"There's a way out of hell....."

TrueRaijin · Post by **TrueRaijin** » Fri Mar 01, 2002 4:23 am

And, I do belive that sets all the rules on thier collective ear.
Secondary note, why is the angel crying? (Sorry, didnt catch her name)
Is this just the usual endless compasion one (should) expect out of the forces of Heaven, or is it something more... personal?

Vazagi · Post by **Vazagi** » Fri Mar 01, 2002 4:57 am

Secondary note, why is the angel crying? (Sorry, didn't catch her name)

I think that her name is Central, but I'm probably wrong

Remember that angels are beings of compassion, so i highly doubt that they like to see anyone suffer the effects of hell, no matter what their crimes were.

(Rant alert!)

Indeed i fail to see the point of eternal suffering. That simply does not fit with a forgiving god, and i do not believe that once you have ended in hell (If indeed there is a hell) there is no way out...

Ask yourself: Why do we put people in prison, instead of just killing then (Aside from humanitary reasons)? We do it to discourage then and so that they might learn from what they have done and NOT repeat their mistakes.

So if hell is the ultimate prison (A fitting description, in my mind) then the point of it would be to allow the dammed souls to learn from their mistakes and perhaps gain forgiveness, perhaps another chance, or a place in heaven. Redemption...

If we follow this point then the angel is perhaps trying to show Silverblue that she can gain her freedom by doing something, i have no idea what it is. Helping Fnar and compassion towards other dammed may be examples of this...

On a side note, i think that even the sins are capable of gaining redemption. Remember that we have been told that jack is not the first Reaper, and that Drip is fairly new too. Even Vince is only 700 hundred years or so old (Don't quote me on that

) so it seems logical that they are replaced by some mechanism once in a while. Perhaps when a greater sin comes along or perhaps when/if they gain redemption...

Hope i made sense there and didn't bore you all to death there

[ This Message was edited by: Vazagi on 2002-03-01 04:58 ]

Thalesin · Post by **Thalesin** » Fri Mar 01, 2002 6:59 am

Plus if the the system of Heaven/hell exsist then it only exsisted for the last 3-4 thousand years. My biggest prople with the idea of a god who puts people in enternal damnation. Judas just before he hung himself relized that he was doing exactly what God wanted him to do. He was being used. Even his death planed. Yet he still went hell. But it really was god;s crime that sent him to hell.

I my religion we do not belive in punishment. We belive that we have part to play be it good or evil and we will play that part out during our lives. Then afterwards we will be shown the wisdom of your life how your chosen life fit into a larger tapestry of life. Also the souls we hold in our bodies are like children to the gods and eventually we will be like them and they will be even further along. But as souls we are collectivly children. Soon mahaps we will be adolesance but until then we continue to learn and grow like small children.

Vazagi · Post by **Vazagi** » Fri Mar 01, 2002 7:39 am

Plus if the the system of Heaven/hell exsist then it only exsisted for the last 3-4 thousand years.

And both would be VERY crowded

Just think of the number of people who have been born and died... Unless of course there is some sort of recycling

I my religion we do not belive in punishment. We belive that we have part to play be it good or evil and we will play that part out during our lives. (....)

Sounds reasonably. Would you mind if i ask which faith that is? I am a Christian, leaning towards atheism... Religion and logics don't mix

Merlark · Post by **Merlark** » Fri Mar 01, 2002 7:41 am

eh, i'm not going to worry about it personal. i mean honostly guys when i die, i hope i HAVE at least 2 places to go. lol, i mean i'm sure we have all had the thought that once the old ticker stops thats as far as we go in life, this is it! the eternal blackness of otter nothingness. I think there for i am no longer apply's for our body's cease to live, this concois state of 'alive' is all we get then nothing.

That thought scares me more than anything else in the world. I tell you if i die and see anyone standing over me and say, "come with me" i'll have to contain my joy, no matter which place i go. All that i am is more than a few chemicals in my dumb brain reacting to stimulous to survive and eventualy reproduce so that life goes on. I suppose i should open a bible sometimes and look up the ten commandments or something, i don't think they would accept ignorence. hehe. "What do you mean i can't do that?! i didn't know! i didn't see any signs posted, thats not fair!"

ANYWAYS!! we finely figure out that what the story boils on down to. (the title is, the games we play in hell afterall) our angel budy, i still think is central. was on a mission to go kick bobs and lisa's butt, no one upstairs was happy about that plane thing. the 'twist' however is that silver is a rather specail case, because namely the angel belives that silvers soul can be saved. (hence why she kept saveing her life, can't tell anyone good news if their cut up into little peices.)

we can now all sleep easeir this weekend knowing that while this is an interesting conclusion. Silver doesn't like it down there, but she makes the best of it and doesn't want anyones pitty. You can tell the angel isn't very happy about this, hey it would brake my heart too when you try and tell someone that there is a way, but you really can't. worst of all is that they don't want to be helped. for an angel i would imagine that would be rather brutal, silver wasn't to nice by throwing the old "you put me here, don't try to make yourself feel better by trying to fix it."

anyways, keen story, i liked it.

Alfador · Post by **Alfador** » Fri Mar 01, 2002 8:55 am

*chuckle* How very odd, two topics with similar names, on the same subject, one serious, one silly.

Maybe the way out of Hell is to take a positive action. Rather than thinking, "Oh, I'm damned, death sucks, may as well go kill/rape/eat somebody/thing...", if you do something that shows compassion or something, BAM, Hell can't handle it, you get kicked upstairs. And "upstairs" could mean either going to Heaven, or back to Earth for a "Game Over, retry one credit. (Insert 2 Virtues to begin new game)

And only ten rules? Woohoo! That means that other stuff that was called "sin" is, just as I thought, guidelines for living in that era. The Ominous Ten are the only absolute ones. And hey, I think I'm pretty clean with 'em. "No other gods before me..." If there are other spirits(open question), they're logically going to be less powerful than the Creator of the universe. "Honor thy father and mother..." I hope I'm honoring them enough. "Keep the Sabbath Day holy" It exists, doesn't it? It's holy, isn't it? Is that an excuse not to work? Nah. Scheduling is. "Do not bear false witness..." Actually, I do have a terrible feeling whenever I tell outright falsehoods, so whenever I feel it necessary (for one reason or another) to deceive, I try to do so with truth and careful omissions. "Do not covet..." If I didn't want something my "neighbor" had enough to pay hard-earned money for it, I'd eventually starve. I figure that's about where the line between "wanting" and "coveting" lies, "covet" is more where you want it so much you're willing to steal it or something.

...

Gee, maybe this should go in both threads. If you guys feel it's inappropriate in one or the other, I'll delete it. (If I see the objection; I don't come to this board as often as I do others!

Vazagi · Post by **Vazagi** » Fri Mar 01, 2002 9:23 am

*chuckle* How very odd, two topics with similar names, on the same subject, one serious, one silly.

It's a tribute to the diversity in minds of mankind

Maybe the way out of Hell is to take a positive action. Rather than thinking, "Oh, I'm damned, death sucks, may as well go kill/rape/eat somebody/thing..." (....)

I agree, if hell was a place one was cast into forever with no change for redemption, then it would do no good, other than perhaps please some cruel deity... Havent they heard of community service?

BigNemo · Post by **BigNemo** » Fri Mar 01, 2002 2:15 pm

On 2002-03-01 04:57, Vazagi wrote:
Indeed i fail to see the point of eternal suffering. That simply does not fit with a forgiving god, and i do not believe that once you have ended in hell (If indeed there is a hell) there is no way out...

Ask yourself: Why do we put people in prison, instead of just killing then (Aside from humanitary reasons)? We do it to discourage then and so that they might learn from what they have done and NOT repeat their mistakes.

So if hell is the ultimate prison (A fitting description, in my mind) then the point of it would be to allow the dammed souls to learn from their mistakes and perhaps gain forgiveness, perhaps another chance, or a place in heaven. Redemption...

I posted something abouth this in another thread - I am a lazy guy so I'll quote myself...

[...]

We usually think of salvation as reward and damnation as punishment. As I see it, however, reward and punishment are human categories, things we invented to make our human society work somehow (stick by the rules and you're rewarded, break them and you're punished). In this life, we also like the idea of good guys being rewarded and bad guys being punished - but God's way is not necessarily our way.

I think that Salvation is what actually gives the final meaning to existence, like for a caterpillar turning into a butterfly - if the caterpillar fails its metamorphosis, its existance as a caterpillar becomes meaningless. Damnation, as failure to achieve salvation, is punishment to itself - and gives Lucifer a good grab on the damned soul... (this brings to the meaning of pain in Hell - I have a take on that but it would be a bit long here)

[...]

My opinion (or my belief if you prefer) is that God doesn't damn us - we damn ourselves. He gave us free will - he made us free to the point we are allowed to believe He doesn't exist if we choose to. He would just be glad if all of us achieved salvation - He will rejoyce every time a sinner changes his heart - but, hey, in the end that's up to us. The only way He could eventually save us would be to take away our free will - before we do wrong! - but that would make our existance meaningless - morally speaking, it would be the same as shooting us in the forehead. (actually, He could just kill us before we damn ourselves... but mankind wouldn't last long that way!)

[note: this was written first before the comic of March 1, 2002]

[...]

...

enough quoting myself!

Just a last note: a point not to be overlooked is, each one of us is given one chance to live his/her life - if we mess with that, we are done for good. Meditate...

Hope i made sense there and didn't bore you all to death there

Well, if you didn't (at least, you didn't bore me!) I guess I did...

_________________
Long live and prosperBig Nemo (...just like the classic comic character, only grown up)------------------
Life is like the ladder to a henhouse - short, steep and full of s(-beep-)t (anonymous)

[ This Message was edited by: BigNemo on 2002-03-01 14:21 ]

BigNemo · Post by **BigNemo** » Sun Mar 03, 2002 10:48 am

On 2002-03-01 14:15, BigNemo wrote:

Just a last note: a point not to be overlooked is, each one of us is given one chance to live his/her life - if we mess with that, we are done for good. Meditate...

That is, obvously, unless there is a way out of Hell...

And I said, 'enough quoting myself'...

Vazagi · Post by **Vazagi** » Sun Mar 03, 2002 10:58 am

Anyone read Peter F. Hamilton's "Night Dawn Trilogy"? It has a quite interesting way to describe the afterlife and in a way, hell.

LudiNimTazral · Post by **LudiNimTazral** » Mon Mar 04, 2002 9:30 am

On 2002-03-01 07:41, Merlark wrote:
eh, i'm not going to worry about it personal. i mean honostly guys when i die, i hope i HAVE at least 2 places to go. lol, i mean i'm sure we have all had the thought that once the old ticker stops thats as far as we go in life, this is it! the eternal blackness of otter nothingness. I think there for i am no longer apply's for our body's cease to live, this concois state of 'alive' is all we get then nothing.

That thought scares me more than anything else in the world.

I am not sure which is worse. To cease to exist at death (no afterlife) or to survive death but end up in Hell (never-ending bad trip afterlife). Nowadays "no afterlife" is considered somehow superior and "any afterlife" is considered stupid and cowardly.

LudiNimTazral · Post by **LudiNimTazral** » Mon Mar 04, 2002 9:43 am

A Third-order Dominican (laywoman) once told me the idea that "The doors to Hell are always wide open; anyone in Hell can walk out into Heaven anytime they want. They just never want to."

The idea was that the damned are so wrapped up in themselves and have made themselves so twisted that bad as Hell is, they actually like being there, and can't think of anywhere else (like Heaven) being any better. Kind of like how an abuse victim can develop a symbiotic relationship with their abuser and actually resist rescue. It's not that God seals them into Hell, they seal themselves in.

C.S. Lewis explored the dynamics of this in more detail in his short fantasy/allegory novel The Great Divorce.

Sins' Apprentice · Post by **Sins' Apprentice** » Sat Mar 09, 2002 11:47 pm

Kind of like the last of those Narnia books. (AAH! Regression alert!) The good guys and some prisoners of the bad guys were thrown in a shed, with supposedly no way out. The "believers" saw a kind of heaven, a perfect world where they could do anything, but the prisoners (who happened to be dwarfs or something) only saw the stable. The good guys might've seen and tasted a grand buffet, but when they fed some to the prisoners, the prisoners only tasted straw. The good guys after a while walked away from their "prison", they only saw a doorway to nowhere and the prisoners sitting in a circle complaining about how small the shed was. The prisoners would be in hell, the good guys were in heaven. same place, but it changes on how you look at it. I myself subscribe to the multiverse theory, so its highly possible that a heaven and hell exist somewhere in infinite universes. Maybe when a good person dies they are reborn in a new, better universe, possibly as a better species, or even elevates to a heaven-like universe. Maybe when a bad person dies, they become a worse life form, or even travel to a universe where they're reborn into what they would see as hell. Then there's the problem if someone aspires to be a killer, but always plays by "the rules" in life. Their version of heaven might be one where they kill everyone in sight. There's another problem: all the direction would have to require some third-party interaction, a god, in lay- terms. And that's obviously completely wrong (imo, of course, imo.) Maybe the laws of quantum physics aren't as random as they seem, maybe the multiverse has some sort of "good-people and bad-people" rules build directly into the laws of quantum mechanics! Eureka! I'm a genius! Of course, if my epiphany is correct in its prediction, I'm screwed. (as are most of you too)

Urban Wild Cat · Post by **Urban Wild Cat** » Sun Mar 10, 2002 1:37 am

Personally, when i die, I'm going to scoot round the universe(s) sight seeing for a few subjective millenia, then jump back on the merry-go-round.

When I look at the world, the only possible purpose I can see for it is to break up the boredom. Life's meant to be fun. I'm going to have fun.

Gen.Talon · Post by **Gen.Talon** » Mon Mar 11, 2002 4:50 pm

*sits back and reads all de posts* Ya know. For me. (About Jack that is) I just can't wait to see how it goes.

heh.