How about the Christian hell, as much as I despise that idea? Is that a notion people comfort themselves with by believing in it?
I don’t think you understand that before Christianity and the churches existed, that none of Hell existed in the Old Testament writings.
The belief in the existence of Hell, was never Jewish idea. It didn’t exist before the 6th century BCE, when the elites of population in Jerusalem was living in exile in Babylon. And Hell did exist upon their return after Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Judah/Judaea.
The Jews did believe in the afterlife, that all human spirits, good or bad, went to Sheol, but it is so vague in details, that no one back then knew what it is really about, but basically it is just a netherworld or underworld, where there were no judging you see in Christian teaching, no Heaven and no Hell.
The idea of afterlife and Hell first arose during the Hellenistic period, when Jews were influenced by Greek cults and Egyptian cults in the afterlife.
The various Greek cults believed in the judgement of the shades (spirits) by judges, and most believed that in the end, few reached the Elysian Fields, and even fewer reached Tartarus, but most ended up in parts of Erebus, known as the
Plain of Asphodel, where the shades forget their past lives when they were alive (unless they drink ram or goat blood, where shades can regain their memories, temporarily, like in The Odyssey, when Odysseus visited the Underworld, to speak with the shade of the seer, Teiresias).
One cult that differed from all others, was the Orphic Mysteries. Oh, the Orphic cultists still believe in the Elysium and Tartarus, but they differed from other cults, in how you get there.
According to the Orphic myth, after dying, the Hades or the Underworld is just a short stopovers for the shades, where they are judged, to see if they deserved to be in Elysium or Tartarus.
If neither of them are available to the shades, they get “recycled” and are “reborn” in the new life as humans again, hence the Orphic cult believe in reincarnation. So a person’s soul may be judged and reincarnated many times, before Persephone’s final judgement on the soul, and either send that shade either to Elysium or Tartarus.
In the end, according the Orphic myth, the final judgement, a person’s final place in either Elysium or Tartarus, is the only way to end the cycle of rebirths or reincarnations.
But whatever beliefs in Greek cults you may believe in back then, Elysium and Tartarus are the same. Both of these places, are part of Hades or the Underworld.
Elysium, Elysian Fields, the Blessed Isles, or White Island, whatever you may call it. These are only special places, where only few get there...mostly demigods, and heroes and heroines, like Achilles, Hector or Helen.
The gods don’t reside in any of these Elysian variations; Elysium is not heaven. They, the Greek gods, all dwell in Olympus, the Greek version of heaven.
And as to Tartarus. Tartarus has always being a place, the deepest recess of Hades’ realm, was where the Titans were confined, and where only the truly wicked are eternally tormented, like Sisyphus, Tantalus are punished.
Tantalus, for instance, was favoured by the gods, allowed to dine with the gods at Olympus, or the gods would dine at Tantalus’ palace. The last time, Tantalus held banquet, he murdered in his ow son, Pelops, and tried to feed to the gods. The gods, except Demeter, recognised human flesh, moved away from table with disgust. They sent Tantalus directly to Tartarus, where he stood I the pool of water, with eternal hunger and eternal thirst. When he tried to drink from the pool, the water would drain away and vanished, but always reappear when he stood back up. And branch of fruit would dangled before him, but whenever he tried to reach for it, the fruit would pull away from him by the wind, always be out of his reach.
The Egyptians believed that all soul, known as ba and ka, were judged by Osiris and the scale of Ma’at, the goddess who was personification of the cosmic law and order, and of justice.
Anubis would weigh the deceased’s ba (sometimes depicted as a heart, sometimes as the mini version of the deceased) on one pan of the scale, while the Feather of Ma’at (depicted as an ostrich’s feather) on the other pan.
Should the ba (soul) be heavier than the feather of Ma’at, the ba get eaten by Ammit, or the “Devourer” and the deceased’s ankh (spirit) is sent to Taut, which is Egyptian version of the Greek Tartarus or the Christian Hell.
Should the ba be lighter than the feather, or the scale is “balanced”, equally, then the ankh (spirit) will resided in the Field of Reeds, which is the Egyptian version of the Greek Elysium or the Christian Heaven.
The Jews had nothing like these afterlife, until Egyptian and Greek cults influenced their religion, the Hellenistic Judaism.
The Christian idea of afterlife in heaven and hell, was directly influenced by the Hellenistic Judaism, and indirectly Egyptian and Greek religions via the Hellenistic Judaism.
Even the concept of the messiah, a martyr god, like the resurrected Jesus, is based on foreign concepts of Egyptian Osiris and Horus, and the Greek Orphic of Dionysus and Orpheus.
So yes, Christian religion of god, resurrection and the messiah, are based on foreign and pagan concepts and religions, hence man-made.
As to Buddhism, I don’t know enough to comment about it, and I am led to believe theism, the belief in the existence of deities, is either minimal or nonexistent, depending on which Buddhism we are talking about.
Isn’t the basic concept of Buddhism about human minds and spirits able to transcend the cycle of rebirths, reaching nirvana?
But since, according to traditions, such a religion was invented by
Siddhārtha Gautama, and therefore your dharmic religion is “man-made”.
