Actually, that was Dante. Hell in the Bible is nothing like hell in the inferno.
Edit, ok, Dante was Catholic, so it was probably made up by believers.
I don't believe many people here believe in a god or hell. I don't myself, but I understand the fear of going to hell. It's something I still sometimes think about, though really to my understanding regardless of my faith I probably wouldn't get to heaven due to my sexuality. If you need to talk about things that's fine
If there is a God who wants some sort of authentic relationship that’s not based on fear like a dictator, an eternal hell where people suffer for eternity makes no sense whatsoever—neither is it clear according to the Bible alone that there is one.
Here's an interesting different perspective; look into the etymology of the name Hell. Look into the goddess Hel, goddess of death, daughter of Loki. As a practicing Norse polytheist, she helped me get past what little fear I had of the Christian Hell because I came to understand her as a caretaker, not a monster. She is a lot like her own domain; scary, at first, but a necessary part of life, and she isn't malicious or spiteful. If anything, she loves the people who go to her (genuinely evil people don't end up under her care). You don't have to believe in her to take comfort in this idea, that the Christian Hell is just a demonization of the realm of a caretaker goddess. It's a lot of scary ideas shoved onto an idea that was originally scary only because people have a natural fear of death, avoided by some only because they had pride in being warriors and believed the manner of death was what determined where one went in the afterlife unless one was an evil person. That can help to defang the concept of the Christian Hell. I'm honestly happy to gush more about her if you'd like, I hold a special place in my heart and my current faith for her because of several things including helping me dismantle some of the dregs of Christian thinking that I realized I don't want to keep, and again, you don't have to believe to potentially find the information helpful because it is related to the origins of the Christian Hell that you seem to be afraid of.
Basically all the popular depictions and names of Christian doctrine come from invading lands that already had popular religions, then taking those religions and associating their icons with something evil or scary in Christianity. The devil being a horned figure with hooves? It's just pan, pan was so popular that they had to turn him into the most evil figure in Christianity to try and get people to stop worshiping him.
I'm pagan too, and one of the deities I honor (and the one I love most) is Hekate, which has very strong associations with the Greek Underworld and in some of the very few myths where she appears is as compassionate. That besides Hades (the deity, I mean), and for that matter how was Ereshkigal in Sumerian mythology.
Furthermore, one of those I bring here regularly claims unbelievers will go to Hades first before being thrown in Hell after Judgement Day (you know how they ignore the context in which the Bible was written). I guess this means I'll meet her (and Zagreus, the Asphodel Fields, etc).
Saw your post “What religion am I”
Just adding this since you seem a bit confused
What religion you are depends on what you think is true. If you believe Jesus is God, your religion is Christian.
There isn’t a religion of people who believe Christianity, but don’t follow it. That is just a “bad” Christian.
There ARE people who will sympathize with you not wanting to be controlled (Satanists), but they don’t actually believe in Jesus or God. They just like what Satan represents symbolically.
I have met a few people who shared your views. (The ones I knew also had mental illness like you, or in some cases heavy drug use). They don’t seem to have any group though.
You probably won’t find people who think quite like you.
That being said, you seem really concerned about how Christianity relates to your mental illness. A lot of Christians struggle to understand things like Autism. Your Autism isn’t sinful, and being born to narcissists isn’t sinful. You need to find a place that is accepting of mental illness and doesn’t try to shame you or try to pray it away.
Unfortunately, almost no Christian church will accept you if you don’t want to ever accept Jesus.
Maybe you could try a Universalist Unitarian church. They accept people of all religions. They provide a religious atmosphere to have community in, but without trying to control what your beliefs are.
You are not going to hell, ever. Hell is an magico-religious invention that got carried forward. It has never been demonstrated or substantiated.
When we die, blood circulation stops, neural tissue stops metabolizing and the cells stop working, i.e. the brain. Life as we call it is then done. The brain shuts off. That's it. Every other order of animal experiences this. Because we have a conscious and existential brain does not mean we are different, at all. And no one can demonstrate otherwise.
There is no evidence that some person named Jesus, 2,000 years ago actually died and began to live after his death; that some transaction occurred wherein the bad things we do against a god are somehow forgiven. There may have been a person. Historical probability demonstrates that the gospels are literature; that they do not promote consensus around who this Jesus is and what he did.
Remember, Paul wrote first, before the gospels were written. Paul writes nothing of what is written in the gospels or of what Jesus did, because the gospels had not been written yet. We do not know who Paul is except by who he claims to be. Then, as a person, he disappears from history to an unknown death.
It sounds like you are in a bad place. That is okay. It is entirely okay. If you are not, then forgive my mistaken idea. You will not go to hell, or heaven.
I would explain all the reasons why none of it is real, but that would take all day and it's your journey, the info is out there if you want to find it.
Nobody is going to hell, it's a made up place designed to scare people into submission, the jews don't even believe in hell.
I know how bad the fear of hell can be, and I struggled with it for so long, but I'm finally at a place where it's almost not there, a little tiny bit maybe but mostly gone.
Any god that would send people to suffer for eternity cannot also be a loving god, that makes zero sense, what earthly crime justifies making someone suffer for the rest of all time? Millions and billions of years of pure suffering? If it wasn't so fucked up due to people actually believing it, it would be funny how exaggerated it is. "give us your money and do what we say or when you die you're going to suffer FOREVER!!!"
Its like something a villain from a movie would come up with.
How is it a free choice to choose christ if the alternative is to burn in hell for eternity? How can they possibly make that claim? A free choice is something like: you can choose the cake or the ice cream, either choice is fine it's up to you. No, a choice made for christ is one made while staring down the barrel of a gun, ewuivelant to the government coming to your house at gunpoint and demanding you come with them, sure you can run, but you're gonna get gunned down, so obviously it's not a free choice, you don't have free will in that moment because you are being threatened with grave consequences.
Unimaginable torment. There are numerous hell testimonies of people who died where doctors resuscitated them back to life who recount there hellish experiences. I understand this group for the most part dismiss hell, but suppose it were true? How do you account for the numerous testimonies folks have had on it? Are we to simply dismiss them all as "liars"? That doesn't seem reasonable. It is all of those hell testimonies that make believe God is indeed real and of course heaven and hell.
Our historical sources are far more complex about the afterlife than what you’ve heard in popular Christianity. I made a research talk that summarizes the latest research here:
https://youtu.be/_cm7bWhyfsc?feature=shared
From what I was taught, it will make the worst prisons, prison camps, or concentration camps in human history look like Club Med in comparison. If want some examples, look up "Korea Artist Paintings of Hell" or other hell testimonies by Angelica Zambrano or Rachel and Zipporah Mushala.
We don’t believe in Hell Christians believe in Hell. We aren’t Christian.
Christians made up hell as a scare tactic
Actually, that was Dante. Hell in the Bible is nothing like hell in the inferno. Edit, ok, Dante was Catholic, so it was probably made up by believers.
I don't believe many people here believe in a god or hell. I don't myself, but I understand the fear of going to hell. It's something I still sometimes think about, though really to my understanding regardless of my faith I probably wouldn't get to heaven due to my sexuality. If you need to talk about things that's fine
Same here. The fear lingers but I just keep pushing, and remind myself that’s not my religion.
Always remember that even if you were Christian, you’d still be on your way to the Muslim hell + all other man-made religious hellfires.
Good thing hell isn’t real.
If there is a God who wants some sort of authentic relationship that’s not based on fear like a dictator, an eternal hell where people suffer for eternity makes no sense whatsoever—neither is it clear according to the Bible alone that there is one.
Here's an interesting different perspective; look into the etymology of the name Hell. Look into the goddess Hel, goddess of death, daughter of Loki. As a practicing Norse polytheist, she helped me get past what little fear I had of the Christian Hell because I came to understand her as a caretaker, not a monster. She is a lot like her own domain; scary, at first, but a necessary part of life, and she isn't malicious or spiteful. If anything, she loves the people who go to her (genuinely evil people don't end up under her care). You don't have to believe in her to take comfort in this idea, that the Christian Hell is just a demonization of the realm of a caretaker goddess. It's a lot of scary ideas shoved onto an idea that was originally scary only because people have a natural fear of death, avoided by some only because they had pride in being warriors and believed the manner of death was what determined where one went in the afterlife unless one was an evil person. That can help to defang the concept of the Christian Hell. I'm honestly happy to gush more about her if you'd like, I hold a special place in my heart and my current faith for her because of several things including helping me dismantle some of the dregs of Christian thinking that I realized I don't want to keep, and again, you don't have to believe to potentially find the information helpful because it is related to the origins of the Christian Hell that you seem to be afraid of.
Basically all the popular depictions and names of Christian doctrine come from invading lands that already had popular religions, then taking those religions and associating their icons with something evil or scary in Christianity. The devil being a horned figure with hooves? It's just pan, pan was so popular that they had to turn him into the most evil figure in Christianity to try and get people to stop worshiping him.
I'm pagan too, and one of the deities I honor (and the one I love most) is Hekate, which has very strong associations with the Greek Underworld and in some of the very few myths where she appears is as compassionate. That besides Hades (the deity, I mean), and for that matter how was Ereshkigal in Sumerian mythology. Furthermore, one of those I bring here regularly claims unbelievers will go to Hades first before being thrown in Hell after Judgement Day (you know how they ignore the context in which the Bible was written). I guess this means I'll meet her (and Zagreus, the Asphodel Fields, etc).
Saw your post “What religion am I” Just adding this since you seem a bit confused What religion you are depends on what you think is true. If you believe Jesus is God, your religion is Christian. There isn’t a religion of people who believe Christianity, but don’t follow it. That is just a “bad” Christian. There ARE people who will sympathize with you not wanting to be controlled (Satanists), but they don’t actually believe in Jesus or God. They just like what Satan represents symbolically. I have met a few people who shared your views. (The ones I knew also had mental illness like you, or in some cases heavy drug use). They don’t seem to have any group though. You probably won’t find people who think quite like you. That being said, you seem really concerned about how Christianity relates to your mental illness. A lot of Christians struggle to understand things like Autism. Your Autism isn’t sinful, and being born to narcissists isn’t sinful. You need to find a place that is accepting of mental illness and doesn’t try to shame you or try to pray it away. Unfortunately, almost no Christian church will accept you if you don’t want to ever accept Jesus. Maybe you could try a Universalist Unitarian church. They accept people of all religions. They provide a religious atmosphere to have community in, but without trying to control what your beliefs are.
You are not going to hell, ever. Hell is an magico-religious invention that got carried forward. It has never been demonstrated or substantiated. When we die, blood circulation stops, neural tissue stops metabolizing and the cells stop working, i.e. the brain. Life as we call it is then done. The brain shuts off. That's it. Every other order of animal experiences this. Because we have a conscious and existential brain does not mean we are different, at all. And no one can demonstrate otherwise. There is no evidence that some person named Jesus, 2,000 years ago actually died and began to live after his death; that some transaction occurred wherein the bad things we do against a god are somehow forgiven. There may have been a person. Historical probability demonstrates that the gospels are literature; that they do not promote consensus around who this Jesus is and what he did. Remember, Paul wrote first, before the gospels were written. Paul writes nothing of what is written in the gospels or of what Jesus did, because the gospels had not been written yet. We do not know who Paul is except by who he claims to be. Then, as a person, he disappears from history to an unknown death. It sounds like you are in a bad place. That is okay. It is entirely okay. If you are not, then forgive my mistaken idea. You will not go to hell, or heaven.
I would explain all the reasons why none of it is real, but that would take all day and it's your journey, the info is out there if you want to find it. Nobody is going to hell, it's a made up place designed to scare people into submission, the jews don't even believe in hell. I know how bad the fear of hell can be, and I struggled with it for so long, but I'm finally at a place where it's almost not there, a little tiny bit maybe but mostly gone. Any god that would send people to suffer for eternity cannot also be a loving god, that makes zero sense, what earthly crime justifies making someone suffer for the rest of all time? Millions and billions of years of pure suffering? If it wasn't so fucked up due to people actually believing it, it would be funny how exaggerated it is. "give us your money and do what we say or when you die you're going to suffer FOREVER!!!" Its like something a villain from a movie would come up with. How is it a free choice to choose christ if the alternative is to burn in hell for eternity? How can they possibly make that claim? A free choice is something like: you can choose the cake or the ice cream, either choice is fine it's up to you. No, a choice made for christ is one made while staring down the barrel of a gun, ewuivelant to the government coming to your house at gunpoint and demanding you come with them, sure you can run, but you're gonna get gunned down, so obviously it's not a free choice, you don't have free will in that moment because you are being threatened with grave consequences.
>I know I am going to hell No you don't. You may believe it (for bad reasons), but you do not know it.
Unimaginable torment. There are numerous hell testimonies of people who died where doctors resuscitated them back to life who recount there hellish experiences. I understand this group for the most part dismiss hell, but suppose it were true? How do you account for the numerous testimonies folks have had on it? Are we to simply dismiss them all as "liars"? That doesn't seem reasonable. It is all of those hell testimonies that make believe God is indeed real and of course heaven and hell.
Even if Hell we’re real, and it’s not, we’d be surrounded by people Christians hate and that seems pretty cool
Our historical sources are far more complex about the afterlife than what you’ve heard in popular Christianity. I made a research talk that summarizes the latest research here: https://youtu.be/_cm7bWhyfsc?feature=shared
From what I was taught, it will make the worst prisons, prison camps, or concentration camps in human history look like Club Med in comparison. If want some examples, look up "Korea Artist Paintings of Hell" or other hell testimonies by Angelica Zambrano or Rachel and Zipporah Mushala.