Let's assume there is a hell and we're all going there

[ramblingrose]

What would be worse? The textbook fire and brimstone, or a constant bombardment of disappointment and low-level annoyance? I think the latter.

[floatingdown]

hmmm, if its the later, then i would say that my office is a prototype of hell:-p

thats a good question. i really don't believe in hell, so its hard to answer this question but since you clearly said "lets assume" i will.

i guess the constant heat would kind of be problematic. that and the consistancy of being there all the time. unless hell is really big and you can move around. then maybe it wouldn't be quite as bad...

[ramblingrose]

See, that's what I mean. If it was physically really uncomfortable, for instance too hot and you were being continually prodded with spears or something, that would occupy you mentally. But pain and extreme discomfort are states that you just inhabit without thinking beyond "I wish this would stop". I think being stuck at a bus stop in a drizzle with nothing to think about other than your own shortcomings might actually be a worse way to spend eternity.

[ramblingrose]

If there is a hell I really hope whoever's in charge doesn't read this.

[floatingdown]

haha...yeah, if the ruler of hell reads this, then we're in big trouble.

i can see your point about how having to ruminiate on your shortcomings with nothing else to distract you would be utterly unbearable. i kind of feel like you would have to get beyond the pain threshold to even be able to think about this. so if we go with the assumtion that the rest (the heat and whatever else might be there)is tolerable and that all you can do is just ponder your shortcomings, then i suppose that would be worse.

then again, as long as you have free will regarding your thoughts, it seems to me that you might come to peace with any shortcomings or at least come to some great self awareness which would ultimately probably lead to if not happiness than some sort of peace. i think?

haha...i should not visit this board at the end of a long work day. my sincere apologies if this is not making sense ;)

[ramblingrose]

Moderate discomfort + freedom of thought x no distractions = pretty fucking awful. Or maybe my life's just too easy? I often wonder if you're living in a war zone, say, would you waste so much time being all existential and angst-ridden or would you just count your blessings that nobody died today and you've got a potato left for breakfast. No offence to anyone currently resident in a war zone, I just wonder if certain things would seem so important if other things weren't so easy to come by. Oh god I'm going all Maslow on my own ass.

[ramblingrose]

By "you" I suppose I mean "I".

[ramblingrose]

And by "ass" I mean "arse".

[Smith Comma John]

maybe hell is like the one described in dante's inferno, where you are punished according to your sins. if i remember correctly it's called symbolic retribution. a murderer is immersed in a river of blood, the greedy fight over a giant ball of feces... you get the general idea.

[Spaced]

For hell to be hell, surely it would have to be individually tailored to each persons idea of what their personal hell would be?

[sleepy sinner]

I'd prefer thinking time or even complete and utter isolation compared to physical discomfort. I'm a pretty happy thinker, used to my own company and I'm sure I could find ways to entertain myself for a while. Either that or just sleep a hell of a lot because I love sleep.

[DrHibbert]

Fire and brimstone would be pretty uncomfortable.

[ramblingrose]

Originally posted by sleepy sinner
I'd prefer thinking time or even complete and utter isolation compared to physical discomfort. I'm a pretty happy thinker, used to my own company and I'm sure I could find ways to entertain myself for a while. Either that or just sleep a hell of a lot because I love sleep.

I'm thinking Old Nick would have a difficult time thinking of punishment for you. I think you'd just get the hot pokers and stuff.

[Jackal]

I'm already crazily consumed with my short-comings. But, if hell is just physically uncomfortable, perhaps over time a person would adapt to that.

Being older and a social hermit, isolation and thinking over my life, and what I wish I had done different is happening now. It's not so bad.

Hell's going to have to be worse than I can imagine, for it to be more torturous than living.

Aw, my emo is showing.
:)

(I'm not as depressed as that sounds.)

[ramblingrose]

Originally posted by flutter
maybe hell is like the one described in dante's inferno, where you are punished according to your sins. if i remember correctly it's called symbolic retribution. a murderer is immersed in a river of blood, the greedy fight over a giant ball of feces... you get the general idea.
I think that's probably no more than you'd deserve but the symbolic nature might be a bit heavy-handed. What if everything that you'd ever done or said that had hurt somebody or something (whether you meant it or not) got visited back on you, and then you had ages to think about it? And then it just all happened again, for ever? That would be nasty. Personally I've never read a scarier description of hell than the one in Portrait of the Artist, when I first read it I was ill and a few hours later I started hallucinating. Not fun I tells ya.
I think the shortcomings at a bus stop situation would make a good purgatory, on reflection.

[tetragrammaton]

I think the worst kind of hell would be this kind of groundhog day. You'd wake up after dying, be tortured beyond imagining, then the next day the same. You'd never get conditioned to withstand the pain so every day would be the worst day of your afterlife.

I think if hell was like it is in the comic Lucifer it wouldn't be too bad. I mean, it would suck, but if you could find some way out of the torture...

[Herr Lipp]

France.

[Celluloid Love]

If this thread got sent to hell, I would likely suffer from side splitting laughter

[Intern Kate]

i think the church (i think Catholic?) abolished Hell as a place, and decided it's a state of mind. they also got rid of purgatory.

[In Dust and Ashes]

i think the church (i think Catholic?) abolished Hell as a place, and decided it's a state of mind. they also got rid of purgatory.

I read something about that. interesting thought, but I can't figure out much about how they supported it biblically. someone tried explaining it to me by using a quote from C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. I havn't read the book yet, but it's a fictional novel with an underlaying message about the seperation of Heaven and Hell (as far as I understand it anyway).

[Intern Kate]

as far as i understand, there wasn't a concept of Hell to begin with in early Christianity. rather, it was added on centuries later, a meshing with some other religion's eschatology. Zoroastrianism? or Gnosticism? i mean, i don't think Jesus was technically supposed to believe in a Hell as he was an Apocalyptic Jew. and i'll exit now that i've begun to babble jargon from my Meaning of Death class.

[In Dust and Ashes]

I've heard that from several sources, but I've never seen any specific evidence of it and from my *brief* study of bible history, I've found the opposite. so I'm rather reluctant to give any credit to such thoughts as those.

[Intern Kate]

sorry, you haven't found evidence of what - of Hell not being added until later, of Jesus not believing in Hell, or both? and, for curiosity's sake, what's led you to believe the opposite?

and honestly i'm just curious and not trying to be a pest.

[In Dust and Ashes]

you're not a pest at all.

I havn't found evidence of either.

for the opposite, I've been shown and explained the accuracy of the translations passed down from the begining. the new testiment letters and gosples have remained the same since the time they were first written with the exception of a relatively few areas (some of which I've looked at myself). all of which were a one word or two word deal that are interesting indeed, but pose no threat to major doctrinal issues and can be straightened out within the greater context of the bible.
the main cause of these problems was handwriting errors and the fact that in the most anxcient text, there was no punctuation and the words were all written together. heh. kind'a makes it difficult to read ;)

[In Dust and Ashes]

it's come to my attention that my above posts could be misinterpreted as me saying that christianity has always been the same and that we've always believed the same thing. that's wrong and even in todays world, christains can't agree on what to believe. I'm not saying that popular belief hasn't changed in the christian faith. but i do believe that the bible has held it's accuracy no matter what the people in the churches are teaching.

[Intern Kate]

clearly John believed in Hell, wouldn't argue there. but - and our professor pointed this out, as i can't just quite translate Greek myself, so these aren't claims i can declare ownership on - that the King James version butchered the term Mark, Matthew, and Luke used that was meant to mean sheol; it was translated as Hell. and sheol is just nothingness, not associated with any kind of punishment.

[In Dust and Ashes]

KJV is known for inaccuracy for a number of different reasons. mainly because it was translated from a limited sourse of manuscripts. (we've discoverd a lot more since then)

but I don't understand why that would be an arguement....translations are never translated from another modern translation. they're always translated from the manuscripts. and all the other translations that I know of use the term and idea of "hell" not "nothingness".
I wouldn't know what to make of that.

[Squirrel]

Now I am kind of imagining hell as one of those nightclubs, where it's far too hot, you are really tired all the time but you can't go home to bed, everyone there is too cool to talk to you and you only get a break once every 72 hours and you have to play Party Poker until you start to win.

[Herr Lipp]

With RnB on repeat D:

[Hi There, Am Pam]

Now I am kind of imagining hell as one of those nightclubs, where it's far too hot, you are really tired all the time but you can't go home to bed, everyone there is too cool to talk to you and you only get a break once every 72 hours and you have to play Party Poker until you start to win.


Holy shit, that's dead on my idea of hell.

I once thought the after-life was, no matter what, a room you were taken to, which had Pearl Jam's "Satan's Bed" playing on repeat. Preferably the "State College" show version, which they butchered (has to be heard to believed). And butchering a song like Satan's Bed makes it all the more enjoyable.

I grew out of that phase though.

[In Dust and Ashes]

clearly John believed in Hell, wouldn't argue there. but - and our professor pointed this out, as i can't just quite translate Greek myself, so these aren't claims i can declare ownership on - that the King James version butchered the term Mark, Matthew, and Luke used that was meant to mean sheol; it was translated as Hell. and sheol is just nothingness, not associated with any kind of punishment.

hey, what class was this in?

[Intern Kate]

the professors in two of my classes - Backgrounds in English and American Lit, and Meaning of Death, have talked about it. and sheol is Hebrew i realize, not even Greek. so who really knows what i'm talking about.

[Intern Kate]

of religion and Jesus, some man found Christ in a pancake and it's on sale at Ebay for $500.

http://www.channel3000.com/family/6881020/detail.html#

[In Dust and Ashes]

the professors in two of my classes - Backgrounds in English and American Lit, and Meaning of Death, have talked about it. and sheol is Hebrew i realize, not even Greek. so who really knows what i'm talking about.

hmm, well then maybe you're refering to something in the old testiment. there are mentions of hell in the old testiment. I'd have to look into that.

[In Dust and Ashes]

of religion and Jesus, some man found Christ in a pancake and it's on sale at Ebay for $500.

http://www.channel3000.com/family/6881020/detail.html#

um. that doent' look like Jesus, but that burn spot looks kind'a gross...

[In Dust and Ashes]

actually from a closer look, it kind'a looks like an eye.

[Hi There, Am Pam]

of religion and Jesus, some man found Christ in a pancake and it's on sale at Ebay for $500.

http://www.channel3000.com/family/6881020/detail.html#


Holy fuck, I did a search for Jesus on E-bay and came across t-shirts and all sorts of crap. The best one was a deleted entry titled "Jesus' half retarded Uncle Maurie Pancake!"

It seems like anything can be a trend these days. I guess when people start selling 9/11 t-shirts, anything is fair game.

[wasp in a jar]

Now I am kind of imagining hell as one of those nightclubs, where it's far too hot, you are really tired all the time but you can't go home to bed, everyone there is too cool to talk to you and you only get a break once every 72 hours and you have to play Party Poker until you start to win.i think you might be right.

and if that is the case, purgatory is work the following day. at my current job where you are tormented by a jcb digger outside and sleep deprivation and annoying customers.

[wasp in a jar]

:cry: of religion and Jesus, some man found Christ in a pancake and it's on sale at Ebay for $500.

http://www.channel3000.com/family/6881020/detail.html#i can't see anything in that.

[mc_festus]

Fire and brimstone would be pretty uncomfortable.

every time i read your posts, i cant help but hear dr. hibbert laughing, and this post seemed pretty exceptional

[DrHibbert]

hehehe :pimp: