Questions for Christians: Hell

This post is the first in a series I am planning, the purpose of which is to pose questions to Christians who come here (or go anywhere, for that matter) with the intent of converting us to Christianity, but also with an open mind about their own faith. I won't pretend that my ultimate goal isn't to have you deconvert from Christianity, but forget about that for now; each post for the time being will focus on a particular aspect of the Christian faith that the Christian would benefit from reconsidering.

We'll start with the following four questions about the doctrine of Hell, that being a place where the wicked and unrepentant will be tortured for all eternity after death. If you don't believe that Hell exists, or is such a place, then these questions won't apply to you -- but they will apply to most evangelical Christians.



1. How do you know that Hell exists?

Being an atheist, I don't believe that the Bible is completely true, or even largely true, so citing the Bible as evidence that Hell exists won't work on me. If the Bible is the only thing you have to go with, however, then our next discussion can focus on whether the Bible can be considered reliable evidence for anything at all.

Obviously -- at least I hope you find it as obvious as I do -- the fact that a large number of people might believe in something isn't proof of anything. Nor are near-death experiences of such a place, as these have been explained as processes of the physical brain. So how do you know Hell even exists?



2. How can Hell possibly be moral?

How can an all-loving God allow, still less create, a place of eternal torture? Doesn't torturing, or threatening to torture, a person indicate that you hate them, rather than love them and want a relationship with them?

Some apologists say that God doesn't send people to Hell, rather we send ourselves through sin. In the first place, however, we did not create Hell, God did, so this doesn't answer why God would deliberately create a place of eternal torture for those who disobeyed him. (Some will say that Satan, not God, created Hell -- but even if that unlikely scenario were the case, the fact remains that God seems to have no problem in making use of the place.)

In the second place, nobody ever chooses to be tortured. Ask any waterboarding victim if he chose to undergo that procedure. (Journalist and outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens did voluntarily undergo the procedure, for the sake of an article he was writing -- he confirmed that it was indeed a form of torture, and that he would never do it again.) Ask any political prisoner if they would choose to be tortured. They never make that choice -- even in disobeying their captors, knowing that torture would be the result; that is not tantamount to choosing to accept torture, as the captors simply do not have the moral right to do that. Hell is flat-out immoral in any human sense of the word.

Would you respond, then, that Hell, while immoral by human standards, is moral by God's standards? If you allow that human and divine moral standards can diverge so widely, then you must also concede that other things which we consider immoral might be considered perfectly moral by God. Such as lying to humans. Such as telling us that we'll be saved if we accept Jesus and so forth, when he in fact has no intention of saving us, but intends to throw everyone, Christian and atheist alike, into Hell. Along with Hell, Christians can't provide any evidence that a single person is currently in Heaven. So the question remains: How can Hell possibly be moral?



3. How can Hell possibly be just?

This is a separate question from the above: it refers to the justice, or lack thereof, in subjecting a person to infinite punishment for finite crimes. If a person's only crime is jaywalking, you don't give him the punishment that you would give to a mass murderer; that would be gross injustice. With humans, every crime we could possibly commit, against man or God, is finite, and therefore merits finite punishment. But Hell is forever. It is infinite punishment. How, then, can it be a just punishment for any crime humans commit during our lives?

Some Christians say that, because the crimes are committed against an infinite being, they are of infinite magnitude. However, a defining characteristic of a crime is that it causes harm, either directly to its victims or indirectly to a society -- thus, humans can never commit a crime against God, as finite beings can only inflict zero or negligible harm on an infinite being.

Another unjust aspect of Hell is the impossibility of release; even if a person repents in Hell and is genuinely sorry for what they have done and is prepared to accept Christ, the vast majority of Christian sects teach that there will be no release for them. We are told that God will accept any sincere repentance from someone on Earth, regardless of what prompted it -- why would the same not apply in Hell? There can be no non-arbitrary answer to this question. So once again: how can Hell possibly be just?



4. Why is Hell necessary?

Why did God feel the need to create such a place in the first place? (Those who say that Satan, not God, created Hell, see above.)

The common answer here is that God has no choice, that he is incapable of existing in the presence of sin, and that Hell is the only metaphysical alternative to his own realm. But if that answer is true, then God is not God. Because God is, by definition, all-powerful -- he can handle the problem, quite literally, any way he wants to.

God could extinguish souls rather than subject them to torture. He could create another metaphysical realm, something like Earth, and keep them there until they get it right. He could simply forgive them unconditionally, snap his fingers (so to speak) to "cleanse" the soul of sin, and admit them into Heaven. To deny that God is capable of any of these things is to deny that God is all-powerful, thus to deny that God is God, and hence to admit that you are an atheist.

The only reason I can think of for God to create and/or make use of a realm such as Hell is because he is sadistic and enjoys the suffering of others. But, of course, this is incompatible with the existence of an all-loving God. So I ask again: why is Hell necessary?



If the Christian wants us to take the concept of Hell seriously, as something more than an evangelistic tactic to try to coerce us into becoming Christians, then the very least he or she must do is provide satisfactory answers to all four of these questions. To my knowledge -- and I have studied philosophy of religion intensively for over a decade -- this has never been done. If you are able to do it, you would be the first. Do you think you can do it? Or do you think you had better rethink the whole Hell thing?