Atheist Universe: Chapter 8
Initially Posted: January 29, 2007
Contents:
2. Origin of the Universe: Natural or Supernatural?
3. God of the Gaps: Does the Universe Show Evidence of Design?
4. The “Miracle” of Planetary Clockwork
5. The “Miracle” of Life on Earth
6. Can Genesis Be Reconciled with Modern Science?
7. “Miracles” of Christian Perception
9. Christian Fundamentalists and the “Danger” of Internet Porn
10. Was America Really Founded upon Christian Principles?
11. “Intelligent Design”: Christianity’s Newest Cult
8. The Myth of Hell:
Mills informs the reader that he will assume that a god exists for the purpose of discussion about Hell in chapter eight. 1 According to Mills, the purpose of this chapter is to argue that God would not create a Hell if God exists.
Mills begins by discussing punishments enforced within American society in order to “lay an analogical foundation” that will allow Mills to differentiate between what is rational punishment and what is ridiculous punishment. 2 However, several questions plague this approach. First, what makes American society’s view of appropriate punishment the correct standard for appropriate punishment? Second, what does Mills base his belief in rationality on if he believes blind irrational processes produced his mind? Also, is his mind not merely a combination of interacting chemicals and electrical pulses between neurons?
In this chapter, Mills repeatedly portrays hell as a “torture chamber” where God loves to torture non-Christian souls by roasting them in flames. Question: “Who said God does this? First, God doesn’t torture anyone. Hell is not a place of externally inflicted torture, but a place of self-inflicted torment (Luke 16:23, 28). Those in hell certainly don’t want it, but they will it. Hell is a terrible place, but its doors are locked on the inside.” 3
I will provide an overview of the biblical view of Hell by quoting Dr. Geisler’s work again:
“God’s Justice Demands a Hell: In addition to direct affirmations, Scripture offers reasons for the existence of hell. One is that justice demands the existence of hell, and God is just (Romans 2). He is so pure and untainted that he cannot even look upon sin (Hab. 1:13). God is no respecter of persons, “For God does not show favoritism” (Rom. 2:11). As Abraham declared, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen. 18:25). Psalm 73 is representative of passages teaching that not all justice is accomplished in this life. The wicked seem to prosper (Ps. 73:3). Thus, the existence of a place of punishment for the wicked after this life is necessary to maintain the justice of God. Surely, there would be no real justice were there no place of punishment for the demented souls of Stalin and Hitler, who initiated the merciless slaughter of multimillions. God’s justice demands that there is a hell.
Jonathan Edwards argued that even one sin deserves hell, since the eternal, holy God cannot tolerate any sin. Each person commits a multitude of sins in thought, word, and deed. This is all compounded by the fact that we reject God’s immense mercy. And add to this man’s readiness to find fault with God’s justice and mercy, and we have abundant evidence of the need for hell. If we had a true spiritual awareness, we would not be amazed at hell’s severity but at our own depravity (Edwards, 1.109).
God’s Love Demands a Hell: The Bible asserts that “God is love” (1 John 4:16). But love cannot act coercively, only persuasively. A God of love cannot force people to love him. Paul spoke of things being done freely and not of compulsion (2 Cor. 9:7). Forced loved is not love; it is rape. A loving being always gives “space” to others. He does not force himself upon them against their will. As C. S. Lewis observed, “the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of his scheme forbids him to use. Merely to override a human will . . . would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo” (Lewis, Screwtape Letters, 38). Hence, those who do not choose to love God must be allowed not to love him. Those who do not wish to be with him must be allowed to be separated from him. Hell allows separation from God.
Human Dignity Demands a Hell: Since God cannot force people into heaven against their free will, human free choice demands a hell. Jesus cried out, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matt. 23:37). As Lewis said, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done’ ” (Screwtape Letters, 69).
God’s Sovereignty Demands a Hell: Unless there is a hell there is no final victory over evil. For what frustrates good is evil. The wheat and tares cannot grow together forever. There must be an ultimate separation, or else good will not triumph over evil. As in society, punishment for evil is necessary that good might prevail. Even so, in eternity good must triumph over evil. If it does not, then God is not in ultimate control. God’s sovereignty demands a hell, otherwise he would not be the ultimate victor over evil that the Bible declares him to be (cf. 1 Cor. 15:24–28; Revelation 20–22).
The Cross of Christ Implies Hell: At the center of Christianity is the cross (1 Cor. 1:17–18; 15:3). Without it there is no salvation (Rom. 4:25; Heb. 10:10–14). It is the very purpose for which Christ came into the world (Mark 10:45; Luke 19:10). Without the cross there is no salvation (John 10:1, 9–10; Acts 4:12). Only through the cross can we be delivered from our sins (Rom. 3:21–26). Jesus suffered great agony and even separation from God on the cross (Heb. 2:10–18; 5:7–9). Anticipating the cross, Jesus “sweat as it were great drops of blood” (Luke 22:44). But why the cross and all this suffering unless there is a hell? Christ’s death is robbed of its eternal significance unless there is an eternal separation from God from which people need to be delivered.
The Nature and Location of Hell: The Bible describes the reality of hell in forceful figures of speech. It is said to be a place of darkness (Matt. 8:12; 22:13), which is “outside” [the gate of the heavenly city] (Rev. 22:14–15). Hell is away from the “presence of the Lord” (Matt. 25:41; 2 Thess. 1:7–9). Of course, these are relational, not necessarily spatial, terms. God is “up” and hell is “down.” God is “inside” and hell is “outside.” Hell is the other direction from God.
The nature of hell is a horrifying reality. It is like being left outside in the dark forever (Matt. 8:12). It is like a wandering star (Jude 13), a waterless cloud (Jude 12), a perpetually burning dump (Mark 9:43–48), a bottomless pit (Rev. 20:1, 3), a prison (1 Peter 3:19), and a place of anguish and regret (Luke 16:28).
To borrow the title of the book by Lewis, hell is the “great divorce”—an eternal separation from God (2 Thess. 1:7–9). There is, in biblical language, “a great gulf fixed” between hell and heaven (Luke 16:26) so that no one can pass from one side to the other.
Nowhere does the Bible describe it as a “torture chamber” where people are forced against their will to be tortured. This is a caricature created by unbelievers to justify their reaction that the God who sends people to hell is cruel. This does not mean that hell is not a place of torment. Jesus said it was (Luke 16:24). But unlike torture which is inflicted from without against one’s will, torment is self-inflicted.
Even atheists have suggested that the door of hell is locked from the inside. We are condemned to our own freedom from God. Heaven’s presence of the divine would be the torture to one who has irretrievably rejected him. Torment is living with the consequences of our own bad choices. It is the weeping and gnashing of teeth that results from the realization that we blew it and deserve the consequences. Just as a football player may pound on the ground in agony after missing a play that loses the Super Bowl, so those in hell know that the pain they suffer is self-induced.
Hell is also depicted as a place of eternal fire. This fire is real but not necessarily physical (as we know it), because people will have imperishable physical bodies (John 5:28–29; Rev. 20:13–15), so normal fire would not affect them. Further, the figures of speech that describe hell are contradictory, if taken in a physical sense. It has flames, yet is outer darkness. It is a dump (with a bottom), yet a bottomless pit. While everything in the Bible is literally true, not everything is true literally.” 4
Mills thinks it is wrong for God to demand sacrifice instead of just forgiving people for their sins. He informs the reader that unlike God, he would not demand blood sacrifice to forgive people. 5 However, again, Mills provides no standard for how he determines what is right and what is wrong.
Dr. Geisler writes: “Two basic mistakes are at work here. First, it is implied that what Jesus did was not voluntary, but was merely inflicted upon him. The Gospels declare that Jesus gave his life voluntarily and freely. Jesus said, “I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again” (John 10:17–18).
While God is sovereign, he is not arbitrary about right and wrong (see Geisler, Christian Ethics, 136–37). Christians believe that God will punish forever in hell those who do not repent. But if God’s holy justice demands that those who do not accept him be eternally punished for their sins, then it would follow that God cannot arbitrarily forgive without a just basis for this forgiveness. In Muslim theology there is forgiveness but no basis for this forgiveness. For they reject Christ’s sacrificial payment for sin to a just God by which he can then declare righteous the unrighteous who accept Christ’s payment on their behalf (cf. Rom. 3:21–26).
A truly just God cannot simply close his eyes to sin. Unless someone capable of paying the debt of sin owed to God does so, then God is obligated to express his wrath, not his mercy. Lacking the Crucifixion, the Muslim system has no way to explain how Allah can be merciful when he is also just.
Moses told Israel: “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life” (Lev. 17:11). This is why the children of Israel were asked to sacrifice the Passover lamb, commemorating their deliverance from bondage (Exod. 12:1f.). This is why the New Testament speaks of Christ as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). And the apostle Paul called “Christ, our Passover lamb, [who] has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7). The writer of Hebrews adds, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb. 9:22).” 6
Mills also thinks God should be able to forgive sinners unconditionally if he is truly omnipotent. However, God cannot do anything that is contrary to His nature. For example, since holiness is one of God’s attributes, it is part of his nature. Therefore, God cannot sin.Justice is one of God's attributes as well, and he must exercise judgment on sinners who do not accept the free gift of salvation. Mills claims that God merely calls Himself holy. However, he provided no Scriptural evidence to support this assertion. Many Scriptures indicate that God is holy in His nature—not that He just calls Himself holy.
Mills tells the reader that he forgives his friends when they “do him wrong” and that he doesn’t hold any long-term grudges. Mills thinks atonement by the shedding of blood is irrational, and that God should be able to forgive humans without requiring the shedding of blood. 7
Dr. Geisler provides a response to this objection as well. He writes:
“For one thing this analogy if flawed. Our ability to forgive is based on Christ’s forgiveness. As Paul said, we are to forgive one another ‘as Christ forgave you’ (Col. 3:13 KJV). No mortal has the inherent ability to forgive; as the Pharisees recognized, only God can forgive sins (cf. Mark 2:7).
Also, even God, without atonement, cannot overlook or accept sin: ‘Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong’ (Hab. 1:13). Nor can He simply forgive sin arbitrarily. Sin has caused a debt with God, and the debt must be paid. Christ paid that debt and ransomed us. As we have repeatedly observed, God can no more wink at sin and turn His head than He can cease being holy, perfect, and absolutely unchangeable.” 8
Mills argues there are two rational, non-hellish alternatives to keep people separate from God.
First, Mills asserts, God could just “return the ‘sinner’s soul’ to a state of non-existence. 9 In other words, Mills thinks that God could just annihilate a sinner’s soul. Consider Dr. Geisler’s comments in response to this idea:
“Annihilation of the wicked is contrary to both the nature of God and the nature of humans made in his image. It is non consistent with an all-loving God to snuff out those who do not do his wishes. Were God to annihilate human beings he would be attacking himself, for we are made in his image (Gen. 1:27), and God is immortal. The fact that these persons are suffering no more justifies annihilating them than it does for a parent to kill a child who is suffering. Even some atheists have insisted that annihilation is not to be preferred to conscious freedom.” 10
Second, Mills asserts, God could send a sinner’s soul to a place separate from God where it would not experience “pointless torture.” 11 However, again, people are not tortured in Hell. On the contrary, people are in torment, which is self-inflicted. A person suffers because of their own rejection of God’s free gift of salvation to them. Further, the torment is not pointless—it’s just punishment.
Mills also claims that it is a straw-man argument for religious leaders to claim that humans are foolish to question God’s Master Plan. 12 Mills relays that Christians say: “If God created Hell to punish humans and fallen angels, then He definitely had a good reason to do so.” Mills asserts that this argument is invalid, because it assumes what it tries to prove. Mills writes, “If you begin your argument by assuming (1) that God exists…” 13 Mills is logically inconsistent in this chapter, then, because he wrote earlier that he assumes that a god exists for the sake of discussing Hell’s existence. 14 Mills continues, “…(2) that He is the God of the Christian Bible…” 15 The God of the Christian Bible is the very God that Mills has been criticizing! Thus, it follows logically that this same God is the god that Mills agrees to assume to exist for his discussion of Hell’s existence! Again, Mills is logically inconsistent.
Finally, Mills claims the “punishment does not fit the crime.” 16 Dr. Geisler provides a response to this objection as well. He writes:
“To punish a person eternally for what he did for a short time on earth seems at first like a gigantic case of overkill. However, on closer examination it turns out to be not only just but necessary. For one thing, only eternal punishment will suffice for sins against the eternal God (see God, Nature of). The sins may have been committed in time, but they were against the Eternal One. Furthermore, no sin can be tolerated as long as God exists, and he is eternal. Hence, punishment for sin must also be eternal.
What is more, the only alternative to eternal punishment is worse, namely, to rob human beings of freedom and dignity by forcing them into heaven against their free choice. That would be “hell” since they do not fit in a place where everyone is loving and praising the Person they want most to avoid. Or, God’s other choice is to annihilate his own image within his creatures. But this would be an attack of God on himself.
Further, without eternal separation, there could be no heaven. Evil is contagious (1 Cor. 5:6) and must be quarantined. Like a deadly plague, if it is not contained it will continue to contaminate and corrupt. If God did not eventually separate the tares from the wheat, the tares would choke out the wheat. The only way to preserve an eternal place of good is to eternally separate all evil from it. The only way to have an eternal heaven is to have an eternal hell.
Finally, if Christ’s temporal punishment is sufficient for our sins eternally, then there is no reason why eternal suffering cannot be appropriate for our temporal sins. It is not the duration of the action but the object that is important. Christ satisfied the eternal God by his temporal suffering, and unbelievers have offended the eternal God by their temporal sins. Hence, Christ’s temporal suffering for sins satisfies God eternally (1 John 2:1), and our temporal sins offend God eternally.” 17
Lastly, Mills claims that Jefferson, Madison, and the other framers of the U.S. Constitution showed more mercy and compassion than the God of the Christian Bible. 18 However, Mills does not explain how he knows the immaterial things such as compassion and mercy even exist within the materialistic worldview of atheism. How then can he compare who is merciful and compassionate with who isn’t? Further, what is Mills’ moral standard for judging the quality of God’s morality? The only moral standard Mills has presented thus far is his own personal opinion.
Thus, Mills displays multiple logical inconsistencies and misunderstandings of at least one basic Christian belief regarding Hell in chapter 8.
Endnotes:
1. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 171.
2. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 172.
3. Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2004), 386.
4. Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1999), 311-312.
5. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 182.
6. Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1999), 145.
7. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 181-182.
8. Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology: Volume Three: Sin/Salvation (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House, 2004), 248.
9. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 184.
10. Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1999), 313.
11. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 184.
12. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 186.
13. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 187.
14. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 171.
15. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 187.
16. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 187.
17. Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1999), 313-314.
18. David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2006), 188.