I had Christianity implanted in me when I was a child. Eight years of
Catholic school did its job well. You wouldn't think that intimidation and physical abuse would be good teaching modalities - but the Sisters of St Dominic and the Sisters of Notre Dame used them to great effect. To this day there are barbed shards of Christianity deeply embedded in my mind. Although even as a boy, based on what I witnessed play out all around me on a daily basis, I saw Christianity for what it was, a deeply flawed spiritual
tradition based on superstition and cruelty, it was on an emotional
level where the infection truly blossomed. Specifically - the terrifying concept of
everlasting torment for the unredeemed seemed to me to be barbaric beyond the
pale. The horrifying doctrine of unending torture haunted me for decades. As a teenager I used to have
gigantic, volcanic fights with my mother about damnation. I remember
asking her once if she thought her husband or her children were going to burn for all
eternity for the petty sins of being non-Catholics and for not going to
church on Sundays. That didn't go over well and may well have resulted
in a slap in my face.. It wasn't until I read Arthur Schopenhauer's essay on Christianity that I was (somewhat) set free. That encounter is one of my most vivid memories from my time at UMaine Orono. I stood stock still in the stacks of the Fogler Library reading the book I had known about and searched for but until that day had failed to find... Schopenhauer gutted the Christian dogma of everlasting punishment.. [For a more modern and Orthodox treatment of eternal roasting, check out what David Bentley Hart has written about it..]
All the while I was reading Schopenhauer's essay, I remember thinking "Yes! Finally! Fuck yes!!" Some excerpts: 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[…] […Nay], more, it makes this almost universal damnation the natural effect of original sin, and therefore the necessary consequence of the Fall. [...]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.
[...]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.
[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.
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