(12-09-2024, 11:51 AM)Michigan Swamp Buck Wrote: I haven't had much activity on this forum for this thread. The other two forums are rolling right along.
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I must confess to an inability to grasp what it is you are trying to get at in this thread. Therefore, lacking an ability to intelligently converse on the matter, I've remained silent as I followed it.
As nearly as I can tell, "hell" is simply the termination of existence, so, really, an eternity of nothingness. A big, black, nothingness, of which the individual will not even be aware - if your existence has been terminated, how can you even be aware that you no longer exist?. That notion terrifies some people, but it is what it is, terror or not.
That seems to be in line with the original Hebrew concept of "Sheol", as well as satisfying Biblical verses such as "the dead know nothing" that were in vogue before the Catholics started re-inventing Satan to bring him into line with more southern European extra-biblical concepts of "goat-demons" (ex. "Baphomet") in an attempt to scare the masses over to their way of thinking.
It also lines up - much to his chagrin I'm sure - with a definition of "hell" given to me by a preacher many years ago as "the eternal separation from God". I'm sure non-existence was not what he had in mind with that definition, but it fits.
So, to my way of thinking, "heaven" and "hell" are just the alternatives of "something" to "nothing" in an afterlife... or after-not-life, as the case may be. The rest of the philosophizing just loses me. After all, I'm a simple man with a simple mind. Too much thinking produces a scent like burning clutch in my vicinity.
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