Taken from bash.org:
<Nukleon> the greek “hell” was cold
<Nukleon> like the norse
<@amz> the christian hell is also pretty cold, compared to its heaven
<Nukleon> uh
<Nukleon> wut?
<Nukleon> heaven is bliss
<@amz> it has liquid sulfur in it, so it can’t be over 400 celsius… on the other hand, the bible describes the sun in heaven shining like 7 suns, each 7 times as bright
<@amz> which gives an estimate of 2000-3000 celsius
That was just too interesting. I had to post it.
Heh, reminds me of something out of my random quote file, which much of was gleaned from an old fortune file, and so on. The source I have it listed as is from an issue of “Applied Optics vol. 11 A14, 1972” but I never bothered to actually look it up, so who knows. Either way, it amusingly expands on the issue somewhat.
“The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed.
Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, “Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days.” Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that… the radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation.
Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (_.H/_.E)^4 = 50, where _.E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300K), gives _.H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed… [However] Revelations 21:8 says “But the fearful, and unbelieving… shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.”
Yet more proof that the people who wrote the Bible didn’t know what the hell they are talking about. It saddens me that people use it as a science book and talk about how accurate it is in its description of things.
Huh? Brent, I don’t understand the logic behind your last comment. I get believing or disbelieving for whatever reason, but I fail to see the reasons for your statement. Is hell (or heaven) impossible because “it’s too hot, and therefore it can’t exist?” I mean how is that logical? If we were talking about earth here, I would understand your case: that kind of temperature wouldn’t be able to sustain life. But since we’re talking about a supernatural place, I really don’t see how conventional limitations of biology would apply. If you’re willing to accept that heaven or hell exist, then it’s no stretch to assume that the biology of the supernatural creatures there would differ from our own. (or even that physics might work altogether differently there for that matter) On the other hand, if you assume that no such place exists, then arguing the viability of life in such a place is a moot point, since you’ve already made up your mind. Ergo, while I find this topic fascinating, (calculating heaven’s ambient temp! lol! :)) it seems to me that the authenticity (or lack thereof) of the bible can’t be measured from anything we’ve discussed so far…
Sure it can. The bible talks about how awful hell will be then gives a description. It then tells how wonderful heaven will be and gives a description.
Thus is the evidence that whoever wrote the bible didn’t know anything about physics or chemistry since the descriptions they gave of the two places in terms of heat would show that hell is quite a bit cooler than heaven and thus if you were looking for the cooler of the two places you might want to go with Hell instead of Heaven.