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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to a bow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and my name

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Speaker 1: is Julie Douglas. Julie, do you believe in Hell? I

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Speaker 1: didn't hear you ask me that. Well, you know, that's

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Speaker 1: the kind of what this episode is about, about the

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Speaker 1: belief in Hell, the problems of Hell, why where this

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Speaker 1: idea comes from, and why it's problematic at times are

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Speaker 1: are often problematic in our culture. So I thought we'd

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Speaker 1: we creak it off by just talking about our own

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Speaker 1: sort of viewpoints. Yeah, just there's a big loaded question.

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Speaker 1: What do you think do you think I believe in Hell?

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Speaker 1: I don't think you do. I don't you seem like

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Speaker 1: a nonbeliever when it comes to especially to a place

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Speaker 1: where demons torment souls for all eternity and that sort

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Speaker 1: of thing. I think it's fascinating. Yeah, I love it.

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Speaker 1: I love the imagery. But no, I mean, I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: go out there say it seems a little silly to

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Speaker 1: me at times, so well, silly in the best of

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Speaker 1: circumstances meant to, it's not meant to, But um, it's

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Speaker 1: just such a caricature of humans in a way, um

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Speaker 1: are our worst thoughts that it's rendered to me in

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Speaker 1: this way that seems kind of silly. And of course

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Speaker 1: I've seen so much double imagery and satan imagery, and

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Speaker 1: of late it seems like Satan has been kind of

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Speaker 1: a silly figure in some modern works. Well, he certainly

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Speaker 1: can be. Yeah, I mean the you know, comedy and

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Speaker 1: Hell go way back, um. And we've recently been doing

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Speaker 1: a lot of rather research about this and some of

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Speaker 1: the earliest models of Hell that we encounter, um, you know,

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Speaker 1: an ancient Mesopotamian mythology. You encounter comedic stories even then,

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Speaker 1: stories that we think we're more about about being a

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Speaker 1: little loose with material and then having a little fun

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Speaker 1: with the material, with individuals going and having adventures in

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Speaker 1: in the afterlife in some sort of underworld. So the

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Speaker 1: idea of Hell ranges from yea, from silly too grotesque

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Speaker 1: For my own part, when when I think about hell

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Speaker 1: as is uh, the idea that there is a place

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Speaker 1: where bad people are are tormented for all eternity or

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Speaker 1: even for a finite amount of time. I tend to

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Speaker 1: find that a difficult thing to believe in, and and

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Speaker 1: you know, in this world, it takes a certain amount

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Speaker 1: of mental power to believe in anything, and I feel

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Speaker 1: like that's something that I don't want to focus that

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Speaker 1: energy on. They're they're far more positive things outside of

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Speaker 1: our experience than one can put faith into without thinking

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Speaker 1: about where hell is, who's going into it, and how

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Speaker 1: long they're going to be there. That being said, I've

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Speaker 1: always found the idea just richly fascinating. And uh and

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Speaker 1: and certainly Hell is this this fantastic place in in

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Speaker 1: h in the history of human art, human writing, fiction, philosophy.

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Speaker 1: We keep coming back to it. We can't help but

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Speaker 1: visit it over and over again, despite all of the

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Speaker 1: grotesque ideas that fill it. And uh, and sometimes the

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Speaker 1: grotesque beliefs that prop it up. Well, Uh, I'm sure

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Speaker 1: you guys have all guests we were gonna be talking

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Speaker 1: about hell today. UM. In fact, we're gonna another episode

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Speaker 1: coming out about the science of Hell. And I do

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Speaker 1: think that it's one of those things that has gone

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Speaker 1: by the wayside in terms, at least that's from my perspective,

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Speaker 1: that people really feel invested in. UM. But as we'll

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Speaker 1: discuss later, it actually is a belief that a lot

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Speaker 1: of people hold regardless of this idea that it went um,

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Speaker 1: you know, or according to the economists in the article

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Speaker 1: and Everlasting Hell, that theologically it's gone by the wayside,

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Speaker 1: because even the Vaticans sort of on the fence about

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Speaker 1: it um. And in that article it says, you know,

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Speaker 1: the devils and pitchforks, the brimstone clouds and whaling souls

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Speaker 1: have been cleared away rather as a mad aunt might

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Speaker 1: be shut up in an attic. So you know, that

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Speaker 1: being said, it's still this idea that that's pervasive, and

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Speaker 1: in fact, no matter where you stand on the issue,

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Speaker 1: you have to admit that it's actually died into the

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Speaker 1: fabric of our existence, that it is um sort of

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Speaker 1: creating some of the rules that we we play by

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Speaker 1: as humans, right at least in the West in certain cultures.

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Speaker 1: And I mean just look at sort of at jail.

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Speaker 1: This is a good example of a concrete, uh idea

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Speaker 1: of the abstract hell that we think of and that

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Speaker 1: has been told to us thousands of years now in

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Speaker 1: various forms. Yeah, conceptions of hell or just go side

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Speaker 1: by side with with our ideas about what what should

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Speaker 1: happen to criminals and wrongdoers in the real world. To

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Speaker 1: what extent is it is it punishment? To what extent

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Speaker 1: are they being shuffled away? To what extenter there being

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Speaker 1: m are they going to be saved and turned back

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Speaker 1: into proper citizen? I mean there's some models of even

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Speaker 1: um in the in the history of Christie Anity that

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Speaker 1: saw there there would be a day when even the

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Speaker 1: devil would be saved and brought back into God. I

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Speaker 1: mean there. Um. So when you start looking at the

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Speaker 1: history of hell, you see all these different takes on it,

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Speaker 1: all these different ways that we make we make sense

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Speaker 1: of it. Um. One way that I was thinking about

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Speaker 1: it recently is it's been proposed that that language is

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Speaker 1: the operating system, uh, you know, free the human mind

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Speaker 1: that we we have this brain, we have to put

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Speaker 1: language in it to deal with a lot of these

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Speaker 1: higher concepts. Right. And then you might consider religion a

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Speaker 1: data management program that we install to provide us with

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Speaker 1: a certain worldview of reality. Okay, Um, it's an optional

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Speaker 1: install and you may install another worldview software. You may

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Speaker 1: install multiple ones and do kind of like the thing

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Speaker 1: on Mac where you have the Windows and you go

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Speaker 1: back and forth between the two. Um. More than that,

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Speaker 1: in a second. But but you know how you but

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Speaker 1: you know how, you install certain software and it comes

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Speaker 1: with an antivirus program that you did not want, and

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Speaker 1: suddenly it's there, and how do you get rid of it?

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Speaker 1: Sometimes I feel that that's what hell is and need

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Speaker 1: not be Christianity. But but we can take Christianity Christianity

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Speaker 1: as an example. We can also take uh Tibetan Buddhism

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Speaker 1: as an example, where once one finds something really um

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Speaker 1: enamoring about the concept, something really positive, like you know,

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Speaker 1: like that there's this guy named Jesus and he's gonna

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Speaker 1: he's gonna save my soul, or there's this there's this

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Speaker 1: thing called karma and there and I can eventually work

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Speaker 1: myself through all these different phases of life and find

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Speaker 1: liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth. But both

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Speaker 1: Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity, if you if you look at

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Speaker 1: them closely enough, you you get into these problematic um

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Speaker 1: concerns about hell in the in the Christian tradition and

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Speaker 1: in Tibetan Buddhism, a lot of a lot of thought

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Speaker 1: goes into how to avoid reincarnation into the lower realms

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Speaker 1: and actually to Devot tibetan Buddhist can cause a great

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Speaker 1: goal of anxiety. Um, well, and what we're talking about

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Speaker 1: when we talk about anxiety is the psychology of this. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and uh I thought it was very interesting in the

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Speaker 1: book The History of Hell. But les K Turner that

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Speaker 1: she brought up psychoanalysis and hell. And she said that

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Speaker 1: the Journey of Dante, because this is sort of the

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Speaker 1: gold standard that we'll talk about, and Dante's Inferno. The

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Speaker 1: journey of Dante and Virgil through the Inferno was an

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Speaker 1: interior metaphor, and it was an allegory of the human

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Speaker 1: experience that you have to, you know, trudge through the

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Speaker 1: dark knight of the soul before spiritual re emergence. And

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Speaker 1: so she said that this has really turned out our

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Speaker 1: idea of psycho analysis. She says, a patient must explore

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Speaker 1: with his guide the deep sources of his unhappiness and

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Speaker 1: inability to follow the true path, and he must endure

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Speaker 1: the painful purgatory of examining and challenging his behavior before

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Speaker 1: achieving the relative paradise of mental health. So, even in

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Speaker 1: this way, Hell has pervaded our idea of of how

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Speaker 1: we experience things as human beings. How we talk about them,

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Speaker 1: even psycho analysis. You know, I was thinking about this

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Speaker 1: in terms of mad Men, because this past season has

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Speaker 1: been all about a journey and certainly sins and dealing

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Speaker 1: with sin and the weight of that sin. Yeah. And

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Speaker 1: there's an early scene where Don Draper is reading The

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Speaker 1: Inferno on the beach. Yeah. And there's another great scene

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Speaker 1: where Roger Sterling is in psychoanalysis with with and he's, uh,

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Speaker 1: he's sitting there trying to explain his frustration in life

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Speaker 1: and where he's arrived. And it's really interesting because usually

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Speaker 1: Roger Sterling is just sort of cutting up and making jokes,

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Speaker 1: but here he is sort of giving you a portal

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Speaker 1: into his soul and he says, uh, he's on this

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Speaker 1: path and it's a frustrating path. He says, what are

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Speaker 1: the events in life? It's like you see a door

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Speaker 1: the first time you come to you say, oh, what's

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Speaker 1: on the other side of the door. Then you open

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Speaker 1: a few doors, Then you say, I think I want

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Speaker 1: to go over that bridge this time. I'm tired of doors. Finally,

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Speaker 1: you go through one of these things and you come

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Speaker 1: out on the other side and you realize that that's

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Speaker 1: all there are doors and windows and bridges and gates,

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Speaker 1: and they all open the same way, and they all

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Speaker 1: closed behind you. Look, life is supposed to be a

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Speaker 1: path and you go along and these things happen to you,

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Speaker 1: and they're supposed to change you, change your action. But

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Speaker 1: turns out that's not true. Turns out the experiences are nothing.

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Speaker 1: They're just some pennies you pick up off the floor

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Speaker 1: you stick in your pocket, and you're just going in

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Speaker 1: a straight line to you know where, Hell, of course,

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Speaker 1: And so that imagery again, it's and we'll get more

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Speaker 1: into this when we talk about Dante and we talk

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Speaker 1: about the nine circles of Hell. But the bridges and

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Speaker 1: the doors and the gates in the path and the

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Speaker 1: meandering is all part and parcel of what we think

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Speaker 1: of um when we think about a journey of our

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Speaker 1: soul or trying to transcend our physical selves. Yeah. Medievalist

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Speaker 1: Howard Roland Patch he actually broke down a number of

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Speaker 1: the elements appearing in nearly all known accounts of the underworld,

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Speaker 1: you know, the afterlive, hell, hades, what have you, both

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Speaker 1: in the Eastern and Western world. And he said that

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Speaker 1: they include a mountain, barrier, a river, a boar, and

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Speaker 1: a boatman, a bridge, gates and guardians and import in

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Speaker 1: an important tree. And except for the bridge, all were

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Speaker 1: present in ancient Mesopotamian mythol And of course Roger Sterling

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Speaker 1: alludes to these uh and the passage that you read well,

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Speaker 1: and you know, it's still summer and people are still

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Speaker 1: taking their their summer trips, their pilgrimages. Even even these

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Speaker 1: trips that we take to escape the monotony of life

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Speaker 1: and to find new experiences is in a way reach

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Speaker 1: writing some of this idea of transcending hell. Yeah, brings

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Speaker 1: me back to the very first line in Dante's Inferno.

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Speaker 1: In the middle of the journey of our life, I

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Speaker 1: came to myself in a dark wood, for the straight

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Speaker 1: way was lost. There you go. That's what I say

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Speaker 1: every time I get in the car to go on

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Speaker 1: a road trip. One more thing to to touch on

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Speaker 1: before we start breaking down some of the roots of

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Speaker 1: hell Um is important to note that a lot of

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Speaker 1: us have multiple ideas of what the soul is and

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Speaker 1: what the afterlife is um or isn't in our head

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Speaker 1: at the same time. You know, it's a it's a

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Speaker 1: bit simplistic to say, uh, my name is Robert Lamb

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Speaker 1: and I don't believe in ghosts because they're generally I

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Speaker 1: don't believe in ghosts, but there are times where I'm

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Speaker 1: more inclined to believe in it, or more inclined to

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Speaker 1: want to believe in it. And uh, you know, the

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Speaker 1: same goes with a lot of religious and mythic things. Um.

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Speaker 1: And I've talked before about this idea of like a

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Speaker 1: spiritual salad bar, where you take what you want and

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Speaker 1: you leave the rest. And apparently it's even more popular

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Speaker 1: with the with millennials these days, where they feel completely

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Speaker 1: you know, okay with with saying, all right, I like

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Speaker 1: this stuff in Buddhism, I'm gonna take that. Um, I

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Speaker 1: like this bit from Christianity, I'm gonna take that, and

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Speaker 1: then you sort of build your one faith or worldview

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Speaker 1: out of that. Uh. But but really we do a

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Speaker 1: lot of that anyway. It's kind of the the the

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Speaker 1: view of the world that I have right now is

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Speaker 1: not necessarily the one I have, um, you know, yesterday tomorrow.

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Speaker 1: So a lot of people have varying and conflicting ideas

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Speaker 1: about what the soul is and and who we are

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Speaker 1: and and really really we talked about human consciousness and

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Speaker 1: our views of that in the past, and and a

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Speaker 1: lot of that is part and partial to this to

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Speaker 1: do hell and and beliefs in the after live, because

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Speaker 1: a lot of it comes down to our queens and

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Speaker 1: our inability to to come to terms with the difference

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Speaker 1: between between flesh and mind and trying to figure out

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Speaker 1: what the mind is. And we get into this idea

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Speaker 1: of the mind slash soul is this thing that exists

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Speaker 1: outside of ourselves and therefore continues after we're gone. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's so fascinating when you start to think about it

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Speaker 1: that way, that hell is not only the way that

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Speaker 1: we color our perception of the world and we organize

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Speaker 1: our world again, think of jail's I think of our

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Speaker 1: judicial system, but also it is part and parcel of consciousness. So,

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Speaker 1: in other words, since the beginning of time that man

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Speaker 1: became conscious that you know, he or she was alive

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Speaker 1: and looked up at the stars and wondered about death

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Speaker 1: and wondered about what would happen afterwards, there has always

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Speaker 1: been some sort of afterlife story put in place, or

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Speaker 1: some sort of exploration of that topic, which you can't

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Speaker 1: have consciousness without having this idea of what would happen afterwards.

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Speaker 1: Even if even if that that thing that happened afterwards

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Speaker 1: was nothing, that's still a story in a sense, Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: And it comes down to early people and even modern

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Speaker 1: people trying to figure out how the world works. And

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Speaker 1: there are things that you can test and that you

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Speaker 1: can you can throw a scientific investigation at um, and

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Speaker 1: then there are things that you cannot. And when you

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Speaker 1: cannot answer those questions with science, that's where all of

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Speaker 1: this myth building comes into play. Um. Now we're gonna

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Speaker 1: go into kind of a brief history of Hell, and

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Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go through everything. If you want to

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Speaker 1: really fabulous uh examination of the history of Hell and

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Speaker 1: our belief in it, do check out The History of

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Speaker 1: Hell by Alice K. Turner is a fabulous book, very readable,

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Speaker 1: wonderful illustrations throughout. Um. But we're not going to give

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Speaker 1: that concise of a journey because we'll be here all day. Uh.

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Speaker 1: One thing to keep in mind though with all of

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Speaker 1: this is that is that you you have to look

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Speaker 1: at religion not as a thing that comes off the press,

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Speaker 1: is you know, completely made it is um. It's more

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Speaker 1: like a pit through which humans have thrown ideas down

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Speaker 1: or like an ice cream cone where we're piling ideas up. Um.

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Speaker 1: But for instance, UM, you know, I've read a little

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Speaker 1: bit about the Hinduism here and there, and I often

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Speaker 1: um read that it described as something that you can't

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Speaker 1: really sum up, like you can't give like a really

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Speaker 1: good one paragraph summary of what Hinduism is, because Hinduism

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Speaker 1: is such an old religion built on you know, earlier

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Speaker 1: Vedic models. It just it's just a pit that goes

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Speaker 1: down through the centuries, through through millennia, and there have

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Speaker 1: just been all these ideas about gods and goddesses and

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Speaker 1: the human soul thrown down there, ranging from the literal

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Speaker 1: to the philosophic and uh. And there are there are

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Speaker 1: shallower pits as well, such as the pits of of

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Speaker 1: of of Judeo Christian and Islamic tradition and uh. And

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Speaker 1: those two are are built upon all these ideas that

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Speaker 1: have built up over over the years. And like the

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Speaker 1: Christianity of today is not the Christianity of a few

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Speaker 1: centuries ago, etcetera. So keep all of that in mind. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I kind of think of it as those being sentiments, right,

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Speaker 1: the layers of stories that have just been built upon

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Speaker 1: each other. And if you were to take a soil

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Speaker 1: sample and bringing out you could be you would be

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Speaker 1: able to identify like, oh, look there's the Egyptian Book

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Speaker 1: of Dead, Um, you know, there's Judaiciah, there's you know,

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Speaker 1: and and be able to say like that informed this,

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Speaker 1: and this informed that and so on and so forth.

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Speaker 1: And to go back to the the analogy of religion

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Speaker 1: as a as a program on the operating system, it

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Speaker 1: probably makes for a pretty unruly program that I'm sure

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Speaker 1: some of our programmer listeners out there can can attest

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Speaker 1: to that. It's it's the system that's just built up

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Speaker 1: over time and probably you know, you probably need to

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Speaker 1: go in there and just recreate everything. But you have

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Speaker 1: all this stuff that's in there. Uh fie a legacy. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so we should all pull up a chair right now,

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Speaker 1: get settled and uh laid on us, give us, give

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Speaker 1: us the roots of hell. Okay. Well, uh fabulous notion

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Speaker 1: that was presented in some of the texts we're looking at,

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Speaker 1: uh is the idea that what happens when you go

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Speaker 1: back to like really ancient man, hunter gatherer man, what

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Speaker 1: what what are they? What kind of gods are they? Glimpsing. Well,

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Speaker 1: certainly gods that had to do with hunting, right, because

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Speaker 1: this was not an agrarian society yet. So they're on

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Speaker 1: the move, and uh, it seems to me like they

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Speaker 1: would be things would be a lot less um stable

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Speaker 1: for them. Yeah, be like the winds of change all

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Speaker 1: the time, chaotic even, Yes. So the argument is that

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Speaker 1: the the early humans they looked to horned gods, gods

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Speaker 1: of the hunt, gods that were like, you know, like

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Speaker 1: the dear God that is over the deer that we hunt. Um,

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Speaker 1: it's a god of chaos, and it's a god that

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Speaker 1: you're just kind of really you're really hoping that the

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Speaker 1: dear God will shine on you so that you can

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Speaker 1: actually find enough deer, kill enough deer, and bring back

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Speaker 1: enough meat where your people can survive for another day.

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Speaker 1: So those are the gods of the hunt. But then

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Speaker 1: in time we learn to grow things. This agrarian society

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Speaker 1: begins to grow up, and suddenly we begin to adopt

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Speaker 1: new gods. So we'd bring in celestial gods, gods that

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Speaker 1: are in line with the seasons and cycles, because now

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Speaker 1: we're farming and we're much more tied to the land

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Speaker 1: and things are a lot more predictable. Right, So you

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Speaker 1: kind have all of these demi gods hanging out from

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Speaker 1: from years past, right, Yeah, you don't want to throw

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Speaker 1: out the old gods thousands years past. It sounds like

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Speaker 1: a bad idea. And they're chaotic and they have horns,

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Speaker 1: so we keep them, but they're more resided to the earth,

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Speaker 1: and so we end up with these these hornet Earth

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Speaker 1: gods and these celestial sky gods. Um. So that's one

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Speaker 1: kind of cool idea of just sort of looking at

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Speaker 1: the roots of some of our beliefs about uh, not

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Speaker 1: only ruling uh, you know, superhuman deities, but also the

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Speaker 1: places they inhabit. This idea of sky and deep Earth

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Speaker 1: and then the middle ground where we humans do our things.

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Speaker 1: And speaking of deep Earth, where are we burying people

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Speaker 1: but in the earth. So again there's this idea of

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Speaker 1: afterlife being tied to what is under us. Now I

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Speaker 1: already mentioned some of the the the elements that you

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Speaker 1: find and even the most ancient ideas of the afterlife

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Speaker 1: and uh, and this all takes back to to just

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Speaker 1: ancient Mesopotamian mythology. This is the age of Gilgamesh four

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Speaker 1: thousand years ago. And even here you had, you had

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Speaker 1: a celestial queen named in Nana or Ishtar, who rules

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Speaker 1: over the heavens and the earth, while we're sister queen

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Speaker 1: Erska Gal or allowed to rules over the dead in

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Speaker 1: the Land of No Return. And we live in that

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Speaker 1: space between, this borderland between heaven and a sort of hell.

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Speaker 1: Uh and and and and we quickly find Gilgamesh traveling

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Speaker 1: to the other side in the first of many descent

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Speaker 1: stories to fill human history. Um. And then there's another

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Speaker 1: story where Erska Gal even takes a hostage from the heavens,

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Speaker 1: ushering in cyclical seasons, which is another trope that occurs

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Speaker 1: throughout myth, the idea that that one of the sky

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Speaker 1: beings is taken and has to live a certain part

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Speaker 1: of the year, the winter uh in the underworld. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then there's even another tale where Erska Gal threatens

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Speaker 1: to flood the earth with the dead quote so that

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Speaker 1: they might devour the living, which also makes it kind

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Speaker 1: of the oldest zombie account, or at least the threat

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Speaker 1: of zombies. But even in these these uh, these stories,

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Speaker 1: the afterlife remains a place of sort of generic in life,

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Speaker 1: a sort of limbo uh. In another world, there's no

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Speaker 1: true punishment or reward. It's just this idea that well,

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Speaker 1: the soul, the consciousness lives on and what does it do?

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Speaker 1: I guess it just kind of bums about in a gray,

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Speaker 1: shadowy world. And this is an idea that that sticks

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Speaker 1: with us for a very long time. Now, if we

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Speaker 1: look back at the Egyptian Book of the Dead uh

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Speaker 1: from around we we find some very fascinating, very rich

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Speaker 1: views of what the afterlife would be. Now, in the

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Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian religion, it failed to travel well, as Alice K.

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Speaker 1: Turner makes makes this point. Also, it didn't survive a

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Speaker 1: test of time. But it's just not something that really spread.

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Speaker 1: And it didn't have legs, you could say, no, and

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Speaker 1: if it did, we would probably all worship cats, right, Yes,

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Speaker 1: they loved they love their cats more than we do now. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But but it was a rich religion and it put

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Speaker 1: extreme emphasis on the afterlife. It had just a lot

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Speaker 1: of a lot of amazing ideas about what the soul was.

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Speaker 1: For instance, the soul was just one aspect of the person.

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Speaker 1: He had a soul or bo the often depicted as

390
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Speaker 1: a human headed bird uh. And there's just one part

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Speaker 1: of the cocktail of being which and also involved a

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Speaker 1: car or life force, a coup or spiritual intelligence, a

393
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Speaker 1: sekim or power, and a cohibit shadow and a wren name.

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Speaker 1: So all these things come together to make up who

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Speaker 1: we are. Um. But then the idea is that if

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Speaker 1: you die, then your soul will continues on this journey.

397
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Speaker 1: And this is where I think it's really interesting because

398
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Speaker 1: in the Egyptian Book of Dead you begin to see

399
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Speaker 1: this judicial system evolve because your soul can actually be weighed,

400
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Speaker 1: and it can be weighed against the feather from the

401
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Speaker 1: head dress of Matt who is the goddess of truth.

402
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Speaker 1: And if your heart is burdened with sin, well you'll

403
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Speaker 1: find out that Amt, a tiny little creature that's sitting nearby,

404
00:20:46,280 --> 00:20:48,840
Speaker 1: will gobble up your heart. This will be your fate.

405
00:20:49,280 --> 00:20:52,160
Speaker 1: So here we have this idea of the afterlife coming

406
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Speaker 1: to fruition in the Book of Dead. Um. So again

407
00:20:56,359 --> 00:20:59,119
Speaker 1: you might not think of this coloring our world view now,

408
00:20:59,320 --> 00:21:02,840
Speaker 1: but but later on, later on, yeah, things are things

409
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Speaker 1: are being put into place about what happens when you sin. Yeah.

410
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Speaker 1: So the idea is that if you're good, you get

411
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Speaker 1: to pass on into this other world. This saki Haru,

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Speaker 1: the field of rushes, and if you're bad, it's just annihilation.

413
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Speaker 1: This monster eats your soul and that's it. Uh. And

414
00:21:17,480 --> 00:21:18,919
Speaker 1: but but then the interesting thing is the field of

415
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Speaker 1: Russia is is is not a heaven, and it's not,

416
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Speaker 1: but it's also not just that gray area of Limbo.

417
00:21:24,240 --> 00:21:26,880
Speaker 1: It's kind of like it's his own fabulous world. They're

418
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Speaker 1: fifteen regions, each ruled by a god. One of them

419
00:21:30,080 --> 00:21:32,240
Speaker 1: is that there's just one place where there's no air

420
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Speaker 1: and an egg. God rules over everything. Or it's like

421
00:21:34,760 --> 00:21:37,080
Speaker 1: the God is in an egg. It's very cryptic and

422
00:21:37,480 --> 00:21:40,080
Speaker 1: and wonderful, and you have to take with you stuff.

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Speaker 1: As you know, his evident by anyone who's ever watched

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Speaker 1: the documentary about pyramids. Um, this is a world where

425
00:21:45,280 --> 00:21:47,920
Speaker 1: you're gonna needs, you know, you might want to farm there.

426
00:21:47,920 --> 00:21:51,080
Speaker 1: You're gonna need some protection against giant beetles. You might

427
00:21:51,280 --> 00:21:54,359
Speaker 1: need some spells. Uh, you might you might need to

428
00:21:54,400 --> 00:21:56,520
Speaker 1: bring some loved one, some pets, some golds and foods,

429
00:21:56,520 --> 00:21:58,680
Speaker 1: some comfort, do you know. And I didn't realize this

430
00:21:58,760 --> 00:22:01,920
Speaker 1: until I read this book, Um, that there were gollums

431
00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:04,560
Speaker 1: that were buried with them in the Golems, of course,

432
00:22:04,600 --> 00:22:08,600
Speaker 1: are like this sort of not mindless person or creature,

433
00:22:08,680 --> 00:22:10,840
Speaker 1: but it does your bidding. Yeah, it's a like an

434
00:22:11,520 --> 00:22:15,400
Speaker 1: inanimate form that is given life through some manner of sorcery.

435
00:22:15,760 --> 00:22:18,240
Speaker 1: So in the afterlife, if you have like forty gollum,

436
00:22:18,320 --> 00:22:22,119
Speaker 1: you are set because they're doing everything for you. So anyway,

437
00:22:22,240 --> 00:22:26,200
Speaker 1: just an interesting little that idea too. In the Terracotta Warriors,

438
00:22:26,280 --> 00:22:28,600
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, you need an army in the afterlife.

439
00:22:28,640 --> 00:22:30,720
Speaker 1: Build one, bring it with you. It makes me want

440
00:22:30,720 --> 00:22:32,919
Speaker 1: to I mean, I think my plan is to be

441
00:22:33,040 --> 00:22:36,159
Speaker 1: cremated when I die, but maybe I can still have

442
00:22:36,200 --> 00:22:37,840
Speaker 1: a gollum. I feel like I need a gollum to

443
00:22:37,880 --> 00:22:39,800
Speaker 1: help me out. Well, your a could be contained in

444
00:22:39,840 --> 00:22:42,320
Speaker 1: a gollum. I like that, But does that mean I

445
00:22:42,400 --> 00:22:45,439
Speaker 1: become the gollum? It becomes kind of complicated. Now. I

446
00:22:45,520 --> 00:22:49,040
Speaker 1: definitely want a psychopomp, which you also see a lot

447
00:22:49,080 --> 00:22:52,600
Speaker 1: in these tales. Um psychopomp being a spirit guide or

448
00:22:52,640 --> 00:22:56,680
Speaker 1: a creature that takes you through the afterlife. So maybe

449
00:22:56,680 --> 00:22:58,640
Speaker 1: the gollum could be my psychopomp. Are kind of hoping

450
00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:02,200
Speaker 1: that my psychopomp is a at but let's see. Okay,

451
00:23:02,280 --> 00:23:06,840
Speaker 1: So anyway, Egyptian Book of the Dead that contribution um. Now,

452
00:23:06,880 --> 00:23:09,560
Speaker 1: eventually you get some really cool ideas in the form

453
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:13,000
Speaker 1: of Zoroastrianism. Uh. And this is uh like pretty much

454
00:23:13,080 --> 00:23:15,640
Speaker 1: everything else, it has its roots and ancient Vedic beliefs

455
00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:18,720
Speaker 1: of India and it's it is a duellist religion, meaning

456
00:23:18,720 --> 00:23:21,439
Speaker 1: that there is an absolute force of good in the

457
00:23:21,520 --> 00:23:24,639
Speaker 1: universe counterbalanced by an absolute force of evil. The good

458
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:27,679
Speaker 1: is Otto Mazda, who lives in the sky, and the

459
00:23:27,720 --> 00:23:30,840
Speaker 1: evil is Ottoman, who lives in the hell beneath the earth.

460
00:23:31,280 --> 00:23:33,640
Speaker 1: And after death, the soul is judged by an angelic

461
00:23:33,680 --> 00:23:36,840
Speaker 1: spirit named Rashnu uh and the good pot pass on

462
00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:39,960
Speaker 1: into the House of Song. The evil descend into Hell,

463
00:23:40,440 --> 00:23:43,080
Speaker 1: which is ruled by Yama. The first man to die

464
00:23:43,119 --> 00:23:45,320
Speaker 1: and the rest they go into this limbo that resembles

465
00:23:45,320 --> 00:23:49,919
Speaker 1: this original Babylonian vision of the afterlife again shadowy world

466
00:23:49,920 --> 00:23:52,120
Speaker 1: where souls just kind of bum around and bounce into

467
00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:54,680
Speaker 1: each other. And uh and this this is also really

468
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:58,239
Speaker 1: key with those Zoroastrianism is that a cosmic battle will

469
00:23:58,320 --> 00:24:02,520
Speaker 1: ultimately decide everything. Avior will descend into Hell. Yeah, said,

470
00:24:02,600 --> 00:24:06,040
Speaker 1: will descend into Hell, save everybody. Hell will be destroyed,

471
00:24:06,040 --> 00:24:07,560
Speaker 1: and new Kingdom of God will be born on earth.

472
00:24:07,560 --> 00:24:09,920
Speaker 1: What does that sound like. Oh, my goodness, that sounds

473
00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:12,879
Speaker 1: like Christianity. In fact, a savior name Socian is born

474
00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:16,159
Speaker 1: of a virgin impregnated with the seed of Zoroaster. Who

475
00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:19,400
Speaker 1: So that's pretty specific, right, You can see the influence

476
00:24:19,400 --> 00:24:22,200
Speaker 1: there pretty clearly. Yeah, And you know, and and that

477
00:24:22,440 --> 00:24:24,560
Speaker 1: doesn't take away from any beliefs. Like I said, I

478
00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:26,639
Speaker 1: think it's just about realizing that this is how we

479
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:28,800
Speaker 1: get our beliefs. We build up these stories over time,

480
00:24:28,840 --> 00:24:31,359
Speaker 1: and you know, you should be happy that your system

481
00:24:31,359 --> 00:24:34,680
Speaker 1: of belief has deep roots. Um, there's some other ideas

482
00:24:34,720 --> 00:24:37,439
Speaker 1: that of course kicked around as well. The Greeks, Romans,

483
00:24:37,440 --> 00:24:41,119
Speaker 1: and Jews had some very similar ideas in many respects.

484
00:24:41,160 --> 00:24:44,480
Speaker 1: With the ancient Greeks, we see the the afterlife hades

485
00:24:44,600 --> 00:24:47,840
Speaker 1: is a mere repository for the dead, and there's some

486
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:51,159
Speaker 1: punishment there, but it's generally you know, the Titans that

487
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:54,040
Speaker 1: are chained, the you know, the the elder beings that

488
00:24:54,040 --> 00:24:56,240
Speaker 1: that the God's word with and they so you'd have

489
00:24:56,280 --> 00:24:58,960
Speaker 1: to really commit a crime against the gods to be

490
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:03,040
Speaker 1: punished you in the afterlife. Otherwise it's just gray souls

491
00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:05,280
Speaker 1: shadows bumping into each other. Well, it's kind of like

492
00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:07,840
Speaker 1: a house of horrors, right, almost like that the team

493
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:11,360
Speaker 1: like um house of horrors that are put on by

494
00:25:11,640 --> 00:25:14,879
Speaker 1: churches where you can see all this ins in those

495
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:18,520
Speaker 1: typical stories. Um, it's more of like just hey, we're

496
00:25:18,520 --> 00:25:20,600
Speaker 1: gonna cruise through here and we're gonna just see a

497
00:25:20,680 --> 00:25:23,320
Speaker 1: little bit a little flavor of this. Well, yeah, everybody

498
00:25:23,359 --> 00:25:25,480
Speaker 1: wants to visit hell. So many of our stories are

499
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:28,280
Speaker 1: like that. I mean, Dante's story is a big one.

500
00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:30,679
Speaker 1: But you know, Dante was not the first person to

501
00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:34,240
Speaker 1: write a story where someone toured the afterlife. Virgil did

502
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:36,399
Speaker 1: it before. And that's my Virgil is his guide or

503
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:40,080
Speaker 1: his psychopomp in the Inferno and uh, and you just

504
00:25:40,080 --> 00:25:43,400
Speaker 1: sell countless versions of this before. People are always going

505
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:45,879
Speaker 1: down into the underworld to save somebody or just tour

506
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:48,640
Speaker 1: it to learn something, to grow. It's just a it's

507
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:50,359
Speaker 1: a common trope that we keep coming back to when

508
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:53,439
Speaker 1: we're gonna continue to do it. Um. Speaking of Virgil,

509
00:25:53,440 --> 00:25:57,000
Speaker 1: of course, the Romans initially had views more in keeping

510
00:25:57,040 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 1: with Shintoism, where he had spirits and everything. Um. But

511
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:03,919
Speaker 1: with the increasing doses of Greek myth, uh, you know,

512
00:26:04,080 --> 00:26:06,760
Speaker 1: it changed and really grew more into that model. And

513
00:26:06,760 --> 00:26:09,560
Speaker 1: then Virgil wrotevia Neid, which sees our hero and Nias

514
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:10,960
Speaker 1: travel to the land of the dead in search of

515
00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 1: advice from his dead father. And again, of course Virgil

516
00:26:14,040 --> 00:26:16,400
Speaker 1: goes on to the influence Dante, which will discuss later.

517
00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:18,240
Speaker 1: And then you have the Jews who believed in a

518
00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:20,840
Speaker 1: place so called Shiel, which is often translated as the

519
00:26:20,880 --> 00:26:23,720
Speaker 1: grave or the pit. And again just another gray, ghostly

520
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:28,120
Speaker 1: world of shades. Uh. Turner says in her book that

521
00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:31,000
Speaker 1: there was a lot of cross pollenization going on in

522
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:33,200
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire because you had the great influence, you

523
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:37,480
Speaker 1: have Roman influence and mister influences coming in as well. Right,

524
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:40,800
Speaker 1: she sees like all sorts of things starting to converge.

525
00:26:41,119 --> 00:26:44,240
Speaker 1: And uh, there's a good little passage here that says

526
00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:47,639
Speaker 1: the old religions were assaulted by mosaic of novelties entirely.

527
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 1: New gods like the Greco Egyptian therapists were fabricated, while

528
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:55,080
Speaker 1: old ones arrived from strange lands. It goes on to

529
00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 1: say that there's influence in Turkey and so on and

530
00:26:57,359 --> 00:27:00,760
Speaker 1: so forth, so you get a lot of the sharing

531
00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:04,480
Speaker 1: of ideas here. And again this rich fabric of what

532
00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:08,080
Speaker 1: the story of hell and the afterlife becomes for us. Yeah,

533
00:27:08,240 --> 00:27:12,600
Speaker 1: and then the Zoroastrian influence continues, uh, and it continues

534
00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:17,120
Speaker 1: to democratize hell. In in Turner's words, um, the good

535
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 1: souls have to go somewhere right, and then the bad

536
00:27:19,000 --> 00:27:20,840
Speaker 1: souls have to go somewhere else. And then you get

537
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:24,680
Speaker 1: this rich, dark, disturbing, and endlessly fascinating vision of what

538
00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 1: hell might consist of. And then we have to rationalize

539
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:31,679
Speaker 1: all of that with our belief in and or a

540
00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:34,679
Speaker 1: devotion to a divine being. So you get into this

541
00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:37,199
Speaker 1: problem of hell and you have to work out the kinks.

542
00:27:37,359 --> 00:27:39,720
Speaker 1: And like the idea of a program that is built

543
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:41,639
Speaker 1: upon a previous program, in a previous one, you have

544
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:43,159
Speaker 1: all these problems that need to be worked out in

545
00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:46,440
Speaker 1: the program, Or like a novel that has each chapter

546
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 1: has been written by a different author, and you have

547
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 1: to go back and somehow work all these plot holes

548
00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 1: out well. And it is really interesting because depending on

549
00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:55,760
Speaker 1: the culture your your Hell is going to be very different.

550
00:27:55,760 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 1: So if you have a culture that has a lot

551
00:27:57,480 --> 00:28:00,200
Speaker 1: of different levels of classes, then you're gonna have many

552
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:03,120
Speaker 1: different classes in Hell. Or as you say, there's one

553
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:07,320
Speaker 1: version of hell that is democratized, um. And it's it's

554
00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:11,400
Speaker 1: talking more about perhaps the Greek culture and people existing.

555
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:13,640
Speaker 1: If you've sinned, then then you're all on the same

556
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:15,800
Speaker 1: page or all you know, nobody is higher than the

557
00:28:15,840 --> 00:28:19,520
Speaker 1: other person. And I couldn't help but think about the

558
00:28:19,520 --> 00:28:22,560
Speaker 1: blog post that you recently wrote. This is a little

559
00:28:22,600 --> 00:28:26,640
Speaker 1: bit of a diversion, but it's about cubicles and office

560
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:30,720
Speaker 1: space and which version of hell your your open office

561
00:28:30,840 --> 00:28:34,000
Speaker 1: or your cubicle hell um. And there's an element of

562
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:37,000
Speaker 1: the democratization to that as well. All Right, we're gonna

563
00:28:37,040 --> 00:28:38,480
Speaker 1: take a quick break and we come back. We're gonna

564
00:28:38,520 --> 00:28:40,160
Speaker 1: get even more into this idea of the problem with

565
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:55,960
Speaker 1: healthy Alright, we're back. So what could be the problem

566
00:28:56,000 --> 00:28:59,440
Speaker 1: with a place where sinners are flayed, staked, disemboweled and

567
00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:02,880
Speaker 1: eating a lot. What's wrong with that? Well, because in

568
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:04,680
Speaker 1: most of these you have to it has to make

569
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:07,920
Speaker 1: sense with the rest of this university you've built and uh,

570
00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:10,600
Speaker 1: and there are different ways you attempt to do that.

571
00:29:10,760 --> 00:29:14,000
Speaker 1: But certainly any kind of monotheistic religion you have a

572
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 1: god at the head of it, and what kind of

573
00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:17,400
Speaker 1: god do you want to invest your time in? Is

574
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:20,680
Speaker 1: it a Is it a god who has something called

575
00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:23,160
Speaker 1: it a hell and allows it to exist and sends

576
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 1: people there. That sends dead infants there, That sends people

577
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:31,440
Speaker 1: who hadn't heard about the message of the truth, people

578
00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:34,720
Speaker 1: that had varying uh, you know, faith and varying beliefs

579
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:36,560
Speaker 1: that they go there as well. I mean, how do

580
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:38,920
Speaker 1: you how do you deal with that? Or do you

581
00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:42,160
Speaker 1: decide your God is that type of God? And then

582
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 1: does that shake your belief in the whole system? So

583
00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:46,719
Speaker 1: there's two issues there, Like one is how do you

584
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:50,320
Speaker 1: meet out justice in the afterlife? Right? And how do

585
00:29:50,360 --> 00:29:52,720
Speaker 1: you determine what is sin and what is not sin?

586
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:55,280
Speaker 1: Because everybody has a different take on that. And as

587
00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:57,680
Speaker 1: you said, if you have innocence, let's say, babies who

588
00:29:57,720 --> 00:30:00,239
Speaker 1: are not baptized, then well they're going to help. Right,

589
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: You've got to create new rules to figure out how

590
00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 1: that works. And you've got a choice. You can have

591
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:08,680
Speaker 1: a God who was warm and cuddly and fuzzy that

592
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:10,960
Speaker 1: you take a positive message from and you just kind

593
00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:13,240
Speaker 1: of say, you know what, Hell is not my concern.

594
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: Heaven is my concern. Yeah, And uh, this God would

595
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:19,960
Speaker 1: like me to join him in heaven clearly, or you

596
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:23,600
Speaker 1: could say I may not be worthy for heaven, and

597
00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 1: many other people may not be as well. Yeah, now

598
00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:29,040
Speaker 1: they're There are various ways of dealing with this, and

599
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:30,560
Speaker 1: one is just exactly what kind of a view of

600
00:30:30,560 --> 00:30:32,600
Speaker 1: hell there is? And it's not quite as simple as

601
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:35,680
Speaker 1: they are those of us who do not believe there's hell.

602
00:30:35,760 --> 00:30:37,400
Speaker 1: And then there are those of us who believe there

603
00:30:37,480 --> 00:30:41,040
Speaker 1: is a literal place where where Devil's torture sinners. It's

604
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:43,280
Speaker 1: not quite that kind of right. You do have literal

605
00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:46,280
Speaker 1: there is literal belief in hell where it is that

606
00:30:46,280 --> 00:30:49,080
Speaker 1: where there is a place probably under the earth, where

607
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:51,720
Speaker 1: sinners are tormented. But then there's also a more psychological

608
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:54,920
Speaker 1: view where instead of being physically tormented at the at

609
00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:58,000
Speaker 1: the behalf or at least the permission of a statistic God. Uh,

610
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:00,920
Speaker 1: it's more about being separate from God. Being separate from

611
00:31:00,960 --> 00:31:05,120
Speaker 1: God is torture. Um. There's like a mild cycule tychological view.

612
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:08,120
Speaker 1: There's Um, there's the idea that hell is self inflicted.

613
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:10,800
Speaker 1: And you throw full free will into the equation and say, well,

614
00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:13,600
Speaker 1: it's not really God tormenting you. You had the free

615
00:31:13,600 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: will and you're choosing to live this way, and in

616
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: some of these models, you can get out in any

617
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:19,959
Speaker 1: time you want. It's just do you do you have

618
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: the belief, you have the faith to do so. There's

619
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:24,840
Speaker 1: a There are also plenty of versions of it where

620
00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 1: hell is temporary, the idea that hell is like a

621
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:30,480
Speaker 1: place where souls only have to burn for a certain

622
00:31:30,520 --> 00:31:33,560
Speaker 1: amount of time and then they either are saved or

623
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:37,080
Speaker 1: they're annihilated at the end. There's some versions of of

624
00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 1: hell belief where hell is annihilation. Being cast into the

625
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: fiery furnace is is death is annihilation. It is that

626
00:31:44,440 --> 00:31:47,560
Speaker 1: crocodile faced beast from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

627
00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:51,080
Speaker 1: And then you have, especially in Eastern models of the

628
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 1: Hell's such as the Nakaras in you know, Hinduism, Buddhism,

629
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 1: and various other Asian myth cycles, the idea that we

630
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:01,000
Speaker 1: go through these different lives, there's reinca ornated into different

631
00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 1: phases of being, and you can fall down the chain

632
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: of being, you can fall into these lesser realms of existence,

633
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:10,800
Speaker 1: such as the Hellishnkaras. But it's but it's not a

634
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:14,120
Speaker 1: permanent place. Um it's a place that you can you experience,

635
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:16,240
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a refining of the soul, and

636
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:18,200
Speaker 1: then you can you can work your way back up

637
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:22,600
Speaker 1: to better stages of existence and ultimately ideally free yourself

638
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 1: from the wheel entirely. The problem is that nobody can

639
00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 1: really agree on what hell is right, so uh, and

640
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:34,760
Speaker 1: I think the issue of this is that you know,

641
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:39,480
Speaker 1: from from classical texts, back to very very ancient text

642
00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:44,040
Speaker 1: it was thought that Hell dwelled under us right um,

643
00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:46,360
Speaker 1: and the main things a lot easier back than to

644
00:32:46,440 --> 00:32:49,280
Speaker 1: think that in a sense, because what you're talking about

645
00:32:49,440 --> 00:32:52,360
Speaker 1: is that it's low ground geographically. You can point at

646
00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:55,640
Speaker 1: that time and say clearly it's it's right underneath us um.

647
00:32:55,640 --> 00:32:59,840
Speaker 1: In fact, Pausanias, a Greek geographer, said that Hell was

648
00:32:59,840 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: as far beneath Hades, says Hades is beneath the earth.

649
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:07,680
Speaker 1: But along comes Galileo and Galleto suggests, well, you know,

650
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:09,840
Speaker 1: the Earth is not the center of the universe. The

651
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:13,080
Speaker 1: Sun does not revolve around the Earth, and therefore, if

652
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:15,160
Speaker 1: the Earth is not the center of the universe, then

653
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:19,960
Speaker 1: where where does Hell now reside? So that was really

654
00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:21,880
Speaker 1: one of the big problems with the Church is that

655
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 1: they said, okay, if Heaven is hanging above us, and

656
00:33:26,560 --> 00:33:29,600
Speaker 1: Hell is below us, and you're telling us that there's

657
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 1: something beyond the earth that is the universe um, and

658
00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 1: we're not central to it. Then it really does displace Hell,

659
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 1: and it makes it much less likely as a logical

660
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:44,160
Speaker 1: construct or you just have to make You have to

661
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:47,040
Speaker 1: imagine that exists in like another dimension, that Heaven and

662
00:33:47,120 --> 00:33:50,720
Speaker 1: Hell are both extradimensional places. You couldn't even fly there

663
00:33:50,720 --> 00:33:52,880
Speaker 1: in a spaceship. But this is the teasing a part

664
00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 1: of Hell and the logistics of it in a sense,

665
00:33:56,360 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 1: because now that it is banished to even a further

666
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:03,480
Speaker 1: round of imagination, that is to have been taken out

667
00:34:03,520 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 1: of the ground, the soil, it's been turned into Narnia,

668
00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:08,520
Speaker 1: has been turned into Narnia, then you begin to understand

669
00:34:08,600 --> 00:34:12,640
Speaker 1: that it is perhaps a construct of the human mind.

670
00:34:13,239 --> 00:34:16,440
Speaker 1: And that's all part of the problem too, because you

671
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:18,560
Speaker 1: have you have individuals who who see it this way,

672
00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:21,360
Speaker 1: and then you have individuals who either do believe in

673
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:23,719
Speaker 1: a Hell, or more likely they cling to a faith

674
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:26,799
Speaker 1: that also has Hell somewhere in the fabric. And we've

675
00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 1: all had that situation where we've if we're not you know,

676
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:33,880
Speaker 1: uber religious, ourselves you will end up encountering someone who is.

677
00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:36,440
Speaker 1: And if you don't, actually you may not actually discuss

678
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:38,239
Speaker 1: it with them, but there will come a point. And

679
00:34:38,239 --> 00:34:40,319
Speaker 1: I remember this and thinking about this alting like junior

680
00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:42,440
Speaker 1: high in high school, where you know, I had friends

681
00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:45,880
Speaker 1: that were mostly were Protestant um but there were all

682
00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:49,399
Speaker 1: these different Protestant faiths, some of which supposedly, uh thought

683
00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 1: they were the only ones who would actually make it

684
00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:52,719
Speaker 1: to happen. I don't know how much of that was

685
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:55,120
Speaker 1: just sort of inviting and bickering, but that was kind

686
00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 1: of the charge, Like I would say, oh, well, those

687
00:34:56,520 --> 00:34:58,120
Speaker 1: guys at that shirts they think they're the only ones

688
00:34:58,120 --> 00:35:00,200
Speaker 1: going to happen. And then we also had there were

689
00:35:00,239 --> 00:35:02,680
Speaker 1: some there were Catholics in the area. They were Jehovah's witnesses,

690
00:35:03,239 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: had a number of friends who are who are Mormon,

691
00:35:05,880 --> 00:35:08,560
Speaker 1: and and so you end up in these situations where

692
00:35:08,600 --> 00:35:11,200
Speaker 1: you're like, now, if their faith is right, that means

693
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 1: I'm going to hell. And then my preacher just the

694
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:15,480
Speaker 1: other day, so that these guys are going to hell,

695
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:18,840
Speaker 1: and you start trying to map out these different relationships

696
00:35:19,280 --> 00:35:21,359
Speaker 1: and if you you know, if you let this kind

697
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:23,919
Speaker 1: of thing get the better off you. It can lead

698
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:28,760
Speaker 1: to some uncomfortable confrontations. It can, and I think because

699
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:32,720
Speaker 1: some of this is predicated on what Turner calls abominable fancy.

700
00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:36,120
Speaker 1: Um did you come across this in the book? I

701
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 1: thought it was really interesting. It's ultimately this Catharsis that's

702
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:42,719
Speaker 1: built on the foundation of shaken Freud. So Turner says

703
00:35:42,760 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 1: that it's a it's one of the less savoring notions

704
00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:47,759
Speaker 1: of the early Church. And it's this idea that part

705
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:51,680
Speaker 1: of the joy of being saved laying contemplating the souls

706
00:35:51,840 --> 00:35:56,800
Speaker 1: of the damned. Yeah, it's there's also in this idea

707
00:35:57,080 --> 00:36:00,200
Speaker 1: is this kind of notion that in this world old

708
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:04,840
Speaker 1: in the real world, evils often go unpunished and goods

709
00:36:04,880 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 1: often go unrewarded. But eventually, if we're faithful in the afterlife,

710
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:12,520
Speaker 1: God's going to sort it all out. And these people

711
00:36:12,560 --> 00:36:15,080
Speaker 1: that that were that were vicious or vile or lived

712
00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:17,920
Speaker 1: outside of my group, uh, they will get their come

713
00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:21,640
Speaker 1: upance and I will get my rewards. Uh So, And

714
00:36:21,640 --> 00:36:23,359
Speaker 1: and that can be I guess you know, like you said,

715
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:25,480
Speaker 1: it can be a comforting idea, especially if someone is

716
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:29,360
Speaker 1: in a is downtrodden, if your life really is not

717
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 1: working out and is filled with a lot of a

718
00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 1: lot of torment. There's gotta be something rewarding about the

719
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:37,000
Speaker 1: notion will in the next life, I'm going to be rewarded,

720
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:38,719
Speaker 1: and these people who are living high in the hog

721
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:40,759
Speaker 1: off of my misery, they're going to be the ones

722
00:36:40,800 --> 00:36:45,120
Speaker 1: to suffer. So that can be both rewarding and a

723
00:36:45,239 --> 00:36:49,920
Speaker 1: disturbing concept. Likewise, there's the the ever present concept of

724
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:53,319
Speaker 1: hell as the Boogeyman story, Hell is the thing that

725
00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:55,920
Speaker 1: someone is, that the threat that someone gives you in

726
00:36:56,040 --> 00:36:58,560
Speaker 1: order to make you fall into line. But at also

727
00:36:58,600 --> 00:37:01,120
Speaker 1: it's cathartic in the sense that it what they're saying

728
00:37:01,120 --> 00:37:03,960
Speaker 1: with abominable fancies that you can occupy the station of

729
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:07,799
Speaker 1: the Boogeyman meeting out justice. Right, So if you're sitting

730
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:10,840
Speaker 1: there saying I'm saved and you're damned, then in a sense,

731
00:37:11,400 --> 00:37:15,520
Speaker 1: you're inhabiting the sort of false humility. And it reminded

732
00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:20,120
Speaker 1: me of the episode we did on Pride when we

733
00:37:20,120 --> 00:37:23,160
Speaker 1: did the Seventh Sins, because there was a study in

734
00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:25,799
Speaker 1: which it was talked about how humility, which is thought

735
00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 1: to be the opposite of pride, is actually pretty similar

736
00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:33,040
Speaker 1: in terms of what's going on in the noggin, and uh,

737
00:37:33,120 --> 00:37:37,279
Speaker 1: there's cognitive neuroscientist Julian Paul Keenan. He looked at transcranial

738
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 1: magnetic stimulation to disrupt deliberate self deprecation, this humility. He

739
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:47,160
Speaker 1: found that the patterns of brain activation during self deprecation

740
00:37:47,280 --> 00:37:51,560
Speaker 1: are fundamentally the same as self deceptive pride, so the

741
00:37:51,640 --> 00:37:53,719
Speaker 1: same part of the brain is activated. And I thought

742
00:37:53,760 --> 00:37:55,840
Speaker 1: that was really interesting because maybe some of this is

743
00:37:55,880 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 1: tied to that, that this idea that you're hardwired or

744
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:04,400
Speaker 1: humans are hardwired in a way to try to uh

745
00:38:04,520 --> 00:38:07,680
Speaker 1: put themselves on a pedestal and meet out justice and

746
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:12,799
Speaker 1: assume this false humility in order to see themselves feel

747
00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: vindicated in any sort of do gooding that they've performed.

748
00:38:18,160 --> 00:38:21,040
Speaker 1: So it's kind of it's like vigilante justice on a

749
00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 1: on a weird kind of like thought way, you know,

750
00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 1: in a mental vigilante action. Yea, right, right, So it

751
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:32,080
Speaker 1: would be very interesting if they could take that study

752
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:35,960
Speaker 1: and then uh, you know, slice it up with people

753
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: who are contemplating hell for others since see if that corresponded.

754
00:38:39,600 --> 00:38:41,880
Speaker 1: But I just wanted to mention that because I think, again,

755
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:45,040
Speaker 1: this is a problem of hell. Is it meant to

756
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 1: um to divert us in a way that's cooperative for

757
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:53,719
Speaker 1: the community, that's a positive? In other words, can hell

758
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:56,120
Speaker 1: exist as this example that we point to say you're

759
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:59,239
Speaker 1: gonna go to hell if you don't, you know, do

760
00:38:59,280 --> 00:39:02,120
Speaker 1: what you're supposed to do? Or is it a way

761
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:06,480
Speaker 1: of us occupying maybe the darkest reaches of our minds

762
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:11,839
Speaker 1: and um and playing out this drama in a safe way? Right?

763
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:13,719
Speaker 1: You don't not actually want anybody to be hurt or

764
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:17,080
Speaker 1: tormented or eaten in hell, but it's a it's an

765
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:20,080
Speaker 1: easy way to say, oh, that person, they drive me nuts,

766
00:39:20,080 --> 00:39:22,200
Speaker 1: They're going to Hell. Yeah, And that's where a lot

767
00:39:22,200 --> 00:39:24,280
Speaker 1: of the problem comes in, like how do you separate

768
00:39:24,440 --> 00:39:26,320
Speaker 1: the oh, you know, there they suck, They're going to

769
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:29,600
Speaker 1: go to hell, Like how do you have It's one

770
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:31,879
Speaker 1: thing to think that, but then how do you rationalize

771
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:34,279
Speaker 1: that with some sort of notion that, oh, yeah, they'll

772
00:39:34,280 --> 00:39:37,520
Speaker 1: actually go to a place where you know, demons will

773
00:39:37,719 --> 00:39:40,840
Speaker 1: you know, torment their flesh forever. You know, that's like

774
00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:43,959
Speaker 1: you know who deserves that well? And it's funny because

775
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:46,680
Speaker 1: we talk about it more in this this abstract realm.

776
00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:48,840
Speaker 1: But back in the day, particularly in Galilet, it was

777
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:51,200
Speaker 1: just just a real threat. Right, if someone thought that

778
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:54,400
Speaker 1: you were committing a sin, they wouldn't meet out that

779
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:57,320
Speaker 1: justice for you. They wouldn't wait for for they wouldn't

780
00:39:57,320 --> 00:39:59,040
Speaker 1: sit around and say, oh, when he gets to Hell,

781
00:39:59,120 --> 00:40:01,720
Speaker 1: he's going to suffer. Well. In the medieval church, of course,

782
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 1: they had a tremendous amount of power over the faithful

783
00:40:05,080 --> 00:40:08,359
Speaker 1: because they ultimately had the power to decide who goes

784
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:10,600
Speaker 1: to Hell and who goes to heaven. Uh, you know,

785
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:12,480
Speaker 1: you could, you could put you know, a nation on

786
00:40:12,560 --> 00:40:15,960
Speaker 1: an interdict. You could, you could excommunicate somebody, and that

787
00:40:16,040 --> 00:40:20,000
Speaker 1: was if you believed in into it enough, and a

788
00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:22,480
Speaker 1: lot of people did. That was that was a tremendous

789
00:40:22,520 --> 00:40:25,879
Speaker 1: threat to level against an individual and it it It can,

790
00:40:26,160 --> 00:40:30,080
Speaker 1: It could and did decide like you know, whole international incidents.

791
00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:33,799
Speaker 1: Which again, if you don't think that Hell has some

792
00:40:33,880 --> 00:40:37,799
Speaker 1: sort of shaping of our current culture, you're wrong because

793
00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 1: you have to look back again at these examples which

794
00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:42,560
Speaker 1: have informed how we live today. Yeah, if we didn't

795
00:40:42,600 --> 00:40:45,800
Speaker 1: have have some sort of theology involving Hell at varying

796
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:49,719
Speaker 1: stages in the history of Western civilization, we'd be speaking

797
00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:52,640
Speaker 1: different languages. Now, it's true. I shouldn't say you're wrong,

798
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:55,000
Speaker 1: but I would say, please reconsider. Yeah, I mean, just

799
00:40:55,040 --> 00:40:56,879
Speaker 1: let's look back at the events of ten sixty six

800
00:40:56,880 --> 00:40:59,479
Speaker 1: and imagine a world in which the Catholic Church didn't

801
00:40:59,560 --> 00:41:02,480
Speaker 1: level this kind of supposed power over the fate of

802
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:05,000
Speaker 1: the soul. And and you know, we did an episode

803
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:09,319
Speaker 1: on witchcraft, so or rather which is and I won't

804
00:41:09,360 --> 00:41:11,480
Speaker 1: go into that, but you can certainly see the trail

805
00:41:12,080 --> 00:41:14,959
Speaker 1: that that led to. I did want to mention that

806
00:41:15,719 --> 00:41:21,399
Speaker 1: Turner says that Dante and exploring Hell so richly in

807
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:27,719
Speaker 1: The Divine Comedy that he unintentionally killed Hell. Again. This

808
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:31,040
Speaker 1: is that the notion that if you make something into

809
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:34,480
Speaker 1: a story, or you abstracted enough that the logic of

810
00:41:34,520 --> 00:41:37,480
Speaker 1: it begins to be teased apart. She said, it's because

811
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:40,760
Speaker 1: he invited readers to join him in Virgil in a story.

812
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:42,920
Speaker 1: And she said that Dante made it easier for intellectuals

813
00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:46,360
Speaker 1: of Renaissance and the Enlightenment to reject its reality. Yeah.

814
00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:49,120
Speaker 1: And and it's also worth noting that with the Inferno,

815
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:50,799
Speaker 1: he was not written in Latin. It was written in

816
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:54,719
Speaker 1: Italian because he wanted it to be accessible by a

817
00:41:54,800 --> 00:42:00,279
Speaker 1: general audience without having to undergo particularly possibly brutal translation

818
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:04,239
Speaker 1: by others. And it was. It was wildly popular. So

819
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:09,160
Speaker 1: you might be sitting here thinking, Okay, hell is this construct? Um?

820
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:12,200
Speaker 1: Some people believe in hell? But just how many people

821
00:42:12,239 --> 00:42:15,960
Speaker 1: believe in hell? What are we talking about here? Well,

822
00:42:16,040 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 1: we were looking at a particular article here of titled

823
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:22,680
Speaker 1: who Believes in Religious Evil and Investigation of sociological patterns

824
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:25,000
Speaker 1: of belief in Satan, Hell and Demons by Joseph Baker

825
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:28,040
Speaker 1: at Baylor University. He basically deals with with just the

826
00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:30,719
Speaker 1: United States in this but in breaking down some of

827
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 1: the uh, the demographics here, it is a bit telling

828
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 1: um and you can you can find this article online.

829
00:42:38,920 --> 00:42:41,640
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna just read through the numbers and stats

830
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:44,160
Speaker 1: where you but I thought I would read just a

831
00:42:44,200 --> 00:42:47,440
Speaker 1: little bit from the discussion section of the article. So

832
00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:51,239
Speaker 1: Baker says um in in in summarizing his stats about

833
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:54,000
Speaker 1: these different groups and who believes what he said, African

834
00:42:54,000 --> 00:42:56,400
Speaker 1: Americans tend to have stronger belief in religious evil than

835
00:42:56,440 --> 00:42:58,920
Speaker 1: do whites. Women have stronger degree of belief than men.

836
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:03,680
Speaker 1: Uh not a net of religious controls. Younger Americans hold

837
00:43:03,760 --> 00:43:07,880
Speaker 1: stronger belief and conceptions of religious evil than older Americans. Finally,

838
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:11,000
Speaker 1: social class plays an important role in how certain an

839
00:43:11,040 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 1: individual is about the existence of religious evil, with those

840
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:17,360
Speaker 1: of higher social class having weaker confidence about the existence

841
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:21,200
Speaker 1: of religious evil. However, these effects are conditioned by church attendance.

842
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:24,560
Speaker 1: For those exhibiting a high level participation in organized religion,

843
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 1: the influence of social class is neutralized. For those not

844
00:43:27,600 --> 00:43:30,800
Speaker 1: actively participating in organized religion, the influence of social class

845
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:34,480
Speaker 1: is more pronounced. These results indicate that traditionally power and

846
00:43:34,560 --> 00:43:37,600
Speaker 1: resource deprived groups, African Americans and those of lower social

847
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:42,080
Speaker 1: classes exhibit strong beliefs in religious evil. Difficult life circumstances

848
00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:45,920
Speaker 1: and suffering often lead individuals to search for meaning. Moreover,

849
00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:50,439
Speaker 1: suffering forces people to conceive of God as removed from

850
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:53,680
Speaker 1: this you know, hell equation, or they attribute the source

851
00:43:53,719 --> 00:43:56,960
Speaker 1: of suffering to some other form of evil. So I

852
00:43:57,000 --> 00:43:58,879
Speaker 1: thought that was interesting because it it does not only

853
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:00,640
Speaker 1: with just sort of the demographics. It lets you know,

854
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:04,880
Speaker 1: like where you fall in the socioeconomic ladder, how that

855
00:44:05,040 --> 00:44:08,600
Speaker 1: influences your belief. And I thought it interesting. The more

856
00:44:08,600 --> 00:44:11,200
Speaker 1: downtrodden you are, it's the less likely you are to

857
00:44:11,239 --> 00:44:13,080
Speaker 1: be worried by the problem of hell because you kind

858
00:44:13,080 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 1: of remove God from the source of suffering. God is

859
00:44:15,680 --> 00:44:18,839
Speaker 1: the source of relief, not suffering well, and the perspective

860
00:44:18,920 --> 00:44:21,120
Speaker 1: of God is a good cop in Satan as that

861
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:23,759
Speaker 1: cop right, Yeah, and then you end up falling back

862
00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:26,880
Speaker 1: into this more duellist view of the great evil and

863
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:29,279
Speaker 1: the great good, because in Christian tradition, Satan is just

864
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:32,920
Speaker 1: a fallen angel. He's a disgruntled former employee who wields

865
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:35,240
Speaker 1: a great amount of power. But he's not the equal

866
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:37,640
Speaker 1: of God. It's not it's not the you know, the

867
00:44:37,680 --> 00:44:41,200
Speaker 1: ancient uh, you know, Mesopotamian idea. It's not the Zoroastrian

868
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:45,000
Speaker 1: or the or the Gnostic notion of these two forces.

869
00:44:45,040 --> 00:44:48,160
Speaker 1: And in fact, the Catholic Church show in persecuting heresies

870
00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:52,279
Speaker 1: UH tried really hard to keep dualism from creeping its

871
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:55,480
Speaker 1: way back into the into this into the understanding of

872
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:58,880
Speaker 1: the universe. Well, let me put a hard stat against

873
00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:01,440
Speaker 1: all of this u least here in the United States.

874
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 1: According to Alice K. Turner, six of Americans believe in Hell,

875
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:09,520
Speaker 1: up from fifty in nineteen fifty three. Now here's the

876
00:45:09,560 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 1: real kicker and then here's where American optimism really shines.

877
00:45:13,920 --> 00:45:16,520
Speaker 1: Only four percent think that they'll end up in hell.

878
00:45:17,280 --> 00:45:20,439
Speaker 1: There you go, I mean it. I was reading some

879
00:45:20,440 --> 00:45:23,400
Speaker 1: some thoughts on this too, where in his particularly in

880
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:26,840
Speaker 1: the United States, No, no one really thinks they're going

881
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:29,200
Speaker 1: to go to hell. And then we tend to even

882
00:45:29,200 --> 00:45:31,640
Speaker 1: we may, you know, subscribe to a religion that has

883
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:35,880
Speaker 1: some pretty uh well confusing, but some certain rules in

884
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:38,359
Speaker 1: placing who gets to go and who's who's good who's bad.

885
00:45:38,520 --> 00:45:40,400
Speaker 1: But then ultimately we kind of fall back on the

886
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 1: idea that most people go to heaven and only really

887
00:45:43,120 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 1: bad people go to hell. And certainly all the celebrities

888
00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:49,719
Speaker 1: go to heaven, oh of course, yeah, yeah, uh yeah,

889
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:53,400
Speaker 1: even the Kardashians. Yeah, well, you know, they're really just

890
00:45:53,440 --> 00:45:58,759
Speaker 1: sort of wandering maybe. But it's interesting because of that

891
00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 1: sixty six two percent of Americans who believe in how

892
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:05,279
Speaker 1: nineties six percent think that they're not going to go there.

893
00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:08,040
Speaker 1: So do they really in their heart of hearts And

894
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:11,239
Speaker 1: we can't obviously, um answer this, but do they really

895
00:46:11,280 --> 00:46:12,960
Speaker 1: in their heart of hearts believe in a health they

896
00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:14,839
Speaker 1: don't think they're going there, or do they just sort

897
00:46:14,840 --> 00:46:17,359
Speaker 1: of say, well, I believe in heaven, and they said

898
00:46:17,360 --> 00:46:19,080
Speaker 1: there's a hell, So I guess I believe in that too,

899
00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:21,920
Speaker 1: because it was recently listened to an interview Terry Gross

900
00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:25,320
Speaker 1: interviewed Stephen King last month, I think, and she was

901
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:27,239
Speaker 1: asking him about some of this, like belief in heaven

902
00:46:27,239 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 1: and hell and supernatural and uh. And he he said

903
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:33,720
Speaker 1: that did he found it a bit silly to believe

904
00:46:33,760 --> 00:46:35,239
Speaker 1: in heaven and not in hell. You know, it's like,

905
00:46:35,239 --> 00:46:37,480
Speaker 1: why would you just believe in the one when they're

906
00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:41,280
Speaker 1: kind of a pair, And you know, I, I guess

907
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:43,239
Speaker 1: that's a valid argue. You could, you know, point back

908
00:46:43,280 --> 00:46:46,719
Speaker 1: to some of these ancient models, uh, the Mesopotamian uh,

909
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:48,319
Speaker 1: one of the Mesopotanian models, with some of the the

910
00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:50,760
Speaker 1: other models and say, well, there's alway there's always this duality.

911
00:46:51,080 --> 00:46:53,120
Speaker 1: But then it's not always the case. There are plenty

912
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:56,440
Speaker 1: of examples of of afterlife views in which there's really

913
00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:58,560
Speaker 1: there's only one place the soul was going, and it

914
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:01,240
Speaker 1: may be neutral, or it may be varying the degrees

915
00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:03,799
Speaker 1: of positive. So again, the problem of hell is the

916
00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:07,239
Speaker 1: problem of death and the limits of knowledge. Yes, I

917
00:47:07,280 --> 00:47:09,359
Speaker 1: mean not to to be so reductionless about it, but

918
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:12,960
Speaker 1: it all points back to this idea where we can't, uh,

919
00:47:13,080 --> 00:47:15,400
Speaker 1: we can't really wrap our minds around what's going to

920
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:21,040
Speaker 1: happen to us. Um. So this is what's really interesting

921
00:47:21,040 --> 00:47:26,360
Speaker 1: about it is that nonetheless supernatural punishment informs how we

922
00:47:26,440 --> 00:47:30,839
Speaker 1: go about our daily lives. Apparently. Yeah, and this is uh,

923
00:47:30,920 --> 00:47:33,560
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into a couple of studies here, um

924
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:37,520
Speaker 1: sociology studies that that look at and look at correlations

925
00:47:37,560 --> 00:47:41,120
Speaker 1: between different facts, between beliefs in the in supernatural evil,

926
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 1: between beliefs in heaven and hell, and how people behave,

927
00:47:44,160 --> 00:47:47,279
Speaker 1: how economies behave. And you know, it's not all cut

928
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:49,719
Speaker 1: and dry. It's more about correlation. The authors are not

929
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:52,160
Speaker 1: saying this is the relationship. They're saying, this is interesting,

930
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:55,319
Speaker 1: we need to study this more. But it it's in

931
00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:58,160
Speaker 1: a way, these these studies that were about to discuss,

932
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:01,080
Speaker 1: they represent a kind of problem hell for you know,

933
00:48:01,239 --> 00:48:04,400
Speaker 1: for for me, even because when I was first researching this,

934
00:48:04,480 --> 00:48:05,840
Speaker 1: I was kind of had it in my mind. I

935
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:09,200
Speaker 1: you know, I was reading uh in in Banks, a

936
00:48:09,320 --> 00:48:12,240
Speaker 1: book that deals with the matter that I was discussing

937
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:15,359
Speaker 1: in the summer reading episode, and you know, I kept

938
00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:18,520
Speaker 1: thinking of, hell, is this barbaric idea that that the

939
00:48:18,880 --> 00:48:22,400
Speaker 1: more advanced of society becomes, the more we need to

940
00:48:22,400 --> 00:48:24,960
Speaker 1: get rid of it. It's a dinosaur or you know,

941
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:27,680
Speaker 1: a brutal fantasy, and we're better off without it. What

942
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:29,719
Speaker 1: good could it possibly do us? And then here are

943
00:48:29,760 --> 00:48:32,360
Speaker 1: these two studies. They kind of make a case for

944
00:48:32,640 --> 00:48:39,080
Speaker 1: Hell being a positive motivator. Again, positive motivator. We say this,

945
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:42,239
Speaker 1: and that the studies quick to point out again this,

946
00:48:42,480 --> 00:48:46,319
Speaker 1: these are correlations. So there's a lot more going on.

947
00:48:46,360 --> 00:48:49,960
Speaker 1: There's very complex things going on in societies to determine

948
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:52,440
Speaker 1: the crime rate. But that being said, let's roll out

949
00:48:52,480 --> 00:48:55,640
Speaker 1: some of the data here. Okay, alright, So Azim F.

950
00:48:55,760 --> 00:48:58,560
Speaker 1: Sharif Uh he co authored the two thousand and twelve

951
00:48:58,640 --> 00:49:01,320
Speaker 1: paper Diversion Effect of Belief in Heaven and Hell on

952
00:49:01,440 --> 00:49:06,239
Speaker 1: National crime rates and UH his findings are encouraging or

953
00:49:06,239 --> 00:49:08,960
Speaker 1: discouraging compendently on how you look at the matter. H.

954
00:49:09,000 --> 00:49:11,880
Speaker 1: He compared the national crime rates UH with rates of

955
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:14,560
Speaker 1: belief in Heaven and Hell in sixty seven countries, and

956
00:49:14,600 --> 00:49:16,960
Speaker 1: he came up with with these findings. First of all,

957
00:49:17,239 --> 00:49:20,640
Speaker 1: Heaven's belief rate is almost always higher than Hell's belief. Right,

958
00:49:20,760 --> 00:49:24,759
Speaker 1: all right, that's totally by that, uh, and that kind

959
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:27,120
Speaker 1: of collaborates my theory that that helps kind of an

960
00:49:27,200 --> 00:49:30,880
Speaker 1: unwanted add on, you know, as I mentioned earlier. But

961
00:49:30,920 --> 00:49:34,360
Speaker 1: then the papers major statistical finding was that nations with

962
00:49:34,480 --> 00:49:38,279
Speaker 1: higher belief rates in Hell predicted lower crime rates, while

963
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:42,279
Speaker 1: higher belief rates in Heaven predicted higher crime rates. So

964
00:49:42,360 --> 00:49:45,600
Speaker 1: the idea is that health fearing set of citizens are

965
00:49:45,640 --> 00:49:48,520
Speaker 1: more mindful of screwing up in this life, while the

966
00:49:48,560 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 1: heaven crowd think that they've got it knocked, you know,

967
00:49:51,040 --> 00:49:52,680
Speaker 1: in the next life, so they might as well do

968
00:49:52,680 --> 00:49:54,719
Speaker 1: what they want in this one. Okay. So this is

969
00:49:55,040 --> 00:49:58,040
Speaker 1: from a comprehensive analysis of twenty six years of data

970
00:49:58,080 --> 00:50:02,960
Speaker 1: involving over one forty three thousand people in sixty seven countries.

971
00:50:03,480 --> 00:50:06,400
Speaker 1: Now in two thousand and three, a Harvard University researcher

972
00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:10,319
Speaker 1: Robert J. Borrow and Rachel M. Then clearly found that

973
00:50:10,360 --> 00:50:13,399
Speaker 1: the gross domestic product was higher in developed countries when

974
00:50:13,400 --> 00:50:15,400
Speaker 1: people believed in Hell more than they did in heaven.

975
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:20,160
Speaker 1: So here's another aspect of it. That being said, if

976
00:50:20,200 --> 00:50:25,960
Speaker 1: the gross domestic product is higher and uh, there's a

977
00:50:26,000 --> 00:50:30,160
Speaker 1: bigger belief in Hell in those communities and there's less crime.

978
00:50:31,239 --> 00:50:34,360
Speaker 1: Could you say that the economics of this are playing

979
00:50:34,360 --> 00:50:37,600
Speaker 1: a part. In other words, these communities are being served better,

980
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:41,520
Speaker 1: they have better opportunities for people. And therefore, and I'm

981
00:50:41,560 --> 00:50:45,440
Speaker 1: just throwing devil's up here, just throwing in some other

982
00:50:46,280 --> 00:50:49,840
Speaker 1: nuances of what it means to have a high crime

983
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:51,799
Speaker 1: rate or a low crime rate. And we know that

984
00:50:52,040 --> 00:50:59,200
Speaker 1: low opportunities, UM often predict higher crime. Right, so I

985
00:50:59,320 --> 00:51:01,880
Speaker 1: get the um. You know there's higher crime when people

986
00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:07,440
Speaker 1: in this correlation, uh say that they believe more in

987
00:51:07,480 --> 00:51:09,640
Speaker 1: heaven than they do in hell. But again, there's a

988
00:51:09,680 --> 00:51:13,840
Speaker 1: lot going on. In fact, Uh, there are some studies

989
00:51:13,880 --> 00:51:18,839
Speaker 1: coming out about how even weather affects crime, and so

990
00:51:18,880 --> 00:51:21,080
Speaker 1: you can't just say, oh, it's a belief system that's

991
00:51:21,160 --> 00:51:24,360
Speaker 1: keeping everything under wraps here. I found it interesting in

992
00:51:24,480 --> 00:51:27,600
Speaker 1: the uh the paper on Hell as a is an

993
00:51:27,640 --> 00:51:31,080
Speaker 1: its effect on crime, they pointed out that human trafficking

994
00:51:31,160 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 1: bucked the trend pretty much across the board. So so

995
00:51:34,040 --> 00:51:37,360
Speaker 1: human trafficking, as as as vile as it can be

996
00:51:37,600 --> 00:51:41,439
Speaker 1: in in in some situations like that, was just people

997
00:51:41,440 --> 00:51:43,120
Speaker 1: didn't even think of that as being something you could

998
00:51:43,120 --> 00:51:45,640
Speaker 1: go to Hell for, even in a country where otherwise

999
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:47,439
Speaker 1: you would be like, you know, murders and thieves would

1000
00:51:47,480 --> 00:51:51,040
Speaker 1: definitely be going. Really human traffic. Where does it say

1001
00:51:51,080 --> 00:51:53,400
Speaker 1: in the Bible not to traffic humans and not to

1002
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:55,759
Speaker 1: forget to feed them in a in a you know,

1003
00:51:55,800 --> 00:51:59,400
Speaker 1: a cargo container. M it doesn't. So it's kind of

1004
00:51:59,400 --> 00:52:01,920
Speaker 1: a gray area there, I guess for some people. And

1005
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:05,400
Speaker 1: yet it seems so logical. Was something that that is,

1006
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:08,400
Speaker 1: you know, not something you should do. Yeah, I know,

1007
00:52:08,480 --> 00:52:11,000
Speaker 1: not to do it. That's why I don't smuggle people

1008
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:13,600
Speaker 1: across the international borders. And not to get off on

1009
00:52:13,640 --> 00:52:15,360
Speaker 1: another topic, but this is a huge problem in the

1010
00:52:15,440 --> 00:52:19,879
Speaker 1: United States, especially for um, for sex trafficking, and these

1011
00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:21,760
Speaker 1: are a lot of crimes that are perpetrated against women

1012
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:26,759
Speaker 1: and there sort of under the radar. But anyway, that's

1013
00:52:27,239 --> 00:52:29,239
Speaker 1: neither here nor there right now. But it's kind of

1014
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:31,959
Speaker 1: mortifying to know that that's the perspective. Well, I guess

1015
00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:34,840
Speaker 1: in some cases the individual is saying, I am allowing

1016
00:52:34,880 --> 00:52:37,120
Speaker 1: you to take this journey, and if this journey ends

1017
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: in a horrible place for you, well, my hands are clean,

1018
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:42,040
Speaker 1: which kind of reminds me of some of these arguments

1019
00:52:42,040 --> 00:52:44,920
Speaker 1: about hell and God. God is sort of saying, look,

1020
00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:47,640
Speaker 1: you have the free will. I am allowing you to

1021
00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:51,439
Speaker 1: take this journey that's gonna into's gonna wind up in hell.

1022
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:55,680
Speaker 1: But but my hands are clean. Good cup, I'm a

1023
00:52:55,719 --> 00:52:59,759
Speaker 1: good cup. Um we know what Jean Paul Sartre would say?

1024
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:02,879
Speaker 1: What would he say? Hell is other People? Oh? Well yes,

1025
00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:06,760
Speaker 1: so And as a side note, there's actually an app

1026
00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:09,160
Speaker 1: that's called hell is other People? Yeah. What does it do?

1027
00:53:09,880 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: It tells you where your friends are so you can

1028
00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:16,760
Speaker 1: avoid them. Oh my god, that is brilliant because, um,

1029
00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:19,719
Speaker 1: my wife and I uh my wife particularly has this

1030
00:53:19,800 --> 00:53:22,040
Speaker 1: thing about running into people. She knows that the grocery store,

1031
00:53:22,040 --> 00:53:24,680
Speaker 1: which I totally understand because a lot of times you

1032
00:53:24,680 --> 00:53:26,680
Speaker 1: go to the grocery store, you're not there to socialize,

1033
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:28,759
Speaker 1: you're not dressed up for it. You're there to to

1034
00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:32,520
Speaker 1: carry out a task. And if you run into somebody, it's, uh,

1035
00:53:32,560 --> 00:53:34,839
Speaker 1: it's awkward. You know, like you can say, hey, all right,

1036
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:37,200
Speaker 1: I said hi to you. Now you depart, and then

1037
00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:38,919
Speaker 1: you run into them again and you have to either

1038
00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:41,719
Speaker 1: be keeping store them and it's weird. It's awkward. So

1039
00:53:41,719 --> 00:53:43,520
Speaker 1: if youah, if you had an app that let you

1040
00:53:43,600 --> 00:53:46,480
Speaker 1: know that you know this co worker. This friend was

1041
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:48,840
Speaker 1: at Kroger. Then you might just go to publics instead,

1042
00:53:48,920 --> 00:53:50,640
Speaker 1: but then you would feel like you had no free will,

1043
00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:54,400
Speaker 1: like your life is being dictated by the coordinates of

1044
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:57,200
Speaker 1: your friends that you're trying to avoid because your hair

1045
00:53:57,239 --> 00:54:01,759
Speaker 1: is mussy, Yeah, not messy, mussy. Well, it's it's a problem.

1046
00:54:01,880 --> 00:54:04,560
Speaker 1: It's what it is. It is. All right, Well, there

1047
00:54:04,600 --> 00:54:07,919
Speaker 1: you have it, the problem of Hell explored a little

1048
00:54:07,920 --> 00:54:09,680
Speaker 1: bit there for you, the origins of Hell, the idea

1049
00:54:09,719 --> 00:54:14,879
Speaker 1: of hell as a as a cultural, religious, theological, philosophical construct, um.

1050
00:54:15,120 --> 00:54:16,880
Speaker 1: And certainly if you want to want to read more

1051
00:54:16,880 --> 00:54:19,200
Speaker 1: about it again, highly recommend the History of Hell by

1052
00:54:19,200 --> 00:54:22,880
Speaker 1: Alice K. Turner. Wonderful book. And uh, we're gonna do

1053
00:54:22,880 --> 00:54:25,640
Speaker 1: another episode after this, published after this, where we're gonna

1054
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:27,359
Speaker 1: get into some of the science of hell, where we're

1055
00:54:27,400 --> 00:54:29,399
Speaker 1: gonna deal a little more with this, but there's gonna

1056
00:54:29,400 --> 00:54:32,080
Speaker 1: be less of a of a focus on on what

1057
00:54:32,160 --> 00:54:34,440
Speaker 1: we believe and more about some of the science that

1058
00:54:34,440 --> 00:54:37,560
Speaker 1: we've applied, um often as kind of a thought experiment

1059
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 1: to what we think we know about Hell. That's right,

1060
00:54:41,200 --> 00:54:45,840
Speaker 1: What is the trajectory of the fall or something like that? Cool?

1061
00:54:46,160 --> 00:54:49,640
Speaker 1: All right, Well, In the meantime, everyone out there can

1062
00:54:49,760 --> 00:54:51,480
Speaker 1: get in touch with us. You can let us know

1063
00:54:51,719 --> 00:54:53,000
Speaker 1: what do you think about Hell? Do you think it's

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00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:56,799
Speaker 1: a barbaric dinosaur that does the bone that some of

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00:54:56,840 --> 00:54:59,239
Speaker 1: this cling to, is it? Is it important? Do you

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00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:01,160
Speaker 1: do you feel like do you believe in Hell? If

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00:55:01,200 --> 00:55:02,800
Speaker 1: you do, does it make you a better person or

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00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:04,239
Speaker 1: do you feel kind of guilty about it? I mean,

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00:55:04,520 --> 00:55:06,719
Speaker 1: anything that we've discussed in here is a fair game.

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00:55:07,239 --> 00:55:08,719
Speaker 1: You can find us in the normal means. You can

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00:55:08,719 --> 00:55:10,399
Speaker 1: go to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's

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00:55:10,440 --> 00:55:13,320
Speaker 1: the main website. I have a number of blogs that

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00:55:13,360 --> 00:55:16,000
Speaker 1: have done leading up to this about Hell and you

1074
00:55:16,040 --> 00:55:18,080
Speaker 1: can find those there. You can find out our episodes,

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00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:19,680
Speaker 1: and then you can find us on social media. We're

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00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:22,680
Speaker 1: on that Twitter and Blow the Mind. We're on tumblers,

1077
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:25,120
Speaker 1: Facebook is Stuff to Blow your Mind? And where else

1078
00:55:25,120 --> 00:55:28,239
Speaker 1: can they find us? Well, you can find us by

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00:55:28,239 --> 00:55:30,479
Speaker 1: saying us an email and can do that at blow

1080
00:55:30,520 --> 00:55:37,120
Speaker 1: the Mind at discovery dot com for more on this

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00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:39,800
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it How Stuff Works

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00:55:39,840 --> 00:55:46,360
Speaker 1: dot com