Can we stop with the Manson Is Burning In Hell crap?

[stopbush]

There’s no hell (I’m open to any objective, empirical proof you can offer to convince me otherwise).

Can’t we just be thankful that in his case, the justice system worked? 50 years in prison is no cakewalk. It IS punishment, and severe punishment for a species that doesn’t take to confinement.

We should be proud that our system didn’t resort to the death penalty in this case. Heinous as was the crime, lowering society to the level of the crime to mete out punishment would be debasing.

There is justice, human justice. The best we can hope for is that justice is served before we head off into the nonexistence of death. There is no supernatural being waiting in some afterlife to mete out an imagined ultimate justice. We humans have the power and the warrant to do that, and we did so in the case of Manson.

[ck4829]

1. Why?

Nonexistence can be a comforting thought to some, just as continued existence and some sort of eternal retribution can be.

I don't think we exist right now either, not just in the way we perceive, it's what we make of it in any case.

[Loki Liesmith]

2. the answer is no

[Sneederbunk]

3. Proof? Trump presidency.

[Siwsan]

4. I don't understand why someone's belief in heaven or hell should bother anyone

Unless or until they try to force it on me, another person's belief, one way or the other, has no impact on my belief (or lack thereof). If an individual takes "comfort" in eternal damnation for the evil, and eternal heavenly rewards for the good, so be it. I totally respect their right to believe, as I respect the right of others to not believe.

Sorry, but I had a bad interaction with someone, earlier today, on the same topic. Proselytizing from either end of the spectrum makes for strange bedfellows, IMHO.

[Cartoonist]

5. Even nice people have to hate

It's like sneezing.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Some people do believe in Hell. I am not among them.

However, the fact that you don’t shouldn’t preclude those who do from enjoying the thought that a really evil guy is getting his just desserts in an afterlife. It’s not for you to decide what others should or should not believe.

[Tiger58]

31. tigerram

True !!!!

[VOX]

7. In Mansons case, life imprisionment was the greater punishment...

He had to live out decades with all that insane churning going on in his head. On the rare instances he was trotted out for interviews, etc., his emotional agitation and disorientation was obvious. Some say that THAT is unnecessarily cruel, but in this case, it was a harsh daily punishment, which Manson had more than earned.

[StarryNite]

8. The concept of hell seems pointless.

The concept of heaven also seems pointless.
But then so does the concept of life.
So, who knows?

[malaise]

9. K & R

Great post

[GulfCoast66]

10. Last time I checked...

This site is called Democratic Underground.

Not Atheists Underground.

Have a nice evening.

[Bradshaw3]

27. There are all kinds of topics posted on this site including religion

Off to the left up top you will see the topics folders, one of which is for religion and spirituality. Many people here post religious threads.

[GulfCoast66]

30. For sure. I have no problem with the OP.

Just reminding him or her there are a variety of opinions here.

Ironically, I do not believe in hell. Or heaven or that matter. But I love discussion and am often accused of playing devils advocate just to play devils advocate. I hope my post did not sound like an insult as it was not intended that way.

Have a nice evening.

[stopbush]

48. So, rational, evidence-based thought (ie: non-belief) shouldnt be posted

as a General Discussion topic on DU? It needs to be shuffled off into the atheist group corner?

Gives you an idea of what’s wrong with this country.

[LanternWaste]

55. Along with posters pretending to know what we should or should not discuss.

"Gives you an idea of what’s wrong with this country..."
Along with posters pretending to know what we should or should not discuss.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other... unless of course, you presented rational, evidence-based support for your original sentiment in the OP, which itself was merely a series of unsupported allegations. Yet you didn't.

Or you can simply justify why you hold others to a higher standard than you hold yourself to.

I'm guessing a variation of the latter will be the mechanism of choice.

[GulfCoast66]

59. WTF?

I was responding to your OP. The one where YOU were carrying on about people posting about hell.

You are miss reading my post and accusing me of doing exactly what your OP did! Specifically telling people they should not post about Hell.

I do not believe in hell but could give a damn if others do and if they post such on this forum.

Just like I welcome and agree with rational, evidence and science based opinions

[Binkie The Clown]

11. How about: "Manson is resting in the arms of Jebus?"

No? I thought god was infinitely loving and compassionate. Hmmm I guess not.

[denbot]

12. I'll kick, but also toss a couple of pennies into the Hell Wishing Well for charlie.

Who knows? Even without mysticism, a multiverse with the possibility of a hell could exist. Who's to say it ain't ours?

[tymorial]

13. Why do you care what people believe?

Are they forcing you to believe in hell? I don't believe in hell either but no one here is pressuring me. Just trash the thread. This type of post telling people to stop doing this or that is getting old.

[smirkymonkey]

45. +1000

Thank YOU!

[cwydro]

50. I know; there are more than few here who think they are the boss of

DU.

They’re not.

[MoonRiver]

14. Sometimes phrases are just ways to vent.

For instance, when I say Chumpy is a Piece of Shit, I, of course, don't literally mean that, but it conveys my feelings about that Human Garbage, another example, which has become my new favorite insult for IT.

[Mariana]

15. Even if Hell is real, he may not be there.

Suppose Christianity is true, and Manson sincerely repented of his sins shortly before he died? Christians may enjoy fantasizing about him being tortured forever, but they can't possibly know that, can they? Perhaps he's enjoying eternal bliss right now.

[RobinA]

63. Hey, I Like That Thinking

Maybe he didn't have to repent. Maybe his "crime" was really a mission commanded by God. Maybe his victims were the messengers of the Anti-Christ come to Earth. Maybe God was trying to punish Roman Polanski. Maybe Roman Polanski was put on Earth to father the Anti-Christ.

Hey, this magical thinking is fun!!!

[ClarendonDem]

16. Pretty sure

Manson is burning in hell as we debate the topic. And good. He should be.

[womanofthehills]

39. Not if he confessed to a catholic priest - 1000 hail mary's - and he would be forgiven & floating up

My dad had lots of art books in our house - many of the old masters depicting hell. When I was about 10, I loved to show the neighborhood kids what hell was really like!!!! I might have been responsible for some good behavior on my street. I'll share

[Jim__]

40. Joyce described hell in words.

From A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

...

—Now let us try for a moment to realize, as far as we can, the nature of that abode of the damned which the justice of an offended God has called into existence for the eternal punishment of sinners. Hell is a strait and dark and foul-smelling prison, an abode of demons and lost souls, filled with fire and smoke. The straitness of this prison house is expressly designed by God to punish those who refused to be bound by His laws. In earthly prisons the poor captive has at least some liberty of movement, were it only within the four walls of his cell or in the gloomy yard of his prison. Not so in hell. There, by reason of the great number of the damned, the prisoners are heaped together in their awful prison, the walls of which are said to be four thousand miles thick: and the damned are so utterly bound and helpless that, as a blessed saint, saint Anselm, writes in his book on similitudes, they are not even able to remove from the eye a worm that gnaws it.

—They lie in exterior darkness. For, remember, the fire of hell gives forth no light. As, at the command of God, the fire of the Babylonian furnace lost its heat but not its light, so, at the command of God, the fire of hell, while retaining the intensity of its heat, burns eternally in darkness. It is a never ending storm of darkness, dark flames and dark smoke of burning brimstone, amid which the bodies are heaped one upon another without even a glimpse of air. Of all the plagues with which the land of the Pharaohs were smitten one plague alone, that of darkness, was called horrible. What name, then, shall we give to the darkness of hell which is to last not for three days alone but for all eternity?

—The horror of this strait and dark prison is increased by its awful stench. All the filth of the world, all the offal and scum of the world, we are told, shall run there as to a vast reeking sewer when the terrible conflagration of the last day has purged the world. The brimstone, too, which burns there in such prodigious quantity fills all hell with its intolerable stench; and the bodies of the damned themselves exhale such a pestilential odour that, as saint Bonaventure says, one of them alone would suffice to infect the whole world. The very air of this world, that pure element, becomes foul and unbreathable when it has been long enclosed. Consider then what must be the foulness of the air of hell. Imagine some foul and putrid corpse that has lain rotting and decomposing in the grave, a jelly-like mass of liquid corruption. Imagine such a corpse a prey to flames, devoured by the fire of burning brimstone and giving off dense choking fumes of nauseous loathsome decomposition. And then imagine this sickening stench, multiplied a millionfold and a millionfold again from the millions upon millions of fetid carcasses massed together in the reeking darkness, a huge and rotting human fungus. Imagine all this, and you will have some idea of the horror of the stench of hell.

—But this stench is not, horrible though it is, the greatest physical torment to which the damned are subjected. The torment of fire is the greatest torment to which the tyrant has ever subjected his fellow creatures. Place your finger for a moment in the flame of a candle and you will feel the pain of fire. But our earthly fire was created by God for the benefit of man, to maintain in him the spark of life and to help him in the useful arts, whereas the fire of hell is of another quality and was created by God to torture and punish the unrepentant sinner. Our earthly fire also consumes more or less rapidly according as the object which it attacks is more or less combustible, so that human ingenuity has even succeeded in inventing chemical preparations to check or frustrate its action. But the sulphurous brimstone which burns in hell is a substance which is specially designed to burn for ever and for ever with unspeakable fury. Moreover, our earthly fire destroys at the same time as it burns, so that the more intense it is the shorter is its duration; but the fire of hell has this property, that it preserves that which it burns, and, though it rages with incredible intensity, it rages for ever.

...

[womanofthehills]

42. Wow! Very impressive description by Joyce.

I read that book, but it was years ago. I need to reread it.


Here is one of few words by Bertrand Russell

HELL: A place where the police are German, the motorists French and the cooks English.
Bertrand Russell

[oasis]

47. I get it. Hell is a bad place.

[RhodeIslandOne]

17. Charlie Manson enjoyed his time, don't fool yourself

He was batshit and people still paid all sorts of attention to him, which psychos thrive on.

[mcar]

18. No

[pintobean]

19. He did the devil's work.

Now he's burning in hell.

[snooper2]

54. When you burn something it disinigrates- So even if there is a magical place called hell, boring

Unless it is a magical burning like you see on cartoons.

I guess science doesn't work in fantasies?

[pintobean]

58. I'm an atheist

but not the arrogant know-it-all type. Those folks usually display an extraordinary amount of ignorance about faith.

[dawg]

20. I'm a Christian, but I don't wish for anyone to be burning in hell.

I'm glad Charlie was kept away from society for all those years, and that he was prevented from harming anyone else.

I understand people's desire for punishment and vengeance. But I don't think it helps.

[GaryCnf]

34. Thanks n/t

[bluestarone]

21. you surely are not suggesting everyone

should think like you? are you?

[blogslut]

22. He was originally sentenced to death, as were Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten.

People v. Anderson is why their sentences were reduced to life in prison.

The Tate-LaBianca murders, their cruelty and twisted aftermath, are seared into the conscience of almost every American that was alive then and alive now. He was our real monster and now he's dead. Fuck him.

[Raine]

23. NO infact FUCK NO! nt

[Jack-o-Lantern]

24. Hell is an abstract way of people expressing complete contempt for pure evil.

[womanofthehills]

38. maybe it wasn't all pure evil but extreme psycho mental illness

there are 2 yr old psychopaths after all.

Side note: Yrs ago I worked with a women who spent a few days at Manson's place in Haight-Ashbury. She was a runaway at the time and she met him on the street.

[customerserviceguy]

44. It might be useful

for the authorities to subject Manson's brain to the same analysis that they're doing on the brain of the Las Vegas shooter.

It would be the only useful thing out of that wretched life.

[johnp3907]

25. Any god who condemns anyone to eternal damnation is evil.

Anyone who worships that god supports evil.

[sammythecat]

56. Contemplation of the absurdity

of eternal punishment was the first step on my path to atheism. I was, however, very impressed with God's memory. I'm sure that after a million trillion centuries of someone roasting on a spit I'd completely forget what the original offense was that pissed me off so much.

[johnp3907]

60. Kind of a grudge holder, that one.

But didn't he give his bastard son so all our sins could be washed away? Or something like that?

[nini]

26. This thread is proof that even an agreement on a truly evil man being gone is good..

can turn into something beyond that.


'Burning in hell' is used more of a statement was pure evil than wanting to argue the existence of hell.

I think we're all thankful the justice system worked. I'm not sure why you would think people wouldn't think that

[LakeArenal]

28. Manson was a nut job and should have been housed in a mental hospital.

[RobinA]

64. I Sometimes Wonder

about that. He definitely played a nutjob on TV. He was clearly damaged big time. However, I wonder if the crazy looks, psycho eyes and faces were just an act. I work in a forensic mental health setting and NO ONE looks or acts like Charles Manson.

[Owl]

29. Well said.

[Mira]

32. this is not original but I agree

that it's a shame he died before 45 could put him in his cabinet

[revmclaren]

35. Of course he's not burning in Hell...

He's a slug in Wisconsin.... Over and over and over again!

[Jim__]

36. "My father is the jailhouse. I am only what you made me" - Charles Manson

I don't know much about hell,but Manson pretty much started out in something like a hell. From a short bio of Manson:

...

Charles Manson was born Charles Milles Maddox on November 12, 1934, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Kathleen Maddox, a 16-year-old girl who was both an alcoholic and a prostitute. Kathleen later married William Manson, but the marriage ended quickly and Charles was placed in a boys school. Rejected in his attempts to return to his mother, Charles was soon living on the streets and getting by through petty crime.

Still just a teenager, in 1951 Manson began spending time in prison. Early on, before he discovered the benefits of being a "model prisoner," he was considered dangerous. He would eventually spend half of the first 32 years of his life behind bars.

Manson was described by probation reports as suffering from a "marked degree of rejection, instability and psychic trauma" and "constantly striving for status and securing some kind of love." Other descriptions included "unpredictable" and "safe only under supervision."

From 1958, Manson was in and out of jail for a variety of offenses, including pimping and passing stolen checks, and he was sent to McNeil Island prison in Washington State for 10 years. It was while he was incarcerated that Manson learned how to read music and play the guitar.

...

Manson once said that his father was the jailhouse. It was. That's our prison system. We didn't do a very good job with Manson. I don't think we're doing any better with the young Manson's of today.

We need to try harder.

Nothing excuses what Manson did. But we can all learn something from it.

[RobinA]

65. I Agree With You

wholeheartedly. I also wonder if Manson ever actually did anything violent himself. I don't mean caused violence, but was he, himself ever violent? He has this reputation for being hugely violent because of what others did in his name and because of his "I'm a psycho" demeanor, but I wonder if he was actually violent at all. "Safe only under supervision." Hummm. Why? Because he might write a bad check? I honestly don't know. I've read about the murders, but not much about Manson himself.

[NotASurfer]

37. Human imagination and human nature play in

We have it in us to do great harm to others. In this case, we put that capacity to arguably good use by depriving somebody of freedom for life. Human nature wants somebody who has caused suffering to also suffer.

And now that prisoner can be punished no more. I think we imagine Hell as a way to extend punishment in some way, and that satisfies a vengeful part of a lot of people. Somebody may exist no more, but somehow if one imagines them trapped in Hell's giant jacuzzi of molten sulfur, one feels the suffering would be appropriate.

[lunasun]

41. Can we curse him upon his death by declaring " Go to Hades"? Or same?

[customerserviceguy]

43. I'm an atheist

and I've been happy to joke about Hitler finally getting a worthy roommate.

It's relief for the fact that it took this long for Manson to finally meet his end. It really should have been a lot sooner, even if the state had to bring his life to an end.

The motherfucker was pure evil, and some of us are glad that we finally outlived this piece of shit.

[Initech]

46. Eh, Manson is probably in Purgatory right now awaiting his fate.

And it will probably be the inner most circle of hell.

[WillowTree]

49. So no one should ever mention things that they believe in and you don't? Screw that!!

Grow the heck up.

[backscatter712]

51. Let's just say the world is a better place without him in it.

[ismnotwasm]

52. Prove that there is no hell.

Go ahead, I’m waiting.

Actually I’m kidding—I just want his skull for my neo-goth niece. A Christmas

Personally It would creep the fuck out of me.

[vlyons]

53. the Charlie Manson story has deeply resonated with me.

As a Buddhist it shows me how fast we are to judge people without knowing what karma is pushing on them. The question is not why was he a crazy psychopath, but why not? At first, when learning of his death, I thought good riddance. Then when I learned his story, I suddenly saw how karma works. All his life, from birth, people said "good riddance" to him. How different would have been the outcome if when a child, someone had shown him a little compassion and loving kindness? Cared enough to set a good example? But the ugly karma created by his parents and pushing on Manson's life went on to reach into the lives and families of the 8 people he killed, the 4 women he sent to prison, and the woman who tried to assassinate Gerald Ford.

[jalan48]

57. Perhaps hell is a cosmic black hole.

[Kaleva]

62. Kind of what I believe. Hell is nonexistence. One is gone forever.

[redstateblues]

61. Heard a story about a guy who found himself in Hell

And everybody was standing around knee deep in shit drinking coffee. He thought, "wow this isn't too bad." He got some coffee, waded in and then he heard a voice say " OK, break is over, back on your heads.