On 1/10/2014 1:23 PM, Warp wrote:
> This isn't even going into the question of what kind of sick god would
> create a hell where he sends his own creation to suffer indescribable
> torment for all eternity because they didn't love him the right way,
> while he just watches by, doing nothing.
>
Only, he didn't.

The Bible, the "original Coptic" and earlier versions, not the "improved 
by blurring it all together, because scared people are more likely to 
obey", versions made later, mentions these things:

1. Gehenna - A city dump, outside Jerusalem. It was common practice for 
bodies of those dead from disease to be burned with the city trash here. 
The passage that modern versions "insist" on calling "hell" here thus 
states that, to paraphrase, since I don't have the exact quote, "If you 
fall in with the wrong people, your soul will be burned, along with your 
body, in the garbage dump, outside the city." No idea if "soul" is even 
the proper word here, but this seems to me to be the equivalent of 
saying that, "If you fall in with the wrong people, your reputation will 
die with you, and no one will remember anything you did, other than that 
you got thrown out with the rest of the trash."

2. Some bit later on, there is some passage that references the word 
"Hades", obviously in the NT. Having been influenced at that point, by 
the Romans/Greeks, they came up with the idea that your "soul" went to 
this place when you died. Its "misinterpreted", thanks to later 
revision, and some later passages, as some sort of great paradise, where 
you see god all the time. But, Hades, and thus the place meant "by" the 
original text, is not paradise, its a place of waiting, where you sit 
around, oblivious of everything going on anywhere, like tape storage, 
until some later time, when god decides to do something about you.

3. Later on, another "edit" exchanges Tartarus, which is a prison for 
fallen angels, with "hell", again, completely changing the meaning, and 
making it some place of punishment for everyone. Though, its unclear if 
these edits came before, or after, they commissioned Dante, to make up 
some elaborate absurdity called "hell", and we got stuck with the whole 
lakes of fire, and souls being punished forever stuff.

But, if you want the real version of death, from the OT of the Bible, 
before priests started taking on bits of Roman mythology, then you get a 
lovely section which basically states that all of the rewards you will 
ever have, all that you will ever know, or experience, all wisdom that 
you might acquire, etc., you got "in life" and that no man, whether 
good, or evil, can expect anything more, or experience, or do, anything, 
at all, once dead. That you get this one life, and that is it *period*.

Ecclesiastics 9:10 "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your 
might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is 
neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom."

And yet, people believe they gain all of these, in heaven.

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