The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Heaven and Hell

Heaven and Hell
Posted by assyrian atheist (Guest) - Tuesday, November 24 2009, 8:57:54 (CET)
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It is very difficult, for me, to respect anybody's religious beliefs. Allow them freedom of espression; yes, but repect them...no. I find it just as hard to respect, as in "admire" or consider valid, anyone's beliefs that life exists after death on a cloud somewhere. Religious belief makes people stupid, backwards, superstitious and intolerant. Good people can modify the negative impact of religious teachings, but those same teachings can make mad men and women out of less than decent people.

I wouldn't force people to drop their religious beliefs, but I would make damn sure not to allow them the freedom to infect civic life with their nonsense....I would leave them free to fuck-up their own children in the hopes that a humanistic society could win them back to sanity, which, oddly enough, is exactly what was, and is, happening and which scared the shit out of religious fanatics...which is why they've taken to attacking the rest of us and seeking to limit our freedoms and Constitutional guarantees for the last few decades...because they know a truly open society will spell doom for their hocus-pocus.

Which brings to me to the puzzle of why it has always been easier to describe the torments of hell than the delights of heaven. In hell religious folk can conjure up specific, horrible, punishments with ease...they describe eternal flames, hot spears, whippings, vinegar baths, salted wounds and all manner of imagined tortures which are easy to relate to. But, no one has been able to give a similarly distinct description of what awaits the faithful fool in his heaven...except for the Muslims, who are very specific. Christians, on the famous other hand, get all foggy and vague about the pleasures of heaven...and many of the usual delights turn out to be rather hellish...such as playing harps and singing forever.

But I think I know at least one reason for this lop-sided certainty for what awaits in either place. Not only are the "rewards" awaiting them in hell terrible and terribly specific, but the one special feature unique to both heaven and hell, i.e., eternity, is torture in itself. Whipping someone for ten minutes is horrible and easy to imagine. Whipping someone for 1000 years, or ten million or forever, only adds to the horrible existence and nature of hell. It is easy to accept the concept of eternity in regards to Hell because eternal punishment is obviously a refinement of any punishment, even one that ordinarily lasts for only a minute. In Hell "eternity" is a definitive aid to what goes on in the place...it is completely understandable and even desirable, in order to make the fear of it a constant torment and threat while we on earth. The plan is that we will live better lives if only to avoid an eternity of punishment.

But, dream up of whatever delight awaits in heaven, delights as easily imagined and present on earth as tortures are in hell, and there is something beyond that will turn those delights into tortures...and that is the same "eternity" which is so well suited to hellish tortures rather than to heavenly bliss.

For the truth is that anything good, done "forever" becomes a torture...variety is what makes life bearable and fun...eternity in hell...eternity of punishment, is something easy for our minds to contemplate...but we shrink in dread from imagining an eternity of bliss as well...because eternity, all by itself, is Hell.

Pick any punishment you want and imagine it going on "forever", and you have a good feel for and definition of hell...since the punishment alone, even for ten minutes, is "hell" enough. But, pick your best pleasure, on earth, and imagine doing it forever and see how quickly heaven becomes a hellish place.

Anything, anything at all, that is your favorite on earth, will become unendurable if done for an eternity. Even sex, that sublime pleasure here on earth, would become a hateful task if you had to indulge in it, continuously, for 100,000 years...as would playing pool, or laying on a stretch of white sandy beach with an eternity of cold beers at hand.

It isn;t punishment or pleasure that matters...Hell lies in the "eternity" of it all. The one thing Jesus supposedly died to give us turns out, with any rational thought, to be no gift at all...far better is a quiet sleep in the arms of mother earth, after a life well-lived.

Eternal life, all by itself, turns out to be a punishment and a torment beyond the actual whippings and fires that await us only in Hell. Heaven too, filled with whatever pleasure you can imagine, turns out to be Hell.



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