In short, the occupants of hell (Koine Greek, geenna) are not the objects of God's affection. — Galuchat

Cool. God only tortures people he doesn't like.

Can't see how this helps the case, though. Good people seem to be able to get by without torturing anyone, even those they dislike. So God is still a bit of a bastard.

Knowledge entails truth, correct? If God knows that you will end up in hell then you will end up in hell. It doesn't make sense to suggest that God can choose not to create you as that would invalidate his prior knowledge. There's a conflict between God being omniscient and God having the freedom to change the outcome (so it's a type of omnipotence paradox). — Michael

That's quite an extraordinary bit of reasoning, that is. Astonishing.

You're proposing that a God, should one exist, would be bound by the rules of human reason. Human reason is the poorly implemented ability of a single half insane species on one planet in one of billions of galaxies. You're essentially proposing human reason to be a god of sorts, a factor above all else. — Jake

So... there is no point in trying to understand god? Just believe?

But if there is no way we can reason about god, then there is no reason to believe, either...

So... there is no point in trying to understand god? Just believe? But if there is no way we can reason about god, then there is no reason to believe, either... — Banno

We can use reason to determine that we have no methodology proven to be capable of analyzing anything the scale of gods (should they exist). The God debate can accomplish that. Everybody (theist and atheist) makes their claims, the chosen authority each claim is built upon is examined, and we see that nobody's authority has been proven qualified for the task at hand.

The God debate can reveal that we are ignorant, in regards to questions of such enormous scale. This is useful information.

The problem is that few of us, theist or atheist, wish to follow the trail of reason where ever it may lead, because in this case that trail takes us to a conclusion that most people don't want to hear, we have no idea what we're talking about. This conclusion doesn't serve the ego agendas which are the primary driver of the God debate, and so this conclusion is swept aside, dismissed, ignored.

What a reasoned process would do is...

1) Discover the reality, that we are ignorant.

2) Look for ways to make constructive use of that ignorance.

The God debate could be productive if we were serious about following the trail of reason to it's conclusion. But we aren't serious. And so we hike a little ways down the trail, and then stop, and build a fort.

We can use reason to determine that we have no methodology proven to be capable of analyzing anything the scale of gods (should they exist). — Jake

So much for cosmology, then.

That is, your contention that we are ignorant is a bit too convenient to your position.

That is, your contention that we are ignorant is a bit too convenient to your position. — Banno

What is my position?

You don't know? Fair enough.

You don't know? Fair enough. — Banno

I know what my position is. The question was intended to see if you have any idea what it is that you are rebelling against.

...and not at all trying for a rhetorical save.

We can use reason to determine that we have no methodology proven to be capable of analyzing anything the scale of gods — Jake

I think you can analyse god. For example, if you are a materialist, you must deny the Actually Infinite exists, so god is finite.

1 John 4:8 says God is love. — Empedocles

1 John 4:9-10 says that the way God showed his love for us was by saving us from our sins by trusting in the sacrifice of Jesus. Why trust in Jesus if there is no punishment for sin? Maybe hell could be temporary for some people?

If I recall correctly heaven and hell were not originally part of Judaism, but later introduced under the influence of Zoroastrianism. Anyway, many seemingly contradictions are present because ideas from different sources were merged into one religion.

I'd like to reply to your first premise, "If God is all-loving, he would not have created hell."

In objecting to this conditional, I first want to define "hell" as the separation from the presence of God. Therefore, hell is not something created but is rather merely the natural result of God removing his existence from a place. In the same way that darkness is not a material thing, but is simply the absence of light, hell is not one of God's creations, but is just the absence of his presence.

Ok, but that still does not answer why an all-loving god would allow for the existence of hell. This is where I bring in, as Sam26 put it, the “tired free will argument.” Let’s start with what we’ve already assumed: an all-loving god.

If God is all-loving, then he wants what is best for every person.
What is best for other people is not hell.
Therefore, God does not want people to go to hell.

If God does not want people to go to hell, they either go to hell because they are acting outside of his control, or because he allows them to go to hell regardless of his wants.
God is all-powerful, so people do not act outside of his control.
Therefore, God must allow people to go to hell regardless of his wants.

This is where free-will comes into the argument. This is my basis for believing in free will:

As the Maximally Good Being, God deserves to be loved more than any other being in the universe.
So, God deserves to be loved by the people he created.
Because he is also omniscient, God knows that he deserves love, and therefore wants people to love him.
So, when he created people, God must have designed humankind with the capacity to love him.

Forced love is not love.
So, God cannot force humankind to love him.
Humankind must, therefore, be capable of freely choosing to love God.
To have the capacity of free choice is to possess free will.
Therefore, humankind must possess free will.

Because free will includes the capacity to choose to love God, it also includes the capacity to choose to not love God. In the Judeo-Christian religion, to not love God is to sin, so people who do not love God are sinners. God cannot be in the presence of sinners, so those who do not love God cannot be in his presence.

Through this argument, we can see that God only had two options other than allowing for people to go to hell: (1) go against his nature, and be in the presence of sin, or (2) get rid of free will, and, by extension, the capacity for people to love God. God cannot act outside of his nature, so he could either destroy free will, or allow people to go to hell.

This is how an all-loving God can coexist with hell.

When we die we all become one?

I would rather say that God is not only love, but also the truth. In the library of congress there is a statue of the Goddess of truth holding a mirror and a serpent. Why is that? In the ancient Egyptian mythos one only makes it into heaven when their heart is weighed against Maat, the Goddess of truth. There is actually a lot of weighing of hearts to get into heaven, it's a common theme.

Point is, that the truth hurts. The important stuff, the truths relating to ourselves and characters hurt the most, and we hide from that truth, delude ourselves about reality because we don't like the consequences or implications.

There is a distinction made between perfect contrition, and imperfection contrition. Perfect contrition is because one loves God, but any form of contrition, for any reason, as long as it is felt counts, and even for the reason of loving God if the contrition is not felt, it isn't contrition at all. All that is required is the genuine remorse, for any reason, and this restores one to favor, and presence.

Take it from Adele, you could be rolling in the deep.

Hi Empedocles,

In response to your post, I wanted to give some push back on your second premise, “He [God] did create hell”. To the best of my knowledge, I do not actually think that there is any Biblical evidence for the fact that God created hell. Further, I think it is even worth considering that there may be reason to believe that hell is a human conception and a modern misunderstanding of what is contained in the Bible. Thus, I would like to propose that hell might only exist conceptually, and does not actually exist at all. If hell does not actually exist, then God did not create it, and He can still be all-loving

There are many interpretations of what hell is, if it does exist. However, I do not think it is right to group the term “hell” in with Judeo-Christian belief. For, I believe the Jewish faith does not promote the existence of hell. Rather they promote a belief in Sheol – a dusty abyss where everyone goes regardless of belief in God, righteous or unrighteous. Sheol translates to “grave” as opposed to hell, and from my understanding, is not eternal, nor absent from God (I can provide textual evidence for this belief from Job or the Psalms if you would like to discuss this particular topic further). From the Jewish conception of Sheol, the majority of souls eventually ascend into a heaven-esque representation of a resurrected Eden, with only the utterly wicked being sentenced to Gehinnom. Gehinnom is by some interpreted to be a bit more on par with the fire and brimstone renditions of hell, but even that is still murky and up for debate. Gehinnom does not translate directly to hell either, but rather represents a deep valley in Israel. The only Greek or Hebrew word that refers to “hell” is Tartarus, and this word only comes up once in 2 Peter to describe a realm where fallen angels, such as Satan, await judgment from God. However, this realm seems to be only for fallen angels, and not human beings. Thus, with this context in mind, it appears misguided to ascribe the concept of “hell” that I believe to be implied in premise 2 of the above argument to the Jewish faith, much less a concept of hell that was created by God.

Additionally, I think there are a fair amount of misconceptions about what “hell” actually is amongst Christians, and that the concept of hell may be misguided entirely that are not limited to the reasons previously mentioned. I understand that discussion of translation errors may seem unconvincing to some, so I would like to offer a reconceptualization of what hell is, if it does exist, that I am deriving from imagery C.S. Lewis portrays in The Great Divorce. In this novel, Lewis depicts hell as a dark gray city full of people who have chosen separation from God. How deep one is in this sort of hell relates to how much he is convinced that he is separated from God. The narrator of the story eventually comes to find that hell often appears large and inescapable to those who find themselves in it (as created by their minds), when in reality, the depicted city is, in reality, a tiny crack in the ground that is along the path to the “light” – what I understand Lewis to be depicting as heaven or the presence of God.

Thus, what Lewis appears to be portraying, and a thought that I find rather compelling, is that hell is a conception created in the mind of human beings who are convinced of their separation from God, and that does not actually exist. Separation from God could very well be the most miserable thing one could conceive of experiencing, thus the fire and brimstone types of descriptions seem apt if one were doomed to this condition for eternity. However, I do not see this conception of separation from God for eternity – hell – to be represented Biblically. And further, if Lewis is right, the existence of hell could very well be merely of human conception and not actually a truth about the world. Thus, from this understanding it can be gathered that if one believes hell to exist, he is the one who created hell, and it exists only within his mind. If it exists only conceptually within his mind, then God did not create hell because it does not actually exist at all.

I don't know if you count the Islamic concept of God, but it is part of the system of Abrahamic religions.

So, incorporating that, l would say:

- The Judaeo-Christian God is flawed and perhaps you are feeling the flaws reverbrating in the idea of hell

- It is flawed e.g. in that the NT says God is love. God is not love. Love implies a beloved, yet God is not contingent on anything, and thus God doesn't need a beloved, thus God is not love. Love is the taste of God's presence because God is perfect, thus needs nothing, and there are no other deities thus no war, thus perfection and peace are direct exponents of his existence, his existence being known to us as his presence, experienced by us as Love (hence love is transcendant, because we ascent, toward God's presence, God's existence, God's reality).

- Islam teaches God loves us more than our own mothers, and that he created love, such that even a deer would try not to trample its own babies, and also: God sends people to hell and doesn't care, and sends people to heaven and doesn't care.

Contradictory? Consider though, that God is an actual infinite being, and thus has infinite levels. Even if God were merely sky-high, you'd be able to appreciate that on a rainy day, it can all be blazing glory above the cloud cover, it can be both these contradictory things simultaneously, just different layers.

Unfortunately the Christian anthropomorphism isn't conducive toward getting the true height of God across, thus simultaneous love and hell bamboozle the casual observer who is expecting something man-sized, monolithic.

- Also consider that as God is actual infinity, nothing but him really exists. So, our souls would be pinched off from his but ultimately, all one soul, there's nothing else but actual infinity, which in itself is perfect as it needs nothing new. (in other words, God is fine sending people to heaven / hell, whatever)

A few thoughts...

1) Religion is not science, but is better compared to art. As example, a play upon the stage can reveal deep truths about the human condition, even though the plot of the play is entirely fictional. The value of art is that it can be interpreted in many different ways, opening the door to much interesting investigation and dialog.

2) Hell certainly exists in the minds of many tormented human beings, and religious teachings on the subject many in some cases be referring to this reality. Though other religious people will simply be repeating memorized doctrinal dogmas.

3) Religion, even a single religion like Christianity, is a very big playing field with a great variety of interpretations contained within. It would be a mistake to assume that Christians (or any other religion) all believe a particular thing.

4) Please demonstrate that the poorly developed reasoning ability of single species on a single planet in one of billions of galaxies is a methodology proven to be qualified to analyze assertions about the ultimate nature of everything everywhere, such as is contained in the hell concept.

And there's what Mephistopheles said....

1. If hell exists, there would be Biblical evidence for its existence, or it exists only conceptually in the minds of human beings due to misinterpreting the Bible.
2. Things that only exist conceptually in the minds of human beings do not actually exist.
3. There is no Biblical evidence for the existence of hell.
4. Therefore, hell does not actually exist. — Francesco di Piertro

A logical exercise is mostly irrelevant in religious belief. Belief just doesn't work that way. People do not arrive at belief through logic (in 99+% of the cases) and they won't abandon their belief because of a syllogism (in 99+% of the cases).

The Bible references numerous events and things that do not exist, as far as we know. There's no evidence, for instance, that the Red Sea was parted for the fleeing Hebrews, and then closed up over the Egyptians who chased after them. So Heaven and Hell, neither of which exist in some specific place that we can know about, are not supported by the Bible.

In the interests of strengthening your argument, I offer these criticisms.
I think you make a mistake right out of the gate with 1., which I take to be the premiss of your argument. Surely you would concede that there are things which exist but are not in the bible? Like black holes and many varieties of living creatures, hell could exist as well. This seems to dispell your premiss entirely.
I think 2 would be stronger if you made a distinction between differing states of existing, rather than restricting existence to exclude purely mental phenomenon. It is clear that things that exist conceptually still exist, so 2. will serve objections to your arguments if you structure it the way you have.
3. Is a pretty safe claim as far as I can see. There may be some wriggle room for interpreting the bible as alluding to a hell, but you seem to have largely countered this with some of your preamble before you stated your argument itself. (By defining hell specifically). You might want to include that as part of your argument structure somewhere.
Your conclusion in 4. doesnt follow from 1. In my opinion. I think what your argument accomplishes is concluding something like:
4. Therefore, concluding that hell exists based on a purely biblical account is not a reasonable conclusion.
I think you would still have some work to do if you want to make an overall religious argument against the existence of hell, there are biblical basis for accepting claims of hell existing from the clergy or in non-biblical religious texts and you would have to address those as far as I can tell.

Religion is not science, but is better compared to art. — Jake

Thanks for this. I wish people saw religious teachings as the true gem instead of heaping too much focus on the unnecessary stuff. If the scriptures were just teachings, like fiction, connected to our reality only by symbolism, then everything would be categorized logically. Perhaps.



I think it matters more what hell means than that it is. For me, hell is a situation that necessitates penance. It matters more that I learn and accept what I can't change and change what I can for the better.

Hi Empedocles,

I may not be exactly the Judeo-Christian worshipper of God you are looking for, nonetheless I am Christian, and was raised in a Christian household. However it wasn’t forced upon me, my parents allowed me to make my own decisions about whether or not I was to believe in God. As a result of my upbringing I have developed my own personal views of Christianity, and more specifically this concept of a loving God who also supposedly created hell.

I was never comfortable believing that my God would send a good person to hell simply because they don’t believe in him.

To elaborate, picture a good person. A person who has led a fruitful, loving life full of positive influence, motivation and charity. Now imagine that person is an Atheist. I was never able to believe that my all loving God would sentence this atheist to an afterlife of eternal damnation simply because they didn’t believe in him. After all, if God is love, shouldn’t God be more concerned with his creations inspiring and spreading love amongst each other rather than simply holding a belief that he exists? Shouldn’t my all loving God recognize that, even though this person was an atheist, they spread love and left the world a better place than it was when they entered it?

This is the belief that I grew up with, because I couldn’t picture a God who was all loving, as well as a God who would heartlessly send the majority of his creations to hell simply because they didn’t believe in the right deity.

To clarify, I believe that, regardless of religion, God sends genuinely good people to heaven. People who, in their time on Earth, inspired, cultivated and perpetuated love.

However, that still leaves us with the existence of hell, as well as the question of who gets sent to it. Well if those who inspire, cultivate and perpetuate love are sent to heaven, I believe it would be logical for those who do the opposite to be sent to hell. That is to say, those who inspire, cultivate and perpetuate hate are sent to hell.

To me, perpetuators of hate are people who leave the world worse off than it was when they entered it. To elaborate, the people who get sent to hell are people who absolutely deserve it. People who, in their time on Earth, left a wake of destruction in their path. I believe hell is a place for genuinely bad people who have violated the humanity of God’s precious creations. Hell is a place for rapists and other sexual abusers, senseless murders, abusive and violent people who took the precious gift of life bestowed upon them by the Almighty, and wasted it.

Now that you have the context of my religious faith, I would like to offer my interpretation of your above argument.

1) Heaven was created by God, who is love (1 John 4:8 ).
2) If heaven was created by God, who is love, then heaven is for people who inspired, cultivated and perpetuated love while on Earth.
3) Heaven is the antithesis of hell.
4) Therefore, hell is a place for people who inspired, cultivated and perpetuated hate while on Earth.

The only issue I take with this form of the argument is, I couldn’t directly account for God having created hell. However if you accept the fact that God created hate as the antithesis of love, it stands to reason that you should also accept the fact that God created hell as the antithesis of heaven.

If you don’t accept that fact, well you should.

There can’t be light without darkness.

There can’t be good without evil.

And there can’t be love without hate.

Thank you for reading!(:

1. If hell exists, there would be Biblical evidence for its existence, or it exists only conceptually in the minds of human beings due to misinterpreting the Bible.
2. Things that only exist conceptually in the minds of human beings do not actually exist.
3. There is no Biblical evidence for the existence of hell.
4. Therefore, hell does not actually exist. — Francesco di Piertro

In response to premise 1:

First, I would rephrase this to be “Either hell exist only in the mind or there is biblical evidence for its existence.”

Second, what you seem to consider Biblical evidence is the Bible directly mentioning hell, but this does not seem to be equivalent to evidence. There are a fair number of doctrines that I think are supported by scripture that aren’t necessarily mentioned directly. E.g. the doctrine of the trinity. The word trinity appears nowhere in the Bible, but are we to say it does not exist? Almost certainly not. So, I am not entirely sure what criteria you use to conclude what is considered evidence or not. This is also assuming that your first premise is really only true for issues of Christian doctrine, for surely things exist that are not evidenced in the Bible. But let us take more common parts of Christian doctrine that have little or no evidence in the Bible. God’s omnipresence. By your implied premise one, one could hardly believe in the omnipresence of God. I could only find one reference to it in the Psalm 139, which is hardly more evidence that we have for Hell.

This, I believe your argument, if true, may have some problematic consequences for other Christian doctrine.

In response to premise 2:

I think you should clarify what you mean by exist. Things that exist only in the mind certainly exist in some respect as you used the term “exist” to describe them. I think you maybe should say “do not actually exist in reality”.

Overall Response:

My main issue is with premise one. I’m fairly certain that the conditional you present isn’t true, and if it is, I think you would have to forsake some mainstream Christian doctrine including the Trinity and God’s Omnipresence. Or you could revise what you mean by evidence.

Now I think that if you want to take an annihilation view on Hell, that is certainly reasonable. Simply looking at John 3:16, the antithesis of Salvation seems to be perishing, which sounds really close to annihilation. Or in Matthew 7, when Jesus says that he will say to those who deny him, “I never knew you”. Thus, I think there is a reasonable argument to be made that the traditional conception of Hell does not exist, but I do not think that your argument is sufficient to reach that conclusion.

If the scriptures were just teachings, like fiction, connected to our reality only by symbolism, then everything would be categorized logically. Perhaps. — BrianW

Some of the ideological assertions of religion are probably best seen as simplified fiction used to teach sophisticated understandings to the widest possible audience. And of course some aspects of religion are just silly nonsense cooked up by mediocre clerics with too much time on their hands.

However, some aspects of religion, the most important aspects imho, can be reasonably said to be literally true. As example, the core teaching of Christianity is all about love, and love does work, a reality that anyone can examine and evaluate in the context of their own day to day life.

Perhaps hell is just a colorful illustration of what happens to us when we ignore love and go racing off in the other direction?

Perhaps hell is just a colorful illustration of what happens to us when we ignore love and go racing off in the other direction? — Jake

I agree. And, maybe, the suffering implied by hell is a psychological consequence of that detachment from the ways of love (a metaphorical death) and which can even manifest in the physiological (hence the idea of pain).

When speaking of hell, not even one priest will tell you when hell started. Place— yes: somewhere, down there. Time: now, a century ago, 2000 years ago, perpetually into the future. I'd I go back when people were monkeys and nothing else, did hell exist back then? So the stupid, illequipped monkeys would suffer burning in hell for the reason that nature did not give them enough brain or that they overate bananas due to plantiful harvest. Nope, animals do not go to hell, animals do not have religion. It's only people. Wow, now we know the time when hell started — right about when monkey bore unusually smart kid ( she must have ate plenty of bananas!:))
From then on hell keeps being. Million years will pass, humans will evolve, turne into super humans, or call them metricellians, and, wow, hell keeps being? For whom? For creatures that are million times smarter than Einstein? Or does hell reman being hell only for people of modern time level, mediocre? It seems hell exists only in their brain. Metricellians will be so smart that they can turn hell into heaven thorugh the power of thought, eve if hell existed. But hell does not exist, and modern human is able to turn off this bug of the religious mentality— hell.

Belouie,

Thank you for sharing your personal experience and resulting beliefs. While I agree with some of your argument, specifically that heaven was created by God (premise 1) and that heaven is the antithesis of hell (premise 3), I would like to challenge your second premise and resulting conclusion. Please note that for this argument I am writing from an explicitly Christian view point, thus excluding the other aforementioned Abrahamic faiths.

"2) If heaven was created by God, who is love, then heaven is for people who inspired, cultivated and perpetuated love while on Earth."

"4) Therefore, hell is a place for people who inspired, cultivated and perpetuated hate while on Earth."

I believe that these premises do not entirely capture the importance of Jesus' great act of salvation on the cross and the resulting grace offered to those who believe. Although your argument sounds like a wonderful system of universal discipline at first glance, upon further review I find it hard for me to determine where I would reside after my time on earth ends.

Unfortunately, I often cultivate hate of some form, be it my personal disdain for a certain politician, my implicit hate for the earth through my blatant disregard of my gasoline usage, or simply the absence of love for a neighbor in need. Sure, I often love others as well (and certainly strive to do so regularly), but on any given day the balance between love and hate may ultimately lean toward my place in hell as described in your argument. (Although, to be fair, I recognize you did not attempt to delineate the exact tipping point between cultivating hate and cultivating love.)

Thankfully, I recognize the grace offered through the death and resurrection of Jesus on the cross. As He took the punishment for my sins (or, in other words, my habitual hate), I do not have to worry that when I sin/perpetuate hate I will be forever separated from God in heaven. Instead, I can rest assured that I will be with God due to the fact that I have chosen to accept God's gift of love by my belief in Jesus and acceptance of the grace given to me as a result of His resurrection. I know that the only way I will be separate from God in the afterlife, is if I choose to deny God's gift of love through blatant disbelief.

There's obviously much more to the concepts of grace and salvation, but in an effort to be concise, I offer my version of your argument as follows:

1) Heaven was created by God, who is love (1 John 4:8 ).
2) If heaven was created by God, who is love, then heaven is for people who accept God's gift of love by believing and accepting the salvation and grace offered by Jesus.
3) Heaven is the antithesis of hell.
4) Therefore, hell is for people who deny God's gift of love by not believing and not accepting the salvation and grace offered by Jesus.

I welcome your questions and comments. Thanks for reading.

1. If hell exists, there would be Biblical evidence for its existence, or it exists only conceptually in the minds of human beings due to misinterpreting the Bible.
2. Things that only exist conceptually in the minds of human beings do not actually exist.
3. There is no Biblical evidence for the existence of hell.
4. Therefore, hell does not actually exist. — Francesco di Piertro

I would challenge premise 3. The Greek word for hell γέενναν (gaenna, or Gahenna), though used to describe the valley of Hinnom, also carries in its meaning the conceptual idea of "underneath the earth" and the symbolism equated more with the classic view of Hell. Gahenna appears 12 times in the New Testament, linked here: https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/geenna . Observing how the word is used, we can formulate this argument (assuming some respect for the Bible as true as you mentioned earlier):

1. Either the Bible is discussing the literal valley of Himnon, or it is discussing a more eternal place of punishment and Himnon is a paradigmatic representation of some sort of suffering (Hell).
2. The Bible is not describing the literal valley of Himnon
3. There is a more eternal punishment, Himnon is a paradigmatic representation of some sort of suffering (Hell)
4. Hell exists in the Bible

While I agree with FordFestivaPhilosophy in an annihilationist view of Hell, that still aligns with a biblical view of Hell, as well as acknowledges Hell as real.