Once again, Hell is never really shown from any other perspective than God's. God says it's bad, so therefore it's bad. I'm not going by the book on this one. I can't accept a view of Hell told from the perspective of someone who hates their leader. As for Satan, it's hard to believe that the guy who brought us knowledge is stupid enough to be duped into doing God's dirty work for him and moronic enough that he'd enjoy the same tortures over and over for all of eternity. Isn't a couple of millenia's worth of fire and brimstone more than enough by now?
I wasn't referring to that in my comments, this is a different issue.
Although if you're going to expand in this direction with your comments, then you should understand that there are many different branches of Christianity and some of them would agree with your reasoning and don't believe what you seem to be ascribing to "general Christianity."
And no, I don't like the Christian God, but that isn't why I wouldn't want to be in Heaven. God's actions seem to insanely... well, insane, that I wouldn't really want to know what his idea of perfection is.
Again.
Even if Hell is actually the boring fire-and-brimstone bit, I'd prefer that kind of unbearable surface pain
And I
seriously doubt that.
(Which was my original point.)
I don't really care
what we each claim to believe or what our ideals are, if you're thrown into a situation where you are suffering the worst agonizing pain all over your body possible, you are going to want to DIE just so the pain will end.
Talk to some full-body burn victims about what pain is.
And that would be NOTHING.
And if you know the pain won't end?
Ever?
Let's not even go there.
Maybe you are just using hyperbole to stress how much you hate your version of the Christian God here? I'm approach this straight-forwardly: If hell is the place of punishment you seem to be allowing, with fire and brimstone, you are NOT going to want to be there because of the pain factor.
...the prospect of having no free will, which I still believe is the only way that Heaven can work without our humanity corrupting the place. After all, the worst kind of pain isn't physical.
Maybe heaven isn't (nor ever was) what you're making it out to be here.
If you want my actual view in accordance with "Christian thought":
I think our humanity is what would make heaven work.
Because Christians are not "perfect" people.
They're supposed to be people who have learned to love each other despite NOT being perfect.
That's the secret.
And that's why heaven could work.
Because the people who are there are committed to learning the lesson.
They know how to forgive.
And humble enough to know when to forgive, as well as when to beg forgiveness.
They know what they don't know.
They know their failings.
And they aren't ashamed to be themselves.
Or to let others be themselves.
And the people who won't be bothered with that sort of thing would rather not be there, it would be Hell to them -- hence, they remove themselves.