why_hell just a kid why should there be a hell? (i'm talking the christian hell here, cause it's the only one i know of) so they say that if you don't get saved through christ, you go to hell, suffer eternally, blah but why? WHY? what's the point of punishing people eternally? what good does it do? Even, say, Hitler or the "worst guy ever"... why would you want them to suffer? I remember hearing "that's the way it is... either you're with God or you're not, dude!" but eternal suffering seems really, really sadistic thought of punishment as something you do to make someone repent, and not do it again to make them stop causing harm to others 050712 ... just a kid searched the king james bible (yay for technology!) and got 32 instances (only?) of the word "hell" in the old testament, most of them were footnoted "Sheol" don't know what that means mostly in matthew, mark, proverbs 050712 ... just a kid psalms and ezekiel too 050712 ... google The meaning of Sheol moves between the ideas of the grave, the underworld and the state of death 050712 ... just a kid Gehenna in the new testament, apparently HELL. `Hell' in the NT renders the Gk. word transliterated as `Gehenna' (Mt. 5:22, 29-30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mk. 9:43, 45, 47; Lk. 12:5; Jas. 3:6). The name is derived from the Heb. geÆ(ben)(beneÆ) hinnoµm, the Valley of (the son[s] of Hinnom, a valley near Jerusalem (Jos. 15:8; 18:16), where children were sacrificed by fire in connection with pagan rites (2 Ki. 23:10; 2 Ch. 28:3; 33:6; Je. 7:31; 32:35). Its original derivation is obscure, but Hinnom is almost certainly the name of a person. In later Jewish writings Gehenna came to mean the place of punishment for sinners (Assumption of Moses 10:10; 2 Esdras 7:36). It was depicted as a place of unquenchable fire—the general idea of fire to express the divine judgment is found in the OT (Dt. 32:22; Dn. 7:10). The rabbinic literature contains various opinions as to who would suffer eternal punishment. The ideas were widespread that the sufferings of some would be terminated by annihilation, or that the fires of Gehenna were in some cases purgatorial (Rosh Hashanah 16b-17a; Baba MeziÕa 58b; Mishnah Eduyoth 2. 10). But those who held these doctrines also taught the reality of eternal punishment for certain classes of sinners. Both this literature and the Apocryphal books affirm belief in an eternal retribution (cf. Judith 16:17; Psalms of Solomon 3:13). 050712 ... just a kid http://www.yeshuatyisrael.com/sheol.htm 050712 ... just a kid i feel like kx21, with all this pasting bah 050712 ... laura why not? not everyone is saved you know.. 050712 ... andru235 hell is there for people who are into that sort of thing. if you don't like hellishness, you won't allow yourself to go there. remember, some people dislike heavenliness. your_soul will only allow you to go to places that fall within your loving them and your severely disliking them. your_soul will not allow you to go somewhere that you hate. everyone is saved, but one man's saved is another man's damned, just as one man's damnation is another man's salvation. my heaven and hell would seem quite purgatorial to christians; likewise, the christian heaven and hell leave me bored and unimpressed. if you think it is all relative here on earth, wait till you die and return to the spiritual infinities 051129 ... satan satan satan I've always argued tht something as comparatively brief and finite as one human lifespan is an awfully short period of time in which to determine how one is going to spend the "eternity" after they die. Also, accroding to most Christian eschatology on the subject, you are damned if you are not a Christian which essentially condemns not only those who are AWARE of Christianity but also, by default, condemns any persons who have not yet been introduced to the concept of christianity (hence God's traveling salespeople, the Missionaries, who often forget that there is the whole free-will issue and generaslly affect most conversions through scare tactics and manipulation --- since conversion wrought by brute force is no longer quite as fashionable as it used to be) 051129 ... phil why are we sentenced to be the way we are just right now? First of all, I'm not a christian, never was, just went to church. And the cool thing is, if you stop asking all these stupid mind boggling questions about things that don't excist there really is nothing to talk about, and that's all people want, something to occupy their minds with. Quite frankly, most people's minds don't comprehend things rationally, they don't think beyond their right hand doing what needs to be done. Not because they are retarded but because they are ashamed and afraid for what they've done. Given up all reason for hope just because someone else didn't see that in them. Because someone else didn't see the reason they had for doing something. That reason, the important feeling you get when you commit yourself to something, the reason for doing so, although intangible, it cannot be seen, or explained without simply losing existence, is essential to all things that we attach value. Without our achievments continuing to excist around us we would simply faulter and fail and return to those primitive times when wicked men and creatures ruled our lives. And if I am going I am going alone, because that lady sitting next to you, yapping away your sanity, directing you into oncoming traffic, just doesn't feel the change like I do. So when you are asking yourself, why hell. You are really longing to enter into it, to see for yourself how bad can this be. And enter it you will, and travel many miles towards it's heart before turning away too late to realize all the way you had just come folded neatly up the hill behind you. With no material rewards. No sinful feelings of desire. Filled with remorse. We try to escape our predicament, galantly. We feel treated unfairly. Without the safety of blindness. But there is nothing to be kept safe from. So what now, what do we do? Sin, and sin horribly. 051129 ... birdmad "If thou must sin, Sin mightily" --Martin Luther 051130 ... zeke dialectic argument hungers for polar opposites. the often binary nature of human conception cries for a hell when we imagine heaven. my question is why do we not assume hell first and then conceive of heaven as an after thought. 051130 ... megan why not firstly to reply By 1980, 68 percent of the world population had been evangelized while 32 percent (1,381 million) still remained unevangelized, unaware of Christianity and the Gospel. Though the percentage of unevangelized persons is still very large—about one third of the world population—in comparison to previous periods of history, it is the smallest it has ever been. For example, the percentage of the evangelized population of the world was 28 percent by the year 100, 25 percent by the year 1000, 50 percent by 1900, 68 percent by 1980 and is projected to reach 80 percent by the year 2000. Secondly People who are unaware of Christianity are treated the same as babies who cannot understand concepts yet. someone correct me if i'm wrong. 051130 ... megan yeah found the Scripture 1 Peter 3:19, 20 "19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, 20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water." If they sin in ignorance of the Law, they are covered by Jesus's Atonement and do not go to hell. They will be taught the gospel in the afterlife and given the opportunity to accept it or reject it there. and thirdly Relativism, the belief that everyone's beliefs are equal and right and that there are no absolutes contradicts itself in that two or more separate realities simply cannot exist. and if there are no absolutes, that in itself would be a false statement due to its absolute nature. 051130 ... zeke relativism makes no assertion about metaphysics and is not a belief system which espouses ontological truth. it is an ethical philosophy and derives it's "truths" from uncertainty and the assumption that respect is constructive. absolute truths are outside it's ken. 051130 ... Lemon_Soda Truth is relative, makeing any theory based on it or looking at it moot by default. Truth can never be Fact. 051130 ... z LS: yes. 051130 ... z truth is a human construct 051130 ... andru235 1st, if by "evangelized" you mean definition 1 "converted", no can do. about 2/3s of the world is not christian. there are over a billion people in china and india each of other religions; there are nearly a billion muslims; most of the "christians" in africa are closer to animism/paganism in practice (been there to see it) than to christianity; likewise in south america; there are hundreds of millions of those who are "other". as far as the number of people in the world who call themselves christian, even that is only about 35%, using even the most liberal definitions. sit down with a demographically thorough atlas; the math is quite easy to do. but if by "evangelized" you mean definition 2 "preached at", well, i think nearly everyone in the world has fallen victim by now. some evangelists have made themselves quite a nuisance. i, with my doctrines of infinity, am doing my best to keep up, but monomania seems to have me outpaced. third, all things in this strata contain contradiction. the bible is no exception. i'm not even going to touch on the thousands of biblical contradictions that anyone who is interested in can find in a zillion other places. as paradox is found in practically every aspect of this existence we presently know it's hardly grounds for dismissing a concept; or, let us dismiss *all* concepts. remember, of course, that so much of these discussions can become a semantics game. as to the claim that two or more realities cannot exist, well, that's mere conjecture. the question of "reality" is an unsolvable and unprovable one. fourth, if the true reality is that jesus, the holy ghost, and god, are the holiest of unions, it seems that heaven is for gay male polygamists, and everyone else is going to hell. even i, a gay male polygamist, find this an absurd idea. where are the goddesses?!? i resolutely believe in goddesses. i have prayed to goddesses and my prayers have been answered. people were kind to each other for millennia prior to the arrival of the religions. see any of countless studies on indigenous amazonians or p.n. guineans, etc. based upon nearly all anthropoligical evidence, the vast majority of torturous human interaction has occured since the arrival of religions, and often with a religion's direct consent. unconditional love, be it from jesus or jasper jenkins, does not hinge upon conditional pledges of allegiance to this or that jealous, wrathful god. sounds like a petty, angry man to me! why, hell! 051130 ... birdmad by evengelized, i think she is arguing in the loosest term ...that they have been, at the very least, exposed to "The Word" though not necessarily converted believers which means i'm batting a perfect 1.000 in my refusal to subscribe to those religions whose salvation is hinged upon acceptance of their particular tenets for salvation 051130 ... andru235 i can't help but notice that no one wants to discuss "why_hello". apparently, infernality has more appeal than salutationalism. 051130 ... just a kid interesting. 051130 ... phil The great smell of God crashes the cliff's of cheese crumbling, broke apart with a mighty hammer's thrust. The stretches of dry sand trudging together on blankets of nibbling dogs. Foul black lines in the Z shape float upward like ships of red jello nibbling in the wet freedom. Sense he'll hairpins unearth, woe not tie tool kelp some pimple height vow! Vie saw real fought? 061212 ... phil historical inaccuracies probably great prosperity within religious existence d. the whale is Jonah 061212 ... Christ without the cross Hmmm. I am on this site because I am procrastinating form studying Chemistry in which I have a test for at 8:00 tomorrow morning but this topic interested me greatly. But I don't think will make a comment on it 1)because it will be a personalized view and 2)because Arguing those things are not at all what is driving my own existence at the moment. That shoe no longer fits but I'm sure it will fit again sometime in the future. Well... I guess I can ask a question. Why heaven? What have we done to deserve eternal bliss? Why does it seem (I am gonna make assumptions and generalizations based on a biased perspective. But somewhere I might hit something that touch another mind and probably provoke some thought. Forgive me in advance. My ego believes that it will serve a purpose) Okay I will start over my question. Why does it seem like we seem to be so against unnecessary pointless damnation when we don't seem to argue whether or not we deserve eternal bliss? We have done some things and though it doesn't seem like punishment would come from an unconditional God do we think we should be rewarded for something? We have done some good and some bad and we have had consequences for both. WE seem to be punished for honesty and rewarded for our lies. I think we deserve what we give to ourselves and I think an unconditional God would give us that. No heaven. No hell. Just whatever you choose for yourself. And considering the fact that my ego just trapped me into putting forth an argument that wasn't even well constructed I will say that Heaven is nothing without hell like darkness is anything without light. The assumption that a God would rape you and force you to be in either one because of his judgments. In my opinion no human would deserve idea designation. It is without a doubt that my ego was trying to form the best argument, but ignore my motives and try to get something from these words 061212 what's it to you? who go blather from