Dan4reason
Facts not Faith
The bible describes a place where bad people and unbelievers will be tortured for eternity. So I have a few questions. First, is hell really what most people think it is? Second, is is ethical to torture people forever?
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
There is a gap between the vague references to the Hebrew version of Hades in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) to hell in the New Testament, written centuries later during a time in which Second Temple Era Judaism had undergone several theological transformations.The bible describes a place where bad people and unbelievers will be tortured for eternity.
The concept of hell has gone through great evolution through different periods. So people held various ideas about it in various ANE periods, Hellenistic periods, and Persian influenced periods.So I have a few questions. First, is hell really what most people think it is?
Well there is this annoying neighbor two floors above that makes a lot of noise during the night, I'm opened for suggestions.Second, is is ethical to torture people forever?
Making someone immortal is unethical, regardless of where you put them. Any being that would curse someone to existence without end is twisted beyond measure. If such a being exists, we're pretty much all screwed, one way or the other.
- "And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power," (2 Thess. 1:9).
- "Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire" (Jude 7).
- These men are those who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; 13 wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever," (Jude12-13).
Sounds pretty damning to me, as well as extremely unloving, unkind, unjust, and outright immoral.
Yup. But so what?It says the fire is unquenchable, not anything thrown into it. And death is eternal.
The Bible actually doesn't really teach eternal torment- it teaches about the grave. The word "fire" is probably a reference to purification. I know at least one story in the OT that used fire as purification.
That's just my view of the whole thing.
And it does. Cross god in some particular way(s) and you gonna suffer, mate.Skwim,
It's supposed to sound like cause and effect.
???The natural occurrances of life on Earth. From good acts, good things.. Forever. Vice verse.
And it does. Cross god in some particular way(s) and you gonna suffer, mate.
???
Yup. But so what?
The " . . . penalty of eternal destruction. . . , " ". . . punishment of eternal fire," and the ". . . black darkness . . . reserved forever," certainly doesn't sound like a walk in the park. And no matter how one gets there, according to the cited scripture, in Hell one will undergo eternal destruction and eternal fire, and do so forever.