{"id":92903,"date":"2018-04-08T01:13:35","date_gmt":"2018-04-08T05:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/?p=92903"},"modified":"2018-04-15T01:46:55","modified_gmt":"2018-04-15T05:46:55","slug":"hawking-in-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/hawking-in-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawking in Hell?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/g8zY1KjQrQo\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I am told that various Christians went on record gloating over the passing of the great astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and contemplating his arrival in the magma pit of Hell. Hawking\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s damning sin? Well, of course, he was an atheist, and what other destination would be fitting? Any mature person will deplore what John Beversluis called a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153chop-licking attitude\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at the prospect of one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ideological opponents frying in the Inferno. These \u00e2\u20ac\u0153schadenfreudians\u00e2\u20ac\u009d are like cruel children, and it would be equally silly to take them as typical Christians. But their frank sadism does raise an important question about Christianity per se. Are these gloating believers hypocrites, acting in contradiction to the faith they claim to represent? Or are they consistent with that faith?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The problem is not a contradiction between such spiteful hate on the one hand and Christian belief on the other, much as we might want it to be. No, the problem is a contradiction between aspects of the Christian faith itself. It bids us go in two different directions. Some Christians proceed in one direction, the rest in the other. Even if we are non-Christians, we wish we could say that Christian faith includes a noble moral stance, fostering forgiveness and compassion. And indeed it does. But there is a fatal Tse-tse fly in the ointment. And of course that is the doctrine of an eternal Hell for those who do not accept the Christian belief.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Of course Christians deny that it is a simple matter of one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s choice of religion. They realize how unfair and arbitrary that sounds. How cruel and arbitrary that would be. So they try to ameliorate that offense by telling us (and themselves) that there is much more to it! And what is that? Wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be good works, would it? Roman Catholics seem to add works to faith, as if we must make ourselves worthy of the grace of God, whatever that might mean. Eastern Orthodox Christians believe in synergism: we must work together with God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grace for it to save us. But traditional Protestants want to stick with Martin Luther\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dicta of Sola fidei, Sold gratia (Faith alone\/grace alone. Two \u00e2\u20ac\u0153alones\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Well, yes, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re both sides of the same coin: nothing but God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grace can save us, but we must wittingly receive it or it will never really be ours. God throws out a lifeline, but the drowning man must take hold of it. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if that gets them out of the jam. If it were all simply a matter of grace, we would have Christian Universalism: everybody is saved whether they know it or not! Jesus did not merely try to save humanity, and with partial results. No, he did save the human race. He didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just provide the cure, like a chemist; he actually administered it, like a doctor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Another route of attempted escape is the claim that belief is a necessary but not a sufficient condition; you must have (i.e., you must experience) a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153personal relationship with Christ.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But this seems logically quite different from the transaction of trading belief in Christ\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s atonement for the dropping of the charges against you as a sinner. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not clear what the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153personal relationship\u00e2\u20ac\u009d business would have to do with all the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Protestant Latin,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d you know: justification, regeneration, expiation, propitiation, etc. Besides, it simply adds a kind of religious sentimentalism to correct doctrinal belief as a second qualification for salvation. It is essentially the same principle expounded by the United Pentecostal Church: you must speak in tongues in order to be saved. And this is supposed to be better than \u00e2\u20ac\u0153salvation by works\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see how it makes sense for Stephen Hawking to be condemned to eternal torment for not having prayerful, tearful devotions every day, for failing to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153have a little talk with Jesus.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Damned to the endless flames for not agreeing with an unprovable assertion about an invisible and intangible being?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But I said the real contradiction pointed up by some (I hope few) fundamentalists spitting on Hawking\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grave centers on a crucial element in Christian theology. I have always loved the joke that explains how the Unitarians and the Universalists finally got together. The Universalists said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153God is too good to send anyone to Hell,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and the Unitarians said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re too good to go there!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s truth in that. No one deserves endless torment, not even fiends like Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. Yeah, they deserve plenty of retribution all right, but endless torture? Come on. If that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the way God runs things, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worse than them! No, that can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be, at least if all the talk about God being a loving Father has any truth to it. So, yes, Virginia, God is too good to send people to Hell.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/hell.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-92905\" src=\"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/hell.jpeg\" alt=\"hell\" width=\"1005\" height=\"550\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/hell.jpeg 1005w, https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/hell-300x164.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/hell-768x420.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1005px) 100vw, 1005px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">And there is danger in thinking he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I mean. Your God is by definition your ultimate standard of morality. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Matthew 5:48). But suppose you have been taught that God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s perfection includes, is compatible with, his willingness to condemn people to unending torture. It is the greatest, most outrageous, harmonization of a biblical contradiction ever attempted, and theologians have long tried simply to split the difference between God as Love and God as the Lord of Damnation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">For most Christians, this harmonization is merely a trick of theoretical, theological damage control, just public relations. It is not an existential problem for them. They really only care about God as the loving Father. The notion of him consigning his creatures to the Hellocaust is really just a pesky distraction, no more important than whether the mustard seed is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the smallest seed on the earth\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Mark 4:31).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">What do such Christians say when an outsider raises the question? It is something of a relief to hear them reply that they wish it were not true that unbelievers are doomed to Hell, but that they are obliged to believe it is, unfortunately. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like believing that the Nazi Holocaust happened: you wish it hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, but that hardly gives you the right to deny that it did, right? At least this response is better than that of the Christians who rejoice that poor Hawking is now rotating on a spit over the flames of Hell. But it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t resolve the contradiction. In fact, aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the more compassionate Christians implicitly admitting the existence of the contradiction? And are they not admitting that their own moral conscience is superior to that of the God who, unlike them, does not seem to mind torturing his creatures?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Oh, but perhaps God is just as pained and regretful at having to send these poor sinners to Hell! He has no choice! They should have taken him up on his offer of amnesty. Thus they have only themselves, not God, to blame. This is doubly absurd. On the one hand, to say, as apologists do, that the sinner chose Hell when he could have chosen heaven is ridiculous, especially in the case of someone like Stephen Hawking, who knew there was insufficient reason to believe in either Hell or the Gospel. C.S. Lewis said he was not asking anyone to accept Christianity against his better judgment, since that must poison \u00e2\u20ac\u0153faith\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with intellectual dishonesty. Too bad God does not, on the standard reading, take such an open-minded view!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">On the other hand, why should God \u00e2\u20ac\u0153have to\u00e2\u20ac\u009d send anyone to Hell? Is he bound by some rules that are superior to himself, like Zeus, helpless before the Fates? Jesus does not seem to think so when he petitions his Father, saying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153all things are possible for thee\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Mark 14:36)?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I say there is danger in believing (pretending) that a loving God can damn people to eternal suffering and still be a loving God. The danger is that you may feel entitled to make room in your heart for cruelty and gloating. After all, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all right for God! And this seems to be precisely the thinking of the theological sadists who relish the thought of Hawking or Gandhi or anybody else going to Hell. You see, they are not being inconsistent with their faith, which would make them hypocrites. No, they are being consistent with a self-contradictory faith. We can only be glad that most Christians do not make the logical connection. But we would be even gladder if they did see the logic of it and purge their faith of this terrible contradiction.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">So says Zarathustra.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/god.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-92904\" src=\"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/god.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"331\" height=\"398\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/god.png 331w, https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/god-249x300.png 249w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 331px) 100vw, 331px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am told that various Christians went on record gloating over the passing of the great astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and contemplating his arrival in the magma pit of Hell. Hawking\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s damning sin? Well, of course, he was an atheist, and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/hawking-in-hell\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}