RobertMadewell wrote: I want people to realize how absurd and ridiculous the doctrine of hell is. The best way to do that is to tell them exactly what it is that christianity teaches.
DAR
Well it just so happens, making fun of the doctrine of hell is one of my favorite pastimes. Here are some quotes that help make the point:
"...Nothing should be denied to the blessed which belongs to the perfection of their beatitude. Now all things are the better known for being compared with their contrary. Consequently, in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful and that they may give to God more copious thanks for it, they are permitted perfectly to behold the sufferings of the damned... the saints will rejoice in the punishment of the damned."
--St. Thomas Aquinas, SUMMA THEOLOGICA, III, qu. 94
And why do we have a hell?
"God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation. "
--John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion.
Will those in heaven feel sad for those suffering in hell?
"Can the believing husband in heaven be happy with his unbelieving wife in hell? Can the believing father in heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in hell? Can the loving wife in heaven be happy with her unbelieving husband in hell? I tell you, yea. Such will be their sense of justice, that it will increase rather than diminish their bliss." --Jonathan Edwards, quoted by Ingersoll in The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
If it doesn't make sense now don't worry, it will later:
"To say that the blessed will delight in the torture of the damned is hard because God is just, and because all his acts reasonably should bring joy to the righteous, some Christians are still driven to the conclusion that the faithful will indeed rejoice in the misery of unbelievers. One professor (in a mainline denominational seminary,...) found the logic so compelling he often said to his students, "Once we see the glory of Christ, and the hideous nature of sin as God sees it, hell will be understandable. If my own mother were being carried to the mouth of hell, I would stand and applaud."
--William V. Crockett, Four views on Hell. pg. 47-48
And what of the unborn and new born children who die without getting to accept Jesus?
"...little children who have begun to live in their mothers' womb and have there died, or who, having just been born, have passed away from the world without the sacrament of holy baptism... must be punished by the eternal torture of undying fire."
--quoted in "Hell, A Christian Doctrine"
Rather than torture the vast majority of his creation for all eternity, why can't God just let us cease to exist?
"...annihilation would be demeaning both to the love of God and to the nature of human beings as free moral creatures... This would be like a father telling his son he wanted him to be a doctor, and, when he chose instead to be a park ranger, the father shot him! Eternal suffering is an eternal testimony to the freedom and dignity of humans, even unrepentant humans."
—Geisler & Howe, When Critics Ask (pg. 494)
Now lets finish with some Ingersoll:
"Who can estimate the misery that has been caused by this infamous doctrine of eternal punishment? Think of the lives it has blighted *of the tears it has caused* of the agony it has produced. Think of the millions who have been driven to insanity by this most terrible of dogmas. This doctrine renders God the basest and most cruel being in the universe. Compared with him, the most frightful deities of the most barbarous and degraded tribes are miracles of goodness and mercy. There is nothing more degrading than to worship such a god. Lower than this the soul can never sink."
--Robert Ingersoll, Heretics and Heresies
"Tell me there is a God in the serene heavens that will damn his children for the expression of an honest belief! More men have died in their sins, judged by your orthodox creeds, than there are leaves on all the forests in the wide world ten thousand times over. Tell me these men are in hell; that these men are in torment; that these children are in eternal pain, and that they are to be punished forever and forever! I denounce this doctrine as the most infamous of lies."
--Ingersoll, Man, Woman and Child
"Neither by word nor look have I expressed any other feeling than sympathy with those who hope to live again -- for those who bend above their dead and dream of life to come. But I have denounced the selfishness and heartlessness of those who expect for themselves an eternity of joy, and for the rest of mankind predict, without a tear, a world of endless pain. Nothing can be more contemptible than such a hope -- a hope that can give satisfaction only to the hyenas of the human race."
--Ingersoll, "A Reply to the Rev. Henry M. Field, D.D."
And Ingersoll is exactly right. That's what these people who teach the doctrine of hell are, hyenas.
Darrel.
-------------------
"Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous."
-- George Santayana (The Life of Reason: Reason in Art, 1905-6)
Good little video clip about
hell.