Life in the Open

In church for Christmas. Nice decor, but
it could maybe use a few more trees.

It's been a little over a year since I came out to my family as an atheist, and surprisingly little has changed. Certainly, they were upset at first. My mom asked me tearfully over lunch why I hadn't told them sooner. A little while later she asked me, not threateningly but solemnly, if I realized what happens if I'm wrong about Christianity. And my dad and I had a few brief, cordial lunchtime debates on religious topics.

Sometimes my parents asked me if I wanted to go with them to church, which I politely turned down except for a few times when it seemed especially important to them—Christmas and Easter, for instance. And a couple of weeks before Christmas they got me a book of arguments for God, which I may work through here if it turns out to be worthwhile. (If so, I'm also thinking about formulating a version of my 30 questions for them to read in return.)

But what I listed above is basically the full extent of their reaction over the past fourteen months. Given that I spend time with them virtually every day, it's surprisingly subdued. For the most part, the topic of my atheism was barely touched after just a couple of weeks.

I have mixed feelings about my family's relative lack of interest in my unbelief. On the one hand, it's great. It's wonderful to be able to talk and have fun with them without feeling distant or uncomfortable. And to be clear, I certainly wouldn't trade this outcome for one where I'm constantly arguing. Still, part of me can't help but be amazed at what a small impact my coming out has had. Having grown up as a Christian, it's all too easy for me to think about my situation from the believer's perspective. If I were an ardent Christian and my sister told me she was an atheist, what would I do? Hmm...

My reaction is confusion, then horror. One of the people I love most in the entire world will be spending eternity weeping and gnashing her teeth in outer darkness! I have to do something, anything to convince her that she's strayed from the straight and narrow! I try to tread carefully around this sensitive topic, but I'm far too curious not to ask what changed her mind. Based on her response, I spend hours researching, steeped in books and articles from renowned apologists, training myself to make the perfect case for the Christian faith. Then, when the timing is right, I broach the subject as tactfully as I can and present my talking points.

Given the seriousness of eternal punishment, the only response that makes sense to me is to expend every available resource in pursuit of saving the lives of my loved ones. Granted, it's important not to come on too strong and drive them further away, but neither will it work to skirt the issue almost entirely.

...So why is avoidance the response I'm seeing here?

It's certainly not that my family is too selfish and unmotivated to come to my aid. They've demonstrated their affection in so many other ways that this holds no water at all. And it isn't that they don't believe what they claim to, just because their behavior doesn't perfectly match their beliefs. I hate it when people draw this conclusion about religious people. It could be that they're nervous about driving me away, just as I would be, but that's probably not the whole story.

I think the best explanation is that humans don't always think through the full consequences of their beliefs. Religious or not, we rarely make optimal decisions given the information available to us. In a way it's not strange to believe in a world of epic spiritual warfare, yet still fret more about what we're having for lunch tomorrow than about saving people from horrific eternal fates. After all, how much time and effort do we devote to worrying about trivial problems like morning rush hour, compared to serious ones like the millions of people suffering from starvation and disease? It's the same basic principle, minus the eschatology.

This may be the most important set of insights that leaving Christianity has taught me—is still teaching me.

Humans are irrational. We make bad, short-sighted decisions. And if we want to bring about as much good as we can, it's imperative that we improve our decision-making, both for our own sake and for others.

So I'm glad that I can live a life in the open, where I'm free to believe what I like without looking over my shoulder. But the next step is much more difficult. Can I live a life where I'm open with myself? Where I constantly challenge the mental weaknesses that keep me from achieving what really matters?

Can you?

The Purpose of Hell

Everyone agrees that criminals should be punished, but what many people don't realize is that there are several different theories about why punishing criminals is a good idea. Here I'll examine whether any of these penal theories apply to an eternal punishment in hell. I'll assume in this post, purely for the sake of argument, that unbelief is in some way a bad thing. But even granting this, what we find is that these five rationales either don't apply in the case of the Christian God punishing us in hell, or imply that some other punishment would be more just.

The first reason that one might be justified in punishing a wrongdoer is rehabilitation—punishment for the purpose of morally improving the criminal. But since people stay in hell forever, anything they might learn to better themselves could never be put to use. At most it would result in morally upright people suffering forever, which is clearly even worse than if hell was only filled with the unrepentant.

There's also restoration—punishment for the sake of repairing the damage resulting from the crime. But there's no reason to think that suffering endlessly in outer darkness would benefit God or any other possible victims in the slightest—unless we label God a sadist, who takes pleasure in our boundless pain. In fact, if we take at face value the apologist's claim that God is quite upset about having to punish us, hell seems to work against restorative justice.

The third is deterrence, which is intended to prevent crimes from being committed in the first place. Perhaps hell is a way to bully people into obedience. But there are two problems with this: First, given that 70% of people on earth are non-Christians, the threat of the Christian hell has been largely ineffective at the global scale. Second, by attempting to threaten people into genuine belief when in fact belief is not generally a choice, this form of justice would fall into the same trap as Pascal's Wager.

The fourth is incapacitation, or punishment for the sake of protecting potential victims from further harm. If believers are the victims here, hell would keep the evil heathens from corrupting them—but there are other ways to do this that don't involve excess suffering. If God is supposed to be the victim, it's unclear how hell is "protecting" him from unbelievers. Presumably he isn't so fragile that unbelief or even rebellion would cause him the slightest amount of harm. Perhaps rebellion harms God in some emotional sense. But in that case, hell is once again totally counterproductive: it's the perfect way to stir up even more resentment against him.

Finally, the crudest and most basic reason for punishing wrongdoers is retribution: the idea that evil deeds inherently deserve to be punished, apart from any tangible benefits that will result from such punishment. This may feel like an appropriate reaction, but it's really nothing more than barbaric, institutionalized revenge. What some perceive as punishment for the sake of some idealized "pure justice" is actually a combination of the other rationales listed above. Even if we accepted retribution as a legitimate penal theory, though, it still wouldn't justify hell. Retributive justice carries with it a sense of proportion: the punishment must fit the crime, and eternal punishment for even the tiniest sin certainly doesn't qualify in that sense.

There really is no justification at all for hell as a punishment. This is true because many sins are essentially victimless crimes, and because eternal punishment for sin results in no benefit to any party. However, apologists sometimes sneak around this by saying that hell is a choice: if we willfully reject God, he grants our wish by taking us to a place where we can be completely separate from him. Nonsense. He could accomplish the same thing by simply snuffing out our existence altogether, and avoid all the unnecessary suffering. This would serve as a perfect form of incapacitation (it's impossible to cause any further harm) as well as a more reasonable form of retribution (more proportionate with the perceived crime).

One last defense apologists occasionally give is to claim both that retributive justice is valid and that hell is a proportionate punishment, because our crime has somehow caused infinite offense against God's infinite dignity. Ridiculous. The relevant factor is not dignity, but actual harm. A crime against a king would deserve no more punishment than the same crime against a peasant. If the king threw a fit, demanding the culprit's execution due to some abstract violation of dignity, we would rightly label him a tyrant. If anything, the more power this king has and the more severe his demanded punishment, the more petty and unjust he becomes.

Hell is not only useless as a punishment according to most penal theories, but also highly unjust and even counterproductive. The onus is on Christians to show that this unending punishment can somehow be justified, and they certainly have their work cut out for them.

Through the Pearly Gates (Part 2)

I posted part one of the story yesterday. Here's the second one.

*     *     *

Gabriel stared at Stephen, sizing him up for almost a full minute. The eyes covering his wings appeared to follow suit. Stephen couldn't meet his gaze and instead turned away to look at the lavish furniture and décor. Everything in the house was fashioned from some precious material: sapphires, gold, silk, pearls. The smell of incense was heavy in the air.

"Uhm... wonderful place you've got here," Stephen offered.

"You have one just like it, you know."

"I do? Well, that's... that's nice, I guess. But, uh... how do I put this. What's it all for?"

Gabriel frowned. "I don't understand. Don't you find it beautiful?"

"Well, sure. But you can't just look at shiny trinkets until the end of time, can you?"

He shrugged his wings. "To each his own, I suppose. But now I must be getting back to worship our Lord and Master. It's been far too long already."

"Wait! I came here to ask about my daughter. I can't find her, and my wife is... well, there's something wrong with her. She doesn't remember things properly, and she's acting very strange. Stiff. Very happy, but in an oblivious sort of way. It's hard to explain. Can you help me?"

"Very well," said Gabriel. "What is your daughter's name?"

"Sophie. Sophie Lane."

Gabriel walked over to a corner of the room and began rifling through a massive tome identical to the one Stephen had seen at the pearly gates.

He turned and said simply, "Her name is not in my book."

"I... I don't understand. What does that mean?"

"She chose the Pit."

The room was spinning. "She... what?"

"Sophie never accepted our Lord and Master, so she was sent to the other place."

The words clanged dissonantly in Stephen's head. "But... she was so young."

The angel shifted his wings. "I'm sorry, but all who are old enough to reject our Master's gift are sent to the Pit. Is there something else I can help you with, or shall I go?"

The floodgate opened and the tears came streaming down. How could it be? Sophie had always been an inquisitive girl, always asking why, but Stephen had never imagined that she hadn't accepted the faith she was brought up in. He remembered those innocent round eyes, that carefree smile, and he collapsed in grief as he realized that he had lost her forever.

*     *     *

When Stephen opened his eyes, his surroundings had changed. He was in a room that appeared to be fashioned out of glass, but he decided that given the divine obsession with pointless riches, it was more likely to be diamond. Through three of the thick walls he could make out blurry gold hues of heaven, while the one in front of him had a surface that reminded him of his featureless white cubicle. A pang of loneliness snapped him back into the moment, and he would have collapsed to the floor in sorrow again if not for two powerful hands that grabbed his arms from either side.

"This is exactly what I was talking about, Raphael," said Gabriel. "There is to be no sorrow or crying in heaven, and those are all this man seems capable of."

"Not surprising," said Raphael, maintaining a firm grip on Stephen's right arm. "He ended his earthly life so he could reunite with his family. It would certainly be a disappointment to learn that your daughter chose the Pit and your wife chose erasure."

Stephen let the heat of his anger burn through his tears. "What did you do to my wife?"

"Calm yourself," said Raphael. "When your wife learned the fate of your daughter, she reacted in much the same way you did. We had no choice but to erase her memories of Sophie. But before we could do so, she begged and pleaded with us, told us she would never think of her daughter again. I judged this to be a lie, and our Lord will not tolerate the presence of such sins any more than He will allow sorrow. And so to avoid having to send her to the other place, we removed her rebellious nature as well."

"But that's ridiculous!" cried Stephen. "As long as people have free will, everyone is going to sin eventually!"

Gabriel gave him a small smile. "You have spoken correctly. With our heavenly bodies and our closeness to the Almighty, it becomes easier to avoid sin, and some of us devote ourselves to the Lord so completely that we maintain our autonomy for eons. But in the spiraling depths of eternity, some act of disobedience is inevitable. In the end, everyone faces erasure."

Stephen looked hard into the two blue eyes fixed in Gabriel's head. "Have you?"

The archangel's smile disappeared. "Enough of this. It's been hours since I bowed prostrate before our Master. Raphael, would you mind—"

"To hell with you and to hell with your god," Stephen bellowed. "I want my wife and daughter back!"

Two groups of eyes looked at one another, then at Stephen. Gabriel offered his diagnosis. "This one is beyond help. He is so consumed with evil that after erasure there would be nothing left."

Raphael nodded.

A large gash opened up in the blank wall in front of Stephen. He had expected it to reveal a cavern filled with angry red flames, licking at the legs of people chained to the walls. Instead he saw... nothing. Blackness blacker than soot, so all-encompassing that he imagined at any moment it would burst from the chasm and swallow him up.

He had expected a cacophony of tortured screams. Instead he heard... nothing. In fact, the silence was so intense that it seemed to absorb sound from the room he was standing in. And then he heard it: a single bone-chilling cry, from what sounded like a great distance, that echoed continually but never completely disappeared.

There was a push from behind, and Stephen knew it was the end. During his fall into the Pit, it occurred to him that the wailing he heard was so inhumanly shrill that it would be impossible to identify who the voice belonged to. It could have come from anyone—even Sophie. Had his sentence been total isolation, his memories of her might eventually have been eroded away by the relentless waves of time. But those helpless cries would never allow him to forget what he had lost.

As the pinhole of light in the ceiling began to close, Stephen heard the last coherent words he would hear for the rest of eternity:

"As you writhe in the darkness, always remember: God still loves you. That's why He gave you a choice."

The Holy Sacrament... of Doom

Communion is the Christian practice of eating a small wafer and a sip of wine or grape juice, which represent the body and blood of Jesus—or which literally are his body and blood, according to Catholic and Orthodox traditions. The ritual is meant as a way of remembering Jesus' sacrifice, although unbelievers often view the idea of eating flesh and drinking blood as bizarre and morbid, metaphorical or not. The church I go to with my parents (since I'm not out as an atheist) holds communion on the first Sunday of each month.

It's scarier than it looks. You'll see.

The pastor at this church takes a particular interest in a certain biblical passage addressing communion:

"Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep." (1 Corinthians 11:27-30)

He emphasized the bolded part above, proclaiming that those who take communion insincerely "eat and drink damnation unto their own soul." As I began to doubt Christianity but continued to take communion, this terrified me. Judgment? Damnation? Did that mean that if I was wrong and Christianity was true, I would go to hell automatically for taking communion while not believing?

On the first Sunday of each month, a private drama played out in one second-row seat of that church. I couldn't just decline the ritual; that would probably be taken by my parents as a sign of doubt. But I also couldn't brush off communion as meaningless, since I still retained that overwhelming fear of eternal torment. So instead I tried to temporarily psych myself into a state of belief for long enough to scarf down the cracker and grape juice. After a while I realized that wasn't going to work, so at one point—I'm not making this up—I surreptitiously pocketed the cracker and poured the sip of grape juice on my hands during the preceding prayer, then pretended to eat and drink. Luckily no one noticed that I smelled like grapes for the remainder of the sermon.

These are the sorts of crazy things that a real fear of hell can make someone do. I still take communion, but it doesn't hold any meaning for me (although last time I was grateful for the grape juice since my throat was a little parched). If this passage means what the pastor implied it does, that only highlights the unbelievable pettiness of a being who would send someone into endless suffering for drinking some juice out of a plastic cup.

By the way, for some reason my pastor never mentioned the final sentence quoted above: "For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep [i.e. die]." Hmm, so taking communion unworthily causes illness and death? That's a very testable claim. Maybe we should try it out. I would bravely put life and limb on the line to volunteer for the unbelieving experimental group. Seriously, though, this idea is as silly and demonstrably false as the Scientologist belief that learning about OT III (the Xenu story) before one is ready could cause pneumonia. Cases like this make me reluctant to treat Christianity as though it's worthy of serious discussion.

The Problem of Poorly Communicated Salvation

If only it were this simple.

In the past others have written about some general problems with the Christian God's supposed ability to communicate his will. Here I want to address a specific facet of this issue, with what I'll call the Problem of Poorly Communicated Salvation (PPCS). Here it is crystalized into a formal syllogism:

1. If the Christian God existed, he would clearly communicate the criteria for salvation.
2. The criteria for salvation have not been clearly communicated.
3. The Christian God does not exist.

The syllogism is a valid argument in the modus tollens logical form, so if you accept the first two premises, you must accept the conclusion. I'll tackle the second premise first.

The Unclear Criteria
Virtually all Christians and even most nonbelievers think that Christian salvation is pretty straightforward. After all, you just have to believe in Jesus, right? Well, hold on a minute. Let's be specific and methodical about this. Which of the following are necessary or sufficient for entrance into heaven?

• Belief that God created the heavens and the earth
• Belief that the Bible is the Word of God
• Belief that the Father is God
• Belief that the Holy Spirit is God
• Belief that Jesus is God
• Belief that Jesus is God's son
• Belief that Jesus became fully human
• Belief that Jesus died on the cross
• Belief that Jesus rose from the dead
• Belief that you are sinful
• Acceptance of Jesus' forgiveness
• Lack of belief in any other gods
• Verbally confirming that Jesus is God (Romans 10:8-10)
• Avoiding blasphemy of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 12:31-32)
• Denying oneself and following Jesus daily (Luke 9:23-26)
• Forgiving others for their sins (Matt. 6:14-15)
• Bearing children (For women only: 1 Tim. 2:14-15)
• Baptism (Believed among Catholics, Lutherans, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses: Mark 16:16; John 3:5; 1 Peter 3:21)
• Good works (Among Catholics and Orthodox Christians: James 2:14-26; Rev. 20:11-13)
• Being chosen by God (Among Calvinists: Eph. 1:4-5; Rom. 8:29-30, 9:11-22; 2 Thes. 2:11-13)
• Someone else being baptized on your behalf after death (Among Mormons: 1 Cor. 15:29)

When we break the Christian worldview down into fragments that we can accept or reject individually, we reveal the true complexity of the situation. What if I believe Jesus died for me, but I think he was only divine (or only human)? What if I believe in both the Trinity and the Hindu pantheon? What if I don't believe in the Holy Spirit? What if I do everything else right, but I don't do any good works or get baptized? And what happens when people die before they're too young to understand the requirements, or die before ever hearing of them? I'm not just being pedantic here; if Christianity is true, these questions have quite real and profound implications for anyone who happens to fall into such categories.

My guess is that if I gave the above list of potential requirements to a hundred Christians, I would get close to a hundred unique responses. Why? Because for all its chatter about redemption and salvation, the Bible never actually gets around to laying out a condensed, consistent and precise set of necessary and sufficient conditions for entering heaven. If this were not so, there would be no need for the evangelical tool known as the "Romans Road," which takes tiny bits and pieces from throughout the book of Romans and patches them together to summarize the gospel and the standard Protestant requirements for being a Christian.

Remember, God is supposedly perfect. He could come up with the exact set of words that would cause the least amount of confusion among his followers. So if God is such a great communicator, why are various Christians sects (and individuals) in such disagreement on the exact requirements for salvation? Why didn't he inspire the biblical authors to write them out clearly and succinctly in big bolded letters?

The Enormous Stakes
At this point it should be obvious that a perfect God could have communicated salvation far more clearly than he did. The first premise of the PPCS deals with a different question: would he have done so if he existed? I think most people would intuitively say 'yes,' but just to be thorough, I'll try to explain exactly why an unerringly God would act in this way.

First, there's the issue of earthly violence that has come about as a result of this confusion about what's necessary for salvation. A large part of the difference between Catholics and Protestants, for example, comes down to differences of opinion on this topic. Who knows how many lives could have been saved if the Bible were clearer about salvation? Perhaps the Thirty Years' War, the Catholic Inquisition, and the Troubles of Northern Ireland could have been largely or completely prevented—and that would be just the beginning.

And second, I want to stress the importance of the afterlife in Christianity. If you're saved, you are rewarded for eternity; if not, you're punished in the fires of hell for eternity. People by their very nature are unable to fully grasp the idea of an infinite length of time, so I think it's quite impossible to understate the implications of this doctrine. If even one person goes to hell as a result of a misunderstanding, the resulting harm is boundless. And when we're talking about the fate of billions of people, the stakes grow to ludicrous, incomprehensible heights.

The Christian God is supposed to be benevolent: he doesn't want us to suffer unnecessarily. He's also supposed to be deeply personal: he wants us to be with him. He has every motivation to make the requirements for salvation crystal clear and easily accessible to all human beings. So what's stopping him?

Could free will be the issue? I don't see how; God could easily make the Bible more straightforward without interfering with anyone's autonomy just by magically editing the text himself. Maybe he thinks this uncertainty will test our commitment to interpreting his words? But thousands of theologians throughout history have devoted their whole lives to the scriptures, and they were still unable to agree. Could it be that Satan and his minions are muddling up the wording? Surely God could put them in their place with a snap of his fingers if it was important to him. Beyond this, I honestly don't see any other viable explanations. Christians can play the "God works in mysterious ways" card if they like, but such an unparsimonious and unfalsifiable cop-out shouldn't be convincing to anyone.

Conclusion
When it comes to the task of leading us on the path to salvation, the Bible is a disorganized, inconsistent mess—despite the fact that the stakes riding on it couldn't be higher. I think I've shown with reasonable certainty both that the Christian God failed to make the precise requirements for salvation sufficiently clear, and that he would in fact have done so if he existed. If we accept the two premises of the PPCS, the only possible conclusion is that this version of God does not exist.

JI: How Christianity Evolved (Part 2)

Yesterday I summarized how Jesus came to be viewed as the Messiah, and how early Christians became increasingly anti-Jewish despite Jesus' Jewish heritage and beliefs. Below I'll follow along with Ehrman as he explains the origins of Jesus' divinity, the triune nature of God, and the afterlife.

While it's now one of the cornerstones of the Christian faith, Jesus was not originally considered to be God. As evidenced by verses like Acts 2:22, 2:36 and 13:32-33, the earliest Christians thought he was a mere man whom God granted the status of Messiah at the resurrection. Later Jesus was thought to gain this title at his baptism (Mark 1:9-11), and then at his birth (Luke 1:30-35). Finally in John we see the fully developed view of Jesus' eternal existence as God himself (John 1:1-14).

Ehrman says that this increasingly deified view of Jesus developed independently in different places. Based on details like the "we" in John 21:24-25, John may have been written by a Jewish community, who rationalized the rejection of friends and relatives by assuming they had special access to the truth of Jesus' divinity. Others began believing that Jesus was divine based on his "cosmic judge" position as the Son of Man, while still more drew this conclusion from the fact that both Jesus and the OT God used the title of "Lord." And among former pagans, who were used to demigods born of a god and a human (e.g. Heracles), perceiving Jesus as God would have been easy.

The Trinity doctrine developed to solve the problem of how Christianity could continue as a monotheistic religion. The Ebionites decided that Jesus was not God, the Marcionites concluded that the OT God and the God of Jesus were two distinct entities, and the Gnostics thought Jesus was one of many divine beings. However, the two most popular doctrines were modalism, where God is one being who expresses himself in three roles, and Arianism, where God is one "substance" with three distinct persons. Even after Arianism won out, some insisted that the Son's position must be inferior to the Father's. But in 325, the modern view of Father, Son and Spirit as equal persons of the divine substance (problematic as it may be) was established.

Neither Jews nor the earliest Christians believed in immortal souls, heaven or hell. The OT prophets simply believed that God would inflict earthly punishment on those who sinned against him. The apocalypticists, such as Daniel, Jesus and Paul, believed God would come to judge the world and set up a new kingdom on earth, in which those who were dead would be physically resurrected. But when Jesus didn't come back as expected, people had to resolve their cognitive dissonance by reinterpreting this view. This is especially evident in 2 Peter, whose author desperately tries to explain that "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years." Eventually the judgment was reworked so that it came, as Ehrman puts it, "not at the end of the age but at the end of one's life," when one is sent to either heaven or hell.

The fact that Christian doctrines changed significantly over time does not in itself mean that they're false. But I agree with Ehrman when he says that their formation process looks distinctly human: it's full of fierce disagreements, political struggles and flimsy rationalizations. I would never expect such chaos and illogic if God, the perfect communicator, were truly in control.

The Bolted Door

Don't let your mind be a prison.

My first few whispers of doubt about Christianity began during my later years of high school, but what I haven't yet mentioned was my peculiar reaction to these feelings. I could have been curious about my doubts, or even frustrated with them, but instead I was afraid of them.

Why would doubts inspire fear? Because if they led me astray I would suffer an agonizing eternity in hell. So, I figured, why risk such a horrible fate at all? The easy solution was to suppress these doubts for the sake of securing salvation. This is why hell is surely the most powerful tool that Christianity has at its disposal: not only does it cause people to convert in desperation, it makes questioning dogma the most dangerous thing one can do. It produces vast quantities of intellectual dishonesty by causing people to value the adoption and preservation of certain beliefs over truth itself. (If it's not obvious why truth is a valuable goal, this post from Eliezer Yudkowsky may be of help.)

Perhaps I implicitly sensed the direction in which I was heading, because at times I imagined some future version of myself who no longer believed: a hazy figure, grinning, wreathed in shadow. Not evil, necessarily, but somehow turned over to the dark side, hopelessly misguided, a heathen and proud of it. I was determined not to become this person. At that time, of course, my perception of nonbelief was seriously warped. As far as I can tell, my life isn't enveloped in some kind of spiritual darkness, and if I'm misguided, I can at least take solace in the fact that I've honestly and carefully sought the truth.

For over a decade, it never even occurred to me to take a skeptical approach to my faith. But for a few years after that, I stuffed the skeptical outlook away behind a bolted door in my mind, guarded fiercely by images of fire and brimstone. It's both surreal and sad to think that I once consciously feared becoming the person I am today. And in response, I have resolved not to fear the possibility of being religious again in the future. I'll use logic and critical thinking to examine the information that comes my way, and I will accept whatever conclusion follows. It's a mentally demanding way of approaching the world, but when you follow this principle, truth prevails.

My Conversion Story

I was raised in a Christian home. I accepted the tenets of Christianity ever since I was old enough to understand them. But this is the account of how I explicitly, officially "converted" to Christianity. It's not your average conversion story.

I became a Christian because of a Disney movie.

In 1996, when I was seven years old, I saw the animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The main antagonist is a judge named Claude Frollo. He's certainly not a sympathetic character, but throughout the film, he agonizes over his actions and worries that he will suffer everlasting punishment because of them. At the end Frollo dies by falling into a fiery pit that clearly represents hell. Having gone to Sunday school, I was familiar with that doctrine, but that scene was what made it real to me. I couldn't get it out of my head: the Latin chanting, Frollo's unshakable guilt, and that eternal bubbling inferno.

I was familiar with what was necessary for becoming a Christian. The oft-quoted verse from Romans 10 says that "if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." I took that verse quite literally. But even though I sincerely believed and "confessed the Lord Jesus" privately dozens of times, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was still bound for hell. Could I really be sure that I had met all of the requirements? It seemed like it, certainly, but because the stakes were infinitely high, even the tiniest chance I was wrong was cause for alarm. This was my one profound anxiety at the ripe old age of seven.

I tried to comprehend what endless suffering would be like, but I just couldn't wrap my head around it. It made me dizzy. I would lie awake in bed imagining as long a period of time as I could and think, surely this is long enough? But I realized that no matter what length of time I imagined, it would not even begin to represent the amount of suffering experienced in hell. So, although I had nominally met the requirements for Christianity, the sheer magnitude of hell was absolutely terrifying to me. The idea that I had somehow missed one was enough to consume me with worry.

I remember flipping a cardboard coin I got at Chuck E. Cheese and mumbling to myself, "heads I go to heaven, tails I go to hell." If it came up heads I tried to convince myself it meant something; if it was tails I rationalized it away as a silly game. I remember going to the supermarket with my mother and helping her load groceries onto the conveyor belt at the checkout counter. I would pretend that I was "packing for hell." I realized that no amount of supplies would be enough, but I continued doing so anyway out of some twisted desperation. I knew I had to do something to quench my uncertainties.

A couple of months later I went to the Harvest Crusade with my mom and dad. At the end of the sermon, they had the altar call, and I told my parents I wanted to go down onto the stadium field to be saved. I remember my parents being pretty surprised—they probably figured that I was basically a Christian already, so it wasn't necessary—but they took me down anyway. Someone walked me through the sinner's prayer, and I got a little illustrated "Ben Born Again" pamphlet. A wave of relief and warmth washed over me. As I walked out of the stadium, holding both my parents' hands, I was beaming ear to ear. The lights in the parking lot shone brilliantly, as though ushering me into salvation. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

In the days that followed I read through the little booklet several times. I got a form letter from my church congratulating me on being saved. I wrote a letter to Jesus on broadly-lined school writing paper thanking him for his sacrifice and expressing my hope that the devil would step on a nail. At the top I wrote "I want to go to heaven with God and Jesus"—I don't think I was aware of the whole "trinity" thing yet. I thought about just going outside and letting it blow away in the breeze in hopes that God would eventually make it float up to heaven, but decided against it since I wasn't sure if he did things like that.

Those were simple, untroubled times for me. Life went on as usual, and for quite a while I was at peace. I can recall being on the elementary school playground, gazing at the empty swing set, thinking, Very soon, when the Rapture comes, this is what the world will look like. When I imagined my future, I basically assumed that I would never make it to college, let alone get a job. When I thought about what I would do when I grew up, I was only half serious. Jesus would surely come back before then. It was a calm, surreal sort of feeling, as though this world were just a fleeting illusion.

On the one hand, I could view the things I did as a Christian at age seven as quaint and naïve. But when I really think about my behavior, I find much of it to be pretty disturbing. I was fixated on the terrifying possibility that I might suffer forever in a place that doesn't exist. I played weird mind games with myself centered around this notion. I asked forgiveness of an imaginary entity, and wrote a follow-up letter in gratitude—and such sentiments were actively encouraged by those around me. I welcomed the Rapture completely at the expense of my life on earth. This is how religion warps the thoughts and beliefs of an innocent child. And although Christianity brought me great happiness at times, I can't look back on it now and say it didn't harm me.

Conceptualizing Eternity

It is impossible for the finite human mind to fully comprehend the nature of infinity. We all understand the idea on a surface level, but when we try to push deeper, things invariably fall apart. When we try to imagine, for example, an infinite number of soccer balls or an infinitely long stretch of rope, we end up with a "very large" amount that comes nowhere close to doing justice to the concept. There is always a nagging sense that the "end" is just around the corner—that if we just keep at it long enough, we will be able to rise above it all and take in its sweeping splendor all in one glance. This is, of course, a fantasy.

It's important to understand that infinity is not strictly a number. It is a concept that represents a quantity that is so great as to be boundless and without end. What's more, infinity regularly violates our common sense. If you owned a hotel with infinite rooms, all occupied, you could still make space for infinite new guests simply by moving each old guest from Room #1 to Room #2, Room #2 to Room #4, Room #3 to Room #6, and so on. The set of all fractions is just as large as the set of all whole numbers—although the set of all decimal numbers is even larger. This is the sort of counter-intuitive madness we must deal with when we try to grasp at this concept.

Eternity can be defined simply as an infinite length of time. In this essay I will present a thought experiment designed to help catch a glimpse of eternity's sheer, ludicrous magnitude, to understand it to the greatest extent possible—which, unfortunately, is still not much at all. In the future I will refer back to this experiment to discuss its theological implications. To get the full experience, please take your time and visualize the imagery as vividly as possible.

The Experiment

Imagine that you have decided to spend the day at the beach. Get out of your car and walk along a short concrete path surrounded on either side by grassy lawn. Descend a few steps and look around. The ocean is in front of you, the sky above is a deep and cloudless blue, and an expanse of fine white sand stretches to your left and right for as far as you can see. Sit down and take a pinch of sand with your thumb and index finger. From this pinch, isolate a single grain, which is no larger than the period on this page, and place it in the palm of your hand.

Concentrate on this grain of sand, and imagine that it represents your full lifetime, from birth up until this very moment. In order to fully comprehend this idea, go through your entire life, starting with your earliest memory and slowly working your way through the years. To the best of your ability, recall your various triumphs and failures, but try to remember the more tedious in-between moments as well. Remember every boring lecture in school, every night spent tossing and turning with insomnia, every lengthy sermon in church, every dull wait at the doctor's office, every long delay spent stuck in traffic. Realize that for each moment you can recall, there are hundreds if not thousands more that you cannot. Once the full weight of these memories is clear to you, focus on compressing these memories into the grain of sand. Whether it represents 10 years, 50, or 100, this grain of sand is your life.

Now with your other hand pick up another pinch of sand and slowly sprinkle it into the palm holding the single grain. Each new grain of sand is another lifetime's worth of lunches eaten, books read, movies watched, showers taken, papers written, and so on. Feel the innumerable slight taps as every individual grain makes contact with your hand. What you now hold in your hand is equivalent to several thousand years. Now with your free hand take a great handful of sand and let it slowly out into the other palm. As you do, try to visually isolate the single grains that still represent your full lifetime, birth to present. They probably fly by too fast to identify, but that does not make them any less real than the grain you started out with.

By now you should have a considerable pile of sand in your open palm, representing at least several million years. Dump the pile back onto the beach. Find a single grain to serve a reference, then slowly look up and down the beach to the horizon to the left and right. Try to understand fully that the entire beach consists of countless billions of grains—countless billions of lifetimes—exactly like the single reference grain. Imagine what it would mean to live out these lifetimes one by one. After experiencing year after year, you would finally be entitled to discard a single grain… and pick up the next. Goodness, you think. Infinity really is quite something. But we have only just begun.

Facing forward, you find that the ocean has vanished, replaced only with more sand—it was, apparently, just a mirage. Behind you there are no longer any steps, no grassy lawn or parking lot: only more sand. While before you saw a very long but nevertheless thin strip of sand, it now surrounds you in a flat expanse extending in all directions—hundreds of quadrillions of years of life that you are destined to live out.

Now stand up and go for a brisk jog. After a few miles you stop, panting, sweat rolling down your face. You kneel on the ground and begin to dig with your bare hands, scooping out millions of years at a time, until you have a hole several feet deep. At last, you have found it: a grain of sand representing your full lifetime. The point is that this grain, like countless others, was entirely hidden from you. It was the furthest thing from your mind, yet it still represents the same long drives and meals and lectures and workdays as the others. While it may be nothing special, it still represents many quite real and concrete years that you must live through on your endless journey through eternity.

Look up at the sky and notice that it has become filled with some unusually dark clouds. As you try to understand what makes them so peculiar, you feel a sting on your face—the sting of a thousand arguments between you and your loved ones. It begins to drizzle, then rain, then pour sand all across the desert landscape; each grain that hits your skin carries its own individual bite. The downpour becomes a deluge of such proportions that you must continually move your feet so as not to sink into it. As great heaps of sand pound against your head, you desperately fight the flood of lifetimes, but they soon overwhelm you. In seconds, you are buried up to your knees, to your waist, to your neck, and finally you are buried alive, crushed as quintillions of years press in against you from all sides.

One galaxy. Of 80 billion.

Thankfully, the deluge ceases shortly after burying you, and after several claustrophobic, painful minutes you are able to dig yourself out. But now you feel a rumbling beneath your feet, and soon you realize that the ground is expanding as sand is rapidly added to its mass. (The first 5 minutes of Powers of Ten are helpful for visualizing this part of the exercise.) The lifetimes below you multiply and increase exponentially to swallow up the moon, the nearby planets, the sun, and the entire solar system. It expands to 10 light-years across, engulfing Alpha Centauri, followed by other solar systems, followed by the entire Milky Way Galaxy, the Local Group of over 30 galaxies, and the Virgo Supercluster of over 100 galaxy groups. Eventually the sand-lives swallow up the entire observable universe—over 93 billion light-years across and containing over 80 billion galaxies, each of which contain on average about 400 billion stars.

Now take that image of the observable universe filled to the brim with tiny grains of sand, each representing your entire life's worth of experiences and each no bigger than a period on this page, and zoom out. Zoom out further and further, until the entire mass looks tiny—no larger than a grain of sand. Imagine yourself back on the beach holding that single grain of sand. The grain now represents a universe that is itself filled with grains of sand. Look to your left and right, taking in all the billions of other grains, all of which represent other universes filled with countless grains that all represent lifetimes.

Imagine going through the entire cycle in fast forward several times: a grain of sand, a pinch, a pile, a beach, a desert, a deluge, a solar system, a galaxy, a galaxy cluster, a universe that becomes a grain. Each full cycle multiplies the amount of time you must live through to such an extent that it is beyond my ability to describe it. Go through the cycle thousand times, a million, a billion. For what ridiculous, incomprehensible length of time must you now toil through your dreary existence?

The answer should make you want to vomit: it doesn't matter. Having gone through this cycle one time or a billion makes no difference. You are still no closer to the end of eternity than when you began. This is not meant in any figurative sense. After all of those mind-melting eons, you literally may as well not have started at all. You are zero percent of the way through your journey. But though your brain has long since turned to mush from the sheer accumulation of experiences, there is no giving up. You must press on and on through a life that is, in the truest sense possible, without end. That is the meaning of eternity.

Conclusion

Please do not get the impression that having gone through this exercise you are really any closer to understanding eternity. You have merely imagined a "very long" interval of time and acknowledged that this interval is nothing in comparison to the genuine article. In understanding this, you are simply waving the white flag that should have been waving all along. At best, you now comprehend that you can never comprehend eternity.

As I suggested earlier, both the nature of eternity and our ability to comprehend it have important religious implications. I will refer back to this thought experiment in later posts when discussing subjects such as the doctrine of hell.