Hell – Endothermic or Exothermic?

On this august occasion of my 59th birthday, the question of weather hell was endothermic or exothermic came up, as these kinds of subjects sometimes do during times of celebrations of great events. I’m also presuming that there were no insinuations in the conversation as to where the participants presumed I would end up after my demise.

In pondering this weighty question on this momentus day, I reflected back to an internet posting purporting to be an extract from a mid-term exam given some time ago at the University of Washington.

The question was: “Is Hell exothermic(gives off heat) or endothermic(absorbs heat)? Support your answer with proof.”

Well, in true academic attempts of pontification, most of the students wrote proofs based on their beliefs using Boyle’s Law (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some mutation thereof.

One student, however, is supposed to have written the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So, we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate which they are leaving. I think we can safely presume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave.

Ergo, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s first look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls will go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. How we look at the change of the volume of Hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added.

This gives us two possibilities:

1 – Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure win Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2 – Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature will drop until Hell freezes over.

So, which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me that Ms Therese Banyan during my Freshman year that “it will be a cold day in hell before I sleep with you”, and take into account that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then: (2) cannot be true and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic.

I leave you with this point to ponder as you celebrate the best day of the year, September 19th.

I’m Don Rima and that’s the view From Where I Stand.