The Failure Of Hell

In theory, you would think the threat of hell would make people behave better. But in practice, it does not work. Americans, who are mostly Christian, have one of the highest murder rates on the planet. Norwegians have one of the lowest and they are atheists. Proportionately there are almost no atheists in American prisons. Nearly everyone there is a Christian.

The more religious people are, the more likely they are to sexually and physically abuse their children.

What is going wrong?

• The threat of hell is far off in the future. Punishments must be immediate to work well.
• The church offers all manner of magic that supposedly undoes all effects of sin.
• The bible is extremely violent. Yahweh commands all manner of innocents killed. Clearly Yahweh is not serious about no-killing. Muslims are always telling me they will be rewarded in the afterlife for killing innocent people.
• Christians believe when you murder someone, you have not harmed them. You just sent them prematurely to heaven. How can someone take murder seriously when they harbour than delusion?

Christians often argue that the universe would be horribly unfair if there were no hell. Therefore both hell and Yahweh must exist. What they are saying is because they would strongly prefer it if were a hell, the universe is constrained to provide one. That is just wishful thinking. It is the logic of a terrible twos toddler having a tantrum. It is like saying There must be pony waiting for me in the back yard because I demand it be so.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)