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Stark wrote:So... because something goes there, it must be down the street and accessible?

Empirical observation requires interaction of mass/energy with Hell.

The fact is that every original notion of Heaven involved it being a physical place, and there's no reason to believe Hell would be any different. The whole notion of Heaven and Hell existing on some kind of "astral plane" is modern New Age bullshit which has nothing to do with the original descriptions.

Fundamentalist Christians believe that Hell literally exists at the Earth's core. Let's assume they're right and God opened a one-way video portal to show us what's going to happen to us all. Let's say we can send shockwaves through the Earth to the core and we can verify it's there, surrounded by some weird necroplasmic aura that only souls can permeate. This now means we can invade Hell? MAN, SIGN ME UP!!

Zuul wrote:Fundamentalist Christians believe that Hell literally exists at the Earth's core. Let's assume they're right and God opened a one-way video portal to show us what's going to happen to us all. Let's say we can send shockwaves through the Earth to the core and we can verify it's there, surrounded by some weird necroplasmic aura that only souls can permeate. This now means we can invade Hell? MAN, SIGN ME UP!!

If the fundie Christians are correct, there would be no way to verify this, hence we cannot fulfill the conditions of the OP.

I have to love the 'Demons are there torturing people LOL is must fail'. Demons are traditionally depicted as armed with nothing more terrifying than melee weaponry. They are depicted as torturers, not warrior legions. What would they do against, say, the successful transition of one high-yield nuclear weapon?

Darth Wong wrote:Empirical observation requires interaction of mass/energy with Hell.

The fact is that every original notion of Heaven involved it being a physical place, and there's no reason to believe Hell would be any different. The whole notion of Heaven and Hell existing on some kind of "astral plane" is modern New Age bullshit which has nothing to do with the original descriptions.

I figured it could just as easily be on another planet or otherwise far away, with evidence offered as to it's location that could be confirmed through telescopes seeing lots of ghosts or whatever.

Saying it's a physical place is fine, but it is full of *ghosts*. Bodies aren't being teleported there: just souls or minds. People were talking about Dante's hell fanfiction, so I'm not sure which exact 'hell' it's supposed to be. Stuff like the Greek Hades would be zero problem to take over, after all: it'd just keep filling up with confused dead guys.

I dunno, how many souls will a nuke destroy? None? Oh snap.

Zuul wrote:I dunno, how many souls will a nuke destroy? None? Oh snap.

So no casualties for the recruits for the Glorious Infernal Revolutionary Army. Excellent.

Demons on the other hand, and all their toys...

SirNitram wrote:I have to love the 'Demons are there torturing people LOL is must fail'. Demons are traditionally depicted as armed with nothing more terrifying than melee weaponry. They are depicted as torturers, not warrior legions. What would they do against, say, the successful transition of one high-yield nuclear weapon?

If they're torturing the part of a person sent to hell after they're HIT by a nuclear explosion, that would tend to suggest a nuclear explosion doesn't destroy the soul.

But if everyone who dies is going to Hell now, wouldn't that mean any demon you "kill" is just going to, well, be back in Hell? How exactly are you going to win, since they'll essentially "respawn" anyway? Or if you kill someone/thing twice they just cease to exist?

I suppose the question for storming Hell is, since nobody's going to actually "die" (well, beyond their first death putting them there in the first place), how do you win exactly?

Stark wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:Empirical observation requires interaction of mass/energy with Hell.

The fact is that every original notion of Heaven involved it being a physical place, and there's no reason to believe Hell would be any different. The whole notion of Heaven and Hell existing on some kind of "astral plane" is modern New Age bullshit which has nothing to do with the original descriptions.

I figured it could just as easily be on another planet or otherwise far away, with evidence offered as to it's location that could be confirmed through telescopes seeing lots of ghosts or whatever.

Saying it's a physical place is fine, but it is full of *ghosts*. Bodies aren't being teleported there: just souls or minds. People were talking about Dante's hell fanfiction, so I'm not sure which exact 'hell' it's supposed to be. Stuff like the Greek Hades would be zero problem to take over, after all: it'd just keep filling up with confused dead guys.

You appear to be defining the spirits of the dead as the way they are usually shown in Hollywood. There's no reason whatsoever to believe that the ancients thought of them this way. That goes for you too, Zuul.

Stark wrote:

SirNitram wrote:I have to love the 'Demons are there torturing people LOL is must fail'. Demons are traditionally depicted as armed with nothing more terrifying than melee weaponry. They are depicted as torturers, not warrior legions. What would they do against, say, the successful transition of one high-yield nuclear weapon?

If they're torturing the part of a person sent to hell after they're HIT by a nuclear explosion, that would tend to suggest a nuclear explosion doesn't destroy the soul.

So the torture victim is not a fatality. Where in the OP was it suggested Demons were invincible? In the part you read with your sekrit decoder ring, maybe?

Darth Wong wrote:You appear to be defining the spirits of the dead as the way they are usually shown in Hollywood. There's no reason whatsoever to believe that the ancients thought of them this way. That goes for you too, Zuul.

I was starting from the position that these 'souls', whatever they are, have never been detected or observed interacting with anything. They're unlikely to be a glowy blue outline, but they're clearly not a skeleton or whatever.

Perhaps God just somehow 'copies' your mind into another body in his 'hell' playpen or his 'heaven' playpen at the moment of death?

I think a quick description of Hell would work for our betterment here.

1) It's on Mars, like Doom.
2) Mars is surrounded by a necroplasmic layer that you have to be a dead soul to pass through (one way).
3) It's really horribly unpleasant.

YEAH LETS INVADE MARS WITH NUKES!

Zuul wrote:I think a quick description of Hell would work for our betterment here.

1) It's on Mars, like Doom.
2) Mars is surrounded by a necroplasmic layer that you have to be a dead soul to pass through (one way).
3) It's really horribly unpleasant.

YEAH LETS INVADE MARS WITH NUKES!

Is there any particular reason why we should make any of these assumptions, other than the fact that you seem to have a hard-on for repeating them in some form or other, over and over like some kind of fucking broken record? There's certainly nothing in the ancient mythologies which even remotely resembles anything you're describing, and given the many regional influences on their belief system, it's most likely that they did indeed think that Heaven and Hell were physical places populated by people with physical bodies. They even described the fucking STREETS AND BUILDINGS of Heaven. Why the fuck would people without bodies require such things? And what is with this "barrier" you keep talking about? Is there some particular reason why selected themes taken from fantasy/horror movies should be assumed to apply here?

No empirical evidence could be collected then. At best, you can claim dead matter can go; which means orbital bombardment will work. Once you identify where new souls appear, bombard this place and then execute volunteers for the first wave, dropping supplies to them.

I love how Zuul and Stark totally try and rewrite the OP again and again because they hate the idea that mankind might react as it always has, with superior tools and violence.

Apparently, Zuul does not understand what "interaction" means. He thinks you can have completely one-way interaction in physics.

Moving past the 'invade hell' shin-diggle, what would you do with the real-estate once you had it? If souls (or whatever) are going to keep showing up there on death, what could you do to make it more pleasant for them? Could 'ancestor worship' actually become a measuable and quantifiable pursuit where people create an environment for their relatives to exist in? Since all humans show up there on death now, how will the 'souls' react to such a cosmopolitan afterlife with psychos and philanthropists sharing a park bench?

In order to satisfy verifiability and keep in line with Stravo's actual question instead of having a wank at how awesomely antitheistic we are.

Probably end up negotiating with Satan.

Hey, Mike can edit in SLAM!

Zuul wrote:In order to satisfy verifiability and keep in line with Stravo's actual question instead of having a wank at how awesomely antitheistic we are.

Translation: "in order to make us answer Stravo's question the way I, Zuul, insist that we answer it. Any answers which annoy me, Zuul, will be discarded".

SirNitram wrote:No empirical evidence could be collected then. At best, you can claim dead matter can go; which means orbital bombardment will work. Once you identify where new souls appear, bombard this place and then execute volunteers for the first wave, dropping supplies to them.

How is bombarding an area going to do anything? What, pray tell, supplies are you going to send a load of disembodied souls? Freeze dried ice cream that they won't be able to open in 3 months due to having gone insane from contant torture?

I love how Zuul and Stark totally try and rewrite the OP again and again because they hate the idea that mankind might react as it always has, with superior tools and violence.

I like the idea, it is just obviously not in the spirit of the OP.

Incidently, if we can get to Hell as a physical place, what's to stop the new undead masters of Hell (assuming they defeat the devil, strike a deal, whatever) from launching its own invasion of Earth? Essentially the whole Revelations End of Days thing (that whole Hell on Earth bit, IIRC), just without God eventually bailing us out.

Stark wrote:Moving past the 'invade hell' shin-diggle, what would you do with the real-estate once you had it? If souls (or whatever) are going to keep showing up there on death, what could you do to make it more pleasant for them? Could 'ancestor worship' actually become a measuable and quantifiable pursuit where people create an environment for their relatives to exist in? Since all humans show up there on death now, how will the 'souls' react to such a cosmopolitan afterlife with psychos and philanthropists sharing a park bench?

Well, the obvious things is that there will be attempts made to mete out punishments based on more than just the crime of existance. The backlog will be insane, but given that these dead people get physical torment and still feel pain after all these years, they must regenerate, so they can probably be trained into assisting the work.

I see alot of attempts to examine, quantify, and work out how you go from life to afterlife, and many efforts to create reincarnation.

In short, I actually suspect the final outcome will vaguely resemble Dante's Inferno, only with more massive, imposing courthouses, and alot of tourism. One things for sure, it'd get History and Philosophy majors out of our hair, as they can find their favorite individuals and listen to them talk.

Zuul wrote:

SirNitram wrote:No empirical evidence could be collected then. At best, you can claim dead matter can go; which means orbital bombardment will work. Once you identify where new souls appear, bombard this place and then execute volunteers for the first wave, dropping supplies to them.

How is bombarding an area going to do anything? What, pray tell, supplies are you going to send a load of disembodied souls? Freeze dried ice cream that they won't be able to open in 3 months due to having gone insane from contant torture?

I love how Zuul and Stark totally try and rewrite the OP again and again because they hate the idea that mankind might react as it always has, with superior tools and violence.

I like the idea, it is just obviously not in the spirit of the OP.

Says the man whose constantly reminding us he doesn't know what it means to have empirical evidence...