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MrGrimm888's avatar

Atheists. It turns out we were wrong. You die, and go to hell. Now what?

Asked by MrGrimm888 (19541points) August 22nd, 2016

You wake up in hell. I don’t have a direction for this question, but what comes to your mind?

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59 Answers

johnpowell's avatar

I look for ex-girlfriends and Hitler. Just to confirm it is actually hell.

MrGrimm888's avatar

^^Would there be sections of hell? I’d be kind of pissed if I was on the same floor with Hitler. Shouldn’t he be deeper down or something?

Dutchess_III's avatar

Well, ask for forgiveness then go to confession, obviously. Then I would go to heaven. Easy peasy.

I wonder if this thing about confession was invented by the priestly community as some sort of voyeuristic opportunity.

MrGrimm888's avatar

Dutchess, I don’t think you can ask for forgiveness. Once you’re in,you’re in right?

Dutchess_III's avatar

Well, why not? I can still think and talk, can’t I?

MrGrimm888's avatar

I guess?... To my limited understanding of hell, sure…
Why not try and talk my way out. I feel like being able to leave would make it less intimidating.

Maybe you serve time based on sin. Then to heaven.

Winter_Pariah's avatar

Become the Saint of Killers of course!

And then kill god.

Earthbound_Misfit's avatar

First, look for the pool. I don’t much like the heat.

Second, check for people I know. I’ve always thought those who aren’t too worried about sinning are more fun to party with.

MrGrimm888's avatar

^^Yeah. I wouldn’t know many people in heaven…..

Darth_Algar's avatar

But if I go to Hell
Well then I hope I burn well
I’ll spend my days with JFK, Marvin Gaye, Martha Raye, and Lawrence Welk
And Kurt Cobain, Kojack, Mark Twain and Jimi Hendrix’s poltergeist. And Webster, yeah Emmanuel Lewis, ‘cause he’s the Antichrist!

imrainmaker's avatar

Why to worry about it if most of it can be experienced here itself..do you think condition in Syria / other countries where civil war is on isn’t equally bad if not worse?

MrGrimm888's avatar

@imrainmaker. There is no bigger antiwar person than myself. ‘War is hell.’ I’ve said it many times over… It destroys both participants, albeit in different degrees. No winners. Only losers.

My father (a US veteran of the Vietnam War) wasn’t killed (he was wounded ), but the person ‘he’ was before the war died.
He never forgot about it. He never had 1 single night without nightmares. Not since war. To my knowledge, he still has at least one nightmare a night about it, despite it being more than 35 years ago. He spoke of things I would rather not repeat .Things he saw, or did, or had done to him. He was a POW at one point. He fucking killed people. And it sucks. All those young men given weapons and direction. But not the ability to cope with it.

But that(war) isn’t the subject of this thread….

Haleth's avatar

Me in hell:

oops

¯\(ツ)

Zaku's avatar

The question makes me think of my dad’s nightmare, where he died and went to heaven and it was full of Tammy Fae and scary hair people from the 700 Club and other TV evangelists.

Hell seems like a weird Christian construct to me, so if I found myself in a Christian hell, I’d tend to suspect it was my spirit working out some annoying ancestral baggage. I’d probably be curious and annoyed and suffer lots of agonizing torment. I had a kidney stone once and it was enough to make me think of making a bargain with any Christian bargaining angels if they’d end it, but none showed up so :-P. If forced finally to accept Christian cosmology and residence in hell, I’d probably be a Lucifer sympathizer anyway, since if most of that Old Testament nonsense were literally true, God’s a pretty awful God.

Kardamom's avatar

Most of my friends and family will be there, so it will all be good.

YARNLADY's avatar

The god my family believes in would know what is in my mind, there would be no problem.

ZEPHYRA's avatar

Bad luck on me then. I’ll grin and bear it.

RealEyesRealizeRealLies's avatar

How is being amongst friends considered as “Hell”?

ragingloli's avatar

organise a rebellion to take out the evil god and replace his celestial tyranny with a constitutional representative democracy.

MrGrimm888's avatar

Stay the course @ragingloli. Democracy won’t work in the Middle East. But maybe in hell…..

ragingloli's avatar

Of course it would. All of the good people are down there.

stanleybmanly's avatar

You turn on the radio and discover that Trump is leading in the polls. You then roll over and go back to sleep.

ARE_you_kidding_me's avatar

We have been over this one already.

LuckyGuy's avatar

I’d start looking around for parts to build air conditioners and fire extinguishers.

cookieman's avatar

It’d be nice to catch up with old neighborhood friends and family. I come from a long line of questionable people.

Barring that, I’m with @YARNLADY. I’m an agnostic, but the semi-Catholic, sorta-Protestant God most of my family believes in defines being “good” rather broadly. I’m pretty sure they don’t even believe in Hell.

ucme's avatar

Roast me some meatloaf then hail the next bat ride outta there

LuckyGuy's avatar

With all the heat, and an eternity to work on it, I’d set up smelting operations producing thermoelectric generators and Peltier coolers .
After a while we’d have lights and cooling. We’d then use the extra electricity to pump water. The warm, moist environment would be ideal for growing crops of all sorts, like peaches, oranges, and grapefruits.
The dry areas would be reserved for corn, wheat, and soybeans. After all, we’ll need a lot of food to feed 9 billion mouths (actually 8,999,999,999 since Mother Teresa would surely be in heaven.)
She would be invited to be a guest speaker.

ARE_you_kidding_me's avatar

^^ This is all possible provided there are raw materials to work with and that temperatures are low enough for things like metals and insulators to be solid at normal hell temperatures.

SecondHandStoke's avatar

Is the roof on fire @Darth_Algar ?

GA, but use quotes.

ARE_you_kidding_me's avatar

Nope. Send me to hell just give me tools and raw materials and a couple of other good engineers like LuckyGuy and hell will be fucking awesome.

Darth_Algar's avatar

@SecondHandStoke “GA, but use quotes.”

No.

LuckyGuy's avatar

@ARE_you_kidding_me I work with high temp stuff in my job. So far I have always found the materials I needed to do what needs to be done.
I love this company: Cotronics. Check out their adhesives. I’d order supplies through Amazon Double Prime. They no doubt have set up a distribution center there to handle the needs of 9 billion people.

And I’d manufacture IR reflecting suncreen.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Hey @LuckyGuy canyou give me directions to where you will be in hell? I want to come live with you.

LuckyGuy's avatar

@Dutchess_III Sure. Just follow the cool breeze upstream and look for the cool white lighting.
You’ll find me – most likely taking a relaxing shower.

ARE_you_kidding_me's avatar

I was thinking along the lines of self sustaining engineered artificial island resorts floating around the lake of fire.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Don’t forget the hotdogs and marshmallows.

kritiper's avatar

There is no “Now what?”
You’re asking for an answer that cannot be answered because it hasn’t happened. yet. And beside that, who said I would go to hell just because I didn’t believe?? It doesn’t say that in the 10 Commandments, and if it was that important, it would!
I have stated here before that if there was a “God” that might judge me, he might think of me as quite an intelligent soul for determining, logically, that he didn’t exist, and we would both have a good laugh!

MrGrimm888's avatar

You know what you did @kritiper.

tinyfaery's avatar

I’d sleep a lot. Heat makes me sleepy. Not so bad.

Unofficial_Member's avatar

Then it’s time to rally all the condemned souls and demons to take down heaven and have a better life over there, unless the hell itself is like the one depicted of goddess Hell, where there are luxurious mansions, facilities, and attentive servants. And… on the second thought, I might be interested to mate with demon and perhaps produce a hybrid offspring haha.

Darth_Algar's avatar

@Unofficial_Member

The goddess Hel ruled over at least two distinct realms. Niflheim – where the unjust, but not necessarily evil, dwell. Not so much a realm of active punishment, but a cold, dreary, fog-shrouded land. The other realm is Nastrond – where murderers and oath-breakers (considered the most vile of beings in Norse society) are devoured by the great serpent Nidhogg. I don’t know of any luxurious halls and servants except those possessed by Hel herself.

Unofficial_Member's avatar

@Darth_Algar I am sure there are many different description of what the environment really was like as it’s mere a fictional world. Nonetheless, it’s the best fictional underworld one can happily live in, whereas the underworld based on other religions full of hostile environment.

kritiper's avatar

@MrGrimm888 Does it matter?

MrGrimm888's avatar

Not in the grand scheme of things. No.

Kardamom's avatar

Oh yeah, I’d put a giant fondue pot on a dumb waiter and send it on down.

rojo's avatar

“God I need another drink”

Darth_Algar's avatar

@Unofficial_Member

Eh, the Norse myths had better destinations in the afterlife than Hel’s domains.

Seek's avatar

Not so much a realm of active punishment, but a cold, dreary, fog-shrouded land.

So, Sweden?

Viking explorers, all: “This place sucks. Let’s live here!”

Darth_Algar's avatar

^^^ Pretty much.

Seek's avatar

To actually answer the question, I’d probably roll my eyes, say “Ugh, it figures”, and then go looking for all the cool people.

rojo's avatar

Yesterday while scrolling though radio stations I passed a Christian radio station on which the hosts were talking to someone I assume identified as Atheist (from the context of the conversation). The caller was pointing out how many times Christians are pushy, bigoted and narrow minded when it comes to “spreading the word”; refusing to take “go away” for an answer.

On response, one of the hosts asked if the callers friend was walking on some train tracks and he saw a train coming toward them would he not do all he could to get his friend off the tracks and out of danger?

A catchy analogy but wouldn’t it be more correct if framed in the question if you saw your friend walking down some imaginary train tracks and noted an imaginary train coming toward them…........?

Seek's avatar

Realistically speaking, 99.9% of people would drive right by a stranger on the railroad tracks.

They certainly don’t stand on street corners with bullhorns warning people about walking on railroad tracks, or set up buildings where people gather to discuss how afraid they are of trains and argue about the station schedule.

ARE_you_kidding_me's avatar

@rojo I think I would respond in a similar way as seek but say that if you had a friend hallucinating about imaginary trains would you not want to get them psychological help?

rojo's avatar

^^So you are saying non-believers should be proselytizing to the believers? Turn about being fair play?

Darth_Algar's avatar

^^^ That’s how you interpret that? Seriously?

Strauss's avatar

@MrGrimm888 Maybe you serve time based on sin. Then to heaven.

That actually sounds more like purgatory.

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