Why I'm Not Afraid of Hell

[Shiranu]

I know when I deconverted, the thought of hell was absolutely and utterly terrifying. I don't know if I ever rationalized not fearing it... it just left me one day and I never looked back...

[drunkenshoe]

I cannot get into this. I cannot build empathy with that fear or beating that fear, may be because I wasn't raised with it in the first place. I think it is not about the rational explanation though. It's about scaring/scarring people when they are very young. Filling the ready category of the primal fear. Not death, but what we feel around thar fear.

Something like may be more than 10 years ago, we were sitting on the patio in the summer site and having drinks. Our tiny house is at just at the end of the fence of the site. At the other site, there is a very weak little creek and fence is torn. There were kids playing ahead just there. They were running around like mad having fun. Suddenly we heard a scream and ran to them and found one of the kids crying like mad...she was SO scared he couldn't speak. It was pretty scary.

Long story short, nothing physically happened to her. While she was peeing a little away from her friends, she saw a snake sliding a meter away. And esp. in that vulnerable position she got scared so bad, certainly she is scarred for life. Snake didn't do anything to her, probably it was scared too. We don't have big snakes or poisonous ones here around known as a threat. But it doesn't matter. Most people are scared from snakes, but in her case, probably she won't be able to act calm or tolerate it in any level.

This hell fear or other kind of fears like demons, djinns...etc. feels like something that gets into people and have a power when they are young and stays there. Trauma.

Like scaring kids with doctors, dentists, wild animals, to be left alone, darkness... boogeyman...etc. It doesn't really matter what it is when you are a kid. And when you grow up the category is there ready and defined. The fear is not rational, but doesn't have to be.  Of course when kids become adults, they get over most of the fears inflicted in them consciously or unconsiously when they have to face it, but the fear of the 'boogeyman' and the 'darkness' stay, because first of all as a species we have that basic fear in our genes. Like falling down.

Which reminds me Jack London's 'Before Adam'. It's basically taking advantage of the category of the primates' fear of darkness -probably not consciously designed but evolved into that narrative because that is the darkest available material at hand- but it is decorated and made into a gore story. The description of hell is not just about burning pople for their sins. It's designed with the full idea of severing human from the its sense of belonging a whole. In hell, you are not just supposed to feel physical pain, but also feel the ultimate, indescribable desperation, hopelessness, feeling of absolue lonliness and left alone, cut out out of all help forever. Not even death. Last part is not imginable for  a human being, but again there is no need.

This is nothing but the primal fear, why we developed as social animals all along our evolution. While the 'why' is an incompatible way of inquiry with evolution over all, I mean within the process, in it. Chicken-egg.


Hell is actually the mythified, decorated scene built on the fear of dark-wild forest of an early hominid. Nothing else. Rest is Hollywood effects.

[Baruch]

Hollywood effects?  Why yes, I like the 13th Warrior version of Beowulf.  In that version they gave physical form to the "angst" ... but they shouldn't have, the actual non-physical "angst" can't be slain.

[widdershins]

I cannot get into this. I cannot build empathy with that fear or beating that fear, may be because I wasn't raised with it in the first place. I think it is not about the rational explanation though. It's about scaring/scarring people when they are very young. Filling the ready category of the primal fear. Not death, but what we feel around thar fear.

Very much so.  This is why churches are so desperate to get into the schools.  If left alone reality will normally set in and kids will adjust naturally to the world as it is.  Magical beliefs and fear of monsters will go away on their own and the kid will become a normal adult who doesn't believe in monsters or fairies or magic.  They know damned well that they have to get to people before that happens.  They know damned well that if you want an adult to believe in magic you have to teach a kid to believe in magic.  There is no other way, assuming a stable, intelligent mind.  They want to suppress information which contradicts their beliefs and pretend they have the only answers (and pretend they have "answers" of any kind).  They want very much to control what information kids get and do not get for the very reason you mentioned.

[SGOS]

Very much so.  This is why churches are so desperate to get into the schools.  If left alone reality will normally set in and kids will adjust naturally to the world as it is.  Magical beliefs and fear of monsters will go away on their own and the kid will become a normal adult who doesn't believe in monsters or fairies or magic.  They know damned well that they have to get to people before that happens.  They know damned well that if you want an adult to believe in magic you have to teach a kid to believe in magic.  There is no other way, assuming a stable, intelligent mind.  They want to suppress information which contradicts their beliefs and pretend they have the only answers (and pretend they have "answers" of any kind).  They want very much to control what information kids get and do not get for the very reason you mentioned.

Fear of God and Hell has to be learned.  If not learned you are home free to reason on your own.  I was old enough to stand up, but I couldn't tell you the exact age.  One of my first memories is my Baptist Grandmother telling me for the first time about God, the Devil, and Hell, which she described in graphic detail.  Oddly, I don't recall feeling fear, although I'm sure there must have been some.  What I remember instead, was a feeling of abject resignation knowing that I could never live up to the rules, like having a bad thought, or getting angry at my parents.  Good behavior was not enough.  Your mind had to be pure.  For this to be one of my earliest memories suggests to me that it was a vital imprint during formative years.  When the brainwashing starts so early and is continually followed up, you're going to learn it at the conscious and as well at what I would call an unconscious level.  For those not brought up this way, I can understand that it's hard to imagine the long term effect.  But it is most definitely something that really happens, and most people don't seem to get over it.  I think the early age of indoctrination is probably most significant.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Reason #0: Because there's no such thing as hell.

Unless  you'really in Michigan.

[Mermaid]

That video is outstanding.

[Flanker1Six]

Actually, it's not if the right people got into your head and shit in the right places.  It's like a conditioned phobea.  There's no rational reason to be afraid, but since when have religious beliefs ever relied heavily on rationality?

Excellent point!  I was, of course, only speaking for the adult me. 

As I noted in another thread; my conversion to christianity consisted of the adult counselor/mentor assigned to my church summer camp cabin of 10 to 12 preteen boys (I was 8); speaking to me privately one afternoon.  He preambled/babbled a bunch of the usual drivel; then got to the meat of our meeting.  "Have you excepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior.......................or would your RATHER BURN IN HELL??!!  BLEEP me! I couldn't pick door 1 quickly enough................faced with a choice like that.  My Mom was pleased. 

I had one Sunday School teacher who actually told us that when we "went to heaven" they'd replay our entire lives as if they were movies to see all the good and bad stuff we'd done!!   Prior to judging our worth; of course.  Lucky for him the "current Flanker" wasn't there.  So..........is that gonna be a multi media presentation with pie charts and interactive shit, or just a straight up movie thing?   Just as well it didn't go that way; I guess.  Mom would NOT have been pleased! 

There was a bunch of CProp other stuff I was exposed to over the years; I don't think any of the providers actually meant any of it in a sinister fashion; but it does dove tail nicely into your point. 

Anyway.................fast forward into my early 20s and I'd already managed to shake all that silly superstitious shit off.  As silly as it sounds; I attribute that to some quirk of personality/character (neither of my parents were particularly curious sorts) that's pushed me to questioning and incredulity of many things/conditions, and a Comparative Religion class I had as a 14 year old freshman in HS.   

Imagine my shock when I get to "The End" and I find out it's Door 2!   

BTW: For those of you who may not have gotten Gawdzilla Sama's reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell,_Michigan

[Blackleaf]

That video is outstanding.

Considering it seemed to have been filmed during the era of standard television, I thought it was pretty good.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hollywood effects?  Why yes, I like the 13th Warrior version of Beowulf.  In that version they gave physical form to the "angst" ... but they shouldn't have, the actual non-physical "angst" can't be slain.

Epic cast in that movie. Mads Mikkelsen, the bleeding-eye villain from "Casino Royale" was among them.

[drunkenshoe]

Very much so.  This is why churches are so desperate to get into the schools.  If left alone reality will normally set in and kids will adjust naturally to the world as it is.  Magical beliefs and fear of monsters will go away on their own and the kid will become a normal adult who doesn't believe in monsters or fairies or magic.  They know damned well that they have to get to people before that happens.  They know damned well that if you want an adult to believe in magic you have to teach a kid to believe in magic.  There is no other way, assuming a stable, intelligent mind.  They want to suppress information which contradicts their beliefs and pretend they have the only answers (and pretend they have "answers" of any kind).  They want very much to control what information kids get and do not get for the very reason you mentioned.

Agreed.

But they 'rationalise' and teach it as -at least muslims do as I watched all my life happening where I live- that it is necessary for people to act with 'morality'. That's the point that drives me mad.

This is the part of what I mean when I say taking advantage 'primal fear of an early hominid'. People are always scared of something. We all are, because we are alive, animals. In this age, we are not afraid of other wild animals or darkness as our fellow species millions years ago, but it can be reduced to 'homo homini lupus'. Has been for a long time.

That's the point they win. 'If you are not scared to death of something you are a psychopath'. Hell is a means of this. What they call 'to put the fear of god in people'.

And people buy into this in every level even if they are not devout believers, because they have families and children. This is the first reason why in every organised religion the first thing they attack is family, sexuality and females' place and rights. Because they know perfectly -and they are right- that without the nuclear family and traditional gender norms bullshit religion DOES NOT WORK. That's the pillar.

There is no better way than scaring people over all with their families and esp with their offsprings.

[widdershins]

...
And people buy into this in every level even if they are not devout believers, because they have families and children. This is the first reason why in every organised religion the first thing they attack is family, sexuality and females' place and rights. Because they know perfectly -and they are right- that without the nuclear family and traditional gender norms bullshit religion DOES NOT WORK. That's the pillar.
...

I didn't quite follow all of that, but I think I get the basics of what you are saying.  They have to get people used to and accepting of the idea that there is a "pecking order", that some people are naturally "weaker" and, though they don't actually come out and say it about women, "inferior".  That particular message is subtle enough that the women can ignore it, yet strong enough that both women and men know the man is in charge.  In Christianity, anyway.  I have no fucking clue how Muslim women can ignore it.

In my old church the amount of respect you got directly related to how "holy" you were; how much Kool-Aid you drank.  There were some exceptions, of course.  The pastor's family could do no wrong no matter what they did.  Their respect was virtually automatic.  When one son slept with another man's wife he was teaching Sunday School to teens a month later, talking about how wrong it was to have sex out of marriage.  And, of course, how anyone can fall to temptation, but still be forgiven by God, the ONLY one who can judge you.  So from the bed of another man's wife he went right into a top position, even though he'd never been a teacher or preacher before (I think he is now).  As I recall the position was actually created for him.  Can't have the pastor's family looking bad.