Munging Hell

I am one of those Christians who underwent a true “born again” experience. Surely the absolute worst kind of Christian. I had a life-changing experience that fundamentally changed the sort of person I was. You’re not going to de-convert me so please stop trying.

I could just jump right in and state my view on hell, but first I’d like to make some remarks that I think have a bearing on my view. I don’t know that it’s particularly possible to change someone’s mind about hell by just talking about hell in isolation.

I think the framework from which one views scripture plays a significant role in interpretation and my framework comes from a lengthy study of bible prophecy. It involved my transition from a belief in a “pre-tribulation rapture” where Jesus is going to return any day now (Dispensationalism) to a position known as Preterism, in which Jesus has already returned. This involved the abandonment of “literal” interpretations of certain key texts (e.g., the moon turning to blood). Not Literal. Jesus returning on a white horse with clothes soaked in blood and a sword coming out of his mouth. Not literal. The New Jerusalem. Not literal. And of course, there’s that (in)famous “lake of fire.” Also not literal.

So in a nutshell. That’s my take on hell.

It’s not a literal physical place with a literal physical flaming lake of fire that people will be tossed into to endure eternal agony.

Of course, the actual reasoning was not that simple. There were other passages that needed to be considered. But those are details.

So. I am not here to rescue you from hell.

272 thoughts on “Munging Hell

  1. petrushka,

    No, no, despairing pitiful atheist elder petrushka. Just speaking truth to deception. Elizabeth Liddle is an apostate. She has put herself on the throne of life.

    Don’t you think I’d embrace Lizzie should she ever rid herself of this self-idolatry? Her (chosen trajectory of) ‘studies’ have emptied her reality of grace, enchantment and life. What, if anything, could ever change that?

  2. Lizzie,

    Sure, we can artificially induce weird experiences, and then demonstrate that they were a neural artefact.

    I wasn’t actually referring to that. When I talk of “experiencing the divine presence” I’m talking much more about something like “the still small voice of calm” that we can be aware of when we put aside our immediate desires and impulses and tap into a more considered and other-centred sense of our options.

    I think OMagain’s larger point was that any experience that people tend to ascribe to divine causes will be demystified to a large extent when we can produce it at will through some artificial means.

    (Of course a true believer will argue that a fallible neural capacity for such experiences doesn’t mean that they are never authentic — but then he or she has to argue for why they sometimes are authentic and veridical.)

  3. Gregory:

    You have obviously become a god unto yourself, Ms. Lizzie. And you appear to live now in that self-centred abyss of hell.

    Speaking of hell, I don’t think anyone here, including the Christians, would be willing to trade places with you, Greg.

  4. Elizabeth: When I talk of “experiencing the divine presence” I’m talking much more about something like “the still small voice of calm” that we can be aware of when we put aside our immediate desires and impulses and tap into a more considered and other-centred sense of our options.

    I no longer call that “still small voice” the “voice of God” but it is no less real, and no less worth listening to now that I locate it our human capacity to sublimate the self into a wider sense of our place in the extended human and non-human universe.

    Nicely said. I have pretty much the same attitude. I call it “process-relational pantheism” — the evolving inter-relation of self and cosmos.

  5. keiths,

    You seem more self-absorbed than Lizzie. I don’t expect any Christians to wish to trade places. They are more deeply established than the ugly atheist self-indulgent with who they are.

  6. Gregory: No, no, despairing pitiful atheist elder petrushka. Just speaking truth to deception.

    Judging others, are we?

  7. Elizabeth,

    When I talk of “experiencing the divine presence” I’m talking much more about something like “the still small voice of calm” that we can be aware of when we put aside our immediate desires and impulses and tap into a more considered and other-centred sense of our options.

    That sounds like what we call “finding the listener” or “finding the witness” in my meditation practice. I don’t know if I’d describe it as “other-centred” but more letting go of ego and attachments. Are we referring to the same thing?

  8. Elizabeth:
    One thing a lot of atheists (mostly ex fundies I suspect) seem not to understand is that a lot of believers don’t think that “evidence” is even relevant to what they believe.

    So saying: your beliefs are not supported by evidence entirely misses the issue.The reason people believe in God, at least for a lot of people, is that they have experienced something that they perceive as divine.

    You aren’t going to make a convert, or a de-convert by pointing to the objective evidence for and against one scriptural interpretation rather than another. We believe in God because we experience divine presence.If wenever do that, we probably give up believing fairly early in life.But sometimes we change our perception of the experience – attribute it to a non-divine source.

    But you can’t do that from the outside.

    That’s a nice point, and one I’ve been trying to make to keiths in my conversations with him about what Charles Taylor calls “disclosive language.”

    However, there is still Clifford’s point, in “The Ethics of Belief”, that what we are responsible to others for what we believe because we act as we do in light of our beliefs. And that’s quite correct, for the most part. (William James’s voluntarism about belief, in “The Will to Believe”, actually assumes a lot of agreement with Clifford.)

    As I see it, the way to split the difference between Clifford and James — or, in contemporary terms, Charles Taylor and someone like Michael Lynch — is to say that we are epistemically answerable to others to the extent that our disclosive vocabularies are commended to others as regulating the conduct of all (whether institutionalized in law and policy or not, as in social expectations), except when the disclosive vocabulary of a faith community leads to the violation of human rights of some of its members.

  9. Gregory,

    You’re still bitter about us laughing at you? Let it go. Find your own personal science-starting backwards high-jump.

  10. Patrick:
    Elizabeth,

    That sounds like what we call “finding the listener” or “finding the witness” in my meditation practice.I don’t know if I’d describe it as “other-centred” but more letting go of ego and attachments.Are we referring to the same thing?

    Probably. Sounds similar anyway. I guess my point is that if that’s what you think of as being in the presence of the divine, arguments evidence for and against the existence of God are largely irrelevant. You have something in your experience that needs a signifier. Arguments that “there is no evidence for God” miss the mark, because you have plenty of evidence for the thing to which you have assigned that signifier.

  11. Kantian Naturalist: Nicely said. I have pretty much the same attitude. I call it “process-relational pantheism” — the evolving inter-relation of self and cosmos.

    Well, “pantheism” is the closest I’ve come to finding a label that sort-of-fits. Not sure what the qualifier is about!

  12. Gregory: You have obviously become a god unto yourself, Ms. Lizzie. And you appear to live now in that self-centred abyss of hell. Thanks to an educational pathway of music, architecture, psycho- for that damnable twist of fate?

    I don’t think that is true, Gregory. I certainly don’t think you have grounds for saying that it is.

  13. Elizabeth: Well, “pantheism” is the closest I’ve come to finding a label that sort-of-fits. Not sure what the qualifier is about!

    Well, since both self and cosmos undergo constant change and development, so too does the process which relates them to one another.

  14. In fact I’d say it was the reverse. The “still small voice” may be generated within my own head, but it’s the opposite of the voice of ego. I’d be a better person if I listened to it more often.

    (ETA, this was an after thought to my previous post, not a response to KN!)

  15. Gregory:
    petrushka,

    No, no, despairing pitiful atheist elder petrushka. Just speaking truth to deception. Elizabeth Liddle is an apostate. She has put herself on the throne of life.

    Don’t you think I’d embrace Lizzie should she ever rid herself of this self-idolatry? Her (chosen trajectory of) ‘studies’ have emptied her reality of grace, enchantment and life. What, if anything, could ever change that?

    Except that it hasn’t. The reality I see is full of grace, enchantment and life.

  16. Gregory:
    petrushka,

    No, no, despairing pitiful atheist elder petrushka. Just speaking truth to deception. Elizabeth Liddle is an apostate. She has put herself on the throne of life.

    Don’t you think I’d embrace Lizzie should she ever rid herself of this self-idolatry? Her (chosen trajectory of) ‘studies’ have emptied her reality of grace, enchantment and life. What, if anything, could ever change that?

    Except that it hasn’t. The reality I see is full of grace, enchantment and life.

    keiths:
    Lizzie,

    I think OMagain’s larger point was that any experience that people tend to ascribe to divine causes will be demystified to a large extent when we can produce it at will through some artificial means.[/quote]

    Well, I think I disagree with that “larger” point. I guess I don’t make a distinction between “natural” and “artificial” means. There might be a distinction, but I don’t think it’s between “natural” and “artificial” – possibly between experiences we own and those we do not.

    [quote](Of course a true believer will argue that a fallible neural capacity for such experiences doesn’t mean that they are never authentic — but then he or she has to argue for why they sometimes are authentic and veridical.)

    Can you clarify? Not sure how you are distinguishing between “authentic” and “veridical”, or perhaps what you mean by “veridical” in this context.

  17. Patrick: My issue, and this is much more of a problem in the U.S. than in England at the moment, is that the people who hold fundamentalist beliefs vote based on those beliefs. That results in laws that treat homosexuals unfairly, restrict reproductive rights, push sectarian claims into public school science classes, and on and on. If the fundamentalists want to have their private beliefs, I have no objection (although I’m often willing to have a debate with them). As soon as they use those beliefs to justify oppressing other people, they have an obligation to support their claims with real evidence.

    Exactly. That’s what I was getting at when I said that the real threat to democracy isn’t religion per se, but to religion + politics.

    (I’ve become much more attuned to this whole issue this summer — I finally read Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise, then Dobbs-Weinstein’s recent book on Spinoza’s influence on Marx, Benjamin, and Adorno. I chose to read Spinoza due to our conversations here, and I’m so thankful that I did!)

  18. Elizabeth,

    Probably. Sounds similar anyway. I guess my point is that if that’s what you think of as being in the presence of the divine, arguments evidence for and against the existence of God are largely irrelevant. You have something in your experience that needs a signifier. Arguments that “there is no evidence for God” miss the mark, because you have plenty of evidence for the thing to which you have assigned that signifier.

    I was with you up to the last bit. Just calling that state an “experience of god” doesn’t mean that’s what it is.

    The first time I had it was during a ten day meditation and transformation workshop that I wouldn’t have been ready for without several years of practicing different techniques beforehand. It’s a powerful experience, certainly, and one that has improved my life in many ways. However, it’s still a subjective mental state that people can be taught to achieve. Invoking an unevidenced god as an explanation is not warranted.

  19. Elizabeth,

    In fact I’d say it was the reverse. The “still small voice” may be generated within my own head, but it’s the opposite of the voice of ego.

    Exactly. It’s being grounded and really present, which allows compassion to manifest.

  20. Patrick: That sounds like what we call “finding the listener” or “finding the witness” in my meditation practice. I don’t know if I’d describe it as “other-centred” but more letting go of ego and attachments. Are we referring to the same thing?

    I suspect that a better theory of the subpersonal cognitive and affective mechanisms can explain how meditative practice transforms experience.

    There are some philosophers of mind who explore the relation between neuroscience and meditation: Alva Noe, Owen Flanagan, and a few others. I haven’t gotten into that literature myself but I find it fascinating and I’m looking forward to getting into it soon-ish.

  21. Patrick: The first time I had it was during a ten day meditation and transformation workshop that I wouldn’t have been ready for without several years of practicing different techniques beforehand. It’s a powerful experience, certainly, and one that has improved my life in many ways. However, it’s still a subjective mental state that people can be taught to achieve. Invoking an unevidenced god as an explanation is not warranted.

    I think that a great deal depends on whether the contemplative practitioner is invoking “God” in order to explain what is causing her experience or in order to describe her experience. The neuroscience of contemplative practice, which is still very much in its infancy, undermines the former but not the latter.

  22. Lizzie,

    Can you clarify? Not sure how you are distinguishing between “authentic” and “veridical”, or perhaps what you mean by “veridical” in this context.

    Truly caused by God. Like Patrick, I see no reason to attach the “divine” signifier to that particular subjective experience.

  23. Elizabeth,

    Apostasy? The ground(s) is that you’ve said as much yourself on your blog. What you ‘think you think’ otherwise is apparently just a pretend gloss.

    The hell of it is you’ve convinced yourself that you’re a ‘god,’ self-sufficient, autonomous (stop Deuteronomy), alone in an ultimately meaningless material-only, completely horizontal universe, that Buddha’s nirvana makes (exotic, ‘eastern’) sense to you (centripetal religion), that your wow-hot musical-architectural-psychology ‘mind’ has (evolved) outgrown Christianity, that ‘no salvation is needed please’ and that you’re simply ‘a good person for Eden’, etc. And of course your marriage wasn’t, nor were your children really blessed because there’s no such consequential thing as ‘blessing’ by an ‘ordained’ priest in a ‘skeptic’ atheist worldview. “It’s all just made up shit for faithless spineless freaks (and long live TSZ)!”

    “Spineless dreamers hide in churches”. – Keane

    Do you really not recognise the woolly apostate self-destructive thinking that you have demonstrated repeatedly at TAZ, Lizzie, for the hell of it?!

  24. Kantian Naturalist: I suspect that a better theory of the subpersonal cognitive and affective mechanisms can explain how meditative practice transforms experience.

    A speculative ditty I wrote many years ago:

    Each of us partakes of a variety of levels of self-sense. Ordinarily, human experience is existentially social and verbal in nature, experience that is shaped by the “location” of personhood in an historical and cultural context, built from that person’s unique history of environments, experiences, behaviors and relationships, through interaction with one’s care-givers and the embracing culture they convey. Further, the biology supporting this experience in “cultural space” is unique to the extent that it originates with the genetic and historical particulars of that individual’s life. These are the social and biological considerations of psychology, and are the most frequent referents of the Western concept, “self”.

    There are deeper, much older strata of self that have identity in all human beings, because rooted in structural features of the human brain that are deeply invariant across individuals. Some aspects of this deeply invariant human neurological organization are “recently” evolved and, therefore, organize experiences unique to human beings, while other structures are almost unimaginably ancient, organizing a base stratum of subjectivity that is common to all vertebrate animals, a transpersonal stratum that is vastly more ancient than the neurological powers that originated with the evolution of hominids.

    Evolutionary biology tells us that the essential axis of vertebrate organization, the axis of brain, spinal column and associated deployment of senses, reflects a body plan established approximately 5.7 million centuries ago. This axis defines the absolute core functioning of the vertebrate life-machinery, a core responsible for governance of the internal living milieu, regulation of respiration and heart action, and the expression of drives and appetites.

    Similarly, the integration of sense information and the coordination of volitional behavior follow neural pathways that are organized through a biology of awareness and behavior that is equally ancient, having originated with this 570 million year old body plan.

    These ancient platforms of experience and behavior lay down in each of us a deep stratum of experiencing self that I call the “chordate self”, a structure of awareness that originated with the evolution of the chordate body plan.

    In short, underlying the psychological self is a deeper, more ancient chordate self in which we all silently partake, a self that is profoundly other-than-human, utterly non-verbal and shared with countless other vertebrate species. The Chordate Self.

    Spiritual endeavors, those that invite widened awareness as a means to understanding, direct attention away from the inherently limiting particulars of individual history and away from the talkative narration of recent brain structures, to an essence of human awareness and human circumstance that is independent of personal history. The resulting profoundly transpersonal experiences, experiences that are fundamentally “neurohistorical” in nature, are in reality an experience of an ancient, transcendent non-verbal chordate self, refracted through the “enchanted loom” of more recent neocortical self-awareness and verbal narration that initiate and guide the spiritual effort.

    It is interesting to consider some aspects of eastern discipline in this light, such as Kundalini Yoga, with its interest in the deployment of energy and experience throughout the spinal column, essentially an exploration of one’s phenomenological roots in chordate neural organization. Meditation of all varieties tends to place one’s experience more in synchrony with transpersonal elements of self that are irrelevant to personal history, equating these neurohistorical transpersonal experiences with experience of divinity. In a sense this may not be mistaken, finding in these experiences a record of contingent evolution over very deep time, our true “creator”.

    Similarly, LSD and similar substances become an occasion for a kind of neurohistorical sacrament. Whatever consciousness is, and whatever new ontological and phenomenological dimensions are drawn into existence through the addition of LSD to the human brain, nothing could more clearly demonstrate the neural basis of consciousness than it’s profound alteration through the insinuation of tiny amounts of such a simple substance. Thus altered, one possesses a brain of a new kind, capable of experiences associated with this new sort of brain. As a new individual, one is free to directly experience one’s neurohistorical, chordate self apart from the vagaries of individual personal history, then re-enter that familiar psychological self able to refract everyday experience through the lenses of memory of this neurohistorical sacrament.

  25. Elizabeth:
    OK, I think I get it.“I will return” means “I will return to judge” and the evidence for the “return to judge” is the destruction of Jerusalem “as judgement.”

    Yes. Thank you.

    There are numerous indicators in the text to this effect, many of them using symbolism. In the Hebrew scriptures God came on/in/with clouds in judgment. It’s not saying God was visible, in fact quite the opposite. The very idea of clouds indicates hidden from physical sight.

    But more important to the question of hell is the symbolism of fire. Where, outside the gospels, do we hear of hell? And inside the gospels, what is the context in which the language of hell does appear?

    Again, thank you for asking. I don’t believe in a literal hell, the language is symbolism. It’s odd that people might think I had something to hide, or some reason to be ashamed of my views about hell. Perhaps those people should look at how they choose to interact with others.

    I’d really like to keep this thread focused on hell. I just wanted to lay a background for understanding why I have the view on hell that I do have. It’s not simplistic. I’ll look at how much interest there is in “the second coming” and think about starting a new thread if it seems worthwhile. Assuming Reciprocating Bill and OMagain don’t veto it.

    Hounded if I don’t get into debates involving the bible, hounded if I do. But still, it’s nice to be among friends. 🙂

    cheers

  26. Kantian Naturalist,

    I suspect that a better theory of the subpersonal cognitive and affective mechanisms can explain how meditative practice transforms experience.

    My personal interests run more to the cognitive science realm. I like playing with my mind this way because it sometimes gives insights into how my thinking works.

    There are some philosophers of mind who explore the relation between neuroscience and meditation: Alva Noe, Owen Flanagan, and a few others. I haven’t gotten into that literature myself but I find it fascinating and I’m looking forward to getting into it soon-ish.

    You could even try experiencing it and writing about it yourself. 😉

  27. Elizabeth: One thing a lot of atheists (mostly ex fundies I suspect) seem not to understand is that a lot of believers don’t think that “evidence” is even relevant to what they believe.

    Well, I tried the evidence for hell approach with keiths, he didn’t seem to care for it. We can’t smell burning flesh, therefore hell does not exist. I thought it was right up his alley.

    Evidence is important to what I believe. Else I don’t see what the point was of all the study I did. All the questioning I did. The stereotype of religious believer as fundamentalist who never questions their views has no relevance to me. I even questioned whether or not I was a believer and concluded that I was not.

    Now for someone who grew up always believing they were a Christian, just how radical is that?

    Bruce Jenner, otoh, looked at the evidence and in spite of the evidence decided he was not a man. How irrational is that?

  28. OMagain: The only way that people who have had a divine experience will be convinced it’s solely in their heads is when we get to the point we can turn such experiences on and off at will.

    You could just kill us. Oh, wait. That’s been tried.

  29. Gregory: Don’t you think I’d embrace Lizzie should she ever rid herself of this self-idolatry? Her (chosen trajectory of) ‘studies’ have emptied her reality of grace, enchantment and life. What, if anything, could ever change that?

    A belief in a literal hell and eternal conscious torment?

    Perhaps i should be preaching hell fire and damnation. I mean if it works, why not?

    Why can’t Christians be pragmatists too?

  30. Elizabeth: I guess my point is that if that’s what you think of as being in the presence of the divine, arguments evidence for and against the existence of God are largely irrelevant.

    All of us, at all times, are in the presence of the divine. We can contemplate that, and be humbled, and let it change us. Or we can pretend it just isn’t true.

    Atheists like to fool themselves into thinking they have taken the hard road. Nothing could be further from the truth.

  31. A thread on hell. keiths literally begged for it. You’d think it was really important!

    Have I missed something? Has keiths had something relevant to say about hell in this thread?

  32. poor keiths. no bite. not even a bark. having a bad keiths day?

    Why are you not all over my view of hell, telling everyone how it is all wrong and self-contradictory and the exact opposite of what scripture actually says and all that?

    You know. typical keiths.

    I put forth what I believe about hell and why. And now you pretend like I haven’t. The great keiths. You know so much about the subject. Do tell.

    If there was a hell, you wouldn’t even qualify.

  33. Kantian Naturalist:
    Reciprocating Bill,

    The Chordate Self. That is seriously awesome. Can I steal that? Or is it published anywhere?

    Not published – it originated as a personal musing I arranged into bits in 1992. If you really want to use it, we can figure out a way for you to cite it.

  34. Mung:

    A thread on hell. keiths literally begged for it.

    I’ve scrubbed the thread, start to finish. But all we’ve learned from you is that you don’t advocate a rigidly literal reading of the bible, and that you don’t believe in literal hellfire/a lake of fire and castings therein.

    OK, how WOULD you characterize hell?

    Hell, you brought it up.

  35. Why are you not all over my view of hell, telling everyone how it is all wrong and self-contradictory and the exact opposite of what scripture actually says and all that?

    Because you haven’t told us what your view is, doofus. I can’t evaluate it until you reveal it to us.

    All you’ve told us so far is that you aren’t a literalist and that you don’t think hell is “a literal physical place with a literal physical flaming lake of fire that people will be tossed into to endure eternal agony.”

    What do you believe about hell, OldMung?

    P.S. What have you done with NewMung? Did you strangle him in his sleep?

  36. Ah yes. Reciprocating Bill. If there was anyone who reciprocated less than keiths you would perhaps be that person.

    Sorry, but I would not want to mistakenly infer that you actually believed that you had any knowledge at all of what you are talking about.

  37. Are we having fun yet?

    keiths was hell-bent on exposing something. God only knows what. Demand after demand that I set out my view on hell. Complaint after complaint that I refused to do so. But then I did. Talk about anti-climatic.

    And we’re still awaiting a response from keiths to the questions he was asked.

    Hey, keiths, what were your beliefs about hell when you decided to abandon Christianity (in your early teens) and how did they factor into your decision if at all?

    If your beliefs about hell did factor into your decision, were you aware at the time that Christians disagree among themselves about hell?

    How much time did you actually spend researching the subject before making up your mind about it?

  38. keiths: Because you haven’t told us what your view is, doofus. I can’t evaluate it until you reveal it to us.

    That’s a lie. I have told you what my view is.

    All you’ve told us so far is that you aren’t a literalist and that you don’t think hell is “a literal physical place with a literal physical flaming lake of fire that people will be tossed into to endure eternal agony.”

    That’s my view on hell. Which means that you know you were lying when you stated that I haven’t told you what my view is. Proud of yourself little man?

    Like I said. You’re not even a candidate for hell.

  39. keiths: The sensible conclusion is that the prophecy failed.

    Subjective keiths.

    I say it’s not meant to be interpreted literally, you say it is.

    But when I say language about hell isn’t meant to be interpreted literally, you claim I haven’t said anything that you can “evaluate.”

    But you’re the rational one.

  40. Mung:

    Sorry, but I would not want to mistakenly infer that you actually believed that you had any knowledge at all of what you are talking about.

    What I am talking about are your characterizations of hell on this thread. Anyone can see that you’ve repeated essentially one negative characterization (there is no lake of fire, etc.), as well as some general statements rejecting literalism in your interpretation of the Bible generally.

    Absent are any positive characterizations of hell – descriptions of attributes, features, functions, etc. you DO ascribe to hell.

    But, like I said, you brought it up.

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