Damning Eternal Damnation (or, To Hell with Hell)

Damning Eternal Damnation (or The Hell with Hell)

“Abandon all hope – Ye who enter here.” 

Such is the inscription above the gate to Hell in Dante's Inferno, and I think it is important to remember this when considering the very idea of Hell. For Hell is an idea that we are all familiar with and with which we have at least a rudimentary notion of it as 'a bad place', a place that we all hope to avoid. But also it is a place that we may take a base satisfaction in thinking that the very worst among us—those monsters in human form—are assuredly destined to spend a hopeless eternity in.

But...is that so? Will the very worst among us pass through the gates – if only metaphorically-- and find themselves beyond all hope? What about those who are not the very worst but are neither the very best? And finally, what about those who have tried their best to seek forgiveness and stay on the 'straight and narrow' way to that other place? Will they make it, or will they have committed some infraction that will doom them? The short answer is 'no'. No one is going to Hell, at least no one that you have met.

Before I go any further, I want to be very clear about the subject I am speaking of: Hell. Simply put: Hell is a place of torment that is worse than any a person could image, it is inescapable and it is eternal. That last quality—being Eternal—is a particularly crucial. Unimaginable torment is naturally... unimaginable, but then, you are already dead so it is speculative as to what lasting harm can actually be done. The most critical aspect to the terror of Hell is that it is everlasting. Anything less than that and a person would hold out hope for something better once the torment is over. But you needn't worry about eternal torment, because no benevolent and just force could send you there—and I am going to tell you why.

To understand why no one is going to Hell, let me give you an example of a punishment to serve as a model that we can easily examine and quickly see why the idea of a just force sending anyone to eternal punishment is a false one.

The example I will provide is that of a caring father who wishes his daughter to be home before 10PM. Now, the daughter has no watch and the warning comes by way of her brother delivering to the daughter a note that tells her if she is not in by 10PM she will be punished severely. Never mind the apparent contradiction between caring and punishment—it is a fair objection to the idea of Hell, but it is a very weak one, I will demonstrate that there is a much better one.

So the daughter goes out and fails to return by 10PM and is then punished—and the punishment is that she has both of her hands removed by a chainsaw! Alright, I understand that the punishment is completely out of scale with the infraction, but again, and while that might seem to be a strong objection emotionally, it is a weak objection logically.

The strong objection is that she wasn't told by the father and shown the severity of the punishment in no uncertain terms. A father could do exactly as I have described –and I shudder to think that somewhere in human history this has likely happened—but no one could say that such a father was benevolent or just. The reason that the father couldn't be said to be just is that the daughter was not certain of her punishment. And without a watch, the daughter couldn't even know if she was complying or failing.

Now, it is just an analogy and of course it is imperfect, but it does illustrate the issue. For the father to be just in his actions, he would have to personally be sure to tell the daughter to be home by 10PM and he would have to inform her of what the punishment was and convince the daughter that the punishment was a surety, perhaps by showing to her his other daughter who is missing her hands. Furthermore, he would have to issue her a watch with would be the timepiece by which she would be held accountable so that she knew, without any doubt, what the exact time was and what would happen if she failed to be home on time. Then, regardless of the insane severity of the punishment, at least the father could be said to be just—but what would the daughter do? Given the surety and severity of the punishment, I imagine that no one would even leave the house, but we will return to that in a moment.

But for now, let us transfer this father-daughter analogy to the theology of Hell. In order for any punishment—let alone an unimaginable and eternal one—to be inflicted on a person, that person must be informed in no uncertain terms of the existence and surety of their looming punishment and also the person would have to be always aware of his or her status in relation to damnation. A force could not said to be just if the subject of a punishment was unaware of it--'ignorance of the law is no excuse' be damned. What that means is that unless God-- or any force that would punish-- has communicated directly to each and every person who is eligible to be condemned, then that God's punishment cannot be considered as just. Similarly, each and every person would have to know of his or her status regarding Hell at any given time and for any given action. You cannot have a person be condemned to a punishment when the person was unaware of the potential condemnation for whatever the action was. Just as it would be unjust for a father to condemn a daughter who had never heard of the threat of punishment or had only heard of it by a second-hand source, it is unjust for any power to condemn a person who was either totally unaware or even had any doubt about possible punishment. And—to beat a dead horse—just as it would also be unjust for that same father to condemn a daughter who didn't know if she was in violation of a standard (i.e. no watch), it would be unjust for God to condemn a person who didn't know what was coming as a response to something the person did—whether that was failing to 'keep the Sabbath' or a brutal murder—the person in question must know.

Some people will argue that people do know about Hell, either through an intuitive sense of right and wrong or through explicit instruction from a holy text or a spiritually minded person. And so, they might argue, such people can be condemned by a just God because they do know about Hell and about themselves. That is speculation. Just as we cannot know what another person experiences in so many, many cases of awareness—be it love, hate, compassion, sensory perception, memory, pain, joy or a thousand other things-- we cannot really know if another person is truly aware of a place of eternal punishment or if that person is fully aware of his or her relation to it. But even if that were so, and I maintain that it is not—there is a further problem.

Remember the question about what would the daughter really do if she were aware that she would have both her hands cut off by a chainsaw if she came home later that 10PM? Let us examine that. How would you react to a daughter who then went out? Even more so, how would you react to a daughter who then came home after 10PM? Indeed, we would regard such a person as insane. As I said, the analogy is imperfect, and the problem is much worse with Hell.

What would you say of a person who knows of eternal punishment, knows what to do or not do to avoid it and still does the thing that will condemn him to it anyway? Such a person cannot be considered to be rational or sane in any meaningful way. To condemn yourself to an eternity of unimaginable punishment by taking (or not taking) an action in a temporary life? It would almost count as the very definition of insanity. And what would that say of a God would would condemn such a person? It may be argued that technically such a God is just, but the whole issue begins to become some kind of perverse tragedy. Is that really what Hell is supposed to be about?

It comes down to only two logical possibilities: either people are doing things that are condemning themselves to Hell by way of ignorance, or they are doing things that condemn themselves to Hell by way of knowledge. In the first case, you then have an unjust God. In the second case you have a Hell full of the unhinged. A Hell that is populated by the ignorant or the insane? Both of these results are unacceptable and must be rejected.

So what does it mean? It means that either Hell is not eternal, or that it doesn't exist at all or that God is not just. All three are possible. It could be that case that people are condemned to a place of punishment for a time, but again, such a person is already dead so what harm can really be done? And eventually the person would be released, so really such a place couldn't be called 'Hell' at all. It could be that Hell—as we are told about it—doesn't exist at all, or that no one who lives as a mortal would really be subject to it. It would then become something to frighten the immature but something that would be outgrown once a person can reason things out. Or—and this is somewhat frightening—it could be that Hell exists exactly as described and that it is full of the ignorant and the insane and that God, or whatever force is sending them there, doesn't care about any of that. A world ruled by a cruel and unjust God, yikes!

Those are the possibilities; a pseudo-Hell exists, no Hell exists, or God is unjust. I favor the second, but any of them are possible. To this, I will add just one more thing:

I am fairly well-versed in the literature on those Lost spirits who have been condemned to Hell and escaped. Those spirits who have inserted themselves into our world and been confronted and removed. And those spirits are quite consistent in asserting that Hell exists and consistent in their terror of it. Now, obviously, if they have been there and escaped, it cannot be considered 'The Hell' of theology-- a place of eternal torment with no possibility of escape-- but nevertheless is sounds like a pretty bad place. These spirits are well aware of it and they know that they may be sent back to it. That is what I think exists. I think that there is a kind of Hell, but those spirits who go there know that it exists and they know that they might be able to escape at some point. I think that the Hell that exists in reality is a prison—not unlike our terrestrial prisons-- where some spirits are sent for internment or punishment. Not sent by an all-powerful God for eternity, but rather by such opposing forces as exist in the universe. But unlike the logical reduction that is the bulk of this essay, that part is just my opinion.

Post Script: Oh, and to the person who keeps saying, 'But the Bible/Torah/Koran says....' we will be addressing that in a future essay, so stay tuned.


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