Okay, along with Camus, Dawkins, and Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler?), I’ve also been perusing Judith Hayes’s The Happy Heretic. (I did warn you that I’m a nerd, and,yes, I know that I will probably go blind eventually from reading too much.) I haven’t read the book in order. Instead, I’ve just been flipping through the essays and reading the ones that interest me.
One essay in particular that interested me was the essay about Hell in which Hayes notices that every religion has its own version of Hell, and they all contradict each other.
She makes a good point, and I feel a little stupid after reading her essay, because the descriptions of what Hell is in Christianity are contradictory! I didn’t even have to look into other religions to find contradictions about Hell!
Of course, in Christianity, there’s the usual fire and brimstone version of Hell–you literally burn for all eternity. Although if you’re going to burn like that, I imagine that you’d have to be something like the Burning Bush that Moses discovered in the desert that was not consumed by the flames. Otherwise, you would eventually burn down to nothing, the fire would lose fuel, go out, and you simply couldn’t burn for an eternity. And if you’re not going to be consumed by flames, then how would burning actually be painful?
Then there’s Dante’s version of Hell, in which your punishment is compatible with your chief sin. For instance, if you’re adulterous and lustful, then you spend eternity being blown around in a whirlwind as you are stung by bees, but if you’re greedy, you have molten gold shoved down your throat.
While these are the traditional views of Hell, there are some contemporary views. And these are the ones that really contradict each other. One of them is that in this life, we can either choose to become closer to God or we can choose to be selfish and prideful and not look beyond ourselves. (There doesn’t seem to be an option of not wanting to be closer to God and yet caring for other people and being unselfish and humble at the same time.) This idea claims that when we die, we are merely given what we have been living our earthly lives for–if we have been living for God, we get to spend eternity in His presence in Heaven; if we have been living our earthly lives for ourselves, we are forced to spend eternity in Hell, which is the absence of God’s presence. (There is no explanation of how God can be omnipresent and yet not be in Hell.) Supposedly, the total absence of God’s presence is complete misery.
The second theory that I’ve heard, however, totally contradicts the one that I just explained. This theory states that when we die, we will all be forced to spend eternity in God’s presence. Those who have been living their lives for God will enjoy being in the Almighty’s presence, but those who have spent their lives running from God will feel nothing but torment in God’s presence.
Well, which is it? Am I going to spend my afterlife completely separated from God or unable to get away from Him? It can’t be both. Or maybe I’ll just be stung by bees and whipped around by the wind for a while because, you know, I’ve looked on some people with lust and that makes me an adulterer. But I’ve been greedy too, so I guess maybe I’ll have molten gold shoved down my throat. But I also can’t be in two circles of Hell simultaneously.
Of course, the biggest contradiction about Hell is how a loving, caring God can allow people to suffer endlessly after they die. This is, I have to say, probably the biggest problem that I had with Christianity. When I was younger and didn’t really know anyone who wasn’t a Christian it was easy to believe that God had to send people to Hell but they were bad anyway so it really didn’t matter. Then I got older and met some more people. I met atheists and Buddhists and Wiccans. I even met a Satanist. And I realized that these people were all good people. I also started learning about other religions, and I realized that a lot of these religions taught very similar ethics to Christian ones. Essentially, I realized that these evil sinners really weren’t that evil at all. In fact, some of them were even kinder and better than some Christians that I knew! So, how could a kind, loving, caring God send these people to Hell, especially when some of them had never even had a chance to learn about Jesus?
I never did get a good answer to that question. Some Christians say that God doesn’t want to send anyone to Hell, but sinners choose Hell themselves. That really doesn’t make any sense. First of all, what about the people who are of a different religion than Christianity and who have lived moral lives? They certainly aren’t living their lives in a way that leads them away from God, even though that God might not be Jesus Christ. And secondly, what about the people who may not believe in any God but also live moral lives? They’re not being selfish, even though they didn’t believe in God, so why should they be punished? It just doesn’t make sense! The only answer that I’ve heard to these questions is that we cannot understand the ways of God and that God knows more than we do. I just can’t accept that answer. A God who willingly allows people to be tortured for all eternity is not a benevolent God.
And if God, as Christians say, doesn’t want people to go to Hell, well, why would an omnipotent God create a Universe in which things happened contrary to what He wanted? Well, to give us free will, Christians say, so that we can choose to love Him instead of being forced to love Him. Threatening someone with eternal punishment and suffering doesn’t sound like a choice to me. If someone held a loaded gun to your head and demanded that you give them your wallet, you would say that you had no choice, wouldn’t you? Well, God isn’t really giving us a choice either if our only options are Him or Hell.
Essentially, there are two options: The Christian God is omnipotent but not omnibenevolent. In this case, I don’t think that a God who isn’t omnibenevolent deserves my worship. The other option is that the Christian God is omnibenevolent but not omnipotent (because there is some law higher than God that is forcing God to send people to Hell). However, if God is not omnipotent, then God is not God. And this isn’t even taking into account the very convincing ideas of some philosophers that we do not have free will or a constant, whole identity, ideas that also raise some questions about Hell and how a good and all-powerful God could send someone there.
Life as a Cup of Coffee 