Is Gandhi in hell? It’s a question that should puncture religious chauvinism and unsettle fundamentalists of every stripe. But there’s a question that should be asked in turn: Is Tony Soprano really in heaven?
A couple of rhetorical questions posed by Ross Douthat, who does us all the favor of reminding us how certain ideas that would otherwise be too ugly and despicable to be shared among polite society become perfectly respectable under the rubric of religion. (Via Steve Mirsky on the twitters.) In this case, the idea is: certain people are just bad, and the appropriate response is to subject them to torment for all time, without hope of reprieve. Now that’s the kind of morality I want my society to be based on.
The quote is extremely telling. Note that the first question is never actually answered — is Gandhi in hell? And there’s a good reason it’s never answered, because the answer would probably be “yes.” Hell is an imaginary place invented by people who think that eternal torture for people they disapprove of would be a good idea. And it’s the rare religion that says “we approve of all good people, whether or not they share our religious beliefs.” Much more commonly, Hell is brought up to scare people away from deviating from a particular religious path. Here’s the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost. Jesus solemnly proclaims that he “will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire”, and that he will pronounce the condemnation: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!”
Do you think that, at the end of his life, Gandhi decided to believe in Jesus and converted?
The second question is equally telling, because even Douthat can’t bring himself to use a non-fictional person as an example of someone who deserves Hell. He’s trying to make the point that “we are defined by the decisions we make,” and if there is no way to make bad decisions then making good decisions is devalued. Which is a fine point to make, and many atheists would be happy to agree. The difference is that we don’t think that people who make bad decisions deserve to be tortured for all of eternity.
This enthusiastic stumping for the reality of Hell betrays not only a shriveled sense of human decency and a repulsive interest in pain inflicted on others, but a deplorable lack of imagination. People have a hard time taking eternity seriously. I don’t know of any theological descriptions of Hell that involve some version of parole hearings at regular intervals. The usual assumption is that it’s an eternal sentence. For all the pious musings about the centrality of human choice, few of Hell’s advocates allow for some version of that choice to persist after death. Seventy years or so on Earth, with unclear instructions and bad advice; infinity years in Hell for making the wrong decisions.
Hell isn’t an essential ingredient in humanity’s freedom of agency; it’s a horrible of invention by despicable people who can’t rise above their own petty bloody-mindedness. The thought of condemning millions of people to an eternity of torment makes Ross Douthat feel good about himself and gives him a chance to indulge in some saucy contrarianism. I tend to take issue with religion on the grounds that it’s factually wrong, not morally reprehensible; but if you want evidence for the latter, here you go.
Sean’s comment 21,
There are some comments here that assert that you are factually wrong about the typical religious view of hell, or at least that the description you give is too widesweeping (even if it is generally correct). It is my experience that religious people, and even official religions, have very divergent views of hell. I referenced C.S. Lewis, as did others, as several Christian religions have upheld Lewis as a great christian writer (in particular, we read “The Great Divorce” in our discussion of hell in Catholic high school…which gives it some level of officialness). I’d also look into the works of Karl Rahner, if you are not familiar (he is considered to be one of the most important Catholic theologians of the past century, and would have been very concerned by a question like is Gandhi in Hell, etc)
I don’t disagree with your overall post, just think that its application might not be as broad as you implied….and this is an argument based in facts.
Sartre famously wrote, “Hell is other people” in his play “No Exit.” I prefer a personal reformulation: “Hell is those who believe in it.”
Colin,
Just to put a little meat on the bones, and correct me if I’m wrong, but Rahner’s view of the subject at hand can generally be described under the rubric of Anonymous Christianity as follows:
“Anonymous Christianity means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted Christianity — Let us say, a Buddhist monk — who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian; if not, I would have to presuppose that there is a genuine path to salvation that really attains that goal, but that simply has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. But I cannot do that. And so, if I hold if everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion nothing else but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity.”
According to Rahner, a person could explicitly deny Christianity, but in reality existentially is committed to those values which for the Christian are concretized in God.
To my way of thinking, this doesn’t materially affect the conclusion that religion and myth are simply bad explanations for what we find in the world, but I do think that this is certainly a more generous version and it comes as no surprise to me that is arose relatively recently.
Colin– I understand that no true Scotsman — I mean, religious person — is in favor of flaying people limb from limb for all eternity.
Look, of course there are religious people such as Lewis or Rahner who are appalled by the naive picture of Hell and attempt to change it into something loftier. Not because Jesus came back with a clarification — “what I really meant was that nonbelievers would be tossed into the lake of fire of disappointment that they would forever be separated from God’s grace” — or because improved scientific observations of Hell revealed that the old model was incorrect in certain key respects. Just because the straightforward version is utterly horrifying.
I’m not going to footnote every statement about some of religion’s more horrifying aspects by “there are some religious people who don’t believe these horrible things,” but you can take it as understood if you like. There are no data, so you can believe whatever you want. To me, the inclination to believe in Hell in any form whatsoever is characteristic of a deep sickness, no matter how much it may be prettied up. Just reject it as a bad episode that we should be past by now.
Mike,
That would be a fair simple explication of Rahner’s view (though some versions Anonymous Christianity sometimes only exonerate non-Christians who had never heard about Christianity, which could exclude the likes of Gandhi). Though in part, my comment spoke less to the final implications of Rahner’s work, and more to the fact that Rahner was deeply interested in how non-Christians could or could not achieve salvation after death. Given that Rahner was one of the most influential Catholic Theologians of the past century, that is relevant to Sean’s initial post.
Though your final comment might be equally relevant…it is telling that these types of views did not become mainstream Catholic theology until relatively recently. And it doesn’t really have any impact on the validity/role of a religious ethic.
I get a kick out of people who act as though someone has to be a professional philosopher to discuss a matter as banal and silly as religious belief. The best that they can do is to insist that any critic of their preferred superstition clearly hasn’t read the sophisticated theologian of their choice and to compare their critics to angsty middle schoolers.
Yes, theological positions on any given topic vary, and the popular beliefs about hell are less popular among the theologian crowd than among people in the pews (almost by definition). I’ll give a shit what theologians have to say as soon as they come up with a good reason to believe that their basic premises are actually true. If the topic at hand is the moral reprehensibility of certain common beliefs (and belief in the hell of the sort Sean describes is quite common in the U.S. at least), then it is those common beliefs that concern me, not the historical beliefs they developed from or the elaborate retcons of dedicated fanfiction authors.
Sean,
I agree with the final point: “To me, the inclination to believe in Hell in any form whatsoever is characteristic of a deep sickness, no matter how much it may be prettied up.” Though I perhaps would have substituted a less prejudicial word for sickness.
I don’t think it is fair to imply that I am cherry-picking a few people who don’t believe that Hell is brimstone and Fire. I’m not sure what percent of Catholics believe in brimstone and fire, but it is probably much lower than 100%, though potentially higher than the percent of scientifically-literate Catholics who still disbelieve in some form of evolution or big bang.
I added Rahner as he is oft-cited as the most influential catholic theologian of the past century; I don’t know enough to judge that for myself, but the term influential means that lots of people ended up at least thinking critically about his views, if not agreeing with them. And Lewis is one of the most influential Christian writers, so the same implications apply. Moreover, No one is saying that we need to rewrite what Jesus said according to the bible, just not interpret it literally….which is hardly a new philosophy when it comes to reading the bible, even if not everyone agrees.
The Catechism also affirms a less tormenting view of hell, though it also freely quotes from the potentially metaphorical language of the scripture: “The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs” (1035).
How you characterize a religious worldview goes a long way in how despicable you believe its implications. If the view is “All who don’t follow my teachings burn in hell for eternity,” that seems quite a bit different than “All who don’t follow my teachings will achieve only a lower form of happiness/fulfillment than those that do.” Though I agree that either view is a distortion of reality and should have nothing to do with how people actually live their lives….so categorically, maybe both views are the same.
This eternal hell and more so the younger invention of “purgatory” is not
an idea of torturers, it is moneymaking, nothing else.
Real fortunes were/are herited to “church” in catholic countries to
get some “testate” which saves You from hell/purgatory.
That is why the “Church” was so upset when a little Monk in 1517 wrote
posters against selling of indulgences! This knife aimed directly into
the heart of church – money. I think Luther (more a theoretician)
was not aware of that.
Georg
First, hell is an ancient religious concept concocted millennia ago for unsophisticated people. Ditto heaven. It is not difficult to imagine both as a continuum based, instead, on an abstractly perfect sense of absolute justice.
Now, ***IF*** one begins with the premise that God (undefined) created — out of the purest nothingness (unimaginable) — all that “is” (undefined), from the ethereal substance of a quark to the most sublime states that human consciousness is able potentially to attain; consciously designed (to anthropomorphize the unknowable) it all with purpose and concern (read love and knowledge) ***THEN*** (and only then) does it make sense so say that it’s really not our place to judge those actions.
Further, with the stated givens, it would make a kind of sense to say that failure to conform with the Will of such a Creator could have dire consequences. To ask “why or wherefore” is to challenge the assumptions.
So, what is faith? And does it really have to conflict with knowledge? All science can be freely conducted without having to challenge the assumptions above. It is the imperfect assumptions of imperfect people trying to tell other imperfect people what God wants or means (read: “religion”) that creates all the conflict. Not the abstract idea of a deity — that concept can stand alone and one can accept or reject it as one chooses. Life goes on either way.
@27:
That is awesome and I am going to start saying it. Thank you.
Just for reference, Mormons believe in Hell as a temporary place, where “bad” people go for 1000 years of suffering before being directed to their ultimate (happy) final state.
“the inclination to believe in Hell in any form whatsoever is characteristic of a deep sickness”.
Whilst I do agree with this to a large extent, I do suspect that many (most?) believers outside the true fundamentalists may still believe in Hell for those who do bad things (not necessarily just for lack of the right specific belief).
This is s a slightly more sympathetic aspect to the belief in Hell. People see evil all around them, they see rapists and murderers and just plain old dickheads and more importantly they see injustice go unpunished on Earth and they so desperately want to believe that there will be justice in the afterlife – be that Heaven for the good, Hell for the bad.
It’s still crazy, of course.
Sean, do you believe that when you die you will cease to exist in any form whatsoever (no “afterlife”) for all eternity. An eternity of nothingness? How do you feel about that. It’s my view that this question alone will make religion in some form persist. I, for one, cannot understand how something like is possible.
” … written by any angst-ridden Middle Schooler anywhere in the world?”
That loses the Internet for this millenium at least. (If people can win it, there must be losers too.)
Speaking as an ex-angst-ridden-Middle-Schooler, I pretty much defended by rote what my Sunday School teachers told me, at that age. It took long years of concentrated thought before I broke free of the conditioning and asked myself, how would I expect the world to look if it were all just superstitious nonsense, and to realize the answer was: exactly the way it does look.
I wouldn’t. Not when the claim is stated so baldly, anyway. I mean, let’s say we’re flying in the USS Discovery en route to Jupiter, and there was only room on our hard drive for good movies. (Not just “arty” good, necessarily, but also including solid action fare like the first Die Hard and thrillers like From Russia With Love — unpretentious, quality entertainment for when we’re in the appropriate mood.) Does the fact that we can’t watch Michael Bay schlock “devalue” Kurosawa?
I recall a Pat Benatar song from long ago; also a tryptich by Bosch and the execution of Bruno. Seems to me hell is on earth each and every day. Otherwise it would be meaningless in its entirety.
@38 – Phil
I’ve always found it interesting that people are unconcerned with the eternity of time that passed before their birth — the nothingness, if you will — but are horrified at the thought of returning to that state.
@42 , Jeri,
I know, I’ve thought about that too. The only thing I can come up with is that that state of “nothingness” came to an end when you started sensing the world, etc. But when I imagine eternal nothingness that will never end, I just don’t understand how that’s possible. It has nothing to do with religion or fear of death. It just doesn’t make sense to me. How can I be around for several decades, experiencing the world, thinking, talking, having consciousness, etc., and then poof — gone. Nothing, forever. Even if I thought the concept of God is simply made up and all religion is nonsense, this thought cannot escape me, and I think that it’s this thought that has either been the seed of religion or will allow some sort of spirituality to persist even if all organized religion goes the way of the dinosaurs.
Can’t resist, Sean: is hell exothermic or endothermic?
I think this is an appropriate time to remember the words of Ben Franklin,
“Here is my Creed: I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental Principles of all sound Religion, and I regard them as you do, in whatever Sect I meet with them. As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw, or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Divinity: tho’ it is a Question I do not dogmatise upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble. I see no harm however in its being believed, if that Belief has the good Consequence as probably it has, of making his Doctrines more respected and better observed, especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the Believers, in his Government of the World, with any particular Marks of his Displeasure. I shall only add respecting myself, that having experienced the Goodness of that Being, in conducting me prosperously thro’ a long Life, I have no doubt of its Continuance in the next, tho’ without the smallest Conceit of meriting such Goodness.”
If you, like Franklin, have a foundational view of religion, or of morals, that is incompatible with Christianity, then just get rid of Christianity. There’s lots of good religion left! And you can perfectly well follow many of the morals given to us by Christ. Don’t attempt to modify Chrstianity to suit what you believe; just go with what you believe. The bible is very clear on Hell. If you don’t like it, stop believing in the bible. It’s that simple.
Phil @38,
I can’t speak for Sean, but I conclude that when I die I will cease to exist (no “afterlife”) for all eternity, and I feel fine about that. Just because you cannot understand how something is possible doesn’t mean it is not possible.
Reality is, whether or not we understand it, much less if we like it.
I suspect Phil doesn’t believe that his computer somehow continues to run programs when he turns off its power, or that soap bubbles persist for eternity once blown, but his ego doesn’t let him see that his consciousness is just as ephemeral.
To everyone writing about CS Lewis on Hell,
I am a former evangelical Christian and have read “The Great Divorce” about a dozen times, and I will say that everyone referencing it does not understand what Lewis was saying about Hell. “The Great Divorce” is pure fiction (as he makes clear in the end of the book, this is NOT how he really thinks hell is). It is more of an allegory for how Lewis sees us choosing hell for ourselves by our actions on earth.
Now I’m not sure exactly what Lewis’ views on hell are even thought I’ve read almost everything he’s written, because he writes conflicting things on the subject. Sometimes he seems to be more of a universalist (like his hero George MacDonald), but if you read his book “The Screwtape Letters” I think you will see that he believes in a much more literal hell than many of you are letting on (i.e. a literal Satan, demons that torment the living to get them to turn from God, hell is eternal torment, etc).
Also, despite whatever CS Lewis believed, the vast majority of evangelical Christians and most Catholics, at least in America, believe in a literal fire and brimstone hell full of everlasting torment. That’s a fact. Just look at all the uproar that Rob Bell started recently when he wrote a book saying that he believes that some of the people in Hell will eventually come to know God. He was raked over the coals for that and many Christians are calling him an unsaved heretic for even daring to say that maybe the punishment in hell isn’t eternal. The pastors of almost all of the largest Churches in America believe in a literal hell, and to pretend that liberal views (like Paul Tillich’s) are the majority Christian opinion is just silly and demonstrably false.
Also, Sean is dealing with the argument of a particular author. If you disagree with that description of hell than argue with the original author, not Sean. And please don’t pretend that the traditional description of hell isn’t what the vast majority of Christians believe. If you hold to some mystical, liberal view of hell that only 1% of Christians agree with that’s fine, but Sean is dealing with hell as it is described by the vast majority of Christians past and present.
Dan M,
Thanks for the explanation. Very informative. I love learning more about this subject — of course without having to do the difficult research myself. As Sir Francis Bacon said in 1597, knowledge truly is power. 🙂 Thanks again.
It requires a certain intellectual sophistication (if not maturity) to recognize that the concepts of heaven/hell are inextricably linked and, like many other diametrically opposed concept-pairs, like love/hate and good/bad (or ‘Evil’, in personification) are mutually and critically dependent on each other for their definition. If anyone ‘believes’ in one, they must necessarily accept the other side of the coin. This inevitably leads to an automatic (that is, largely unconscious) and pernicious training in the irrationality of circular logic: for example, evil exists because good exists and vice versa.
The only way out of the dizzy trap is to emancipate oneself from the idea that belief or conviction or ‘faith’ in anything somehow automatically confers a reality to it. This is harder to do than we may like because we ultimately don’t have anything BUT our concepts and our imaginary world-view models to work with. The fact is, imaginary concepts that exist in the mind do not sanction their existence in the reality that exists quite independently outside of notably fallible human minds. Yet we have the capacity to recognize that our conceptions are never the Real McCoy and are only hazy representations of natural reality at best, or utterly mistaken fantasies at worst. But any attitude that places the importance of one’s convictions above any available evidence as a means of demonstrating absolute truth or simply to establish authority is a sure sign of the presence of undeveloped adolescence, if not outright madness.
Pity we’re still gnawing so rabidly over this pathetic bone 400 years after the Age of Enlightenment and the era of modern science blossomed on the scene. One might think there has been some organized and very potent force at work on societies that has systematically subverted public education…but that’s just me.