The alternative fate.is not an everlasting torment but an everlasting death, that is, simple annihilation.' In other words, what is thought of as heaven is actually the earth we currently inhabit - with the obvious addition of God's presence establishing it as his Kingdom - and those who are said to be 'sent to hell' simply do not enjoy this Kingdom of God.

As Milner notes, 'eternal life does not consist in such immortality but in the resurrection of the bodily life of man on earth - a life that shall be endless in the finally established Kingdom of God. He argues that scripture does not justify the belief in an immortal soul that is sent either upwards to heaven for reward or downwards to hell for punishment. In Hobbes' discussion of this first cause he elaborates on his conception of the afterlife. During ceremonies such as baptism, communion, and marriage, God is not present, and is not somehow brought into those partaking in the rituals due to the actions of those performing them. Also following from this is the mistaken belief that ceremonies and consecrations actually take place with God present, a belief which religious authorities abuse by claiming to be a privileged conduit to God. As Hobbes noted in the previous book, what follows from this is the belief that the Church, and especially Popes, should rule over men, which serves only to undermine the authority of the sovereign. This first cause of darkness, the 'main abuse of scripture, and to which almost all the rest are either consequent, or subservient,' is saying that Kingdom of God is present in this world. Instead, it 'is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers, that to obtain dominion over men in the present world, endeavor by dark, and erroneous Doctrines, to extinguish in them the Light, both of Nature, and of the Gospell and so to dis-prepare them for the Kingdom of God to come.' There are four causes of spiritual darkness: 1) misinterpreting scripture 2) introducing false doctrines of demonology 3) mixing scripture with 'the vain and erroneous Philosophy of the Greeks, especially of Aristotle ' and 4) unfairly incorporating history and tradition into philosophy and religion.

This is not Hell in the way it is sometimes understood, mainly, as a place of eternal torment to which the souls of sinners are sent.

In the last portion of Hobbes' Leviathan, he outlines how abuses of religion and philosophy have led to what he calls the Kingdom of Darkness.

Book written by thomas hobbes