Let’s distill out four lessons from the last two posts (here), which considered how knowing of hell would burden the souls in heaven.

Those two posts surveyed popular Christian rationalizations about hell, from the first few centuries of the church to the present day. Many concluded that the thought of loved ones in perpetual torment would be impossibly distressing to those in heaven. Therefore, those in heaven must either have their memories erased or be so overawed by heaven that they have no mental bandwidth for compassion. Either way, you must be changed into someone else to endure heaven.

Our first takeaway is a biggie:

Lesson 1: God is immoral, God doesn’t exist, and the Bible is contradictory

Let’s start by agreeing that morality is a good thing. (It may seem odd that we must back up this far, but you’ll soon see that we must in this “up is down and eternal torment is good” environment.) Our best examples within society of honesty, compassion, selflessness, or any other moral trait are examples that are often highlighted for us to emulate. It’s not that we don’t know what is morally good. We do know; our problem is our inability to consistently strive for moral goodness.

While we do our imperfect best to be moral people, Christians tell us that God perfects that. God is morally like us but better; he’s what we strive to be but perfectly so. But the view of heaven we’ve been discussing is not that. God isn’t a vastly better moral being like us. This God doesn’t have more morals but less because God’s view of hell is radically different than ours.

Take a step back to the foundational idea of Christian salvation. Count the ways it offends our moral instincts.

1. It’s a human sacrifice
2. needed to satisfy God’s justifiable rage
3. at humans being imperfectly moral despite the fact that he made them that way
4. when he could just forgive any sin, like we do (and like he has done himself).

Now add:

5. hell as eternal torment for our finite crimes.

This justification for hell doesn’t just seem crazy, it is crazy. A savage because-I-said-so god might have worked for an Iron Age tribe, but today the flaws are too glaring. When Christians also insist that their brutal god is love, the delusion breaks. God can’t be both loving and the author of hell; therefore, he doesn’t exist.

(The Christian response will be, “But you haven’t proven that these are incompatible.” That’s true, but the burden of proof is not mine. An open-minded person, like I try to be, can evaluate Christianity’s claims, but when they don’t satisfy the burden of proof, we’re obliged to reject them.)

Salvaging the idea of God?

A popular defense of God’s good name cites Isaiah 55:9, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” If we’re talking about understanding reality, that makes sense. The author of the universe would understand physics, chemistry, and other aspects of nature vastly better than we do. That’s an understandable intellectual gulf.

But the topic is morality. We’re not talking about how God’s love for someone who is homeless, depressed, or lonely is a million times more profound than ours. The issue here is that, when it comes to hell, God’s morality is radically different than ours. It’s contradictory. It’s preposterous. It’s insane. You would think we share a moral awareness with God. Remember who we’re talking about—it’s the “God is love” guy. But as we’ve seen, the response to heaven and hell by Christians themselves show that God’s morality is different, and, since human morality is the standard, God is immoral. (More here.)

When I say that human morality is the standard, that’s simply because “moral” and “immoral” are words with definitions. If God’s actions match up with what passes for human morality, then he’s moral. If instead God’s actions would be called immoral if a human did them, then God is immoral.

Let me give a parting challenge to Christians who refuse this conclusion: tell us what moral rules you think God is bound by. In God’s calculus, it’s okay to drown the world, it’s okay to bring into existence people that his omniscience knows are destined for heaven, and it’s okay to support slavery by making rules for it. He clearly doesn’t follow conventional Western morality. He even breaks most of his own Ten Commandments. Is God’s guiding principle “might makes right”? Is it arbitrary, driven by what annoys him at any moment? Or is there some logic behind it that we can understand?

Lesson 2: You become a grotesque, unrecognizable creature in heaven

I once thought that when one gets to heaven they become acutely compassionate. Silly me! No, Christians themselves tell us that you must be less so. You must be anesthetized or lobotomized by removing any loving memories of friends and family who are in torment in hell. Because given the two important priorities, our comfort in heaven and just punishment in hell, why would God bother fixing hell?

The other bright idea is that somehow those in heaven come to understand that it’s all part of the Plan—and, despite the revulsion that any person with a functioning conscience would feel, that’s a good thing. Who cares what humans’ God-given sense of right and wrong says?

Someone who could look from heaven at their children in agony in hell and not immediately feel overwhelming horror, compassion, and sorrow has become a different person. Only by inverting society’s moral rules can heaven be made tolerable.

Lesson 3: God doesn’t support free will—he suppresses it

This was discussed in the last post.

God is hidden, which is odd because we’re told that he longs for a deep relationship with each of us. Christians rationalize this by saying that God making his existence plain would step on our free will. (No one else’s existence seems to offend our free will, but let’s ignore that.) We must freely give our love to God. But what kind of champion of free will is God if he must override your honest response to hell?

(More on the problem of God’s hiddenness here, here, here, and here.)

Lesson 4: You should reconsider Christianity if it seems like BS

What does it say about Christianity that a fundamental doctrine—God administering justice in the afterlife—falls apart with a little examination? And that the same is true for the Trinity. And the virgin birth prophecy. And lots more foundational claims of Christianity.

Many Christians who hit these speed bumps take no notice. Others notice but don’t want to. And an open-minded few keep track of these rather large problems that don’t make sense—the Bible’s contradictions, prayer that doesn’t work as promised, attributes of God that are beneath a deity, how God is pretty much like every other deity, how this looks like a world with no God, and so on. These thoughtful Christians are the ones that could find a more sensible world outside of Christianity, one held together with more than cognitive dissonance and wishful thinking.

This is what happens when you squeeze a normal, compassionate human brain into a Bible-shaped box. Repeatedly, “But it doesn’t make sense” is pounded down with “God must have his reasons.”

Stumbling over a nonsensical claim can be an opportunity to wake up and reevaluate whether Christianity makes sense or is just another manmade construct.

See also:

• What Christians Won’t Do to Defend God’s Marvelous Plan®
• 9 Responses to Christian Hell
• William Lane Craig Wrong About Morality Again as He Justifies Hell

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Image from John Verive (license CC BY-SA 2.0)
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Could you enjoy heaven knowing of the agony of those in hell? What if those in hell are your loved ones?

Medieval Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas turned the problem around by embracing that torment:

In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned.

Many Christians have seized this lemons-to-lemonade opportunity. Thinkers from the early church such as Tertullian and Augustine down to Jonathan Edwards in his famous 1741 sermon “Sinners in the hands of an angry god” and beyond have not avoided but celebrated the pain of hell, imagining those in heaven looking over the ramparts and delighting in the anguish of those far below (more).

That doesn’t provide much support for C.S. Lewis’s famous claim, “The gates of hell are locked from the inside.”

(This is argument 28 in a list that begins here.)

Such thinking continues today. Popular Christian theologian R.C. Sproul told of one of his teachers saying,

In heaven, you will be so sanctified that you will be able to see your own mother in hell and rejoice in that, knowing that God’s perfect justice is being carried out (video @19:35).

Who’d want to go to heaven if you’ll turn into that?

How to deal with a hideous heaven, part 1

Christians often rationalize hell by pointing to Revelation 21:4, where “[God] will wipe every tear from their eyes . . . [and there will be] no more mourning or crying or pain.” If God will remove all sorrow in heaven, then somehow hell won’t bother us. It’s not clear how (the Bible doesn’t even admit the problem), but Christians have come up with various ideas to insulate those in heaven from hell.

Christianity StackExchange cites a popular though childish rationalization:

A common argument goes: There is no sadness in Heaven. If I knew that this person I loved was in Hell that would certainly make me very sad. Therefore it must be that I won’t remember them.

That the doctrine of hell isn’t fully explained and justified in the Bible is a clue that the Bible comes from simple people rather than God, but let’s let that pass.

The Stand to Reason podcast (here @12:11) expands on this:

So we are not going to spend eternity reflecting on the anguish of our loved ones who have not received the mercy of God through the love of Christ. That would put a damper on things. But those things are going to be forgotten. . . . [Even if there were a fleeting memory of them,] it will be a reflection from God’s perspective, that they are getting judged justly, and that’s a good thing, and we have escaped justice and received mercy instead, and that’s a good thing, too.

Yeah, thinking of billions in torment in hell—or even just a handful of loved ones who didn’t make the cut—would put a damper on your pleasure in heaven, wouldn’t it? We certainly can’t have a loved one’s anguish ruining our picnic. But don’t imagine God would actually solve the problem and eliminate the injustice of perpetual conscious torment in hell. Instead, we either lose memories of those loved ones or smother any tender memory with the thought that, but for the grace of God, that could be us.

This is the “Sucks to be you” approach to justice. I got mine, and you’re burning in hell. God approved both placements, even though no human merits heaven. But of course if the tables were turned (you in heaven and me in hell), the justification would be equally valid—one of us is where justice demands they go, while the other subverted justice and lives in heaven.

Heavenly justice?

What about the importance of absolute, celestial justice? I’ve read many Christians who are incredulous that anyone could be an atheist because then Hitler got away with it. For example, here is Bobby Conway, the One-Minute Apologist:

Suppose we were to step into atheism—I’d have a harder time living with the [lack of] ultimate justice than I would with . . . the Problem of Evil (STR podcast @10:20).

I think he’s saying that the problem of no ultimate justice would be a greater burden to him as an atheist than the Problem of Evil is to him now as a Christian.

He claims ultimate justice for his worldview but now has a new problem, how to make sense of God violating that fundamental principle by letting unworthy Christians into heaven. Is justice in the afterlife essential or not? If it is, why give some subset of Christians a pass? And if mercy is being given to some people, why not all?

I guess Christians set it aside when they can exploit a loophole to get to the Good Place. (More on the Christian claim of ultimate justice here.)

William Lane Craig (WLC) has something to offer on this topic. He is quoted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

[Craig hypothesizes] that God could simply “obliterate” from the minds of the redeemed “any knowledge of lost persons so that they experience no pangs of remorse for them.”

The Encyclopedia ticks off a couple of puzzles this brings up and then rests on this one:

The main issue to be resolved here is whether blissful ignorance qualifies as a worthwhile form of happiness at all.

“Welcome to heaven! It won’t be so bad once we erase your memory.”

WLC tosses out another possibility.

The experience of being in Christ’s immediate presence will be so overwhelming for the redeemed that they will not think of the damned in hell (Source).

So where does that leave us? Christians themselves tell us that heaven is so hellish that to endure it, one’s memory of loved ones must be erased. Alternatively, one must be distracted, forever.

I think this is the point where someone with a heart says, “If that’s heaven, I want nothing of it.”

Concluded in part 2, where we explore another way to make heaven less hellish.

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Summary of reply: Christians need to rethink the entrance requirements for heaven, since Jesus made clear that most of us won’t make it in. And why should someone be punished for failing to seek the Christian god instead of any other?

(These Bite-Size Replies are responses to “Quick Shots,” brief Christian responses to atheist challenges. The introduction to this series is here.)

Challenge to the Christian: A loving God would not send people to hell.

Christian response #1: You can’t expect everyone, good and bad, to get the same treatment in the afterlife. “A loving God must also be just or His love is little more than an empty expression.”

Does that apply to Grandma as well? Is her unconditional love an “empty expression” since it’s not tied to justice? Uh, no—this lockstep connection between love and justice is imaginary.

The apologist wants to explore different entry requirements for the afterlife. How fair would it be if the same afterlife were given to Jeffrey Dahmer (sentenced to 16 life sentences for many murders) and Anne Frank (died at age 15 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp just weeks before liberation by the Allies)?

But if you think that’s unfair, consider the Christian view: Dahmer, who became a born-again Christian in prison, is now in heaven, while Anne Frank, a Jew who never accepted Jesus as her savior, is in hell. How fair is that?

And the Bible is inconsistent about how one gets into heaven. If God is offended by our sin, he could just forgive, like we do. In fact, he does forgive. In one instance, God says about Israel, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” The parable of the sheep and the goats says that good works get you in. And anyway, everyone already has a ticket to heaven. Paul in Romans 5:18–19 says that no one had to opt in to get Adam’s sin, so no one needs to opt in to get Jesus’s salvation.

You get into heaven if you’ve accepted Jesus, not if you’re a good person? Christians need to work on that story. [Click to tweet]

Christian response #2: God doesn’t send people to hell, and he won’t force people to live with him in heaven.

Jesus said about the afterlife, “Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” This is God’s perfect plan? Most teachers pass a higher fraction of students than God allows into heaven. God made hell knowing that most people would end up there, and yet somehow he gets no blame for creating this catastrophe. Nope—if people are imperfect, blame their Maker.

A popular Christian rationalization is that God wants us in heaven, but he’s not going to force us there. And yet in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, where the rich man is sent to hell after death, it’s clear that he really doesn’t want to be there. No, you wouldn’t have to drag him to the Good Place.

Sending people to hell isn’t the loving thing to do. This “God is a gentleman and won’t force himself on anyone” argument is ridiculous. God should know how relationships work, and this isn’t it. If God wants people to love him, he can be worthy of love. Being indistinguishable from nonexistent isn’t the way to get there.

Most teachers pass a higher fraction of students than God allows into heaven. For those people who don’t deserve heaven, don’t blame them—blame their Maker. [Click to tweet]

Christian response #3: People in hell aren’t tortured, though they will be tormented. Denying God’s offer of heaven becomes your choice to go to hell.

Tortured, tormented—whatever. Either one is bad, and God is to blame.

If heaven or hell is our choice, not God’s (charging God with sending us to hell is against the rules, apparently), why the secrecy? Why doesn’t God lay his cards on the table to let us make an informed decision?

“Just read the Bible” is no answer, because the Bible is unclear. God should make himself known, convince everyone that heaven and hell exist, and explain the entrance requirements. No one should be expected to believe the unbelievable.

Why elevate the Christian claim of heaven over the afterlife claims of any other religion? Alternatively, why should someone be punished for failing to seek God rather than failing to seek Allah, Xenu, Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, or any other god? See the questions as merely cultural—in the West, most believers are Christian—and Christianity dissolves into just a local custom.

Why the secrecy surrounding hell? God should make himself known, convince everyone that heaven and hell exist, and explain the entrance requirements. No one should believe the unbelievable. [Click to tweet]

(The Quick Shot I’m replying to is here.)

Continue to BSR 15: Jesus Didn’t Even Think He Was God

For further reading:

• When Christians Treat God Like a Baby
• Top 20 Most Damning Bible Contradictions
• Why Map of World Religions but not World Science?
• Can God Be Benevolent if He Sends Your Children to Hell?
• William Lane Craig Wrong About Morality Again as He Justifies Hell
• 9 Responses to Christian Hell
• Stupid Argument #19b: “All that are in Hell, choose it”

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Image from Jaroslav Devia, CC license
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