The Physics Of Hell

The very concept of an afterlife is of a post-mortem existence in another realm or form.  Whether a real or hypothetical afterlife is physical, nonphysical, or a mixture of both metaphysical states (the Biblical afterlife is physical and spiritual), it is inevitably true that something distinguishes the nature of ordinary human existence from an existence of consciousness after death.  The kind of afterlife described in the Bible is one that places human spirits within resurrected bodies that will either face eternal life in a physical New Jerusalem or eternal destruction in a physical lake of fire.

Due to the valid association of the afterlife with spirituality and theological metaphysics, many fail to realize that the afterlife described in several key religions is not an immaterial "world."  It is a place made of matter inhabitated by the souls and bodies of humans.  Physics and the metaphysics of a logically possible afterlife are widely considered to be in opposition with or irrelevant to each other, but anything physical behaves in accordance with some set of physical laws, even though the laws of physics are arbitrary and contingent, unlike the laws of logic--physics is, after all, nothing but how matter behaves.

Since the Biblical hell is a physical place, it follows that such a place would be governed by laws of physics, even if they are drastically different from the laws of physics experienced by humans in the present life.  For example, some sort of gravitational phenomenon would have to be present in a physical afterlife, no matter how weak or strong the gravitation would be.  It is logically impossible for events in a physical plane of existence to occur without the physical landscape being subject to some sort of physics in addition to it being subject to the laws of logic.

As long as the physical substance in hell, such as the flames described in Mark 9:43-49, behaves in any way whatsoever, hell is subject to its own physics, however similar or foreign they may be to our own.  It is thus a misrepresentation of genuine Christian doctrine to say that hell, whether or not it actually exists, is divorced from all laws of physics (and the same is true of heaven).  Reading the Bible without assumptions on the matter reveals that matter plays a significant role in the afterlife: it is antithetical to Biblical concepts to say that hell is a matterless void of spirit and empty space.