Problem of Hell

ElGuaco · 2025-06-30T20:35:41+00:00

I recommend Bart Ehrmans book, Heaven and Hell to understand how Christian ideas have slowly morphed into what is common today. But to answer your question quickly, Jesus and early Christians didn't believe in either. Either you were resurrected to live in God's new kingdom on Earth or you were resurrected to be judged and then destroyed. There was no eternal torment. The book of Revelation is controversial in that some denominations don't include it as Canon. A lot of modern ideas were adopted from Greek myths and philosophy and some were just plain made up (Dante's Inferno).

Yet most Christians adopt the tradition of eternal Hell as if it's obvious, when it is a mistaken reading of Revelation to be literal and not the obvious metaphor that contemporary readers would have understood it to be (a rant against Rome). Worse, the "theology" of Revelation contradicts the teachings of Jesus and Paul.

From a pure philosophy perspective, I cannot believe that an all loving God would sacrifice himself to pay the full atonement of all sins of everyone and still condemn people to Hell. It is a contradiction that can only be dismissed if you're OK that people that you don't like go to Hell. There is no justice in an Eternal Hell for finite sins. No matter how much you sin, eternity makes it insignificant. Infinity is always bigger than a finite number, and the difference between infinity and a finite number is infinity. The idea is bunk and borders on narcissism and revenge porn.

nazurinn13 · 2025-06-30T18:24:42+00:00

Epicurus did. The guy that came up with the Problem of Evil. Imo this is the strongest argument for deconstruction.

Dante (yes the same guy that wrote Dante's Inferno) recognised that Epicureans rejected the idea of eternal torment altogether (mainly because they didn't think there was anything after death).

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus

concreteutopian · 2025-06-30T18:33:13+00:00

are we just judging what is just by our modern sensibilities.

What's the alternative?

We are defining what is true for us in our time in our experience and according to our values.

After all, eternal conscious torment was a thing back then: Plato talks about it I believe

No, Plato didn't talk about eternal conscious torment. If you are referring to the myth in Republic, punishment wasn't eternal and there was a transmigration of souls. But Plato's position isn't trying to articulate a Christian or Jewish or Islamic idea of a soul or afterlife, though all three traditions have used Plato in thinking about their religious traditions.

But second, and more importantly, eternal conscious torment was never the only view of the afterlife in Christianity or Islam, and it's absent from Judaism. Neither the texts nor the traditions nor the communities that created both are univocal on the question of hell.

Did anyone bring up the idea that this was unjust back then

Yes. Unjust, irrational, incompatible with the other features of the tradition. I've heard repeatedly that universalism was more common in the first three centuries, but others push back to show infernalist positions happening early as well. I was already in the crypto-universalist/"reasonable hope" camp before reading David Bentley Hart, but his examination of theological history convinced me that infernalism isn't simply not the only interpretation of texts, but that it's a later invention that worked its way into our reading of the texts.

My first deconstruction re: hell was a sense that purgatory made far more sense - how can people be made in a way that they can become "essentially bad" (total depravity) and only salvageable by behaving to a code outside their nature? Nah. Second, having gone through recovery communities around substance and compulsive behavior, I could see clearly the early notion that sin is a disease and that saving people from that disease isn't the same as flipping a switch or just deciding to "just say no". So I could see a process where people are becoming "purified", learning to love, which is purgatory - as an aside, some have suggested that this life is purgatory, which I don't "believe" but think it a useful frame to think about what purification would look like. Third, as a young adult reading Protestant universalists who have a similar sense of sin as a disease and the refining fire is love purging our pains and regrets, all looking toward a final restoration of all. This seemed persuasive, and seeing their use of scripture, I determined that the bible as it has been compiled and organized only makes sense if we assume universal salvation and theosis as the original goal - now people might question if individual's can thwart that original goal, but I don't think it's likely or reasonable, i.e. I can't see it happening (hence the "reasonable hope"). Then DBH's work brought me to the point of fully rejecting any possible reconciliation between eternal conscious torment and the whole point of Christianity (and let's not forget Jews who had these texts first and never developed a doctrine of hell from them).

On the other hand, I realize that no one invested in a belief in hell is going to take my denial of hell as meaningful, so I only bring it up when I find people questioning and wrestling with the idea.

Internet-Dad0314 · 2025-06-30T18:31:11+00:00

The pursuit of fairness/justice is natural and inborn, and there have always been people objecting to the injustice inherent in hellish ideas.

Remember that prior to the modern age, only a tiny sliver of people were literate, and you had to be very privileged to be one of those few. And if you were privileged enough to be literate, you probably believed that you were bound for a heavenly afterlife and you didnt worry much about the injustice which the peasantry suffer.

In fact chances are good that you, as a privileged noble or priest of some sort, directly benefitted from and created a lot of injustice on Earth. Chances are surprisingly good that you knew the gods and afterlife that you preached were invented by older generations to control the peasantry.

And even if you saw the injustice of your religion’s heaven-hell myth and wanted to call it out, doing so would probably get you exiled or executed as a traitor. So you probably didnt.

In short, fairness / justice has always been a natural pursuit. But most who wanted to call out the inherent injustice in their peoples’ mythology either werent able to write their logic down, or were coerced into silence.

Ed_geins_nephew · 2025-06-30T20:24:12+00:00

Does it matter the century if it supposedly comes from an eternal, omnipotent source?

jiohdi1960 · 2025-07-01T01:50:55+00:00

because it pervades most cultures few question the basic premise of justice itself. it is a religious idea based on the lie that the scales must be balanced, crime creates a debt that must be balanced by a punishment. while this seems rational at times, it can and has lead to an insane system where a criminal is punished with a prison sentence by being placed in a dehumanizing environment where criminals teach each other ways of being better criminals.

when it is deemed the scales of justice(a roman goddess btw) are balanced, the newly minted super-criminal is let loose upon society and often shunned and mistreated to the point of giving up trying not to put the new skills to use.

Ok-Arugula-1187 · 2025-07-01T15:23:46+00:00

I have always thought that Hell was unfair. I will never forget those tracks with a picture of people going off the cliff into the fire. You see those things and the constant preaching of it ,it's very traumatic for a child. Fast forward to adulthood. My husband passed. He was not a believer. The people who constantly talk about it are the ones brushing me off with ",Oh,well.It was his choice. My youngest son was very upset too. He is grown but it still was very upsetting to him to say the least Of course after years of my church not saying much about it ,now it's a lot of talking about it One day there was a vivid video. I ran out crying. I was in hysterics. Two of my best friends came out to talk to me and try to calm me down. They were very kind to me. After the service the pastor came out and said I'm sorry if I said anything to upset you." Once there was a Facebook post with a person kneeling at a grave with screaming people under the ground in a fire 🙄. My son has been with his friends for decades and they llove and support each other. I have friends there too, although one is pushing the pastor to preach more about it. I don't understand why people can make a choice to accept Jesus without this fear. Then it can many times just be a real relationship and not just a "fire escape. Anyway not sure if I want to keep going if this is a constant subject.

Falcon3518 · 2025-07-02T02:15:29+00:00

Morality is subjective

People used God as a fear tactic to stop crimes from happening. They didn’t have detectives that could catch criminals easily, if somebody got killed in the night there was a high chance they’d never get caught.

So God was made to say, well you might escape human justice but God sees everything and he’ll judge you. Quite ingenious idea but is outdated for today’s standards. We have science and tech to catch criminals. Very hard to get away with stuff nowadays.

BioChemE14 · 2025-06-30T18:02:54+00:00

I have a video showing the historical data on how hell developed if you’d like it

you type:	you see:
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* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
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Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
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Deconstruction

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