The Falling Man Is Not In Hell

If I am reading the 10-year update correctly, the family of Norberto Hernandez, the man misidentified as the ‘Falling Man’,  felt there was an element of shame about the possibility of him having died by jumping off the building. The wife did not speak to Norberto’s sister  for 8 years (!!!) because she had erroneously confirm that that was her brother in the pic.

Wow that is incredibly sad :’ (

Worst part is that since God is omniscient, he knew that the man would jump.  It was part of his divine plan which works in mysterious ways which humans cannot possible understand. Either that or its fiction.

Did you read the article? Junod writes that the fall was anything but smooth and relaxed. The collection of stills from the fall shows chaos, but that one image deceptively suggests otherwise.

I guess it was too much to ask that I have one fucking place today on my regular online run that I didn’t have to think about the horror of that day.

At some point we aren’t memorializing or remembering, we’re wallowing. 9/11 as a day of service is such a beautiful idea. I wish we could have marked the 10 year anniversary, not by a deluge of nightmarish video, stills and traumatic anecdotes, but by the biggest outpouring of community service the country has ever seen. That would show us as a country that heals, not one that picks its scabs obsessively.

OK rant over, I’m going to go drown my brain in cat videos now.

@Nordog: What in hell gives you the right to judge how people deal with fear and grief? Who made you the morality police?

Hemant didn’t make it about that.  It’s what people said to the grieving families.

Catherine sits on the step with her palm spread over her heart. “They
said my father was going to hell because he jumped,” she says. “On the
Internet. They said my father was taken to hell with the devil. I don’t
know what I would have done if it was him. I would have had a nervous
breakdown, I guess. They would have found me in a mental ward
somewhere….”

By your own lights, what in hell gives you the right to judge my comment?

The person you replied to is today’s sockpuppet troll.  Please don’t feed.

Is he a sockpuppet also? What are the other names?

I believe it to be the same person as Grady, Morrison90 and others from last week, very similar argument style.  I’m not totally sure though.

Hemant, thanks for sharing this article. It was terribly sad to read, but it was very well written. 
My deepest condolences to the relatives of those who lost their loved ones this day a decade ago. 

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. It’s always nice to reply to sockpuppet trolls once in a while, like a boxer punches a punch bag to hone their skills. Both are basically inanimate objects there to serve little purpose other than bouncing off practice rounds ready for a proper confrontation down the line.

I wonder if the twit who suggests inevitable hell fire for these victims would perceive the righteous bitch slap heading towards their face? Fair warning: I won’t tolerate sadomasochistic whores dishonoring the dead with their vengeful torture fetish. You say go to hell, I say go to College.

Criticising a belief is not the same as hating a person, Nordog. 

Then whatever you do, don’t watch/listen/read the news.  It’s a positive orgy of fear-mongering about “believable but unconfirmed” threats.  We gotta keep the fear alive!

As a Christian, I have to agree with you. I think it’s a problem of fundamentalism. “Judgement is mine, sayeth the Lord.” It’s presumptuous to think you know what happened to someone after death. Judgement is the Lord’s only ….a practice I wish more christians would rememeber.   “he who is without sin, cast the first stone.”

Most atheists in the US are ex-christians, bryan.  A lot of us deconverted not because of a lack of knowledge about the religion, but because extensive study of it thoroughly exposed the gaping holes in it.  There have been a mountain of articles written on the subject, but  none of them adequately answer the problem of evil/pain/suffering nearly as well as the simple answer of “there is no god, the universe does not care about you, and people often act like assholes”.  That answer covers it all, with no mystery or complicated mental gymnastics required.

To add to this, the second any other answer relies on a heavy pinch of salt, a bit of faith and the assumption that something is true, it all seems rather weak to be honest. No evidence for a God, no need to factor God into the equation, stuff happens, move on. Simple compared to trying to guess whether there is a God, what its intentions are, what its likes and dislikes are, whether it is watching, whos God is right… too much nonsense. By the maniacs crashing the planes 10 years ago THEY were acting on THEIR Gods wishes in their minds. If you can see how foolish and wrong that is, how can any one person on the planet claim to be right in what they believe?

Sometimes, we are trapped in the impressions that language provides.

This man, none of the jumpers, “killed themselves.” They had the choice that very few people ever have, which is to choose the method of their own death, from a very short list. That they would die is simply accepting what was inevitable, instead of crassly denying grim reality and instead insisting to themselves that there was some way, some chance. That, is the comfort that religion supposedly brings.

There is no pain in an end like this, no time for pain to exist. To think that the fear during the descent is greater than the fear of those who faced the fires or the collapse is ludicrous. Waiting to meet the flames and the destruction means believing that the pain is justified in some way – again, this is what religion teaches. Pain is only justified in telling us not to do that again; that is what nature teaches.

Religion, however, does not want to stop there – the families must share the pain; so do the friends, even the witnesses. “Watch the descent into hell. Watch god refuse to catch the man after provoking him beyond humanity.”  Yes, comforting.

If we do not discuss this now, when do we discuss it?

In case you didn’t notice, it’s certain Christians who were precipitating this line of discussion by claiming people who deliberately jumped went to hell.  These are the people using this day to parade their bigotry, not atheists.

Religious people sure are used to their smokescreen of privilege, wherein they can whore any tragedy for their own use, starting the conversation along those lines, and then turn around and pretend that anyone who argues with them or disagrees with them is the one whoring the tragedy.  Hypocrisy much?

I’ll insert some theological legitimacy into this debate.

According to the Catholic Church, these are the conditions that must be met in order for a sin to be considered “mortal” (the bad kind).

1. Grievous matter
2. Sufficient reflection/full knowledge
3. Full consent of the will
Killing yourself is certainly a grievous matter, but I think it’s clear that “sufficient reflection” was probably not performed with regard to this event. Even more so, I think it’s plausible that someone’s rational will would be compromised in such a situation (certainly for someone with clinical depression this may be the case). Bottom line is that we, as Catholics, are taught not to judge what is in a man’s heart at the time of his death. That is between him and the Creator.

Like a lot of people I watched the TV yesterday and there were many reports on the anniversary.  I saw these same images that shocked and horrified me a decade ago but this time I had my family with me.  I got to discuss the horrible events with my teenage children who had no memory of the actual events.

In some ways thinking about that day and being reminded of the all the violence and panic again was a comfort.  Watching fire fighters and volunteers talk about how it changed them and changed the nation was therapeutic.

What pissed me off is the week long build up to it all that seemed to promise gore and violence.  It wasn’t a horror movie or a disaster movie where the hero saves the day in the final scene and I really didn’t appreciate the media acting like it was.

I believe that “sin” is nothing more than an invention of churches to frighten people into staying in the faith and to justify their existence.  That they’ve gone to the effort and mental gymnastics to explain when a “sin” is so severe as to be a “mortal sin” is testament to how silly, controlling and deluded they are.

There are people in pain or facing imminent death.  Blaming them wanting to end their pain or choose how to die is something that religions seem to revel in.  Why?  I think it is because they cannot let go of their power even in the face of death.  They cannot allow that small mercy to another who faced something that we can barely imagine and decided to take the least painful option.  Anyone who claims “hell” for someone who chooses a relatively painless death over agony is just cruel.  They need to learn some compassion.

With all due respect RoboEmma, 

Grow feathers, and shit in a tree.

I severely doubt Nordog’s a sockpuppet; they’ve been around for a while now, and while I utterly disagree with many (most? all?) of their opinions, they do seem to make an effort to remember they’re talking to actual humans rather than just dirty-atheist-scum. Grady, on the other hand…

The thing that got me suspicious was saying this blog post, among others, was about hating on a religion.

How does providing salient points against the tenets of Christianity equate to being a bigot against those that follow the tenets of Christianity?  You are so wrong in this claim of bigotry, I wonder if you’re capable of understanding the accusations you make.  Statements like yours above are as blatantly offensive as any I’ve seen.

I think the word victim to describe people who commit suicide is
misused. Although you could argue, that in the case of 9/11 victims it
is appropriate, I don’t view their deaths as suicides. In general, I
don’t see how someone who takes a decision to end his life could be a
victim. Victims don’t have a choice when it comes to suffering or dying.

It seems condescending to those people, as if their choice isn’t valid because it seems wrong or even absurd to us.

Hemant, don’t you think making a statement that a person “is not in hell” is just as unjustified as someone claiming that someone is in hell? Surely from your position you can only say something like “I don’t believe in hell” or “I don’t see reason to think people go to hell”? 

Er… I think you’ll find Hemant was the one who brought up hell.. and I think you’ll find I simply asked a question – and I would have asked it if he had said Valhalla, because the question was about whether the kind of statement is justified. 
He’s a big boy, he doesn’t need you to obfuscate for him.

I concur. I don’t agree with Nordog’s opinions, but he/she has been around for quite a while, long before the move to Patheos. I don’t think Nordog is a troll, but he/she does seem to prefer making snarky little comments. At least Robert W. (whom we seem to have lost in the transition) would actually have a conversation with you.

So now it’s about whether the kind of statement is justified? Forgive me when I say I just don’t believe you. No one in modern Western culture believes that Valhalla is anything other than imaginary, and there is no need to make qualifying statements about obviously mythical places. 

Of course he wouldn’t have actually called him out. He thinks that he’s devilishly clever by arguing a preposterously pedantic point.

I’m desperately hoping that we’ll get to take a trip down the rubbish chute of :

No one knows where ANYTHING is if they’re not presently observing it, so it’s not justified to proclaim that  he’s NOT in hell, or NOT in valhalla, or NOT having his soul weighed against the divine weight of ma’at, or NOT riding the river styx to the realm of hades. 

You’re way too cynical.. and presumptive. Of course I can’t simply be interested in Hemant’s view, now, can I? Sheesh..

What would be an equivalent statement a theist would make? That the man is in hell? Then, I would say that he has no way of knowing that he is or that hell even exists. It would be more accurate, I guess, to say that hell doesn’t exist and someone would be entirely justified to say so since there is no evidence for such a place existing. But this so trivially implied that I don’t see the problem. Or did you think that Hemant was making a theological point that he didn’t go to hell even if it exists?

You seemed to suggest that it’s ok for an atheist to make a positive claim like ‘hell doesn’t exist’ because we all understand that to mean that they ‘lack belief in hell’ (exchange ‘hell’ for ‘gods’ and I’m sure you’ve come across this kind of thing!) Is that what you meant?

I meant then, would you allow a theist to say one thing but be understood to mean something more nuanced?

You wrote:

 I would say that he has no way of knowing that he is or that hell even exists.

And from this you say that one cannot assert that   someone is in hell.. but then I cannot see how you  jump to:

It would be more accurate, I guess, to say that hell doesn’t exist and someone would be entirely justified to say so since there is no evidence for such a place existing.

It doesn’t seem at all trivial: what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Lack of evidence is not proof of lack (and likewise, lack of disproof is not proof!). So, even stepping back from the issue of whether or not we could say that someone is or isn’t in hell – the very reason you give for not being able to say that hell exists also prevents from making positive statements that it doesn’t exist. This was my point. I suppose it’s a case of deciding whether one’s atheism really is ‘merely’ a lack of belief in gods / hell / etc. or whether there is a positive belief that those things do not exist..

But as you ask..

I hope that the question would at least provoke thought (even if I didn’t expect a personal answer).

It’s a headline, short and sweet, responding to the Secret. If it makes you feel better, I can say there’s no evidence he’s in hell. That’s also accurate.

I assume you make the same kind of remarks to pastors who say things without justification? (i.e. everything)

Lack of evidence is not proof of absence, but depending on how exhaustive the search is, and how logically (in)coherent the object is, it IS evidence of absence.

Saying “X is not at A” is a shorthand statement. We’d both agree that it’s fine to say that “Cheetahs are not inside a solid rock statue”. Or the classical Adams “There are no faeries at the bottom of the garden”. Both of these statements are reasonable because saying “solid object X is inside another solid object Y” is not logically coherent with our understanding of macroscopic solids, and there is no evidence of existence of faeries.We can apply these same sorts of criticisms to hell. Not only is there not a shred of evidence for the existence of hell (the location), but there is no evidence of disembodied minds (souls) that are available for torturing, no evidence that the christian god (or his devilish counterpart) exists, and the christian doctrines are logically incoherent on top of this. So in this case, yeah, the statement Hemant made is justified. 
You can have “merely lack of belief” in lots of things, and have “nope doesn’t exist” beliefs in other things. There are lots of god claims. Some are so vague that all you can say is “no bloody evidence”. Some are specific enough to refute logically.

Can someone point me to an article about the people saying that those who jumped are in hell?  (Yes, I know the theological argument.  I just was wondering if any specific religious figures that I’ve heard of were making a point of it.)

None of it is “rationally” driven. Fear-driven is more like it.

Read the article and the epilogue to it yesterday, and was shocked to learn the stats of the estimated 50 to 200 people who were murdered-by-suicide and/or falling to their demise. And to learn the other country’s news coverage did not censor that image nor the footage of those that fell.

I live in a northeast suburb, and our local paper tried to gin up the masses to display flags, as so many did the week after 9/11/2001. Out of curiosity I drove around a bit and discovered that a scant few had heeded the call to fly their “these colors don’t run” swag. I have a feeling that people are perhaps ambivalent, if not positively cognitively dissonant regarding the last ten years. Reluctant perhaps to shout about America being number 1, as perhaps we all secretly know that is not the case…

After all, Gore Vidal predicted years ago that one day we’d be China’s “plantation”.

It’s also flawlessly compatible with the natural sciences

I see your mind-body-soul duality/triality, and raise you a neuroscience.

In what way is theism rational?  The existence of gods is devoid of evidence.  Belief in something without evidence is faith, not rationality.

It’s unfortunate you thought I was being snarky. If my responses to you became more sarcastic, it’s because I tend to mirror the tone of whoever I’m responding to (not necessarily a good thing for me to do, I realise).

If ‘engaging’ doesn’t include making comments which are critical, what kind of engagement is that?

It wasn’t a zinger, or meant to be one. If the truth ‘zings’ you it’s your own problem.  

Ignorant comments from theists about the ‘rationality’ of religion do not require or deserve well thought out responses. 

I am an orthodox Roman Catholic and I maintain that none of my thoughts are contradictory or irrational. My beliefs are not fideistic, but are the product of a good deal of rationality.

Regarding medicine v religion I was not attempting to equate the two. One deals completely with the physical, the other the metaphysical. I simply wanted to make the point that discarding religion solely on the basis of it being complex and tricky is intellectually dishonest.

And I’ve read Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. Never heard of Dennett. While I disagree with many of their points, the thing that irks me the most is their ‘tudes. Very off putting. Not the right way to go about things if they’re trying to “unconvert” people. 

Also, I am not at all impressed with Harris. A scientist attempting to do philosophy. His performance in the Gob Debate II was pathetic, appealing to conventional standards and human emotions  rather than cold hard logic. I daresay he was out dueled by a *GASP* Evangelical!

Not true here in the south. After 9/11, flags were *everywhere*. Now, the Ostentatious displays of the American flag are a good indicator of the people & businesses I want to avoid. The righties are the super proud flag flyers; these are the same folks who fly the Confederate flag and call it “southern pride”.

And how “typically presuptious” of you to assume that you know the motives and compellances of billions of religious people based on your own apparently exhaustive and comprehensive experience. The world according to aerie.

By “engagement,” I mean a willingness to have an actual discussion, not just making hit-and-run critical comments and getting annoyed when people respond to them.

However, I do apologize for my tone. I see that my first remark came off as unnecessarily sarcastic.

I was not intending a hit an run (hence the question mark at the end of it) and I’m obviously not against people answering questions I might ask – but chafe at having my motives impugned.

Perhaps I have made some snarky comments, and I do need to think about how I engage if what I write is being perceived that way (maybe the perception is more accurate than I’d like to think!)

Lack of evidence is not proof of absence, but depending on how exhaustive the search is, and how logically (in)coherent the object is, it IS evidence of absence.

I would say it depends on the scope of the claim – this is also why you can prove a negative is some cases e.g. I can prove that no money exists in my wallet, because I have access to the whole of my wallet. Where supernatural claims because problematic is that we simply don’t have access to the whole scope of the natural yet, let alone what is beyond that (add to that that it lies beyond the defined scope of our methodology for exploring the natural universe).

Thanks for your reply and your apology Anna, I appreciate it.

 I don’t think that mere accident of birth is a good reason to pretend that certain claims have any sort of legitimacy. Heaven and hell may be popular, but popularity doesn’t make them real.

Of course they don’t, but then, I’ve met too many Christians not born in so-called ‘Christian’ cultures to think that this line of reasoning is fallacious. Besides which, if the secular lobby is to be believed, Christianity is not a majority view in Australia any more ;)I do see what you’re saying, and I’m actually not saying you can’t dismiss ideas of heaven and hell – my question, as I noted, was made with the assumption that atheism is merely a lack of belief in gods. I’ve no problem with atheists making positive claims that certain entities don’t exist (though it is strictly speaking, a position somewhat of faith – based on certain reasoning, of course, and that’s ok too, we all believe certain things based on reason and evidence, even if we can’t prove them empirically) it’s just that a number of the atheists I interact most with argue vehemently against doing that.. perhaps there’s a bigger division about that than I realise.

Well, I don’t see it as division. It might come across that way to outsiders, but if you observe hesitation or reluctance on the part of most atheists to assert the non-existence of particular things, it’s symptomatic of the culture we are forced to deal with. In another time or another place, things would be different. I can not only casually dismiss, but outright proclaim that Thor does not exist, and that’s seen as perfectly rational. This can only happen because our entire culture accepts that Thor is fictional. If I tried to do the same thing with Yahweh, I would immediately be put on the defensive because the vast majority of people in our culture believe in Yahweh. If there were still ardent Thor followers around, the same thing would happen. They would shift burden of proof onto me, which is why most atheist avoid making the same statements about Yahweh that they do about Thor.

For me, as an atheist, one god is the same as another. I see absolutely no difference between Thor and Yahweh. But only Yahweh is privileged in our culture. Heaven and hell are likewise privileged in our culture, while Valhalla is not. It’s not controversial to say that those other things are make believe, but atheists are accused of arrogance/faith/not being able to prove their claims only when it comes to the Judeo-Christian supernatural realm. That’s what I personally find so frustrating. There’s a tremendous inability (even among many atheists) to “think outside the culture box.” Knowing that there are so many different supernatural creatures and places and that virtually all of them are accepted as imaginary, it’s so strange to me that people in our society can’t seem to step outside of their culture and see it.