We all experience pleasure and pain (ought and ought not) in this world. Categorical salvation is the ultimate pleasure, categorical damnation the ultimate pain.

We also have in this life the vulnerability in others for us to do any harm to them--or to be generous, kind and merciful to them--but they have this power over us in turn. To us they are the danger; to them we are the danger. And to us they can be saviors also, and we can save them too.

But there is death in this world, which is a point beyond which whatever any man or woman has done to us, he or she cannot do any longer--we die, and go off to wherever go the dead. Thus, it is not in the power of any man or woman to harm us absolutely, irretrievably, or irredeemably. Pleasure and pain we can impact one another with; but never eternal suffering, nor eternal bliss; therefore, however vulnerable we are to the Other in this world, the Other can never give us categorical damnation, nor categorical salvation; but only a smaller, limited image or version of these: limited happiness, limited pain.

But there is a clue that God has given us to see the way to categorical salvation, as well as point out a way to categorical damnation (which is always a possibility too). For we interact with one another every day, and have the power to give micro-versions, or limited semblances of salvation and damnation. We are able to impact another and every other can impact us with pleasure or pain. It would seem God has led us to a mental connection there--so that we may deduce, as has nearly every major religion, that we reap what we sow, that the way we treat others will come back against (or for) ourselves. Categorical salvation is the ultimate goal that all and everyone ought to seek, categorical damnation being the opposite, which we flee; and, interestingly, we find that in this world we give to the others, or receive in turn, salvation or damnation in limited semblance--not categorical salvation and damnation, but blessings and curses more limited.

So we would add that not only is it irrational not to hope in categorical salvation, but it is also irrational not to act as if it were real, the stakes being as high as they are. And to act as if it were real, means to pick up on this clue that all the religions have picked up on--that we can torture, that we can bless; that we can be tortured, and can be blessed. Add to this the general belief of humanity that those who torture deserve torture, and those who bless deserve blessings, and the natural inference becomes--those who torture will be tortured, and those who bless will be blessed. To act in accordance with this notion is the only rational response to the terrifying and grave situation Man finds himself within--if he is to find a solution to the human condition.