I have never been able to think of hell as anything other than an allegory. Reading
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for senior lit in high school, I had to write a paper on the famous "hellfire" speech and its effect on the hero, Stephen Dedalus. The torments described in the speech were emotional as well as physical: God's rejection amounted to eternal despair as well as eternal hellfire. Stephen was more terrified by the speech than any other boys in the audience, because he had known deeper guilt, shame and despair than the rest of them. Humans can't know anything other than worldly emotions, so hell is one imagining of the worst of them, magnified by the fear of the unknown. I don't believe in its physical existence at all. Of course, if there's ever proof, I'll change my views.
Darth Raptor wrote:Actually, everything I've heard points to Lucifer being Heaven's chief musician before his "fall".
That's so cool. Where did you hear that? I was about to say that it makes sense, that Christian music has no bite, but then I remembered gospel, Bach, Mozart, et cetera. However, it does give a bit more credence to that old deal at the crossroads ...
