Heck, it's about time [*]

[_fustian]

Current Music: Underworld -- Billy Goat

High amongst my top ten movie rants is a speech about Hell, delivered in cameo by author Tom Keneally in Fred Schepsi's semi-autobiographical The Devil's Playground. Keneally's bearded and softly-spoken Jesuit uses an extraordinary analogy to explain to his captive audience what the eternal part of "eternal

Comments

[xhile]

Although work has blocked the Youtube vid (will watch later) I completely and utterly agree.

And I agreed when I was/am a theist, too.

While I am familiar with various arguments to justify or minimise the idea of hell, in the end none satisfy me. A g0d who designed such a system would not be a loving g0d, she would be a cosmic sadist. Imo.

Incidentally not all theists traditionally believe in hell, it's mainly christians and muslims from what I can tell. Jews have a different conception of the afterlife. Not sure about the smaller varieties of theist.

And there are conservative "bible-believing" christians who are annihilationist, ie don't believe in hell. I have an old school friend who is now the minister of such a church.

[_fustian]

not all theists traditionally believe in hell

Indeed; it's a Christian doctrine that Islam unfortunately took up, although they tend to be less enamoured with the whole eternity thing. (Of course, that's not to say there aren't Hells in other faiths; Shinto's is apparently pretty nasty-although I wonder how much of that was later, Western-influenced thinking at play.) And as you say there are universalist and semi-universalist options, so there's really no excuse for it.

[xhile]

By "theist" were you intending to include all who believe in gods, rather than just monotheists? After all, the ancient (polytheistic) Greeks had Hades which wasn't a very pleasant place

[_fustian]

Hades which wasn't a very pleasant place.

Hades-or rather Tartarus; the rest was more like the Jewish Sheol, ie. not originally a place of general punishment-was a special case, reserved for the subjects of important morality tales and legendary monsters.

Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry not only makes the case that Hell is in fact an evolution from Sheol, but also cites John the Revelator to imply an annihilationist eschatology! :) And apparently journalists are using it more and more...

[xhile]

Ah yes, our local paper reported that Wikipedia journalism thing today.