Hell: an excessive punishment

Could you stand by and watch a person being tortured slowly by fire until they died? What crime would they have to commit, in your opinion, to deserve such a punishment? If you locked someone in a burning room, would that play on your conscience?

Some believe atheists deserve an infinitely grislier fate than this, simply for doubting the existence of a being that doesn't openly present itself. I've always been curious about that.

PLEASE NOTE:

For anyone confused about the last line, I am referring to phases of non-dreaming sleep. Clearly, dreaming sleep involves a form of consciousness.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• hell
• atheism
• unjust
• punishment

[politicoochie09]

@donaldinasweater Thank you!

[ChrisTheHealey]

We all gotta live and we all gotta die. Religion isn't reality. I say stop worrying about what happens after death, because its gonna happen to everyone, including you, whether you like it or not

[donaldinasweater]

@politicoochie09 that was so beautifully put :') well done sir/madame, i have tried to articulate this point many times, and I have never put it as eloquently as you have.

[politicoochie09]

Believing in “God” is silly. Here's the bottom line: Get a telescope and look at the stars. Do some math regarding the size and distance of those stars relative to the earth. If you can comprehend the magnitude of what you discover, you'll also see that whatever made the TRILLIONS of stars and the BILLIONS of galaxies could not possibly be Yahweh/Jesus/Allah. A creator that can do that doesn't get jealous, it doesn't command tribes to carry out genocide, and it needs no resurrection and no hell.

[verminslayer]

@kongo4527 thanks for that

[MrOceanPenguin]

Why is it difficult for people to imagine there is "nothing" when we die? Are they not conscious about the "nothingness" which dictated them prior to birth and, quite possibly, the very early years of their lives?

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." - Mark Twain.

[MNcreativity]

I think what most people leave out of the equation is motive. God wasn't looking for physical works as a way to get into heaven and the "sole" purpose of Christianity is not to get to heaven or to avoid hell as many may think. It is to live righteously according to God's Word which includes one's motive for doing good works. You can be charitable, but if you tell the whole world in "triumph," you are not humble, but prideful in your own actions. Charity is giving all expecting nothing to gain.

[lauriedexter]

I think the point he's trying to make is what it would most likely feel like after we die. The parts of our sleep cycle that erase our dreams so we don't remember them... we wake up feeling like nothing happened. What would be a better comparison to the feeling of after death would be before birth. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And I'm okay with that. :)

[blaze1372003]

I agree with this for the most part. The only real problem I have is at the end when you say that sleep is "large chunks of nothingness". This is untrue. We dream when we sleep. Even if it's not real we're all still experiencing something.