God Is Just Vs. God Punishes Forever

According to the Bible, all who do not acknowledge and accept Christ as their savior will go to hell. Hell is a terrible place where there is "wailing and gnashing of teeth" etc. Some imagery portrays hell as a place of eternal burning. Whether it's really like that doesn't matter--what we do read in the Bible indicates that hell is a place of intense suffering, be it physical or emotional. Hell does not end. According to the Bible, the damned deserve to go to hell because they are sinners. Hell is a punishment administered by God for sins or crimes that humans commit during their mortal lifetimes.

This is what God is and what he does, according to a Christian definition. But this definition contains a self-contradiction, making it impossible for God--so defined--to exist. God is supposed to be just, yet he administers unjust punishments.

Yes, that's right--according to a Christian definition, God must administer unjust punishments, since he condemns sinners to an eternity in hell. Any punishment that exceeds the severity of the sin is unjust. You don't cut a kid's hand off for stealing a dollar bill, since that would be an unjust punishment. You don't pull out someone's tongue for committing perjury, or sentence someone to life in prison for giving someone else a black eye. These are all punishments that grossly exceed the severity of the crimes for which they are administered. They lack all sense of proportionality. They are unjust.

If all of these punishments are unjust, think how much more unjust is the punishment God gives sinners. The agony of hell is much more intense than anything experienced on earth. It also never ends, which means that the total severity of the punishment will approach infinity. It will inevitably exceed the severity of the limited sins committed during a limited lifetime. It doesn't matter how many terrible things you do during your life--the severity of those sins will never equal infinity. We are, after all, only finite beings. But in hell, the severity of someone's punishment will eventually equal the severity of the sins she has committed. But after that happens, the punishment doesn't end. It just keeps going and going, one miserable, terrible, agonizing moment following the next.

Pause here to ponder, if you will, how many organisms has existed from the beginning of life on earth. Imagine how many died horrible deaths in their struggle for survival. Imagine how many humans have suffered as a result of pestilence, disease, fire, storms, starvation, war, drought, freezing cold, floods, earthquakes, and being eaten alive, et cetera. Now imagine how much the total suffering was, is, and shall be for all organisms from the beginning till the end of time. The amount of suffering would be beyond human comprehension. But here is the fact that is really mind-boggling: A single individual who has to spend eternity in Hell would suffer zillions upon zillions of times far more than all life on earth has suffered in the past and shall suffer in the future. Eternal torment would be torture without end.

God will supposedly inflict this gratuitous punishment on the sinner. Perhaps the sinner is responsible for all the suffering she endures prior to the moment when the severity of the sin and the punishment reach proportionality. But God would be responsible for the excess that occurs thereafter, and therefore God commits an injustice. So, according to the Christian definition, God is both just and unjust. But it is impossible for a real being to simultaneously possess both these qualities. This means that a god so defined can't exist. The Christian God is disproved.

There are some responses to this argument. One of the most common is that, since the sinners choose to reject the forgiveness that God offers, they are responsible for what happens to them, not God. If their punishment matched the severity of their sins, this would be true. But this is not the case, since the punishment lasts forever. By rejecting God's offer of absolution, the sinners accept on themselves only the limited punishment they deserve for their limited sins.

Consider this parable: A man named Paul owes a guy named Josh $100. Josh offers to forgive Paul's debt, providing Paul honestly believes a story related to him by Josh. In other words, Paul doesn't need to pay Josh back if he agrees to this offer. But Paul just couldn't bring himself to believe something as absurd as the story told by Josh, no matter how hard he tried, because the tale was just either too illogical or improbable. Paul therefore rejects Josh's offer. Josh then replies "Ok, you made your bed, now you're going to have to sleep in it. Since you chose to reject my offer, you must now pay me $1,000,000."

Does this make sense? Of course not. Paul's rejection of Josh's offer, for whatever reason, doesn't mean that Paul owes Josh any more than the original $100 he borrowed. Similarly, the sinner's rejection of God's forgiveness, for whatever reason, does not mean that the sinner deserves any more punishment than is deserved given the severity of his sin. Inflicting eternal punishment isn't simply unjust--it's absurd.

A related objection to my argument is that hell isn't really a place God creates to punish the sinner, but a state of misery that the sinner creates for herself by choosing sin. According to this view, God doesn't punish us--we punish ourselves. So supposedly God isn't responsible for sinners suffering forever in hell. The problem with this is that if God created the universe and everything in it, then God would be responsible for the state of the universe, including the state of misery that the sinner would have to endure should she happen to sin; plus, God would be responsible for creating the eternal life that a person would need in order to suffer eternally. Another problem with this objection is that it is unbiblical. There is no verse that indicates that hell is just a self-created misery. According to the Bible, hell is an actual place of punishment created by God. Luke 12:5 says that we should "fear him [God] who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell." The Bible describes hell as a kind of prison God has made for sinners, not just some self-inflicted state of suffering. As the punisher, therefore, God has a responsibility to see that the punished receive only the level of punishment they deserve--no more and no less.

Another response to the argument is that sin is an infinite crime, so infinite punishment is deserved. I have already addressed this objection by pointing out that finite beings cannot commit sins of infinite severity. Consider this: There are different degrees of wrongdoing. Murdering someone is much worse than kicking someone in the shin. In our earthly systems of justice, we recognize these different degrees of wrongdoing by administering different degrees of punishment. For mild offenses, we might require someone to pay a fine, or do community service. For more severe offenses, we might sentence someone to long periods in prison, sometimes even life in prison, or even the death penalty. We give people these different sentences because they commit different crimes. How do we measure how severe a crime is? Basically, we measure the severity of a crime by estimating the relative amount of needless suffering that such a crime tends to cause. Pilfering a Tootsie Roll tends to cause relatively little suffering to others. Torturing and slaughtering millions of people, however, tends to cause a relatively massive amount of suffering. Given these relative amounts of suffering, we assign degrees of severity to crimes, and assign parallel degrees of severity in the punishments we mete out for specific crimes.

Given this standard of determining what punishments are appropriate, an infinite punishment is only called for when a crime tends to cause infinite suffering in others. But the suffering that people experience as a result of one person's wrongdoing--even if it is unbearably severe--is still limited. Holocaust survivors endured unimaginable horrors at the hands of Nazi criminals. Still, their physical suffering ended. Their emotional suffering continues for many years afterward, but still fades with time. When they die, the remaining emotional suffering will be entirely erased. Thus, the suffering caused by the sins of even such tremendous wrongdoers as the Nazis is limited. The punishment must therefore be limited.

We have seen how human suffering as a consequence of sin is limited. Is it possible that God himself endures infinite suffering because of sin? Of course not. If God experienced unlimited suffering, we could hardly call him perfect, nor would he be omnipotent. After all, people would have the power to cause such a god to suffer, and thus his existence would be no better than those whom he condemns to hell. The suffering caused by sin is limited, so the punishment administered for it should also be limited.

The final objection I will address is the one that insists God is the one who creates justice, so we mere humans have no basis for judging his punishments to be unjust. If God wants to punish limited sinners eternally, then that's just, because whatever God does is just. By this view, justice is what God says it is. The main problem with this objection is God has never personally told me what was a "sin" and what was not. Only my personal experiences and people have advised me on such matters. Also, I know some people tend to be bigoted or prejudiced from a lack of experience or ignorance. How am I to know whether the person offering me advice is offering it from a bigoted or prejudiced perspective or not? Also, people are often mistaken, and they have no magical or supernatural means of knowing when they are mistaken. Neither does the so called "sinner."  Some people claim that ignorance of the law is no excuse. But that is a lie. A first time offender, especially a person who proves she was ignorant of the law, is judged differently than the person who has broken the same law many times. Of course, I realize some religious folk may claim to know what advice to offer because they communicate directly with God. But I also know people tend to lie in their own interest. Furthermore, I know that some people might seem healthy, but have limited mental problems that could make them think they are hearing the voice of God. And the last problem with this objection is, if God ultimately determines what is sinful and what is not, and he spontaneously decided to punish Christians while rewarding sinners, would this be just? According to this view, it would be, since God is the person who decides what is just. Can you imagine a world where hurting people is considered good, while kindness is bad and is punished? By defining justice as whatever "God" arbitrarily decides is just, we commit ourselves to the view that such hypothetical worlds would be just, even though it goes against our every intuition about what is good and bad. And what would be the social impact of such a notion of justice? Wouldn't a belief in a system of such arbitrary justice tend to produce tyranny, social discord, and injustice?

However, the religious tyranny, intolerance, and injustice that once ruled the world no longer do. And this is primarily due to the fact that most folks do not believe that the leader is God, nor do they believe God would set arbitrary standards for justice. Human experience and needs ultimately define justice and injustice. We therefore have established standards of justice to use as a guide. Murder is unjust because of the gratuitous suffering it causes, not because God says it is. If there is a God, he knows experience has taught us that there is an irrevocable bond between needless suffering and our definitions of justice and injustice

A just god would not make arbitrary rules, but would set standards that acknowledge this unbreakable bond between justice and needless suffering. These standards would necessarily include the principle that just punishment is proportional to the suffering that sin tends to cause. These standards would also include the principle that only punishment with rehabilitative or redeeming qualities is good punishment.

So a just God who sends people to hell for eternal punishment does not exist. Maybe there is a god who is just. Or maybe there is a god who sends people to hell. But there cannot be a God who is and does both. Such a God is impossible.

This is one reason why I don't believe in a Christian God.

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