I've seen a few threads with religious/afterlife themes lately about NDEs, hell, religions and etc and just wanted to add my two cents. I'll be straight up. I'm an atheist and this post is for anyone who is afraid, doubting or who has been traumatised by their religion. If anyone reading this is strongly religious this post is not meant as the start of a debate. You will not be able to convince me and I probably won't convince you. So I'm not going to debate the existence of God. I would, however, like to outline some things I've learned on my journey to atheism that may help other people who have been left scared, stressed or abused by religious upbringing. Post is long so feel free to skip around to parts relevant to you.
Firstly, there is no hell. There is no hell in the Christian sense of a place of brimstone and fire and a devil torturing you. Hell is not mentioned in the bible and as far as I'm aware the name Hell comes from the Norse Hel, it's what the Vikings believed in. What is mentioned in the bible is Gehenna. This is an actual place outside Jerusalem. It was considered an evil place because child sacrifices had taken place there and it was a garbage dump. An actual garbage dump where people burned rubbish. That's where the burning comes from. The most coherent interpretation I've come across is that when Jesus talked about being burned what he meant was that those who had been good on Earth would end up with God and those who had been evil would be burned to ashes and exist no more. They would be annihilated. Burnt out of existence, not burnt as torture for all eternity. Also, the Jewish religion does not have a hell. Or nowhere near what Christianity imagines as a hell. So how do Christians and Jews believe in the same God but a completely different after life?
Secondly, nowhere is it written in the Bible that suicide is a sin. There are a couple of suicides in the old testament and there is no mention of the person being punished for this. Suicide as a sin was established by the church several centuries into the religion because too many people were killing themselves to get to heaven. Think about this. How would the religion grow and who would be around to pay tithes if they all killed themselves? This was a pragmatic and economic move by the church.
Thirdly, if God does indeed send people to hell he is a sadistic bastard. Those of you who have children, can you imagine them committing any crime here on earth that you feel would make them worthy of eternal and I mean ETERNAL torture? I don't think anyone would say yes. I don't think anyone could bear to see their child tortured for ALL ETERNITY no matter what crime they may have committed. The bad things anyone happens to do on Earth are finite. But God supposedly hands out an infinite punishment for these finite crimes. Does this sound like someone who is just and fair and loving? Is this even rational? If God is perfect, how can he have such a sadistic and irrational rule? I could understand if there was some sort of scale like, if you steal you get this much time in hell, if you kill another person, you get this much time or whatever but INFINITE torture for a finite crime? Really? And not only that, supposedly God, who is your loving father, is ok with this. With just sitting back and watching his beloved children being tortured for all eternity. Could you, as a parent, do that? Sit back, knowing you have omnipotence and can rescue your child from this at any moment in time, and just watch and wring your hands and say 'Well, they made their choice when they committed that crime'? What kind of parent would you be? Could you not think of a more appropriate consequence? Especially if you're supposed to be all loving?
Fourthly, religion is absurd and cannot be relied upon for any evidence of anything. Frist off, the bible is no proof of anything. The most authoritative biblical scholars will tell you that the earliest writings of the new testament were written at least a few decades after the supposed resurrection of Jesus and probably more. And this is in an age with no telecommunication or video recording. The bible is as much proof that god exists as the Harry Potter series proof that Harry Potter exists. We have no idea who wrote the books of the bible, under what circumstances, where they got their information from and etc. Not only that but the book we know as the bible was put together in the 3rd or 4th century AD by a council. And there were many books and gospels that were left out because they did not fit the narrative the early church wanted. This is not conspiracy theory but well known fact amount religious scholars. Also, religion keeps changing its mind as science evolves. We went from literal interpretation to now saying much of the old testament is metaphor. I mean even the Catholic church now accepts the earth goes around the sun and that evolution is real. This was unthinkable a few centuries ago and people were burned and tortured for saying so. If the bible was so true and to be taken literally the biggest church in the world wouldn't be doing such about turns. And don't get me started on the Catholic church selling indulgences in the middle ages…being able to buy your way out of hell. Don't make me laugh.
Fifthly, God is not loving. Besides my point above about God and sending you to hell, God is not loving. If he is a parent he is the shittiest one you could have. Think about it. Think about the Adam and Eve story. They were punished for eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Basically God wanted them to stay ignorant children all their lives. Do you want that for your children? For them to stay naïve and ignorant and obedient to you all their lives? Because that's what God wants. He doesn't want them to develop into fully formed individuals with their own views and values. And in the new testament Jesus tells us that we should be like little children if we want to inherit the kingdom of god. It sounds cute and makes for a great soundbite but have you ever really thought about it? Do you really want to give up your intellect and autonomy? Because that is the price for going to heaven. What a great parent… and not only that, God creates you knowing exactly what you will do in your life, he is omniscient so he knows before he even creates you whether you will choose to believe in him or not, whether you will CTB or not, whether you will be gay or not and basically any other sin that will supposedly send you to hell. He knows all this. He knows exactly what you will do and think throughout your life. He knows whether you will do something worthy of hell and yet he still creates you. Think about it, there he is like 'Hmm…well I see that Johnny will never accept Jesus into his heart, be gay and he will eventually take a heroin overdose to kill himself because he can't stand to live in persecution and hate from his family anymore, which according to my rules means he'll go to hell but hey, I'm gonna create him anyway.' If you disagree with this that means you disagree with the fact that God is omniscient, all knowing. And if he's not all knowing then he's a weak God. There's a lot more I can say about this topic but I won't. I strongly recommend the YouTube channel 'Theramin Trees' who explores this calmly and in depth. But just to summarise, this loving God we've been told looks after us really doesn't. He is either not omniscient or not omnipotent.
Sixthly (is that even a word?), what makes Christianity or Judaism or Islam or whatever other religion more real than any other? There have been thousands of religions around the world throughout the years. Why do we believe our one is true? For example, I was raised Christian and I'm not afraid of the Muslim hell, yet hundreds of millions of people around the world believe I'm going there. I don't because I've been brought up to believe that only my religion is true. We're not afraid of the hell of other religions, only our own. Let's take that last step and not believe in the hell of our childhood religion either. This is also why I don't believe in reincarnation, karma etc. It's just one set of beliefs among many which has just as much scientific and credible evidence as Christianity. Which is zero.
Seven (I give up). NDEs and the like. I do not believe in this as I have stated several times on different threads. NDEs are called NEAR death experiences for a reason. They are not brain death but happen when the heart stops beating the brain is receiving limited but not zero oxygen. No one has come back from complete full brain death to tell us what it was like so I dismiss any and all NDE experiences and will not argue about them anymore here or anywhere else.
Eight, religion may not be true but is still a positive force in the world. No, it's not. For individuals it might be and that's fine. If individuals get through the day because they feel there is a God looking after them then that's good. I'm not going to harangue that person to stop believing. But as a social force they are evil. They impede progress (thanks Dark Ages where science was basically considered the devil and even now science stalls in things such as stem cell research because of religion) and they trample on human rights (abortion, assisted suicide, lgbtq etc). Just because a person's beliefs bring them individual comfort does not mean religion is a good thing. If religion is the only reason someone does good things like volunteering, or charity work then I feel bad for that person. Many atheists also engage in many altruistic and charitable activities so I don't really agree with the argument that religion is needed in society. It should be an extremely private thing.
Firstly, there is no hell. There is no hell in the Christian sense of a place of brimstone and fire and a devil torturing you. Hell is not mentioned in the bible and as far as I'm aware the name Hell comes from the Norse Hel, it's what the Vikings believed in. What is mentioned in the bible is Gehenna. This is an actual place outside Jerusalem. It was considered an evil place because child sacrifices had taken place there and it was a garbage dump. An actual garbage dump where people burned rubbish. That's where the burning comes from. The most coherent interpretation I've come across is that when Jesus talked about being burned what he meant was that those who had been good on Earth would end up with God and those who had been evil would be burned to ashes and exist no more. They would be annihilated. Burnt out of existence, not burnt as torture for all eternity. Also, the Jewish religion does not have a hell. Or nowhere near what Christianity imagines as a hell. So how do Christians and Jews believe in the same God but a completely different after life?
Secondly, nowhere is it written in the Bible that suicide is a sin. There are a couple of suicides in the old testament and there is no mention of the person being punished for this. Suicide as a sin was established by the church several centuries into the religion because too many people were killing themselves to get to heaven. Think about this. How would the religion grow and who would be around to pay tithes if they all killed themselves? This was a pragmatic and economic move by the church.
Thirdly, if God does indeed send people to hell he is a sadistic bastard. Those of you who have children, can you imagine them committing any crime here on earth that you feel would make them worthy of eternal and I mean ETERNAL torture? I don't think anyone would say yes. I don't think anyone could bear to see their child tortured for ALL ETERNITY no matter what crime they may have committed. The bad things anyone happens to do on Earth are finite. But God supposedly hands out an infinite punishment for these finite crimes. Does this sound like someone who is just and fair and loving? Is this even rational? If God is perfect, how can he have such a sadistic and irrational rule? I could understand if there was some sort of scale like, if you steal you get this much time in hell, if you kill another person, you get this much time or whatever but INFINITE torture for a finite crime? Really? And not only that, supposedly God, who is your loving father, is ok with this. With just sitting back and watching his beloved children being tortured for all eternity. Could you, as a parent, do that? Sit back, knowing you have omnipotence and can rescue your child from this at any moment in time, and just watch and wring your hands and say 'Well, they made their choice when they committed that crime'? What kind of parent would you be? Could you not think of a more appropriate consequence? Especially if you're supposed to be all loving?
Fourthly, religion is absurd and cannot be relied upon for any evidence of anything. Frist off, the bible is no proof of anything. The most authoritative biblical scholars will tell you that the earliest writings of the new testament were written at least a few decades after the supposed resurrection of Jesus and probably more. And this is in an age with no telecommunication or video recording. The bible is as much proof that god exists as the Harry Potter series proof that Harry Potter exists. We have no idea who wrote the books of the bible, under what circumstances, where they got their information from and etc. Not only that but the book we know as the bible was put together in the 3rd or 4th century AD by a council. And there were many books and gospels that were left out because they did not fit the narrative the early church wanted. This is not conspiracy theory but well known fact amount religious scholars. Also, religion keeps changing its mind as science evolves. We went from literal interpretation to now saying much of the old testament is metaphor. I mean even the Catholic church now accepts the earth goes around the sun and that evolution is real. This was unthinkable a few centuries ago and people were burned and tortured for saying so. If the bible was so true and to be taken literally the biggest church in the world wouldn't be doing such about turns. And don't get me started on the Catholic church selling indulgences in the middle ages…being able to buy your way out of hell. Don't make me laugh.
Fifthly, God is not loving. Besides my point above about God and sending you to hell, God is not loving. If he is a parent he is the shittiest one you could have. Think about it. Think about the Adam and Eve story. They were punished for eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Basically God wanted them to stay ignorant children all their lives. Do you want that for your children? For them to stay naïve and ignorant and obedient to you all their lives? Because that's what God wants. He doesn't want them to develop into fully formed individuals with their own views and values. And in the new testament Jesus tells us that we should be like little children if we want to inherit the kingdom of god. It sounds cute and makes for a great soundbite but have you ever really thought about it? Do you really want to give up your intellect and autonomy? Because that is the price for going to heaven. What a great parent… and not only that, God creates you knowing exactly what you will do in your life, he is omniscient so he knows before he even creates you whether you will choose to believe in him or not, whether you will CTB or not, whether you will be gay or not and basically any other sin that will supposedly send you to hell. He knows all this. He knows exactly what you will do and think throughout your life. He knows whether you will do something worthy of hell and yet he still creates you. Think about it, there he is like 'Hmm…well I see that Johnny will never accept Jesus into his heart, be gay and he will eventually take a heroin overdose to kill himself because he can't stand to live in persecution and hate from his family anymore, which according to my rules means he'll go to hell but hey, I'm gonna create him anyway.' If you disagree with this that means you disagree with the fact that God is omniscient, all knowing. And if he's not all knowing then he's a weak God. There's a lot more I can say about this topic but I won't. I strongly recommend the YouTube channel 'Theramin Trees' who explores this calmly and in depth. But just to summarise, this loving God we've been told looks after us really doesn't. He is either not omniscient or not omnipotent.
Sixthly (is that even a word?), what makes Christianity or Judaism or Islam or whatever other religion more real than any other? There have been thousands of religions around the world throughout the years. Why do we believe our one is true? For example, I was raised Christian and I'm not afraid of the Muslim hell, yet hundreds of millions of people around the world believe I'm going there. I don't because I've been brought up to believe that only my religion is true. We're not afraid of the hell of other religions, only our own. Let's take that last step and not believe in the hell of our childhood religion either. This is also why I don't believe in reincarnation, karma etc. It's just one set of beliefs among many which has just as much scientific and credible evidence as Christianity. Which is zero.
Seven (I give up). NDEs and the like. I do not believe in this as I have stated several times on different threads. NDEs are called NEAR death experiences for a reason. They are not brain death but happen when the heart stops beating the brain is receiving limited but not zero oxygen. No one has come back from complete full brain death to tell us what it was like so I dismiss any and all NDE experiences and will not argue about them anymore here or anywhere else.
Eight, religion may not be true but is still a positive force in the world. No, it's not. For individuals it might be and that's fine. If individuals get through the day because they feel there is a God looking after them then that's good. I'm not going to harangue that person to stop believing. But as a social force they are evil. They impede progress (thanks Dark Ages where science was basically considered the devil and even now science stalls in things such as stem cell research because of religion) and they trample on human rights (abortion, assisted suicide, lgbtq etc). Just because a person's beliefs bring them individual comfort does not mean religion is a good thing. If religion is the only reason someone does good things like volunteering, or charity work then I feel bad for that person. Many atheists also engage in many altruistic and charitable activities so I don't really agree with the argument that religion is needed in society. It should be an extremely private thing.
At the end of the story they're pushed out into the world as we all are, and they have to fend for themselves.
