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Jiro comments on Is Spirituality Irrational? - Less Wrong
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If someone told me that when I die God would send me to New Jersey, I'd understand that he was joking and being symbolic. But I would not reason "well, people in New Jersey die, so obviously he is trying to tell me that people in Hell get destroyed after a while".
Nope, because dying is not a particularly distinctive feature of life in New Jersey; it happens everywhere in much the same way. So being sent to New Jersey wouldn't make any sense as a symbol for being destroyed. What if someone told you that God will send you to the electric chair when you die?
If someone said that, I would assume he is trying to tell me that God will punish me in a severe and irreversible manner after I die.
It's true that actual pits of flame kill people rather than torture them forever, but going from that to Hell being temporary is a case of some parts of the metaphor fighting others. He used a pit of flame as an example rather than dying in your sleep because he wanted to emphasize the severity of the punishment. If the metaphor was also meant to imply that Hell is temporary like a fire pit, the metaphor would be deemphasizing the severity of the punishment. A metaphor would not stand for two such opposed things unless the person making it is very confused.
I agree that he wanted to emphasize the severity, but that doesn't have to mean making it out to be as severe as it could imaginably be. Fiery (and no doubt painful) total and final destruction is pretty severe, after all.