What is hell?

Hume said:
I know some Buddhist but none claim it to be a common belief about hell.

Not familiar with that section of Plato. But I agree with nothing Plato says, he is an authoritarian
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I agree. Reincarnation is more prevalent and "hell" would be more like being reincarnated in a way that brings torment and suffering on you.
 
Yakuda said:
He did create it but you choose not him.
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LOLOLOLOLOLOL. Sorry but watching you guys dance around some of the most appalling theology is often too funny.


Yakuda said:
It's amazing to me how many people want freedom but not the responsibility of that freedom. Choices have consequences.
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You always have a choice. When the mob comes around and tells you to pay up or face the consequences I guess by your metric the one to blame if you get shot is you.

You had a choice. The mob boss told you clearly at the beginning that if you don't believe in JUST THE RIGHT WAY you'll get whacked.
 
Cypress said:
So I was correct that concepts of hell did not originate with Christianity,
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Maybe you are thinking the Greeks who originally seem responsible for the concept of the more well-developed afterlife? What form of hell did they have?

I HIGHLY recommend Bart Ehrman's book "Heaven and Hell". I think you'll enjoy it. It discusses the impact of hellenization and greek thought on the early Christian church and the ultimate development of the concept of hell.

Cypress said:
but has deeper historical roots in Platonist philosophy and in Buddhist and Hindu traditions.
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The Buddhists have hell? Do tell.
 
Cypress said:
The Buddhists and Hindus had a well developed concepts of hell centuries before Christianity
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But that isn't how the Christian concept of hell arose. The Christian concept of hell appears to have been derived from the Greeks and their more developed concept of an afterlife with potential for punishment/reward.


Cypress said:
Plato writes in The Republic four centuries before Jesus about a transcendent place of punishment that evildoers will ultimately wind up in.
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Yup, the Greeks. Again, gotta recommend "Heaven and Hell" by Ehrmann. You'll really dig it.
 
Hume said:
I know some Buddhist but none claim it to be a common belief about hell.

Not familiar with that section of Plato. But I agree with nothing Plato says, he is an authoritarian
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Christians don't agree about hell either, so it's not clear why you expect Buddhists to have a uniform and universal concept of it.
 
Daylight63 said:
But that isn't how the Christian concept of hell arose.
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My thread title didn't ask how the Europeans invented the concept

More importantly, the Europeans and people of northern India are all descended from the same late Neolithic Aryan Indo-European tribes of the steppes of southern Russia. So there appear to be faint echos of vaguely similar religious concepts found in all these people, including the immortal soul, samsara, and/or Hell.
 
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Daylight63 said:
LOLOLOLOLOLOL. Sorry but watching you guys dance around some of the most appalling theology is often too funny.




You always have a choice. When the mob comes around and tells you to pay up or face the consequences I guess by your metric the one to blame if you get shot is you.

You had a choice. The mob boss told you clearly at the beginning that if you don't believe in JUST THE RIGHT WAY you'll get whacked.
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There's no dancing. You're free to choose. Period. You just whine because you live in a world that has taught you choices shouldn't have consequences. Guess what? Every choice does whether you like it or not.
 
Yakuda said:
There's no dancing. You're free to choose. Period.
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So explain to me how this doesn't turn God into a Mob Boss shaking down store owners. You have a choice. Either pay the fee to the boss or bad things will happen.

Do you think the Store Owners set that system up?

Yakuda said:
You just whine because you live in a world that has taught you choices shouldn't have consequences.
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Son, I know that feeling more than you can imagine. You don't even have a clue how much I live by the knowledge that actions have consequences. In fact I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I know it FAR BETTER than you can ever even think about it.

LOL. Step off little child.


Yakuda said:
Guess what? Every choice does whether you like it or not.
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LOL. You don't even understand what you are arguing in defense of here. It's hilarious. Do you think this surficially about EVERYTHING?
 
Daylight63 said:
So explain to me how this doesn't turn God into a Mob Boss shaking down store owners. You have a choice. Either pay the fee to the boss or bad things will happen.

Do you think the Store Owners set that system up?



Son, I know that feeling more than you can imagine. You don't even have a clue how much I live by the knowledge that actions have consequences. In fact I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I know it FAR BETTER than you can ever even think about it.

LOL. Step off little child.




LOL. You don't even understand what you are arguing in defense of here. It's hilarious. Do you think this surficially about EVERYTHING?
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Let's be clear about something just because you may not like the choices you have available to you that doesn't remove your freedom to choose. Thr difference is God isn't going to burn down your business like the mob boss does he's just going to leave you to your choices. You're going to burn down your own business. Youre choices direct you to hell. Again you want freedom of choice but without consequences.
 
I don't quite understand what reincarnation would be.
Something that comes after me
that's made of different atoms in a different configuration
isn't me all over again. It's something else.

One would have to believe in some sort of soul or spirit that exists
in some mysterious realm apart from physical matter.
I have never seen anything approaching a reason to believe that.

I can't imagine anything more horrible than having to experience the travails of life endless times,
or even twice, if we're being honest,
but that would definitely be hell.
 
Yakuda said:
Let's be clear about something just because you may not like the choices you have available to you that doesn't remove your freedom to choose.
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I am fascinated at how thick you seem to be. You seem to not understand that in your scenario God is a mob boss. GOD set up the system of punishment and reward. It just so happens, according to some versions of Christianity, that means eternal torment for a sin committed as a flawed imperfect creature who only has a short human lifespan in which to act. God hides himself effectively (so effectively that most other humans do NOT believe about God in the same way YOU DO, but you don't care...you just KNOW you worship the right version).



Yakuda said:
Thr difference is God isn't going to burn down your business like the mob boss does he's just going to leave you to your choices.
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And, according to some BURN ME ALIVE FOR ETERNITY. ETERNAL TORMENT AND PAIN because I wore mixed fibers or failed to believe as YOU do.



Yakuda said:
You're going to burn down your own business. Youre choices direct you to hell. Again you want freedom of choice but without consequences.
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Nope. If God is worthy of worship he doesn't appear like a Mob Boss shaking down innocent store owners. That's your faith, not mine. Never was even when I had faith.

I found it repulsive in the extreme. And the fact that no one can clarify if God is a mob boss or not and many like yourself NEED him to be a mob boss is all the reason I need to know it is ALL made up.

All of it.
 
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