Culture

In a Word . . . hell

Is hell sustainable?

Still life of typewriter with crumpled paper around it Pic: getty images writing writer
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Patsy McGarry
Sat Jul 9 2022 - 00:30

Such times. Even hell is not what it used to be. All that fire and damnation, such as inspired priests, poets, and painters for generations may not exist after all. Gone too, like Limbo, which Pope Benedict dismissed in 2007 as “only a theological hypothesis” and “never a defined truth of faith”.

It is claimed the University of Liverpool, in a final year chemistry exam, posed the question: “Is hell exothermic (does it give off heat) or endothermic (does it absorb heat)?”

One student, in response, addressed the essential need to know the rate at which souls enter hell and found it a fair assumption that once there, souls did not leave. Looking at the world’s religions, he noted how almost all teach that if you are not a member you will go to hell.

Since people who do not believe are destined for hell anyway and all people of all other religions are fated to end there too, according to every religion, then all souls end up (or down!) in hell.

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With the world’s birth and death rates as they are, the number of souls in hell will just grow and grow. So we must look at volume.

Waterford man Robert Boyle, father of chemistry and theologian who died in 1691, concluded in “Boyle’s Law”, that for temperature and pressure to stay constant, volume must expand proportionally as more is added.

In Hell this raises two possibilities: (i) if it is expanding at a slower rate than that at which souls arrive, temperature and pressure will increase until, well … all hell breaks loose. Or (ii) if hell is expanding faster than the rate of souls arriving, temperature and pressure drops until, well …hell freezes over.

Either way, hell has exploded out of existence or frozen over, the Liverpool University student concluded. He got an A.

This loss of hell would be a source of regret for some as it too was a part of our heritage and accommodated some of the most interesting and entertaining, if appalling, people who ever existed.

Should we set about resurrecting (pardon my verb) it through more moderate and sustainable sinning or have it come back to us naturally by doing nothing and letting it reign through climate change? Over to you dear reader.

Hell, from Old English hel, helle, for “place of torment”.

inaword@irishtimes.com

In a Word