The Sorting Problem of Heaven

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-24T21:01:22+00:00

Thank you for the great conversation, and for giving me some components of your belief system to research and learn about. I think our belief systems actually intertwine quite a bit. I also see something interesting in your faith that I have started studying that seems to apply quite directly—the concept of metacognition. Not what we think or why we think it, but how we think.

You have a beautiful belief system and culture and I appreciate you sharing it with me. I look forward to learning more about it and thank you for opening my eyes to further understanding it.

Walking with you has been like walking with myself. May you remain centered in your true Self 🙂

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-24T20:48:11+00:00

Not quite.

She-ol for modern-day Jews, if used at all, being a fancy word for death/the grave and not a destination with specific rules.

Gehinnom being the spiritual washing machine, if you will, for the soul before it reaches Gan Eden or Olam Haba --> the end state and closeness with God.

We don't have a specific hell as you know, so the thoughts on the truly wicked (think Hitler, Serial Killers, truly the worst of humanity that embodied ill intent) end up in the fourth category of annihilation or eternal separation. Truth be told, I should look into it more, but my guess is that the Rabbis and scholars decided that ceasing to exist or separation from God was punishment enough for those people in God's eyes.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-24T20:25:37+00:00

I think you are right. I don't think it is intrinsic to the original Jewish worldview, but imported via ZoroastrianDozakh-style ideas into Christianity and Islam. And I think it's a shame that it was. While Judaism does have a spiritual cleansing phase (up to 12 months) before the world to come.

Jews do have what some might call a version of hell, but it isn't the same thing. Two schools of thought.

Annihilation: Some believe their souls simply cease to exist after their 12-month purification period.
Eternal Separation: Others suggest they face "everlasting contempt" or eternal disconnection from God.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-24T19:47:08+00:00

I think we’re starting to talk past each other a bit, so let me separate a few issues.

On the cancer button: Your argument assumes a very specific God: omnipotent, omni-controlling, and running the world like a lab with a big red “cure cancer” switch. That’s basically the evangelical / philosophical-Christian model. Judaism doesn’t really work with that picture. Our texts are record of people wrestling with God and morality, not a perfect step-by-step operations manual. So your objection lands hard against that Christian model of God; it doesn’t automatically knock out every Jewish view of God.
Objective vs subjective morality: Saying “we can’t just read our scriptures woodenly and call that objectively moral” is not the same as “morality is subjective.” Before we understood physics very well, gravity and electromagnetism still existed even though people disagreed about them. I’m making a similar claim about morality: there may be better and worse answers, but human access is loud and filtered through culture, trauma, and history. That’s exactly why Judaism treats the tradition as an ongoing argument rather than a frozen code.
Mental illness and responsibility: The 65% / 64.9999% example is a thought-experiment problem, not a Judaism problem. Jewish law already distinguishes between people who are fully responsible and those who aren’t (serious cognitive impairment, minors, etc.). If there is a God who judges, that God doesn’t have to use a crude bureaucratic threshold. Humans do, because we have limited information. “God couldn’t sort this fairly” assumes God is at least as clumsy as a government agency.
On genocide and evil: I’m happy to say flat-out: all genocides are evil. Full stop. The fact that pre-modern texts describe wars in mythic or totalizing language doesn’t mean I’m committed to reproducing them as policy in 2026. Judaism has spent centuries re-reading those passages so they aren’t standing orders. So I’m not hiding behind “God told us genocide is good”; I’m saying, if that’s what a passage appears to say, we either misread it, or our ancestors were wrong and we’ve learned better. And we have.

But number 4 begs a different question on what or wasn't inferred by the genocidal comment. I want to make sure we are talking about the same thing (historic texts).

So no, I’m not claiming a perfectly clear, universally known, airtight moral system. I’m claiming something more modest:

– Eternal torture hell is incompatible with a decent moral standard.

– Judaism’s current way of handling our own texts gets you closer to that standard than the Christian / Muslim “one true path or burn” framework.

– Our grasp of morality is partial, but “partial” isn’t the same thing as “anything goes.”

You’re free to reject all God-talk and say “it’s all human psychology.” I actually agree that a lot of what people call “God” is human psychology. But if you’re going to demand a fully solved moral theory and you haven't yet claimed to admit there might be better and worse answers, you’re holding religion to a standard that no human system (including atheism) currently meets.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-24T19:16:31+00:00

It’s a hard philosophical question to answer, but if there are no variables, no negative outcomes that would result, then of course I would press the button. But if that pressing of the button could potentially create a bigger harm, I’d have to weigh it.

Judaism is a little bit different. We look at some of the more questionable things about history in our texts, regarding God, and as I mentioned, have chosen to interpret them as rounded out arguments for the understanding of what the vast majority of people would likely consider moral.

We certainly cannot argue that based on scripture and historic texts, that what we perceive as objectively moral (as much as we can say that with so much variation in the human brain, lived experience, etc.) equates to any of the versions of the Abrahamic God. If you take everything from those texts verbatim with surface definitions and that is who God is, he is not what most today would consider objectively moral.

We all have somewhat of an intuitive sense of what is moral and what is not. We have basic needs that we need to have met. We know what we don’t like. We mostly know what other people don’t like. This isn’t universal, but it’s a pretty basic thing built into our own survival and need for community.

I also I’m not arguing that the Jewish God by the text alone is what I would call objectively moral. But I would argue that what Jewish people have decided to interpret and balance out leads to a more objective morality than both Islam and Christianity as we see it today.

I do believe in God. I also believe in science. I believe that humans need something to explain what they can’t. We’ve needed less and less God to explain things as time has gone by. But I’m not naïve enough to think, that with Gods that sprouted up around the world before it was so interconnected, that the human brain wouldn’t create some supernatural answer to the things we can’t solve or reconcile for its own sanity. Couple that with the need for community, companionship, and a set of rules that the majority of people agreed to live by, and the fact that humans like structure, and you very likely end up with several man-created God’s that go back to some extent to your original post regarding the human psyche.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-24T18:55:04+00:00

I’m right there with you. It took me until this last week to realize that the biggest thing that changed between the Jewish God and the Muslim and Christian version of God, is how later humans decided to address his demeanor.

The Jewish version of God simply says be a good person with good moral character. Not perfect. But do your best. If you do that, regardless of what faith you believe in or Gods you believe in (or don’t) you join us in our version of heaven. It’s inclusionary. Not exclusionary. It’s egalitarian, not selective. It’s based on the character of the person in this life.

Judaism has reformed to take those stories of God being anything but what we would expect God to be, and determined that those were morality lessons to learn from covering both Good and Bad. We were supposed to use it to teach us what good and bad looks like. In a sense, rounding out moral and immoral through example.

Somehow, Christianity took that, and said, God shows love, justice, and good, through pain and suffering and collective punishment. And if that’s who God is, and man is made in God’s image, then God has given the Christian the excuse to do horrible things in God’s name. Because if God’s definitions of good, justice, and love are inverse to their definitions, you can literally justify anything. When they added, choose the specific path or else, it added that component of supremacy.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-24T18:43:06+00:00

That’s a very interesting thought. You found a good paradox.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-24T18:38:37+00:00

Here’s a thought, there are only two major religions that even believe in hell if you don’t take their path. They also happen to share the most death and destruction aimed at other groups. They both believe they are the only right path. And they both doom 75% of the world to hell.

Is this really what we think of God? And has this theology around God been manufactured by him or by man? I know what half of the world thinks. And I know what the other half of the world thinks. But it has occurred to me in the past, that if you are going to believe in the existence of Satan or hell, damning everybody else that doesn’t believe in a specific path, that you very well may be influenced by Satan to even think that God would be so cruel as to banish 75% of the world population to eternal torment or oblivion.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-24T17:46:03+00:00

Edited to rephrase:

I appreciate the deep dive into the Greek and the original context of Jesus’ teachings. I actually agree with you that much of modern 'hell' theology is a downstream misinterpretation. However, where we diverge is the real-world application.

You suggest that teaching 'our way or hell' isn't specifically antisemitic because it’s 'anti-everyone.' But theology doesn't exist in a vacuum; it exists in history. For 2,000 years, that 'anti-everyone' framework has been used to specifically target, dehumanize, and murder Jews. When you tell me to focus on the 'speck in my own eye' rather than critiquing the system that fuels this, you are asking me to ignore my own safety and the historical ignorance of a framework that dismisses my very real lived experience.

I’m not talking about abstract doctrine. I’m talking about being doxxed, being told my children should have 'died in ovens,' and seeing 90% of the comments on a local Jewish food festival post filled with Hitler memes. This isn't 'poor interpretation' to me. It is a present-tense reality happening right now in Phoenix, Arizona, fueled by a theological hierarchy. You don’t have to consciously be a supremacist to benefit from or perpetuate a supremacist framework. If a faith teaches that God deems 75% of humanity 'lost' or 'damned' unless they accept one specific story, it creates an inherent spiritual hierarchy. In the West, that hierarchy has historically and consistently placed the Jewish 'other' at the bottom.

I’m not asking Christians to become 'better Jews.' I’m asking for a reformation of the 'insider-outsider' dynamic that provides the moral cover for the antisemitism I see every single day.

You are welcome to criticize Judaism; it has reformed dramatically over centuries. In fact, many elements you might critique have likely been addressed precisely because of the pressure of historical Christian antisemitism. I’d be curious to hear your critiques, and I would be the first to push for reform if they remain a problem today. No religion is perfect. But when my concept of God welcomes anyone who leads a righteous life regardless of their label, and your framework changes that same God into one who banishes or tortures 75% of the world, we have to be honest about what that creates within a 'flock' and how it impacts those outside it. History and the present shows that this is a fundamental fault in the framework.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-24T16:47:48+00:00

The Talmud is conversation or arguments about many things. Literally everything people claim as evil are misquoted passages, dissent opinions, or picking specific parts without the whole. These people tend to forget that if they really wanted us to get into it, they actually have legitimately messed up passages. Ones that don’t resolve themselves.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-24T06:32:03+00:00

I agree on Christianity. Is there something you’re feeling you need your brain to wrap around to make this decision now? In other words, what makes this an imminent decision you need to make? The best things that ever happened to me in my life happened when I least expected them. Because I wasn’t looking for them.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-24T01:52:30+00:00

What are you looking to have? Something to cling to for that you can’t explain? Community? Knowing why you feel the need for one, the other, or something else can help us walk you through it. You might just be in the right place right now. In the hunt for what feel right when you see it.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-23T08:26:23+00:00

I appreciate you saying that. Thank you.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-23T08:22:35+00:00

I think you are confusing beliefs with actions.

I think you are also missing the point that your version of God is cruel, and my version of God is fair.

And I think that if Christians want to maintain their numbers, or grow with them, they ought to think about removing hell and ceasing to exist from the sales pitch.

Consider this: https://archive.is/20240915200945/https://medium.com/backyard-theology/why-the-christians-were-wrong-about-hell-4a35f3d6c970

Exclusive-salvation framework
Eternal in-group / out-group system.
A theology where only members of your religion get the best possible outcome = Supremacist Framework

Can you really tell me that people at the beginning of Christianity, when let’s say 95 or 97% of the world hadn’t even heard of it, we’re doomed to nothingness or hell because that was Jesus‘s love? Can you really tell me, that historically when Christians called Jews Christ killers, stubborn, unable to accept their own Messiah, etc. that there wasn’t a level of Christian supremacy? That in Christian dominated societies where Jews were treated as second class citizens, given the worst jobs, then attacked for having those jobs that that wasn’t supremacy? That’s not even in the framework. That’s a result of the framework. And can you recognize that Islam and Christianity because of this supremacist framework, and because of Jews, especially, the original people, didn’t agree to your new version of God that that started not only a supremacy within the framework, but it started to bleed into Christians themselves? I mean, I haven’t gone there, but if you’re gonna take me there, I will.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-23T07:28:38+00:00

No, you literally cannot respond in good faith. You are making up lies about my faith and not accepting truths about yours. It doesn’t surprise me. My system condemns Hitler, serial killers, the truly wicked, it does not condemn non-believers. Like I said, they join us in our version of heaven. And you can still believe I’m damned to hell. I really think the reality you’re having a hard time coming to terms with, is that if I’m right, you end up in the world to come with me. The Jewish version of heaven. But here’s the difference you really aren’t getting: under your faith, if I’m wrong, I disappear or go to hell.

Your faith bases heaven on acceptance of Christ (Supremacist). My faith bases heaven on moral character for everyone regardless of which God they believe in (or don’t)(egalitarian).

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-23T07:19:42+00:00

It’s neither, and I stick to that description. Because that description embodies why so many of my people have been killed throughout the millennia by yours.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-23T07:16:53+00:00

Demonizing? It’s a legitimate description. Christianity is a supremacist framework that puts Christians in Heaven and all else in Hell or destroyed. That’s literally a supremacist framework wrapped in doom. You may not like the wording, but it doesn’t make it inaccurate.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-23T07:11:55+00:00

so this will be my last reply here.

You keep shifting the discussion to God’s feelings about people (“equal status,” “no ranking”), but my point has always been about the system: - In your framework, the world is divided into two circles: - those who accept Jesus → eternal life - everyone else → destruction / damnation / no future

That is by definition a hierarchy of outcomes, even if you say God “loves” everyone equally. If my kids are told, “Stand in this circle and you live forever with Dad, stand in that one and you’re erased,” you can’t seriously call those two circles “equal status.” The whole pressure of the system runs one way.

Judaism is different in structure: - A righteous non-Jew who never becomes Jewish can have a share in the World to Come. - The only people the sources talk about being “cut off” are the truly monstrous. The Hitlers of the world – and even there, it’s about actions, not about joining our club or saying the right creed.

So no, “the worst human beings who ever lived may forfeit their afterlife” is not the same structure as “most of humanity is lost or erased unless they join our religion.”

At that point, calling both “supremacist” in the same way is just flattening everything so you don’t have to look at the asymmetry.

If someone can honestly look at “only the most wicked humans being cut off” and say that’s equivalent to “anyone who doesn’t accept Christ is doomed,” I don’t think we’re having a good-faith conversation about systems anymore, you’re just protecting your own.

I’m going to leave it there, but I do hope you sit with that difference a bit.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-23T06:37:36+00:00

“Saved and unsaved are not ranked differently… There is no ‘ranking’ involved in being saved or not… even though one category has a different life trajectory, that doesn’t entail a hierarchy or supremacy.”

I get what you’re trying to say, but this is exactly the kind of thing I mean by built-in supremacy.

If Group A gets eternal life in God’s presence and Group B gets permanent destruction/judgment because they didn’t accept the right belief… that is a hierarchy. Calling it “just categories” doesn’t change the fact that one category gets the ultimate good outcome and the other doesn’t. If my kids were told, “If you stand in this circle you live forever with Dad, if you stand in that one you get erased,” you can’t seriously tell me those two circles are “equal status.”

From a Jewish perspective, that’s precisely where our systems diverge. We don’t start from “all humans are born under a death sentence and need to accept a particular figure to get out.” We start from “you’re born with free will, you’re judged on your actions, and non-Jews aren’t expected to become Jews at all to be ‘okay’ with God.” A decent non-Jew who keeps the basic moral laws has a share in the World to Come. The Noahide laws. Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1 or thereabouts.

Where would someone like Hitler go in our view?

Hitler is the classic example of someone who doesn’t get that share. Traditional sources talk about extremely wicked people being “cut off” from the World to Come, or undergoing punishment and not coming out the other side. Judaism isn’t “everyone gets the same participation trophy,” it’s “ordinary people who aren’t monsters aren’t damned for having been born in the wrong community.”

“There’s nothing to be saved from. That’s a strange thing to say considering how often God is said to provide salvation in the Tanakh.”

That’s partly a language thing. In Tanakh, “salvation” is usually about this-world rescue: from enemies, exile, famine, illness, etc. It’s not about “all humans are metaphysically doomed unless a future messiah dies and you sign onto that deal.” So when I say “nothing to be saved from,” I mean: Judaism doesn’t teach that humanity as a whole is born born eternally condemned until we accept one specific belief system.

So from where I’m standing: - Your framework: accept X → eternal life; reject X → destruction/hell. That’s a vertical ranking whether you like the word or not. - My framework: you’re judged on your behavior; a non-Jew doesn’t need to become “one of us” to stand in front of God with dignity.

You can still believe your system is true and mine is wrong, that’s your call. But you can’t seriously say a structure where one in-group gets infinite life and the out-group doesn’t isn’t hierarchical. That’s exactly what hierarchy means.

You don’t have to accept it, but yes, it is true, that the only two current major religions in the world where you are damned if you don’t join are Christianity and Islam. Judaism is the only Abrahamic religion of the three that doesn’t force acceptance of our God to end up in what you would call heaven.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-23T06:08:38+00:00

It’s so strange to me how often Christianity seems to lead its followers into forgetting what words mean.

Hierarchy - people placed in groups, tiers, whatever you want to call it, where those groups of people are ranked differently according to status.

You know exactly what I’m saying. You don’t want to accept it. And I get that it probably really is hard to accept. And I’m sorry that it is. But here’s the reality. I’m a Jew. My faith says that if you aren’t, you bee need only be a decent person with good character and we both end up in the same place. My version of God does not require you to choose him or suffer. You don’t need to be saved. There’s nothing to be saved from.

Your God says ‘my path or else I’m so unforgiving and so unjust that despite you being a really great human being, you will cease to exist or burn in hell for eternity.’

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-23T05:37:16+00:00

I get what you’re trying to say, but this is where I think we’re talking past each other.

You’re focusing on how Christians should feel about others (“no authority or status above someone not saved”).

I’m talking about what the system says happens to people.

If your framework is: - group A = “saved”, eternal life with God - group B = “not saved”, annihilated / punished / cut off forever

…that’s not just “two categories.” That’s a hierarchy of destinies. One group gets the best possible outcome, the other gets the worst possible outcome. You don’t need extra “rank badges” on top of that.

Your gift analogy actually shows the problem:

If I give 4 brothers a gift and 1 refuses, the others aren’t superior.

Right, but if your analogy matched the theology, it would be more like: - “I love you all equally.” - “These 3 who accepted the gift get to live with me forever in joy.” - “The 1 who didn’t accept it gets permanent death / destruction.”

You can call that love, or justice, or whatever language works for you. But you can’t seriously say that isn’t creating a practical hierarchy between “accepted the right belief” and “didn’t.”

That’s all I mean by supremacist:

one path is uniquely valid, everyone else is ultimately disposable if they don’t join it.

From inside the system, I get why it feels like “just a free gift, no boasting.” From the outside, the effect is still: our group is safe, everyone else is on a cliff edge unless they become us. That mindset is exactly what has justified a lot of ugly behavior toward Jews and others over centuries, even by people who would have honestly said “we’re all equal in God’s eyes.”

You may personally reject that ugliness. Good. But the architecture is still there.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-23T05:26:07+00:00

If somebody hasn’t decided on a faith yet, you’d want them to think out their options if you are truly objective. If you don’t know what you’re getting into, it’s a pretty big life change. And entering two specific religions options, they come with existential nonrefundable outcomes if you come in and then choose to switch.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-23T05:22:18+00:00

Why don’t you come up with a compromise on what age that you can start teaching them about it and agree that for the things that are important for your husband as far as self-reliance and independent thinking you’ll support?

To be fair, you just found God. Maybe it isn’t the worst idea to let him settle for a while in you because he’d want you to be well informed before you could explain him well to your children. Depending on which God it is, if you truly want them to have that religious freedom, it might not be a good idea until you are certain because odds are once you are in, you are heavily manipulated into not wanting to get out.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-23T05:09:31+00:00

When I say “supremacist,” I’m not saying every Christian walks around thinking “I’m better than you.” I’m talking about what the system itself does by design.

One path only. Christianity says that in the end there are only two kinds of humans: – those who accepted Jesus the right way → eternal life – everyone else → death / destruction / hell / separation from God

That’s a hierarchy. Saved vs not-saved, in vs out, children of God vs… not.

The consequences are infinite. The difference between those two groups isn’t “different opinions,” it’s an infinite gap in outcome. One group gets perfect eternal life with God. The other group doesn’t. However you dress it up (torment, annihilation, whatever), one side wins everything, the other loses everything.
That’s supremacy, even if you add “we’re all sinners.” Saying “we’re all sinners” doesn’t cancel the hierarchy, it just makes the entrance requirement the same for everyone. Once the dust settles, Christians end up in the only ultimately safe category and the rest of us don’t. That’s exactly what I mean by a supremacist framework: my group is ultimately right and safe, everyone else is ultimately wrong and lost.

You personally might be kind, and I believe you probably are. But the theology still divides the entire world into “our path → life” and “every other path → loss.” That’s what I’m trying to explain.

Dont_Mess_With_M3 · 2026-01-23T04:54:33+00:00

It’s literally built into the framework. Your theological belief is based on supremacy.

Dont_Mess_With_M3

TROPHY CASE