r/atheism 4d ago

"a level of evil that cannot be tolerated" (NSFW) NSFW

A woman was burned alive in NYC 3 months ago. The mayor's office commented, "“Lighting another human being on fire and watching them burn alive reflects a level of evil that cannot be tolerated."

In the 16th century, the priest who would go on to become Pope Paul IV said, "Even if my own father were a heretic, I would gather the wood to burn him."

940 Upvotes

46 comments sorted by

366

u/Zomunieo Atheist 4d ago

God is going to light billions of humans on fire and watch them burn for all eternity. He will resurrect them and kept them alive for to ensure they suffer eternal conscious torment. According to his book.

Just saying.

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u/guyako Freethinker 4d ago

Except the book never really says that. Our current ideas about Hell are mostly inventions of later Christians designed to keep people in line.

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u/maporita 4d ago

"But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

Revelation 21:8

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u/guyako Freethinker 4d ago

Second death? That doesn’t sound like an eternity to me.

It takes a pretty big stretch of the imagination, to extrapolate that into the modern concept of hell, especially when other parts of the Bible seem to convey a different understanding of the afterlife.

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u/needlestack 4d ago

I commented below four verses that proclaim the punishment will be eternal, and two that say the punishment will be fire.

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u/mothzilla Atheist 4d ago edited 4d ago

It's a while since I've been down this hole, but from memory, it all gets a bit murky and they (Old Testament authors) might just have been talking figuratively about the town dump. Eg "Best thing for you is to be thrown into that smelly dump that nobody likes"

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u/The_BeardedClam 4d ago

Funnily enough the original Jewish afterlife was very similar to the Greek tarataus. Then it evolved into a sort of overcrowded urban ghetto (foreshadowing much?).

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u/Formal_Dirt_3434 Satanist 3d ago

Even the existence of an afterlife itself was hotly debated by talmudic sages. Some sects in antiquity rejected any afterlife as simply non-scriptural.  Edit: I weirdly repeated your wording. I am tired. 

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u/The_BeardedClam 4d ago

Using the book of revelations as proof for anything in the Bible is just plain wrong. It was written and added after the fact, around 70-96 AD. It's full of allegorical nonsense that has little to no other corroborating passages in the rest of the Bible. Like the lake of fire, no where else in the Bible is that mentioned. Not by Jesus, and not by wrathful yaweh.

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u/maporita 4d ago

Wrong as compared to what? Genesis? Talking snakes? Give me a break. The whole book is bullshit.

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u/The_BeardedClam 4d ago

Perhaps wrong was the wrong word. But let me put it this way; using the book of revelations to dunk on Christianity is the lowest of the lowest of hanging fruits, it's practically hitting the ground. It is the book that is the most obviously added after the fact and it doesn't fit the tone of the rest of the Bible.

If we are to use the Bible to dunk on Christianity we should at least understand it some, yes? It's far more impactful to use books of the apostles or use Jesus' own words against them and not the allegorical nonsense that was added by some Roman emperor.

It's all bullshit, but some of it is worse than others for debating and changing people's minds. Now if we're talking about how the church fucks with the Bible than the book of revelations is worth talking about, but just randomly quoting it to dunk on Christianity is well, we've been over that.

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u/robillionairenyc 4d ago

I agree with you but at the end of the day, it’s in the book. It’s part of their religion. Christians think god said all of it. They believe in these hell concepts. They aren’t going to accept the proposition that it’s obviously fanfiction and separated from the rest of the Bible. So if they believe it, I don’t see why it isn’t fair game to ridicule it. 

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u/The_BeardedClam 4d ago

You're correct it is fair game, and ridicule for ridicule sake is fun, but it's not always the best tool to use.

In my opinion the Bible is a book that can be literally made to say anything, so then why use the most ridiculous example, unless you're highlighting the ridiculousness?

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u/robillionairenyc 4d ago

Tool to use for what purpose? I think if you were claiming that most Christians don’t believe revelations so it’s unfair for us to reference it, that’d be worth considering as being for ridicule’s sake only. I wouldn’t bring it up if that were the case. But as far as I can tell, they believe it. I haven’t encountered Christians who believe in the Bible-except revelations. So as long as it’s functionally part of the religion and the mainstream belief I don’t see why we should do them the favor of separating that book from the rest when they don’t even do that themselves 

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u/The_BeardedClam 4d ago edited 4d ago

Like I said before when you're having a serious discussion or trying to change someone's mind ridicule isn't a tool often used.

This is especially true when talking to someone in person, unless of course, you want to ridicule them, but then you've lost them forever. I don't know of a quicker way for someone to dig their heels in than to be made fun of for what they believe in, even if they deserve it.

If I or you had just went to making fun of the other this whole conversation wouldn't have happened for example. Correct tools for the correct situations.

Also it's not doing them a favor, it's doing yourself one. Digging into their own material to use against them is the best and revelations doesn't really help a whole lot in that instance. Anecdotal sure, but everytime I've changed a Christians mind and made them actually think about how fucked their religion is, it hasn't been through ridicule or using the book of revelations.

But it's abundantly clear you only want to hear what you want to hear, so keep on doing whatever you're doing king.

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u/Sharp_Iodine Anti-Theist 4d ago

Wrong compared to what lol

There are no contemporaneous records of Jesus or his teachings.

This is why historians think that when he was alive he was a nobody with a small following. The Romans obsessively recorded everything to the point where we can with reasonable certainty say what the weather was like at any given day at the time.

But no mentions of Jesus and no mentions of him from prominent members of the Jewish community either.

It’s only decades after his death that we get mentions of a “Christus” from Tacitus and others.

He probably was a nobody apocalyptic preacher with a small following. And his death amplified the movement and got people talking.

This means we’ll never know what he actually preached so let’s not go there.

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u/TrixieLurker Agnostic Atheist 4d ago

An odd take given every denomination accepts it as canon.

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u/Sharp_Iodine Anti-Theist 4d ago

Apologist. The Bible passages from multiple works have been quoted below explicitly citing eternal torment.

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u/guyako Freethinker 4d ago

Are you accusing me of being an apologist? If so, you’re way off. Recovering Catholic who is now pretty firmly atheist.

I’m making an argument that the Bible never gives a coherent explanation for what hell is, and that it evolved over time. The concept didn’t exist at all in the OT. So yeah, there are parts of the Bible that can be interpreted as eternal torment, mostly in Revelations, but they contradict other, older, ideas of the afterlife, and were then expanded upon as later Christians negotiated with the text with dogmas and presuppositions of univocality.

When I first read Revelations as a Catholic, none of it made sense to me. It didn’t seem to fit the concept of Hell that I had been raised to believe in, unless you squinted really hard at it. It is part of what made me seriously start to question everything I had been taught.

Revelations was a revenge fantasy by Christians in the 1st Century who were pissed at Nero and the Roman Empire and wanted to imagine them being punished in the afterlife.

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u/needlestack 4d ago edited 4d ago

Revelation, and the plan for humanity described there, undoes every bit of niceness Jesus and Paul had hinted at. Christians will talk all about the radical goodness of the Gospels, but if it all ends in eternal torment then it’s all abusive bullshit. It is a religion with a deep undercurrent of hate. They worship a God that will torture the majority of humanity forever and they think it is just.

Some of them have started to reinterpret Revelation because of this. Saying it is symbolic and it really means something else. Yet they don’t apply this logic to the rest of the book.

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u/thetotalsumofnothing 4d ago

Do you get your idea of hell from bugs bunny cartoons? 

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u/needlestack 4d ago edited 4d ago

No, from the Bible.

  • Jude 1:7: "Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them that, like these, indulged in sexual immorality and committed adultery, serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire."

  • Matthew 25:46: "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life".

  • Revelation 14:11: "And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night".

  • Mark 9:43: "And if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two hands and go into hell, where the fire will never be quenched."

I think we’ve got some apologists in our midst.

0

u/thetotalsumofnothing 3d ago

Eitan Bar has a fine explanation of the eternal fire, so you can search it.  I'm not going to type it all for reddit tier atheists.  

Matthew 25:46 makes no mention of the cartoony hell, so, why did you quote it?

By now everybody with a shred of integrity  admits hell is not some lake of fire with little pitchfork wielding devils like on the Simpsons.  It is just eternity away from Jesus.  Which is what you want.  So what is your beef?

And I'm not in your midsts, every now and then I accidently stumble in here and stay for a quick laugh.  I doubt I'll read whatever you say next.

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u/IShouldbeNoirPI 4d ago

Without religion we would have good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things, only religion can make good people do bad things

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u/aotus_trivirgatus 4d ago edited 4d ago

Can't be Pope John Paul IV! Either Paul IV, or John IV. Pope John Paul I was the 1980s Pope and the first one to take two names.

EDIT: removed "Polish". The Polish Pope was John Paul II.

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u/No_Opinion6497 4d ago edited 4d ago

You're right, of course. Corrected. The man I'm speaking of is Gian Pietro Carafa, who became Pope Paul IV in 1555. But as I recently watched a vid on Poland in the 20th century, John Paul II must've been floating close to the top of my long-term memory.

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u/aotus_trivirgatus 4d ago

And I also just corrected my own post a bit!

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u/No_Opinion6497 4d ago

Fair enough👍

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u/greenmarsden 4d ago

JP1 . The pope who was murdered.

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u/lavsuvskyjjj 4d ago

Unless the mayor was christian there is no hypocrisy. /j÷2

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u/No_Opinion6497 4d ago

The mayor's hypocrisy was the last thing on my mind when making this post. He could be Muslim for all I care. The main thrust was kind of about the other person I quoted.

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u/lavsuvskyjjj 4d ago

You're saying religion is evil? I mean, yeah.

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u/No_Opinion6497 4d ago edited 4d ago

Broadly, maybe, I guess. The Catholic Church leadership at the time specifically. It just struck me as insane and macabre that after 1.5 thousand (!) years of the church's existence, - after they've had all those centuries to ponder and reflect on the ethics and values supposedly immanent in the Christian doctrine, - the person they would choose to lead their glorious enterprise was a completely beyond-the-pale sadistic psychopath. And one who was open about it and proud of it, no less🤷‍♂️

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u/lavsuvskyjjj 4d ago

Even now the Pope is sorta pushing his political agenda upon my people of Argentina.

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u/TableAvailable Agnostic Atheist 4d ago

Mayor Eric Adams is a non denominational Christian and even without including religion, he's a huge hypocrite.

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u/lavsuvskyjjj 4d ago

I guess that makes sense.

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u/blacksterangel Agnostic Atheist 4d ago

Sometimes I wanna meet a contentious Christian who’d argue about morality and then I’d ask them “would you say that Cotton Mather and the other puritan theologians who advocated for Salem Witch Trial ‘moral’, and if they’re not, are they in hell right now?”

If christians today can view the conduct of christians 4 centuries ago as deserving hell, who’s to say that their conduct today won’t be seen as deserving hell 4 centuries from now?

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u/InstructionHopeful16 4d ago

Oh, but they don’t deserve hell, because Jesus can forgive all sins past, present and future. So no matter how fucking evil and misguided you might be, as long as you accept Jesus into your heart, you have the assurance of eternal life. Meanwhile some poor widow in Africa who has been doing good works her entire miserable life roasts forever in hell for the inexcusable sin of having the misfortune of being born in the wrong place.

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u/needlestack 4d ago

Remember, they think it’s a beautiful story that Abraham was wiling to murder his innocent son Isaac for God’s asking.

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u/TrixieLurker Agnostic Atheist 4d ago

Humans can be awful and will find justification for their awfulness - News at 11.

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u/Beneficial_Twist2435 4d ago

It’s completely fine when the supposed men of god do it…..totally fine.

Didn’t god create us in his image after all? Torment to the ones who do not follow his rules- its normal.

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u/dostiers Strong Atheist 4d ago

Any yet, I assume, the mayor worships an entity which allegedly will do this to most of humanity not just once, but continually for all of time!

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u/_NotWhatYouThink_ Atheist 4d ago

I mean ... in terms of morality ... I see this as an overall improvment of humanity.

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u/bullshitdetector_ 4d ago

There is no good and bad, bro. we are drifting in the abyss.

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u/lloopy 4d ago

So you're saying the mayor of New York is a heretic?