Why has Hell been reduced to a metaphor

[Sha'irullah]

Like most atheists, I grew up in the kind of straightjacketed religion you espouse! The only way to keep your kind of religion in control of large populations is through intimidation and the threat of violence for anyone who tries to leave or even ask tough questions about ideology or scriptural accuracy

You really do not know anything about me. I have no scripture nor do I believe anybody is going to hell. What religion do you think I am? Seriously.

....going back a few years, I recall a Muslim scholar in Cairo being thrown out the window of his sixth floor office for theorizing that the Quran was originally written in Aramaic and translated into Arabic. Rather than offering a rebuttal, his ideological opponents just through him out a window!

I despite such behavior more so then you ever could.

I find little of value in the self-absorbed crap that Nietzsche wrote! But, my main reason for rejecting gods that promise eternal rewards and eternal punishments is because life after death is nonsense to begin with. Our sense of self is an illusion...albeit a useful illusion created by brain function to plan future responses and generate an emotional attachment for our bodies for self-preservation. The fear of death that accompanies self-preservation is the likely source of all of the fantasies of souls rising above the body and life-after-death experiences. Our minds are the product of brain function - there is no mental activities that are not correlated with brain function, and when the brain dies, the mind is no longer generated and no longer exists. It is extinguished just like the image on a TV or computer screen goes out when you shut off the device.

entertaining yet the hard problem of consciousness still eludes us

But, the fear of death is very powerful and always working in the background at an unconscious level...or at least that's the whole point behind Terror Management Theory...which I won't get into right now.

I love it when you speak because you do not even know what you are refuting.

What I want to get to before I close, is that those of us who are atheists have transferred hope for an afterlife into hope for continued human progress towards paradise on Earth, and eventually leaving the Earth to establish colonies in space or on other planets. The great angst that a lot of atheist/humanists aren't getting a grip on right now is that all of the environmental trends towards a hotter world, with an oversized, unsustainable human population, and an increasing rates of animal extinctions unprecedented in the last 65 million years, are evidence that we have grown and consumed so much already, that we are on a trendline towards human extinction that is looking unavoidable right now.

I am a trans-humanist which says a lot honestly. My desire to better the human condition has already shaped my life.

If there is something that makes me feel nihilistic, it's not my own death, but the fact that our species...which has held so much promise, may be gone by the end of this century, and all of our concerns about all of our issues will be snuffed out like a candle flame!

That will happen in due time

 

[work in progress]

You really do not know anything about me. I have no scripture nor do I believe anybody is going to hell. What religion do you think I am? Seriously.

Perhaps. I did not know Wathanism predated the rise of Islam in Arabia. Aside from that, your heaven and hell beliefs I'm familiar with, and have no use for.

 

[Sha'irullah]

Perhaps. I did not know Wathanism predated the rise of Islam in Arabia. Aside from that, your heaven and hell beliefs I'm familiar with, and have no use for.

My heaven and hell beliefs do not mimic common thought at all. You asserted that I believe that people will go to hell for not believing in my religion which is not true. I merely stated that the afterlife is neutral and is hellish and heavenly. Most Semitic religions concluded this actually as they had a bizarre view on the soul.

 

[work in progress]

entertaining yet the hard problem of consciousness still eludes us

We don't even know if there is a "hard" problem to begin with. Maybe we do/maybe we don't. It is based on how we perceive our own sense of consciousness as unique.

David Chalmers - who came up with this hard problem and the Zombie - who gives outward appearance of being conscious, but has no inner sense of self-awareness, does not argue for the kind of substance dualism that would support beliefs in souls controlling physical bodies and then leaving to go on to some sort of spiritual realm.

On the contrary, his dualism is a property dualism, where he contends that the entire essence of the Universe itself is the seat of consciousness, and the fundamental building blocks of consciousness are contained in the particles and fields that make up the universe.

So, in his view, our uniquely complex consciousness is made possible from having a large, complex brain organizing our small corner of the universe. His property dualism he refers to as panpsychism is unfalsifiable by the usual measures that could prove or disprove non-physical souls controlling physical bodies. So for now, it's a parlor game between him and the strict physicalists who don't want to leave any window open for mysticism to crawl through.

For myself, I can't say for sure whether we live in a conscious or an unconscious universe, based on what we know now, but I'll agree that conscious awareness may not be such a cut and dried issue after recently reading stories about apparent conscious activity in plants: Can Plants Think? | Popular Science

 

[Sha'irullah]

We don't even know if there is a "hard" problem to begin with. Maybe we do/maybe we don't. It is based on how we perceive our own sense of consciousness as unique.

David Chalmers - who came up with this hard problem and the Zombie - who gives outward appearance of being conscious, but has no inner sense of self-awareness, does not argue for the kind of substance dualism that would support beliefs in souls controlling physical bodies and then leaving to go on to some sort of spiritual realm.

On the contrary, his dualism is a property dualism, where he contends that the entire essence of the Universe itself is the seat of consciousness, and the fundamental building blocks of consciousness are contained in the particles and fields that make up the universe.

So, in his view, our uniquely complex consciousness is made possible from having a large, complex brain organizing our small corner of the universe. His property dualism he refers to as panpsychism is unfalsifiable by the usual measures that could prove or disprove non-physical souls controlling physical bodies. So for now, it's a parlor game between him and the strict physicalists who don't want to leave any window open for mysticism to crawl through.

And the universe is infinite you say?
I myself am a Subjective Idealist when it comes to epistemology and ontology

 

[BruceDLimber]

Wondering if Heaven and hell aren't really the same place and God and the Devil are the same person....

Heaven and hell aren't places: they're conditions.

Heaven is spritual nearness to God; hell spiritual remoteness from Him.

And God being One, Supreme, and without equal or rival, there is no "devil" out there competing with Him or trying to “get us.”

Further, "satan" merely refers to our own lower (animal) nature when we give it control instead of our higher (spiritual) nature.

Peace,

Bruce