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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, January 27, 2014 - 04:56 am:   

In my aimless wanderings on the interwebs, I stumbled across this transcript of an 1880's Irish/Roman Catholic "travelogue," for children, on the flora & fauna & fun of Hell.

http://www.saintsbooks.net/books/Fr.%20John%20Furniss%20-%20The%20Sight%20of%20H ell.html

(Side note: It relates the [widespread?] source [altered by the time he heard it] of the story Stephen King relates in... I think it was Danse Macabre; about the Sunday school teacher who impressed upon him the immensity of eternity, with the example of a bird who sharpens its beak on a giant mountain; here, it's a bird that brushes a gigantic rock "once a hundred million years" with its feathers, until the rock's worn down to nothing, and eternity's barely begun.)
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.24.62.55
Posted on Monday, January 27, 2014 - 02:34 pm:   

Eternity never began, Craig. That"s the secret. It is all there is, or ever was or can be.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, January 27, 2014 - 05:46 pm:   

Ah... you mean, Stevie, it's like the unstoppable force/immovable object trick: neither can exist in the same universe, so it's an illogical question. Eternity simply is, until it is not—there is no middle ground; there is no "end."

Okay. So how does all that help me with my bills?
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.24.62.55
Posted on Monday, January 27, 2014 - 10:55 pm:   

It puts such transient concepts as "bills" in perspective, Craig. Deciding to pay them or take the consequences of ignoring them is one's own choice. There is no middle ground, yes, and no end... but also no start.

1 implies the existence of 0 by the concept of absence but 0 implies nothing but itself therefore 1 is equal to eternity and 0 does not exist except, itself, as a concept. 0 or the true absence of anything is the only imaginary "thing" that can possibly be thought of. Consciousness will try to bring 0 into existence by the negation of 1 but in doing so has merely created 2 and gone back to 1 again, and so on... ad infinitum. It is my own hypothesis that what we call "black holes" are a physical (to us) manifestation of this very process at work.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.134.108.205
Posted on Tuesday, January 28, 2014 - 01:48 am:   

If you add all the numbers from 1 to infinity, the final sum is -1/12.

You don't believe me???

Check this out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Tuesday, January 28, 2014 - 02:44 am:   

I think Hell is trying to follow that guy....

Actually, I was able to glean what he was explaining after a couple watches. It's clever. One wonders about the implications of 12—the Zodiac, months of the year, etc.

Stevie: reminds me of the famous paradox by one of the ancient Greeks, blanking on which one; the one who said it was logically impossible to reach any destination. Because, to reach destination X, you must first cross 1/2X. And before that, you must cross 1/4X. And so on, and so on, ad infinitum... and, because it is infinitum, it's therefore impossible to make a move at all.
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Mbfg (Mbfg)
Username: Mbfg

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 212.219.63.206
Posted on Tuesday, January 28, 2014 - 04:55 pm:   

Back to the original point, what a vile little man that author was, scaring kids like that and filling them with guilt. Still, he represents a church that has other ways of screwing up the lives of children...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.24.62.55
Posted on Tuesday, January 28, 2014 - 07:53 pm:   

I loved reading that and found it genuinely disturbing - far more than some fictional horror stories. The fact that it was presented as "truth" to scare children - and they couldn't see the harm in that - makes it all the more fascinating a document.

Religion has always needed to generate fear of the unknown to keep its believers under control. It is my belief that the earliest Stone Age witch doctors pretended to understand, predict and even control the forces of nature in order to ensure their own survival in a world where physical strength was more important than brains and they fully realised this. The creation of priests, priestesses and ultimately organised religion was as a result of the physically weak but wiley needing to find a use for themselves in order to be protected and fed.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - 03:54 am:   

I'm more with Terry—I find it verging on the evil, but surely firmly grounded in the wrong.

I didn't realize it was from the mid-1800's, the Victorian era—it sounds like American Puritanism of the 1700's, Jonathan Edwards and the like. It's not that a Hell like this couldn't exist. Maybe it does. But it doesn't square logically with the religion against which it's founded.

Because then, God/Jesus/The Trinity becomes this incredibly cruel and sadistic force that renders the Devil himself a veritable angel of pure white light by comparison. A young girl who's proud of her dress misses her confession, and ends up horrendously tortured to the very absurdest limits, for all eternity?… Um, evilfuckersayswhat? So we pay forever for acts that take up less than a millionth billionth of a second (by these examples of the length of eternity)... sure. That's a crazy, mad, Lovecraftian God.

Notice, despite the unmitigated and endless catalogue of minute horrors—how delicate it remains. Surely, in THIS kind of Hell, the demons & devils have no problem raping young girls day and night, forcing them to… insert explicit perversions here. One wonders what this country priest would respond if asked, "Father, will demons shove giant painful dildos in me for all eternity?" "Father, will I be forced to suck demon cocks in Hell?"

So… let's see here. You die, and your spirit goes to Hell—but somehow, it's able to see/hear/smell/taste/feel, just like you can here on Earth. In fact, there's no real difference from the sensations on Earth; aside from the pure awfulness, it's just another place to be. So God created souls to be able to experience this kind of madness? Then why these bodies we have now at all?

On, and on, and on. Belief in Hell is comforting, but absurd. Fear, yes, Stevie, religion has used this to terrible effect. But there's only two people I can think of who deserve to experience this sickest of fantasies—the author himself, and the idiot who thought it suitable for children.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 94.118.14.252
Posted on Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - 08:40 pm:   

Craig, my friend, don't think in any way that I was forgiving that abominable tract because I was born a Catholic but I do understand it and find it fascinating. My favourite work of literature that has ever been written, and the best horror epic, is, btw, 'The Divine Comedy' by Dante Alighieri. We Catholics know the horror of the damned and laugh in its face because it is so ridiculous!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, January 30, 2014 - 03:52 am:   

You know... you're right, Stevie, Dante's epic is glorious and great. It's kinda the same thing, in many ways: someone wandering through Hell looking at the horrible sights. Dante must have been, in his own way, parodying such tracts (which were around then, and surely better known); yet somehow, his Hell is so much less terrible, most importantly as an indictment against God—why it seems that way, I'm not entirely sure. I guess it's because Dante's epic is suffused with wonder and empathy and understanding—this one, is no more than some hateful Nyarlathotep acolyte's mad sick gibbering.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 85.255.232.139
Posted on Monday, February 03, 2014 - 07:24 pm:   

He even had the temerity to include a few "infallible" Popes among the tortured damned. One of them, if memory serves me right, was being rogered in the rear with a red hot poker for all eternity. The man was lucky not to have been burnt at the stake for writing such heresy!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.151.241.209
Posted on Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - 09:50 am:   

And they got kids to read it by hiding it in a cupboard and saying "Never read this forbidden book."
It reminds me of Struwpeter. I loved those horrible things.
I was thinking of this astrological guide to what happens to victims in a horror film depending on their star signs. Mine was virgo, "I survive". I am virgo, sheepish, shy, not daring. For me survival means never really having lived. I think they should make a movie that addresses this, the killer as being a test of what constitutes living.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.151.241.209
Posted on Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - 11:46 am:   

And they got kids to read it by hiding it in a cupboard and saying "Never read this forbidden book."
It reminds me of Struwpeter. I loved those horrible things.
I was thinking of this astrological guide to what happens to victims in a horror film depending on their star signs. Mine was virgo, "I survive". I am virgo, sheepish, shy, not daring. For me survival means never really having lived. I think they should make a movie that addresses this, the killer as being a test of what constitutes living.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.151.241.209
Posted on Sunday, April 19, 2020 - 04:06 pm:   

 on Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - 11:46 am:   And they got kids to read it by hiding it in a cupboard and saying "Never read this forbidden book." 
It reminds me of Struwpeter. I loved those horrible things. 
I was thinking of this astrological guide to what happens to victims in a horror film depending on their star signs. Mine was virgo, "I survive". I am virgo, sheepish, shy, not daring. For me survival means never really having lived. I think they should make a movie that addresses this, the killer as being a test of what constitutes living.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.151.241.209
Posted on Sunday, April 19, 2020 - 04:06 pm:   

And they got kids to read it by hiding it in a cupboard and saying "Never read this forbidden book." 
It reminds me of Struwpeter. I loved those horrible things. 
I was thinking of this astrological guide to what happens to victims in a horror film depending on their star signs. Mine was virgo, "I survive". I am virgo, sheepish, shy, not daring. For me survival means never really having lived. I think they should make a movie that addresses this, the killer as being a test of what constitutes living.

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