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Comment by intralizee | Hacker News Reader

> Voltaire: “My good friend, I no more believe in the eternity of hell than yourself; but recollect that it may be no bad thing, perhaps, for your servant, your tailor, and your lawyer to believe in it.”

I'm not sure why humans have to dream up a Hell or Heaven after death. It appears to be obstinate refusal of observing what's right in front of them.. On what we call earth. You can either observe someone in Hell or Heaven and it's not like anyone has any real control over the matter. My whole life was pointed in one direction and there has never been any choice for me. /determinist

I think it's a bad thing to believe in afterlife and when what's in front of you is all that should be considered. Reason being, maybe it prolongs people having to be in Hell and not just Heaven.

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>I'm not sure why humans have to dream up a Hell or Heaven after death.

Weird way to exclude yourself, but ok.

The article to me explained that the idea of heaven and hell is a manifestation of justice. That even if YOU can’t do anything to them, bad people will eventually suffer and good people will eventually be rewarded. Nicer to believe than the alternative. Did you read the article?

Is it nicer than the alternative? Many people are perfectly ok with death being the end. Many people don't need some affirmation of themselves or others to believe in.

Also, wishing for the unending torture for someone who's slighted you is a very non-christian, non-most-religeons way of thinking.

>Also, wishing for the unending torture for someone who's slighted you is a very non-christian, non-most-religeons way of thinking.

You know it’s pretty much a key tenant of Christianity to pray for the souls of those that have harmed you or others right?

Is it necessary to observe the tenets of Christianity to call oneself a Christian? Anecdotally, I find little evidence for it. People mostly use their religion to validate their pre-existing lifestyles, not to redesign them.

Imagining a torment for someone who has wronged you is a rather effective method of ablating away the desire to enact revenge physically. It also leaves more room for ironic and humorous punishments.

"Dear theological construct, please take mercy on this guy who cut me off in traffic after driving on the hard shoulder to pass a bunch of stopped cars, and do not send him to a punishment in Hell wherein other cars are freely zooming around on the highway, while his is perpetually boxed in by semis and garbage trucks. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Amen."

My understanding is that that's only Catholics and, only for those in purgatory. However, it's never been clear to my why the petitions help the person.

> My understanding is that that's only Catholics

No, it mostly just some subset of Protestants that reject it (the practice is common, as well as in Roman Catholicism and some Protestant communities, in the Eastern and Oriental [despite etymological similarity, these are not synonyms] Orthodox Churches, and, apparently, the Assyrian Church of the East.)

> and, only for those in purgatory.

It's true that in the Catholic tradition, there is a special connection between prayers for the dead and purgatory (arguably, purgatory as a doctrine is a Catholic explanation for the ancient Christian practice of prayers for the dead.)

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