Hell is supposed to be a place where you suffer for all eternity. What would this really be like?
Let’s look at this logically. There are two types of suffering physical and mental…or emotional.
And this suffering would be for eternity. Eternity is very, very long time. It is forever.
In order to survive for eternity, we could not be in our current physical state. In other words, our bodies could not survive for eternity. If we are lucky, we might live to be 90 years old. The longest any person has ever lived was Jeanne Calment of France
Who lived to be 122 years. But eternity is much much longer than that. Even 1 million years is nowhere close to eternity. A billion is not even close, 1 billion times a billion times a billion is not even close to forever. The point is our bodies could not survive for eternity.
In fact, no material thing can survive for eternity…and here’s why:
The universe is expanding at a very high rate (see my video on dark energy). Space is expanding and it is accelerating. At some point in the future, probably several trillion years from now, space will expand so much that even all the things in it will fly apart, including all molecules and atoms, and even the nuclei of atoms.
This means that no material thing will survive for eternity. So, what will survive?…probably pure energy will survive for all eternity.
So, since the requirement is that we must suffer for all eternity, we would need to be composed of pure energy.
Now, there is absolutely no physical harm that can come to pure energy…because physical harm just means that you are putting some kind of energy into it. if you try to put energy into energy…the energy will just grow more energetic. You will not harm the energy you began with. And you could not kill this energy – it would exist forever.
So physical harm will not work. Let’s look at mental harm. In order to put mental harm into this energy, we have to presume that we would be conscious. Perhaps we would exist as a packet of energy that is somehow conscious.
The question is, can mental or emotional harm come to pure conscious energy?
Mental harm is rooted in a perception of threat…either to you or someone you care about.
Could anything be a threat to pure energy?
I suppose if could happen…if the energy retained memories of its mortal past. But pure energy would be immortal. If it lived literally forever, would it continue to suffer because of its retained memories.
We humans continue to suffer from our memories sometimes for decades, maybe even a lifetime of say 90 years. If we lived to a thousand years, would our memories continue to haunt us. What if we lived for 10,000, or a million, or a billion years…would we continue to live in agony because of our memories.
I don’t think so, I think they would fade…eternity is very long time for us to heal.
So, what really is hell.
Well, if a god wanted us to suffer in a hell. He would make sure that we could feel physical pain and mental pain. And in a way, eternity for us mortals is the number of years we live on earth because a lifetime is the eternity of our consciousness.
So I would conclude that if there really is a hell, we are living in it.
Pretty sad huh? To realize that you may be living in the hell you always read about.
But I have some good news for you.
By analogy, if there really is a heaven…you are living in that, as well.
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