Hallelujah

I used to make fun of the idea that heaven is angels circling God saying "Hallelujah" for all eternity. "How boring!" I would exclaim and think that hell could scarcely be worse.

But if heaven were angels singing "Hallelujah" like K.D. Lang in this stupendously stunning version of the great Leonard Cohen song that she performed during the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics this year in Toronto, heaven might be pretty blissful indeed.

"Proof" of Hell's Goodness

God is completely good; therefore, he does only what is good.
God everlastingly tortures most of the human race after they die.
Therefore, God's everlasting torture of most of the human race is good.

Can You Tell Me How?

For all you Christians who rebuke nonbelievers like me for condemning everlasting torture and for condemning THE IDEA of a supremely good God who inflicts everlasting torture on most of the human race after they die, can you tell me how I can force myself to believe that this God exists, and can you tell me how I can force myself to see something--everlasting torture of most of the human race--as good rather than the way I've always seen it: as something hideous, horrible, and monstrously evil? You tell me I'm wrong to see it the way I have since I left the church as a boy of twelve. Can you tell me how I can force myself to grow up and see God's everlasting torture of most of the human race as a GOOD thing?

A Hellish God?

Below is a comment I posted to someone else's blog this morning following a recent discussion of Christianity that, I suppose you could say, went nowhere.

Coonhound, yesterday you said that no one you know had ever criticized your Christian faith the way I have here. I don't doubt this. I don't take this subject lightly. I've given it a lot of thought, and I think my questions and criticisms are worth considering. I also think that this is not a church or private establishment where I should be expected to show deference to anyone's religion, but a public internet forum where people should be able to discuss subjects like Christianity in a straightforward manner so long as they don't personally attack or insult the people with whom they're discussing them.

I believe that I have lived up to this standard rather well over the past several days in my discussion of Christianity. I have not attacked you personally for your beliefs. I haven't called you stupid or crazy or gullible or anything of the kind, unlike your calling me evil in various ways, but I HAVE strongly questioned and criticized Christian teachings. Chiefly and most strongly, I've criticized the idea that the supremely loving, just, and merciful nature that the Christian God is alleged to have is compatible with hell. I have said that I find the idea of hell to be obscene; therefore, I find the idea of a supremely loving, just, and merciful God creating hell and then consigning souls to it obscene.

I know this is something that you haven't been able to wrap your mind around. You think that only someone under Satan's evil influence could make such an argument. But I ask you to keep something in mind.

You and I come at this discussion from two radically different perspectives. From your believer's perspective, it is a given that God exists, that scripture reveals his nature, and that this nature is one of supreme goodness unadulterated by evil; therefore, everything God does is necessarily good, whether we fully understand how it is or not.

But from my perspective, as a non-believer because i have yet to be convinced of God's existence, of scriptural truth, and of God's supreme, unadulterated goodness, I have to look at what God has allegedly done and discern whether his reported actions substantiate his alleged perfect goodness.

And one of the things I see when I do this is a God who created a horrible, horrible place where the souls of people who didn't love and obey him in this life are forced in the next to spend all eternity suffering unimaginably terrible torment. I look at this idea, and I just can't wrap my mind around the notion that this could EVER be justified. I just can't understand how a truly loving God could do such a seemingly hateful thing, how a truly just God could inflict a punishment that seems infinitely worse than anyone's sin could possibly be, and how a truly merciful God could do something that seems utterly and completely devoid of mercy.

And because I don't come at this from the perspective of a believer, I can't simply tell myself, "Even though this makes no sense to me, I must accept it because I know that God is good." As a non-believer looking to determine whether I have grounds to believe in God and his goodness, I must examine the claims made about his nature and conduct and come to the best conclusions I can about whether they are consistent with one another or inconsistent.

And when I look at the claims of God's supreme goodness and then I look at the teaching concerning hell, I see a terrible, terrible inconsistency. And so I tentatively conclude one of two things: Either God is supremely loving, just, and merciful, and hell doesn't exist, or God is not supremely loving, just and merciful, and hell does or at least could exist. But, wait, I need to take this further.

From my non-believer's perspective, there cannot possibly be anything more obscenely evil than forcing someone to suffer unimaginably horrendous agony forever and ever. There is simply nothing they could ever do during this ephemeral lifetime here on earth to justify this consequence. Therefore, any being who would subject anyone to this must also be obscenely evil, just as, in your mind, any human being who would do what Phillip Garrido has done must be obscenely evil. By Phillip Garrido's "fruits" YOU shall know him, and by God's fruits *I* shall know HIM. And hell seems to this non-believer to be the most despicably vile fruit of which I can conceive.

Could I be mistaken in this? Of course. But I do the best I know how to know truth and to distinguish it from falsehood. There are many false religious and other kinds of beliefs in this world. We all must use the tools God or nature gave us to evaluate them rather than either reject them out of hand or embrace them without question. That is what I'm doing here. No more, no less.

Why Is Abortion Bad?

Someone recently took exception to my argument that "pro-life" Christians don't make sense when they proclaim that abortion is a terrible evil. But when you really think about it, why is abortion bad if the souls of aborted fetuses go to heaven?

Because these souls don't get the chance to live on Earth first? What's so terrible about that? Heaven is infinite and everlasting bliss. Life on Earth is hard. Even if you're rich, it's hard. For the poor, it can be hell. How many fetuses being carried by women planning to abort them are likely to end up anything but poor if they aren't aborted?

What's more, whether they end up being poor or rich or somewhere in between, what are their chances of going to heaven compared to their chances of going to hell? Doesn't the Bible in Matthew 7:13-14 quote Jesus as saying, "Enter through the narrow gate. For 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."? What does this mean if not that most people go to hell and only a few go to heaven?

"Pro-life" Christians say that women who abort their fetuses are horribly selfish, but I disagree. I say that if a woman aborts her fetus believing that she could go to hell for it but does it anyway because she wants to ensure that her fetus' soul goes to heaven instead of hell, she is committing the most heroically selfless act possible. She is willing to be tortured unspeakably forever so that her child is guaranteed eternity in paradise. Not even Jesus' "sacrifice" on the cross begins to compare with this.

But even if a woman aborts her fetus for such "selfish" reasons as wanting to avoid the inconvenience of raising a child, she's still doing her fetus a tremendous favor. She's sending it to heaven instead of allowing it to go to hell. And if Christianity is nonsense and there is no heaven and hell, she's not denying her fetus anything it will miss, since it won't be around to miss it, and, in all likelihood, she'll be sparing it more suffering than happiness on this earth.

I really don't see what's bad about abortion, especially so long as it's done early in pregnancy. I wish there were far more abortions than there are, since I believe that many women who give birth do so not because they want to or can provide well for their offspring, but because they feel obligated or coerced to by religion and the "pro-life" crowd.

Sarah's Choice

Sarah Palin, McCain's VP pick, is being lauded by many pro-birth conservatives for having decided not to have an abortion even though she knew early in her pregnancy that she was carrying a fetus with Down syndrome. And if she had her way, no woman would have the legal right to make the choice she had the right to make. All would be required to have the child.

I'm inclined to say that Palin shouldn't be admired and praised for her choice, but criticized if not condemned for it, and condemned all the more for wanting to take the choice away from everyone else. Life is difficult enough, especially in the social Darwinist world the Republicans glorify, for even those of average or superior intelligence. Why knowingly bring a mentally handicapped child into this, as conservative "stand-up comedian, political/sports commentator, and television/radio personality" Dennis Miller puts it, "Serengeti Plain" of a world if one can prevent it early on?

To "spare the life" of a precious child? "Spare" it from what? From a life of tremendous struggle against all-but-impossible odds in an ever-more complicated and rapidly changing world? From the "wide gate" to hell in which fundamentalist Christians like Palin and John McCain believe?

And you want to know something really ironic about all of this? Sarah Palin and her husband are not fabulously wealthy individuals. I suspect that they're a lot better off financially than most of us, but not rich enough to be able to pay out of their own pockets for all of the special services their Down syndrome child will require over the course of his life. So, who do you think will pick up the tab? The federal government, of course. That means all of us. The same federal government that politicians like McCain and Palin are so hellbent on shrinking, and the same American people that these politicians say they want to tax less.

Are the American people so stupid or blind that they can't understand or see this? Yes, I think they are. And so all-too-many of them will vote for John McCain partly because he chose Sarah Palin who made a legal choice to bring a mentally handicapped child into this cruel world to suffer the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and face the high probability of burning in screaming agony forever and ever in the world to come.

Godless Hell

I've been discussing the subject of hell with a Catholic in a religion forum. This guy is bright and challenges me to understand what the Catholic Church officially teaches about hell before I disagree with it. I must say that I think my understanding of Church teachings on hell has deepened as a result, and I think this has helped me to refine my objections to them. Here is what I wrote yesterday summarizing my central objections:

(1) Can one freely choose to act in a manner that one fully knows will lead to eternal hell? And even if one could, (2) Would a perfectly loving, just, and merciful God allow someone to make such a choice?

Let us assume, for the moment, that one could, with adequate knowledge, freely make such a choice if God allowed it. The question is, How could a perfectly loving, just, and merciful God allow it? As I understand it, the Church teaches that he does it because he gives us freedom and respects our capacity to exercise it. But this is how I look at it. If I were a human parent, I too would want my child to exercise as much freedom as possible. However, if I knew that he had a proclivity for pouring gasoline over himself and setting himself on fire, I would not allow him to do it if I could prevent it. Even if I thought he was choosing this with full knowledge of the consequences and completely free of any pathological compulsion to do it, which I almost certainly wouldn't (but we can get into that later), I wouldn't believe that his freedom should extend as far as his bringing such horrible pain and death to himself. And I don't think I'm being foolish in thinking that as bad as this kind of death would be, it is infinitesimally so compared to spending eternity completely isolated from all love and goodness. It just seems inconceivable to me that any parent--human or divine--could allow someone enough "freedom" to choose such an awesomely horrible fate for himself. It seems entirely unloving, unjust, and unmerciful.

But then it also seems to me that no one who fully knew God's love and the joys of heaven on the one hand, and the awfulness of isolation from God, love, and goodness for eternity that goes with rejecting God on the other could freely make such a choice. I know I'm repeating what I've posted before, and I admit that I can't prove it, but everything I think I know about human nature and psychology tells me that people naturally seek to experience pleasure and avoid pain and would, therefore, not knowingly choose to reject eternal joy in heaven for eternal pain in hell unless they were overwhelmed by an irresistible compulsion to do it. Yet, it also seems to me that unless someone has experienced God's love in a very powerful and direct way and/or the horrible isolation of hell in an equally powerful and direct way, he lacks the fullness of knowledge to make a sufficiently "informed" choice between them for which he can justly be held accountable.

And this is why I have said, time and again, that I find a hell of eternal suffering in total isolation from any vestige of God, goodness, and love to be utterly incompatible with a God of perfect love, justice, and mercy.

So far, my discussion partner hasn't replied. However, I suspect that he will in time, and that he will challenge me to refine my objections even further. Who knows? He may even persuade me to abandon my objections and embrace the Catholic position on hell and, ultimately, the Catholic faith. Now THAT would be a miracle!

What Was He Thinking?

A young man walked into a Salt Lake City mall last night and calmly and indiscriminately shot to death two young women, two men, and a teenage girl and wounded four others before police killed him with a hail of gunfire after he failed to drop his weapon and surrender. Had the police not responded as quickly as they did--reports are that the gunman was "contained" within six minutes of the first gunshots fired--many more might have died or been wounded.

The question that comes to mind is, Why did this young man do what he did? Was it a case of "suicide by cop"? It's doubtful that he expected to live after he murdered those people. The fact that he responded to a command to surrender by firing shotgun blasts at police certainly suggests this.

But if he wanted to die, why did he want to kill as many innocent people as he could first? Whether Christian or not, don't most people fear "dying in sin" enough or feel sufficient uncertainty about what might await them in a possible afterlife that the last thing they would want to do just before dying is murder as many innocent people as possible?

I don't know about you, but if I wanted the police to kill me, I'd be as much of a saint as I could be for as long as possible before the fateful moment. And when that moment came, I'd do something to attract the police's attention that didn't harm anyone, and I would point an unloaded gun at police to get them to shoot me.

Don't worry, I have no desire to commit suicide by cop or any other means. But if I did, I would be an agnostic male version of Mother Teresa beforehand. I wouldn't walk into a mall with a shotgun and handgun and start blowing away men, women, and girls out doing an evening's shopping.

What was he thinking?

Addendum to Yesterday

Here is an addendum to yesterday's entry.

Nature aborts approximately 75% of all pregnancies. If the biblical God made nature, one could say that God aborts all of these pregnancies. In other words, God aborts vastly many more pregnancies than people do. Some would say that if God does it, it’s not an abortion. But this seems like a silly play on words. A miscarriage and a medical abortion have the same result—a “baby” dies in the womb. It’s an abortion.

Yet, do Christian opponents of abortion rail and protest against God for aborting these poor “babies”? No. Do they mourn these innocent victims of God’s abortions? No. It’s perfectly okay with them if God does it, but not if people do. They say that when God aborts a conceptus, it’s God’s plan for that child, but not when people do it.

Yet, what is the real difference for the conceptus? Do Christian opponents of abortion truly believe that the soul of a conceptus aborted by God meets a different fate than does the soul of a conceptus aborted by humans? What would that difference be? Does the soul of a conceptus aborted by God go to heaven and the soul of a conceptus aborted by humans go to hell? The soul of the conceptus aborted by people was no more responsible for what happened to it than was the soul of the conceptus aborted by God, so why would it not go to the same place that the souls of conceptuses aborted by God go?

Some Christian opponents of abortion say that we don’t know where any of these souls go, but that they have faith in God’s supreme justice and mercy. How could this faith lead them to any other conclusion than that God sends all aborted souls to heaven? For how could God be just and merciful if he penalized these innocent souls by sending them to anywhere but heaven?

Some Christians say that God can do anything he wants and that it’s good simply because he does it. So, if he wants to send the souls of conceptuses aborted by humans or all aborted souls to hell, it is good because he does it. Well then, one could use that same argument to say that if God ever tells us to rape our children, it’s good because God has told us to do it. If everything God does is good simply because he does it, we have no grounds for saying that anything he could conceivably do would be evil. If a Christian wouldn’t accept a tautological definition of God’s goodness, then he or she implicitly believes that God’s acts are not good simply because he does them, but because they meet standards of goodness that we use to judge all acts, including God’s or those attributed to God. Our standards of goodness tell us that innocent aborted souls must go to heaven and that a God who didn’t meet this standard would not be good. If God is good, he must meet this standard and send all aborted souls to heaven.

So, all aborted souls go to heaven. On the other hand, souls whose bodies aren’t aborted have a very good chance of going to hell, for the Bible says that the gate to heaven is narrow whereas the road to hell is wide. Christian opponents of abortion say that all souls should be able to choose for themselves where they will go. But if that’s true, why does God deny this choice to 75% or more of all souls? What’s more, what woman who truly loves the “pre-born child” in her womb would want it to end up suffering everlasting torture in the dungeon of hell?

Christian opponents of abortion say that a woman who aborts her child is selfish. But if she aborts her child because she wants to spare it suffering in this life and a strong possibility of going to hell in the next even though she knows that she could spend eternity in hell for doing it, she is committing the most selfless act imaginable—risking the damnation of her eternal soul to guarantee that her child’s soul enjoys everlasting bliss in heaven.

So, a Christian cannot credibly argue that abortion is wrong because it’s necessarily a selfish act of the mother that harms the “pre-born child.” I have shown that abortion is the ultimate gift that one could give to any child—a non-revocable ticket to everlasting bliss, and that it can be a supremely selfless act on the part of the mother. Abortion may violate God’s command not to abort, but what external standard of goodness dictates that God’s command is good? If our standard of goodness says that everyone should have the chance to choose for herself whether she goes to heaven or to hell, doesn’t God himself violate this standard for more than 75% of created souls? If God does only good, then abortion can't be wrong because it deprives souls of their choice. There must be some other reason. What is it? If there isn’t any and Christians continue to insist that God's innumerable spontaneous abortions are good, shouldn’t we humans do our best to follow his good example?