Do people still believe in Hell?
- Thread starter Jayson1
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I know plenty of people who do. A good chunk of my family is LDS but their conception of hell doesn't revolve around fire, brimstone and physical torture. Instead it revolves around the idea that the only punishment is removal from the sight of God. It also takes a hell of a lot, pun intended, to get there.
The whole fire and brimstone idea is a late creation. Though there will always be arguments about it, I always thought that the non-canonical text, The Revelation of Peter, served to influence later depictions of Christian hell. Here's a link with basic information if you're interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_of_Peter
The whole fire and brimstone idea is a late creation. Though there will always be arguments about it, I always thought that the non-canonical text, The Revelation of Peter, served to influence later depictions of Christian hell. Here's a link with basic information if you're interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_of_Peter
I find it weird that Christians sprung out of the Jewish religion and written works and yet Jewish belief apparently has no hell? Christians just added that in for shits and giggles? Or, control.
There are people who believe in anything. There are people who believe in society.
To say that human beings have free will assumes and ignores an awful lot of context - that is, we all can make choices at a given moment but our choices are conditioned by circumstance now and myriad circumstances leading to this instant . Positing an idealized quality of "free will" negates cause and consequence itself.
To say that human beings have free will assumes and ignores an awful lot of context - that is, we all can make choices at a given moment but our choices are conditioned by circumstance now and myriad circumstances leading to this instant . Positing an idealized quality of "free will" negates cause and consequence itself.
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Of course. Even folks who choose not to believe in an afterlife have (at least) semantic problems with the whole cessation thing.
We're in it, sunshine.
"Hell is other people" -- last words of No Exit (Huis Clos) by Jean-Paul Satre
A least 2 Billion Christians, 1.5 billion muslims, Buddhists have a hell concept, and certain sects of Judaism view Sheol as a place of torment for the wicked.
This isn't the most intelligent question.
This isn't the most intelligent question.
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Amaris
Guest
It's a fair question. I'm seeing a shift in most sects of Christianity (save fundamentalist Evangelical) where hell is becoming more a state of the spirit removed from God, than an actual destination of fire and brimstone.
Besides, as anyone who's read Dante's Inferno will tell you, not all of Hell is fire anyway.
In fact part of it IS frozen over.
(actually you want to know what the worst part of Hell probably is? The place where the Flatterers go. Just don't even look it up unless you have a strong stomach.
)
In fact part of it IS frozen over.
(actually you want to know what the worst part of Hell probably is? The place where the Flatterers go. Just don't even look it up unless you have a strong stomach.
)
By that you mean the declining mainline churches which are neither evangelical or fundamentalist.
Also you mean big megachurches where the main gospel is believe in yourself and God will believe in you. Which have a little time yet.
I attend a Southern Baptist Church and He'll is a place that we still believe.
So, what you're saying is that yours is an affirmative answer to the thread question.
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Amaris
Guest
So that's a "yes, I believe hell exists."
I expect the U.S. form of fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity will stick around for a while yet. Also, most megachurches, in the U.S., are Evangelical fundamentalist. There are people like Joel Osteen, sure, but you'll see more Jimmy Swaggarts, Rod Parsleys, John Hagees, and so on than you will Joel Osteens in those megachurches. Baptists, Pentecostals, and Non-Denominational Christians make up the vast majority of Evangelicals, and they're not going to go anywhere for a while. Right now, Donald Trump is President, and they will feed off of that. In fact, the church will likely thrive under a Trump administration, as we see the wall between Church and State erode.
Christianity outside of the neo-conservative, fundamentalist Evangelicalism is declining, likely due to many factors too numerous to go into great detail here, but suffice to say that for the moment Evangelical Christianity is holding fast at roughly 25%.
Anyway, all of that aside, a little over half of the Christian population still believes in some kind of hell as punishment for sins. That seems like a lot, until you consider the general makeup of the Christian population, and that the decline in a belief in hell continues, though very slowly. That means the original question posed by the OP is quite valid.
My sources:
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_evangelical_megachurches
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/10/most-americans-believe-in-heaven-and-hell/
Myself, as a former fundamentalist Christian minister
The mainline churches in the mid 20th century basically to use religious terminology became apostate. The megachurches led by the likes of Joel Osteen are an 80s-90s phenomena of poorly led, doctrinally heretical churches appealing to the greed, self-absorption, and vanity of modern American society hence their(numerical) success.
There has been a growth of orthodox, and traditionalist Catholic Churches though. Though they have their own problems.
There has been a growth of orthodox, and traditionalist Catholic Churches though. Though they have their own problems.
Do you have an example of this?
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Amaris
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Doctrinal differences have been happening since the days of Paul and Peter. Today, the church goes in many directions, so while the number of Christians who believe in hell is around the halfway mark, I expect that to change. I do know that, for example, the SBC has been experiencing a loss of moderates, for some time now, leaving a more fundamentalist base. That, of course, falls in line with the Southern Baptist Convention's "conservative resurgence." The problem for them is that a core group of fundamentalists will only pay the bills for so long, so they will either have to adapt or die, just as every other Christian sect has over the past two thousand years. I believe there will come a time when few Christians, beyond a tiny group of hardcore fundamentalists, will accept the idea of hell as being an actual place of punishment and pain. The next few decades will be interesting to watch.
My sources:
https://www.christiantoday.com/arti...tist.convention.in.terminal.decline/55989.htm
The Episcopalians, Anglicans, Lutherans(the vast majority),Presbyterians, and the other traditional American protestant denominations adopted positions and practices that were in pretty much direct contrivance of doctrine, biblical mores, and engaged in flat out idolatry.
The appointment of atheists to the pulpit, total capitulation on issues of sexuality, worshipping the "mother goddess", inclusivism, abandoning hope in the second coming among other indicators.
You also have things like Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark that are part of a religion. Just because it's in the dogma doesn't mean people will buy into it.
I personally don't even think most religious people believe in a God with 100% certainity. I think a lot people want to believe but it's impossible to not have doubt since their is no real evidence so you get a concept like "faith" that allows you excuse your doubt making it easier to lie to oneself about believing in a God.
For whatever reason some people just aren't comfortble with having a opinion that their might be a God and they believe it but instead they need to have that opinion to be seen almost like a fact.
Jason
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