BY SOFO ARCHON
Recently, while reading a book by Arthur Schopenhauer, I came across an insightful and thought-provoking essay in which he criticizes the Christian concept of hell, arguing that it contradicts the idea of an all-loving, benevolent God.
According to Christian doctrine, those who commit acts that the Bible declares to be prohibited by God are considered sinners. Unless they repent, they are believed to be sent to hell in the afterlife, where they must endure eternal suffering as punishment for their actions. In Schopenhauer’s view, this is both unfair and unjust.
He writes:
Taken in its ordinary meaning, the dogma [of Christianity] is revolting, for it comes to this: it condemns a man, who may be, perhaps, scarcely twenty years of age, to expiate his errors, or even his unbelief, in everlasting torment[…]
How can it be fair and just that an imperfect person who commits a wrongdoing—or simply doesn’t subscribe to a particular religious ideology—is thrown into hellfire, where they have to burn until the end of time?
Schopenhauer continues:
[…Nay], more, it makes this almost universal damnation the natural effect of original sin, and therefore the necessary consequence of the Fall.
In our flawed and corrupted world, we would never punish a child simply because their parents did something wrong. So how can a perfect, all-loving God punish people merely because a couple of other people—namely, Adam and Eve—supposedly sinned thousands of years ago?
Schopenhauer then goes on to say:
This is a result which must have been foreseen by him who made mankind, and who, in the first place, made them not better than they are, and secondly, set a trap for them into which he must have known they would fall; for he made the whole world, and nothing is hidden from him. According to this doctrine, then, God created out of nothing a weak race prone to sin, in order to give them over to endless torment.
Think about it: God created humans knowing that they were incapable of resisting a particular temptation. He then deliberately placed that temptation before them, only to punish them afterward for succumbing to it. Does this not seem less like an act of a benevolent God and more like an act of a sadistic madman?
Schopenhauer proceeds to say:
And, as a last characteristic, we are told that this God, who prescribes forbearance and forgiveness of every fault, exercises none himself, but does the exact opposite; for a punishment which comes at the end of all things, when the world is over and done with, cannot have for its object either to improve or deter, and is therefore pure vengeance.
God is portrayed as benevolent, loving, and forgiving, yet he takes revenge on people for disobeying him by condemning them to everlasting hell. This doesn’t sound very loving, does it? Schopenhauer goes on to point out that:
[On] this view, the whole race is actually destined to eternal torture and damnation, and created expressly for this end, the only exception being those few persons who are rescued by election of grace, from what motive one does not know.
We’re often told that a select few deserve God’s love and are therefore fortunate enough to make it out of this life safely, without having to enter hell’s abode. But what about the rest of humanity? God doesn’t seem to care about them at all.
Schopenhauer concludes:
[…It] looks as if the Blessed Lord had created the world for the benefit of the devil! It would have been so much better not to have made it at all.
A so-called sinful, corrupt, and evil world could never have been created by a truly benevolent, all-loving God. It seems, therefore, that either the Christian God is not all-loving or that he does not exist at all. If I had to choose between these two possibilities, I would certainly choose the latter.
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