I mean, assuming “hell” exists (there’s very little basis for it in Christianity and as previously discussed there may be multiple places referred to as “hell.”) Judaism has olam habah (which could be said to be like heaven... but it’s not well described and is more accurately the kingdom of “the father and king” which you may infer is God. They have Sheol- which could be equated to hell, or it could be equated to purgatory. Actual descriptions are slim, and mysticism and opinion are the primary sources of its definition. Islam believes the soul goes to, or sits in- barzakh, a sort of judgment and purgatory before going to its final destination. Traditional Islam states that believers who have sinned won’t generally find “eternal damnation” but instead have a term god determines they stay in “hell” for their sins, and may have reduced suffering. Non believers like infidels however don’t get this option generally (gods discretion...) and are said to be damned for eternity with...
... no limits on their suffering. Other religions and spiritual philosophies have varied views, and what any sect or offshoot or even individual person in a religion believes often doesn’t follow the most supported and canon stance of their root faith and its core materials. And of course- some people just don’t believe in religion, or believe but do not believe in a concept of “afterlife.” So we first must say hell exists. Let’s assume it does to go to the next step.
Next up we have to ask- does god send you to hell? That depends on the religion or personal belief, and some philosophy. Most all abrahamic faiths hold God as all powerful. So as a general rule, if you go to hell- god could stop it if god so chose. Abrahamic religions also generally hold that all things that occur are the will or part of the plan of god. In that sense- it is t a stretch to say “god sends you to hell” since everything that happens happens through the will and power of god in most abrahamic faiths. Of course- there are questions and contradictions there. Most faiths hold sin as that which displeases god. But to sin- if god has absolute authority, god would have to will that sin, allow it, and have it as part of gods plan. Seems odd to punish you for following the plan.
I won’t go in to that whole thing but in short- if we assume there is free will- that we can make decisions and while god knows what those decisions are before we make them, god doesn’t force us to follow a path- and we assume that god has a plan, and god is all powerful, such a complex plan as to run the entire universe through all eternity- made by an all powerful, all knowing being, could weather multiple choices. Like a complex version of a large open world game. Many choices and paths you can take, but if the game was programmed by a perfect programmer perfectly (no hacking or bugs etc.) you end up where the programmer wants you to and there isn’t anything you can do about it. More so- if that game is on a time limit (like life) and multiplayer like an MMO- what you do won’t stop the game from going forward. All you can do is minimize your role in it at most or piss off/disappoint the devs.
But the contradiction to this logic that I see most with those like atheists- when a person is pulled from a burning car and thanks God as opposed to the paramedic that pulled them out, or when a person received life saving medicine and thanks god but not the doctor of the person who developed the medicine- many will be quick to point out that it “wasnt god that saved you...” so then why is it these same people, when arguing about suffering and wrong in the world against religion, are so quick to say “well if god exists then god can’t be good because of all these bad things...” why would it hold logically true that when a good thing happens you’d scoff at involving gods name- but when trying to discredit god you’d immediately attribute it to gods power?
If we can get past the contradictions inherent to the idea of the existence of sin and an all powerful god who abrahamic faith considered perfect and good- agree for this argument that there are logical resolutions to these seemingly contradictory things- take it in earnest that in the context of religion- whatever god does is good and everything god doesn’t like is bad; a “perfect” being of good being a better arbitrator of morality than a hairless ape who doesn’t have omnipotence- we can continue. Let’s assume we have done that and dig deeper.
Going deeper- we could also argue, especially if you refuse to reconcile (at least for the sake of this discussion) the aforementioned seeming contradictions- we could then argue it isn’t technically god that sends you to hell- it is you that send you to hell. You’re choices make that determination.
Now, let’s look at this a few ways. First let’s go by the general consensus of abrahamic faiths and the common view of the afterlife in abstract.
1. If god is all powerful, we’re god to send you to hell and wish you to remain there- you simply could not do otherwise.
2. Religion is abstract and subjective. So we tend to think of it in those terms. When exploring religion, you must think of it as a physics we don’t understand the mechanisms of. The simple fact is that gravity exists and we don’t have a way to remove its influence. We can fight it, mitigate it, sometimes resist it or contrive ways around its pull to- for example fly or soar in to space. But it’s still there and you are still at its mercy. Remember- no structure you can build or rocket you can make can ever be said to be free of gravity- and while anything you can build will one day be pulled by gravity when your structure fatigues or cannot maintain its defiance- gravity doesn’t tire. It is always there.
Even “zero G” like when you see them floating in a space station? That isn’t “zero G.” They are falling. That’s why they float like that. The slave station is falling towards earth in a way that that it will miss the earth so long as it can maintain its speed. The people on board feel the effects of weightlessness because the station is falling at rapid speed. But that’s the point right? They aren’t immune to gravity here. They are only able to float like this because of gravity. By the power and pull of gravity. If gravity had a will, and did not want those people to float- it would simply stop pulling the station so hard and they wouldn’t float.
So with that cleared up- in the abrahamic context you simply couldn’t refuse to go to hell because that would be like telling gravity to change directions. Islam is probably the faith with the most specific details on things like the afterlife. Islam’s core holy writings even quite literally say that when you gave judgment from god, that god is immune to being swayed, and “special pleading” in all forms- trickery, sob stories, bribes, threats, debate, refusal including passive resistance. You can’t “go limp” and hope you’re too heavy for god to carry to hell.
Could there be an “afterlife”? Well... yes. In many senses there could be- even some form of “reincarnation.” Scoff. Get it out now. But evidence shows increasing support for ideas like “genetic memory,” that certain things, especially strong traumas or other things can imprint our actual DNA and alter our offspring. What’s more- your offspring are in part a biological copy of you. You- but not you. A reborn you in a new life. It’s also true that we can observe that people who are closely biologically related, even when they are supersets at birth, often make similar decisions, develop similar interests and preferences, and so forth. So there is evidence that there is some measure of “us”, who we are on more than just some generic biological level- in our offspring.
When we look at humans and viruses- many viruses get stored in our DNA. If you catch covid, there is a good chance that covid will exist in a dormant state within the genes of your descendants, the same with perhaps the Flu or any number of viruses. So we know that there is carry over of genes and this carryover can be effectively “forever.”
But even if we aren’t subscribing to “reincarnation light” we simply don’t know. if we discount the more extreme versions of an afterlife- that you die, your body rots, some essence of you goes off and literally ends up in a flesh and blood body all new and perfect in a real love paradise you can touch- we don’t know enough about what our genes really hold, about how the human mind works- we don’t even understand the nature of consciousness well enough to say what it really is. Science lacks answers. Lacking answers doesn’t mean that whatever you make up is true- but it also means that you can say a things isn’t true. Especially something that has a level of plausibility.
So the idea that you die, you rot, you’d soul or whatever floats away and a new body that doesn’t age or get old or have problems or pain or whatever is made for you and that a whole gigantic paradise exists we can’t see or find and that’s the afterlife... it is possible but... it defies most of what we know about the way the universe works. It could be hard to swallow. Now- an all powerful god could do all that sure. But we don’t see much evidence of supernatural reality bending. So saying there is a good for this discussion- that god seems to favor using the rules of the universe more or less as we understand them.
And the universe is big. We have not even seen most of our galaxy. The universe is full of things we can’t see- like the inside of black holes. So in the vastness and mystery of space- could there be a supermassive actual physical paradise and a physical place for eternal torture? Sure. Black holes could do it. We don’t know why the universe is so heavy- dark matter is the leading theory- but no one has proven it. Our quantum and Newtonian understandings of the universe appear to be missing fundamental pieces. Could those pieces be “heaven and hell” sure. Is it likely.... not scientifically.
So let’s step away from this classic pop culture idea of a physical heaven and hell and an actual literal rebirth. Let’s focus on the soul. The supposed core of who you really are. The thing that most often is what we talk about with heaven and hell. The soul hasn’t been recorded medically. The soul hasnt been observed leaving the body, nor has there been credible evidence of the souls absence after death. Assuming you have a soul- we don’t know what it is and can’t see it. That’s usually a good indicator that something may not be real. Except...
There are all sorts of things that we can’t measure or see, that have never been actually observed and don’t give direct evidence they exist- merely that they could exist. Particle physics is full of hypothetical particles we assume must exist because with what we know about the universe (or think we do) their existence is the only “glue” that we could see fitting in the blank. So let’s stretch a little and take the soul as a particle or form of energy that we simply don’t have the knowledge to measure or observe.
Possibly- given our understanding of the actual structuring the universe and larger arrangement of cosmology is lacking- that there could be exotic dimensions or entire separate universes- and scientifically it is highly possible some of these dimensions or universes don’t follow the physics we know. Knowing what we do, and knowing what we don’t know- it would be possible for a soul to even be of origin from one of these places and not follow rules we know- possibly not even be able to be perceived by us. It may even return there as part of the physics of its origins and how those things interact.
So the existence of the soul is scientifically possible. But even if we take it to a less hypothetical level- let’s not call the soul some exotic and undocumented foreign particle or energy. Let’s look at cognition. You have a brain. It is an organ made of cells. A brain on a table, near as we can tell- is... nothing. Not so different than a cut of roast beef or a potato. And it decays- so it’s doubtful your eternal afterlife would be happening there. But that’s only part of the equation isn’t it? You think and feel- or believe you do. What’s going on there?
Well.... electricity. Energy. Think of the mind in this scenario as tv remote. Without batteries- that remote is pretty useless. Without the remote- or something to go in- the batteries are pretty useless at interacting with things. Put them together- you’ve got something that can interact with the world, effect will upon it. Now- what’s doing the actual work when you use that remote? The batteries are. The remote allows the energy in the batteries to be harnessed, directed. Without the remote, holding the battery to the TV Sensor would largely be fruitless. The remote has the physical circuitry and structures to interface the reality around it, other devices, but also to interface the battery. So without the remote you couldn’t direct and manage the energy from the battery, but the energy from the batteries are what is actually doing any work.
But now we come to the place science can’t help us much. At least not yet. What is consciousness? Sentience? The brains of many animals are smaller and seemingly simpler than ours. They seem to lack many of the processes that we have and the complexities for understanding and interacting with the world. Is a dog sentient? Is it anything more than a worm? What about a bird? Are birds more sentient than dogs, less? Does it depend on the exact dog or the exact bird or can some types of bird be sentient and some not? What about humans? If we just decide that we “think therefore we are...” and humans are sentient- are some of us more so than others? Are there some humans we could treat and consider no different than a worm or a mouse or a dog? Is all life or all complex life equal and we should treat a cow or a dog the same as a human in that sense?
We don’t know. We don’t know what makes us tick or what our deal is. We don’t understand what is intelligent and what isn’t. We are going to assume a rock isn’t intelligent. It has no structures we can identify to be dedicated to thought. It shows no evidence of life processes as we understand them. It does not appear to respond to stimulus in anyway we recognize as anything other than fundamental reactions of physics or chemistry from largely external factors and without any self interest or agency. So it’s pretty safe we figure, to say a rock isn’t alive and it doesn’t think or feel.
What does an ant or a cat “feel.” We know they have some sort of system that allows them to get feedback on their environments and their own bodies. We can observe behavior that could indicate emotional response. Do they feel emotions? Are those the same for them? How they I was them probably isn’t. The structures of their brains are very different from ours. But can we say a cat or an ant doesn’t think or feel? We can’t. We can say if they do- it’s probably different than us- but we can’t say it IS.
But what are all these thoughts and feelings? Electrical impulses being shunted through some hardware. Following a path, probably waves of certain frequencies and repeating patterns. So does that mean that where we can observe energy in nature forming patterns or waves- those are disembodied “thoughts?” Not exactly. But it isn’t a stretch to say that if we can’t understand a cat or an ants state of being- if we don’t understand ours- how the hell would you have any empathy or understanding of what it is like to be literal electricity?
And keeping up our pseudo scientific bent- is the planet itself “alive?” I mean- the rocks probably aren’t. We covered that. Maybe not alive- perhaps the question is if it has some form of “consciousness.”
Our planet exhibits complex electrical activity. Complex systems and patterns. Now- I’m not saying the planet is sentient or even that it has some form of a mind- but our earthworm is very simple and yet has some processes. The verdict is out in wether ants dream. They have a sort of “sleep” and show involuntary movements at this time. Some say they lack the complexity of the brain to “dream,” and others say some ants and some species or most, can dream. We don’t have a great way to communicate with ants to really study it, and the sensitivity of equipment as well as understanding of what the results would mean aren’t really there to say for sure if ants dream. Ants COULD dream.
So we just... don’t know. Scientifically we do not know enough about cognition and especially about cognition that is different than our own or outside our scope of empathy or understanding.
With that somewhat briefly established (brief for the subject matter but not brief in words!) we can say that when the bodies dies- the “mind” or some form of some part of it could endure in a sort of untethered state. Unable to receive sensory input as we know it and unable to knowingly (as we understand it) interact with the world. But would there be some form of thought on some level? Without a brain would there be any sort of moment to moment.... existence of “self”? We just don’t know.
A simpler and shorter way to put this- is that the ideas of “heaven and hell” may simply come from a “dream state.” When the body shuts down and you lose your ego and you ability to influence the electrical activity in the brain, to reassure yourself and justify things to yourself and so on- would you enter a sort of “dream” where you are laid bare and at the mercy of something akin to a subconscious- where your emotional states and such would essentially dictate wether you had “pleasant dreams” or “bad dreams” based on things like shame and guilt and anxieties and such?
Dream is a poor word to use here. And well... it’s hard to wrap the head around. How do you “dream” without a brain? Who, what, would “see” those dreams? Yes. That’s already the question when you’re alive! We take the brain for granted. It’s the thing that does all the stuff. That’s who you are. Your brain. Is it? We don’t know. Most people dream. Even people who say they don’t dream- they probably do. They just don’t remember it. The same as you might be aware of a dream, even cognizant, and upon waking, you can’t recall details. Especially dreams that happen outside REM sleep, are often not remembered if you are even aware they happened at all.
So you can have a dream, not be aware of that dream, and not remember the dream. And yet- if we are watching your brain using diagnostic imaging- we could say “yup. You had a dream at this time for this long...”what’s more- time in a dream isn’t exactly linear to time in real life. Or in the dream, it doesn’t seem to be. A dream that is a few minutes long can span centuries in your mind. So “eternity” in a dream may not take more than moments in real life.
This is where my own interest comes in. We tend to study dreams based on brain topography, classically anyway. Even now there isn’t a great deal of science on the exact and minute electrical activity of the brain. We would say that magnitudes of activity in certain areas indicate certain processes most likely. But when it comes to measuring each impulse, scoping the wavelength of it in real time for every single neuron, understanding the frequencies and patterns and various aspects of the measurements of the electrical signals- we just don’t have the technology to do this in depth. So we are looking human thought from a very high level view and missing lots of details.
It is scientifically plausible to say that there could be some form of “afterlife” at least in the sense that some form of experience could continue or some essence of self could continue after death. There are numerous possible ways this could occur that don’t break the limits of how we know the universe functions.
In one of these scenarios- such as a scenario where your “afterlife” is a sort of “dream” being experienced by energy- we would say that it is YOU who put yourself in hell because the parameters of that dream might well be dictated by your thought processes in life. In the scientific explanation- there can be an afterlife without there being a god in theory. But the scientific explanation doesn’t preclude the existence of god if it were true.
Either way, to the point- in the scientific explanation you couldn’t “refuse to go to hell” because it would be both a matter of physics and not choice, and it is very possible that you wouldn’t have a choice- the ability to choose- that you’d have some form of quasi consciousness but not have any sort of autonomy. Like a leaf on the wind just along for the ride.
As to the final question: “what would god do...” I’m not foolish enough to speak to what a being who abrahamic religion calls all powerful and all knowing. And if we assume for this discussion there is a god, even if not all powerful and all knowing they are certainly overwhelmingly so on both counts. But hypothetically- what they might do could depend on your faith- or more accurately which faith might have the best representation of god.
For example- in systems such as Islam where a persons suffering isn’t necessary eternal and without limits, bad behavior after death could worsen your punishment. And well- most of us haven’t served life in prison and it is hard enough for a person to relate and understand that experience let alone eternity or millennia. BUT- say you’re sentenced to life in prison?
Now- would this be the point where you decide you can do whatever you want because “what will they do to me about it?” Perhaps that thinking got you in prison because that’s not a successful way to think here. It’s foolish- ignorant. Life in prison sucks. But it sucks worse without TV or yard breaks. The guards can be nice to you or nasty. And well- your odds of parole aren’t getting better when you act up. 15 years is a long time in jail- but I’d probably prefer to get out after 15 years than to stay in for life providing I wasn’t institutionalized. So we could assume some analogs to this may apply in hell.
Of course the other thing to consider.... is that you are a mortal with a very narrow window of experience and a very small brain. Especially when we compare this to our all Powerful deity. So what if there is something worse than death? Not knowing what comes after death, we can’t say that there aren’t entire endless cycles of ever increasing pleasure and pain which could be handed out at the discretion of the person in charge. In fact- given that abrahamic faiths consider god all powerful- god could literally invent better happiness and worse suffering whenever god wanted to. There is theoretically no limit and it is beyond yours or mines comprehension to even try to understand it- just to understand there is no limit to “what god could do” in religious context.
Understand here that “infinite” is a concept. If we define something as the “absolute worst possible..” we are designating it as an infinite magnitude. BUT- we use the term incite because you and I cannot comprehend let along even count and infinite number. We know that some infinities are bigger than others (I’ve talked about this before... listable infinity, scalable infinity... blah blah. Some “infinities” are “bigger.”) and so that should tell you your answer. You cannot comprehend what the “worst” is- and the hypothetical ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM WORSE that is possible in the universe... relies upon infinity for you to understand it. So it doesn’t stop. You never reach it. It just keeps getting worse.
So I mean yeah. Once you’ve established that a god exists- it is from there generally not a wise move to go against that god, and it generally won’t be of any use whatsoever.
@iccarus- I’d say rarely. Sometimes someone does. But it doesn’t seem to be common, nor would I expect it to be.
@lolcats121a lol. Thank you.
@cryoenthusiast- thank you? Although I’m pretty confident this isn’t my longest by far. But in fairness, religious theology is a pretty involved subject. Seminary to ordaining takes about 10 years for Catholics, and that’s just for a single religion- and to even begin to properly approach the study of the general subject is still a 4 year undergraduate course. So in relativity this is quite short.
1. If god is all powerful, we’re god to send you to hell and wish you to remain there- you simply could not do otherwise.
2. Religion is abstract and subjective. So we tend to think of it in those terms. When exploring religion, you must think of it as a physics we don’t understand the mechanisms of. The simple fact is that gravity exists and we don’t have a way to remove its influence. We can fight it, mitigate it, sometimes resist it or contrive ways around its pull to- for example fly or soar in to space. But it’s still there and you are still at its mercy. Remember- no structure you can build or rocket you can make can ever be said to be free of gravity- and while anything you can build will one day be pulled by gravity when your structure fatigues or cannot maintain its defiance- gravity doesn’t tire. It is always there.
Our planet exhibits complex electrical activity. Complex systems and patterns. Now- I’m not saying the planet is sentient or even that it has some form of a mind- but our earthworm is very simple and yet has some processes. The verdict is out in wether ants dream. They have a sort of “sleep” and show involuntary movements at this time. Some say they lack the complexity of the brain to “dream,” and others say some ants and some species or most, can dream. We don’t have a great way to communicate with ants to really study it, and the sensitivity of equipment as well as understanding of what the results would mean aren’t really there to say for sure if ants dream. Ants COULD dream.
@lolcats121a lol. Thank you.
@cryoenthusiast- thank you? Although I’m pretty confident this isn’t my longest by far. But in fairness, religious theology is a pretty involved subject. Seminary to ordaining takes about 10 years for Catholics, and that’s just for a single religion- and to even begin to properly approach the study of the general subject is still a 4 year undergraduate course. So in relativity this is quite short.