SHOW LINKS
- The AntiBot
- Genetically Modified Skeptic
- Drag Me To Hell, Louisville KY
- Patron Sinner Nominations!
- From I traveled to Jerusalem to face my fear of hell, Genetically Modified Skeptic, 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGvcRnlId4k
- From Heaven & Hell, Bart Ehrman, 2020: Some of my high school friends were committed Christian kids who believed it was necessary to make an active and specific commitment to god by asking Jesus into my heart. They convinced me, and as a 15-year-old I became a born again Christian. From that point on I had no doubt I was going to heaven. I was equally convinced that those who would not make this commitment were going to hell. Believing this made me a christian on a mission. It is not at all unlikely that I was more than a little obnoxious about it. After graduating from a fundamentalist College I chose to pursue the study of the New Testament and went to Princeton Theological Seminary. It was there I started having doubts about my faith. These doubts disturbed me not only because I wanted very much to know the truth but also because I was afraid of the possible eternal consequences of getting things wrong. Would my soul be in serious trouble? There was a particular moment when these worries hit me with special poignancy: It involved a late-night sauna. To pay for grad school I went to a part-time job at a tennis club. Most days of the week I was on the late shift. One of the benefits of the job was that I could take advantage of the facilities, including the sauna, when the place was shut up. The evening in question I’d been sweeping the courts and thinking about everything I’ve been hearing and resisting in my biblical studies and theology courses. I decided to have a sauna. I cranked up the heat as high as it could go and sat down to have a good after work sweat. As I sat on the wooden bench all alone late at night perspiring, I returned to my doubts about my faith. I then I started realizing, wow it sure is hot in here! Oh man is it hot in here! And then naturally the thought struck me: Did I want to be trapped in a massively overheated sauna for all eternity? Is it worth it? For me at that moment that meant: Did I want to change my beliefs and risk eternal torment? Suffice to say that I did eventually begin to change. As a friend of mine, a Methodist Minister, sometimes jokes, I went from being born again to being dead again. A recent Pew research poll showed that 72% of all Americans agree that there was a literal heaven where people go when they die. 58% believe that an actual literal hell. These numbers are of course down seriously from previous generations but are still impressive. One of the surprising things is that these do not go back to the earliest stages of Christianity. They cannot be found in the Old Testament, and they are not what Jesus himself taught. There was a time when literally no one thought that t their soul would go to heaven or hell. But eventually people came to think that this could not be right, largely because it was not fair. If there are gods with anything like a moral code then there must be Justice, in this life and the next. The ideas of the afterlife that so many billions of people have inherited emerged over a long struggle with how this world can be fair and how god can be just, which Jews and Christians came up with over a long period of time that they tried to explain the injustice of the world and the ultimate triumph of good.
- From The Apocalypse of Peter, Anonymous, Second Century CE…ish: And I saw the place of punishment. There were certain there hanging by the tongue: and these were the blasphemers. There was a great lake, full of flaming mire, in which were certain men that pervert righteousness, and tormenting angels afflicted them. Women hanged by their hair over that mire that bubbled up, and these were they who adorned themselves for adultery. Men who mingled with them in the defilement of adultery were hanging by the feet and their heads in that mire. Murderers and those who conspired with them were cast into a place full of evil snakes, and the souls of the murdered looked upon the punishment of those murderers and said: O God, thy judgment is just. I saw another place into which the gore and the filth of those who were being punished ran down and became there as it were a lake: and there sat women having the gore up to their necks, and over against them sat many children who were born to them out of due time, crying; and there came forth from them sparks of fire and smote the women in the eyes: and these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion. And other men and women were burning up to the middle and were cast into a dark place and were beaten by evil spirits, and their inwards were eaten: these were they who persecuted the righteous. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/apocalypsepeter-roberts.html
- From Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas, 1274: In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to god for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned. Whoever pities another shares somewhat in his unhappiness. But the blessed cannot share in any unhappiness. Therefore they do not pity the afflictions of the damned. Charity is the principle of pity when it is possible for us out of charity to wish the cessation of a person’s unhappiness. But the saints cannot desire this for the damned, since it would be contrary to Divine justice. The saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy. And thus the Divine justice and their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the blessed: while the punishment of the damned will cause it indirectly. Further, envy reigns supreme in the damned. Therefore they grieve for the happiness of the blessed, and desire their damnation. Even as in the blessed in heaven there will be most perfect charity, so in the damned there will be the most perfect hate. Wherefore as the saints will rejoice in all goods, so will the damned grieve for all good. Consequently the sight of the happiness of the saints will give them very great pain, and they will wish all the good were damned.
- From the Catholic Catechism, Holy See, 1992: We cannot be united with god unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love god if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: Our lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren. To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting god’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with god and the blessed is called “Hell.” Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted. The chief punishment of Hell is eternal separation from god, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs. The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of Hell are an urgent call to conversion: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from god is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In daily prayers, the Church implores the mercy of god, who does not want any to perish but all to come to repentance.
- From Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God, John Edward, 1741: The damned deserve to be cast into hell, so divine justice never stands in the way of this nad makes no objection against god’s using his power at any moment to destroy them. On the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, “Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?” The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over our heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and god’s mere will, that holds it back. And the reason why they do not go down to hell at each moment is not because God, in whose power they are, is not very angry with them, as he is with many miserable creatures now tormented in hell. Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on Earth. The devil stands ready to fall upon them, and seize them as his own, at what moment god shall permit him. They belong to him; he has their souls in his possession, and under his dominion. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of god, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth does not willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air does not willingly serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service of god’s enemies. The world would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign hand of god. If God should only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath would come upon you with omnipotent power. The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart and strains the bow, and it is nothing but tan angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. The god that holds you over the pit of hell abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent. You have offended him infinitely more. It is to be ascribed to nothing else that you did not go to Hell last night but that god’s hand has held you up. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and you have nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce god to spare you one moment.
- From The Devil: A New Biography, Phillip Almond, 2014: For Gregory the Great, the victory of Christ left Satan imprisoned in the bottomless pit, though he would be released again for the final battle at the end of history. However, the continued existence of evil in the world required explanation. So while Satan as “historically” imprisoned in Hell, he was “allegorically” still in the world. According to the Gospel of Nicodemus, demons were both the keepers and tormenters of the dead, although in an alternate text of Nicodeums Satan was not a prisoner in Hell to begin with but was cast into the fires after Christ conquers death. The idea that Satan was incarcerated along with his demons was a tradition that went back at least to the First Book of Enoch, yet remained present. It was a problem over which many puzzled intellectually. To some, the devil and his angels lived in the air beneath Heaven, in order that they should not excessively harass men, and for this reason Lucifer was called the Prince of the Air. On the last day they would be cast down to Hell. Bishop Peter Lombard ambiguously wrote that some demons are in the air and some are in Hell, and that devils come and go to Hell on a daily basis, so that there are always some of them to torture souls. This was hardly a persuasive compromise. The Franciscan writer Bonaventure, in writing on Lombard, ignored the issue of Lucifer being in Hell and located him in the air, since there was no redemption in Hell and if the fallen angels were there they would be unable to ascend to our world to tempt us. Thomas Aquinas, arguably the greatest of Christian theologians, was unable to resolve the paradox of Satan being bound in Hell and being active among men, or at least we can conclude this from his not having taken up the issue.
- From Really Believing In Hell, Keith DeRose, Yale Department of Philosophy, 2008: Richard Dawkins’s comparison of sexual abuse to being taught doctrines of hell as a child were the subject of some great outrage. Never having been the victim of sexual abuse myself, knowing little about what that must be like, I don’t want to get into the comparative issue here. But some of the outraged seemed to be quite sure that being taught nasty doctrines of hell could not be seriously harmful at all, and that I do want to dispute. As someone who spent many sleepless, terrified nights as a child, I can certainly empathize with this When I was around 7, I got the message that Hell is a place I absolutely do not want to go to loud and clear. And it did terrorize me–and not just worries that I might end up there, but terror at the thought of anyone ending up in such a place. The combination of eternal duration with unspeakable torment really got to me. In a later post I hope to go into the effects – some of them lasting to this day – beyond nightmares. Why do some people who accept a traditional doctrine of hell experience debilitating terror while others don’t? My guess is that having the ability to understand and appreciate the doctrine without (yet) having developed the ability to “quarantine” threatening beliefs is to blame. As a child I really believed a traditional doctrine of hell. Some believers only kinda believe it–and kinda don’t. By the time I was 12, though I still accepted a traditional doctrine of hell, I only kinda believed, as opposed to my earlier, terrorized real belief. The “quarantining”of the doctrine wasn’t a simple matter of fully retaining the belief while blocking it from having some of its corrosive effects. Rather, it seems to me, it reduced the extent to which I could accurately be described as a believer at all. By that time, I didn’t really believe anymore. https://campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/really-believing-in-hell/
- From Religious Abuse Damned To Hell, Carolyn Gage, 2011: It strikes me as a serious political issue, as well as one of children’s rights and one that needs to be understood in the light of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that most Americans believe in Hell. What exactly does it mean that the majority of folks in my country actually believe that they face the possibility of a lake of burning hellfire at the end of their lives? What does it mean that the majority of folks in my country believe that the universe is governed by a tyrannical despot capable of devising this form of torture? Honestly, I can’t even imagine taking these propositions seriously. How do any of these believers ever have a nice day? I was able to outgrow and outlive my abusive human father; for believers in hell, there is no way out. That, in a nutshell, is the definition of trauma: the unacceptable that must be accepted. Black-and-white thinking with good-versus-evil moral codes may keep one out of hell in an afterlife, but they are set-ups for fascist propaganda that leads to the creation of hell on earth. The entire notion of sin stems from a kind of universal depersonalization. Might this take the form of patriarchal structures that replicate imagined scenarios of Judgment Day? Or waging wars to project an overwhelming fear of sinfulness onto some “other” who can then be appropriately punished, the more fiery the punishment the better? Are the infernal weapons of modern warfare some subconscious attempt to gain godlike control over the dreaded hellfire? As lesbian-feminists, we can educate people that religious freedom does not include the right to spiritually abuse. And in doing this work, we can also take the opportunity to look at our own beliefs about an afterlife. Is our end also contained in our beginning? Personally, I find purpose, peace and morality in an observation made by feminist sociologist and novelist Charlotte Perkins Gilman: “Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time.” https://carolyngage.weebly.com/blog/religious-abuse-damned-to-hell
- From The Christians, Daniel Walker, 2017: “The Christians,” now playing at San Francisco Playhouse, goes where seemingly few shows dare to tread: Into the spiritual beliefs of everyday Americans. Anthony Fusco plays the pastor of a multi-million dollar mega church, the kind you see on TV headed up by men who always seem a bit like they’re trying to sell a timeshare–in this case, an eternal one. Then one day he gets up at the pulpit and begins preaching a new, slightly radical, much more liberally-minded lesson: Hell, it seems, doesn’t actually exist; everyone gets into heaven after all. Yes, even Hitler, he admits. It’s okay if people don’t quite understand this new idea, our Pastor adds, because god, it seems, has given him this revelation personally–and you can’t very well argue with that. Except his younger and more ambitious protege (Lance Gardner, as the only character in the play who gets an actual name, “Joshua,” with all that that entails) decides that he’ll argue anyway–right there at the pulpit in front of everyone. Even though they’re arguing about ancient scripture, the dispute does not come off as academic: religion, after all, is always personal. When Gardner returns later in the play for a second confrontation, his monologue about damnation sends chills down the spine. More people spend time wrestling with religious questions like these than, say, questions about physics and consciousness that come up in Tom Stoppard plays. So why isn’t there more theater about it? Most of the flock sides at first with the Pastor, but cracks soon form in his new vision. Eventually even his long-silent wife played by Stephanie Prentice can’t keep her customary silence up anymore, and the tension of their conversation is wounding. Fusco is almost TOO good at communicating the frozen, half-confused panic of someone who has been caught in the act but only just realized it himself. Director Bill English gives “The Christians” an anxious quality, like a stress nightmare, with Michael Oesch’s lights casting an increasingly gloomy pall as church fortunes go down.
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