No Stupid Questions

The idea of Satan as the embodiment of evil is arguably an early medieval borrowing from Zoroastrianism. In the Book of Job he works in conjunction with God as a tester of souls, and his roles in the garden of Eden and the temptation of Jesus aren’t inconsistent with that. And a lot of the popular folklore associated with him originates from morally-ambiguous trickster figures from other traditions that were absorbed into Christianity.

Displaying nuance in "hell" as pushback against the binary concept of good and evil is arguably one of the oldest tropes in fiction. Both ancient Greek and Norse mythology very specifically depict the underworld as a place of ambiguity or even normality, with "heaven" holding a far more exalted status.

Even in Abrahamic mythology the idea of hell being some kind of default punishment for sinners is a fairly modern idea, arguably stemming from Dante, who absolutely works a good amount of sympathy for sinners into the story. It really only is the most recent take on the concept by evangelical Christians which holds that an otherwise innocent person will be tortured for eternity over a mere lack of faith, and that form of absurd extremism certaintly plays a large role in the modern backlash against the concept.

Milton's Paradise Lost doesn't paint Hell as pleasant, but Satan is absolutely the protagonist of the story. That's 1667.

I have friends who are still religious and it seems like they’ve pivoted from “lake of fire” to a more “hell is the absence of God” vibes

I live in a crunchy granola area so I just assume that’s how the church here operates to keep patrons.

Religion is pretty hard to believe if it wasn't the one you were raised into. And it's often times pretty hard to get out of the one you were raised into.

But outside of religion, a pretty common fictional view is that heaven is the extreme end of order, and hell is the extreme end of chaos. Neither one can harbor any middle ground, and thus they would both suck to be stuck in.

Inside religion, whatever your religion's version of heaven is, usually depends on what "your people(local and as a whole)" would want it to be. It changes over time and distance to better fit. But never bring up that it has changed, as it has always been this one and true correct way of depicting it, to question that is some kind of sin... and hell of course is similarly fluid despite having always been "this" way.

In truth, they have both been depicted every which way imaginable.

If you count Hel (one L) from Norse religion, older than the bible.

the idea of the snake in the Garden of Eden as having given free will and wisdom to humanity can’t be that modern of a thought, even if it would have been heretical.

In Gnosticism, the snake is sometimes identified with Jesus, while the god of the old testament is the demiurge. You're correct in that the catholic church really didn't like that.

I think you misunderstood parts of The Good Place: >!It's not people in The Bad Place pushing to improve the system, they try their hardest to prevent any improvements (except for Glenn, he's the only demon that tries). Michael only became better because he learned ethics from a human perspective.!<

And that's what The Good Place is fundamentally about: you can't expect people to be good, if they don't get the opportunity to become good people.

Mark Twain had some interesting ideas about Heaven, Hell, and Satan.

I think it is absolutely a reaction to more people becoming non-religious. There is much more in the world that is morally ambiguous than the Bible alone would lead people to believe. Things like my example here: hell frozen over with Satan stuck in an endless dopamine hit cycle, struggling with depression is just one of many ways we have "humanized" Lucifer.

I think, especially, in a world ruled by corruption, that people no longer have faith that those in charge actually have their best interests in mind. You question whether Lucifer was kicked out of heaven for pointing out similar issues with heavenly society. Is he truly the villain in the story? He kills far fewer in Biblical history than God does.

I would suggest it's the other way around. Sympathetic versions of hell and the underworld are if anything older. For that matter the concept of hell is very much borrowed from religions that came before Christianity. Heck the vast majority of our imagery for Christian hell comes from medieval retellings of Greek and Roman myths. Maybe with little bit of the pity and empathy taken out though.

Just a few off the top of my head that portray heaven in a negative light, are sympathetic to the devil, or have an otherwise non-traditional take on the judeo-christian mythos.

1995 - Memnoch the Devil, novel, Anne Rice

1995 - Preacher, comics/graphic novels, writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon, Vertigo Comics

2001 - American Gods, novel, Neil Gaiman

1990 - Good Omens, novel, Terry Pratchett

1978/1998 - What Dreams May Come, novel/movie, Richard Matheson - novel author

edit: formatting because ewww

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained

• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I’ve noticed this in video games too. For example, in Monster Train you fight as the champions of hell to save what’s left of your home against the forces of light.

Letters from Earth was written by Mark Twain in 1909, but publishers refused to publish it until 1962. So, I’d say it’s fairly modern, starting around 1962 and becoming more acceptable since then.

It's pretty modern if you mean popular, although the idea itself is REALLY old.

Rather than going into specific examples because there are a lot of them (especially in gaming and TV), I'd like to say my piece on cliches.

Basically, cliches come to exist because the cliche trope is a really good idea.

"The Butler did it" as a murder mystery trope is a fantastic idea because some people with too much money will use the protection money affords them to mistreat their employees, providing a great motive you can build on to create a great story with relatable morals and characters. It sets up a character with perfect motives, means and a reasonable position of trust to avoid suspicion.

Similarly, "Hell good, Heaven bad" is a fantastic trope because it lets you step back and analyse things like the negative impacts of religion and how authorities (and the bible) will portray themselves as good regardless of their actual actions. Plus of course there were periods of time where people were told doing virtually anything that didn't fit into an extremely narrow worldview meant you were going to hell. You know, stuff like basketball and Dungeons and Dragons.

Now, the problem with cliches is when someone sees a popular idea that's also a very good idea, but doesn't understand why it was a good idea. As a result, when they use the idea, it rings hollow at absolute best, and that kind of terrible execution of something that's already known and popular tends to be especially disappointing. I think the best example is The Hunger Games, which absolutely defined young adult dystopian fiction for years because it showed how the media industry mistreats its workers, and Alleigant, which used a lot of ideas from Hunger Games (and some other things) without actually understanding the ideas.

(TLDR: Hunger Games has a love triangle as a prominent plot element, but the actual reason is that it's perpetuated by the media pretty much on pain of death for Katniss so that she can entertain the viewers. By contrast, Alleigant also has a love triangle but the triangle IS the plot element and the author bends over backwards to make it happen despite the fact none of the characters really feel like they're suitable for it)

Anyways, cliches aren't bad but you need to know how, why, and when to use them in order to actually fulfil their potential, and the heaven-hell one you've mentioned above is no exception.

Right now I can think of the buddhist "tale of the bug".

Two (human) friends died and were reborn. One in heaven, the other as a dung beetle (a type of bug) on a dung pile.

The guy in heaven tried to "help" his friend by going down to Earth and carrying his friend to the skies. But his friend refused, because the dung pile was now his home, and he didn't want to leave at any cost. Only then the guy realized that it is not heaven that makes you happy, but finding the place that you're destined for.

I completely forgot to mention His Dark Materials! Hell doesn't appear, but Heaven is portrayed as actively bad.

This is not an easy answer because what you think of as hell and demons was not always this Christian image. If we think of other older religious beliefs, such as Hades and his underworld, then things look already a lot more positively, or at least rather neutral (depending on their planes). Cultures differed quite a bit on those things and Christianity basically gobbled up parts of them, munched them together and replaced them. During the height of Christianity in Europe of course it would have been complete blasphemy to display hell and demons as something other than evil and would've likely got you killed. With modern times and people becoming more socially liberated it becomes less and less of an issue to say or think those things. So I don't think there's a clear cut time based border on when this happened, but rather it happened gradually with us becoming more and more educated I suppose.

From my own experience as an ex-christian and now a "pagan" person (syncretic demonolater), I'd point many factors that converged to a general understanding of how demons aren't so evil as we thought before (and how angels and God himself aren't so good as we thought before), while also leading to the understanding and reevaluating of the concepts good and evil, light and darkness.

Starting by the technological progress that allowed us to connect in realtime. Social networks, online communities that gathered people once unbeknownst to each other. Online platforms that connected people from different backgrounds, sharing once unknown knowledge. Books once distant from our reaches are now easily accessible through online libraries. Knowledge was never been so easy to reach (albeit there are many people that prefer ignorance).

This leads us to another important factor: the silent rediscovery and rising of ancient beliefs. The cyberspace brought us knowledge about the Sumerian faith, Hellenism beliefs and many, many others. Everyone can now know in detail about ancient deities and concepts in just a few clicks. Entities and deities such as The Mother Goddess (once extensively worshipped by our ancestors) is being rediscovered. We can easily know a Wiccan nowadays, or a Luciferian, or a neo-hellenist, or a Gnostic, or syncretic people like me, thanks to the internet connection and community. There's also the gnosis (i.e. knowledge through spiritual channelling) becoming available as soon as we have the basic openness to all this great knowledge and wisdom.

These two factors lead to a last factor: the weakening of Christiancracy (the former theocratic West where State and Christianity were intertwined as one) and the strengthening of both secularism (atheists, yet to understand how metaphysical aspects converge with the modern scientific inquiry; as an example, the modern chemistry began from the ancient alchemy) and syncretic ancient beliefs (once "pagan" and "forbidden" knowledge and both sacred and/or profane ritualistic practices, now openly available to be learnt and to be known).

In this way, movies and cinema are just echoes of these phenomena, echoes of the human awakening, becoming part of the culture, extending how the knowledge can reach and teach the masses, even though movies and TV series always have some degree of poetic freedom so they don't always represent things as precisely/concisely as a book/grimoire/oral knowledge. Media knowledge is far from perfect, but their esoteric and occult references spark the curiosity on part of the audience, people that will begin to really know what it's all about. As a personal example, I got to know some esoteric concepts through Supernatural TV series (although it demanded my own research that led me to Luciferianism and then to Lilith).

In summary, I'd call it the Aquarian Era, the Kali Yuga, the Revelation, the new Aeon. Some would call it "evil", while humanity as a whole can now rediscover what "evilness" really is: it's not the demons. It's a part of the Cosmos, it's a part of the Nature, it's a part of ourselves, as above so below. Our spiritual awakening is important to lead us to understand our own shadows through the wisdom of ancient, ambivalent forces, and reintegrating ourselves in Oneness with them.