If there is but one universal axiom that sums up our collective beliefs about injustice it is this:  There must be an atonement mechanism.  The scales of justice cannot remain forever in a state of unbalance.  Wrongs must be righted.  Offenders must get their just deserts.  Karma demands it.  Religions demand it.  God demands it.  We may not agree on much, but retribution—meted out from a cosmic source—is the one principle that finds universal favor among the masses.  Even kings fear it (some say).  Megalomaniacs likely feel superior to it, and thus immune from it.  Most believers, however, would argue they plunder and conquer at their peril.   

There is a paradox looming in these beliefs.  The human mind can conjure up punishments that defy all the commandments, all the virtues, and all the rules of conduct—earthly or otherwise.  To be cast into a fiery furnace, thence to burn for all eternity is an example of overkill—in a coarse manner of speaking.  Even one second of burn time produces unspeakable pain.  What sort of supreme benevolent force or being could possibly inflict that kind of pain in the name of love on an offender forever?  He, she, or it would need to be full of love and full of hate at the same time.   

And what about the inherent contradictions within such physical judgments?  Most religions believe in an eternal soul, an entity that exists without a body.  In such a state, I could not harm you, nor you me.  Would not a spirit preclude all notions of physical punishment?  Suffice to say, there are many logical problems inherent in the notion of cosmic justice that rely on a physical body to beat up on a spirit in getting those scales back into balance. 

It seems to this observer that most of these ideas of justice stem from pagan beliefs, from half-baked religious creeds, from old wives tales, and the like.  None of them has any satisfying component, nor do they reach out to include a whole range of other injuries that we heap upon each other, or onto the animal kingdom, or upon Nature.  When we pollute the land, the air, and the waters; or burn forests; or starve and slaughter animals, are we not in violation of laws or standards that are far above us?  We are now polluting the space surrounding our planet with debris, even while we speak of pushing outward to occupy more space on other worlds.  How arrogant are we in not taking notice of the mess we create between our actions and our goals? 

Here is a perspective that has taken root in my belief system.  Hell is a state of mind.  We live in our own hell for as long as we choose to violate the universal code of justice. Those violations go beyond murder and pollution.  They include slavery, exploitation, greed, taking without giving, dirty dealing, lying, cheating, stealing, and the great silent offense of doing nothing while others inflict their injustices on still others.  At some point Karma demands an accounting where confession is not good enough.  Justice would not be served until we first acknowledge our wrongs, and relive them—not from our own perspective, but from the perspective of those we harmed.  And those others could be people, animals, trees, land, lakes, or the air.  We need to suck it up, feel it, and spit it out—if it takes months, years, or millennia.  We must cleanse our souls of all the garbage we ingested, of all the bad seeds we sowed, and of all the consequences that flowed outward from us.  Free choice isn’t free; it carries a heavy responsibility.  Once we have expunged our souls of our own deeds, then we likely will need to seek out those who were on the receiving end of our wanton ways, and apologize to them as best we can. That seems like a better way to learn in connection with atonement. 

Life in the universe is complex enough without injecting paganism as an enduring truth about an afterlife.  Just as the Flat Earth Theory fell when ships did not fall off those abrupt changes in sea levels out there on the edges, so too has the notion of truth by assertion outlived its usefulness.  Even the added rejoinders that “God told me so,” or “God told my dead uncle so” carry no weight at all in any search for purpose, meaning or truth.  Neither Popes, brass plates, miracles, nor deliberations by men in funny hats, as well as “ex cathedra” proclamations do any thing at all to elevate beliefs into truth; not even when they are surrounded by books of faith, or by liturgical pomp and circumstance.   

The surest way to know when someone has just uttered something you should not believe is when the speaker says “that’s the truth, and it came from God.”  But don’t take my word for it.  Just remember the wisdom in the observation that is surrounded by men and women of great cerebral contemplation—“the burden of proof always falls on the asserter.” And that is why the afterlife must remain in the domain of the unexplained.  It frees us to observe, pursue, and push the outer limits of knowledge without fearing the wrath of God or Karma.  Neither needs our thumbs on its scales of justice.