Personally, I think that when you're dead, you're just dead. Like sleep, except you don't wake up or dream. When your neurons are shutting off, they probably put on one hell of a show for you. Just like the show they put on that convinces you that "consciousness" is a real thing, and you have a "soul." It's not and you don't.
But like I said, I think what you believe is probably good for humans, on the whole, and I don't condemn it at all.
Getting to the root, the Word can be confirmed by internal knowledge or outside evidence. Most come to faith by God drawing us in as we hear or read His Word with a humble, seeking attitude. His sheep hear His voice. I recommend starting in John for that while asking who Jesus is and what we must do.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1&version=...
For external evidence, the Word was confirmed in more ways than most things people believe. It's more rational than many beliefs. I summarized that here:
https://www.gethisword.com/evidence.html
I've prayed that you find Him through any of these methods. That He also helps you better face anything in your life, too. I'm glad God has already shown you the goodness in what He does.
I have no interest in debating this with you. However, I do have a suggestion, which Gary Luckenbaugh (not an HN'er, I don't think) took from me, and is delighted he did:
Start a Substack channel. It can be free (like mine). Gary has one on the BASIC language, and he's thrilled when hundreds of people all over the world read his posts. On HN you don't know how many even saw your post, but on Substack you will.
You'll probably find that there are already a lot of religious channels, but who knows -- maybe yours will stand out!
In the Great Commission, Jesus commanded believers to take His message to the world so they won’t perish. He and the Apostles always went wherever people were already gathering or to those unreached. Likewise, I go to places with people from many walks of life to meet them, learn from them, bless them, and share Christ, too.
HN is quite a blessing because I get to see most of that happen here. Except for Christ and His Word which I talk about when the occasion arises. I really do enjoy meeting all of you. :)
You know how the very consistency of the rules of the material world seem to outlive the world itself? The fact that 1 and 1 are 2 outlives the fact that a certain bottle of beer and another bottle of beer are two bottles of beer. Even if I found a single receptacle that could hold all the beer (mmm), 1 and 1 would remain 2, the fact altogether out of my reach to alter.
Similarly the pecking order in a chicken coop won't last longer than the chickens and the coop, and it can change besides—but 1 always comes before 2, and 2 before 3, and no other numbers will displace that order even if you shoved another chicken between two others near the front of the line every other second. You may destroy the line of chickens, but you'll never shake 6 off 5's tail.
The faculty by which you and I recognize these obvious truths—well, what kind of stuff is it? Do we "sense" the very number 1 in all its splendor with our mere ears or somehow conjure it up from a multiplicity of neurons? or do we merely suppose or opine, rather than know, that the numbers take a particular order? Of course not! Rather, we find out. We label the numbers arbitrarily to keep easy track of them, and then we count them: we see where they'll take us. We're along for the ride, passengers on someone else's train, one that can take you right outside the universe to the mysterious land of D'oh—a land, you might say, more real than our native one.
Now, the faculty by which we recognize that numbers are always prior to material nature—since nature plays by number's rules but never the other way round—what will we call it? I call it reason, anyway. It's notable among our faculties for comprehending eternal things like number, as naturally as anything else.
So commonly a human being will prefer pure numbers to any sloppy instantiation of them. Bees make hexagonal honeycombs out of natural habit because the shape of a hexagon works well; a human, however, contemplates the pure hexagon and tells its ratios and properties to other humans on HN because the numbers are just that cool, hang usefulness. This is one thing that divides humans from the mere animals.
From all this it seems to me more plain that the spiritual human soul (the part of the human that touches or is itself in eternity) exists than that Mumbai is a real city, or even that the earth is a geoid and not a perfect sphere (though I believe these things also). And anyway, I use mine every day. I should know.
More recently I've been reading some pre-Socratic excerpts with friends, and some Augustine—On Free Choice of the Will and De Musica—on my own. De Musica I'm working through a second time, this time in the original language. I've never been more motivated to become fluent in Latin in my life.
This is a curious statement, as the subject is Dante, and the "Inferno" shows us not a huge lake of fire with all the damned burning within it, but rather a diverse Hell in which one's torment reflects one's vices. This has a theological resonance, as the very nature of Hell is first and foremost the fulfillment of one's corrupt and sinful desires, it is God letting you have exactly what you want, your dark little heart's desire (the logical outcome of having been created a free being; Matthew 6:21[0] captures this quite nicely). When you die, your orientation becomes fixed forever, and if it isn't on the Summum Bonum, the Highest Good, the only thing capable of satisfying Man's heart, then it will be some lesser real or apparent good. This is the consummation of utter hopelessness and despair.
And what is at the very center of Hell in the "Inferno" if not a lake of fire? An absolutely frigid place, a frozen lake, with Satan lodged permanently in the ice up to his waist, with every flap of his wings making the place even colder. Fire is actually a better metaphor for God (even when we speak of the fire of God's just wrath, a kind of friction resulting from our evil will colliding with the Will of God). If God is the Logos, and Logos is like fire, and God so often is represented by fire, by its dynamism, then the opposite is the lifelessness of sin, a world of ice and death, a cold void.
So, you’re certainly right. I went to a factual source with evidence I linked elsewhere instead of the fictional work. That source said you and I would be in Hell if we didn’t take steps to avoid it. A critical topic that gets no attention here. So, I’m covering it.
We can know it will be fire, not ice, since the God who created Hell talked about it so much during His time here:
https://www.crossway.org/articles/jesus-said-more-about-hell...
It’s not some consequence of our thoughts or feelings or symbolism. It’s an actual place… an objective punishment…. justice and wrath… our sovereign ruler pours out on His enemies. It has a number of descriptions that make us wonder how literal or symbolic they are. While none are ice, many talk about flame, lake of fire, and smoke in quite a literal way.
Far as Satan, God’s Word says he goes into the lake of fire at the appointed time for his defeat. Revelation 20 captures much of the judgement of Satan and people without Christ’s forgiveness:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Rev.+20&version...
One other thing. God’s wrath is described as a consuming fire. The book of Nahum is all about how horrifying it is. Ice, or deadly cold, makes your body slow down until you nod off dead. Fire wakes you up to fully alert as you scream running away from it. If your nerves and organs were indestructible, then you’d be stuck with that maximum moment of pain every second of your life. Hell might be eternal fire because it’s more horrifying that way.
"in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them" (2 Cor. 4:4)
So, let's contrast the truth. In my other comment, I mentioned what the sinful kids and Satan are destined for. It's not pretty.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39973866
What about heaven? In Genesis 2, before the Fall, man had fellowship with God, hung out with each other, did work, and rested. God said all good things are a gift from Him. If it's not sinful, it might exist in heaven. For its nature, fruit of the Spirit is "love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control." So, imagine all human activities that are fun and embodied with those virtues. That's Heaven.
We have a taste of it here on Earth in the Church. We mostly go about our day, do our jobs, spend time with our families, and enjoy our hobbies. In church service, we worship God together and serve others in love. In spare time, we hang out, enjoy good food, go on vacation together, play games, share stories, etc. The problems in churches come from our sinful natures which God will eliminate (called glorification) once our time here is up.
So, one place has us separated from everyone, in a lake of fire, and burning non-stop. Satan will be there, too. The other is every good thing you can imagine on Earth done in a better way, other things you can't imagine, your friends there, and the very presence of God giving you fullness of joy. Christ and His Heaven are the obvious choice. Anyone suffering here on Earth are also told to keep their eye on the prize which is our future inheritance.