HELL

i could deal with hell except for Joan Rivers

ruh roh

https://www.yahoo.com/news/does-hell-exist-pope-francis-155354139.html

Adhering to Jesus' commandments (Matthew 19:16-22) is easy enough, so why worry about Hell?

I thought Hell and purgatory were invented or at least more popularised in around teh 12th century to help line the coffers of teh church. They could then talk the populace into buying indulgences to reduce the time that they or loved ones/relatives spent in at least purgatory.
It also helps create the us vs them epistemology where the them are bound for hell because they don't maintain the beliefs, habits morés of those that constitute the 'us' who are bound for salvation. So helps bind people together in the co9ntemporary culture.

Also once protestanism comes in those who work hard in this life are bound for greater comfort in the next world so you need something to threaten those who don't go along with that idea with.

oh god he's gone universalist on us

no wait this is even crazier than universalism

he's saying that hitler just, you know, vanished?

as for matthew 19:16-22, francis is a pretty outspoken advocate of jesus' advice in those verses...

idk a lot of Biblical scholars have claimed "Hell" is a mistranslation of "sheol" (which should really mean "grave") and that bad souls are merely extinguished rather than forced through the spatial nightmare of Hell.

Bart Ehrman writes some interesting musings across his several books on the matter.

it just strikes me as kind of weird that the goal of all human existence in buddhism is what happens by default to the worst people in the world in certain strains of christian thought

tbh living forever in any form sounds like Hell to me so Buddhism otm

right, i mean absent the curse of the survival instinct no so-called "heaven" could ever tempt me to reject the gift of nonbeing. i feel like francis and i aren't exactly on the same page here.

Hi I'm Satan https://t.co/rbpoSaSlCR

— Iggle piggle (@1gglepiggle) October 1, 2018

I think we're in it

bump

theres at least one ilxor who afaict believes in hell

this is minblowing to me

altho they dont upthread

confused now

I ain’t no hippie, but in response to Neanderthal and Kate’s annihilationism riffing upthread, if the options are between eternal unity with the divine, and none-existence, I know which one I’m taking

When I examine all the possible origins for the idea of Hell as a place of eternal punishment for eternally anguished souls who shall never escape their extreme pain and humiliation for all time, not one of them makes any sense to me in terms of morality, physics, philosophy or divinity. The only hypothesis that makes the slightest sense to me is that Hell is a falsehood that was concocted solely to frighten credulous people into better behavior by well-meaning but stupid religious leaders who thought they were doing a good deed by teaching this grotesque doctrine to those who respected them.

In this world, we're just beginnin'
To understand the miracle of livin'
Baby, I was afraid before
But I'm not afraid anymore
Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth?
Ooh, hell is a place on Earth