2006.03.08
It's Wednesday night and I am listening for the first time to the live broadcast through Infidelguy.com. I've listened to a few of his past shows, but this is my first live one where you can see the people in the chat room discussing the show as they listen. Today's show is a very interesting interview with Joe Holman, who is a former minister, now atheist.
During the show they mentioned the concept of eternal torment in the fires of Hell. I've always wondered if anyone could be bad enough to deserve a whole eternity of torture. Take Hitler for example, even giving him a year of torture for every person who died in the Holocaust would be only 6 million years, right? Still nothing compared to an infinite number of years. Don't you think that is a little excessive for any crime, even one so evil as Hitler's?
Then if you believe in Hell, I assume you also believe in Heaven. Also assuming the murder victim is going to heaven, doesn't that make the crime less heinous than a murder in a purely materialistic world with no afterlife? So the irony is in a materialistic world Hitler is even more deserving of punishment by hellfire for casting so many people into oblivion.
Some say that atheists have a greater appreciation for the value of human life, because they believe there is nothing beyond that life and it becomes brief and precious. As an atheist however I do miss the idea of divine justice. Too often in real life, unlike in movies, the bad guys end up winning in the end and their victims just suffer and die. I hope the singularity comes soon and puts and end to the cycle of horror. (Best quote from that link: "[The Singularity is] "the Rapture for nerds." -Ken MacLeod)