Quote of the Day, by John W. Loftus

Christians are not bothered in the least that they are risking Allah’s hell by not being Muslims. We all risk the hell of other religions. All I do is risk one more hell than what others do. Once I risk one hell they all look like nothing but empty threats.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well stated, John. It almost results in a variation of the popular Stephen Roberts quote about dismissing all possible gods. When you understand why you risk all the other possible hells, you will understand why I risk yours.

-Louis

Lazarus said...

It sounds silly now but this simple argument helped me a lot years ago when I was leaving Christianity. I got "advised" at a lunch by a Muslim that I better get my life in order and revert to Islam or else I would spend an eternity in Allah's hell blah blah. It upset me, but after a while it also hit me like a train - that they are all full of it, that I have never given Allah's torture chamber a moment's notice and that yet it is as likely as sweet Jesus' one.

From there the shackles of my childhood indoctrination started dissolving as the nonsense that they really are. Laughing at ideas have a wonderfully liberating effect.

I still believe that propagating or preaching the very idea of hell (of any stripe) should be a criminal offence, but it has no hold over me any longer.

As Sartre pointed out, "hell is other people".

LadyAtheist said...

Funny how Pascal's wager only applies to the Christian hell.

Another variation: what if you're wrong and Buddhism is the One True Religion (tm)? YOu'd get recycled as a cockroach.

Papalinton said...

Hi LadyAtheist

Or perhaps one of the turtles all the way down.

Cheers

Papalinton said...

Hi mindyourmind

You know? I've never been been able to quite get my head around this christian hell concept.
If you do not declare your life to jesus or do something bad like poo-poo yahweh you will be sent to hell for eternity. And who looks after hell? The Devil, Satan, right?
So what reason would he [satan] have to do god's bidding to put all his guests in Hell through all that eternal burning and torture stuff at god's request? I have had beaten into my head by asinine clergy and god-botherers that the Devil is the antithesis of god, so why would he do harm to those who showed god the 'bird'? Surely to goodness he would be rewarding them for their irreverence. The whole theological ideation of Hell is complete malicious juvenile nonsense.
The concept just does not hang together, as most child-like mythological constructs do not, once subjected to focussed rational analysis. The threads of the theist's arguments on the concept of hell are functionally disparate and imbecilic.

Cheers

Lazarus said...

Yes, a control measure by the devious to control the gullible Of which I was one).

Or the Big G will just subcontract the job to old DM, he seems quite happy to be God's toadie forever.

Sabio Lantz said...

And once you reject a hell threat, and turn on the lights, the scary things in the dark prove to be mere furniture.

shane said...

This is a very relevent point that I myself have always tried to argue with believers.

Just like LadyAtheist said the whole Pascels wager thing is so obviously flawed!

Not only does the wager consist of betting on whether there is a God or not, there is also the gambles of-which revealed religion portrays the truth of that God?

If we wager that it is the biblical God, then we have to wager which faith is the right one-christianity-Judaism-Mormonism-Jehovah's witness...etc.

If we wager it is christianity, then we must wager which denomination holds the true belief system and docrtrines-Calvists (who believe in predestination)-evangelicals (who believe in praying in tongues and the gifts of the spirit)-Bapists (who believe the gifts of the spirit were only for the apostles time)-Seventh day adventists (who believe all other christians are going to hell for breaking the sabath)...etc...etc...

When we truly reflect on the odds of the wager, I have to say the right choice is either atheism or agnosticism!

GearHedEd said...

@ shane,

Or, in Dungeons & Dragons(TM) speak, you'd have to roll about seventy natural 20's in a row to "win" Pascal's wager...

GearHedEd said...

Even my cat knows that's absurd.

BobCMU76 said...

The Rick Nelson corrolary to Pascal's wager...

You can't appease every hell-bent deity, so you gotta please yourself.