The whole idea behind the whole Heaven/Hell fantasy seems to be this primal notion of justice.
And most people who believe in Hell just imagine the little watered down cultural meme we've had drilled into us by movies, and cartoons, et cetera, of some dead guy who pisses us off, say Saddamm Hussein, getting a hot foot, and a pitchfork poke in the bum by a cackling dude in red pajamas, and we smile, and go about our day.
But...like most things in this doofy culture, when you really stop, and really think about it....what a bunch of bullshit.
When you REALLY think about it, there's no "justice", to be had with this little fable, and it erases even the alleged purpose for having the idea.
Justice?? Nothing of the kind.
Lemme give you a visual fix on the problem...
Imagine a solid steel ball in the middle of the Sahara desert.
Let's make it, oh, 10 miles in diameter let's say.
Big fuckin' ball.
And let's say every few decades to a century, the jet stream is just right, and sends a migrating bird off course, and into the path of this ball.
And let's say every few thousand times, a bird passes close enough to the ball, that it gently brushes the ball with the tip of one of its wings.
By the time this wing brushing action GRINDS THE BALL AWAY, it will only be the BEGINNING of eternity.
Now imagine a giant gumball machine dispensing new balls to continually renew the cycle.
Then imagine a giant trailer truck full of these gumball machines.
Now imagine a warehouse packed full of such trailer beds.
Oh yes, STILL only the BEGINNING of eternity.
And this is how long Hell fucking lasts.
Now imagine the worst crime you can imagine, eh, let's say The Holocaust.
Hitler was a pretty bad customer, let's go with the common Christian assertion "if Hitler doesn't deserve Hell, no one does".
All right, fine, Hitler in Hell.
Now, have you ever burned your finger on a candle, or a match, or a piece of hot metal, say a stove burner?
Remember how much that really, really, really fucking hurts??
Imagine that all over your fucking body.
It's mind blowing to try to fathom.
Some people don't need to struggle to imagine, there are a lot of burn victims out there.
It's really fucking horrific.
And this is what awaits in Hell.
None of this "in separation from God", bullshit, right there in the bible, "lake of fire", look it up.
Now, go back to those steel balls, that's how long you fucking burn.
Okay "Hitler deserves it", you say?
All righty then, how about your generic crime of passion murder?
Same as the holocaust?
Come on now.
We lose justice right out of the gate with that leap of illogic.
The convenience store robbery that goes wrong gets the same sentence as the fucking Holocaust?
Come on.
Okay, let's be really liberal, and say...a human life is so precious, that to take one equals...a thousand years of fire up the asshole.
Regardless of circumstance.
Accident, misadventure, cold calculated murder plot, no matter what, a thousand years of fire up the asshole.
Well, add up all the people Hitler killed, not just in the holocaust, but let's get greedy, and blame every death of WWII on the motherfucker, Soviets, Japanese, Brits, American, everybody, and round it upward, let's say he gets a sentence of 30 billion years.
Okay, my math is no doubt sloppy here, but let's just go with this number.
30 billion years of fire up the asshole for Hitler.
That ought to cover it, shouldn't it?
People change in regular jail for regular sentences.
I should think 30 billion years of fire up the asshole would be a fucking transformative experience for even Hitler.
After 30 billion years of fire up the asshole, I would think Hitler would be really, really, really, really, REALLY sorry.
Fuck, I bet he'd hit that point around week one of that shit, tops.
TOPS.
Probably MINUTE one.
But no, Adolph, you haven't burnt enough to slake our infantile bloodlust yet, roast for 30 billion years, then we can feel good about ourselves.
Okay, so 30 billion years, he's suffered enough by even insane mathematics, and he's pretty much forsaken his doofy ideas of national socialism, and Aryan blood purity, and he's really fucking sorry now.
Ah, but no, the steel ball clock awaits, and eternity still sprawls before him.
See what I'm getting at?
There's literally nothing a human being can do to deserve this.
It's injustice.
In it's most pure and smash-you-over-the-head-obvious fucking form.
And that's Hitler, just think of all the other regular shlubs who are supposedly going to this place.
The adulterers, the shoplifters, the fatasses, the chronic masturbators, and on and on.
Think of all the people day in and day out that are genuinely wished to Hell by some fundie nut.
Now imagine the mindset of the people that really do wish this on people.
For petty fucking shit.
Petty childish fucking shit.
Not returning the hedge trimmers for a month.
Not writing a "thank you", card for the Christmas fruitcake the person didn't even want because your fruitcake fucking sucks.
On and on, terabytes of wasted neural impulses poured into this Hell crap.
And if you call it lunacy....there's something wrong with YOU.
And this is where we're at in our development I guess.
But come on folks, when you reason it through like that, it just SCREAMS OUT so fucking OBVIOUSLY that not only is this is an idea that human beings thought up, but primitive humans, who didn't think this shit through too hard, and given that they were primitive, were governed by VERY childlike and vicious passions.
Heaven & Hell are not a system of justice, it's a loony tantrum-reacted revenge fantasy of a primitive people.
An angry suppressed people on top of that.
It's a nasty fable that has no place in the 21st century.
If you want justice, let's bend over backwards to have it here in this life.
Want everything Hitler stood for annihilated?
Make sure Nazism never rises to power again.
Cherish liberty.
Protect it.
And use it.
Speak your mind.
Don't let fear stifle you.
Especially not of Hell, or someone who threatens you with it.
And don't be emotionally blackmailed by the fear of others, that's just as bad.
That's the worst part, the control these ideas have become a self fulfilling prophecy of tyranny.
Cherish your liberty, and use it.
And don't bow to fear.
Who knows, something like Heaven might arise.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Why the whole "Hell", idea perturbs me.
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12 comments:
Outstanding post. I was thinking of doing one on heaven, I'll have to work hard to make it as good as this one on hell. Excellent stuff.
PS- I wants more Harry Hembock cartoons! :-)
Jonathan-
Thanks, and looking forward to your post. :)
And yes, I'll get back to Harry relatively soon.
Few more rants to go in my backlog.
:)
Well, my post on heaven is up. You may observe a link to a certain post toward the end of it!
Brilliant! Yes, nothing anyone could do could possibly deserve an eternity of torture.
I have heard equivalents of that steel ball metaphor... mind-blowing, isn't it?
Excellent. So if Hitler was a good boy in Hell could his sentence be reduced and he gets time off for good behavior? Say he gets out after 25 billion years?
Geez, I forgot it's ETERNITY!
markg :)
nice one, an excellent demonstration of why you are nicer than yahweh.
phatbat/steve
Excellent post, D!
Mixed together with Jonathan's post on the horror of Heaven it is plainly obvious that these two doctrines are primitive in the extreme.
Thanks.
-- Gregg Townsend
So often we are quick to dismiss the notion of hell as patently absurd without really pulling it apart and looking at it closely like this. I think it helps to do so once in awhile and you did a really good job with this post. So thanks, Mike.
Even if this god were real, why on earth would anyone want to bow down to worship such a mind-bogglingly sadistic being that creates HELL for people who don't believe in him, follow his confusing anti-human rules to a T or sing his praises? Such madness.
And as Jonathan pointed out in his Heaven rant, no one ever seems to wrestle with the idea of their loved ones being the ones going to Hell.
How can Heaven comfort you if your loved ones are roasting in Hell?
No one ever seems to imagine their loved ones in Hell.
They skip over that part.
Or they're passive-aggressively blase about it.
Geez, I dunno, I think that's an important detail to gloss over.
If this is an idea you've seriously committed to, that's something you should really meditate on.
That is if you take it seriously.
For it not to haunt people's thoughts, they must be taking in the watered down cartoon version I spoke of at the start of the rant.
Or they buy the "separation from God", business.
Well, as an atheist, I'm "separated from God", and it hasn't done me any harm.
Kind of makes "Hell", meaningless.
"Hell", is being atheist?
Hey, folks, it's fucking great, come aboard!
All the interesting people are here!
Of course, there's also the logic problem of how one can be absent from an omnipresent God.
But yeah, it all breaks down.
great post, however, let's get the physics out of the way first:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/hell.htm
So there you have it, hell is COOLER than heaven (as if we didn't know!)
Now, on to semantics. Let me ask you all a question. Do heaven and hell exist?
I know it sounds like a stupid question but I ask it for a reason.
Next question, does limbo/purgatory exist? You can see where this is going can't you?
Yep, the celibate man in the dress, who lives in the vatican decides what exists. No, for real. If you were catholic for the last, hmmm 2000 years or so, you could possibly (or your loved ones) end up in purgatory. not a very nice place according to Dante.
Then, after 2000 years, they abolish it. Never happened. Doesn't exist. Can we maybe go a few steps further? no heaven or hell. Perhaps even no god?
Just a thought.
I just read this now because you linked to it. Excellent, my man.
I posted a somewhat related although infinitely weaker link here:
http://frankus1122.blogspot.com/
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