The Science of Hell

Hell may be the most famous location in human history never to have appeared on a reliable map. Oceans have been crossed, mountains climbed, caves explored, planets photographed, and shipwrecks located beneath miles of water. Human beings have drilled more than seven miles into Earth, landed machines on Mars, collected rocks from the Moon, and sent spacecraft beyond the outer planets. Yet no scientific expedition has returned from Hell carrying a mineral sample, a temperature reading, a resident census, or even one badly scorched postcard saying, "Weather terrible. Management worse. Wish you weren't here."Despite this shortage of physical evidence, Hell has been described with remarkable confidence. It has gates, walls, chambers, circles, rivers, pits, furnaces, prisons, bridges, monsters, demons, judges, and an admissions department whose standards seem to change according to whoever is delivering the sermon. Some descriptions place Hell under the ground. Others put it outside creation, beyond the visible universe, in a spiritual dimension, or inside the condition of a soul separated from God. It has been portrayed as intensely hot, unimaginably cold, completely dark, painfully bright, deafeningly noisy, and horribly silent. Apparently, Hell has suffered from several major renovations without notifying the public.