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Does hell exist?

Do you believe in hell? I'm not asking if you think the city of Hell, Michigan exists. And I'm not asking if you consider life in modern society or on planet Earth to be a form of hell. No word games here.

Explain your answer.

No, hell is a myth. I know you're all shocked and surprised by my answer. LOL There is no heaven and there is no hell. There is no god and there is no devil. I do like Anubis though. [Darn, no undertaker emoticon!]

Sure hell exists. What is may consist of may be subject to interpretation, and the requirements for getting there may change from religion to religion or from act to act, but if you have some belief of something "after this life" then there has to be somewhere to go, and since so many religions seem to think they have the "right" way and everybody else is the "wrong" way, one common theme is that "somewhere" exists. A lot of people are living in their own hell now. I disagree that there is no good or bad...if there wasn't then our society would look a lot different. Although I am a catholic, and had the "or you will go to hell" stuff drilled in me forever as a kid, I don't believe in the black-and-white versions many religions seem to profess. But I do believe there is someplace the very evil reside after death. weather they can get parole or something I don't know.

msmith47 wrote:. . .I do believe there is someplace the very evil reside after death. . .

I believe hell exists now. I also believe in infinitesimals and the vanishing point in pictures.

Tom

Definitely not. Unless one considers Hell to be the absolute oblivion of a person once they die. That's pretty scary!

As a child, I always found the concept of Hel (Helheim) scarier than Hell. Endless cold and despair seems worse than fire and suffering. Maybe because I was a bit of a pyro as a child.....

Theomanic wrote:Definitely not. Unless one considers Hell to be the absolute oblivion of a person once they die. That's pretty scary!

As a child, I always found the concept of Hel (Helheim) scarier than Hell. Endless cold and despair seems worse than fire and suffering. Maybe because I was a bit of a pyro as a child.....

Maybe it's because you live in Canada

Hell was invented to keep the proles in line.

Sure it's there, whether it's physically there or just a reminder in our psyche to stray from evil doings, one will never know. Personally, I believe in the concept of Purgatory and Hell because there are too many bad people to not be served some form of justice for acts they have committed. But like I said, it's hard to say, for we won't know until we get there...and I hope nobody on this forum ends up there!

Since, when our bodies die.....we don't take them with us to wherever we go. Hell, doesn't need to be a physical place, since our souls don't take up any physical space.

Therefore, Hell, if it exists, must be a state of mind, not a state of body.

It says somewhere that Hell is a state of the soul being cut off from God...

I wouldn't dwell on this subject......

Does Heaven exist is a better question.....much more positive and productive.

Some one once said that heaven was within us.....

And certainly I have experienced 'joy' as opposed to 'pleasure'...bubbling up from within me for no apparent reason......and I know I'm not alone in this experience.....so I don't think I'm quite mad!!!

I think the idea of Hell is an innate hope that all of the wrongdoers in the world will eventually pay for their terrible deeds or thoughts, or whatever it is that would deem one worthy of eternal suffering.

Unfortunately, I have yet to see any empirical evidence that tells me it is anything more than a creation of our forefathers that is meant to keep us conforming to the social mores they thought were most important. Like most religious concepts (not any religion in particular), I find that the most dominating themes are nothing more than tools that were used to keep their followers within the bounds of acceptable behavior. Whether the concept of consequences comes in the form of eternal hell or being reincarnated as a slug, they were all meant to keep us from behaving on animalistic urges and instincts.

I guess I can not really answer that is does not exist any more than I could answer that it does exist. But I find it more probable that Hell is more of an ideal...a mortal thought that we will be held accountable beyond the span of our lives, and that our actions in our life bear some greater consequence in the world.

(This all sounds much more pessimistic than I thought it would)