As an Atheist,
should Christianity's loving message be true, I can
look forward to an eternity of divinely sanctioned, mind-shattering
pain in Hell. But what is an eternity, what is infinity?
I'll have a go at
describing an eternity. Let's consider the infinity of
time during which I (and the majority of people who have
ever existed) will be brutally tortured:
Imagine a giant
egg timer, you know, one of those old-fashioned hourglass
things with fine-grained sand in them. Let's consider
this egg timer to be the size of oooh, the Earth. Next,
imagine that the whole universe is filled, side by side,
on top of each other, with tens of hundreds of thousands
of millions of billions of trillions of giant egg timers. There
is nothing but egg timers. Now fill the top half of all
the earth-sized egg timers with sand, up-end and let one
grain of sand go through the gap once every thousand
years in egg timer number one. Eventually the sand will
run through, it will take many billions of years, but the
sand will eventually get through. Now repeat the process
for each egg timer in the universe one after the other.
When the last egg
timer in the universe has done it's stuff go back to egg
timer number one and start over again, repeating the
whole process for all the egg timers in the universe a
billion times. Then repeat all of the above a billion
times.
Are we any nearer
to the end of an eternity? Is the end of infinity
approaching? Nope, we have not scratched the surface. We
have not even made the least, microscopic dent in
infinite time. The torture is only just beginning, the
torment has hardly started, the agony hasn't really got
going yet.
The one, unique
concept brought to humanity in the Christian New
Testament is the heaven/hell dichotomy. It's nothing more
than a nasty little threat. Many Christians, via email,
have threatened this writer with their lovingly crafted
messages of eternal hell-fire torment. In reality, how
nasty is their message? How cruel is their threat? How
ignorant are their beliefs? How corrupt is their faith?
How cynical is their religion?
I'll tell you:
Still,
according to the Bible it's not only unbelievers who get
to spend the rest of time on the infinite subterranean
BBQ:
"But
anyone who says 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire
of hell."
(Jesus
speaking) Matthew 5:22
"O foolish people" (Moses
speaking) Deuteronomy 32:06
"the princes of Zoan are fools"
(Isaiah speaking) Isaiah 19:11
"ye fools" (David
singing) Psalms 94:08
"O foolish people" (Jeremiah
speaking) Jeremiah 5:21
"And every one that
heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall
be likened unto a foolish man"(Jesus
speaking) Matthew 7:26
"You fools!"
(Jesus speaking) Luke 11:40
"But God said to
him, 'You fool!' " (Jesus quoting god)
Luke 12:20
"How foolish you
are" (Jesus) Luke 24:25
"You blind fools!"
(Jesus) Matthew 23:17
"You blind fools!"
(Jesus) Matthew 23:19
"We are fools for
Christ's sake" (Paul writing) 1
Corinthians 4:10
"Thou fool"
(Paul) 1 Corinthians 15:36
"O foolish
Galatians" (Paul) Galatians 3:1
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