c4ts
20th March 2003, 05:08 PM
As for Cerberus and the furies and the pitchy darkness these do not and cannot exist anywhere at all. But life is darkened by fear of retribution for our misdeeds, a fear enormous in proportion to to their enormity, and by the penalties imposed for crime- imprisonment and ghastly precipitation from Tartarus's Crag, the lash, the executioners, the condemned cell, the boiling pitch, the hot metal plates and the branding torches. Even though these horrors are present, yet the conscience-ridden mind in terrified anticipation torments itself with its own goads and whips. It does not see what term there can be to its suffering nor where its punishment can have an end. It is afraid that death may serve merely to intensify all this pain. So at length the life of misguided mortals becomes a Hell on earth.
Does a belief in an afterlife which includes a Hell become the problem Lucretius describes? Do people only behave well because they are afraid of something?
Does a belief in an afterlife which includes a Hell become the problem Lucretius describes? Do people only behave well because they are afraid of something?