If God wanted to zap away the people causing our collapse into utopia, he could

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[–]Vulptex 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Don't forget that if you ever express any frustration or questioning of his actions, he will just judge you to condemnation in Hell for eternity.

I think you mean the church. Hell was inserted by translators, it does not actually exist in any of the "canonical" books. The concept postdates even purgatory. It was made up so the church could control the masses.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

What do you think of the verses when Jesus is referring to people going into the "lake of fire"?

[–]Vulptex 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The only time this is ever mentioned is in Revelation. Only the beast, false prophet, and accuser are said to be "tormented day and night forever and ever". Everyone else receives the "second death". Furthermore, the translators conveniently omit the fact that the word used for "torment" is in the sense of interrogation. Not only that, but the lake of fire doesn't even exist; unless you also believe that all the other places and creatures seen in that vision are real, which is not how visions usually work, and this is obviously one of them.

There's one more fact about Revelation I'd like to share with you. It was not widely accepted until centuries later. Even Martin Luther thought it was fraudulent.

The only few remaining references to anything like a "lake of fire" is a few mentions of "fire that doesn't go out" (meaning complete destruction), Gehenna (a valley where Jews burned those they deemed sinners, which is condemned in Jeremiah), "the outer darkness" found only in Matthew (with no mention of fire or torture, except in the debt parable), and one mention of being "tormented in flame", only in Luke, in a parable.

The concept of Hell comes from some old Egyptian religion. I would think that if the viciously brutal writers of much of the Old Testament knew of such a place, they wouldn't be able to go 2 seconds without employing it. Yet there is not even a single mention of it. The reason the hell doctrine dominated is because Rome, the one church that taught this, ultimately won out because of Constantine. Before that others thought the lost simply died, were reincarnated (I'm suspecting this), or ended up being rescued anyway. Some of the latter group believed in a temporary purgatory (yes, Purgatory is older than Hell). I think the world we live in can be considered a purgatory. And aside from not being on fire it has many parallels with pop culture depictions of Hell, with the devil and demons ruling over it and sadistictly torturing everyone in it. If that's the place you were looking for you have already found it.