Thursday, October 28, 2010

Has science disproven Dante's inferno?

According to Ed Babinski, contemporary Christians generally “reinterpret” the Bible to deny the subterranean location of hell. But among other issues, why does he think modern Christians would be motivated to do that? Does he think modern geology has disproven the (allegedly) subterranean location of hell?

I’m one of those contemporary Christians who doesn’t take the subterranean imagery at face value. Is that due to scientific pressure?

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Scripture literally situates hell somewhere “under” (or “inside”) the earth–a la Dante. Has science disproven that geographical setting?

It’s not as if terranauts have explored the interior of the earth, mapped every cubic inch, and discovered, much to their chagrin, that there’s no room for a hellish compartment.

From what I’ve read, our knowledge of the earth’s interior is quite sketchy and indirect. Geologists use seismic waves to get a general sense of what’s solid and liquid. But they don’t have anything like a detailed, 3D map of the earth’s interior.

In principle, I don’t see that science has disproven (ad arguendo) the subterranean existence of hell. Maybe at some point, due to technological advances, that can be ruled out on empirical grounds, but we’re far from that point.

So if contemporary Christians reject the subterranean location of hell, that isn’t due to some scientific finding of which prescientific Jews and Christians were blissfully ignorant. We don’t know something they didn’t.

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