Inferno discussion

I think that Dante is trying to prove in a way that all humans are evil in their own special way. He shows this by giving all different layers of hell for different kinds of people. Sometimes he even talks about how good people are in hell they just weren't baptised. Also Dante talks about people who are stuck in limbo. limbo is people who aren't in heaven but also are not in hell.
With everything I have read so far, People are generally evil.

It's not really as bad as all that. More like, he's explaining that just being on earth as humans--having a material form at all--means we are automatically defiled and weighted-down, to some-or-other degree. We add to that weight with any unredeemed sin we commit. Even a baby who dies at birth, is weighted down, by dint of not being able to receive baptism or lead a Christian life.

This is not so bad--just means that we should always realize we are living on the lowest spiritual plane and we need to strive to transcend it as much as possible. That's shouldn't be too hard for anyone to keep in mind.

As Dante writes in The New Life (La Vita Nuova),

"And I will say,—still sobbing as speech fails,—

That she hath gone to Heaven suddenly,

And hath left Love below, to mourn with me.

Beatrice is gone up into high Heaven,

The kingdom where the angels are at peace;

And lives with them; and to her friends is dead.

Not by the frost of winter was she driven

Away, like others; nor by summer-heats;

But through a perfect gentleness, instead''

Dante shows in this that Beatrice, not being evil, directly enters Heaven. That is, if she were evil she would face the inferno or Purgatorio instead.

When I read the book I had the overwhelming feeling that if this represents how people are judged in the Christian faith, then there I no possible way I could understand it. Babies that die before baptism or people simply not born at the right time. Hardly their fault. I understand that I do not need to take this literally, but it's just hard to understand at all.

I also understand that this is an incredibly narrow view. I have been trying to get a view in. To try and understand religious thought, but it's always from the outside looking in. So basically this book baffled me.