©2002 Ed Buckner, Council for Secular Humanism, www.secularhumanism.org
Well, yes, I guess I will. I could just reply, “Well, you won’t be a believer when you’re not burning in hell.” But that somehow lacks the punch of a truly powerful answer. If I “wake up” in hell, whatever that is, I expect that would be enough evidence for me to become a believer. And it may seem odd or even unfair that, if the Christian is right, he and I will presumably both find out that he is right, while not the opposite. (If the secular humanist/atheistic position is the right one, neither secular humanist nor Christian will “find out” anything after death.) But no one should mistake such a point for evidence that counts in favor of the believer being right.
When a religionist declares that I’ll become a believer when I’m suffering eternal torture, it does lead to a couple of interesting questions to ask him: 1. “Why is your god so sadistic as to provide conclusive evidence only after condemning me to endless unimaginable suffering, while giving me no credible evidence while I still had a chance to act on it?” and, 2. “How can religionists reconcile their belief in a perfectly joyous afterlife with the belief that they will certainly know that some whom they love must writhe in agony forever?”
If some other, more liberal, religious questioner, especially a Christian, tries to evade the horrors and logical contradictions of the vicious hellfire dogma, I have to point out that it was allegedly Jesus himself who described “hell” as “the fire that never shall be quenched” (Mark 9:43). And Jesus himself also allegedly declared that we blaspheming secular humanists are the only ones beyond hope of avoiding damnation: “Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. ” (Matthew 12:31-32; see also John 3:36, Hebrews 11:6, and Mark 16:16 if you are in doubt that not believing is considered a damnable sin). In light of these explicit passages, if all this hellfire stuff is supposed to be interpreted as merely “not having the pleasure of God’s company” or some such less dramatic, less horrific punishment, then it’s hard to take any of the Bible pronouncements seriously.
I always insist that, given the right evidence, I’ll become a believer—but it’ll probably be a hell of a thing if that comes about.
Dan Barker, many essays in Losing Faith in Faith, FFRF, 1992, especially “Washed in the Blood” and “Christian Joy?”.
Massimo Pigliucci. Tales of the Rational: Skeptical Essays About Nature and Science, Freethought Press (Atlanta Freethought Society), 2000; especially Chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5.
“The Devil, Evil, and Morality” (Section V) in Gordon Stein, ed., An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, Prometheus Books, 1980, pp. 240-292.
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