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Introduction: Yahweh (a more popular of Biblical names for Christians' deity) is supposedly a "loving" god because He offers forgiveness to mankind despite Eve and Adam, the first created humans, who perverted humanity with their all-defining "Original Sin" - eating from the one forbidden tree (the Tree of Knowledge, ironically) in their paradisaical Garden of Eden. Indeed, this very offense sufficed ending the great fortune of life in the grandeur of Eden, which was made, accordingly, with perfection by God specially for them (whom he'd made in "His Own Image"). Nonetheless, though, this castigation from the paradise of Eden was dispersed not only upon them, but for ALL SUCCESSIVE HUMANITY. Comparatively, thus, we human beings are forever petty, whereas God is the All-Powerful Creator whom we must worship unquestioningly, despite that He inflicted a world of strife upon us. That's a literal AND figurative statement, considering how the "just" wrath of god is implemented rampantly throughout the Bible, firstly. Secondly, and most obvious, are the delusions theists rationalize to pretend away His overall amoral absence. For instance, whenever good comes Christians' way, they scream, "Praise the Lord!", yet they fail to acknowledge the 99 % percent "margin of error" (so to speak ) when praying is ineffective. After all, if praying really worked, God surely would have ended the excessive suffering of the seven billion people on this planet, no? Nevertheless, in response, I hereby purport a compelling counterargument to Christians' faulty, ever-weaker conviction:
First of all, I must make plain that my STRONG conviction is that - within the hypothetical basis that "God" (as Christians define "Him", that is), "Heaven", and "Hell" all indeed exist - this described God is the most revolting character I have ever known of. (Yes, ALL people who live or have lived on Earth are included in that; i.e. Hitler, Stalin.) And why is it that I contain less than no respect for God? Why, specifically, is it that I couldn't be farther from a feeling of remotest admiration, irrespectively, for the alleged Christian being in question? How could I be so vocally inflammatory, so resentfully misinformed about a God who desperately offers all of us eternal bliss in Heaven? I have answers for that myself, one logical and one illustratively obvious: God may offer his heaven to minute proportions of well-intended people in his scripture, but how can I prioritize on a God who has no problem apathetically sentencing those he created and "loves" to eternal torment? Second, if nothing else, imperative a mention is how scientifically unlawful it is to eternally punish anyone. This can be proved by a simple mathematical equation: A mortal lifetime is finite; eternity is infinite. And regardless, it is ever-noteworthy that the reason preventing the overwhelming majority of people from acquiring eternal life in Heaven is unfathomably cruel, apathetic, and most of all, absolutely BASELESS: accordingly, mere disbelief in Christianity is universally penalized, injudicious or not, with damnation in Hell, the (vividly-described no less) brimstone of torturous, eternal fire. And yet, what a loving, forgiving god.
A lack of Christian faith is sufficient to be consigned to eternal torment, but how could a nonbeliever deserve such a consequence (not to mention non-Christian theists and deists who stand massively respectable in the world)? People usually have good reasons to NOT identify with the three in four Americans who are Christians; and how could a loving God have the strength to fathom such unthinkable destruction? How could "He" have even ONCE in the fourteen billion years since time first began have entertained such an option?! A nonbeliever astray this illogical, totally immoral "divine" scriptural principle doesn't deserve the Hell injustice, nor does even the most heinous criminal in history! (I'm a faithful Jew but even HITLER could not have earned eternal torment, an impossibility within any mortal's temporary lifetime.) But in case you believe I am some sort of immoral person, let's first try to detail and define the "crime" that dooms nearly every member of the human race into eternal torment: The absolute only way to evade the fires of Hell, according to, all-imperatively, Ephesians 2: 8-9, is to contain 100 % confidence in Jesus alone, and then he will redeem your sins; Paul, the prime inscriber in the New Testament, ensures that it's clearer than ever that by no consideration whatsoever do good works salvage even one "sinner."
The very remarkable, one quite refreshing exception to this rule of thumb lay specifically in Catholicism, because of its two exclusive additions to the afterlife complex: First, that those who accumulate more good works than sins have a chance at receiving the kingdom of Heaven eventually, because they believe in a third temporal of neither eternal torment nor joy called "Purgatory." God allegedly offers this temporary banishment for non-Christians in order to cleanse away sins (their due "tithe" perhaps, in a manner of speaking). Very controversially, however, this concept originates from seven books that only Catholics include in the Bible, called the "Apocrypha." (It is noteworthy to generalize that most Catholics altogether place less emphasis on misplacing elitist exclusion for themselves as the sole right ones; you know, that which fills the churches of Protestants in many, if not most cases.) For this Catholics get a slight bit of credit on my part, considering at the least they place value on good works. It is completely insane and irrational, in contrast, how Protestants not only claim that faith ALONE can save your soul, but that all sins are also equal; how absurd it is to compare stealing a penny from someone to murder!!
With that said, on to sociological repercussions of the Hell phenomena, the first address the most common: Have you ever met a born-again Christian? You probably have, I certainly have, and you may find that to be tailgating to my argument in being a common event. After all, I continuously claim Christianity is a belief brainwashed into people's minds since the moment of each Christian's birth, and yet born-again Christians contradict that theory, right? No, but I can understand why my argument may seem less believable at the current juncture, given the unique role that born-again Christians play in the equation. So, in order to reassert my theory's insolubility, now I will decorate my argument with two additional points that shall squarely invalidate my opposition in spite of any likely-present doubts! Wait and you'll see -- above everything, after all, what two forces always brings in the "Born-again" demographic substantively across the board?
These two emotions are thrown at them brutally - Christianity was foreign a custom only moments before - because the horror Christians preach await every sinner is absolutely the worst piece of news you could ever hear if you believed it to be true. Most likely, a converted will have never paid regard considerably their entire lives, thereafter newborn with the terror of contemplating such an abomination possible. It is a fear too great to chance to most listeners, be it logical or illogical,who then rationalize the new repugnance through themselves.
Moreover, most of these Christian converters appear to be some of the nicest people imaginable, and what's better is that Christianity offers forgiveness in return for everything. Forgiveness is second because the relative majority of these people are cajoled as the converters admonish them over most often a traumatic life experience (and usually a recent one, too). Needless to say, the idea of removing every bullet of guilt in exchange for a single prayer to Jesus makes eternal bliss in Heaven sound a hell of a lot better than the limits of worldly therapy. Thus, the ultimate gift of perfection completely leaves the Hell thoughts behind as those of Heaven far more pleasantly supplement (obviously); and hence, such is precisely when the phenomena of Heaven and Hell take over - the very point at which, uncontrollably, the converts are deceptively led into banishing their conscious sensibilities...
Pity.
Moving on, let's discuss more about fear, the most formidable of the two emotions that's preyed upon secular individuals. The saying goes 'the only thing to fear is fear itself', and I strongly resonate to this more than anything else. Fear creates the mass of "born-again" Christians within America's 75 % Christian make-up; the price to pay rests in how Christians so often look down at a totally well intentioned nonbeliever with superiority.
Given, Protestants could not be clearer that the only path to Heaven lay in the "free will" to receive or not to receive free redemption from Jesus and ONLY Jesus, the savior and Lord Christ. Unappreciative of the nonbeliever's good works because of failure to acknowledge the "savior", the believer's blind devotion is prone to creating resentment and adversity between believers and nonbelievers alike. No matter how much history, science, rationale, or any argument whatsoever that compels otherwise, the expectation is that nonbelievers MUST and SHOULD "see the light." Fear, thus is too potent to leave them anything less than unabashed under the spell of the Heaven & Hell complex, and Christians cover any skepticism by immersing in compulsive paranoia.
That's the very nightmare I call Christianity, frankly.
One final point remains that easily Christians and nonbelievers collectively can accept non-threateningly: the war that raged in Heaven, referenced to in Revelations 12:9: "This great dragon--the ancient serpent called the Devil, or Satan, the one deceiving the whole world--was thrown down to the earth with all his angels." (Indeed, in the supposed perfect kingdom of only "peace" and perfection, in the reaches of God's home after all, a war occurred.) It was at the hands of Satan, then the most favored angel of God's, who declared war on the Heavens in excessive jealousy and paranoia after no longer being able to cope with seeing God cherish all the rest of his angels, too.Yes, believe it or not, all this ruckus is what invented (or evolved into, literally) original sin and Hell and all the rest of the ballistic ideologies, at least that's how I FIRMLY consider Christianity to be. The Prince of Darkness had an only child complex and something like Borderline Personality Disorder, and these untreated disorders led him to damn humanity. Talk about a cruel dose of passive aggression, wouldn't you agree?
A nonbeliever and even a believer should be baffled by the actions that followed Satin's possessive, apathetic motivations of discontent; God loved Lucifer very much, the most favored angel as noted (which contradicts the EQUAL love God SUPPOSEDLY has for all creation),so the love Satan had received was not embellished for the rest of the angels. The scripture describes the desire Lucifer retained out of a failure to receive help for Hell-sized psychoses. But stepping back, what allowed Satan the demented power to collude many other fellow angels into a coalition to overthrow God? Could it not be said, rules of blasphemy aside, that God contaminated his perfect Heaven with defected creations?
The Bible also states that God knows the final path every one of his creations will choose prior to their being alive. So basically God consigns everyone to their ultimate end with his tricking fast-hand, then, thereby making the future beyond the determination of human freewill, right??!! Not to mentioned the fact that he in turn foresaw the consequential creation of the eternal torment in the brimstone of fire. Is that just? In fact,why does god create sociopaths (most who are BORN, not made) who disrupt society with cold heart, murder, abuse, trauma, rape etc.? Clearly, also god predetermined Satan to become so evil in order to leave him an inch from the clutches of humans without any mercy. Established. Now, consider this: Satan's banishment led to what? The temptation in the Garden of Eden that marked original sin upon all of humanity! Yes, all-"loving" as He supposedly is, God prefixes his Afterlife (so to speak) so that He is "forced" to terminate the life and soul of most His creations; God is so loving in fact, He essentially labels each creation as follows endlessly as just the next victim of Hell's brimstone (yes, VICTIM)...
Undeniably, the world has provided me with a billion follow-up victims since time began, torment-to-torment, but now god provides an illogical, both scientifically and historically, fallacy: This religion is without ONE direct shred of evidence to Jesus of Nazareth (circumstantial "likelihoods" are not enough when eternal torment is at stake), nor any universal offer of mercy. Greedily, nearly everyone will receive what Satan did, mostly for absolutely nothing. But as for the rest of you assured Christians who plan on sauntering your way to Heaven, have you ever entertained the thought that if one war broke out in Heaven, surely a second could just as well (or possibly already has)? Ever wondered yourselves what kind of secret plans God alone foresees without change?
Conclusion: I think the whole thing made ONE great happening, Paradise Lost, one of the most famous epic poems conceived creatively from what I feel is not half-bad fiction; but on every other hand, it is hard to unconcernedly disregard that society has suffered a psychological PANDEMIC that breeds contagiously. It is an arguably conspiratorial production dominating the Christian religion (and/or franchise, depending on your perspective). Nonetheless, the Scripture lacks the ability to mobilize my character at all (too many abominations, too many headaches, I suppose), as it doesn't provide any reason for me to believe that it's anything more than the muses of clearly immoral, seemingly uneducated men. This single essay - based on intelligence, common sense, morality, and the Bible's own scriptures alone - hence why the "Heaven & Hell" concept falls in order among the many impossible Biblical fallacies. But if nothing else, please encourage others to remember the three critical words that fill in the blanks next time the topic arises, both nonbelievers and believers alike:
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