/lit/ - Literature

>>7279179
Why are you afraid of hell?

shitpost on /lit/ instead. off to a good start

>>7279179

>>7279192
Well, hell is supposed to be eternal suffering. It doesn't sound fun. My irrational fear of hell is what motivates my search for truth and at the same time is what hinders it.

>>7279205
Most investigations of philosophy should make specific understandings of hell irrelevant.

>>7279205
What denomination are you?

>>7279219
I'm a former Catholic, essentially agnostic now. I didn't mean to say I was religious, just that my fear of hell is still with me.

>>7279179
Just don't start with Nietzsche but stick to rather religious authors. The contradictions and relativisms will annoy you over time until you have the courage to do the full break.

t. been you

>>7279179
Go meditate in the wilderness for a few days, OP.

The best thing I could do to get rid of my religious (American rural south fundamentalist Christianity) was to go out and be alone in nature. I hunt, mountain bike, backpack for a week or so at a time and stuff like that. A big part of my deconversion was realizing that I didn't genuinely feel, intuitively, that someone must have made it all the way so many people claimed to feel, and that without other people in my ear there was so much less to be afraid of in the world. I thought the story about Luther's epiphany in a thunderstorm absurd when I first heard it, because I'd taken hard falls, nearly drowned and been shot at by a poacher and never felt that the presence of mind that saved me was any other but my own.

>>7279205
Think about it this way.

What makes the Christian hell eternal suffering? The answer from a believer is, "Because God's not there."

If you aren't religious, died, and found yourself forced into heaven, forced to spend eternity with a God you did not care about, you'd be rightfully pissed off. That's why the default is hell, and you would be happier without god than with him.

As for Hell itself, it is the same place as Sheol, the hebrew afterlife in the old testament, which was described more like oblivion than some endless torture chamber, which was exaggerated over the years, even to the point where people think the devil rules over hell.

Ecclesiastes 9:10
“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.”

I'd reconcile these differences with the new testament by saying it's a matter of perspective, sheol/hell being fucking terrible and the worst possible thing you could imagine to someone who deeply loves their God. But what do I know, I'm Lutheran.

>>7279224
You should read Hobbes's Leviathan, and pay special attention to his treatment of the afterlife.

An insufficient and brief overview:
God created us and he gave us this world. This world is all we get, it is earth, hell, and heaven. All past covenants with God have been in exchange for earthly rewards. Adam got the Garden and eternal life, Moses got the land of Canaan. Adam sinned and broke the covenant. The Israelis elected Saul and broke the covenant. Jesus proposes a new covenant, and in return we get eternal life. When he returns, the dead will rise, as if from sleep, and be judged. The believers receive eternal life. The non-believers die a second death and never die again. Even in The Bible, Jesus clearly says that God is God of the living, not of the dead.

This is it. This is all we get. Make the best of it, and don't fret over eternal damnation.

t. Catholic who has a deep interest in philosophy and no fear of hell

>>7279247
That's rather like the way one of my Catholic school teachers explained hell. If I go to hell it's supposed to be the best choice for me. I can understand that, but my irrational fear stays with me because it's, well, irrational.

I also fear hell-like scenarios, such as the idea that we're in a computer simulation and someone will pull the plug and I'll be the subject of some sort of alien torture. I think this sort of stuff is my biggest fear.

>My religious upbringing destroyed my ability to read and enjoy philosophy.

This doesn't make any sense.
Assuming the religion was Christianity you're in a good spot to understand a vast amount of medieval and modern philosophy without even trying.

>>7279268
Most philosophy is pretty much outmoded by work done in the past 150 years, and most of that revolutionary work is essentially secular. I agree that a solid biblical scholar might be in a good position to understand much of the history of philosophy, but not to contribute to the field as it is now.

>>7279299
>Most philosophy is pretty much outmoded by work done in the past 150 years

Accept it. Let it wash over you like death. Get it over with. Now.

>>7279327
Accepting that nobody holds things together and there's no reason for anything is a big band-aid to rip off, and it doesn't even feel particularly good afterwards, but at least you don't have a huge band-aid on your face like Nelly.