Just a rant I wrote to read to myself during my deconstruction that I’ve added to with time. Sharing it here to help whoever might find it useful. Feedback or discussion is always welcome.
We’re not going to burn in hell. There is no hell. The idea is ridiculous on it’s face, its just so scary that most religious folks don’t dare think to hard on it but when you do, it totally unravels.
The length of your life on earth is minuscule compared to eternity and your human life happens at the very beginning of this infinitely long span of time.
Some omnipotent, all knowing god came along and decided it was fair to make your fate for eternity dependent on this blink of an eye we call human life? And that god is supposedly loving and fair? How does that make any sense at all? It’s crazy anyone believes it.
In reality, a loving god would never put us in such a situation. Only some truly evil entity would devise a system whereby a soul would be tortured for hundreds of millions more years than the person’s life. Picture yourself as god. Would any of that be ok with you?
Also a loving god would make him or herself known. No reasonable god would rely on the corrupt mouthpieces that are everywhere. Joel Osteen - Kenneth Copeland, et al. God with power would have a clear voice. These people say whatever will keep the most followers. A God that cared would smack them with lightning on live TV.
No reasonable god with power would allow so many different religions to exist that didn’t believe in him. God would know that just being born to parents of the wrong religion would make it near impossible for that person to leave theirs to go find the “one true religion.” If Christianity were real, god would be dooming 99% of the Muslim children that are born each day, just by letting them be born into the wrong religion/family/region.
Hell and Heaven are constructs created specifically to keep people having doubt from leaving the fold or voicing their ideas. Fear works well. But we have reason to see through the lies.
It is time to be free from the fear of hell. It is just a boogeyman story. Some of the most moral people I know are atheists. We know there is nothing more precious than right now and our current world.
Hug your children. Fix your issues or start toward the fix at least. Worry about today, and tomorrow, but don’t worry about hell. It doesn’t exist.
I loved it! I’ve always been atheist, my family is also atheist, I’ve studied a little religion at school but from a non-religious perspective, just to learn about other cultures. I’m from Italy but I don’t know many truly catholic people, it seems to me that Americans are more religious than us!
I agree with everything you said, and also it drives me crazy when Christians thinks that atheist have no morals! They follow the morality of their church so if they lose their faith there’s no morality? That’s crazy to me, we believe in a humanist morality that’s completely independent from religion and it’s very strong (at least for me and my family), I don’t need a god to be a nice person!