Why do you think so many people say that there can't be a heaven without a hell or vice versa?

Fallacious argument.
I believe in grass. There is no anti grass, unless you want to count grazers. And lawn mowers. I believe in cars. Where are the anti cars?
Why would you put the concept of afterlife places to go on the same level as physical things?

They simply don’t exist, either of them….
I think they’re all quite mad :-/

I think the argument isn’t that there literally cannot be heaven without hell, but that our perception of heaven’s… heavenliness depends on our perception of hell’s hellaciousness.

If you do an experiment in which you put a 20 watt light next to a 60 watt light, and you ask people if one of them is bright, they’ll say yes, the 60 watt bulb is. Then if you put a 60 watt bulb next to a 120 watt bulb and you ask them if the 60 watt bulb is bright, they say no, of course not. The one next to it is.

Our perception of nearly everything depends on a relative rather than an absolute scale. (We use absolutes to try to calibrate and communicate sometimes, but our subjective sense is still determined relative to the environment around us.)

Even something as objective as temperature depends on the context you put it in. When I lived in Vermont, the first day the temperature got above freezing and the snow started to melt was a glorious, warm day, even at just 33 F. Now, as a southern Californian, the second it dips below 60 everyone’s bundling up and staying inside, myself included.

So sure, you can have heaven without hell, or day without night, or happiness without sadness. But you’d have a much harder time perceiving each one for what it is without the other.

It wasn’t enough for Jesus to die on the cross for our sins He also had to suffer an eternity in Hell so that we wouldn’t have to go there or even believe in it anymore. While you are watching your television that is where he is.

heaven is where hell is not.

Why wouldn’t the people that believe in it believe in both? They’re both a part of the religious doctrines. Either way, that’s like saying I believe in good and not evil…..some things just have an opposite, even if they are made up.

Everything in human experience is composed of opposites. Every up has its down; every left has its right. Existence is a system of divided wholes. Each of us has opposing arms, legs, hands, feet, ears, and eyes. Even our brains are divided into opposite halves. In our experience, we most appreciate a cool interior when we come in from the heat. We would not truly know how good central heating was unless we were cold and needed to be warmed. We know concepts such as good and bad only as opposites of each other. Whether or not heaven and hell truly exist, they are the two sides of the same coin.

@flutherother So you think Jesus is in hell?

@DerangedSpaceMonkey Logically, yes. If Jesus suffers for our sins and our suffering would mean an eternity in Hell then that is the price that must be paid.

@Trillian

There is anti-grass. It’s made out of antimatter.