Hell?

[Jane_the_Bane]

Karma sounds fair to me, and the kind of karma that would lead you to one of the hell-realms would be the sort of deeds that clearly require some sort of redemption.

Now, contrast that with a divine judge who condemns uncounted billions to neverending torment on account their being fallible humans who cannot live up to divine standards (for if they could, Jesus's sacrifice would have been unneccessary, right?), granting respite only to those who point to a blood sacrifice as a sort of bribe, even though they are no better than all the rest.

The Christian/Muslim hell is not the equivalent of a high security prison filled with only the most heinous villains - it's the equivalent of a Nazi Death Camp where the Buddhist nurse who sacrificed her adult life to the task of tending the sick was tormented right next to the Khmer Rouge soldier who shot small children in the face; a place where Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who turned atheist during her teenage years will receive exactly the same treatment as the Nazi henchmen who murdered her and most of her family.

 

[Tariki]

Tariki,
Not going to harp on this
But I noticed the "thou", though not connected to a Christian theme as such, someone pointed out the other day the difference between, thou and you. They meant that "you" can be used meaning one or more persons, whereas "thou" was used concerning one person.
What says?

Robban, your use of the word "harp" made me smile, as I've been dipping into the book "Life" by "Keef" Richards, the guitarist of the Rolling Stones. He was speaking of how Mick Jagger was great on the "harp", very expressive. I had these strange images in my mind of mad Mick sitting demurely, waving and strumming his delicate hands across the strings. Then, further on, it became clear that "Keef" in fact meant the harmonica! (This I can more easily imagine, except it makes me wonder how it would not disappear down Micks mouth............ )

Anyway, enough waffle. I'm glad you are not going to harmonica on about it, I'm a spent force.

"I-Thou"...............I feel a few quotes coming on, those allergic to them please look away now.

I mean the dual relationship between the believer and God/The Divine, as opposed to the non-dual experience that Buddhism (and in some ways, Christian mysticism) points towards. There is a very pertinent letter of Merton's written to the author Aldous Huxley, when Huxley was advocating the use of drugs to induce "mystical" experience.

Merton (writing in 1958) sought to distinguish between an experience that is essentially aesthetic and natural from an experience which is mystical and supernatural. (Merton says at one point that he would not exclude the possibility of God's grace being involved with any "natural" experience)

Merton defines the mystical and supernatural experience as follows......"a fully mystical experience has as its very essence some note of a direct contact of two liberties, in which God is known not as an "object" or as "Him up there" or "Him in everything" nor as "the All" but as - the Biblical expression - I AM, or simply AM. But what I mean is that this is not the kind of intuition that smacks of anything procurable because it is a presence of a Person and depends on the liberty of that Person. And lacking the element of a free gift, a free act of love on the part of Him Who comes, the experience would lose its specifically mystical quality."

Merton had what he himself referred to as a "restless" mind. As he opened to the experience of Zen meditation, and Buddhist exprience in general, he spoke later of the "I-Thou" relationship in an essay....."Transcendent Experience - Who is it that has a transcendent experience?" as published in his book "Zen and the Birds of Appetite".

After saying that there is a place for the "I-Thou" relationship, he then says that those who would wish to deepen their experience of the Divine must learn to relax their grasp on their conception of what the goal is and "who it is" that will attain it. "To cling too tenaciously to the 'self' and its own fulfillment would guarantee that there would be no fulfillment at all."

He then proceeds to speak of the difference between the "person" and the "ego" with concepts and comments that has my own mind struggling to keep up!

At the end of a long dialogue between Merton and Suzuki, Merton sums up, and relating it to the Buddhist phrase concerning the "enlightened experience" (When happy we laugh, when sad we cry, when hungry we eat, when tired we sleep), says "For the Buddhist, life is a static and ontological fullness. For the Christian it is a dynamic gift, a fullness of love. There are many differences in the doctrines of the two religions, but I am deeply gratified to find, in this dialogue with Dr. Suzuki, that thanks to his penetrating intuitions into Western mystical thought, we can so easily and agreeably communicate with one another on the deepest and most important level. I feel that in talking to him I am talking to a "fellow citizen", to one who, though his beliefs in many respects differ from mine, shares a common spiritual climate. This unity of outlook and purpose is supremely significant."

(I would query Merton's choice of words concerning Buddhism. "Static"? "Fullness"?......they seem, at least to me, a strange choice of words. Both seem at odds with what he has shown himself to understand elsewhere, but there you go, who's perfect?...... )

Well, perhaps enough.

All the best

 

[Tariki]

Karma sounds fair to me, and the kind of karma that would lead you to one of the hell-realms would be the sort of deeds that clearly require some sort of redemption.

Now, contrast that with a divine judge who condemns uncounted billions to neverending torment on account their being fallible humans who cannot live up to divine standards (for if they could, Jesus's sacrifice would have been unneccessary, right?), granting respite only to those who point to a blood sacrifice as a sort of bribe, even though they are no better than all the rest.

The Christian/Muslim hell is not the equivalent of a high security prison filled with only the most heinous villains - it's the equivalent of a Nazi Death Camp where the Buddhist nurse who sacrificed her adult life to the task of tending the sick was tormented right next to the Khmer Rouge soldier who shot small children in the face; a place where Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who turned atheist during her teenage years will receive exactly the same treatment as the Nazi henchmen who murdered her and most of her family.

Jane,

Quite so.

I've spoken elsewhere about the "free will defence" and of how I see it as inherently flawed. I'd just say further that I have heard it said that it is that God respects us - and our "choice" - that He sends us to Hell. It would seem to me that if the Divine truly respected our choice to that extent, he would continue to do so, and if any in hell chose to anihilate themselves, He would duly oblige. But apparently no, He does not. Free will is given for just one short sharp life full of ambiguity and inequality, then its "misuse" (i.e. not believing in one particular creed of so many presented) then it is merely respected for eternity, respected just enough to ensure an endless on-going torture of alienation, misery and loneliness.

As I posted before....

Freud came to this conclusion about human beings, that.......it is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestation of their aggressiveness. ("Civilization and Its Discontents")

Alas, just so. Yet perhaps such is not always so, and will not always be so. And maybe the possibilty that eventually all will be able to live together in full and true communion without such a "remnant" is a spiritual truth, not able to be seen or understood by the "natural" man? At least, not without grace?

 

[oi_antz]

Karma sounds fair to me, and the kind of karma that would lead you to one of the hell-realms would be the sort of deeds that clearly require some sort of redemption.

Now, contrast that with a divine judge who condemns uncounted billions to neverending torment on account their being fallible humans who cannot live up to divine standards (for if they could, Jesus's sacrifice would have been unneccessary, right?), granting respite only to those who point to a blood sacrifice as a sort of bribe, even though they are no better than all the rest.

The Christian/Muslim hell is not the equivalent of a high security prison filled with only the most heinous villains - it's the equivalent of a Nazi Death Camp where the Buddhist nurse who sacrificed her adult life to the task of tending the sick was tormented right next to the Khmer Rouge soldier who shot small children in the face; a place where Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who turned atheist during her teenage years will receive exactly the same treatment as the Nazi henchmen who murdered her and most of her family.

It's a blind quote, I'm not really going to jump on this thread because I'm not an authority on matters of afterlife, but I do find your attitude toward the topic here Jane that you seem to think you can just pick and choose which god will give you the reward you seek at the end of the day. I'm not so sure this is true, I mean Jesus said He would come to judge the world, and since I believe Him I find myself thinking you've chosen to worship someone other than that whom was chosen by God to have jurisdiction on the matter. I happened to turn to this verse when I meditated on the topic:

Psalm 106:11-31 (New Living Translation)


11 Then the water returned and covered their enemies;
not one of them survived.
12 Then his people believed his promises.
Then they sang his praise.

13 Yet how quickly they forgot what he had done!
They wouldn’t wait for his counsel!
14 In the wilderness their desires ran wild,
testing God’s patience in that dry wasteland.
15 So he gave them what they asked for,
but he sent a plague along with it.
16 The people in the camp were jealous of Moses
and envious of Aaron, the Lord’s holy priest.
17 Because of this, the earth opened up;
it swallowed Dathan
and buried Abiram and the other rebels.
18 Fire fell upon their followers;
a flame consumed the wicked.

19 The people made a calf at Mount Sinai[a];
they bowed before an image made of gold.
20 They traded their glorious God
for a statue of a grass-eating bull.
21 They forgot God, their savior,
who had done such great things in Egypt—
22 such wonderful things in the land of Ham,
such awesome deeds at the Red Sea.
23 So he declared he would destroy them.
But Moses, his chosen one, stepped between the Lord and the people.
He begged him to turn from his anger and not destroy them.

24 The people refused to enter the pleasant land,
for they wouldn’t believe his promise to care for them.
25 Instead, they grumbled in their tents
and refused to obey the Lord.
26 Therefore, he solemnly swore
that he would kill them in the wilderness,
27 that he would scatter their descendants among the nations,
exiling them to distant lands.

28 Then our ancestors joined in the worship of Baal at Peor;
they even ate sacrifices offered to the dead!
29 They angered the Lord with all these things,
so a plague broke out among them.
30 But Phinehas had the courage to intervene,
and the plague was stopped.
31 So he has been regarded as a righteous man
ever since that time.

13-14 show us how quickly self pity can turn someone to hate the Lord, because the Lord is not giving them what he wants. The Lord knew this, and the type of results one achieves when you give an inch to the types of people who will take a mile, so he gave a curse and the few whose conscience they trusted were saved. This caused the commoners, the ones with less faith, to become envious of Aaron and Moses and to challenge their authority in an official showdown. Here we see the fires of hell raged from heaven and the ground swallowed them up, because they had refused to worship the Lord who had been the one who took care of them, and honor the ones He had chosen to be His prophets. Clearly this Lord we worship has some expectations of how we respect Him, and when we respect Him, how we regard Him, and when we understand that, what we can do that will help Him in His cause instead of being a blunder (this is not something we Christians have much consistently with, quite often adding in quips and idle comments that don't serve the Lord's best interests and we can really screw it up for people by doing this. I think a higher awareness of this could lead to a higher regard for Christianity since it would cut out personal opinion and tom-foolery to leave only the thoughts that we consider credible enough to contribute. So this God we come up against is the type to open the earth and seen flames of fire from the hell of heaven upon anyone who dares stand up and question His authority. Why do we see different behavior today (in the literal sense), that non-believers are allowed to walk all over God's authority as though they have no fear of the one we discuss. I think because Jesus is a merciful judge, He never once used His miracles to condemn a person, but to convict and correct them on ways of righteousness. Personally I have found that to be a much more effective way of developing a person's respect for God than simply ruling with an iron fist, and we are told that all this time even as the world is aggressively hostile toward Him, that He tolerates this, because there is a time for everything, and there could well be a time for humility in some of these people before they come to give answer for their words.

Whose Son Is the Messiah?

35 Later, as Jesus was teaching the people in the Temple, he asked, “Why do the teachers of religious law claim that the Messiah is the son of David? 36 For David himself, speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, said,
‘The Lord said to my Lord,
Sit in the place of honor at my right hand
until I humble your enemies beneath your feet.’

37 Since David himself called the Messiah ‘my Lord,’ how can the Messiah be his son?” The large crowd listened to him with great delight.

38 Jesus also taught: “Beware of these teachers of religious law! For they like to parade around in flowing robes and receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces. 39 And how they love the seats of honor in the synagogues and the head table at banquets. 40 Yet they shamelessly cheat widows out of their property and then pretend to be pious by making long prayers in public. Because of this, they will be more severely punished.”

This clearly shows that Jesus hates dogmatic religious teaching, knowledge taught by man as though man is any authority on God. Jesus is always shows us by every answer He gives and every lesson He teaches, that He wants us to think, pray and decide for ourselves what God is telling us in the Bible, and yet even knowing great wisdom from the Bible does not demonstrate to anyone how God wants them to think and behave, because if we are to know God whom we discuss in any way resembling the truth, we are going to have to think about what God is telling us when we read that book. And then there's Matthew 25 with the goats and sheep in the final judgment, I'm sure there's been plenty of talk about this already and how even those who are selected by Jesus are selected on their merit for contributing to a society that demonstrates greater love and respect for each other and condemns selfishness.

I really just felt to contribute that passage from Psalms 106 since I happened to read it just moments after I'd notice this thread, but yeah I don't hold any opinions on what constitutes a person's right to heaven or hell, these matters are well beyond the scope for a human to judge upon one another, and we must concede that only God knows us well enough that there is no misunderstanding about what is sin, what is righteousness, and what is permitted in His kingdom of heaven. There are certain sins mentioned in the Bible however which show us what God hates, those things He cannot tolerate in His house, and once we get to see eye-to-eye with Him on these things, He truly does become a very reasonable person to serve, a person whose genuine love affords the everlasting spring of understanding and growth in the knowledge of His truth.

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

It's a blind quote, I'm not really going to jump on this thread because I'm not an authority on matters of afterlife, but I do find your attitude toward the topic here Jane that you seem to think you can just pick and choose which god will give you the reward you seek at the end of the day.

Not at all. I greatly doubt that anything that could be identified as myself (or my self) could possibly survive my physical demise, and do not believe that there's any kind of afterlife, neither in a positive or in a negative sense.

We are talking about justice. If the Cosmic Death Camp existed, then it'd exist, and I'd probably end up there for defying the monster that created and maintained it. But it still wouldn't be just, whereas a karmic universe would certainly live up to that description.

 

[Robban]

Robban, your use of the word "harp" made me smile, as I've been dipping into the book "Life" by "Keef" Richards, the guitarist of the Rolling Stones. He was speaking of how Mick Jagger was great on the "harp", very expressive. I had these strange images in my mind of mad Mick sitting demurely, waving and strumming his delicate hands across the strings. Then, further on, it became clear that "Keef" in fact meant the harmonica! (This I can more easily imagine, except it makes me wonder how it would not disappear down Micks mouth............ )

Anyway, enough waffle. I'm glad you are not going to harmonica on about it, I'm a spent force.

"I-Thou"...............I feel a few quotes coming on, those allergic to them please look away now.

I mean the dual relationship between the believer and God/The Divine, as opposed to the non-dual experience that Buddhism (and in some ways, Christian mysticism) points towards. There is a very pertinent letter of Merton's written to the author Aldous Huxley, when Huxley was advocating the use of drugs to induce "mystical" experience.

Merton (writing in 1958) sought to distinguish between an experience that is essentially aesthetic and natural from an experience which is mystical and supernatural. (Merton says at one point that he would not exclude the possibility of God's grace being involved with any "natural" experience)

Merton defines the mystical and supernatural experience as follows......"a fully mystical experience has as its very essence some note of a direct contact of two liberties, in which God is known not as an "object" or as "Him up there" or "Him in everything" nor as "the All" but as - the Biblical expression - I AM, or simply AM. But what I mean is that this is not the kind of intuition that smacks of anything procurable because it is a presence of a Person and depends on the liberty of that Person. And lacking the element of a free gift, a free act of love on the part of Him Who comes, the experience would lose its specifically mystical quality."

Merton had what he himself referred to as a "restless" mind. As he opened to the experience of Zen meditation, and Buddhist exprience in general, he spoke later of the "I-Thou" relationship in an essay....."Transcendent Experience - Who is it that has a transcendent experience?" as published in his book "Zen and the Birds of Appetite".

After saying that there is a place for the "I-Thou" relationship, he then says that those who would wish to deepen their experience of the Divine must learn to relax their grasp on their conception of what the goal is and "who it is" that will attain it. "To cling too tenaciously to the 'self' and its own fulfillment would guarantee that there would be no fulfillment at all."

He then proceeds to speak of the difference between the "person" and the "ego" with concepts and comments that has my own mind struggling to keep up!

At the end of a long dialogue between Merton and Suzuki, Merton sums up, and relating it to the Buddhist phrase concerning the "enlightened experience" (When happy we laugh, when sad we cry, when hungry we eat, when tired we sleep), says "For the Buddhist, life is a static and ontological fullness. For the Christian it is a dynamic gift, a fullness of love. There are many differences in the doctrines of the two religions, but I am deeply gratified to find, in this dialogue with Dr. Suzuki, that thanks to his penetrating intuitions into Western mystical thought, we can so easily and agreeably communicate with one another on the deepest and most important level. I feel that in talking to him I am talking to a "fellow citizen", to one who, though his beliefs in many respects differ from mine, shares a common spiritual climate. This unity of outlook and purpose is supremely significant."

(I would query Merton's choice of words concerning Buddhism. "Static"? "Fullness"?......they seem, at least to me, a strange choice of words. Both seem at odds with what he has shown himself to understand elsewhere, but there you go, who's perfect?...... )

Well, perhaps enough.

All the best

Tariki, asked myself, what do I know about Buddism? well it was not difficult, nothing. And the same goes for other religions, as well as tons and tons of stuff. So this simple thought came to me, when I was at sea it was always nice to hear from home. As soon as it became possible I bought a radio receiver, but I found it to be quite dissapointing, after leaving a port and getting away from land, it was difficult to tune in, and if I did get a station it was often full of disturbance, plus it was most often in a language that I had not a clue as to what they were talking about, then another station would chirp in, the music was also often very strange to the ear. Sometimes it was full of very disturbing noises, so it was best to turn it off. This is how I see religion/s. However I did and still do hear from home, and it is always encouraging news, no interference, crystal clear. So maybe it the same for most folks, I hope so.

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

Do you want to know what troubles me so much about what I'd refer to as "Chick Tract Christianity"?

It's the moral bankruptcy, the utterly callous and egocentric attempt at saving your own behind from a monstrous entity that will only save a bunch of smarmy lickspittles from the wholesale destruction it wants to visit upon most sentient beings.

Now, I do not think that this is all there is to Christianity, or even that this is TRUE Christianity. But this is the kind of belief that I've heard many Christians express: ingratiate yourself, or burn forever.

 

[oi_antz]

Not at all. I greatly doubt that anything that could be identified as myself (or my self) could possibly survive my physical demise, and do not believe that there's any kind of afterlife, neither in a positive or in a negative sense.

We are talking about justice. If the Cosmic Death Camp existed, then it'd exist, and I'd probably end up there for defying the monster that created and maintained it. But it still wouldn't be just, whereas a karmic universe would certainly live up to that description.

Are you reeling me in? I don't like that if you aren't going to be serious. We are discussing a very real situation in terms of justice administered by someone sufficiently righteous to know who is worthy of praise and who is worthy of condemnation for the way they have live during life. That's the extent of my understanding and it is far beyond me to begin suggesting that those Jesus chooses will be anyone and everyone who wants to be on His side. I think there's a lot lot more to consider, which requires the investigation of a person's heart to know if the heart is sufficiently noble that upon accepting Jesus that person will be His loyal servant forever. Only God knows a thing like that.

 

[Eudaimonist]

Are you reeling me in? I don't like that if you aren't going to be serious.

Trust me, she's being serious. Just because she doesn't accept Biblical claims of God's perfect goodness at face value, that doesn't mean that she isn't examining the doctrine very carefully.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

Are you reeling me in?

No. I'm pointing out the moral bankruptcy behind the belief that people will suffer eternally (and DESERVE to suffer eternally) for the heinous crime of being fallible and not being a Christian.

Cue for John 14:6-7, the favourite fundamentalist verse: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

(Now raze, I KNOW that there's a way to read this line differently, but *you* know as well as I do that many Christians *do* read it in the fashion I point to here.)

Thus, selfless Buddhist nurses will be tormented throughout eternity. Jewish holocaust victims will experience agonies that make Auschwitz look like a walk in the park. Any sentient being that's ever lived but didn't join your faith will be subjected to unspeakable horrors because they were fallible mortals.

Naturally, I do not believe this to be true. But there are people who do believe that, and my beef is with them.

 

[Tariki]

I suppose I can tell myself, I told you so - keep out of it. Got the T-Shirt, why seek another?

Maybe just my own obvious bias, but those who still seek to maintain the doctrine of ET continue to offer no valid arguments in its favour, and again offer no valid counter arguments to those who offer arguments against it.

It is merely asserted because "the Bible tells them so" and if the Bible tells them so, it MUST be right, must be just..............even though they can't actually say why.

Jane, I do remember a while back on a "religious" chat show, a couple of Christians discussing with Lionel Blue, the Rabbi. The Chairperson asked the Christians to say what for them was the meaning of Christ. One spoke up and said....."Christ enables a person to become a son of God, a child of God, in a totally unique sense. And only Christ enables one to become such a child of God." Lionel Blue spoke up and said......."Do you mean to say by that, that the Jewish people in the death camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka, who shared their last slice of bread with each other, were not God's children in the fullest possible sense?" At which the Christian began waffling about the parable of the wedding guests, about the original guests not turning up and so more had to be gathered from the backstreets etc. Lionel Blue just interrupted and said......"Oh no no no , we Jews, Hindus, Buddhists don't want to enter heaven by the back door, we want to walk in thorugh the front like you Christians!"

And Robban, I do agree that most religion is just useless noise. Always good to come "home".

Anyway, all the best to you all.

 

[Meepy]

Karma sounds fair to me, and the kind of karma that would lead you to one of the hell-realms would be the sort of deeds that clearly require some sort of redemption.

Now, contrast that with a divine judge who condemns uncounted billions to neverending torment on account their being fallible humans who cannot live up to divine standards (for if they could, Jesus's sacrifice would have been unneccessary, right?), granting respite only to those who point to a blood sacrifice as a sort of bribe, even though they are no better than all the rest.

The Christian/Muslim hell is not the equivalent of a high security prison filled with only the most heinous villains - it's the equivalent of a Nazi Death Camp where the Buddhist nurse who sacrificed her adult life to the task of tending the sick was tormented right next to the Khmer Rouge soldier who shot small children in the face; a place where Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who turned atheist during her teenage years will receive exactly the same treatment as the Nazi henchmen who murdered her and most of her family.

this is what tends to happens when you try to understand the justice of God. His ways are not our ways. And with how the world is today I don't think our ways really are humane anyway.

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

this is what tends to happens when you try to understand the justice of God. His ways are not our ways.

And with that, all need to call what "He" is supposedly doing "justice" ceases to be.

As I said, making up a wholly new term would make more sense than calling it "just" or "good".

 

[razeontherock]

The Christian/Muslim hell is not the equivalent of a high security prison filled with only the most heinous villains - it's the equivalent of a Nazi Death Camp where the Buddhist nurse who sacrificed her adult life to the task of tending the sick was tormented right next to the Khmer Rouge soldier who shot small children in the face; a place where Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who turned atheist during her teenage years will receive exactly the same treatment as the Nazi henchmen who murdered her and most of her family.

Jane, while information that has been repressed for eons and is new to me makes me reconsider, you mis-represent the classic, mainstream C concept of hell. You really didn't know that when you wrote this?

 

[Tariki]

this is what tends to happens when you try to understand the justice of God. His ways are not our ways. And with how the world is today I don't think our ways really are humane anyway.

meepy,

And just what is it that "tends to happen"? A human being draws perfectly reasonable conclusions from the insistence upon a theological doctirne, but these conclusions are rejected - not by showing that they do not follow from the doctrine itself - but just by saying...."oh, His ways are not our ways". By such a claim you avoid all need to rethink your own position, and allow yourself to remain "at peace".

There is the peace that passeth understanding, and there is the peace that is all too understandable.

And Raze, though we seem to have some sort of "communion of understanding", I would say we disagree on this. Janes conclusions seem perfectly just ones to make, given the doctrine as it has been insisted upon to me on forum after forum by Christian after Christian. Merely to appeal to some unstated "classic, mainstream Christian" understanding as some sort of get out clause seems to me unjustified. Perhaps you could give us the benefit of the full unexpurgitated doctrine so as to know exacatly what it is, and then we could perhaps see just where Janes conclusions are wrong.

In some ways I feel she has understated the conclusions, in as much as a coarse human being with virtually no human empathy whatsover, who kills without compunction would - as far as I can see - suffer less in hell than another who had in fact lived a reasonably humane life, loving their nearest and dearest, but who rejected Christ because of what they saw to be the total hypocrisy of many Christians....(not to mention certain Priests)

And if such a human being is NOT to be damned, then I really see no content to the Christian proclamation at all.

 

[Eudaimonist]

this is what tends to happens when you try to understand the justice of God. His ways are not our ways.

I know what you mean.


Iä! Iä!

Mark

 

[Crusader05]

Jane, while information that has been repressed for eons and is new to me makes me reconsider, you mis-represent the classic, mainstream C concept of hell. You really didn't know that when you wrote this?

Of course, it's always a misunderstanding!

 

[Crusader05]

Karma sounds fair to me, and the kind of karma that would lead you to one of the hell-realms would be the sort of deeds that clearly require some sort of redemption.

Now, contrast that with a divine judge who condemns uncounted billions to neverending torment on account their being fallible humans who cannot live up to divine standards (for if they could, Jesus's sacrifice would have been unneccessary, right?), granting respite only to those who point to a blood sacrifice as a sort of bribe, even though they are no better than all the rest.

The Christian/Muslim hell is not the equivalent of a high security prison filled with only the most heinous villains - it's the equivalent of a Nazi Death Camp where the Buddhist nurse who sacrificed her adult life to the task of tending the sick was tormented right next to the Khmer Rouge soldier who shot small children in the face; a place where Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who turned atheist during her teenage years will receive exactly the same treatment as the Nazi henchmen who murdered her and most of her family.

Jane, outstanding post. I agree with you about the tremendously unjust nature of the christian god and christian hell.

It makes me wonder, suppoosing this god is real, why is faith in him the ultimate virtue? Is he really that vain and selfish? Why not reward kindness and humanity, whether someone worshiped him or not? How unjust to send someone to hell for eternity because they were raised in the wrong faith, or the wrong church.

Of course, believers will argue that we misunderstand god's infinite love and his divine plan.

 

[razeontherock]

Janes conclusions seem perfectly just ones to make, given the doctrine as it has been insisted upon to me on forum after forum by Christian after Christian.

unexpurgitated

Now there's a word! I think it's clear that not all in hell suffer equally. Not only from those who have been there and re-told their experiences, but from Scripture. To say that Ann Frank suffers equally with the very Nazis who killed her loved ones? Seems to unduly stretch all the notions, IMHO.

Rev 16:7 And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous [are] thy judgments."

This is by no means a stand-alone verse, but the thought is expressed a myriad of ways. If even we mere mortals can see blatant injustice in Jane's scenario, surely it does not escape the Almighty?

On the other hand, exactly how His Judgments are true and righteous, I cannot pretend to understand, any more than I can pretend to know what all His Judgments are. I count myself fortunate to have been shown how Righteousness and Peace have kissed, and how Mercy and Truth have met ...

You might say I am infinitely more interested in exploring that side of the coin,
than in knowing the sordid details of "G-d's left hand."

 

[razeontherock]

I agree with you about the tremendously unjust nature of the christian god and christian hell.

Did you even read the OP? Also, you might take note that Faith is not virtue:

"And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; (2 Peter 1:5)

You might find that full passage, in context, to be interesting; but at the very least it smashes one false notion you expressed.