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From: schnitzi@osceola.cs.ucf.edu (Mark Schnitzius)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Atheists and Hell
Message-ID: <Apr.22.00.57.00.1993.2115@geneva.rutgers.edu>
Date: 22 Apr 93 04:57:00 GMT
Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu
Organization: University of Central Florida
Lines: 70
Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu

db7n+@andrew.cmu.edu (D. Andrew Byler) writes:

>Mark Schnitzius writes:

>>>  Literal interpreters of the Bible will have a problem with this view, since
>>>the Bible talks about the fires of Hell and such.  
>> 
>>This is something I've always found confusing.  If all your nerve endings
>>die with your physical body, why would flame hurt you?  How can one "wail
>>and gnash teeth" with no lungs and no teeth?

>One can feel physical pain by having a body, which, if you know the
>doctrine of the resurrection of the body, is what people will have after
>the great judgement.  "We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the
>life of the world to come."  - Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.  You
>will have both body and soul in hell - eventually.

Now this is getting interesting!

I was raised Roman Catholic before becoming an atheist, so I have stated
this Creed you quote nearly every Sunday until I was about 18.  For some
reason, I always took the 'resurrection' in this statement to mean the
resurrection of the soul, but I guess resurrection does strictly mean
the raising of the physical body.  I have some questions on this point:

1.  I always thought that Christians believe the descent into hell was 
pretty much immediate, and that there are people burning in hell right
now.  You seem to be implying that it will not occur until after the
"great judgement" (which I read as meaning the proverbial Judgment Day).
I was always a little confused on this point, even when I was with the
church -- maybe someone can clear it up for me.  Where will my "soul"
(which, by the way, I don't believe in) exist until that time?

2.  Will the new body I will have be created out of the same atoms 
that my body now is made of, or will it be built from scratch?  My
physical body now is susceptible to aging, etc. -- so I guess my
new body will have to be radically different in order to be immortal
so it can be tortured for all eternity?

3.  Since I will have a physical body, I assume it will need a physical
place to exist in -- where is this hell?  In the center of the earth?
Do you think we could find it if we dig?

Mark Schnitzius
schnitzi@eola.cs.ucf.edu
Univ. of Central Florida

[There is not complete agreement on the details of the afterlife.  I
think the most common view is that final disposition does not occur
until a final judgement, which is still in the future.  In the
meantime, some believe that people "sleep" until the final
resurrection (or because God is above time, pass directly from death
to the future time when the resurrection occurs), while others believe
that souls have a disembodied, pre-resurrection existence until then.
There are probably other alternatives that I'm omitting.

The new body is generally conceived of being implemented in a
different "technology" than the current one, one which is not mortal.
(Paul talks about the mortal being raised to immortality, and Jesus'
resurrected body -- which is the first example -- clearly was not
subject to the same kind of limitations as ours.)  It is assumed that
there are enough similarities that people will recognize each other,
but I don't think most people claim to know the details.  I don't
think I'd say it's the same atoms.  I'd assume there would be some
analog of a physical place, but I wouldn't expect to find it under the
earth or up in the sky.  I'd suspect that it's in another dimension,
outside this physical world, or whatever.  But again, we have little
in the way of details.

--clh]
