In Fact, There Is No Hell; So It Doesn’t Look Like This At All.
That’s right— no “hell.”
Well, wait.
There are all those thousands of supposedly rational, intelligent people who still believe that the all-loving, all-merciful God they profess belief in maintains a gigantic, universal “Lake of Fire”— at enormous expense, too, despite all the overpriced “lakefront” property he’s sold— and you just know a live feed is available on the Celestial Cable base-package under “entertainment”— because burning your children eternally is so … um, “all-loving and all-merciful… so yeah, every person who ever lived who sinned against him in the many ways enumerated by boilerplate Christian dogma get’s to be an eternally roasting sentient hotdog!
But heeah me tooday and remember me tomorrow: there is no actual place called Hell.
Mmmm, okay, I almost forgot, there is the brain-box of Rush Limbaugh‘s enormous head; that’s certainly the closest thing to a living hell I can think of. But look he’s gotta be realllly close to a fatal karmic coronary, so. . . let’s say there’s no eternal actual material place called Hell.
Just for the hell of it (see, now that just slipped out) let’s go back and recall what the Jewish traditions of heaven and hell and the “doctrine of devils,” as recorded in the Hebrew scriptures, have to say. You may not know it, but they were founded on the lingering traditions of Lucifer and Caligastia,* but also too, they were principally derived from the Zoroastrians during the times when the Jews were under the political and cultural dominance of those nasty Persians. (Oooh yes, yes— the forefathers of the evil threat du jour, the Iranians. Below the Mason-Dixon line this is pronounced “Eye-Ranniuns.”)
So Zoroaster, a heavy dude with a thing for white flowing garments and hipster beards, lived in the eastern part of the Iranian Plateau and anybody who’s anyone knows it is the most desirable part of the plateau. Location, people.
Yeah he totally taught the “day of judgment,” and one night after some bad hummus and feeling particularly apocalyptic, he connected this event with the idea of the end of the world.
And fun fact: “The ‘Roaster“— as he was known to a small group of intimates— did not teach the worship of fire, he just tried to use the flame as a symbol of the pure and wise Spirit of universal and supreme dominance. Whew. (Okay, but too true, his later followers both reverenced and worshiped said symbolic fire.) Finally, after the conversion of a particular overwrought Iranian prince who shall remain nameless, this new religion was spread by the weapon of choice back then, the sword. Shocking. And Zo died in battle for what he believed was the “truth of the Lord of light.”
So where were we. Ahh . Yeah, there is just the idea of hell, too; that’s probably the most vivid and powerful form of no hell that there is, really; and you might be surprised to learn that it isn’t kept alive by just the religious fundie-mentalists either. It seems there are many weak-minded atheist trolls who, while claiming there is no hell (good so far) still insist on helping to keep the idea of hell alive by continually bringing it up whenever and wherever they can, in an effort to prove— get this— how dumb fundamentalists are. The irony— it burns all the way to the center of the earth.
Hmm. Well dammit, the center of the earth is a lot like every garden variety idiot’s idea of hell, too; I mean if you could actually get there with a. . . Mm you know what, just forgeddaboudit.
