After some time away from attempts at initiating a dialogue, I return to that format, much to the chagrin of...we...ll...everyone.  I open at a great place.  You are herein warned, there are bad words to follow--Ian.

There is no Hell.  At least not the Hell we claim there to be.  And going forward, being a bit out of tune in my eloquence and desirous to regain it at the cost of the amusement of some (half) dozens of people, I will leave this musing short and unedited, but rather wordy and dense.

I realized this last night.  We need to take a moment to compose in our heads a personal version of damnation... ... ...Okay.  So what is Hell?  We are intended to believe that it is a tangible spatial manifestation wherein we are intended to pay unendingly for a finite amount of sins committed against a particular set of rules (I don't speak vaguely to be insulting, but rather to cover the broadest base of religious beliefs, which I might as well now acknowledge I have no intention of disrespecting at any point herein).  It is tangible in as far as our spiritual selves are tangible, and for now we must assume this is fact.  So while our bodies may experience an undying thirst, it is a completely different sensation for our spirits, removed from the instinctual needs of physical existence, to feel insatiable dehydration (for example)...

And we constantly remind ourselves and others that a far greater punishment (and complimenting reward) await once we are killed, dependent on our behavior in what is assumed to be a somewhat mediating substantial placement.  But we already begin to contradict ourselves.  The punishments and rewards conceived are that of a divine nature, and to explicate the difference between divine and human, I invoke an oft implemented truism that itself implodes when looked at more than once.  We are told, if we're lucky, sometime in our upbringing that Forgiveness is Divine.  By contrast, Fallibility (erring) is Human.  So here we have in a purified (purile) and simplified format, a simple dichotomy.  That which is divine is not only inhuman, but unattainable by humans.  And plenty of other canonical and folksy wisdoms exist to support this assertion.  (As a brief sidenote, it's important to note that in this cliche, we prove that it is not in a Human's capacity to forgive.  So... if anyone has ever told you to forgive another, or if another has forgiven you, then they are blind liars with no respect for your happiness...) What's important here is that there is a clear separation between Spirit and Body, Earthly and Ethereal and in the most complete sense the other, the External (as we are human and can't be divine, it must be defined as such) and ourselves as a collective.

So what is Hell (aside from having read this far into this post)?  By all accepted accounts, it is comprised of unspeakable and intolerable retribution upon a human for committing acts considered by divinity morally reprehensible (so my usual defense of human acts only be considered immoral only by human standards is inapplicable here).  We are told how to behave by a law of otherworldly and superior dictation.  This is the same governing body that assesses and exacts punishment.  As such, it exceeds all all human conception of extremity in terms of pain or even in its physical representation.

We have human conceptions of pain, pleasure, right and wrong as they appeal to our mental and bodily existence, but lacking the element of the divine, we have no way of knowing with certainty the exact sensation that such an extreme eternal punishment would create inside our fragile, failing limbs--and if the spirit is even thousands of times more resiliant than our terrestrial frames, it is certainly still one of the weakest cohesions of material in existence (and if it is that strong, I doubt these invalid shells could house them).  Even so, we so often speculate, even in terms of making this unthinkable torture palatable for ourselves, on the physical pain and terrible anguish that occurs.  Greek myth, S. Alleghri and Dostoevsky (not that I've read any of them), as well as more obvious sources, explicitly depict a great amount of physical pain inflicted upon the deserving.

This is the main point that I fail to believe that a Hell exists consisting of physical punishment for misdeeds that very rarely include physical infractions (by proportion).  People take such strains to stay alive, and I'm not talking here about the ones who simply refuse to do the right thing and off themselves and spare us, but everyone who actually struggles and makes a concerted effort just to continue existing, as unpleasant as existing is most of the time.  Most of the time, this is accompanied by a great deal of physical suffering that either cannot be satisfied or at best only temporarily so.  And in such cases, there is not time to suffer the mental anguish of questioning surroundings or whether or not there's a Hell.  Is the preference to stay alive plagued by tactile lacking merely a tactic as to further delay the far greater pain that lay ahead?  is it merely instinct?  (If that's the case, then we can reintroduce the argument against morality as then survival becomes the primary motivating factor).

I know for myself, and perhaps this is truly the genesis of this illfated supposition, that I would rather experience a new and unfathomable physical pain than that of a mental or emotional nature.  When one desires in the physical realm, there is a physical, tangible, knowable goal that will alleviate when once acquired.  There is a measurable material solution.  But even the most innocuous of mental desires is elusive and offers no glimpse as to its own remedy.  Even if one believes they have been unburdened of that initial pestilence, a new one arrives into a steadied mind or even as a result of that first solution.  Perhaps this is too subjective, but I certainly feel that others have expressed that their deepest sorrows are tantamount to similar
unspeakable and intolerable retribution.  If one is thirsty and one could never drink, one would think on how to get a drink, how to drink, why can't I drink?  But if one is inconsolably sad...what then?

It is strongly implied that education is the direct route to a better life.  As education leads directly to more attuned mental states, and that leads directly to an intellectual sensitivity, ripe for frustrating quandries in voluminous quantities, why is it promoted?  Why do most cultures celebrate and revere the learned individual?  Is it one's ability to bear that weighty state?  It can't be, since world over, physical punishment is regarded as the primary pain and not the mental. 

But since the External, and not us, dictates the appropriate punishment, how can it be individualized to us, so that one whose mental suffering in one's earthly (early) existence would then suffer an even greater one in the afterlife?  Would one be presented with insoluble puzzles, riddles to madden one who wouldn't be able to die in order to escape?  Would one be presented with emotional truths so harrowing as to render even immortal langor unbearable?  I am led by counterpoint immediately to the argument that this inconceivable diety knows individually wholly and perfectly each human that dies so well that but an instant is needed to invent the perfect punishment.  If this is true, and Hell exists, and exists as it is related to us manifold, then wouldn't there be, in the midst of the piercing and flaying and melting, a slight amount of relief knowing that there is some conclusion?  I ask those who have ever uttered either of the sister phrases "Let's get this over with" and "I'm just glad it's over with"-- Doesn't the sensation of closure lift any burden?

So I suppose I haven't fully proven that a Hell doesn't exist, but I do sincerely believe that last night I was struck with inspiration enough, while still be it mortal, to sufficiently convince that we haven't even the merest accurate conception of what it is.   The somewhat less important question stands, then if I have proven that a Hell as we know it doesn't exist, where does heaven sit?  Of couse, as opposites as these are intended to be, one cannot exist without the other and if I were to allow the mortal conception of heaven to stand, then I would be no better than these insufferable sops who refrain from the word Hate because it's too strong but then talk about the love they have for material items or foodstuffs. One somewhat intelligent proposition has been made famously, and then also less famously by someone I knew (biblically...), that this earth itself is Hell, an fantastic prospect had it not been made by someone without the intellectual capacity to expound on it more than self-justification.