Letters to the Editor
-
Mormons and Hell
Emily,
The short answer is no, Mormons do not believe in Hell. They believe, rather, in three distinct levels of heaven, each of which is a rather good place to be (much better than, say, Detroit), but some of which are better than others in that they allow for more progression. "Damnation" in Mormonspeak, simply means the cesessation of progression; it does not mean weaping and wailing and lakes of fire tormenting sinners.
The long answer is, well, really long and full of footnotes. If you are really interested, and I have time, I could try it. . . .
Cid
-
RonaldF
Isn't that Paglia's point? That a lot of (most?) Americans have no idea how exclusive Evangelical Christianity truly is??
Evangelical Christians preach love, but their belief that anyone who disagrees with their world view will be damned in hell suggests there's a violent unconscious in all that philosophy. They share that taste for violence with other fundamentalist religions of the world, of course. Another religious group might say let's shoot them for disagreeing in the temporal world while Christians (and Mormons and Catholics?) want their enemies to suffer for eternity in the after world. It could be argued that the wish for eternal damnation for ones enemies is the MOST violent of all stances.
-
HELL yeah!
I'm really interested! Seriously: I'm fascinated by the whole "eternal soul" thing.
Let's say that I'm a really super bad sinner in the eyes of the Mormons: that I'm an unrepentant lying cheating coffee-drinking Sodomite thief who blasphemes the name of the Holy Ghost.
Oh, and I killed a few people.
What happens to my eternal soul?
-
Laughably sad world this Salon
when a virulent useless troglodytic teletubby from hell like Rosie O'D is lionized while an uber-successful world traveling super wealthy self-promoting wunderkind like the Donald is despised.
But then, I never considered most lib women who read Salon to be fair or decent or rational, particularly when you take into account their unchecked (and self denying) hatred towards men, ANY men, in favor of women, ANY women, no matter how heinous those women may be.
As someone else said, RO'D attacked first, lobbing a gratuitous personal attack on the Donald.
-
brightstar 65...
I just want to give you a great big zzzrbrt on the belly.
-
Bad People's Souls
Emily asks,
"HELL yeah!
I'm really interested! Seriously: I'm fascinated by the whole "eternal soul" thing.
Let's say that I'm a really super bad sinner in the eyes of the Mormons: that I'm an unrepentant lying cheating coffee-drinking Sodomite thief who blasphemes the name of the Holy Ghost.
Oh, and I killed a few people.
What happens to my eternal soul?"
---------------------------------------------
Well, it goes something like this (standard Mormon view, not necessarily my own): after you die, you wait around for a while while people come and knock on your spirit door and try to get you to accept some posthumous version of Mormonism. If you do, then somebody back on earth gets baptized in your name and you become a good (albeit dead) post-Mortal Mormon. But you probably won't, since you will be essentially the same person that you were while here, so any vicarious baptism has no effect.
Then you go to a place called the "Telestial Kingdom," which is rather nice and nothing like what Cahtolics and Protestants generally consider hell to be--think of, say, an Orange County subdivision where the temperature is always moderate and there are strip malls everywhere meeting your every need. However, since you are basically an angry, small minded, vicious person (not you personally, of course, the sodomite coffee-drinker persona you are adopting), nothing makes you happy. Nobody punishes you for anything; you just have to live with yourself for all of eternity, and, as you describe it, this is pretty bad company.
Ironically, the closest thing I have ever read to describing my conception of this portion of the Mormon afterlife is in a book by an Anglican, CS Lewis, whose _The Great Divorce_ spells out pretty much this scenario. The people in this region (which he calls "hell," which is not a term that Mormons use) are free to leave any time they want to, but they don't want to because of the kind of people they are. They stay there, not because God requires them to, but because going other places is uncomfortible. Something like this is also going on in level five of Dante's Inferno. People are not "punished," per se; they are simply left alone with whatever kind of person they have become.
Cid
-
emily and brightstar
Emily,
Be careful, brighstar is clearly a misogynist who had his kids taken away from him during a divorce. He may just take that metaphorical automatic weapon and climb that metaphorical tower and start spraying metaphorical bullets......
-
Cyd:
Bless your mortal heart for having a sense of humor.
As far as the afterlife goes, Mormonism sounds like it's come back around full circle to Judaism.
But here's the trouble with it, from my point of view, as a cattleprod/carrot (threat/reward) moral structure:
I actually AM a blaspheming coffee-drinking Sodomite!
I've never killed anyone, but I do have a criminal record.
And I'm totally not angry, small-minded or vicious at all.
I have a bunch of faults, but a general lack of good cheer or generosity are not among them.
I'm an atheist and I don't believe in the afterlife, but if it turns out I'm wrong and when I die I face a tribunal of Jesus & my Mom & a committee of aborted babies, I'm ready.
I live with myself just fine, and can't imagine why this would change in the afterlife.
Especially since I wouldn't have any Christian neighbors telling me what a bad person I am.
So if hell is supposed to be living with your sucky self for eternity, but you don't actually consider yourself that sucky of a person...what's the threat? What's to stop you from sinning?
-
Anonymous:
That's tragic.
Clearly, brightstar has not been e-zrrbrted nearly enough.
-
Great dialogue
Emily & Cid: Your letters are really great! What a fabulous dialogue. I'm learning much from each of you as individuals (about Mormonism, about being an open-hearted liberal atheist) and your interpersonal skills too! I can't wait to hear Cid's reply. You two could start your own column!