7
Hell and Heaven

Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful. They distract humans from present concerns, from self-actualization, and from rectifying social injustices.

—Humanist Manifesto II1

“Afterlives are fantasies,” laugh the atheists. They are fairy tales and horror novels. Some are written by the most cloud-headed among us, others by the most dark-hearted. They are daydreams that escape and compromise reality. The deeper it delves into such fictions, the further religion banishes itself from credibility, says the atheist. Although such confident pronouncements abound, arguing from the absurdity of the afterlife gets it backward. Once you are able to confirm that there is no God, then afterlives naturally disappear, but if God’s existence remains a good possibility, then so do afterlives. Simply ridiculing afterlives doesn’t further the debate. A more legitimate way, however, is to argue not that hell and heaven are ridiculous but that they are immoral, and that therefore a good God said to employ them could not actually exist. Such is the atheist’s argument presented in this chapter. Now, the atheist cannot challenge the morality of hell and heaven by simply assuming them to be blatant absurdities, a caricature that stacks the deck against their legitimacy. It is no real victory to prove harps, haloes, pitchforks, and red suits to be too silly to believe in. If hell or heaven is under attack, let it be the real thing.

But how real is the afterlife? Within Christianity, the celestial world is firmer than our earth’s crust. The here and now is a fleeting shadow, while the hereafter is a fixed surety. Instead of the afterlife being the novel, this life is the novel. “The End” in the book really means “Ever After” outside the book. The curtain closes; the playwright walks onstage. The artist signs his name at the bottom right and resumes life. The afterlife is the real-life realm of the author; what we call real life is the author’s daydream. “Imagine there’s no heaven,” sings John Lennon.2 Peter Rabbit might as well wish for the nonexistence of Beatrix Potter. Atheists will continue to ridicule the afterlife in the same tone they would use toward an adult believer in the tooth fairy. What must be conceded to be fair is that, if God exists, such a dimension is no mere tack-on but a necessity. Indeed, it is not a mere necessity but the necessity, whereas our realm is something similar to God’s science fiction.

So if God exists, we, not hell and heaven, are God’s embellishments. Whatever might be the basic stuff of the universe, eternity is the basic stuff of reality. Let us not have any nonsense about hell and heaven being harmful distractions that keep us from real work in the real world. Such talk assumes the nonexistence of God and only freezes the discussion. If God exists, then (no matter what happens in a person’s lifetime) eternity with God and eternity without God exhaust the basic possibilities of a person’s existence. So, as it would be only prudent for atheists to at least seriously consider God’s existence, they must also consider hell and heaven. What if the atheist’s lifetime has been God’s daydream, and at death, the character awakes to his author? In the rudeness of the dawn, will he prefer the light or the darkness?

Hell: What the Doctrine Means for God

What is most surprising to atheists, and even to Christians, about hell is who came up with the idea. It was Jesus. This is quite disappointing because, on the whole, Jesus is quite likable. Bertrand Russell expresses his disappointment:

There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching.3

Dan Barker agrees: “Probably the worst of all of Jesus’s ideas is the teaching of hell.”4 The reason is that “[a]ny system of thought or any religion that contains such a threat of physical violence is morally bankrupt.”5 Christopher Hitchens notes the irony: “Not until the advent of the Prince of Peace do we hear of the ghastly idea of further punishing and torturing the dead.”6 Though eternity with and without God exhaust the possibilities, the choices can seem a bit extreme, as Hitchens interprets the evangelist’s presentation: “With an unctuous smile they offer a redemption that is not theirs to bestow and, when questioned, put on the menacing scowl that says, ‘Oh, so you reject our offer of paradise? Well, in that case we have quite another fate in store for you.’ Such love! Such care!”7 It can seem as surprising as a mousetrap: from cheese to snap in a second.

Thus, the doctrine of hell shows God to be cruel. Former evangelist Charles Templeton found it impossible to work for such a God: “How could a loving Heavenly Father create an endless Hell and, over the centuries, consign millions of people to it because they do not or cannot or will not accept certain religious beliefs? And, having done so, how could he torment them forever?”8 George H. Smith goes even further: “And why would God create a place of torment in the first place, unless he derived some kind of pleasure or satisfaction from witnessing pain? Whether the Christian deity of fire and brimstone projects love or neurotic sadism on a cosmic scale, will be left to the conscience of the reader to decide.”9 Whether necessitated by his system or requested for his pleasure, the fires of hell seem to disfigure God so that his love is either marred beyond recognition or burned away altogether.

Hell: What the Doctrine Means for Us

Likewise, the doctrine of hell is said to be immoral because of what it means for us. The “hell” it creates for us falls into two categories based on two kinds of people. First, it is devastating to the gullible—namely, those who believe it. The doctrine destroys three crucial relationships for those who believe it.

The first relationship destroyed for the gullible is relationship with self. If only they could “imagine there’s no hell,” they could salvage their lives from psychological shipwreck. According to Richard Dawkins,

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” The adage is true as long as you don’t really believe the words. But if your whole upbringing, and everything you have ever been told by parents, teachers and priests, has led you to believe, really believe, utterly and completely, that sinners burn in hell (or some other obnoxious article of doctrine such as that a woman is the property of her husband), it is entirely plausible that words could have a more long-lasting and damaging effect than deeds.10

Barker pulls no punches: “How many children go to sleep at night afraid of hell?”11

The second relationship destroyed is relationship with God. If a forced marriage stifles love, what would the threat of abuse do? According to atheists, the doctrine bullies believers into fake love. In a letter from God to the theologian, Barker has God say, “And if I did create a hell, then it certainly would not be smart to advertise that fact. How would I know if people were claiming to love me for my own sake, or simply to avoid punishment?”12

The third relationship destroyed is relationship with other people. In Russell’s words, “I must say that I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture.”13 Atheist philosopher Keith Parsons calls the doctrine “an eternal glorification of vindictiveness” and asks, “How can an institution claim to be the Light of the World if one of its central doctrines is, to all appearances, an expression of the deepest darkness in the human heart?”14 Such cruelty can even be legitimized for eternity. Note Hitchens’s paraphrase of church father Tertullian, “promising that one of the most intense pleasures of the afterlife would be endless contemplation of the tortures of the damned.”15

Not only is the doctrine of hell devastating to the gullible, but it is also useful to the corrupt. What such a scary doctrine does to control believers has not gone unnoticed by atheists. Hitchens surmises, “Perhaps half aware that its unsupported arguments are not entirely persuasive, and perhaps uneasy about its own greedy accumulation of temporal power and wealth, religion has never ceased to proclaim the Apocalypse and the day of judgment.”16 According to Emma Goldman, “Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment.”17

Now the question is what to do with such a doctrine. The first long-awaited task, says the atheist, is to call it what it is. Perhaps Charles Darwin did it best: “I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.”18 The second task is to finally and decisively throw it out. Parsons prescribes, “With respect to the doctrine of hell, two thousand years are far more than enough. The damage this horrific and contemptible fantasy has done cannot be estimated. . . . Cruel dogmas make cruel people.”19

Heaven: What the Doctrine Means for God

It is here that the plot twists. Clearly, the atheist does not want to go to hell. What the atheist might not yet realize is that God does not want him to go to hell either. All the facts considered, it is illogical to see the Christian God as one who delights in sending people to hell. Such a portrait is a shameful misrepresentation. But neither is it logical to see God as one who is basically displeased with sending people to hell. “Basically displeased” speaks of a mildness the Bible does not know. To be fair to the Bible, the portrait must be a shocking one of panting, frenzied desperation. How so? What we know is that the Christian God was so intensely against sending the atheist to hell that he went to hell himself, like a fireman to the rescue. God did not merely send an underling to the cross; the sacrifice was God in flesh. “It makes no difference,” says the atheist, “because I don’t believe in that kind of thing.” No, by challenging the morality of God, the atheist must be prepared to deal with the real thing. And the cross is the twist central to the real thing.

So the atheist is not merely critiquing hell. It might sound permissible to sue someone for cutting you with a knife, something terrible in itself, until it comes to light that he was a surgeon removing something that might have killed you. In critiquing hell, the atheist is really attacking the whole surgery as immoral. Half-court scrimmage was back home; now, on the road, you are facing the real opponent, and it is this: God went through hell so the atheist could choose to go to heaven. But, in keeping with the two basic options of real, “out there” existence, the atheist can always reject the offer. It is understandable why the atheist would reject hell, but why reject heaven?

The first reason to reject heaven is what it says about God. God becomes something worse than the new stepdad (perfect according to mom), when he starts trying to buy and play his way into the role of loving father. Having to admit a God into your life in the first place is bad enough, having to worship him is worse, but having to love him is unthinkable. The obligations become increasingly unbearable, according to Hitchens:

Imagine . . . that you can picture an infinitely benign and all-powerful creator, who conceived of you, then made and shaped you, brought you into the world he had made for you, and now supervises and cares for you even while you sleep. Imagine, further, that if you obey the rules and commandments that he has lovingly prescribed, you will qualify for an eternity of bliss and repose. I do not say that I envy you this belief (because to me it seems like the wish for a horrible form of benevolent and unalterable dictatorship).20

Take note, furthermore, that your new stepdad promises to snap into something akin to Cinderella’s wicked stepmother when his love is not returned. For Barker, the threat of hell cancels out any joy of heaven: “Speaking for myself, if the biblical heaven and hell exist, I would choose hell. Having to spend eternity pretending to worship a petty tyrant who tortures those who insult his authority would be more hellish than baking in eternal flames. There is no way such a bully can earn my admiration.”21

Heaven: What the Doctrine Means for Us

According to atheists, heaven means two different things for two different kinds of people. The first kind of person is the truly good person, and to such a person, the flattering enticements of heaven backlash into an insult. Hitchens explains,

The working assumption is that we should have no moral compass if we were not somehow in thrall to an unalterable and unchallengeable celestial dictatorship. What a repulsive idea! . . . [I]t constitutes a radical attack on the very concept of human self-respect. It does so by suggesting that one could not do a right action or avoid a wrong one, except for the hope of a divine reward or the fear of divine retribution.22

Our moral convictions should be strong enough to withstand needing such threats and rewards, says Barker: “If the only way you can be forced to be kind to others is by the threat of hell, that shows how little you think of yourself. If the only way you can be motivated to be kind to others is by the promise of heaven, that shows how little you think of others.”23

Yet a second kind of person is far from insulted by heaven. Instead, religion addicts need it to function. Their moral convictions are so flimsy that heaven is needed to prop them up. David Hume contrasts the truly moral with the superstitiously moral:

The moral obligation, in our apprehension, removes all pretension to religious merit; and the virtuous conduct is deemed no more than what we owe to society and to ourselves. In all this, a superstitious man minds nothing, which he has properly performed for the sake of his deity, or which can peculiarly recommend him to the divine favor and protection. He considers not that the most genuine method of serving the divinity is by promoting the happiness of his creatures. He still looks out for some immediate service of the supreme Being, in order to allay those terrors, with which he is haunted.24

Superstition makes for groveling, smirking subjects, as Dawkins notes. To the question “If there is no God, why be good?” Dawkins retorts,

Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble. When a religious person puts it to me in this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: “Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God’s approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That’s not morality, that’s just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought.”25

So what is the atheist’s problem with heaven? Regarding God, heaven turns him into that much more of a tyrant, not content to monitor behavior, but now needing to win our love as well. Never could more be demanded. Regarding us, heaven insults good people while enabling bad people by promising rewards for superficial conformity. In short, the atheist would hate heaven because he, being a good person, could not stand living in the presence of a bad God.

On the Other Hand

Not that hell is all it is fired up to be. Barker advises fellow atheists, “If someone tells me I am going to hell, I say, ‘Thank you! All the great people are in hell. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mark Twain, Johannes Brahms, George Gershwin, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Margaret Sanger. . . . I was afraid you were going to tell me to “go to heaven” and spend eternity with Jerry Falwell.’”26 Apparently, atheists can imagine one place worse than hell. Mark Twain was more balanced: “Heaven for climate; hell for society.”27

Besides simply being not as bad as heaven, are there any perks to hell? It seems the doctrine probably does help improve behavior. Russell notes, “Those who genuinely believe that ‘sin’ leads to eternal punishment might be expected to avoid it, and to some extent they do so, although not to so great an extent as might be expected.”28 According to Parsons, it helps improve behavior, not that that is necessarily a good thing:

Not only will the threat of hell prompt you to become a Christian, it will lead you to be a submissive one. All the stuff about faith, hope, and charity aside, obedience has always been the prime Christian virtue. . . . “There is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey,” says the old hymn. Indeed, the threat of hell will motivate not just external obedience but internal self-control as well.29

Before his conversion to Christianity, former atheist Peter Hitchens stood chilled before a piece of fifteenth-century artwork by Rogier van der Weyden called The Last Judgment. He recounts, “I had simply no idea that an adult could be frightened, in broad daylight and after a good lunch, by such things.” Why was it so terrifying? “I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned, if there were any damned.”30 Did such fear make any moral difference? Says Hitchens, “A year or so later I faced a private moral dilemma in which fear of doing an evil thing held me back from doing it, for which I remain immeasurably glad.”31

Perhaps a lesser-noted perk is the dignity hell gives humans. Theologians have long held that the decision to create hell was the ultimate compliment to human freedom. Who could have imagined tears splashing down the cheeks of Omnipotence as he cries, “[Y]ou were not willing!” (Matt. 23:37). Though such a compliment seems to go unnoticed by atheists, Russell notes a lesser compliment paid by hell: “The whole of theology, in regard to hell no less than to heaven, takes it for granted that Man is what is of most importance in the Universe of created beings.”32

Of course, neither its ability to deter nor its compliment to human importance is enough to outweigh hell’s problems for the atheist. But is the concept behind hell itself a problem? To refute philosopher William Lane Craig’s contention that God is necessary for morality, Elizabeth Anderson argues that the moral authority must lie within humanity, so that we have “the authority to make claims on others, to call upon people to heed our interests and concerns.”33 Anticipating objections, she asks, “What of someone who refuses to accept such accountability? Doesn’t this possibility vindicate Craig’s worry, that without some kind of higher authority external to humans, moral claims amount to nothing more than assertions of personal preference, backed up by power?”34 Note her solution: “No. We deal with people who refuse accountability by restraining and deterring their objectionable behavior.”35 Deterring and then restraining is precisely what God does with those who refuse his accountability, and it is called hell. However, to the atheist, the concept of warning followed by quarantine makes good sense unless enforced by God on a divine scale. It is really the same kind of double standard that surfaced when I (Norman) was telling people about Jesus door-to-door and met an atheist named Don:

Norman:	“Don, if you were to die tonight and stand before God, and God were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’ what would you say?”
Don:	“I’d say to God, ‘Why shouldn’t you let me into your heaven?’”
Norman:	“Don, if we knocked on your door seeking to come into your house, and you said to us, ‘Why should I let you into my house?’ and we responded, ‘Why shouldn’t you let us in?’ what would you say?”
Don:	“I would tell you where to go.”
Norman:	“That’s exactly what God is going to say to you!”36

It is completely permissible for me to keep God out of my life, but for some reason, he cannot keep me out of his.

So hell has its merits. The concept behind hell—deterring and restraining the objectionable behavior of those who refuse accountability—is necessary in itself. Moreover, the motivation hell provides to good behavior and the compliment it pays to human dignity both keep it from being something entirely hellish. At any rate, hell has more in its favor than heaven for the atheist, like a Saturday night party compared to a Sunday morning worship service. On the other hand, we have yet to find an atheist mention a single positive with regard to heaven. It is no exaggeration to glean from their writings that heaven seems the most hellish place imaginable.

Yet what does the atheist say about the concept behind heaven? Is paradise really so distasteful? Well, for one thing, a real paradise would have to be in the real world. As Michel Onfray notes, “Their glorification of a (fictional) beyond prevents full enjoyment of the (real) here below.”37 For another, a true paradise must be discoverable not above, nor beside, but within humanity, as the Humanist Manifesto I makes clear: “Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement.”38 But above all, paradise must be free from the parasite of religion, says Russell:

With our present industrial technique, we can, if we choose, provide a tolerable subsistence for everybody. We could also secure that the world’s population should be stationary if we were not prevented by the political influence of churches which prefer war, pestilence, and famine to contraception. The knowledge exists by which universal happiness can be secured; the chief obstacle to its utilization for that purpose is the teaching of religion. Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific co-operation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.39

Thus, with the skies cleared of all divinities, we are free to rise to royalty over our paradise. As Salman Rushdie advises the earth’s “six billionth person” in his letter, “Imagine there’s no heaven, my dear Six Billionth, and at once the sky’s the limit.”40 Until God leaves, heaven becomes hell, and as long as God stays away, hell becomes much preferable. Once again, the problem is neither hell nor heaven but God.