Like Huxley after him, Dante made the first circle sound somewhat appealing. No doubt the food there could be much better, but the attraction would be the company, not the cuisine. (somewhat like Peter Wimsey visiting the Soviet Club, where his host tells him "...the cooking isn’t very good here, but the subscription’s so small, you see"?)
I've been reading Paradise Lost and Satan gives off major "sexy villain" vibes. The hosts of hell remain strong and defiant even while in their realm of eternal torment - "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" and all that. Meanwhile heaven is pretty bland and the angels come of as a bunch of milquetoasts.
I don't know enough about Milton to know if he intended to write a cautionary tale vs. an interesting tail, but I can imagine readers thinking "f** it, I'd rather hang out with the cool kids"
Just to stir the pot and throw C.S. Lewis into the mix [0]:
> To admire Satan, then, is to give one's vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography. Yet the choice is possible. Hardly a day passes without some slight movement towards it in each one of us. That is what makes Paradise Lost so serious a poem. The thing is possible, and the exposure of it is resented. Where Paradise Lost is not loved, it is deeply hated. As Keats said more rightly than he knew, 'there is death' in
Milton.
> We have all skirted the Satanic island closely enough
to have motives for wishing to evade the full impact of the
poem. For, I repeat, the thing is possible ; and after a certain point it is prized. Sir Willoughby may be unhappy, but he wants to go on being Sir Willoughby. Satan wants to go on being Satan. That is the real meaning of his choice 'Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n.' Some, to the very end, will think this a fine thing to say ; others will think that it fails to be roaring farce only because it spells agony. On the level of literary criticism the matter cannot be argued further. Each to his taste.
That part has always bugged me. The Lucifer is always depicted from the Bible's point of view. There are no Gospels Of Hell that give Satan's viewpoint.
And the Bible insists that only its words are true. You must not trust anything else (sorry, too lazy to find the verses right now).
For me, this sounds exactly like every propaganda outlet (and I read a lot of "Pravda" for historical research).
I had a former coworker (who sometimes is on this site, maybe he'll even see this comment and know I'm talking about him) who argued that Lucifer was essentially the same character as Prometheus in Greek mythology, which gives a bit of an alternative perspective to him. The idea was that both figures brought knowledge to humans against the wishes of the higher power(s) and were punished for it. If you view it through that lens, he's more of a tragic hero for humanity against an authority that presumed to know better than we did, which would explain why the narrative from the other perspective portrays him as reckless and full of hubris.
I don't particularly believe that either Satan or Prometheus existed as literal beings at any point, but I do find the idea of their stories being different perspectives of the same tale fascinating.
The difference being, that Prometheus' actions brought humanity fire and with it the power to both cook and fight against the darkness of night, while Lucifer brought knowledge of pain, lust, pride, and gluttony (among others). Only by leaving out what Lucifer actually brought to Adam and Eve can the comparison really work.
> while Lucifer brought knowledge of pain, lust, pride, and gluttony (among others)
Contrast these concepts with that of the prodigal son—an adherent who strays and then returns to the flock is more valued than one that never left. Why? Is it possible that in revealing these other aspects of humanity our "connection to god" could be made stronger?
Another thought that occurred to me is that life in the garden would have been painfully dull. If there is no pain, no striving, what does it mean to find pleasure in something? Similar to playing a video game with god-mode cheats enabled, it quickly becomes boring after the power fantasies are played out.
I always thought this.
Same for the fall, which was the consuming of the Forbidden Fruit. For some reason, God(s) did not want us thinking that hard.
When I see the world, sometimes, I tend to agree…
> “The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,
While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,
And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods
Like horses, and cattle like cattle... ―ΞὁΚ
>That part has always bugged me. The Lucifer is always depicted from the Bible's point of view. There are no Gospels Of Hell that give Satan's viewpoint.
Satan, as a figure was created (and described) by Christians. So it can't be anything but what it says on the tin.
It's not a real person whose biography they could have lied about - it's a creation they made of words, and those particular words define him.
You could reject their whole teachings and universe, but you can't really say "but what if Satan is actually good?", while accepting he exists. If he was good he just wouldn't be Satan. So it makes as little sense as asking "what if Moby Dick was really a rabbit?" - when Moby Dick only existed as a literary whale Melville conjured.
Similarly, as much as Satan is anything, and is useful for anything, it's for embodying the specific character he was described to be with the specific backstory.
You could write an alternate Satan (like the gnostic gospels do or Milton does), but that's fan-fiction then. The rabbit version of Moby Dick, not the "true" Moby Dick.
> That's why it's important to highlight the inconsistencies in the very logic of the religion.
I strongly disagree. Important towards what end? And if that end is getting people to be less religious, I think this is one of the least effective ways to make that point. Trying to dissuade a religious person in the basis of the logical inconsistencies in their religion is the le atheist approach, and seems to be most compelling to the agnostic and atheist crowds.
It is said: According to [Jubilees], Hebrew is the language of Heaven, and was originally spoken by all creatures in the Garden, animals and man; however, the animals lost their power of speech when Adam and Eve were expelled.
To which I respond: "Silflay hraka, u embleer rah!"
When I hear "chuffed" I think of how cockatoos put their feathers up over their lower beak when they're pleased with themselves (or sleepy); you can see Ngarritj and the others do this several times in that clip.
Well done .. although Yolngu has to be the easiest (and not that easy at all) to pick up rough translations on the web - there are many* that don't feature at all given they're oral with no alphabet, phonetics came late with the missionairies and linguists.
As the spelling "Yolŋu" attests, I guess IPA goes a long way towards allowing dictionaries for non-alphabetic languages. (It's well known that the polynesians lost the t/k distinction moving eastward, in between settling Tahiti and Hawai'i, but at one point it occurred to me that missionaries moving westward might also have gotten better at transcription?)
When I was into The Expanse's Lang Belta (a creole), I was following BBC Pidgin: https://www.bbc.com/pidgin to get some feel for the possible antecedents. (UK:"Most read" = Pidgin:"De one we dem de read well well") Just to complicate things, what gets called "Hawai'ian Pidgin" is actually a creole as well, eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R15IQAVT7Rg (Is the use of "Aunty" parallel between this and Oz cultures?)
I'm just a fan. Thanks very much for the pointers into a new set of cultures* for me; up until now I've been enjoying cultural appropriations (consider the platypus!) in the other direction, eg polka acca dacca: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_gtGfAail4 (and songlines I only discovered today while trying to figure out what the Oz equivalent of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuksuk might be)
* so far these mobs have been using a basketball court as an impromptu community centre/dance floor, which I guess they share even with very highly produced numbers, like "Baby One More Time"? As basketball had yet to be invented, earlier germans contented themselves with dancing around lime trees: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanzlinde
"Satan, as a figure was created (and described) by Christians."
Satan is initially described with his methods in Genesis, a Jewish work. Evil people often use the same ones today, esp in advertising and politics. Analysis of his methods below:
Later, Satan is in Job and Zechariah 3. He's accusing people hoping that they get taken down. By Genesis, we don't need to know anything more about Satan other than to avoid or resist him. By Job and Zechariah, we know he's a consistent, mortal enemy of humanity across many generations. God's Word reveals more later but not much. Why not?
God's Word is about His relationship with and redemption of man through Jesus Christ. The books all combine into one story about how God saves us from ourselves for Himself by His grace and Christ's death. With that writing focus, he barely mentions most things in nature (eg angels). Same for most of the sciences. Why would God dig deep into a subordinate enemy in a book meant to glorify God?
The other angle is, once forgiven by Christ, God's Word is training for righteousness. We're to focus on loving and imitating Christ, and loving and serving each other. Much of what's in the Word supports those goals in different ways. Reading about lying angels that hate us wouldn't help at all. If we bump into them, invoking Jesus' name is all it takes to deal with them. He'll finish them off later.
I interpreted Lewis' statement as claiming Milton's Lucifer, within the story exists in a cloud of his own lies and propaganda. (As opposed to labeling Milton's work as lies and propaganda in the real world.)
Just for contrast, imagine a Lucifer-character that said: "Yeah, we didn't part on good terms, and I dispute a lot of what's said about me... But I've learned to accept things I can't change and I invite you to watch and judge me by my works."
There were plenty of Gnostic works during the early church. There were certainly some sub-sect or heresy that gave a positive depiction of the other side.
> The Lucifer is always depicted from the Bible's point of view.
To the best of my limited understanding, very little is said of Satan, at all, in either the OT or the NT. What little is said, doesn't actually plainly state that the Serpent from the Garden of Eden is Satan, or that this is the same entity as Lucifer (or any other angel, fallen or otherwise).
Satan, as in the Christian Devil, is very much a thing of the Judeo-Christian mythology, the stuff that didn't make it into any of the books. Not much written down about it (think of what it might mean to be caught with such books?), just stories passed down orally, maybe in whispers.
> And the Bible insists that only its words are true. You must not trust anything else
I'm an atheist myself, but this seems like a particularly asinine interpretation of anything you might find in the Christian Bible.
I think you're all missing a conundrum that has some similarities to those we find in computer science. If you have two or more invisible, incorporeal entities, one or more of which may lie and be the impostor of the other, how can you determine who is who? What if some or all have multiple names? Can you even determine if there are multiple entities, perhaps you are mistaken and there's only one? For instance, when Mormons or Muslims say they worship the same deity as Christians, why should their opinion be taken at face value (regardless of whether you are a believer or atheist)?
If you have invisible, incorporeal entity G, and invisible, incorporeal entity H, both of which are infinitely perfect and not inferior in dignity to anything else, then by the rule of indirect equality:
x=y ≡ (∀z. z≤x ≡ z≤y)
G is H.
(or at least isomorphic to H, if one allows one's deities to merely be preordered instead of partially ordered. However, in this setting one would be unable to distinguish even a single religion's deity from Her identical twin Latonya, which probably leads to greater theological problems than it solves...)
Per the chain above, if you also exist in some state where you are effectively, permanently downhill in computation, then entities which exist at some state upward are "effectively" indistinguishable, no matter their relative "up".
In Greek theology, all "deities" are effectively "up" and normal humans have very little way of telling which entity is "really" in charge. To much information disparity. Zeus, Hera? Hephaestus? Has it already done the entire Titans storyline again with Zeus, and humans don't even know?
Below some resolution, the lines on the chip are indistinguishable from a pixel. [1] Most creatures need significant advancement to comprehend anything other than "glowing texture."
> ...done the entire Titans storyline again with Zeus, and humans don't even know?
Ancient Mythology theorists suggest it has been done, with the advent of the "Age of Pisces", and humans have bumper stickers to attest to it. Could it be true?
> normal humans have very little way of telling which entity is "really" in charge
The rivalries (enacted with human and demigod pawns) in the Iliad suggest that even the Olympians didn't know they had a King and instead acted as an (infighting and infidelitous?) autonomous collective.
"You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just 'cause you got your dad to chunder all your siblings!"
(note that a tradition of apothanatophagy has been carried over from the Olympian age into the Galilean)
It is not even necessary to think of it like that. Judeo-Christians (including Mormons) and Muslims claim to worship the god of the same figure called Abraham/Ibrahim of Canaan, who had sons named Isaac and Ishmael/Ismail. According to the Judeo-Christians, Isaac had a son named Jacob whose sons formed the twelve tribes of Israel, while according to Islam, Ishmael/Ismail was the ancestor of Muhammad.
It's interesting to me that Lewis is so engaged with it. I read Paradise Lost as a sort of fanfic. Milton does not claim to be a prophet or that it is some literal representation of heaven and hell. Within the book Satan is a fictional character with the same sort of appeal as Walter White or the Joker or Severus Snape. They seem cool as long as you don't think about it too deeply.
But I don't mean this as a criticism of Lewis who I adore. I'll have to read his Preface, since I'm sure they'll deepen my understanding.
Circling back to partially-relatable depictions of devilry, Lewis' The Screwtape Letters has it's own mix in the eponymous author Screwtape.
I recommend it even to the non-religious since many of the human errors/temptations it discusses can still be understood through an agnostic lens. For example, one doesn't have to believe whispering devils are involved in order to believe in in/out-group thinking, inferiority complexes, procrastination, etc.
> Circling back to partially-relatable depictions of devilry, Lewis' The Screwtape Letters has it's own mix in the eponymous author Screwtape.
But it's not quite the same with Screwtape, he represents a demon (fallen angel), who is sort of tip-toeing around ideas that, if he were to stumble even an inch closer, he might decide that he is actually among the "bad guys", and reform. He belongs to a tyrannical and diabolical organization that recognizes the dangers of such tip-toeing. It's been many years since I read it, but doesn't his protege end up turning him in to their secret police?
This is a counter-reversal of what he suggests Milton does with his poem.
> tip-toeing around ideas that, if he were to stumble even an inch closer, he might decide that he is actually among the "bad guys", and reform
I know Screwtape is concerned with not spooking the mortal target with unnecessary moral quandaries:
> You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
However I never got the impression Screwtape was afraid of some kind of... moral whiplash on his own account. Rather, I think he was more concerned with accidentally running afoul of the Lowerarchy's official dogma. I infer that it--like The Party in 1984--is a self-perpetuating system where no participant can do anything except oppress and predate on one another. (Hellish, indeed.)
> I hope, my dear boy, you have not shown my letters to anyone. Not that it matters of course. Anyone would see that the appearance of heresy into which I have fallen is purely accidental. By the way, I hope you understood, too, that some apparently uncomplimentary references to Slubgob were purely jocular. I really have the highest respect for him. And, of course, some things I said about not shielding you from the authorities were not seriously meant. You can trust me to look after your interests. But do keep everything under lock and key.
> a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking
“The mind is its own place and, in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.” That satanic line alone should be cause for reflection. How often human beings shack themselves up in their delusions where they feel they can reign, because pride looks upon service with disgust, screaming "Non serviam!"
Of course, cut off from the truth, we are cut off from being, and thus condemn ourselves to insanity, to rot in the noxious vapors and mirages of our decaying souls. And it is here, through this void, that we embrace the demonic and prepare ourselves for enslavement to the demonic.
I guess almost all (including Hindus, Buddhists, etc.; what about Taoists or Confucians?) would agree, with the exception of christian and muslim believers in predestination?
Confucians are far more concerned with behaving properly in this life than in wondering what may happen after; Taoists nominally believe in the possibility of immortality, but again brought about by human agency.
So ~1/5 of the world believes "you don't make your own heaven and hell", and the remaining ~4/5 believes in agency, whether connected to an afterlife or not.
(as far as the conflict between omniscience and free will goes, that page says that the prophet [pbuh] counselled: don't delve too greedily and too deep)
There's a quote from Zach Weinersmith (author, cartoonist) during a podcast a while back that stuck with me about Milton's depiction of Satan:
"I will say Milton is great and readable as long as Satan is talking. [...] the joke on Milton is that he was the greatest gift to Satan in history. He did everything short of giving him a two-headed guitar. It is just like, Satan is so cool." [0]
I highly recommend giving it a listen (and Econtalk more generally!) if this is something that interests you.
It's his married name, and would conventionally be hyphenated, but he decided not to (I think because he thought it would be funnier without the hyphen).
> The hosts of hell remain strong and defiant even while in their realm of eternal torment ... Meanwhile heaven is pretty bland and the angels come of as a bunch of milquetoasts.
That reminds me of the observation that happy lives make boring stories, so fiction tends towards showing dysfunctional characters, awful environments, or both.
I believe it was Tolstoy who said something to the effect of "Happy families are boring, because they're all the same. Unhappy families are interesting because they're all different."
“Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.”
And we see it on HN itself, there are many "very good" stories that get posted that get a lot of upvotes but few comments because really all there is to say is 'very good'.
But stories about bad things happening get thousands of comments.
Also what we perceive as "heroic" especially in a fantasy/super-hero context, tends to ultimately be status quo preserving, which frequently means the villains tends to be the "cool" "disruptive" characters, and if the world isn't sufficiently perfect then it's easy for some people to start believing that any disruption is justified.
Could you expand on why you think living healthily doesn't increase your lifespan?
Untreated STDs can cause infertility, sexual dysfunction, cancer, brain damage, and death. No method of preventing them is 100% effective besides abstinence or having sex with a small amount of partners that you trust not to lie about being clean.
Drugs carry the risk of overdosing, and for those that even just use semi regularly they still reduce lifespan.
Eating excess calories makes you fat which hugely increases your risk of having a heart attack among other health issues. Even if you control your calories, eating processed food makes you more likely to die early or develop a debilitating disease.
This is all very common sense about how to live longer, if you think you've cracked the code and any of the above is wrong please explain.
I highly recommend you read some William Blake. He was Milton's greatest critic (but a great admirer too):
"The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it."
--The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
“You see, the thing about heaven is that heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in heaven. Like, well, singing, talking to God, watering pot plants.” — The Black Adder.
In Samuel Clemens' posthumously published work there's a story in which heaven has wings and harps, because all the newbies expect them, but after you get bored with that it's perfectly ok to return them and go do something more fun.
There must be some psychic link, I was tempted to quote Biggie in my post. I kept waiting for Satan stand up in front of his crew and say "Raise your hands in the air if youse a true player"
I recently picked up Dante and enrolled in an online course. Inferno and Purgatorio: no problem. I wouldn't say "couldn't put it down" but it was no problem to read. I also watched the Ken Burns special.
I have heard Milton's work described as an expression of a spirit of Protestant satanism. That is, Milton, by virtue of the rebelliousness of Protestantism, to which he subscribed, is accused of being satanic.
God's Word says Satan is permitted to run this world, encouraging us to think his way, until judgement comes later. He does it by appealing to their sinful desires. Our own selfishness does the rest.
"in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them" (2 Cor. 4:4)
So, let's contrast the truth. In my other comment, I mentioned what the sinful kids and Satan are destined for. It's not pretty.
What about heaven? In Genesis 2, before the Fall, man had fellowship with God, hung out with each other, did work, and rested. God said all good things are a gift from Him. If it's not sinful, it might exist in heaven. For its nature, fruit of the Spirit is "love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control." So, imagine all human activities that are fun and embodied with those virtues. That's Heaven.
We have a taste of it here on Earth in the Church. We mostly go about our day, do our jobs, spend time with our families, and enjoy our hobbies. In church service, we worship God together and serve others in love. In spare time, we hang out, enjoy good food, go on vacation together, play games, share stories, etc. The problems in churches come from our sinful natures which God will eliminate (called glorification) once our time here is up.
So, one place has us separated from everyone, in a lake of fire, and burning non-stop. Satan will be there, too. The other is every good thing you can imagine on Earth done in a better way, other things you can't imagine, your friends there, and the very presence of God giving you fullness of joy. Christ and His Heaven are the obvious choice. Anyone suffering here on Earth are also told to keep their eye on the prize which is our future inheritance.
While I will Vouch for your right to say that, and I find the professional atheists like Dawkins to be a bunch of a-holes:
Personally, I think that when you're dead, you're just dead. Like sleep, except you don't wake up or dream. When your neurons are shutting off, they probably put on one hell of a show for you. Just like the show they put on that convinces you that "consciousness" is a real thing, and you have a "soul." It's not and you don't.
But like I said, I think what you believe is probably good for humans, on the whole, and I don't condemn it at all.
I appreciate your kindness. The brain dying might indeed put on some kind of show. Having had an out of body experience (i.e. electrocution), I'll confirm it does make people open to an afterlife. Then, I was quite opposed to religion later. Then, God's Word proved true, it claims these other things, and so I have to believe it over my personal opinion. Our faith is about objective truth after all.
Getting to the root, the Word can be confirmed by internal knowledge or outside evidence. Most come to faith by God drawing us in as we hear or read His Word with a humble, seeking attitude. His sheep hear His voice. I recommend starting in John for that while asking who Jesus is and what we must do.
For external evidence, the Word was confirmed in more ways than most things people believe. It's more rational than many beliefs. I summarized that here:
I've prayed that you find Him through any of these methods. That He also helps you better face anything in your life, too. I'm glad God has already shown you the goodness in what He does.
I have no interest in debating this with you. However, I do have a suggestion, which Gary Luckenbaugh (not an HN'er, I don't think) took from me, and is delighted he did:
Start a Substack channel. It can be free (like mine). Gary has one on the BASIC language, and he's thrilled when hundreds of people all over the world read his posts. On HN you don't know how many even saw your post, but on Substack you will.
You'll probably find that there are already a lot of religious channels, but who knows -- maybe yours will stand out!
I appreciate the tip. I might do that sometime as a YouTube alternative. I don’t really try to promote myself or anything, though.
In the Great Commission, Jesus commanded believers to take His message to the world so they won’t perish. He and the Apostles always went wherever people were already gathering or to those unreached. Likewise, I go to places with people from many walks of life to meet them, learn from them, bless them, and share Christ, too.
HN is quite a blessing because I get to see most of that happen here. Except for Christ and His Word which I talk about when the occasion arises. I really do enjoy meeting all of you. :)
AlbertCory, I appreciate your frankness. I also doubt that any sensory or neural show could prove the existence of the supernatural; but I still believe in the supernatural, merely on the grounds that the natural exists, and I want to tell you why.
You know how the very consistency of the rules of the material world seem to outlive the world itself? The fact that 1 and 1 are 2 outlives the fact that a certain bottle of beer and another bottle of beer are two bottles of beer. Even if I found a single receptacle that could hold all the beer (mmm), 1 and 1 would remain 2, the fact altogether out of my reach to alter.
Similarly the pecking order in a chicken coop won't last longer than the chickens and the coop, and it can change besides—but 1 always comes before 2, and 2 before 3, and no other numbers will displace that order even if you shoved another chicken between two others near the front of the line every other second. You may destroy the line of chickens, but you'll never shake 6 off 5's tail.
The faculty by which you and I recognize these obvious truths—well, what kind of stuff is it? Do we "sense" the very number 1 in all its splendor with our mere ears or somehow conjure it up from a multiplicity of neurons? or do we merely suppose or opine, rather than know, that the numbers take a particular order? Of course not! Rather, we find out. We label the numbers arbitrarily to keep easy track of them, and then we count them: we see where they'll take us. We're along for the ride, passengers on someone else's train, one that can take you right outside the universe to the mysterious land of D'oh—a land, you might say, more real than our native one.
Now, the faculty by which we recognize that numbers are always prior to material nature—since nature plays by number's rules but never the other way round—what will we call it? I call it reason, anyway. It's notable among our faculties for comprehending eternal things like number, as naturally as anything else.
So commonly a human being will prefer pure numbers to any sloppy instantiation of them. Bees make hexagonal honeycombs out of natural habit because the shape of a hexagon works well; a human, however, contemplates the pure hexagon and tells its ratios and properties to other humans on HN because the numbers are just that cool, hang usefulness. This is one thing that divides humans from the mere animals.
From all this it seems to me more plain that the spiritual human soul (the part of the human that touches or is itself in eternity) exists than that Mumbai is a real city, or even that the earth is a geoid and not a perfect sphere (though I believe these things also). And anyway, I use mine every day. I should know.
Hey, I think I read that back in high school! Guess I'm a plagiarist.
More recently I've been reading some pre-Socratic excerpts with friends, and some Augustine—On Free Choice of the Will and De Musica—on my own. De Musica I'm working through a second time, this time in the original language. I've never been more motivated to become fluent in Latin in my life.
> So, one place has us separated from everyone, in a lake of fire, and burning non-stop. Satan will be there, too.
This is a curious statement, as the subject is Dante, and the "Inferno" shows us not a huge lake of fire with all the damned burning within it, but rather a diverse Hell in which one's torment reflects one's vices. This has a theological resonance, as the very nature of Hell is first and foremost the fulfillment of one's corrupt and sinful desires, it is God letting you have exactly what you want, your dark little heart's desire (the logical outcome of having been created a free being; Matthew 6:21[0] captures this quite nicely). When you die, your orientation becomes fixed forever, and if it isn't on the Summum Bonum, the Highest Good, the only thing capable of satisfying Man's heart, then it will be some lesser real or apparent good. This is the consummation of utter hopelessness and despair.
And what is at the very center of Hell in the "Inferno" if not a lake of fire? An absolutely frigid place, a frozen lake, with Satan lodged permanently in the ice up to his waist, with every flap of his wings making the place even colder. Fire is actually a better metaphor for God (even when we speak of the fire of God's just wrath, a kind of friction resulting from our evil will colliding with the Will of God). If God is the Logos, and Logos is like fire, and God so often is represented by fire, by its dynamism, then the opposite is the lifelessness of sin, a world of ice and death, a cold void.
There is of course the old rec.humour.funny posting, that was far earlier a humorous journal article from the 1970s, that demonstrates with Biblical references and basic chemistry and physics that Heaven is a lot hotter than Hell.
Re the subject. On HN, we often discuss the article, other content related to the article, and peripheral points. Many often prefer the original source over adaptations, too. In this case, I referenced “God’s Word” to make peripheral points about the original source material instead of Dante’s own work.
So, you’re certainly right. I went to a factual source with evidence I linked elsewhere instead of the fictional work. That source said you and I would be in Hell if we didn’t take steps to avoid it. A critical topic that gets no attention here. So, I’m covering it.
We can know it will be fire, not ice, since the God who created Hell talked about it so much during His time here:
It’s not some consequence of our thoughts or feelings or symbolism. It’s an actual place… an objective punishment…. justice and wrath… our sovereign ruler pours out on His enemies. It has a number of descriptions that make us wonder how literal or symbolic they are. While none are ice, many talk about flame, lake of fire, and smoke in quite a literal way.
Far as Satan, God’s Word says he goes into the lake of fire at the appointed time for his defeat. Revelation 20 captures much of the judgement of Satan and people without Christ’s forgiveness:
One other thing. God’s wrath is described as a consuming fire. The book of Nahum is all about how horrifying it is. Ice, or deadly cold, makes your body slow down until you nod off dead. Fire wakes you up to fully alert as you scream running away from it. If your nerves and organs were indestructible, then you’d be stuck with that maximum moment of pain every second of your life. Hell might be eternal fire because it’s more horrifying that way.
