I am going through one of my worries about hell again. What do you guys think are truly the odds that the Howard Storm story is actually true? How likely is it that he actually saw hell?
Here is a link to his story for those who are not aware of it.
I am so worried about this I have lost sleep over it because I am scared that I and my loved ones may end up in hell forever. What can I do? I can't get this video out of my head :-( Would you say it is less than a 5% chance that he actually saw hell assuming he is not intentionally lying and being as sincere as he can?
I know most of you will not believe this story, but I really need some logical minds to help me think more logically as well.
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my friend the best thing is to relax.do you feel unease about something? you have to ask yourself something, why does the specter of hell come up every now and then? I wouldn`t worry if I were in your place. are you atheist agnostic, such as myself? I wouldn`t take religion and its teachings to seriously, My advice is try to live life to the full, Make the most out of every day.Try not to offend anyone try to live in peace.And you will go a long way.As for the question you posed about the video about hell I wouldn`t worry about it or take it to seriously.
I would say there is ZERO chance that he saw hell. Nill, nada, zip!!!!!!!
@Pork222
"I am so worried about this I have lost sleep over it because I am scared that I and my loved ones may end up in hell forever."
If you're really that upset, I'd say the that the lying swine who created this fake story have done their job well. The whole purpose of hell stories is to frighten people in joining or staying in some crackpot religion or other. They're on the same level as the toothpaste and deoderant commercial producers who try to convince you that you have bad breath or body odor.
I on the other hand actually saw hell today. I went to a place that was full of panicky souls rushing around, pushing and shoving, filled with anger and stress. Everyone was staggering under heavy burdens and being tortured by horrible, repetitive, inane music. And there were big hairy men in red suits laughing at us.
That place is called a mall at Christmas. And as Sartre said, hell really is other people.
People say stuff. They can be convincing. Some even convince themselves of their own contrivances because they're weak.
Remember, people are all different and logic doesn't necessarily level the playing field for us all. Some are rather weakly imbued with it and you seem to be one of the weaker equipped. I don't mean that as an insult. It's simply the truth as evidenced by your post. If you had a grasp of it as the salient device to gauge everything within your sensory exposure, you would not pose your question.
In the way-way back, everyone believed gods were floating around and looking to be worshiped because that was the order of the day and logic was absent, if not buried deep into people's psyches where they sheltered their doubts from bringing the bad upon themselves. Along the time line since then logic took on a more noble role and became a measure of a man's intellect. When it took the fork in the road towards the sciences and raised questions about human origins people suffered from excessive use of logic. They were shunned. Darwin took a beating in his time. Copernicus was considered a heretic.
Those days are still with us as the supernatural apologists maintain the threat of evil they created in the way-way back to scare people towards its antithesis, which they just happen to keep handy.
WC Fields once said he never drank spirits but he kept it handy to ward off snakes, which he also kept handy. It's an analogy to your situation where you don't accept god but you want to keep it handy to ward off hell, which you seem to also keep handy. Make sense?
You need to lose your demons.
@pork222 : Your posts have a repetitive theme. The most irrational and outrageous claims by believers and you want us to disprove them. Instead of searching on line for these topics why not spend your time watching James Randi debunking Peter Popoff or Hitchens debating bishops?
@pork222
I totally understand what you're going through. How long have you been agnostic/atheist? I just kissed my belief in the supernatural goodbye recently, so I'm certainly experiencing some growing pains as well.
I guess we could speculate all day about just what the hell is going on in this video. I can generally tell when someone is making shit up, and this guy reeks of BS. I've heard several stories like this before, and even as a christian I never really bought any of them. Even when my own father claimed to have had a vision of Christ hovering over him in bed.
Look, what I remind myself of, is that LARGELY the concept of hell/satan didn't even exist until Zoroaster introduced dualism to the region. This happened between the writing of the old and new testament. (If I'm wrong, please correct me) It just goes to show that they were simply making this crap up/plagiarizing on the fly all along, so why the hell would I believe it? Allow yourself to read these concepts for what they are-IRON AGE FICTION.
Pitar couldn't be more right with his WC Fields analogy. It's absolutely what I did for years. I carried my faith in my pocket just in case.
I'm pulling for you. Chimp makes a great suggestion. If you need to feed the side of reason, the four horsemen are just a youtube search away. I myself am also considering getting into meditation.
@B God's Country
Thank you for this response. It seems as though we are going through somewhat a similar struggle at times. One thing that I do find strange about this man's testimony is the fact that he has published books on this. He surely made a lot of money on these books. The one thing that baffles me though is the fact that he became a minister after this experience. If this experience is not in fact real, then either his brain created this experience for him which seemed very real, or he was never an atheist to begin with and just decided to "claim" that he had been an atheist to scare people into believing in Christianity.
There are people in mental hospitals that think they are the reincarnation of Napoleon. Would you believe them and if so why? There are muslims and other kinds of theists who claim to have had visions. Do you believe them and if so why?
You're concerned about a video in which a guy claims / asserts that something happened to him. Why do you believe him? What proof does he offer? What testable, repeatable, falsifiable evidence does he offer?
pork222
I can tell you without a doubt, that believers make this stuff up all the time for any number of reasons. I've seen it happen first. In high school I had a friend that made up a story about a supernatural experience that I supposedly witnessed with him. I didn't even correct people when they would ask me about it because I didn't want to embarrass him. That one bothers me to this day.
Usually there is a kernel of truth to their story. They just fill in the gaps with supernatural nonsense.
It's possible that homeboy here was having a bad dream when he died and then made up the rest. If the dream seemed real, then all of the added information has to be real as well. Full disclosure, I've convinced myself that lies were true. It's how I got through high school.
JB Hod's Country:
I am sorry that you had to go through that, it is never easy when someone whom you are close to comes up with a story and you have to back them up no matter how atrocious the story is because they are your friends. Do you think even though this man became a minister that he is still lying though?
I can only speculate, but I imagine that this is a combination of delusion and lies. Maybe even he believes it by now. It's also absolutely possible that this is nothing more than a complete lie and he's KNOWINGLY telling it over and over again. Society has no shortage of ministers that are pathological liars.
Pork, you really should become friends with snopes.com