ETERNAL PUNISHING IS A DOCTRINE OF HATE

The Christian tradition says that if you die in serious sin or at loggerheads with God you will lose him forever at death and have to go to Hell.

We do not fall for the claim that the teaching is merely a warning.  Passive aggressive abusers would say that anyway.  Why do Atheists consider the doctrine of Hell to be grossly evil and spiteful? 

1) Because it asks me to approve if I am sent to Hell forever for my sins though I would still be more sure I existed than that God existed. God cannot then expect me to approve. Since Hell is supposed to be opposition to the love of God it follows that I have to approve of God but reject him to go there. If I shouldn’t approve then only an evil God would approve of a system like eternal damnation. The doctrine implies that goodness is hating the self and rebelling against it and trying to destroy it.

I would need to be a very holy person before I could claim the right to believe that bad people go to Hell. It is just like you cannot judge your neighbour as a whore even if she is worse than you if you occasionally sell yourself for sex. There would be an obvious element of vindictiveness in doing that.  Just imagine the level of vindictiveness and evil there would have to be in you to judge somebody as being in danger of Hell? And Christianity is all about making this judgment for if you don’t see people as in danger of Hell you will end up letting them go there. Better to upset them now and give them a chance to save themselves than to let them go to the place of everlasting torment.

The Church says we should try to save people from Hell by expressing the gospel to them. But if they deserve it why should we care? To save somebody from what they deserve or have asked for is to declare that their decision to deserve should no longer be respected and so their personhood shouldn't be respected. It is to say that deserving doesn't matter and therefore that morality which is based on the ideas of justice and deserving is nonsense. If we should save people who deserve Hell from what they deserve, then we should fight every step of the way to stop criminals being fined and or going to jail for they do less damage. 

Contradictions contradictions galore in the Christian faith! The help of Christians then is sour. They give you rotten meat and marinate it in perfume to disguise the stink.

2) Because it implies that God and the saints cannot want you to be released from Hell for God keeps you there for you would leave eventually if you were there of your own free will which glorifies hatred. You don't have to leave to go to a Heaven.  Why not an earth style setup?  They don’t want you to leave then they either do not care about you or they hate you but since they are happy they must simply not care for hate is painful. But indifference is worse than hate and is the real opposite of love. Also, they have to decide to be indifferent and that is an act of easy hate so hate and indifference are connected. If you should hate the damned you should hate the living sinners as much because many of the damned are people who committed relatively harmless sins.

3) Because you need a vast pile of evidence before you can say anybody deserves to rot in Hell forever for that is such a serious punishment. The evidence would need to be better than the evidence that John F Kennedy was shot. The case for Islam and Christianity which both believe in Hell is not that strong – and non-existent from a philosophical point of view. To say that God even if he is all-good which we cannot be totally sure of has the right to damn people forever is to make nonsense of all we know of right and wrong for you need to know why he does it and prove that that his reason is plausible but no explanation is possible. If God can be good and do that then he can be good and command the murder of heretics. It is a serious slander to say that anybody could be that bad that they would choose an eternity of misery. God must do something to the damned to make sure they don’t repent. He must cut off good influences from them. All that whitewash about people going to Hell against the will of poor helpless God is nonsense and is so common and obviously ridiculous that it casts doubt on the integrity of Christian teachers.

4) Because if God needs a Hell for a purpose then that purpose has to do with us not him for he is all-powerful, in other words, we make it impossible for Hell to be done without. But in that case he can create an illusionary prison for us.   Say we deserve perpetual agony surely he can do something to stop us seeing it as painful as it is?  It would not be lying for he has no choice. He supports lies by not refuting them on earth so he can promote what is not true.

5) Catholics say that Protestants who hold that Catholics are going to Hell are bigots and being very uncharitable. Very isn't the right word. They are being totally uncharitable. If that is bigotry, then what is it to look upon a dying person and think they might or probably will go to Hell? The Catholics actually admit - albeit indirectly - that Hell is a vindictive doctrine.

6) Because Hell, and the teaching that Hell exists, is useless for it cannot deter us from sin.

Though it may scare us off doing bad things it does not stop us from having the attitude that if there were no Hell we would go ahead and do the bad actions. In other words, it fails to stop attachment and the will to commit sin. Such attachment is sinful.

7) Because the modern attempts to justify Hell hold that the souls there are not being tormented as much as possible but according to their sins. But they would have to be tormented to the extreme for all sin is equal if there is a God. To offend a God who deserves infinite kindness from you is an infinite insult. It is not the tormenting in Hell that is most terrible but the forever aspect and so why would a God who damns forever not torment you to the extreme forever? If he gets scrupulous then he should close Hell down altogether.  If you hate God enough to choose eternal exclusion from him then that is such a big sin that terrible punishment will come.  If your other sins are punished to different degrees you will not even notice. 

8) Because the doctrines of venial sin and salvation from sin enforce the hatred that emerges from the Hell doctrine. To say you have venial sin for which you don’t deserve to go to Hell is the height of self-righteousness because you intended to offer God an infinite insult knowing how much he hates sin and then you say other people deserve Hell for doing much the same thing and that they should be there if God wills. The if God wills clause implies that if God can damn them without damaging his plan he should damn them. If you believe that Jesus has saved you so that you will get away with your sins and other people will pay for theirs for not being saved then it is your reasoning and your feelings that tell you that. You are still being arrogant for it is not the promise of God that you are depending on as you would like to boast but your own thinking and feeling – your self-made perception. Since God says one error in a prophets teaching is enough to prove he was from Satan (Deuteronomy 18) it follows that to have real faith in Jesus you have to have a photographic memory and a complete knowledge of theology, Christian history and philosophy. So nearly all Christians can’t know if they are really saved and they are just hoping they are and that those who disagree with them will rot in Hell forever. There is no philosophical evidence in favour of the Christian faith so its wishful thinking at its cruellest and when a person chooses to hope that the damned will suffer eternally as well as that the just will have eternal life instead of hoping that everybody will be saved one day it gives a real insight into the dark nature of that person.

9) Because it is blasphemous to say that God would send anybody to Hell forever without having evidence that he does. And even if it is to please the likes of Jesus Christ it is still blasphemy. The less evidence one has, the worse the blasphemy. And the Church claims to have strong evidence and still it expects the people to do with very little. It’s an evil faith that does such a thing!

It is insulting and slanderous to say that a man murdered his baby for a good reason without evidence. If God comes first then you need absolutely perfect evidence and proof that God sends people to Hell for he is so important. You need more evidence for him doing this than you would for the guilt of the man.

10) Because when evil is just mistaking what is not good for good how can anybody possibly commit a sin that deserves Hell? Hell has no good in it at all and we are expected to believe that a person could be so evil that they would choose it. The Church explains that it is indeed the ultimate in insanity to choose Hell but the damned choose to be insane. But then if you are insane you need treatment not punishment and certainly not everlasting punishing from which there is no escape.

11) Because the Atheist system shows that all evildoing is caused by fear. Hell is therefore an evil doctrine for it incites fear for yourself and fear for others going there. The Hell doctrine is designed to corrupt and suck people into the pits of Hell and to say Hell exists amounts to saying, “I hate your guts!”

We end by saying that arguing that God is bigger than our evil does not fit the doctrine of eternal Hell and religion goes out of its way to endorse the latter.  And it turns forgiveness something that should be spontaneous into a command.  It affirms Jesus who threatened people who don't forgive.  No real forgiveness happens under threats or pressure or commands.  One wonders does the spite of Hell arise from how even Christian forgiveness is in principle toxic.  Nobody has the right to say somebody would stay in Hell forever or that anybody is bad enough to sin to deserve it.