Posted on 10/03/2012 10:14:57 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Hell is the Detroit of the afterlife.
I ain’t hell bound (it’s two words, I think), I’m already there!
Actually it's about 50 miles west. And when a group of drunk fraternity boys arrived there to liberate the signs, we found they were securely arc welded on, LOL.
I knew, that, Dr Godwin or not, “Hitler” would come up.
Not Pol Pot, not Leon Trotsky, not Walter Ulbricht,
not Saint Patrice Lumuba, but the cliched monster Hitler.
Always Hitler! You’d think we worship him.
The argument for not doing just whatever you want and can get away with is that it is irrational. If you want to live the life proper to a human being then you don’t follow every whim and irrational goal that pops into your head or gives you momentary pleasure. You have to use reason to guide your actions and think long term. A rational person doesn’t need to be threatened with hell and damnation to do the right thing. Of course rationality is a choice and many do choose to be irrational. Religion in my opinion is one of the root causes of this because it preaches that man is evil by nature and his mind in not capable of a rational morality. The reason there is so much evil in the world is that people are not taught to think but to “feel” and no one can deny that subjectivism in all its forms is the ruling philosophy today.
Sorry, no.
You can talk to people who have done some of the worst atrocities in history and they will tell you that they thought they were doing “good”. Human rationality is subjective.
Walter Ulbricht
Theres a name we haven’t heard in a while. I thought those
glasses he wore made him look sinister x 2.
Retired comfortably in South America, if i remember correctly.
The parable of the ‘rich’ man, who became ‘rich’ with lying, cheating, and any and all other nefarious methodologies waits across the gulf from Lazarus in Abraham's bosom.
That was his successor the late Erich Honecker..
Ulbricht joke:
In 1939, a man is arrested in Berlin for shouting “Hitler is a fool”. He is sentenced to one year in prison. In 1949, the same man is arrested for shouting “Ulbricht is a fool”. He is sentenced to ten years. He says: “Under Hitler, I only got one year. It’s not fair.” The Stasi officer answers: “Well, you only got one year for insulting Ulbricht. The other nine are for talking about a state secret in public.”
Good one. Sorry about the misinformation. Ulbricht croaked much earlier.
An interesting take on things is found in the Jewish Kabbalah, and their take on the creation myth (in the good sense of the word.)
They believe that God created the universe to discover if there was anything “not God”. To do so, God contracted from a vast, empty space, into which He injected a single particle, which was to endlessly replicate itself, becoming the physical universe. Once completed, the universe would reflect the image of God like a mirror, so God could see if there was anything “not God”. Having done so, the universe would cease to exist and again become part of God.
But inherent in this idea is that the universe exists within this contraction, this “absence of God”, so adding this to what I posted before would make physical reality, the universe, Hell. But this Hell is still inside the spiritual realm of God, and God may reach inside it to touch man, and man may beckon God to do so.
If man does not, he is in Hell. And if man beckons God, and God responds, then only man’s physicality is trapped in Hell. His spirit and soul may transcend the limitations of the flesh.
Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.
This so short but deep thoughts.
no one ever throws the milkman or local grocer into that group either
My personal belief about hell, is that if you go to hell you get to be your own god.
In your little hell, you’re the god of your own kingdom. Whatever you knew on earth, are the limits of all the knowledge exists in your kingdom. Anything you found pleasure in on earth, are the limits of the possible pleasure that can exist in your kingdom. You also carry with you any thing that ever caused you pain.
Because you saw yourself as your own god, God gives you exactly what you want, the place where you can be your own god. Everyday is the same, everyday your pleasures are the same, everyday your pain is the same.
You can create a sunset in your kingdom, but there’s no one to turn to and say “what a beautiful sunset”. You may have a beautiful wife, but she herself has decided whether her heaven is with the God of all, or, if she has decided to be her own goddess, God grants her wish, she has her own little kingdom all on her own. Two “gods” can’t share a reality and still be gods, one would have to give in, and you can’t change a vote you already cast for all of the eternity. And sooner or later, being alone with yourself and the limitations of yourself, becomes Hell.
Hell was really never a punishment. It’s simply ask, and you shall receive. Once the person in “hell” recognizes that, there is a judgement, but it is they who judge themselves, now knowing that they have cut themselves off, and that this was an eternal decision, the same power that they had as a “god” to experience pleasure in their little kingdom, through conviction no longer produces pleasure, but pain... being a “god”, the power to create the kingdom you wish, through conviction of your own guilt, produces the hell you fear. And then, the flames begin.
If God judges, we really have nothing to fear, if we know we have our advocate in Jesus Christ. Rather, be fearful of becoming your own god, and being your own judge, because all the mercy and love that we know is what God gave us, and without God we will have no mercy on ourselves.
Just me, my humble O.
Hell is other people - Sartre.
RE: Hell is other people - Sartre.
In which case, the Christian heaven would be hell to Sartre.
“and some to shame [and] everlasting contempt.”
I read a book/article that said EVERYONE would be in the presence of God. It was very serious, and lots of verses, etc. He talked about how God is omnipresent, etc. But that those who do not believe, etc. would not like being in the presence of God. (See the Old Test. on looking at God and being destroyed, consumed or whatever).
With God’s energy being the everlasting fire, etc. Interesting take on it. If Hell for a Christian is separation from God, then Hell for a non-Christian would be having to spend eternity with God. And not being forgiven, having all of those old wounds, past sins, etc. exposed to yourself and gnawing at you every minute forever and ever. “everlasting shame and contempt”.
The descriptions of hell that I read, here and elsewhere, are always descriptions of life here in paradise, that only the luckiest among us have been able to avoid. Maybe it is they who write these descriptions, while others live them.
On the other hand heaven sounds, can’t avoid saying, dull and boring, and unspecific. What really happens there? What kind of hierarchy is there. If some human requests are granted and verifiable miracles happen on earth (as Catholics believe, and the Church experts verify or not), then how are decisions made up there what requests to grant what to reject, and what powers decide these things. I am interested in very practical details not some fairy tales.
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