Do you believe in hell? [Spirituality & Religion]

@PrivateHell ok but how you’re going to torment someone without a body

@SW-User nowhere near all torment is physical, you can believe that. There are far worse things in this universe than death or physical pain.

@PrivateHell yeah. Emotional pain. You do need a brain for that though. That’s part of the body

@SW-User still not seeing deep enough. There is worse than even emotional pain. But, to address what you just said, a soul can be damaged and torn asunder by emotional and spiritual pain. And, unless you believe we simply cease to exist when we die (i don't), it would seem a physical brain is not required to feel this sort of torment. If it were, then one could not possibly believe in a heaven either, or any sort of afterlife, because a brain would also be required to experience joy and contentment.

@PrivateHell I know my body will die. That’s a 💯. Now if you can’t see,hear,taste,touch,smell,think or have a memory (you lose all that when you lose your body) how will you be tormented. Just give a specific example

@SW-User i cannot within the limited (and to me) false confines of what you are asking. I was once an atheist, and did in fact believe that "when you die, that's it". No thoughts, memories or feelings. And if this is true, there can be no heaven or hell, because there is nothing left to go to them.

I believe now that when we die, our consciousness (that energy within out brains that makes us who we are) does indeed go somewhere, as energy can neither be created or destroyed.

@PrivateHell okay but how do you torment that energy? That’s the question

@SW-User i am neither God nor the Devil but I can think of dozens of ways with just my mortal mind, so i imagine there are an infinite number of ways they could come up with you and I could never conceive.

One of the simplest ways... imagine just being your consciousness... all your thoughts and emotions. But, with out a physical form. Now, imagine being fixed or bound to an endless void, just sheer black darkness, for all eternity. Unable to leave and having absolutely no contact with anyone or anything else ever again, and being totally unable to adapt to the isolation or find any comfort in it. Completely and totally aware at all times, yet also completely and totally separated and alone. That in and of itself would be a hortofying prospect.

@PrivateHell you don’t have your thoughts and emotions though because you need a brain for that man. Without your body,you can’t perceive anything. That’s my whole argument

@SW-User so in other words you are an atheist. If this is the case, then, as interesting as this conversation is, it's kind of pointless. You could not believe in heaven or hell anyway under the conditions you are setting aside here. You are basically saying that without the physical brain the soul does not exist, and that the energy that is you internally, is destroyed upon death.

I'm not arguing or insulting you, just clarifying.

@PrivateHell im not saying i am an atheist. Maybe there is some sort of an energy field we are all part of. Im open to the theory. As for thinking and memory goes,you can see proof of that right here in our current existence. People with Alzheimer's for example. The brain not getting circulation makes you a vegetable (my grandfather for example) he died not knowing anything. Literally. There is actual proof of the brain being responsible for thinking,cognitive skills and memory. That’s not something people speculate about,that’s a fact. Im not saying there’s no soul without the brain. Maybe there is. But once you take the brain out of that equation,religious teachings become meaningless.
That’s how you know that the whole concept came from the human brain. I added that so it makes more sense

@SW-User sorry to hear about your grandfather.

However, what you are presenting here is far from definitive even within the medical and scientific communities. First of all, there are countless, documented cases of people suddenly regaining all their faculties before death, Alzheimers patients that were basically infantile or vegetative, suddenly returning to their former, pre-condition states, bed ridden patients suddenly able to stand and walk on their own... there are thousands upon thousands of these accounts.

The other issue is, we don't yet fully understand how consciousness (or the soul) actually works in the brain. How the firing of synapse and neurons leads us to being us mentally and emotionally on the most basic levels. We don't know if all those thoughts and emotions are simply electrical impulses on a cellular level, or if that is merely a means of relaying them to the flesh. In other words, even without the ability to outwardly think and express ones self to the outside world, no one can truly say if our thoughts and emotions carry on or simply cease to exist.

There has been many compelling testimonials of people recovering from catatonic and vegetative states, in which they claim they were fully aware (despite scans saying they shouldn't be), just unable to interact with anyone or anything. Sort of like Stephen Hawking lived his adult life.

@PrivateHell the problem with this is that they’re only testimonials. I saw people die(trough visits to my grandfather) i saw people pumped up on drugs dying of cancer seeing things in the room. It’s not pretty. Think of the brain as a hard drive. All your memory is stored in there. Once that’s gone,everything is gone. If you can show me one example of those thousands who came back online right before death ,only to pass away,i will give you the benefit of the doubt.

No testimonials though please. People can state anything as facts

@SW-User not really. The true problem is, the testimonials and accounts of people being revitalized just before the end, are all we really have to go on. There are very few studies and virtually no means of actually testing either of our points of view. The closest I have ever found was a few years ago researchers (i believe at John Hopkins) were able to conclude that the soul itself has weight. They studied something like 50 people that were in the process of actively dying, carefully monitoring everything from bodily fluids to air intake of the lungs, as they consistently measured the person's body and vitals. In each case, almost immediately upon death, and after factoring in the loss of fluids and oxygen from the lungs, they record a very slight, but consistent drop in the weight of the dying person that seemed to have no explanation. But, it happened in each patient. Was that actually the soul leaving the body? I leave it up to you to decide, because even the experts are uncertain.