See you in Hell - one in three clergy believe in damnation

(Read the whole article at Scotland on Sunday.)
The Devil's work is far from done. More than a third of Scotland's clergy still believe in the literal existence of Hell as a place, according to a new survey.

[…] Hardliners hold out the prospect of eternal physical punishment as an added part of the package for the condemned. Judgment Day, whether it ends in being sent to Hell or not, is also a strong belief, the survey found, with more than half of Scottish ministers in no doubt that humanity is divided into the saved and the damned after they depart the ranks of the mortal.

I guess the remainder think there is no real difference between Stalin and Mother Teresa. I can’t help wondering what there heaven must look like if it is populated with those who refused to repentant? It sounds like heaven will be a lot like Cambodia in the late 70’s.

[…] Your personal chances of being sent to either Heaven or Hell, however, could depend on where you live. Ministers who believe in an eternal mental and physical torment are much thicker on the ground in the Highlands and Islands and on the west coast of the mainland.

Ah, yes. Since reality is whatever we humans decide it is, then we can only go to hell if we convince ourselves that it exists. I wonder how the author feels about gravity, or Ohm's Law?

[…] The survey, 'Hell in Scotland: A Survey of Where the Nation's Clergy Think Some Might Be Heading', was conducted by Dr Eric Stoddart, a lecturer in practical theology at St Andrews University.

Mere sin is available to all of us; total loss of logic and reason requires advanced degrees.

[…] Stoddart said: "The fire and brimstone may largely have been extinguished but the beliefs that many Scottish clergy hold concerning the potential horrors that await "the lost" continue to be dark and forbidding. All will not be well, if the majority of Scotland's clergy are to be believed."

Throughout the history of many religions, the concept of a fiery Hell has been used to frighten populations away from sinning. The reward for a morally good life - and those who repented before death - was a place in Heaven alongside your God, while those who sinned without remorse were destined to descend into the Devils's domain.

I think we are confusing Christianity with Islam.

The concept of Hell as a literal place has declined in an increasingly secular world. But what surprised Stoddart is that "there is a solid number of Scottish ministers who still believe in eternal torment.

"There are those who maintain that Hell is something that should have gone away with the thinking that the Earth was flat, but it clearly hasn't," he said.

"I can understand that after death there might be some who think there are others who won't get into Heaven. They just won't exist. But for others to think there is really mental and physical torment came as a shock to me."

Translation: I never see these people at the faculty cocktail parties; therefore I couldn't imagine they actually existed.

[…] Social commentators said the continuing strength of the literal belief among ministers in modern Scotland reflected the rise of religious fundamentalism across the world.

Somehow, you knew they would get around to that. As someone who lectures on molecular evolution as part of his Biochemistry class, I wonder what “fundamentalist” has now been stretched to mean. It seems to primarily be used as a means of lumping all orthodox Christians with “fundamentalist” Islamofascist terrorists.

Rev Professor George Newlands, head of the Kirk's School of Divinity in Glasgow, said: "It is no surprise that there remains such a strong belief in Hell, because all over the world, religions are tending to become more fundamentalist and moving towards a kind of literalism. On many religious issues, there is a more literal interpretation of scriptures in the west than in the east, which corresponds to the north-south divide in the US."

Historian Michael Fry said the remaining fundamentalist areas which still believe in Heaven and Hell were a useful mirror image for the rest of modern, materialist Scotland. "It will not alter the fact, however, that most people will make their own moral choices."

Now that statement certainly strikes me as true, though perhaps not in the way he meant it.

[…] Stoddart, a former Baptist minister, says he no longer believes in Hell in the sense of a future destination. "But there is still a lot of value in talking about Hell because it allows us to say no to things in a moral sense. It's a way of making a judgment on what is right or wrong."

In other words, we can use hell to scare the ignorant masses, even though we all really know (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) that morals are strictly a matter of social convention.

I was wondering where this article would go when I opened it up, since it referred to a “literal existence of hell as a place.” It went to hell in a hurry, pun intended. Scotland seems to divide along the same sorts of religious lines as the USA.

Personally. I have no idea whether hell exists as a place; I am better at physics than at metaphysics. I really do expect it to exist as something, however. I base that less on any theological perspectives on the nature of God than I do on my experience and perspective on the nature of me. It is all too easy to picture myself rejecting the love of God and the offer of salvation. To such a person who has rejected Love itself, an eternity facing the unconcealed, unfiltered, uncreated light of God must burn indeed. And I suspect that the only recourse for souls who have trapped themselves in that state is to turn on one another in hatred. The imagery of total hopelessness, flames and unending torment seems pretty appropriate.

BTW - Anybody that wants a rather horrifying picture of how a man can condemn himself to hell should check out Descent into Hell by Charles Williams. You can get it in printed form from Amazon, or a (free) Microsoft Reader download from BlackMask.com. Williams was a buddy of Lewis and Tolkein, and his novels are a little weird, but extremely thought-provoking.