JESUS HAD HIS WIRES CROSSED

The idea of hell is incompatible with the Golden Rule

If everyone who ever lived was doomed to suffer eternal torture then it would massively reduce the total suffering the human race had experienced to prevent that suffering. It would be a loving, caring thing to prevent that suffering. If a God had erased hell so that no human could go there then that would have prevented and avoided a nearly infinite amount of suffering and the suffering of humans while on Earth would seem relatively trival by comparison. God would have needed to jump into hell and abolish it to be worthy of love & adoration. To win the right to save people but then only choose to save a minority would be mostly cruel, bad, unjust etc.

What of the suffering of humans while on Earth ? After the human race has come to an end and if an account could be made, nothing could be done to undo the suffering that was experienced. Only by preventing  suffering by intervening, giving the knowledge to make medicines & avoid illness or stopping the crime before it happened could the total suffering have been reduced & the situation  made better. By contrast, sending all those who caused suffering to an eternal suffering would only  increase the total suffering of the human race.

I was brought up going to church. I have heard most of the views about the Bible. My conclusion is that the idea of hell is incompatible with the Golden Rule. 

The idea of a perfect, loving God is incompatible with the idea of hell.

 If a perfect God had practiced due diligence then hell would not have come into existence. 

If Jesus had won the victory over a hell then to be a hero he would have needed to save everyone or change the game plan so that it was a choice of heaven or extinction. 

If you have to do to others as you would have them do to you then since no one would wish to go to an eternal torture then you could not agree to send someone else to hell. 

A caring God would have had a duty of care to prevent anyone becoming liable for hell. With so many habitable planets in the universe it would have been easy to wipe out Earth as soon as a hell came into existence and start again on another planet.

 For God so loved the world that he not only allowed suffering in this world but also sent most to eternal suffering ? Doesn't really fit does it ? For God so loved the world that he erased hell so that at least when people died they could rest in peace; sounds better.

What can you say of a God who was all knowing yet stood by and did not inform humanity to the ways to prevent suffering. We now know from science & technology that there were many things that could have been done to reduce pain & suffering. Yet none of these ideas came from Jesus or Biblegod. In fact Jesus mislead people into thinking that the only thing that could be done was prayer / casting spells.

The idea of hell is incompatible with the golden rule

The golden rule says to aim to treat others as you want them to treat you.
So if you think that the golden rule is a good rule of thumb then ask yourself if you would want to be sent to a hell of eternal suffering ( if such a thing existed ) If the answer is no then how could you agree to send others to hell ? Not possible. How could a God who lived by the golden rule send any human to hell ?

The idea of hell is incompatible with the concept of a loving, perfect God. An almighty caring God would have needed to prevent a hell coming into existence and if it had would have had a duty to prevent any human becoming liable to go to hell. God could have terminated this planet as soon as a hell came into existence, before any human was liable to end up in hell. If there are many habitable planets in the Universe it should have been easy for a god to start another human race elsewhere and hopefully that god would have learned some lessons on how to prevent everything going pear shaped.

In any case hell / hades / Tartarus look like fictional places.
2 Peter 1v16 claims,"We did not follow cleverly invented tales"
Yet 2 Peter 2v4 uses the name Tartarus in the original Greek which was a dungeon in the mythical Hades. "For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to tartarus, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgement"

I agree with the Bible passages which say, "Love your neighbour", "Treat others as you want them to treat you", "Love does no harm", "Do not murder", "Greater love has no man than that he lay down his life for his friend", "Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness"
I think these ideas are not compatible with the idea of hell. The Bible has its wires crossed on this point. It is like sewing a patch of new cloth onto an old wine bottle, the bottle will split. Spotting and accepting that there is a contradiction about this matter is like rending in two the curtain separating the holy of holies in the Temple of Jerusalem. Or it is like Samson pushing apart the two columns holding up the pagan temple. Or it is like the story about Samson about finding the hive of bees in the carcass of the lion,"Out of the eater something sweet" or it is like saying if you had skepticism the size of a grain of mustard you would say to the mistaken ideas in the Bible to pick themselves up an be thrown in the sea.
The stories about Jesus can save us from the myths of hell and show that it is not real.

Universalism or atheism ? How can we react to people who have caused others to suffer?

 Why would I need to worry about any of Jesus ideas about heaven & hell  if I thought that there was a supernatural being who was definitely going to take us all to a happily ever after ?  I think if there was a loving God and if we had an immortal part and if there was a heaven to go to then I would be taken there along with everyone else, washed, cleansed, renewed. But if we have no spirit or soul then we will go back to nothing which isn't a problem either. I have to admit it grates to think of some of the tyrants of history going to a happily ever after, so they can just go extinct.
If you think that someone who has caused severe suffering to others should be punished then how much suffering can they be sentenced to before you have done a worse deed than the person you criticized ? If we sentence the Nazis to eternal torment will we be acting worse than they did ? I think prevention & restitution is the only real solution

The Jedi has again failed to return on May the 4th, will his record be as bad as Jesus ?

Another May the 4th has come & gone with no sign of the return of the Jedi, seems like he might be as fictional as Jesus.
Jesus greatest error was to fail to notice that Hades was an idea invented by the Greeks or Zoroastrians. The ancient Egyptians fantasied about a judgement day too, with the ones whose heart weighed light being thrown to the crocodile god to be eaten or burned up like chaff in a fire. They needed to know the secret names of the gods and their mysteries to sail into the afterlife. Last time I heard their bodies were still with us.
Jesus also failed to recognise it isn't loving, caring or just to let people suffer for ever after death, in any case how could they if they have no spirit or soul ? Ecclesiates 9v5-6,"The dead know nothing...never again will they have a part in anything under the sun". [ How could that fit with Matt 27v52 which has folk resurrecting ? It contradicts Jesus alleged resurrection ] Even the author of Romans 13v10 scolds the ideas about judgement attributed to Jesus,"Love does no harm to its neighbour". How can you claim to love your neighbour while you approve the idea that they should suffer for ever more ? 1 John 2v9,"Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. ". If Jesus had won the victory over a hell why not save everyone & abolish hell totally ? Because then priests would make less money ? Jesus claimed to be the light but maybe he was the darkness - someone with his wires crossed ?
Jesus failed to note that the O.T describes a God who fails to prevent things going pear shaped.
Thomas Paine noted that the gospels have Jesus taken up to a high place but somehow he fails to notice the Americas.
To me Jesus was more like a detour, half truths and a degraded life
Jesus failed to explain the causes of earthquakes, he showed no knowledge of plate tectonics, he gave no advice about which areas of the planet to avoid building on or on how to design buildings that would be resilient to earthquakes. Luke 21v11 makes Jesus say that earthquakes are a sign & omen rather than just something that has always happened and always will until the Sun becomes a red giant.
Jesus or his creators failed to predict any detail of the science and technology that came after the first century. The 21st century we know was completely unknown to him or any other founder of a religion.
The religion of the 21st century that counts is the one of attention to detail and being on the ball.