The eyes of the LORD are in every place, Watching the evil and the good.
“When you read descriptions of hell, it’s a place where God is absent.”
You mean the Democrat Party HQ?
Moral of the story: Be careful what you wish for. 8>)
Satanist believe in God And Hell
Atheists believe in neither.
I believe CS Lewis said that God loves us all so much that he even created a place where He is absent — just for those people who like it that way.
Life's journey since then hasn't always been easy but many miracles in my life have happened that reinforces my faith everyday.
I may be the only Atheist on FR, and I certainly don’t want that. Just because I am not a believer doesn’t mean that I think God doesn’t have a place on Earth. When you hear of Atheists in the news, you hear of those who are loud, obnoxious, and extremely hateful. Most are like me, and don’t hate; we just don’t believe.
I have spent a lot of time around a lot of the faithful, including my own family. I was on dialysis in my twenties, and I saw how faith kept people strong and helped them persevere. I also know that religious organizations do many good things, like feeling the hungry, providing shelter and clothing to those in need, and providing counselling and resources to unwed mothers who were careless or who were raped, and aren’t sure where to turn. (I’m not pro-choice, with the exception of medical issues making the matter life and death.)
It disheartens me to see posts like this, but I understand where it comes from. I even made an attempt to remind a very prominent “Atheist” organization that they don’t speak for all Atheists everywhere, and they were very, very rude in response. I saved the emails. Maybe I’ll post them here in their entirety someday.
Like the old saying, for those going to Heaven, life on Earth is the closest they will get to experiencing Hell. For the others, this is as close as they’ll get to experiencing Heaven.
Where?
he’ll is what atheists have been putting us through for years...
I dunno...seems to me that Lucifer is an ever-present reminder of the existence and power of God.
I suspect also that the souls in Hell are surprised they are in Hell.
You say: "When you read descriptions of hell, it's a place where God is absent. He does not stop anything occurring there, nothing bad is prevented or stopped from happening. There is no healing. There is no release from torment and pain."
Well, the most detailed explanation of Hell that I've ever read was Dante's, ,which is still, as far as I know the only major literary work in the Western canon that dealt at length on the nature of hell.
I think a lot of people's view of Hell in the West was shaped by it, perhaps even more than the Bible. (I'm not saying this is right or smart, just that it's historically where a lot of our views of Hell come from).
Have you read Dante?
Here is the Wikipedia description of the Seventh Circle of Hell as described by Dante:
In the first round of the seventh circle, the murderers, war-makers, plunderers, and tyrants are immersed in Phlegethon, a river of boiling blood and fire. Ciardi writes, "as they wallowed in blood during their lives, so they are immersed in the boiling blood forever, each according to the degree of his guilt".[63] The Centaurs, commanded by Chiron and Pholus, patrol the ring, shooting arrows into any sinners who emerge higher out of the boiling blood than each is allowed. The centaur Nessus guides the poets along Phlegethon and points out Alexander the Great, "Dionysius" (either Dionysius I or Dionysius II, or both; they were bloodthirsty, unpopular tyrants of Sicily), Ezzelino III da Romano (the cruelest of the Ghibelline tyrants), Obizzo d'Este, and Guy de Montfort. The river grows shallower until it reaches a ford, after which it comes full circle back to the deeper part where Dante and Virgil first approached it; immersed here are tyrants including Attila, King of the Huns (flagello in terra, "scourge on earth", line 134), "Pyrrhus" (either the bloodthirsty son of Achilles or King Pyrrhus of Epirus), Sextus, Rinier da Corneto, and Rinier Pazzo.
Most modern descriptions of Hell, like Dante's, go far beyond the absence of God, and get directly to eternal punishment for sin. Certainly this was the catechism of the Catholic Church at the time I was instructed in it, almost 50 years ago. So this is an active Hell, quite different from the sort of passive Hell that you have described. God has set Hell up to serve out ultimate justice (sometimes referred to as "cosmic justice").
You say: "He does not stop anything occurring there, nothing bad is prevented or stopped from happening." , but that almost sounds like a heresy.
If God is all powerful, and created all things, then God created, and maintains, and continues to condemn souls to Hell. It's not some region outside of his creation where where he's decided to stop helping people, which is how you seem to be describing it.
Here is a short excerpt of what the Catholic catechism says about Hell:
The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, "eternal fire." 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.
I would say that the difference in the modern catechism of the Catholic Church and the one I was taught is summed up by the quotation marks around "eternal fire". This is the softening of punishment that is in keeping with modernism, so presumably the quotes have been placed there to imply that it's a figure of speech, and not an actual fire.
Of course I know that Protestants have different views on hell, different from the Catholics and different from each other, as they do of most other things. Here are some quotes on the topic (quotes within quotes, from Wikipedia)
One historic Protestant view of hell is expressed in the Westminster Confession (1646):
"but the wicked, who know not God, and obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ, shall be cast into eternal torments, and punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power." (Chapter XXXIII, Of the Last Judgment)According to the Alliance Commission on Unity & Truth among Evangelicals (ACUTE) the majority of Protestants have held that hell will be a place of unending conscious torment, both physical and spiritual,[22] although some recent writers such as Anglican layman C. S. Lewis[78] and J.P. Moreland[79] have cast hell in terms of "eternal separation" from God.
Certain biblical texts have led some theologians[who?] to the conclusion that punishment in hell, though eternal and irrevocable, will be proportional to the deeds of each soul (e.g., Matthew 10:15, Luke 12:46-48).[80]
So, essentially in both the Catholic and Protestant sects of Christianity you seem to have the old-school hell (let's call it Hell Hell) and a new-school version of hell, which is less eternal burning and more absence from God (let's call it Heck Hell).
And, in addition in Christianity, we have the old view that there is no Hell at all, which is a very old theory, but also has been considered heretical for equally as long. And is often accompanied by the another heretical view, that there is no immortal soul, or the soul is only immortal if granted eternal life by God after death.
So, where did all these Christian visions of Hell originate from? Well, presumably the only authoritative descriptions, from a theological point of view, must be found in Christian scripture. Again, details from the Wikipedia article "Christian Views on Hell" (which contains helpful hyper-links to the cited chapter and verse).
The most common New Testament term translated as "Hell" is γέεννα (gehenna), a direct loan of Hebrew גהנום/גהנם (ge-hinnom).Apart from one use in James 3:6, this term is found exclusively in the synoptic gospels. Gehenna is most frequently described as a place of fiery torment (e.g., Matthew 5:22, Matthew 18:8-9; Mark 9:43-49); other passages mention darkness and "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (e.g., Matthew 18:12; Matthew 22:13).[17]
Apart from the use of the term gehenna (translated as "Hell" or "Hell fire" in most English translations of the Bible; sometimes transliterated, or translated differently)[19][20][21] the Johannine writings refer to the destiny of the wicked in terms of "perishing", "death" and "condemnation" or "judgment". Paul speaks of "wrath" and "everlasting destruction" (cf. Romans 2:7-9; 2 Thessalonians), while the general epistles use a range of terms and images including "raging fire" (Hebrews 10:27), "destruction" (2 Peter 3:7), "eternal fire" (Jude 7) and "blackest darkness" (Jude 13).
The Book of Revelation contains the image of a "lake of fire" and "burning sulphur" where "the devil, the beast, and false prophet" will be "tormented day and night for ever and ever" (Revelation 20:10) along with those who worship the beast or receive its mark (Revelation 14:11).[22]
The New Testament also uses the Greek word hades, usually to refer to the abode of the dead (e.g., Acts 2:31; Revelation 20:13).[5] Only one passage describes hades as a place of torment, the parable of Lazarus and Dives (Luke 16:19-31). Jesus here depicts a wicked man suffering fiery torment in hades, which is contrasted with the bosom of Abraham, and explains that it is impossible to cross over from one to the other.
Some scholars believe that this parable reflects the intertestamental Jewish view of hades (or sheol) as containing separate divisions for the wicked and righteous.[5][22] In Revelation 20:13-14 hades is itself thrown into the "lake of fire" after being emptied of the dead.
It is also interesting to look into Hell as a concept pre-dating Christianity. Even the word goes back to the Pagan era Old English.
From a secular point of view it seems like the Christian vision of Hell has more in common with the Pagan view than with the views of Old Testament era Jewish prophets who wrote the Torah.
That's probably more than we need to get into, now, but it is really interesting if you are willing to analyze Hell as a concept, which had a historical development. But that's secular, and I'm trying to stay with the mainstream received religious views here.
You say: "If an athiest sat and thought about what life would really be like in a world without God, the logical end is it would look like what Hell has been described as."
Atheists believe life in a world without God would look exactly like what life looks like right now. That's because they don't believe in God, but they are not denying the existence of the world and physical reality. It's more of "what you see is what you get", with no hidden meaning or extra levels beyond the door.
The Wikipedia article on Hell (not the specifically Christian Views on Hell I linked above) contains this rather droll statement:
Despite written accounts and depictions of Hell throughout much of human history, and common belief in such a location, there is no scientific evidence that Hell exists.
Most atheists are satisfied with that statement, and the acceptance of the world "as it is" and reject the various super-natural explanations of life-after-death: be they the several alternate Christian views (Hell Hell, Heck Hell), based on the New Testament and it's interpreters (be they Catholic Popes, Protestant Reformers, latter day theologians, or devout Christian artists like Dante and C.S. Lewis).
Seeing as you have offered your original posting as advice for how atheists should think about things, I'll close with this saying of a well known atheist philosopher I know:
Stop Pretending To Know Things You Don’t Know
I believe Hell may be as “simple” as eternal separation from God.
Sin separates us from God and when Jesus was on the cross, taking on all the sins of the world and tasting sin for the first time, He cried out about His Father forsaking Him - my personal interpretation is that this was the first time He had lost conscious contact with the Father and it was more agonizing than all His other wounds.
Hell may be conscious separation from God and knowing it...
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it...