Lawrence Krauss tweeted your article on Hitchens and while most people responding to the tweet were appreciative, these believers (they self-identify as such in their Twitter bio) are positively salivating about atheists burning in hell.
I think I might go and listen to a Jeff Dee rant on hellfire.
(Jeff Dee is a long-time host/co-host of The Atheist Experience and The Non-Prophets; and frequently got irked by Christians who called into the show threatening hell. Many of them thought they were “being nice” in issuing their little caveat; and they got their butts kicked all the way to Cairo by Jeff who pointed out that there is nothing remotely polite about telling someone that they deserve to be tortured forever.)
A nice piece by @Evolutionistrue on slimy book with false claims on Hitch conversion. I have piece coming out later. https://t.co/jx6PJP9Kmx
— Lawrence M. Krauss (@LKrauss1) May 15, 2016
Here are the descriptions of those lovely Christians. I find these reactions odd—and un-Christian. Any God that would send somebody to eternal flames for not believing in Him is an immoral and reprehensible God. Is there any atheist who wishes that believers should be consigned to such punishment for their ignorance? 
As a palliative, here’s Jeff Dee and Matt Dillahunty taking down a Christian who claims that atheists go to hell (but God doesn’t send them there!):
Typo: though => thought ?
Fixed, thanks.
Nasty little people.
Which is no surprise to anyone here, I’m sure. But they do need to be reminded of their sadistic pleasures when they crawl out from under their rocks in public. Came across the Mormons in the street few days ago and made sure that their recruitment message got well and truly spoiled.
Well done! After my experience with the JWs, I was quite annoyed to see the Mormons walking up my street on Saturday morning as I drove to the supermarket – I was going to miss them! Normally I’d be pleased about that, but I was in the mood for some theological discussion. 🙂
So good to know that we send ourselves to hell. Was really worried about that one.
But atheists go to heaven. God likes atheists. They haven’t spent a lifetime pestering him with trivial little prayers.
Yes, and there’s a parable about us using what God gave us to do the best we can. Surely that includes our vrains?
What an unimaginative reason to bar someone from hell: atheism.
Suliman Gani, the Tooting Imam at the centre of the recent Khan-Goldsmith Mayor of London campaign can trump that.
If you wear a bun in your hair ‘like the hump of a camel’ under your hijab, you’re a candidate for the Blaze. It’s Gehenna for you, O exalted women of Islam.
Sisters, it’s got to be the right kind of hijab.
Erm…bar someone from heaven…
One of my grandmothers was a member of the Church of God Holiness. When I was a teenager, some of the young ladies from her church informed me that I was going to Hell because I plucked my eyebrows and wore a small decorative bunch of flowers at the neck of my very modest clothing. Not much to gain from striving for goodness and Heaven when such minuscule infractions are enough to send one to Hell!
“Church of God Holiness”
And why do so many church names not even parse?
Interesting! Quite a few students I know do that… no doubt he would prefer they were not studying! I feel sorry for the girls – it is hard for them to kick against the pricks in a male dominated muslim culture..
Couldn’t listen to Dipshit Denise for more than a minute😖
It’s worth listening at least to the part when they walk her through the logic of hell and she says, “That’s messed up,” but doesn’t realize what she admitted.
Yes, the “seeing ourselves as others might see us” thing isn’t usually internalized very well in the fundies.
If there is an afterlife, we atheists will find out we were wrong. That is a slim risk I can live with. The faithful, who are almost certainly wrong, will never know they wasted their precious life believing rubbish.
not just believing nonsense — but living every day, as jeff dee described of himself, in mortal fear and anxiety worrying about where simple doubt might lead them.
Hmmm, is it logically possible to be both an atheist and to believe in an afterlife?
Of course it is – Philip Jose Farmer at the very least has played that card ((on the back of IIRC Clarke’s Third Law).
Is that in Riverworld or another book?
Yes, ‘Riverworld.’
It’s the Riverworld (and 2 or 3 sequels, not so good IIRC) that I’m thinking of.
Haven’t read any of them for 15-20 years, but with good books you don’t need more often than that.
If Hell is where atheists go and it isn’t near these insufferable people who revel in the thought of torture, isn’t it now by definition not infinitely tortuous since we’re relieved of these people”s presence? If it’s not infinitely tortuous, it isn’t Hell. The theists would have to join us there.
Therefore, either Hell doesn’t exist, or everyone goes there. CHECKMATE THEISTS!
That would mean that an atheist in hell can be threatened with something worse. So doesn’t even have the solace of resignation the “it can’t get worse.”
Which is especially troubling for the sadomasochists. How does God handle torture for them anyway?
Old joke :
Masochist : “Bite me, beat me, hurt me, frob me ; come to my postcode and tell me you love me!”
Sadist : “No.”
[Basking in the unwelcome recognition of Mr Bowdler.]
Hell exists! Hell is real!
http://exviking.net/man/small/image/hell-st.jpg
http://exviking.net/man/hell.htm
But not everyone goes there, there wouldn’t be room.
(Still, it’s bigger than Fucking, Austria)
cr
Intercourse, Pennsylvania is even larger
That’s just down the road from Blue Ball, PA.
That was a very tedious and annoying encounter.
I wish they had asked Denise to explain her evidence for believing her stuff, rather than talking about why they didn’t.
She did totally deny logic in the encounter; but I think they should have tried a different tack at that point. I also wish they hadn’t used an expletive. Those rarely help, especially when you are interacting with someone who strongly disagrees with you.
Her pompous tone was also ridiculous; but they should have, “been the adults” relative to that.
I might have asked her, “You seem really certain that we are going to this hell you speak of. What makes you so convinced of that? What evidence do you have that this hell exists and that we are going to go there?”
I agree. And whilst in general I don’t care a jot about people swearing and I think people who get uptight about it are rather silly, they were still gratuitously rude to her.
You should always keep the high ground. Be patient, listen to her, ask polite but frank questions and eventually the contradictions, incoherence and irrationality will reveal themselves: give ’em enough rope.
And, you never know, you might cause people like her to examine their beliefs in ways they’ve never done before and so open up a crack of doubt.
I have no truck whatever with accommodationism, but I don’t think the attitudes they showed do us any favours and can perpetuate the angry/arrogant atheist stereotype. It’s difficult and frustrating to be sure, but I think if you’re going to do call-in shows like this you’ve got to show more patience.
It’s easy to run out of patience when you’re hearing for the 900th time than my invisible friend is going to do justified terrible things to you if you don’t change your mind.
I don’t know about anyone else, but my patience has limits. if that contributes to an unfortunate stereotype, that can’t be helped.
This again reminds me that all theists believe in magic.
They think that by thinking certain thoughts in the heads, that effects (really important ones) in the real world will be caused. Directly, without their physically doing anything other than thinking the thoughts.
They believe in magical incantations.
At a personal level, these conversations are always uncomfortable and embarrassing for religious people. The question of transcendence is vitally important them, except that when they try to pin down a truthful proposition about what an afterlife it like, they recognize their claims lack testability. And worse, no claim is more valid than any other.
So Heaven will be filled with insufferable people like Denise?
Ok, they win: I choose Hell.
If we take Christianity at face value, then the only possible conclusion is that Jesus is the worst imaginable archenemy of humanity ever proposed.
After all, Hitler didn’t send Jews to the gas chambers; the Jews chose to remain Jewish. The Nazis were more than happy to spare those Jews who converted to Christianity, so it’s their own fault that they didn’t accept Jesus and were therefore slaughtered.
If you have the human decency to recognize just how fucked up that bit of logic is, then it should be trivial to figure out that infinite torture is infinitely worse than merely being gassed, and that Jesus is clearly therefore infinitely more horrific than Hitler.
The only even hypothetical salvation for Jesus would be if his salvation were truly unconditional and universal — if Jesus spared even the likes of Hitler from Hell, and would truly sacrifice himself for the least of us. And not this play-pretend weekend sleep-in before flying back to his sky palace home, but himself accepting infinite torture so that none other need even fear it.
…but that’s not the Christian story. The Christian story is that Herr Jesus remains in his splendid castle in the capital city and only spares those who pledge allegiance to the Führer and His Reich.
And let’s not forget — Hitler kissed babies, gave some rousing sermons filled with all sorts of feel-good platitudes few can argue with, worked for youth education as well as retirement security, stood for strong economic policies, promoted traditional family values, and all sorts of other good things. Nobody has a problem with that side of Hitler; it’s just that his policy of, “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me,” (Luke 19:27) is, in and of itself and regardless of any good he might have done, sufficient to brand him one of the worst monsters in all of human history.
Those who sincerely believe in Jesus desperately owe it to themselves to question why they don’t belong to an underground resistance movement struggling to overthrow the regime.
Cheers,
b&
I have a particularly naughty bobnobo here who thinks he should have salvation – because it’s in his nature to shag his enemies instead of bottling (*) them.
(does EN_US have “bottle” as a verb? Break a beer or wine bottle across someone’s head to stun them, then mess up their face with the broken end of the bottle. EN_GB_var-Glasgow)
When that theological point has been settled (that should take several eternities), there’s a necrotising fascititis bacterum here also requestion salvation. It’s fresh from providing for it’s offspring by chewing some metazoan’s sensory apparatus. (The metazoan in question – an elderly human – is not expected to survive the encounter.)
And note also that “to bottle someone” and “to bottle it” mean very different things.
Also “to loose ones bottle” both not knowing where your next drink is coming from and not having the courage to recognise the fact.
Somewhat off topic, but I think you’re wrong about Hitler sparing Jews who’d converted to Christianity. The Nazis defined “Jewishness” as a biological or racial category – they didn’t care about how devoutly (or not) you followed Judaism. Completely assimilated, secularised atheists born to Jewish parents, or even those who only had a Jewish grandparent or two, went to the same gas chambers as the ultra-orthodox. If the Nazis decided you had “Jewish blood” you couldn’t escape death by converting to Christianity.
It seems to me that I read somewhere that Hitler had Jewish ancestor(s). He would have saved us all some gawdawful events in history if he’d solved his familial problem by committing suicide.
I will be glad before dying that when I die, my molecules will be released into the universe to become something new and I won’t have to mull eternally over all the mistakes and terrible things I’d done before I died. And I won’t have to spend eternity listening to a bunch of nit-picky kvetchers.
I looked up the question of conversions. I couldn’t find much on conversions per se, but what I did find on Jews, converted and reclassified was both interesting and somewhat horrifying. Apparently in the 19th century there had been large number of conversions, many which were far enough back in time so it wasn’t a big problem for them. Also ex Jews numbered among those who participated in the persecutions of Jews.
Those considered mix blood were considered inferior, faced persecution but were not generally sent to the camps.
“Proof of Aryan descent was achieved by obtaining an Aryan certificate. One form was to acquire an Ahnenpass, which could be obtained by providing birth or baptismal certificates that all four grandparents were of Aryan descent.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws
“A reclassification approved by the Nazi party chancery and Hitler was considered an act of grace”
Hitler reviewed the applications personally. That must have slowed down the process.
“A second way of reclassification was by way of declaratory action in court. Usually the discriminated person took the action, questioning their descent from the Jewish-classified man until then regarded as their biological (grand)father.[14] Paternity suits aiming for reclassification (German: ‘Abstammungsverfahren’) appeared mostly with deceased, divorced, or illegitimate (grand)fathers.”
“The process was humiliating for the (grand)mothers who had to declare in court that they had committed adultery. The petitions were successful in the majority of cases.”
Not surprisingly grandmothers and grandfathers humiliated themselves and no doubt lied to get grandchildren out from under the spectre of the Nuremberg laws. I would for mine.
“The effective assimilation of Jews and Gentiles of Jewish descent into their Gentile (and Christian) surroundings made matters much more complicated than the Nazis had anticipated; widespread corruption, and lack of ethical moorings among many Nazi leaders, frequently gave way to bribery, extortion, and other subterfuges concerning documentation of who was, or was not, a Jew.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_of_Jews_to_Catholicism_during_the_Holocaust
The issue with Hitler was that he was unable to prove one of his grandparents was an Aryan, so technically he didn’t meet the criteria for full German citizenship. Whether that grandmother was Jewish is unknown.
As for conversion, that may not have worked with the Nazis, but did work with the Inquisition. If you converted to Catholicism you were spared being burned at the stake. These former Jews were known as Conversos, and were (of course) constantly being watched to ensure they weren’t practising Judaism in secret.
You’re pretty much correct – but that was Ben’s scenario, not mine.
For what little it is worth, there was a denomination which thought salvation would eventually apply to all, though I am not sure what they had in mind as to how this would happen. (the Universalists, now absorbed into the non-Christian UUs.)
Actually, Nazis did indeed send to the gas-chambers Jews who had converted to Christianity, notably Edith Stein.
One of Hitler’s first moves when taking over many of the Christian churches was to defrock any Christian minister with any Jewish ancestry.
IMO, the logic of Jesus’ sacrifice is still pretty phuqued up even if it saves everyone.
The substitutionary theory of Jesus’ death (mainly due to an 11th century monk names St. Anselm) remains morally incoherent.
Other viewpoints (Jesus as shock-absorber for evil, Jesus’ death as ransom paid to Satan, etc.) contain obscurantist mystification, but remain at least morally coherent. But it’s the damned substitution theory that remains the one that reigns in evangelical Christendom.
Meant to be a reply to Ben Goren above. Didn’t register that way.
Or, as Hitchens put it: “I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There’s no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man’s debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves.”
“And let’s not forget — Hitler kissed babies, gave some rousing sermons filled with all sorts of feel-good platitudes few can argue with, worked for youth education as well as retirement security, stood for strong economic policies, promoted traditional family values, and all sorts of other good things. Nobody has a problem with that side of Hitler”
– just nobody ever mentions it. (Except maybe the neo-Nazis, but I wouldn’t know, nobody ever listens to them).
I suppose it’s relevant in the context of how a modern civilised society could ever allow such an evil character as Hitler to come to power. There’s the answer.
cr
Sorry to interject here but it has to be said. Hitler did not spare Jews who converted to Christianity.
It didn’t matter. It was a blood-line thing. See ‘IBM and the Holocaust’ (Black) on where the blame lies for the machines that tabulated the records to make those determinations.
A christian, who is a science writer and has been all over the world still insists that Luke 19:27 is a “parable”, but when I have asked him twice what the parable means he never gives me any answer. Just silence! Nothing! Sounds to me that Jesus is claimed to want his disciples to kill those with their swords if people did not accept him. Also where Jesus is said that if a disciple did not have a sword to sell his cloak and buy a sword. Seems like wealthly people were his disciples instead of fishermen. If your cloak could be sold to buy a sword! Swords were expensive!
Luke 19 is, indeed, a parable…a parable in which the character whom Jesus quotes in verse 27 is a stand-in for Jesus himself, and in which the whole story is about the coming Armageddon where Jesus will personally slaughter all non-Christians before having them infinitely tortured by his brother.
Why a Christian would want to bring up those facts in defense of Jesus is utterly beyond me….
b&
>
Reading thqat exhcange of tweets about hell put in mind of Mark Twain’s classic “Heaven for climate, hell for society”
The evangelical meme that God does not send sinners to hell -they just choose it- seems to have originated with C.S. Lewis’ novel “The Great Divorce”.
Except Lewis was far more influenced by Eastern Orthodoxy than evangelicalism and in his novel it is the ability to love and to appreciate beauty that becomes the major criterion for entrance into heaven, not any particular creedal belief. Eastern Orthodox generally have no problem with Gandhi in heaven.
Christians who are glad Hitchens is (allegedly) in hell have a spirituality which is simply gratifying their arrogant self-satisfied egos, all the while claiming to “humbly” follow the Bible.
Universalism is the only really morally sound version of Christian belief.
From what I’ve observed, C.S. Lewis has become the single most pervasive influence in Christian apologetics.
I’ve seen Lewis referenced by Christians in many denominations, from Catholic to Protestant. His arguments arise implicitly, or explicitly referenced in many debates, and
I’ve yet to read a *sophisticated Christian thinker* (e.g. Plantinga, Craig, Catholic philosophers, etc) who did not reference or express admiration for Lewis’s work.
Lewis, for the most part, started with Enlightenment values and rewrote Christian theology to fit as best he could. It’s no wonder that he’s the foundation of modern liberal Christian theology.
Good thing, too. As deeply problematic as Lewis is, I’d far rather live in his fantasy worlds (Narnia) than the Biblical fantasy worlds that were most popular before. Aslan, despite his flaws, is a far more respectable character than Jesus.
Cheers,
b&
>
Interesting point.
Lewis was especially influenced by 19th century Romantic writers like the poet Wordsworth and the composer Richard Wagner all of whom re-appropriated Christian symbols for their own very different personal ends and aspirations. (An excellent study of this is the book “Natural Supernaturalism” by M.H. Abrams.)
IN addition, Lewis’ notion of what Christianity is is cobbled together far more from Christian epic poets like Dante, Spenser, and Milton, than it is from theologians like Luther, Aquinas, or Wesley. That’s why his “Mere Christianity” seems kind of traditional on the surface, but is less so the more you unpack it.
He has no problem with non-Christians in heaven, evolution, and he doesn’t believe at all in the standard-issue interpretation of Jesus’ death as a substitutionary sacrifice to a vengeful father deity.
“The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” goes with a belief widespread in early Christianity that Jesus’ death was a ransom payed to the devil, rather than to a father-god demanding substitutionary payback.
I’m not sure Lewis is the “foundation” of Christian liberal theology so much as the guy who unconsciously popularized it and injected it into the mainstream thinking.
Actual founding figures would by various 19th century Germans such as Friedrich Schleiermacher.
However, your point is still well-taken.
Thanks for this. I always learn from your and Ben Goren’s posts.
I always wondered if Clive Staples Lewis popularity began its rise during about 2005 with the movie release of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. If one goes back into the archives of the various apologetic sites during the 1990’s with the rise of the internet, one can nary see a peep of Lewis.
I suppose Lewis’s popularity rise during the mid 2000’s was likely due to the spectacular success of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (LOTR) movies from 2001 through 2003. Remember John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and Lewis were buddies so the motion picture industry adapted Lewis’s novels into films and tried to duplicate the very successful LOTR movies that included several Academy Awards. Christian apologists then took note of his other apologetical works, thus beginning his rise to fame over 50 years after his death. Indeed, several Christian apologists make hay of his death occurring the same day as the assassination of the John F. Kennedy.
Typo error. Please change 50 years to “40” years!
Indeed, C.S. Lewis, JFK, and Aldous Huxley all died on Nov. 22, 1963.
Somehow no Christian apologist has dealt with Huxley’s paeans to mescalin-induced mystical experiences in “The Doors of Perception” as a consequence. (The phrase is from William Blake. The rock group “The Doors” named themselves after Huxley’s book.)
Ah yes, I forgot about Huxley. I am not sure when christian apologists began heralding Brave New World (BNW), but I do not recall them referring to the novel and Huxley during the late 1970’s with the rise of artificial insemination. Rather during the early 2000’s with the rise of stem cell research did apologists refer to Huxley and BNW.
Lewis’ popularity was greatly magnified in the 2000s due to the films, but it really began much earlier.
I seem to remember Christians referencing Lewis on alt.atheism in the mid to late 90s, so it is at least from then. (I think the alt.atheism FAQ even mentions the ridiculous “liar, lunatic or lord” false trilemma.)
I read the entire Chronicles of Narnia around 1990, well before the popularity of Lord of the Rings. My father was also a big fan of The Screwtape Letters by Lewis. He seemed to have a lot of popularity, but I grew up in conservative Catholic circles, so it’s hardly a stretch to imagine that what was popular there may not have reached mainstream Christian popularity yet. If I recall, Protestantism was more caught up in the Rock N’ Roll is Satan fad back then. Between that and the Satanic baby sacrificing rituals plaguing the United States at the time, there was likely little time for concerning oneself with literature.
I always tell them that atheists have as much chance of going to hell as xtians do of going to Valhalla.
They don’t get that since they don’t believe Valhalla actually exists, they’re sure they’re not going there. Somehow that logic escapes them when it comes to the way an atheist might think.
I’m tempted to wish that jamokes like Denise would burn on earth, but (unlike burning in hell) that could actually happen, so I’d feel bad. (Not that my wishing it so makes it anymore likely.)
It has always seemed unfair to me that when it comes to whether there is an afterlife, theists will never know if they’re wrong and atheists will never know if they’re right.
True, sort of, for the Christian who goes to the grave believing in an afterlife.
But I submit it’s not true in the case of atheists. We don’t have to die to know there is no afterlife. All evidence points to consciousness ceasing at death – as sure a conclusion as anything else we know…so we already know.
… therefore, be a theist!
(Variant of Pascal’s Wager, I think?)
cr
I suppose we all understand that the headline refers to *some* Christians and certainly not all of them. Hopefully, not even most of them.
cr
When talking with believers I simply tell them that there simply is no real evidence for any heaven, hell, soul, afterlife. That those are simply religious ideas that people have held especially before the rise of modern scientific knowledge and if people were to deal with actual evidence based on the latest scientific knowledge like they actually do when they go to a doctor or a hospital rather than stay home and pray and save their money. Also when in discussions with the religious I have a series to questions for them to answer! We can use science to answer some religious claims!
Its hard to engage with Idiots.
When I was at school the term “pocket pool player” was innuendo at the expense of someone who had the habit of walking around with his hands in his pockets.
So, reading the second bio did not convey the meaning I suspect the author intended, but it did suggest an appropriate epithet.