Arguing For Hell

We've written a lot over the years in support of a traditional Christian view of hell. See, for example, pages 145-57 of The End Of Infidelity, where Steve Hays and I responded to Keith Parsons on the subject. We address a lot of issues there (objections to the fiery images of hell in scripture and later Christian tradition, whether everybody in hell will suffer equally, how many people will go there, whether children go there, etc.). There's other relevant material in the archives of this blog.

I recently heard Greg Koukl discuss the view that hell is self-perpetuating, in the sense that hell will keep going because people in hell will keep sinning. He thinks highly of the view, but isn't committed to it and isn't aware of any Biblical passage affirming it. However, he refers to how Amy Hall, who works with him at Stand To Reason, advocates the view. I advocate it as well, and I briefly discuss what I consider some Biblical support for it in the section of The End Of Infidelity cited above.

And I want to highlight a point about hell that's often neglected. It's common for people to say that they reject a particular organized religion or organized religion more broadly because of what it teaches about hell. Or it will be suggested that nobody would believe in hell if they weren't told to believe in it by a religious book, religious authority figures, and so on. It's common to assert that some religious belief or another, whether hell or something else, was fabricated by religious authorities to control people, influence them, or whatever.

For a Christian, the teaching of scripture on hell is our primary reason for accepting the concept and a sufficient reason for accepting it. But the extrabiblical evidence has some significance.

We've occasionally discussed some of the philosophical issues associated with hell. For example, as discussed above, if sinning continues in hell, then hell would be self-perpetuating in that sense, even if one were to reject the concept of one sin warranting eternal punishment. And philosophical arguments aren't equivalent to organized religion.

Several years ago, I wrote an article on hellish near-death experiences (NDEs). As I document there, hellish NDEs are more common than is often suggested. I suspect the large majority of people, in fact, underestimate how common such NDEs are. They vary widely, but some of them do involve a hell that's perceived as lengthy or eternal or that has some other characteristic that people object to when that characteristic is taught by an organized religion.

The significance of such NDEs will be different for different people. I'll provide some examples.

Some people have a view of the afterlife that's largely shaped by paranormal phenomena. For those who hold the highest sort of view of the veridicality of NDEs, the evidence from hellish NDEs will be more significant accordingly.

But even for those who hold a more subjective view of NDEs (as I do), they offer some support for the concept of hell. Even if NDEs are generally something like a supernatural dream or supernatural virtual reality, a state the soul enters when released from the body by some mechanism, it doesn't follow that every NDE is of that nature. One or more could be some sort of highly objective foretaste of the afterlife, whether it involves traveling there, so to speak, a vision, or whatever else. And the fact that God allows people to have hellish NDEs, even if all of them are highly subjective (something I don't see how we could prove), demonstrates that God isn't of such a nature as to not let anybody have such an experience. It would be similar to how the existence of wars, genocide, famine, natural disasters, etc. casts doubt on views of God that have him being highly accommodating to our intuitions, our preferences, our practices as parents, and so on. If your God wouldn't allow something like genocide or famine, then your God doesn't exist. And if your God wouldn't allow anybody to experience a hellish NDE, then your God doesn't exist. Similarly, the degree to which hellish NDEs occur tells us the degree to which God is willing to let such things happen. At a minimum, hellish NDEs increase the plausibility of hell.

As the thread I've linked above mentions (read the comments section as well, since there's some relevant material there), people who have hellish NDEs seem to report them less than people who have heavenly NDEs report theirs. Given the difficulty involved in reporting a hellish NDE, such as the shame involved, there's more reason to accept the sincerity of the people reporting such accounts accordingly. (I don't deny that other factors have to be taken into account, such as whether somebody sells a book about his hellish NDE or makes money from it in some other way. But the fact that we take such factors into account doesn't mean that we don't take the other factors I've mentioned into account as well.) Some people have a conversion experience, involving some kind of major change in their life, as a result of a hellish NDE, as discussed in the thread linked above, so that's another factor that adds to the credibility of such accounts.