Christianity’s Justice System
First, what finite sin or mistake deserves eternal damnation?
I need to straighten some things up here. I don’t know where this came from, but it seems many Christians I know think that Hell is never described or even mentioned in the Bible. These same Christians tell me Hell is just separation from God. But really, it’s more than JUST separation from God. Here’s some scripture on it…
You’ll find the Bible is clear. Hell is a real place that you can go. It’s full of fire, smoke, demons, suffering and it’s eternal.
To deny these Bible says these things is to deny the Bible in general… as the Bible has TONS of information on Hell, including from Jesus.
So, on to the rant…
Christianity takes crimes as despicable as murder, rape, genocide, and so forth and deems them forgivable by an act as trivial as accepting Jesus as your savior. What moral foundations are there that back up the forgiveness of horrible deeds by simply accepting something that, demonstratively, does no statistical good at reversing these evil behaviors?
Some Christians will now argue that accepting Jesus as your savior is not trivial. It’s a life commitment and total reconstruction of one’s self. Even if this is so, it still doesn’t do any good for the victims of your crime. It’s still not acceptable to forgive murder because you found Jesus… If I were to rape a girl, I shouldn’t be then forgiven because I started to attend feminist meetings. That doesn’t repay or heal my wrongs against the person I raped. Not only that, but statistically, accepting Jesus as your savior doesn’t even do any good at reversing these negative behaviors. Atheists, being a moderate proportion of the USA population (about 8-16%) are disproportionately less numerous in the prison population (0.21%). Christians, being about 75% of the USA population make up about 75% of the prison population (holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm). It seems accepting Jesus as your savior gives no noticeable boost in morality, thus, the argument that such an act is worthy of forgiveness for horrid crimes because it prevents the act from happening again is bankrupt.
Furthermore, the Bible condemns those who want to believe in God, but can’t, with Hell. Many atheists and deists would love to believe the Christian story, and even attempt so regularly, but reason, logic, science, and rationality enslave them. In fact, I spent a few years searching for God with an open heart. Obviously I didn’t find anything. Also, the crime of intellectual honesty harms no one, but the Bible sees it worthy of eternal punishment. What I mean by this is that you’re not fundamentally hurting anyone solely by not believing in God.
Ok, So murder can be forgiven, but not being able to find God is worthy of eternal damnation? Does anyone else see a problem with that? I’ll concede this. Maybe I’m just too weak. Maybe I’m too faulty… or stupid or arrogant. Maybe that’s why I don’t believe in God. But are any of those worthy of Hell?
In fact, if I may ask, what finite sin or mistake is deserving of infinite punishment?
And a quick note, Any sin that leads others to Hell is not a reasonable example of a sin deserving of Hell because that, in logic, is circular. The conclusion of the argument is assumed in the premise.
So, Christianity is effectively saying that what you do in your finite time on earth is enough to punish you with infinite damnation… or damnation that lasts an infinite amount of time.
Christians often argue at this point that atheists are choosing to go to Hell because we’ve shunned God out of our lives. This is just ridiculous 'cause we can’t CHOOSE to go somewhere we don’t believe exists. If I believed in Hell, I would do everything possible to avoid it. But I don’t. I can’t. I’ve tried for years, and I can’t. Try this, try to force yourself to believe that a magical brownie exists at the center of the earth. Choose to believe in the flying spaghetti monster. Choose to believe in Zeus. You can’t. You can’t just CHOOSE that belief. So how would you react if I was a believer in Greek myth and I told you, “You deserve to go to Hades and suffer 'cause that’s what you chose. You chose not to believe in Zeus.” I don’t actually know if in Greek mythology you go to hell for not believing in those gods, but, you get the point.
Christian Plagiarism
There are dozens of pre-Christian gods and messiahs that were born on December 25th, of a virgin, who had 12 disciples, performed miracles such as healing the sick and walking on water, crucified and resurrected three days later, and are known, by their inventors and followers, as such things like the Lamb of God and the King of Kings. Jesus is the most recent of a long list of plagiarized gods and holds no credibility.
A few gods and prophets that pre-date Jesus and harbor all or most of these specific attributes include Horus, Mithra, and Dionysus.
“Design” Of Our World
Collected from various sites including TalkOrigins.org
–Baleen whale fetuses have teeth and
fetal calves have upper front teeth;
adult (and probably newborn) baleen
whales are toothless (the baleen is
not teeth), and cows lack upper front
teeth. These teeth never erupt and
are resorbed as the fetus grows.
(What’s the point of that? Evolution explains it, does your god?)
–Babies can swallow and breathe simultaneously,
until the larynx descends after two or three
months, making us prone to choking. Why would a
supposedly intelligent creator
combine our breathing and eating channels
into one single orifice? Think of the lives this
slipshod design has cost.
–How about the appendix and tonsils? Leaving
such useless and dangerous components in the
final-version human speaks
ill of the creator’s intelligence.
–In human males, the urethra passes right through
the prostate gland, a gland prone to infection and
subsequent enlargement, which blocks the urethra.
A better plumbing design requires little intelligence.
–Evolution leaves behind many unnecessary features
such as vestigial structures in some snakes, or
nonfunctional wings on some insects.
–Though sea snakes and cetaceans
are completely aquatic, giving birth
in the water, they still have to breathe air,
which is a limitation for a completely aquatic animal.
–If you count the digits on a panda’s paw you will
count six. Five curl around and the “thumb” is
an opposable digit. The five fingers are made of
the same bones our (humans and most other
vertebrates) fingers are made of. The thumb is
constructed by enlarging a few bones that
form the wrist in other species. The muscles
that operate it are “rerouted” muscles
present in the hand of vertabrates (see S.J. Gould
book “The Panda’s Thumb” for an
engaging discussion of this case).
Again, this is not good design.
Evolution explains all of these… How does your God explain them? Nay. How does your God explain them better?
Natural Disasters
Natural disasters claim millions of lives.
It is indubitable, just be sheer statistics, that many many of those lives taken had not found Jesus yet would have if given the chance to live out their lives. This means, according to Christianity, they have been sent to Hell to suffer forever BECAUSE of the natural disaster.
Christians often say natural disasters are God’s way of testing our faith. Is a test of faith like this worth the damnation of millions? Is a god incapable of testing our faith without consequentially sending millions to suffer forever in Hell?
Human Evil
For most atheists, if not all, it’s hard to imagine why disobeying God in a bizarre set up is deserving of cursing billions of people that have not even been born yet and consequentially sending billions of those people to Hell to suffer forever as well due to human evil. God, according to the Bible, is all-knowing. He knows exactly what will result with every action he could possibly make. He specifically chose to allow a snake to tempt Eve, he specifically chose to create the chemicals in her brain that would be responsible for her gullibility, and he specifically created the fruit that was magically bound to a curse on mankind. To say God didn’t specifically plan for all of that to happen is to insult his omniscience. Thus, we come to our next part on human evil…
The classic retort by theists to the problem of evil is that God gave humanity free will. The usual reason given for this is that he didn’t want to create mindless robots. He wanted his creations to CHOOSE to worship him. This argument falls immediately apart when one notices Heaven. Unless a theist is willing to argue that we’re all mindless robots in Heaven, they have to admit that moral perfection and free will can coexist.
The following is non-fiction (even if it weren’t, the situation is more than possible). Please answer the questions.
Johnny didn’t choose to be born with a disease that will slowly disintegrate his bones that will bind him to a motorized wheel chair, a distorted face, poor speaking capabilities, embarrassment from soiling himself, constant agony, and the knowledge that he will die at a young age. And what does God expect? That Johnny will just forgive God and accept that God just likes testing his faith? Oh and, if he didn’t pass the test of faith, he would have just sent him to suffer forever in Hell? I would hope, even if Johnny disbelieved and even scorned the very idea of God, God would allow him in Heaven nonetheless. But even so, if God was going to just allow him in Heaven no matter what, why did he have to test his faith? What sick “need” does a god have that would allow him to do this?
Jesus Compared To Magic Gurus of Today
Jesus, a guy attributed with many miracles such as resurrection, being born a virgin, healing the sick, walking on water, water into wine, etc… gets world wide belief based on a book that allegedly recorded these events decades decades AFTER they occurred and there is no 3rd party record of any kind of these events.
Yet, Sathya, a guru who claims to be born from a virgin, can walk on water, healed the sick, flew without assistance (ascended?) and a number of other miracles, has literally thousands of living eyewitnesses IN THIS DAY AND AGE with the ability to record said miracles. Millions of people believe he is a living God. “So, consider, as though for the first time, the foundational claim of Christianity. The claim is that miracles stories of a sort that surround a person like Sathya Sai Baba today and which are compelling to no one apart from his devotees suddenly become specially creditable if you place them in the pre-scientific religious context of the first century Roman Empire decades after their supposed occurrence. Sathya Sai Baba’s miracles don’t even merit an hour on the Discovery Channel and yet place these miracles in an ancient text and half the people on this earth think it a legitimate project to organize their lives around them. Does anyone else see a problem with that?” - Sam Harris