[Discussion] What is hell?

[Rococo]

The most popular image of hell would be Dante's Inferno,which is a peice of his Divine Comedy.
The book Dante's Inferno is the foundation of a huge part of todays "Hell".

If you were to ask me, "Hell" would be whatever you fear most,a nightmare of your own creation where you would suffer a more numbing pain then you could ever imagine for all eternity...

But honestly I believe in rebirth. :/ :}

[Keiran777]

No Exit is a really good play/book, and I agree with it that certain other people would be the absolute worst thing to deal with for eternity. I don't think you need to be dead to experience hell.

[Guillermo]

A place made up to scare people into being religious and worshipping a God, like the Boogeyman was created to scare kids into behaving.

[Yellow Silver Nostalgia]

I always thought hell was the absence of God.

God is love.
Love is the unity of all things.
Fear is the opposite of love.
Fear is the separation of things.

Something like that.

[sab]

Whelp... Seeing as how this is highly subjective to religion as it is, I figure I can't be that far from my rights...

Hell is a concept to to serve as an opposite to heaven. Much of this was probably twisted by the church in it's power corrupt stages, and, since I don't happen to have the dead sea scrolls handy, (which are probably just a collection of stories of that were put into what we know as the bible. They're almost certainly vastly varied from the original accounts as is.) I can't honestly trust anything in the bible in anything but a vague since. I think that most of what the average person thinks of as hell is nothing more than propaganda. If you were told that you would be tortured forever if you didn't give the church money, you would be much more likely to give it up. Hell is, in my opinion, a metaphysical term which serves to describe a state of emotional turmoil. One which has been twisted and skewered. It is, in reality, a state that is perceived to be unhappiness in a strong degree. In some it's cases unbearable. It exists to explain an underlying sense of morality which dwells within almost all human beings. It's opposite, heaven, is the state in which people dwell when they have done something which we now view as morally correct. This is a definition which I choose to believe because I don't believe in life after death, but I have viewed the impacts of the bible upon people's lives. The reason I don't believe in life after death is because I don't believe in life, but that's a whole 'nother can of beans.