@Coloratura - J, is that you? Been quite a long time since I've been round these parts!
So... yeah, Hell is quite possibly the dumbest idea in religion. As there's been a lot of discussion of the "Old Testament", aka the Tanakh, might as well toss in a Jewish perspective on all of this.
There is no conception of Hell in Judaism as Christians would understand it, as the idea of God creating something He loves so much and then throwing it away in what amounts to a cosmic dustbin for all eternity is utterly ludicrous. The few references to the afterlife in the Torah are to sheol (grave in Hebrew), which is basically a matter-of-fact statement that all human beings must, ultimately, die and be interred in the grave. Hell is ultimately a Greek idea, a melding of Jewish eschatology with the ideas of European pagan religion on the underworld.
The Levitical law, or halacha, is basically an attempt by the Jews to create a civilization based around justice and order, compared with lawless surrounding tribes. The 613 mitzvot are so detailed so as to set us apart from those and attempt to give the Jews of the time a better way of life - hence a lot of laws about how to treat the poor, guidelines in warfare, etc. There's a lot of stuff that was wrong back in the Middle East then that needed put right, so when making guidelines for His own people God had a lot of ideas on where civilization had gone wrong previously.
Another thing about halacha is that while God's word is unchanging, how we as Jews follow it and interpret it can change depending on the way the world is at that point. I doubt whether when the Torah first appeared people needed to consider the internet or gender fluidity, both of which are topics that are currently debated among Jews and regarding which there are a variety of perspectives depending on whether you're Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox. The idea that it's some kind of frozen, obsolete law that's been surpassed yet still needs to be obeyed is crud - how to live according to it in today's world is one of the most pressing issues in Jewish culture today.
Here's the thing about God, at least as we Jews see him: He's a pretty forgiving guy. He isn't some guy sitting up in heaven watching people like some kind of cosmic hall monitor giving people infractions for the wrong kind of sex, or believing the wrong thing. To be on God's good side in Judaism, the Law can be boiled down pretty simply: to update Rabbi Akiva's famous words when asked to summarize the Torah standing on one leg: don't be a dick, the rest is commentary. That's really all God asks of us, if He is asking anything. Doesn't matter if you're an atheist, a Jew, a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist or anything else - as long as you're not a dick to others, you're in God's good books no matter what your thinking is on God's existence (or lack thereof).
Here's the thing: God gave you an "evil", self-serving side, and a "good" altruistic side. They're both His creation, and both are meant to be indulged up to a point. Neither is "bad" unless we serve one exclusively. Take marriage and starting a family as a good example. When I met my wife, my first thought was "Wow, she's hot". I had a lot of thoughts that some in Christianity would regard as sinful and impure, "evil" and lustful but after those initial thoughts spurred our relationship they gave way to other, "good", altruistic thoughts about how I could make her happy, and how I could provide a good life for her and my kids.
The yetzer hara ('evil' inclination) and the yetzer hatov (good inclination) are both from God, and they're intended to work in tandem to keep us on the right path. Usually they go against God's nature when we serve one to the exclusion of the other, either becoming entirely selfish and truly evil, or so altruistic that we forget that we're also here to live our own lives too and fall prey to fulfilling the selfish indulgences of others to our own detriment.
I've never got the idea of the "cosmic checklist" God of some versions of Christianity, which appears to amount to obeying the Law of God for a fear of damnation and eternal separation from God. That's just... strange. You can't ever really be apart from God as the "spark" of God is what makes existence... exist.
God's holiness is made manifest through the world (cf: Isiah 6:3/Kedushah), and the Law of Moses was given in love for the people of Israel, and is intended to make our lives in this world better, rather than in any expectation of reward in the next. This is obvious from the fact that Judaism mandates that we say the berachot before performing a mitzvah - Baruch atah Hashem, elokeihnu melech ha-olem, asher kidshanu b'mitzotav... (whatever we are doing now... eg. lighting shabbat candles) - blessed are you Hashem our God, sovereign of the universe, who has made us holy with His commandments - this is meant to thank God for a precious gift intended to make our lives better in this world, rather than begging Him not to be terrible to us in the next.
The original intent is that God's holiness is made manifest through all human beings living good, moral lives whatever they believe, rather than living in fear of something terrible after death. To be quite frank, the afterlife, how to get into it and how to avoid "the bad place" are what's messing up the world at the moment. Too many fundamentalist Christians ignore Deuteronomy 30:19:
Choosing life and not being overly obsessed with and worrying about what comes after is the name of the game, folks. Some atheists are much, much better at that than many of the more pious believers...
So... yeah, Hell is quite possibly the dumbest idea in religion. As there's been a lot of discussion of the "Old Testament", aka the Tanakh, might as well toss in a Jewish perspective on all of this.
There is no conception of Hell in Judaism as Christians would understand it, as the idea of God creating something He loves so much and then throwing it away in what amounts to a cosmic dustbin for all eternity is utterly ludicrous. The few references to the afterlife in the Torah are to sheol (grave in Hebrew), which is basically a matter-of-fact statement that all human beings must, ultimately, die and be interred in the grave. Hell is ultimately a Greek idea, a melding of Jewish eschatology with the ideas of European pagan religion on the underworld.
The Levitical law, or halacha, is basically an attempt by the Jews to create a civilization based around justice and order, compared with lawless surrounding tribes. The 613 mitzvot are so detailed so as to set us apart from those and attempt to give the Jews of the time a better way of life - hence a lot of laws about how to treat the poor, guidelines in warfare, etc. There's a lot of stuff that was wrong back in the Middle East then that needed put right, so when making guidelines for His own people God had a lot of ideas on where civilization had gone wrong previously.
Another thing about halacha is that while God's word is unchanging, how we as Jews follow it and interpret it can change depending on the way the world is at that point. I doubt whether when the Torah first appeared people needed to consider the internet or gender fluidity, both of which are topics that are currently debated among Jews and regarding which there are a variety of perspectives depending on whether you're Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox. The idea that it's some kind of frozen, obsolete law that's been surpassed yet still needs to be obeyed is crud - how to live according to it in today's world is one of the most pressing issues in Jewish culture today.
Here's the thing about God, at least as we Jews see him: He's a pretty forgiving guy. He isn't some guy sitting up in heaven watching people like some kind of cosmic hall monitor giving people infractions for the wrong kind of sex, or believing the wrong thing. To be on God's good side in Judaism, the Law can be boiled down pretty simply: to update Rabbi Akiva's famous words when asked to summarize the Torah standing on one leg: don't be a dick, the rest is commentary. That's really all God asks of us, if He is asking anything. Doesn't matter if you're an atheist, a Jew, a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist or anything else - as long as you're not a dick to others, you're in God's good books no matter what your thinking is on God's existence (or lack thereof).
Here's the thing: God gave you an "evil", self-serving side, and a "good" altruistic side. They're both His creation, and both are meant to be indulged up to a point. Neither is "bad" unless we serve one exclusively. Take marriage and starting a family as a good example. When I met my wife, my first thought was "Wow, she's hot". I had a lot of thoughts that some in Christianity would regard as sinful and impure, "evil" and lustful but after those initial thoughts spurred our relationship they gave way to other, "good", altruistic thoughts about how I could make her happy, and how I could provide a good life for her and my kids.
The yetzer hara ('evil' inclination) and the yetzer hatov (good inclination) are both from God, and they're intended to work in tandem to keep us on the right path. Usually they go against God's nature when we serve one to the exclusion of the other, either becoming entirely selfish and truly evil, or so altruistic that we forget that we're also here to live our own lives too and fall prey to fulfilling the selfish indulgences of others to our own detriment.
I've never got the idea of the "cosmic checklist" God of some versions of Christianity, which appears to amount to obeying the Law of God for a fear of damnation and eternal separation from God. That's just... strange. You can't ever really be apart from God as the "spark" of God is what makes existence... exist.
God's holiness is made manifest through the world (cf: Isiah 6:3/Kedushah), and the Law of Moses was given in love for the people of Israel, and is intended to make our lives in this world better, rather than in any expectation of reward in the next. This is obvious from the fact that Judaism mandates that we say the berachot before performing a mitzvah - Baruch atah Hashem, elokeihnu melech ha-olem, asher kidshanu b'mitzotav... (whatever we are doing now... eg. lighting shabbat candles) - blessed are you Hashem our God, sovereign of the universe, who has made us holy with His commandments - this is meant to thank God for a precious gift intended to make our lives better in this world, rather than begging Him not to be terrible to us in the next.
The original intent is that God's holiness is made manifest through all human beings living good, moral lives whatever they believe, rather than living in fear of something terrible after death. To be quite frank, the afterlife, how to get into it and how to avoid "the bad place" are what's messing up the world at the moment. Too many fundamentalist Christians ignore Deuteronomy 30:19:
Choosing life and not being overly obsessed with and worrying about what comes after is the name of the game, folks. Some atheists are much, much better at that than many of the more pious believers...
