[ExI] The void left by deleting religion

[John Grigg]

The Mormon concept of "Hell" is to be cast out (I always envisioned it along the lines of General Zod & his two followers in Superman II when they get thrown into the Negative Zone) into "Outer Darkness," which is envisioned as a very bleak and cold place.  Some modern-day Mormons like to conjecture it might be within a Black Hole.  This is where Satan and his angels will ultimately wind up & just a relatively few humans such as Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Jeffery Dahmer, etc.  Most of the world's "wicked" people will end up in the "Telestial Kingdom" which is the lowest sphere or level of Heaven.  
   
  To the Mormon mind, "Hell" is ultimately to be seperated from God and to lose out on one's personal potential of having had the chance to become a god who is mated to another god & can create worlds and people them with their very own children.  And so anyone who fails to achieve exaltation is damned and is essentially in the Mormon version of Hell.  "As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become" is the popular quote.  "Eternal Parenthood is Godhood" is another one.  
   
  An added incentive to follow the rules is that Mormons believe everyone who is not exalted will be stripped of their ability to be sexually active.  This thought really disturbs Mormons (who would not be disturbed!, lol) but also leads to conjecture on how this celibacy/abstinence is enforced.  
   
  The Protestants and Catholics generally believe that disembodied spirits and the resurrected do not have the ability to engage in sexual activity and/or marry.  I have had mainstream Christian friends who were very depressed over this doctrine.  C.S. Lewis tried to explain away the need for sex in the next life by saying, "if as a sexually active adult you tried to explain to a young child who loves chocolate that sex is even better than chocolate, how really could you?"  His point was that God was the adult and we were the young children who just could not understand.  
   
  Family life is seen as the ideal in this life among Mormons and so to be excluded from that in the next life is seen as the ultimate punishment.  No spouse, no sex, no children = Hell.
           
John Grigg 
   
  
spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
  > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Max More
> Subject: Re: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion
> 
> A question for those, like spike, who found religion to be "an
> extremely positive experience"--especially those of a Fundamentalist
> belief system: Did you take seriously the idea of Hell as a place of
> eternal torment and damnation? Max



Hi Max,

Not in my case, because Seventh Day Adventist doesn't have that doctrine.
Perhaps that sect's designers in the 1840s sat down and asked themselves
what is the most egregious doctrine in all of christianity. To anyone with
even a modicum of ethical intuition, that one should top the list, the bit
about god tormenting for eternity anyone who misbehaves for a short human
lifetime. So they got rid of it. In that system, those who are wicked just
die in a rain of fire that doesn't last any longer than any flesh mortal
would survive in such a dire sitch. They are damned for all eternity in
that they stay dead and gone forever; god "opposes their reanimation" to
borrow a phrase from a recent poster.

spike






_______________________________________________
extropy-chat mailing list
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat


 
---------------------------------
Never miss an email again!
Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives. Check it out.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070505/a12ba1fa/attachment.html>