I watched some of an interesting program today about Hell. Here are some of the things I learned about Hell w.r.t. different religions - Alvaro I know you know a lot more about this topic, so if you can give more info about any of this, I would really appreciate it!
Christianity
- Lucifer vs. god
- infinite hell
- literal hell
- Dante - the first to associate behavior with different punishments - 7 rings of hell.
Islam
- no devil, only god
- god's wrath needed for people to serve him, but his mercy overcomes his wrath, therefore...
- finite hell
- hell is both literal and logical
- very few people go to hell
Hebrew
- no afterlife
- however there exists reward and punishment after death
Buddhist
- not creator base
- hell not a place but state of existence -> negative rebirth
- no divine god but your own karma
Chinese Buddhism
- multiple realms of hell
- finite hell until unwholesome karma they created exhausted and reborn in more fortunate
They should have started with Zarathustra... wasn't he the one who started this all good vs. evil thing? I would assume that this notion would include a hell by default :-P Then again the greeks didn't have this good vs. evil grand battle and they did had a hell... or did they? More just like an afterlife. But they did punished people; e.g. Sisyphus.
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