Heaven, Hell, and the Soul

Well, as if you guys didn’t know already, today is another Sacrilegious Sunday (every Sunday is for that matter). It is just a day of the week I like to celebrate by doing something sacrilegious and possibly pissing other people off. I welcome you all to join right in and participate in your own little ways and in your own little towns. It doesn’t matter what religion you were brought up in (or not in), the whole point of this day is to anger others who are caught within the binds of all organized religions. This could be from just saying something blasphemous all the way to standing up in the middle of mass (if you are so bold) and screaming that the priest is a liar (it may be best to try this one at a different church than the ones near your home. Christians can get pretty upset by this, and some may even throw a white sheet over their head and hunt you down… *cough* Okay, maybe that is a little too much of an exaggeration, but it is still probably best to go to a foreign church).
I have had a lot of requests from folks about what I am going to talk about, but I think I am going to go ahead and proceed anyway. This Sunday I thought I would write a post that may be offensive to my dear sweet Catholic church. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is far from the usual cry of what I normally do, which is usually not attending mass at all whatsoever. But due to embarrassing circumstances of late (which I do not want to get into), my usual shenanigans of ecclesiastical terrorism had to be put on hiatus. So, here I am, celebrating my hate of religiosity by writing an essay, an essay which is not likely to antagonize anyone’s beliefs anytime soon. For the people who might actually read this would probably find it agreeable to their own ideologies about faith. But this is how I am going to celebrate it. If you want to pick up the slack, then you go right ahead. As for me, today, I am happy to blaspheme my way to Hell with words written down here.
Speaking of the place where everyone from priests, the old lady up the street, co-workers, my parents, and random people on the street tell me my ultimate destination will be. What I want to discuss today is about the idea of Heaven, Hell, the soul (in the Judeo-Christian sense), and why these are false concepts. For my purposes and my argument, I am going to assume that everything written down in the Bible and told to us by Christian faith is indeed true and take their literal meanings.

God is a Fickle God
We have been told repeatedly in our lives that God is an all loving God, an omnipotent sentient being who loves all of his creation, all the way from the little amoeba to the greatest achievement, human beings. We also have been told that if we do not buy into and act rightly upon his word, then we were to be doomed to an eternity of suffering. Namely, we would be damned to an eternity in Hell. But for those of us lucky enough to follow every one of God’s commandments and beatitudes, then we would be judged rightly into the Kingdom of Heaven. Now all Christian beliefs differ upon what Heaven and Hell will be like in the after life, but they pretty much agree upon the concept of Heaven and Hell, and the fact that some will be rewarded as others will be justly punished. However, I will ask how this supposed “all loving God” could possibly condemn any of the creatures that were God-created? If he (I know there is no gender to God, but it is just easier to maculate him, for reasons I may explain later) loved all his creatures, how would an omnipotent sentient being be so hypocritical as to condemn those he loved?
So, I thought the answer could possibly be that our concept of eternal love and God’s was different. The first choice I came to that obviously fit this pattern of damning loved souls was the idea of “tough love.” If we consider the patriarchal concept of God, where he is a father who punishes and rewards his children after they have been bad or good respectively, then this notion of tough love fits. Hell is just a lesson God inflicts upon his people to teach them a lesson. But then, this notion of tough love cannot fit either, because tough love is punishing those you love for their own good, but to do it for eternity? What kind of lesson is that to teach? It is a one strike and your out sort of deal. Those who are damned “for their own good” could not be redeemed in any way because the punishment is eternal; it is forever. So, then either Hell is not eternal so God can teach those he condemns a lesson, or the idea of tough love is not all together a correct one.
I could go into another example of a differing meaning of the word “love,” but I think it may be better to move on and ask another similar question. Does the term “love” then mean something else? Is it a concept so foreign and abstract to us mortal men to conceive because God is on another plane of existence? The answer is probably not. As the word of God, the covenant of God was written down by his prophets, who were inspired by “the hand of God,” these words were supposed to be a communication between God and his people. The Bible was nothing more than a type of transistor radio, where God could use his tools (the prophets) to communicate with us. To say that the written word, the prophet’s writings were not written in a simple, defined way for us to perceive would be like arguing that God himself was at fault for not communicating in ways in which we could comprehend. And thus would be admitting that God was fallible, or at least not perfect. Once God becomes fallible and imperfect, he ceases to be God. Therefore, we can safely assume that the words written were choice ones that we could comprehend.
So, then how is it that an all loving God could send his flock to a despicable place such as Hell? There are two answers of which I can conceive that would be close to being right, given that we assume that everything told and written on the subject is true.
The first is that God is a fickle God. Like the gods of ancient Greece who were also fickle, never agreeing with one another and holding some virtues higher than another god would, therefore confusing the hell out of the humans who worshiped them. The Judeo-Christian God, hell all the religion’s gods, are just as fickle as Zeus, Apollo, Ares, and Hera were. For further evidence we can just look through out the Bible and see thus. God is a vengeful God in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament he is a forgiving God. There are plenty of examples, ones that we may all know too well—for it has been written about tremendously. So, I will not spend much time on the examples of fickleness but to the fact that Hell may a true destination of our poor souls, because God in fact is inconsistent. And since this idea is so absurd that God is fickle, it therefore can not be true. For God cannot be inconsistent/fickle (established earlier) and therefore must be an alternative answer.
My other choice was that the concept of Hell cannot actually be. For a loving, forgiving God could not damn his loved to an eternity spent away from him. I say away from him because the Bible says he is the overseer of Heaven and Earth. Not of Hell, this is saved for another, the opposite of God. So therefore, why would an ever-compassionate, forever loving, omnipotent, sentient being ever condemn his loved? Obviously, he could never do such a thing, if he were not inconsistent that is. And if he never sent anyone to Hell, then it would be an unnecessary place to exist. So fear not my Bohemian Brethren, we cannot go unto a place which does not exist. Arguably, one could also then say there is no such thing as heaven or afterlife, but I will save that for the end of my next argument of the concept of the soul.

It’s Either a Soul or Bad Indigestion
Let’s change gears a bit. And now we are not assuming anything of the Christian faith anymore, but of science itself. The soul according to philosophers and theologians is an entity separate from the physical being altogether. But can anyone actually show me what the soul is? It is a great probability that they cannot. Though scientist have been searching for the ever elusive soul for many centuries now, the soul not being a physical thing, or that of matter, for that fact, it will never ever be found. Some of us would claim then that if it is something that cannot be found, or contain physical mass whatsoever, then it is not a real thing.
Philosophers and theologians claim the soul to be something that is unique to all of us, and apart of us. They have summed up that our soul is pretty much our minds. Another abstract concept, the mind is. Descartes claimed that he thought and therefore was. In other words, if the soul is the mind, then Descartes was because he was a soul, whatever that means. But if the mind is the soul, then what exact part of the mind goes to Heaven or Hell (a place which we have already discovered does not exist). Where is the mind at in our temporal bodies? Is it contained within the brain? Certainly, it cannot be contained within our hearts (as once believed). Because the soul/mind is not made of mass, or in anyway a physical thing, then it is safe to assume it does not exist because something (mainly ideas, thoughts, ect.) cannot come from nothing (the soul/mind not being made of anything). So, therefore our mind, and in turn the soul, has to be made up of something physical.
Through our technology we have discovered the functions of the brain as a big organ which controls our central nervous system, all bodily systems, through electron firing sparks. If we break the brain down, we find little cells and such (hell, all of us have taken biology at one point or another), and those cells (formatted specifically for the organ which is the brain) can all be broken down to the minute littlest speck of atoms and their neutrons, protons, electrons, etcetera. But where is this mind we speak of? Is it in the thousand, million functioning parts of the brain and its components? For arguments sake, let assume it is, though we have not found it yet (assuming, but not necessarily for our argument, technology will one day find this physical characteristic which can define the mind). And if the mind/soul is a physical part of our bodily system then I ask in return what part of it goes to Heaven when we die?
Here is where it gets sticky. If when we die, our physical body dies, then it is safe to assume that our soul/mind therefore also dies as well. Or does our brain ascend to Heaven when we are put into the ground, or burned, ect.? Obviously, with my assumptions made, it cannot. So, isn’t it likely that there is no afterlife?
For arguments sake, one could argue that there is still a Heaven, but what part of us would be there? Obviously nothing that could be conscious of being there, for our physical brain was left in the ground below. But again that is under the assumption that our consciousness comes from something physical within us (and again, if it is not physically there, then how could it exist?). It is probably safe then to assume that even if we go to a so-called Heaven, then we would not be aware of it, and then what would the purpose of having a so-called Heaven to begin with and ultimately again a Hell in which we wouldn’t be attending due to the loving nature of God? So what is the purpose of having a functioning Heaven and Hell within our societies for us to try and achieve, even though in the depths of our subconscious we ultimately know that it does not really exist (or if it does, then there is no real reason to care whether it does or not)? For that we need to look at societies and what function it could serve. But this enlightenment is for another day my friends, for this essay has already gotten way too long for any patient being to sit through, and tolerate.
Perhaps I will save this further explanation for next Sacrilegious Sunday. And there we will talk about Karl Marx and his brash theory of opium, masses, and communism. Also why I think he is correct and completely wrong at the same time. Until then my friends for my brain—soul—mind is beginning to hurt and I am tired of sharing.
Peace out peoples,
-sib-