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.
Regardless of whether or not there is an entity that created and controls the universe, this debate is still just an exercise of human intellect in topics none of us really knows the answer to. While your faith may have you argue otherwise, in reality, all religious practices, beliefs, institutionalizations, documents, teachings, ceremonies, edicts, channeling, feelings, and inspirations are products of human effort. There may very well be a creator or God, but no individual truly knows any more than any other individual, and when we die, we will either find out or we won’t find out.
I have my own assumptions – like it would be ridiculous for a perfect being to play such heaven and hell games with that which it created, or for a creator to have a gender, or to be human centric given all possible forms of life in the universe – but in the end, I have no idea nor proof whether there is a heaven or hell.
Lots of electrons have been spilled over Sean’s (anti-)theological claims, but I actually want to first take issue with his psychological claims; namely, that someone who believes in Hell necessarily possesses “a shriveled sense of human decency”, and that “condemning millions of people to an eternity of torment makes [such a person] feel good about himself.”
It’s been my experience that one’s personality is less apparent in what one believes than in the manner one believes it. To hold otherwise is similar to accusing someone of arrogance simply for making a truth claim–one can certainly make such a claim arrogantly, but making such a claim does not prima facie make one arrogant. So it may be that Sean has personal knowledge of Douthat’s mindset, and further that he has directly experienced just how much (or how little) human decency other similarly-minded Christians have. But I seriously doubt it, and thus I would say that Sean’s charges of “petty bloody-mindedness” are just simply wrong.
To be more specific, I’d wager that Douthat doesn’t *want* people to go to Hell, any more than I *want* people to be in prison currently. But I do recognize that justice demands some sort of accountability for the choices people make, and given our current judicial system, that means prison. Of course, Douthat’s (and others’) analogous belief in Hell could be wrong, but saying such a belief cannot be held by a good person is just as fatuous as the claim that someone who does not believe in God cannot be a good person.
Furthermore, there is “good” in the conventional sense, and “Good ” in what I’ll call the theological sense. Christianity has held for thousands of years that, while people may be “good” in the former sense, none is “good enough”–that is, “Good” in the latter sense. As GK Chesterton put it, “Original sin is the only doctrine of Christianity that can be empirically proven.” Since all people, from Jeffrey Dahmer to, yes, Mahatma Gandhi, are on some level twisted and broken, then justice demands an accounting for each individual’s moral failures. So–at least according to Christianity–Sean has the issue exactly backwards. He may ask “How dare God send anyone to Hell?!?”, when the more appropriate question is “How can it be that God is gracious and merciful enough to bring anyone to Heaven?!?”
So God made a defective product (humanity) and we are supposed to be grateful that he’s recalling the units back to the factory to fix them rather than dumping them in a landfill somewhere?
KWK,
“He may ask “How dare God send anyone to Hell?!?”, when the more appropriate question is “How can it be that God is gracious and merciful enough to bring anyone to Heaven?!?”
Neither is a good question. The first, however, was meant facetiously, and succeeds in demonstrating a notable absurdity at the heart of the Christian mythology regarding hell. The second question is meant (if actually taken seriously) as a “better” explanation of Christian dogma.
But it’s not a better question, even if meant seriously. As previously noted, Christian dogma, like any myth, can be changed, varied, refined, adjusted and reinterpreted ad nauseam, as it has been over time as its most cherished claims regarding the nature of reality one after another have been demolished by better scientific explanations.
In the end this myth, and the theological questions it spawns, remains a bad explanation because, unlike scientific explanations, there’s never a way to disprove the multitude of changing claims, assertions and so-called “truths.”
How does the thermodynamics of eternal hellfire work out?
@DanM,
A fairly recent Harris poll shows that only 70% of american catholics even believe in hell. It might still be the vast majority who believe in fire and brimstone, but I am doubtful that is the case….though the numbers likely are different among different christian faiths. The Catholic Cathechism post Vatican II also explicitly allows non-christians the chance of entering heaven, though arguably under fairly restrictive circumstances.
@11, @58, @75: Whether you send him to hell or not, please have the courtesy of spelling Gandhi’s name correctly. While it comes from a different language, there is a standard transliteration, with g, gh, d, and dh all being distinct. Gandhi has the g and dh sounds, and not the gh or d sounds.
@Colin #81,
I’m actually surprised that the number was as high as 70% for self-identified Catholics who believe in hell, but I still don’t think that hurts my statement that the majority of Christians do believe in a literal hell. I’ll explain myself because I realize that sounds contradictory. The majority of “Catholics” I have met are cultural Catholics who use contraception, think abortion is fine, don’t care what the Pope says, only go to Church for weddings and funerals, don’t think Jesus really rose from the dead, and some are even unsure if God exists, yet they still proclaim themselves proud Catholics. I’m sure that in surveys like the one you noted they were some of these people who claim Catholicism and said they don’t believe in hell, but I don’t think their opinion is really germane to whether Catholics believe in hell. All the Catholics I have met who actually go to mass regularly and hold to the Church’s doctrine believe in a literal hell with eternal torment. If you just polled practicing Catholics I think you’d see a much higher percentage who believe in hell.
I hope it doesn’t appear that I’m using the No True Scotsman Fallacy, I’m sure there are some fervent Catholics who don’t believe in hell, but I think my point should be clear. If surveys came back and said that 30% of atheists believed in hell and it was known that there were a lot of people who identified as atheists yet believed in an afterlife, God’s existence, miracles, the soul, the Trinity, that Jesus was divine, etc I think it would be clear that the 30% number was being inflated by people who might call themselves atheists yet in practice were not. The same thing appears to explain why at least some of those 30% of “Catholics” don’t believe in hell.
@DanM,
A less recent gallup poll showed that only 74% of people who attend church on a nearly weekly basis believe in hell; though 92% who attend church every single week believe in hell. I don’t think you can say that one of those groups of people should be defined as Christians, and the other should not (and more generally, I object to the view that self-identified Catholics who don’t attend church regularly should be excluded when it comes to asking what do Catholics believe).
Given that the catholic catechism stresses that the primary torment of hell is to be away from God, and other leading catholic theologians have downplayed the fire and brimstone version, I’m standing by the view that catholics strictly defined to do not by a huge margin all believe in fire and brimstone.
A more narrow (and less literally correct) definition of catholics might get you there, but it would have to be along the lines of “Catholics with evangelical leanings,” or “all catholics who believe the bible literally,” or something like that. But the majority of catholics don’t believe the bible 100% literally, so it begs the question.
Shame you couldn’t quote the remainder of the Catechism’s teachings on Hell before completing your article. Please stick to science.
@Colin,
So you consider someone to still be a Catholic if they claim to be a Catholic, even if they think abortion is fine, mock the Pope, never attend Mass, don’t believe in the Trinity, don’t think Jesus was divine, and are unsure if God exists? That seems a bizarre definition of Catholicism to me.
I’ve never met a Catholic who actually believed most of the doctrines of the Church and didn’t believe in Hell, although I’m sure there are some out there. Many people go to Church out for cultural reasons, don’t hold to the tenets of Christianity, label themselves as Christians, yet don’t meet any definition of traditional Christianity. I was in that boat for a while during my deconversion.
Yoav Golan Says: “Why is it all-too-often that physicists mistake themselves for philosophers?”
Each of us operates according to many things, how we were brought up, what our experiences have been, what we learn, what tribe(s) we are a part of, etc etc. Each of us finds comforting axioms to have faith in, these axioms help form our worldviews, through which we understand the world. We ‘cut up’, edit, etc the world-as-it-is into understandable chunks, put it into a symbology/language, and call that ‘this is the real world’. So, in a very real sense, every word we use IS a straw woman — the words actually aren’t the objects they describe.
Now, taking Dawkins’ (which is a revisiting of a VERY OLD IDEA) meme idea, certain memes get passed around and they can ‘take over’. They can be like slogans that repeat themselves. No one, I don’t think, is immune and it doesn’t matter, I don’t think, how smart one is. There are people and organizations out there that grok how this works and intentionally create memes and ideas that we then follow.
Plus, I think that people aren’t as critical towards the things that they like as they are to what they don’t like — and this is normal tribalism.
Sean is just doing what we all do; to some, Sean is expressing truth, to others, Sean has jumped onto ‘the bandwagon’ late, etc etc etc…we all have our slogans and our likes and we all aren’t at the same level of understanding or even likes/dislikes. THANK GOODNESS FOR THAT — life is much more interesting that way 🙂
My personal idea of ‘Hell’ is that it shouldn’t be taught to KIDS AT ALL until they come of age. People, I think, have different predilections; it seems that some people NEED some sort of Archon/ruler to give up authority to or some sort of punishment to go through life avoiding…it is a complex issue that goes beyond simple reduction but involves many areas of knowing.
@Dan,
Actually, I said that I believe someone can be a Catholic even without going to church every week. The Catholic Church explicitly allows members to have some leeway with areas of practice/belief as long as it is done in good faith; that obviously does not include things like the trinity, etc.
Having gone to Catholic grade school and high school, known and read Catholic scholars/priests/officials, and bothered to read the actual teachings of the church and looked at studies of what Catholics actually believe, I disagree with your generalizations of catholics (maybe not so much with the generalizations, as with the comments that they hold true of virtually every devout catholic).
Colin, Alright maybe many Catholics don’t believe in a hell like you claim, but that has not been my experience with talking to Catholics, reading polls, or reading Catholic theology/history. Even you admit that 70% of American Catholic’s believe in hell , and I’m sure the number would be higher in places that the Catholic Church’s numbers are especially strong like Central/South America and Africa.
Like I pointed out, the majority of self proclaimed Catholics I have interacted with are just cultural Catholics who don’t even believe in Jesus’ divinity, all the Catholics who are devout I have talked to believe in a literal hell, every single one. If many Catholics are only cultural Catholics and still the numbers say 70% believe in hell I think it is clear that the vast majority of devout American Catholics believe in a literal hell (as did Catholic theological and philosophical giants like Augustine, Aquinas, Thomas More, Scotus, Descartes, Pascal, Chesterton, and all the Popes.)
Do you really think that most Catholics disagree with the Pope that hell is a literal place where almost everyone who dies apart form God goes? What percentage of devout Catholics worldwide (including Africa and Central/South America) would you guess believe in a literal hell?
It is nothing short of absurd to condemn the concepts of heaven and hell as “unimaginative.” If believability is accepted as a measure of the imagination contained within an idea, and I believe it must, then what better credential could there be than two-thousand plus years of human acceptance? Eternal reward/damnation, no matter that some might find it preposterous, is supremely compatible with human cognition, offering comfort, hope, and justice on a scale found nowhere else.
Darwin’s theory may be compelling, elegant, and in harmony with the scientific record, but I wouldn’t recommend employing it to comfort a mother who just buried her toddler. Natural Selection might explain much about how humans came to be, but to offer it as hope for those who will live out their miserable lives under a brutal despot will only make them poorer. Randomness and chance may be acceptable in explaining how the elements came together to create life, but when it comes to satisfying the wrath of the brutally traumatized, culpability and hellfire have no competitors.
If you accept that eternal reward/damnation is merely a human invention, then I would argue that it is Man’s greatest invention. For the minimal cost of spreading the word community members embracing the concept found peace of mind, brotherhood, and a belief system packing the fear factor necessary to compete with the formidable challenges of human nature. To populations facing the perils of disease, abandoned children, and broken communities, what better manner of suppressing destructive behaviors than to brand them immoral and punishable by eternal damnation? To communities in need of stability and heroic sacrifice, what better compensation could be offered than heavenly reward? In exchange for impinging on the liberties of a small minority of skeptics, communities reaped the kind of behavior-modifying benefits that might otherwise require a police state.
Eternal damnation for non-believers may seem a bit extreme from our perspective today but for those vulnerable populations of long ago the positive impact of a belief system was in direct proportion to its degree of acceptance. A mechanism that would increase the embrace of doctrine would likewise increase group cohesion and civility (and face it, threatening a non-believer with eternal damnation wasn’t so bad when compared to the lash or burning at the stake). In the contest of survival fundamentalist societies proved safer from disease, disunity, and family dysfunction, which explains why so many of us will find fundamentalism in our family trees.
A great many people make themselves feel good by picking apart the beliefs of the religious, ignoring the fact that our religions are merely reflections of ourselves, evolved systems chockfull of absurdities and conundrums. Yes, the greater good of every religion takes its toll on a few individuals, but is that not the same equation used by Natural Selection in strengthening the group? The road to human progress, whether measured in biological or societal miles, is paved with the carcasses of sacrificed individuals. Each and every one of us got to this place in history as members of a group, and it was religion — imperfect, unfair, and nonsensical religion — that made our group strong enough to survive a journey guided not by free thinkers and iconoclasts, but by true believers.
@69:
The difference is that we can tell when someone has the right answer or the wrong answer in physics, and one’s credentials are completely irrelevant to how that is done. Can we say the same about religion? If we have two conflicting models of hell can we decide which one is more likely to be correct without reference to the credentials of those advocating the two views?
The problem with your argument is that the “unsophisticated” believers in a literal hell have every bit as much reason to believe their story as the “sophisticated” believers in C.S. Lewis’ claptrap: none whatsoever. You know where you can take your false equivalence.
@68:
See above. There’s no such thing as an expert “on religion” because there’s no external reference by which one could determine right or wrong answers about, for example, the nature of hell. Prof. Carroll’s opinion is just as good as the next person’s.
Note that neither of you was the least bit specific about how this post was “ignorant” or what sort of expertise is required to have an opinion on this. Also note that most of everybody everywhere has an opinion on hell without a degree in religion or theology (why don’t you go whine on everyone else’s blog?). Finally, you don’t even acknowledge that Prof. Carroll was NOT presenting his own view of the concept of hell out of the blue, he was responding to someone ELSE’s view of hell — someone who believes in it no less. Why don’t you go bug Ross Douthat about how unsophisticated and foolish HE is?
This stuff drives me crazy. If you’re going to be critical, you could at least be constructive about it. But no, all this talk of “sophistication” and “expertise” is completely empty. Fluff. Noise. Go sink into the television static from whence ye came.
@85:
Where do you fools come from? Stop telling people what to put on their own blogs!
@34: While I wouldn’t say it quite that way (but then, I didn’t), your comments largely reflect my view; objecting to Hell as a consequence of rejecting God makes no more sense than objecting to physical death as a consequence of rejecting water: The latter by definition causes the former. Dragging atheists kicking and screaming into Heaven would, for them, be a Hell of its own, which is ultimately the point of the op ed more than reevaluating literalist views of Hell (though most of them could certainly benefit from reevaluation). As for the legitimacy of an eternal Hell (literal or figurative), for me it hinges on two questions:
1) If, after death, someone who has rejected a religion (for this question it doesn’t matter which so long as it has alternate eternal afterlives; not all do) is confronted with its undeniable proof, would embracing it be moral, or simply enlightened self interest? If ones very existence is proven to be contingent on accepting a given deity, is that acceptance piety or selfishness, and what are the answers ramifications for their subsequent conduct? While I’m no fan of universalism (for the reasons Douthat states) this is what I troubles me in traditional fire and brimstone sermons: Choosing Christ soley to save your sorry hide just won’t cut it, because loving God is the paramount consideration. Which brings me to the second question.
2) If one categorically rejects God despite temporal evidence (but never proof) of Him, how will a posthumous confrontation with Him as proof of Himself mitigate their antipathy? If one who resents the very notion of God to the point of explicit denial faces indisputable proof existence requires Him, how could that ever produce a change of heart and acceptance of Him? Those who ignore this question routinely paint God into a corner, equally quick to decry Him as a tyrant whether His fellowship coercively preserves their being or accepting their denial commits them to an eternity of non-being: God is incapable of being inoffensive. How can death alter such a sentiment?
Needless to say in all this, faith is off the table when confronting a deity; one no more “has faith in” God at that point than the ground beneath their feet: It’s an irrefutable fact.
As for whether one needs in depth knowledge of religion to comment on it, no, it’s not necessary to comment, only to comment credibly. Had you restricted yourself, Dr. Carroll, to comments on the op ed itself, that would be between you and its author, but saying, “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,” goes a BIT further, doesn’t it? Now you’re not just commenting on one authors views, but a significant theological concept of extensive pedigree and with many interpretations. Saying, “And it’s the rare religion that says ‘we approve of all good people, whether or not they share our religious beliefs,'” makes Taoism, most forms of Hinduism and the religious forms of Buddhism rarities, along with Unitarian Universalism. Saying, “I don’t know of any theological descriptions of Hell that involve some version of parole hearings at regular intervals” ignores Greek Orthodox, Jewish, Mormon and at least some sects of Zoroastrianism and Islamic theology. So, yes, you’re free to comment without deigning to study the matter, but the weight of comments on any scholarly topic is in proportion to the study informing them.
“the weight of comments on any scholarly topic is in proportion to the study informing them.”
Yes, just as one would need to be a Scholar of Greek myths to credible comment on the intricacies of that subject.
However, you don’t have to be a scholar of Greek myths to conclude that they are false as a true description of reality.
Kyle.
“However, you don’t have to be a scholar of Greek myths to conclude that they are false as a true description of reality.” Yet they are are a “true description” of the greek cultural reality of that slice of spacetime. All religious belief is shaped and imagined through the lens of the culture of the congregants.
Dr. Carroll.
“And it’s the rare religion that says ‘we approve of all good people, whether or not they share our religious beliefs,’”
But that is what Sufis say. We also say, all paths are the One Path.
Hopefully, I can give both an islamic perspective and an evolutionary perspective here.
bismillah ar-rahman ar rahim
Most muslims believe in some form of wahdat al wujud (unity of being, existance) and wahdat al shuhud (unity of consciousness). Muslims also believe that all humans are born muslim.
It seems to me that all successful religions basically incorporate two evolutionary actions…one action– a way to explain the unexplainable, and the second action– a way to increase reps. These two paths are of course, mappings of the selfish gene– survival and reproduction.
I think a more intellectually interesting way to discuss Hell…is the Evolution of Hell.
Anglo-saxon christianity is a dying CSS, and as such subject to all the symptoms of decline (see Scott Atran or Pascal Boyer)….and Ross Douthat is nothing more or less than a christian fundamentalist.
In the current envirionment of hyperconnectivity and globalism, universalism and inclusionary religions will increasingly have a fitness advantage in increasing reps. And the older tribal exclusionary religions will die out.
It is unfair to judge all religions on Ross Douthat’s fundamentalism.
bi la kayfah
“Yet they are are a “true description” of the greek cultural reality of that slice of spacetime. All religious belief is shaped and imagined through the lens of the culture of the congregants.”
Yes, of course. They are a “true description” of the greek cultural reality at that time. What I meant was the “reality” or truth of the plot line, story or fable content of Greek myths as a true description of the way the world really works (e.g. Zeus marries someone and then something bad happens, like a war, or anything silly like that).
#95: that’s a good riff there. I’ve enjoyed Scott Atran’s works and am glad that he is trying to help humanity by actually going out into the field to talk to people and figuring out how to help them.
I’ve thought that the 2 religions that stand the greatest chance of becoming the 1 dominant world religion would be either Christianity or Islam, and Islam has a slight advantage over being the least exclusionary. I don’t hope that everyone would convert to just one religion, that would be too dull of a world, but I do agree that, in our interconnected global world, humanity is going through the birth pains of figuring out a global ethics that everyone will follow and believe in (which can be thought of as a religion, trusting in something being true because it is good, because as we know, we can over-rationalize anything to show the flaws).
Also, I have hopes that this global humanity will understand themselves more, that what they like and dislike, what they find sacred and what they find profane ISN’T what other people think. We’re all going to have to learn, as a global species, to figure out how to live with one another’s different worldviews, without banning or censoring or breaking the rule of law.
I, also, am partial to those religions that have a sense of humour built in to them. I think not a little of the world’s problems stems from people taking themselves and their beliefs too solemnly. Like that famous GB Shaw quote just because someone laughs doesn’t mean that life isn’t serious as just because someone dies doesn’t mean life ceases to be funny.
oops, pardon….KARL.
😉
But that was the empirical reality of the Greek world. If you study ancient greek it is all action verbs, a dead language preserves culture frozen in time. The greeks interpreted events empirically through the lens of their culture.
It may seem “sillie” to us moderns that Pallas Athena with her terrible gaze appeared on the battlefield of Troy, yet most christians accept the rolled back stone and the empty tomb.
Who can say what they saw?
salaamu aleykum Matthew
Actually Islam has a quite large advantage in the context of EGT (evolutionary theory of games). al-Islam is resistant to proselytization.
al-Islam also incorporated both the sacred texts and membership of the older Abrahamaic religions with the doctrine of the People of the Book.
eg, Jews and Christians could be citizens of the Caliphate– they just could not convert, preach, build churches or synagogues without permission, or marry muslimahs without reverting.
Namaste shams.
Islam isn’t monolithic, right? In my little investigations, I’ve found there are many, many different interpretations in Islam, unlike something like Roman Catholicism, which has the Central Authority.
I understand here that Allah is the Central Authority, but I am talking about practical matters here, the people who do the doing and the people who do think actual thinking and acting.