"But You Choose Hell"

Recently on a podcast, someone made a statement that I have heard repeatedly from my Christian friends, “God doesn’t send you to Hell; you choose to go”.  To which I respond, “Bullshit”.  I can tell you right now that I do not choose Hell.  Of course, I wouldn’t choose Heaven either if the prick in the Bible is actually in charge as they claim.  Going to Hell is purely the fault of God.

First, God created Hell.  He could have just had us non-believers wink out of existence after we die, but he didn’t.  Instead, he created a place of eternal torment.  God is responsible for the existence and conditions in Hell.

Second, we are all supposedly born sinners and doomed to Hell unless we repent and accept Jesus.  But why are we born sinners?  Because God decided to not just blame Adam and Eve for disobeying him, but to spread the blame around a little and condemn us all because of their actions; another example of good old fashioned biblical justice.  So, from the moment we are conceived, we are already doomed to Hell.  We can avoid it by accepting Jesus, but the default mode for our existence after death is already predetermined: Hell.  Isn’t that good evidence of a loving god?  He creates a very nasty place that no one would want to go to and then blame everyone for something their ancestors did wrong so that from the moment of birth you are doomed to go there.  There is no true choice.  A true choice would allow you to not play the game in the first place, but you can’t opt out of this one. 

Even for Adam and Eve the game was rigged.  The only way that they could know that disobeying God was wrong was to have knowledge of good and evil; however, the only way to gain that knowledge was to disobey God and eat from the Tree of Knowledge.  They were damned from the beginning and due to God’s version of justice, so were we.  So, no, we do not choose Hell.  Hell is the default position established by God.  I use the term “God” lightly because no being worthy of the name would set up such an immoral system and the idea that Jesus suffered for us and offers us salvation is very warped, not generous.

  

By way of analogy, here is what the God/Jesus/Hell scenario boils down to.   Imagine a ship’s captain kidnaps several people, drugs them, takes them to the middle of the ocean and throws them overboard.  That is the situation that God set up by making Hell the default position.  Now imagine the first mate stands at the bow of the ship and offers to sell everyone a life vest and that the cost of the vest is everything the person owns.  This is Jesus offering salvation by giving up your life and your freedom of thought to him.  In the scenario with the ship’s captain, I know of no one, including my Christian friends,  that would disagree with the fact that the captain is an evil ass, but God/Jesus get a pass from the Christians and are considered loving and worthy of praise.

It is an immoral system that is supposedly in place and we most definitely do not choose Hell, we simply do not choose to believe in or follow despicable monsters from a theological version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.  Those who do accept this story and consider it good, just, and moral are just as warped as the God their “holy book” describes.

I Don't Hate Myself Enough To Be A Christian

Humanity is inherently weak, unjust, selfish, prejudiced, and evil; at least that is the tune sung by many Christians, both pastors and laity alike.  Without constant supplication to a god to help us stay on track and his subsequent violation of our free will and the laws of physics (how else can he do it?) to answer our prayers, we would succumb to our supposedly baser instincts to steal, rape, and murder each other.

We are wicked; born inclined to "sin", with no ability to control ourselves.  Without a god, we would be immoral and purposeless - a meaningless mass of worthless flesh uncontrollably driven to self-gratification with no care for others.  

I don't know about you, but to me this is an awfully depressing view of humanity and one that I just don't accept.  I have a purpose without god; whatever purpose I choose for my life.  I am not depraved and indifferent to others, an uncontrollable sinner, but rather a responsible member of society.  I do not need a god to define my morality, especially one that is depicted as so despicable and immoral in his own holy book.  And I am constantly looking at ways to improve as is most of the rest of society.  Most of us are not killing, raping, and stealing; we are just trying to get by in life, protecting our families and causing no one undue harm.  I believe in the inherent goodness of humanity which is borne out everyday in simple acts of kindness to strangers and the ability of societies to work together to solve problems despite differing opinions.

If I have to believe the Fundamentalist Christian view of humanity, well, I guess I'm just not depressed enough or have low enough self esteem to be a Christian - I don't hate myself enough to be a Christian.

Which Is More Moral, Mercy Or Justice?

Mercy: the discretionary power of a judge to pardon someone or to mitigate punishment.
Justice: the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness.

If a man commits terrible crimes like rape or murder, or even lesser offenses such as theft or assault, but at the end of his life recognizes the error of his ways and comes to sincerely repent before the Christian god, he gains entry into heaven.  This is claimed by Christians to be evidence of their god's mercy.  You cannot earn your way into heaven; God must grant his mercy.

However, if another man has lead an exemplary life, one without crime and full of compassion for his fellow man, but simply cannot see any reason to believe the fantastical tales of the Christian religion or their savior, he does not gain entry into heaven, but faces an eternity of punishment.  No mercy here; and no justice in either outcome.

Of course, the Christian may say that all have sinned and any sin is abhorrent to their god, so both men are equal in the eyes of their god.  The one man receives mercy because of his honest acceptance of Jesus.  That's right.  It doesn't matter how heinous your crimes or how trivial your missteps, they are viewed as equally reprehensible to God. I find it disgustingly laughable that the being directly responsible for the deaths of millions, perhaps billions in the Bible finds even the most gentle, compassionate, and honest citizen of this planet too sinful to accept.

Of course, he can accept the good person, the rapist, the pedophile, even the mass murderer, if they pay the right price; absolute belief in God and along with it their intellectual freedom as well as their sense of fairness.  Turn over your life and place complete faith in a being that has demonstrated that he is far worse than you and you can be forgiven anything, but live a good life of reason and compassion and deny this being and there is nothing that will save you.

There is no justice in this Christian view of God.  In fact, it looks more like a religious version of organized crime's protection money scheme: "Pay me now, with your unquestioning faith, or something bad might happen and neither one of us would want that now would we?"

What Sacrifice?

SACRIFICE
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

Allowing innocent substitutes to be sacrificed and blaming subsequent generations for the crimes of their ancestors is a commonly accepted practice of this just and loving god.

So god makes the rules, doesn't want to enforce the rules, but can't change the rules because that would not make him look too godly.  So he concocts this bizarre arrangement to sacrifice himself to himself to appease himself.  If we decide to look at this rationally and do not accept the validity of a substitute sacrifice or doubt that god actually sacrificed anything, this loving god sends us to eternal torment.  Nice huh?  Give us a rational mind and then punish us for using it.

And what exactly was sacrificed?  Jesus was God, after all, and was resurrected just a few days later.  A day of torture (and you knew it all beforehand because you arranged it all) an eternity of bliss sitting beside, er - yourself?

Does any of this convoluted story sound like the work of an all-knowing, all-loving god?  Does it make any sort of sense?  It doesn't to me. If we are to believe the Bible, then this vengeful, bloodthirsty god of the Old Testament suddenly felt sorry for us and tried to give us a way out - a crazy, nonsensical way out - but a way out nonetheless.  But if we don't accept it, he rapidly goes back to his old ways, actually worse ways because Hell didn't exist in the Old Testament.

I don't know if any gods exists or not. I am extremely doubtful.  I don't see any logical reason to believe, but I could be wrong.  But if a god exists, he certainly cannot be as described in the Bible; at least one would hope not. This 'sacrifice' story is just one of several issues in the Bible that do not depict a being that is even close to being what I would consider "God-like".  If I am more ethical and rational, then it is not a god.

God Says: Humanity Sucks

On my way to work this week, I was listening to a preacher on the radio. He said what I have heard many other preachers say many, many times, but every time I hear it, it makes me sick. He was talking about how all of us have sinned, how all of us are incapable of reaching the kind of perfection that god demands of us, and how we all fall short of the glory of god. See Romans 3:23.

It's the typical view that humanity is worthless, vile, immoral, and incapable of goodness with out the grace of god. The view degrades humanity to elevate god. It takes away all of the compassion, knowledge, art, science, etc. that man has cultivated for good over the years and gives the credit to God. It denies the fact that despite setbacks, humanity has clawed its way passed many obsolete notions (in some places) and outdated moral norms and is trying to trend the path towards increased compassion and decreased selfishness. But religion is happy to leave us with our greed, anger, cowardice, and cruelty and deny our better nature by assigning it to God.

God supposedly created us in his image, created us as we are - incapable of being perfect - and then blames us for this. I despise this part of religion probably more than anything else.

God created us, created us prone to "sin", incapable of meeting his standards, and doomed to eternal punishment for it. But he has a way out, if only we believe that setting his son (himself) up as a blood sacrifice - a human sacrifice - as a substitutionary atonement - for our shortcomings. If we pay the ransom, belief in God and Jesus and they whole warped concept of justice that He provides, we get the "prize" of spending eternity with this jerk. Fortunately, He does not exist. He is a creation of Man. It's too bad Man has such low self-esteem that it has to create God's to make us feel even worse.