N.B. if you do not wish to read a very long hypothetical conversation between an Atheist and a Christian, please scroll to the 'Analysis' section at the bottom of this blog post, which summarises the major points nicely.
Below is a hypothetical conversation between an Atheist and a Christian. I have tried my best not to create a straw man, including all of the arguments I've heard from Christians and from my own viewpoints when I was one. So here goes, Christian vs. Atheist:
Atheist: Why would a loving God torture his children?
Christian: He doesn’t torture us, he wants us to go to Heaven but by being sinful and not repenting our sins we send ourselves to Hell.
Atheist: Doesn’t the Bible say that God judges who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell?
Christian: Yes, he judges us, but he cannot let an impure soul into Heaven, he can only exist with perfect souls. Any uncleansed soul must live apart from God and that place is Hell. This means that, in essence, we send ourselves to Hell.
Atheist: Why can he not exist with an uncleansed soul?
Christian: Because he himself is perfect, so can’t dwell with anything imperfect.
Atheist: Why? Are those just the rules of the universe?
Christian: Yes.
Atheist: And who makes the rules?
Christian: God.
Atheist: Don’t you see how silly that is then? He could just change the rules. And don’t you think it is an unjust way of judging people?
Christian: No, it is God’s perfect justice. If God changed those rules it would be unfair and unjust.
Atheist: But according to God’s “perfect justice”, the ones who deserve Heaven are those that believe in him. Isn’t this just selfish, instead of just? And what is just about infinite punishment for finite crimes?
Christian: We don’t understand God’s logic because it is much higher than ours. But he loves us and he is perfect in justice so we trust him.
Atheist: But if you don’t understand someone’s agenda, why would you believe that they love you and have got it all under control? Couldn’t God actually have a flawed justice system if we don’t understand it? Just because someone tells you they are perfect, it doesn’t mean they are.
Christian: God showed his love for us through the sacrifice of his Son, Jesus Christ.
Atheist: That doesn’t prove he loves us. He’s still eternally torturing people when they die
Christian: Again, he isn’t torturing us, we are choosing to be separate from God by not believing in him.
Atheist: But isn’t that a form of hijacking on God’s part? “Believe in me or you will be eternally tortured”. Why couldn’t he create different realms other than Heaven and Hell, places where we would be taught lessons about our wrongs? And also, nobody chooses to go to Hell, if you don’t believe it exists you aren’t choosing to go there!
Christian: Again, our brains cannot understand the nature of the afterlife yet. All we know is that God loves us and will judge us.
Atheist: But you don’t know that God loves you, because you still can’t explain why he eternally tortures people.
Christian: He doesn’t eternally torture people! He wants us to go to heaven, but is perfect in justice so cannot let impure souls into heaven!
Atheist: But that “justice” is not justice. First of all, accountability is an issue. Why should a rapist deserve to go to heaven if he repents the rape? Shouldn’t the woman he raped forgive him? Secondly, no finite crime deserves infinite punishment. Third, why does Joseph Stalin deserve the same punishment as a 10 year old African kid that’s never heard of God?
Christian: Again, we do not understand this justice system. But God is perfect, so he makes the right decisions.
Atheist: You assert this, but how can you back it up?
Christian: Because God said it himself in the Bible!Atheist: And how do you know he’s telling the truth?
Christian: Because he’s God, he can’t lie!
Atheist: How do you know?
Christian: Because he’s God! And he said it himself!
Christian: Because I know he’s perfect, after all he sent Jesus down to Earth to be sacrificed. His own Son! For our sins.
Atheist: So, he made up a rule that everyone deserves to be eternally tortured unless they are cleansed of their sins, and then “saved” everyone from his own rule by killing his son? Do you not see how stupid that is?
Christian: No. Humans are sinners by nature, ever since the original sin. We are not perfect and therefore do not deserve to dwell with God, who is perfect. But God made a way for us to, by giving us redemption through Christ.
Atheist: Yeah, so he’s saving us from his own elitist rules! Brilliant. And also, that still isn’t fair. The billions of people before, during and after the time of Jesus, who didn’t even know he existed, they all had to go to Hell without even a chance of salvation. But the people that have heard about him and believe it can go to heaven? It’s not justice, or equality for that matter, at all!
Christian: God takes each soul's judgement into account and is always fair.
Atheist: But according to your logic, everyone deserves to go to Hell, and the only way to heaven is believing in Jesus Christ.
Christian: Well I'm sure God manifests in them or something else that we can't yet comprehend, and gives them the chance to redeem themselves
Atheist: Well that's rather more speculative than supported. Let me ask you a question. Do you think I deserve to be eternally tortured?
Christian: No.
Atheist: So aren’t you more loving than God?
Christian: No, I am less just than God. He can’t just let a bunch of people who have sinned into Heaven, because where do you draw the line? It would be unjust.
Atheist: So you’re saying that it’s justice if I am eternally tortured?
Christian: Well… yes, if you don’t repent your sins.
Atheist: So you do think I deserve eternal torture.
Christian: No, I didn’t say that, I said that it would be unjust for God to let sinners into Heaven.
Atheist: But isn’t it even more unjust for God to punish rapists and murderers in equal measure to law-abiding, loving, caring atheists? And isn't it more unjust to punish someone forever?
Christian: We don’t understand the afterlife yet. We don’t even know if Hell is like physical torture or just separation from God’s goodness.
Atheist: So if you don’t understand it, you can’t say it’s just.
Christian: Yes I can, because God is just, I know he is.
Atheist: No you don’t know he is because you still cannot explain why he tortures people.
Christian: Yes I can and already have! He cannot let people into Heaven if they are impure. It would be an injustice.
Atheist: And I say it again, where is the justice in infinite punishment for finite crimes?
Christian: If you choose not to believe in God, you are choosing to go to Hell. You are the only one to blame.
Atheist: You really think I’d choose to go to Hell? I don’t believe in God. I don’t choose not to believe in God, I can not believe in him, my intelligence doesn’t allow me to. I would only be choosing Hell if I believed it existed.
Atheist: And that’s what it’s like, God is holding a knife against our neck. It's robbery! But it’s so unconvincing (i.e. he expects us to believe in him on a self-contradictory, Stone Age book with no evidence or original copies) that it is like an invisible man is holding a knife against our neck.
Christian: Come on, you know God is true but you reject him.
Atheist: No, actually I know your god isn’t true.
Christian: You’re just saying that but deep down you know the world makes more sense with a God at the center.
Atheist: I'm afraid you're wrong about my opinions there. But anyway, a loving God would not expect us to rely on such awful testimony as the Bible. The creator of human intelligence would understand atheist criticisms and try to appeal to us in a much more obvious and sensible way. A loving God would also not torture anyone for eternity. He would teach us lessons and punish evil, but not forever. He would give us much more opportunity and reason to believe in him. In fact, he wouldn’t even require our belief in him, he would judge us based on our actions. Do you not see that this God you worship has got it all wrong. That he is pathetic and evil?
Christian: NO, our God loves us more than we can possibly imagine, and we should love him for all the wonderful things he’s given us, I mean just look at the Earth!
Christian: He is not any of those things, he created man with free will and with that free will we created sin and all the horrible things in the world. God is loving because he has given us redemption through Jesus Christ; he didn’t even have to do that.
Atheist: Don’t Christians claim that God is omniscient? I.e. he knows everything that has happened and everything that will happen? So when he placed the forbidden fruit tree in the garden of Eden, he knew that Adam and Eve would eat from it. So he knew the world would get into a state, and that people would be tortured for the rest of eternity. That means that he could have stopped it, he didn’t have to cause all of this suffering because he knew it would happen. If God is all powerful he is accountable for all evil and suffering in the world. He is 100% accountable, and his creations, us, who are far inferior in wisdom and power, have no accountability for it.
Christian: God gave Adam and Eve everything, yet they disobeyed him. So God cursed every future generation with a sinful nature.
Atheist: Oh, so God really did cause all the evil and suffering then! Also, that shows he’s unfair, because he created Adam and Eve to be perfect, but not me or you, which means he treated them better than us! Injustice.
Christian: You’re just saying silly things now.
Atheist: No, you’re making bad points, and haven’t reasoned well against any of mine. All I can conclude is that you are brainwashed in your belief, and that your emotional and biased links with your religion force you to make unreasonable arguments in favour of it. You may not see this now but I hope you do in the future, like I did when I became an Atheist.
Analysis
What we learn from this kind of conversation with a Christian:
- Christian logic (oxymoron) is that God does not send anyone to Hell, it is us that deny belief in him, reject his offer of forgiveness, and therefore send ourselves to Hell.
- Everyone is a sinner by nature, therefore nobody is a pure soul.
- Only pure souls can exist in God's realm, because God himself is pure. Allowing an impure soul into heaven would be unjust. Every sin must have justice dealt to it.
- However, Jesus offers forgiveness through his sacrifice, allowing our souls to be cleansed and fit for heaven.
The problem with this:
1) By the Christian's logic, Jesus' forgiveness is an unjust, unfair act of God. It allows those who, according to the Christian, deserve punishment for all their sins, to be wiped of this sentence just by believing something. God's forgiveness through Jesus Christ, essentially punishes non-belief, which for many thinking people is impossible to escape from.
2) This is even more unfair because billions of people in the present day and throughout history have not even heard of Jesus' forgiveness. When probed about this, Christians will say that "God takes each case into account, and is just in his judgement." However, if it is true that an 'impure soul' cannot go to Heaven, and if it is also true that everyone is by nature an impure soul, it must be true that everybody who hasn't heard of Jesus goes to Hell. God has offered forgiveness to some and not others, which is unjust.
3) God created the terms and conditions of divine judgement, which means we do not "send ourselves to Hell", God does. A useful metaphor for this stems from one of the Christian's own points (the knife against neck metaphor):
A man holds a gun to your head and says give me £100. If you don't give him £100, you are rejecting his wonderful offer of forgiveness. You are committing suicide. You are sending yourself to an early grave.Does this make any sense? No! It's not a wonderful offer of forgiveness, it's robbery, and if he killed you it would be murder, not suicide. God's judgement is robbery in the same way.
Also, atheists, agnostics and people of other faiths than Christianity are not "sending themselves to Hell", because they don't even believe that God exists.
What's worse is that the case God makes for his actual existence is too poor to be believed by a thinking person. It's like the same robbery metaphor, except the man with the gun is invisible, and a few crazy people are shouting contradictory things to you about how loving this invisible armed robber is and how forgiving he's been with the whole £100 thing.
4) If it is unjust for impure souls to exist in a pure realm, it is also unjust for anyone that isn't 100% evil and barbaric to go to a place of 100% evil. Every sin being punished is a fair enough point, but eternal torture is not an amount of punishment that equates to the amount of sin being commited. Once all sins are punished, surely the soul is clean and can go to heaven? Isn't that how it should work? Why do Christians say that God is "just" when he dishes out infinite punishment for finite crimes?
"God works in mysterious ways"
The text highlighted yellow demonstrates the Christian's fallback unfalsifiable counter argument that he resorts to when logic overcomes him. In the debate, he tries to explain God's judgement, but when faced with a good argument from the atheist, that shows God's judgement does not add up, the Christian reverts back to the good old "God works in mysterious ways" copout. Phrases such as "God's logic is higher than ours" and "We do not understand God's ways", are all copout philosophies that were implemented into the religion in order to retain followers. The problem with this unfalsifiablility-booster is this: if the Christian does not understand why God tortures people, he shouldn't worship and love him. This is a recurring theme throughout my blog.Conclusion
Christians are taught, before anything else, that God loves them, and is kind and generous and forgiving. This is, more often than not, drilled into children's heads in childhood, before they learn about Hell and the old testament.
This belief about God's goodness is so strong by the time the Christian learns about the bad stuff, that he makes everything 'fit in' with his beliefs about God's love and perfection. He makes excuses for God's terrible deeds, unfair judgement, and wicked nature.
If something conflicts what we believe we know is true, we will do mental backflips to overcome that conflict. So although Hell completely contradicts what is taught about God's loving nature and omnipotence, it must be justice because God is just and that's what the Christian knows (i.e has been brainwashed into believing) to be true.
This is why it is so hard to have a logical debate with a Christian. If they cannot reason against opposing arguments, they either resort to the "God works in mysterious ways" line, or become angry and assertive. This is a telltale sign of someone who has been brainwashed.
I think it's time to stop brainwashing our kids into believing and defending with passion a set of teachings that 1) we cannot logically support and 2) tells them they deserve to be eternally tortured.
Thanks for reading.
Dave
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