Young Australian Skeptics

Part one, part two and part three…now here’s part four!

“Physical death is the first down payment for the wages of sin. After death, there is hell to pay.”

In true biblical fashion, Ray opens his third chapter with that quote without any reference or citation to let us know who it actually came from. (A brief internet search turned up that it was a Ray Comfort original; opening a chapter with your own quote seems poor form somehow…) If it seems that there’s a long break between articles on this book, consider that I’m giving it exactly the time it deserves.

But enough of that — onto the chapter itself. The main thrust of the third chapter has to do with punishment — both a response to the accusation that the Christian hell is little more than fear-​​mongering, and the advancing of the idea that there must be a god so that the evil can be punished when they die.

On the first account, Ray seems to almost accept this criticism to the point that he admits that the threat of hell is certainly enough to instill fear in a man. He justifies this, however, by saying that of course for him it’s not fear-​​mongering because, well, hell is real gosh-​​dangit!

Naturally, he is unable to produce any evidence on this matter, and is unable to even mount a cogent argument as to WHY we should believe him. Instead, he resorts to emotional blackmail, preying on the widespread fear of death and asking what an atheist could possibly say to their child on the subject. We, it is argued, must tell them nasty things that are not encouraging at all, while…

“Christians don’t need to cop out when that question is asked. We can tell our children how we were created (you don’t know), why we were created (you don’t know), why we are all going to die (you don’t know), what happens after death (you don’t know), and what we can do about it (you refuse to listen to that one).”

Of course that, according to Ray, is the end of that discussion and he soon moves on to other topics — in this case an uncited ‘millions of people’ paralysed daily by the fear of death — without so much as an attempt to justify his outrageous assertion not only that he knows all the answers but that as atheists we are unable to bring anything of worth to the table. Quite frankly, it’s insulting. If I ever did have children, unlucky sods though they may be, I’d not tell them a convenient lie just to make them and myself feel better somehow — the very act of implanting false hope and untruths in a young child’s head seems to me quite immoral. There will always be uncomfortable truths. Time and lies do not and cannot make them go away.

The other main drive of the chapter has to do with the need Ray and so many other Christians perceive for universal justice. In one section on this, Ray advances the idea that,

“If you were reasonable…we all know that hell exists because we know intuitively that God is good. And if He is good, He must by nature punish a man who has tied up and raped three teenage girls, and then one by one, strangled them to death. In this case, justice delated is not justice denied.”

Again, Ray is basing his entire argument on paper thin wishful thinking, and more than that he is clearly shaping his god to fit his own notions of justice.

First, the obvious: Just because we may want all acts of evil punished does not necessarily mean that they will be. As comforting as the idea that a man like John Wayne Gacy might receive more punishment that was able to be alotted to him in life may be, it runs contrary to everything we currently know about the mind to suggest that in some way it might survive death.

Next is that somewhat less obvious point — that this god Ray is talking about is fashioned after Ray’s own notions of good, evil and appropriate punishment. Think on this — does a good god have to punish evil? In some ways, it could be argued that a truly good god could not, as doing so would be stooping to a lower moral level. Either way, it is easy to conceive of a good god who does not punish evil — perhaps the mere sight and glory of this god inspires regret and remorse for crimes far beyond anything we could know on Earth, effecting a complete understanding and empathy for victims, and a complete rehabilitation. Ray’s argument that a good god must necessarily entail hell is a reflection not about any analytic fact about a ‘good god’, but instead stem from his own desires to see his conception of evil punished.

Personally, I find the concept of eternal punishment completely repulsive and out of proportion for any act one could commit on Earth. While there are many who would probably make exception at this point for the truly vile, I honestly cannot — Hitler, being a stock standard example, I could not with good conscience consign to a literal eternity of punishment. Remember that when we discuss an eternity in this fashion it is not hyperbole — the meaning is quite plain: Torturous punishment, in hell, forever. I could certainly send him away for a great long time — I imagine that if he were forced to live the lives of every man, woman and child killed under his regime; know the discrimination, the torture and the fear, wasting away to nothing until finally death came brutally and far too soon…then I might imagine that he had been punished enough. But even for the most heinous bastards to ever live among us, eternal punishment seems wildly out of proportion.

Since we are discussing heinous bastards, I’d like to end now on a point I think Ray makes much better than I ever could:

“If the skeptic still wants to complain that God killed women and children in the Old Testament, he should realize that He did more than that. He proclaimed the death sentence on the entire human race — every man, woman, and child.”

Remind me again why such a tyrant is worthy of respect, and above all why he should be considered the standard for an objective moral system?

Tags: book, Ray Comfort, Richard Hughes

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 8:30 am and is filed under Atheist, Religion, Richard Hughes, Skeptic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.