The existence of Hell, unproven and unlikely at best, is none the less a fabulous source of income for those who sell protection from being assigned to its nether regions.
There are many different depictions of Hell, One of my favorites is the world of horrors painted by Bosch. His visual creation may well match the verbal images found in Revelation. Both strongly suggest that the artist's and writer's rye bread may have been just a bit past its expiration date.
The Greeks who imagined a sacred mountain dwelling for their major deities chose the logical alternate for the after life. Rome, followed the Grecian lead. Many other cultures chose the good up – bad souls down model. The presence of tectonic activity in the breeding grounds for human civilization may have well contributed to the fire an brimstone imprint that continues even in the face of a well developed range of physical and biological sciences that preclude the existence of a subterranean Hell.
We've dug deeply enough, shot radio and sonic energy deep into the planet and tracked them. No line of scientific exploration suggests the validity of any theory of the existence of supernatural realm beneath the earth's surface.
Still, there are literally billions of people who will not only admit to believing in an afterlife including “Hell.”
It is easy to understand how the tribal leaders of primitive populations invented the underworld as a means of influencing behavior. Fear of eternal torment by supernatural creatures could be used to control undesirable behavior and to reinforce desirable behavior. As religion became mingled with civil authority, the role of priests became tied to enforcing civil as well as cannon law. This turned out to be a good thing for the priestly class as they could enforce donation from the populace on two fronts.
The great cathedrals of Europe demonstrate how much was given by people who were afraid to do otherwise. To the churches, it mattered not whether their share of the loot was generated by a love of faith or a fear of death; a civil requirement or fear of the supernatural fiends lurking outside the church walls to drag them kicking and screaming into the subterranean confines of the underworld. All too often, the underworld went no deeper than the dungeons and torture chambers of the local ruler or the local Inquisition.
The donors were right to be scared; they simply had the wrong ideas about who they should fear. The tons of gold on and in various cathedrals and artifacts in towns and villages so destitute that the inhabitants are all chronically malnourished shows us how effectively fear of Hell was wielded by the priests in the days of colonial conquest and forced conversions.
Today, we see just as much fear in people who should know better. Just look at the phone book of any small town or large city. Churches, cathedrals, store-fronts, and in-home religious stores predominate the yellow page listings. Every listing is a business masquerading as as non-profit house of faith, using fear of death and fear of Hell to milk money from people who can't or won't understand the truths taught us by chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology, anatomy, geology,astronomy and the other sciences that collectively describe and define the reality of life and of the universe. eliev
Every week people who need the money to pay for food,housing, and education, place it into the hands of sky-pilots who tell them that their contribution will save them from Hell for another week. Part of it,depending upon the church, may wind up being used to convert happy non-believers into frightened believers, continuing the cycle of fear and ignorance. Other portions may wind up paying for immense buildings that serve as regional and national headquarters, keeping the noose around the necks of those who have been sold the myth of Hell at some local level, at an earlier age.
Hell is a great idea when used to scare the masses into contributing money to the priests. Obviously, the various religions have no interest at all in exploding the myths created by religious leaders millenia ago. Don't look for them to announce that they have decided to switch their emphasis to publiizing the truth about the universe. There's damned little money to be made in searching for truth as defined by science. Just ask any multiply-degreed NASA scientist. But there are still fortunes to be made peddling religious mythology to the poorly educated. There's not even the need for an education. Inquisitional minds don't want to know.
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