it, but you always flee when you do because being seen by the gloriously happy people at the party is unthinkable. You spend the entire party this way... hiding, weeping with frustration, shame, and regret... and the party goes forever.
To spell out that parable:
The party is both heaven and hell. The filth is sin. The basic idea is that being in the unfiltered presence of God is incredible bliss if you repent your sins and accept the forgiveness of God through Christ, and unbearable shame otherwise. This is a common idea, with minor subtleties and nuances (eg the nature of eternity - infinite time vs timelessness) proposed by various theologians.​
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Oh dear.

Someone once said that St. Anselm's ontological argument might as well be
God is that being than whom no more evil being can be conceived.

It is also said sometimes that Christians have the sort of religious philosophy they have because they simply aren't capable to understand anything better.


Anyway, I really do have trouble accepting that fire and brimstone notions could not be true, that they are simply an error or a whip to hold unintelligent people (including Christians) in check.
So much harm has been done in the name of those fire and brimstone notions, so much suffering, so much time and energy invested - that to think that it was all for naught, or nothing but a controlling strategy is very difficult to accept, for me at least.
 
I don't know how specific you can get about a hypothetical burning of an undefined metaphysical concept in an unknown location for a time without end.

The Christian understanding of hell is diverse among various sects and individuals, so one can only go to the source.

As has been stated before, the concept of burning for eternity comes from the Book of Revelation.
Revelations 19:20 said:
[T]he beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf...The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.
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20:10 said:
[T]he devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
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Revelations 20:14-15 said:
Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
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Many will be thrown into the lake of fire, only three are explicitly declared to burn for ever and ever: The beast, the false prophet, and the devil.
 
Prospero said:
I don't know how specific you can get about a hypothetical burning of an undefined metaphysical concept in an unknown location for a time without end.
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The problem is that we have at least three factors (soul, suffering, hell), and each seems to receive their respective definitions in relation to the definitions of the other two. So it's not simply about hypothetical or undefined factors, but that in trying to explain the phenomenon of burning in hell for all eternity, all three need to be defined at once. Or so it seems.

In other words, I entered the discussion with some idea about what the soul and suffering are, but it would be up to anyone explaining the issue to clearly define the terms, probably changing my initial definitions. If I could have defined the terms to begin with, I don't think I would have any topic to post.
 
In that case, we need only to find someone willing to share their experience of a bad chemical burn, objectively measure their level of suffering, and understand hell to be at least that bad all the time.
 
Baron Max said:
It's not YOUR will, it's the collective "will" of all of those others.

Baron Max
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And to take a different take than Swarm on the problems of this idea:
How would you know?
The collective had determined your ideas on this.
You really would have no way of knowing if you are the only one who is so determined by others or not.
You could think your reasoning makes sense, but given that it is controlled by the collective your confidence in your idea is utterly determined, by definition.
 
there is no place to move forward you have died, suffering is eternal and externally around us. you can over come the suffering by opening your mind and heart, those who dont will go through live with a lack of understanding and commitment. churches suck, no one should listen to them, except for one, but im not going to tell you that unless you want to know.
 
its all a state of mind, no one is right, unless they are righteous in themselves.
atheists arent righteous nor do they hold any value. except for what they can grasp with there brain, shallow thoughts, your mind is capable of all.
 
wouldn't you like to know, look it up.
i would tell you but you wouldn't even appreciate it if i told you.
 
It was a common practice 2000 years ago to toss human sacrifices into pits of fire. In laymans terms, the fire represented the under world gods and the smoke the stair way to heaven.
Christ used fire as a metaphore because the Jews and others were well aquainted with the practice of certain societies that burned people alive for theism purposes. Now toss in some of the older teachings/stories of the jews of certain Israelites being put into fires but remaining alive and unburnt and you had people with attentive imaginations.
Christ's real purpose was to explain that a seperation from the God that made them for time and eternity was like living in burning flames all their remaining spiritual lives, not burning but to suffer the painful burning sensations constantly.
Many people when reading the Bible (regardless if you believe it true or a story) miss a crucial point in Revalations when Lucifer is ran out of heaven and bound to the earth, no fire is mentioned. As is heaven, so is hell. The differance being is who is in charge of which plane of existance and with what attitude they govern it by.
My opinion of course.
 
laladopi said:
wouldn't you like to know, look it up.
i would tell you but you wouldn't even appreciate it if i told you.
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So you lied when you said: "but im not going to tell you that unless you want to know."

Is that really what you wish to represent?
 
greenberg said:
The specifics of burning in hell for all eternity
It is sometimes said that the soul cannot be hurt; but when it identifies with the body (or mind, emotions, possessions, relationships) and the body (etc.) is afflicted, the soul feels hurt - but that hurt is felt due to the identification with the body (etc.). No such identification, no suffering.
I am not sure though that this holds true for the case of the Christian understanding about souls who burn in hell. It appears they posit another kind of suffering, one that is not contingent upon being entangled into material existence, but one that the soul experiences directly or in-and-of-itself somehow.
This is something I don't understand about the common Christian notion of burning in hell for all eternity: How exactly does suffering take place there? It is said that after we die, we get spiritual bodies, whether we go to heaven or hell. If souls suffer in hell for all eternity, this would then imply that their spiritual bodies are such that they are conducive to eternal suffering, no? Or can a soul suffer directly or in-and-of-itself somehow?
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We are spirits. We live in bodies. We have souls (mind/will/emotion). The worst part of Hell is eternal separation from God. Then there's the fire and burning and unquenchable thirst. When we die our bodies begin to decompose, our spirits go to Heaven or Hell. For eternity. End of story.

http://books.google.com/books?id=yj...sult&ct=result&resnum=12#v=onepage&q=&f=false
 
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