The Universality of Hell

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Almost every religion, with some exceptions, some interesting exceptions, believe in Hell. So it's both sort of universal between religions and at least a healthy fraction of people in all the religions actually buy into it. There's some people, for example, the Hebrews and the modern Jews, they're not very good at Hell. Jewish Hell is already boring. Everybody goes to a shoul and everybody's good or bad, evil or virtuous, they all go to the same place. That's been my impression that they don't have quite nearly the detailed picture of what comes after as Christians or Muslims do.

If you’re bad, we are taught, you go to Hell. Who in the world came up with that idea? Some will answer God, but for the purpose of today’s podcast discussion we’ll put that possibility aside and look into the human origins and history of the idea of Hell. Marq de Villiers is a writer and journalist who has authored a series of non-fiction books, many on science and the environment. In Hell & Damnation, he takes a detour to examine the manifold ways in which societies have imagined the afterlife. The idea of eternal punishment is widespread, but not quite universal; we might learn something about ourselves by asking where it came from. Support Mindscape on Patreon or Paypal. Marq de Villiers was born in South Africa and now lives in Canada. He has worked as a reporter in a number of locations, from Cape Town to London to Moscow to Toronto. His books cover a variety of topics, many on history and ecology. He has been named a Member of the Order of Canada and awarded an honorary degree from Dalhousie University, among other accolades. Web site Amazon page Wikipedia Talk on the state of the world’s water See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.