Petter ([info]petter_haggholm) wrote,
@ 2007-04-28 00:22:00
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Entry tags:essays, religion

The morality of Hell

I recently had an email exchange with someone (on a pretty good and amicable level, fear not) on the topic of religion. One thing that came up was the common Christian theme of free will, which supposedly justifies Hell. Humans, the argument goes, enjoy the privelege of free will. We may freely choose to believe in God and go to heaven and enjoy eternal bliss; or we may freely choose to reject God, in which case we will go to Hell. (I disagree that belief is a simple matter of choice, but this is tangential to the topic du jour.) I responded to this with an analogy:

Suppose I am the supreme ruler of a kingdom. I make a royal decree: You may wear any colour of clothing you want. You have a totally free choice in the matter. Your will is unbonded by mine. The only catch is that if I catch you wearing anything but green, I'll throw you in the dungeon, pull out your nails with pincers, and crush all the bones in your hands and feet. Still, you're free to choose that.

The analogy should be pretty obvious. The law of the land does not, in effect, say that you are free to choose what clothes to wear. Rather the law (whether we call it such or not!) demands that you wear green, and enforces it with a grisly punishment. If I tell people you're free to choose, that is merely a cruel mockery. Free will is not applicable under coercion.

The chief differences between my analogy and the biblical version is that the crime being considered is of a much more totalitarian nature in the Bible: Not a matter of doing, but a thought crime—I am, in this view, to be punished for the crime of not believing in a story that reason and evidence do not (in my view) support; and that the punishment is much worse—my hypothetical king merely tortured you for a little bit, while the Christian Hell is eternal torment! (Mark 9:43, Luke 16:19–28, …)

As an aside, I think that this issue is morally important. I consider any mainstream Christian who believes that I will go to Hell for my views malicious. I am of course personally quite untroubled by thoughts of Hell, being very skeptical indeed of its existence. However, if a person believes that I: God exists; II: God is all-powerful; III: God is perfectly just; IV: I will go to Hell for my unbelief, then I think that said person bears me malice. The reason is simple: If you believe that God will send me to Hell for my unbelief (IV), and God is all-powerful (II), then clearly (you believe) he has a choice in the matter and chooses to subject me to eternal torment. (I do not believe in any gods at all, but I assure you I would not make the choice of eternal torment, so this is not a simple free will issue.) As per (III), his decision was, in your opinion, a just and fair one. Ergo, you think it is fair that I should suffer eternal torment for not believing.

I've actually had someone tell me that they hold all of the aforementioned beliefs, and this person had the gall to take offence at my reacting unfavourably.


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[info]kokopellinelli
2007-04-28 02:58 pm UTC (link)
I knew a girl in college whose grandfather told her that anyone who didn't believe in God would go to hell. Pretty standard, I guess. She said, "Okay, there is a tribe of people in the deep Amazon. They've never heard of the Christian God. If they KNEW about him, they would believe, but since they have never heard of him, they don't believe." Her grandfather insisted that they would still go to hell.

That's not love for your fellow man. That's malice toward anyone who's different than you (at least in that aspect).

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[info]dark_wolf
2007-04-28 05:31 pm UTC (link)
Personally, I've always approached the whole matter from the perspective of heaven, but it's somewhat the same principle. Barring the whole worshiping part and stuff, if I recall correctly, the way to get to heaven is being good to others, turning the other cheek and all that nice stuff.

Now this makes me wonder: is a Christian forced to do be nice? Like a grumpy child behaving not for the sake of behaving, but so that he wants the toy his parents promised if he would shut up? So one has to wonder if such god-believing people do acts of kindness purely as mercenaries. Help the old lady cross the street, not because you want to be nice to your fellow humans, but because you're after the eternal reward.

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[info]petter_haggholm
2007-04-28 05:40 pm UTC (link)

Barring the whole worshiping part and stuff, if I recall correctly, the way to get to heaven is being good to others, turning the other cheek and all that nice stuff.

Even this is contentious! Depending on which Bible verses you prefer, being good to others may or may not get you to heaven. See this page for an overview.

I once read an article by a pastor who argued, surprisingly, that the most moral person of all is the moral atheist, who is good not in hope of reward but out of goodness, and who refrains from doing ill not out of fear of punishment but out of a sense of justice. It was an interesting read. I do not mean (nor did that writer) that Christians cannot do good things because they are good people! But for a Christians, there is always at least this added incentive or disincentive, and it does raise the question…

Of course, unselfishness is a pretty slippery concept, anyway. I like to help and support my friends, as much as I can, in part because it makes me feel good to do so, in part because I feel better when they are happy, and in part because I enjoy their gratitude. That's not unselfish! It's all about making me feel better, even if it should involve a sacrifice on my part…!

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