The Origin Of God And Heaven, Of The Devil And Hell

by Robert Ingersoll

In the estimation of good orthodox Christians I am a criminal, because I am trying to take from loving mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, and lovers the consolations naturally arising from a belief in an eternity of grief and pain. I want to tear, break, and scatter to the winds the God that priests erected in the fields of innocent pleasure -- a God made of sticks called creeds, and of old clothes called myths. I shall endeavor to take from the coffin its horror, from the cradle its curse, and put out the fires of revenge kindled by an infinite fiend.

Is it necessary that Heaven should borrow its light from the glare of Hell?

Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal gaoler [jailer] hardens, debases, and pollutes even the vilest soul. While there is one sad and breaking heart in the universe, no good being can be perfectly happy.

Against the heartlessness of the Christian religion every grand and tender soul should enter solemn protest. The God of Hell should be held in loathing, contempt and scorn. A God who threatens eternal pain should be hated, not loved -- cursed, not worshiped. A heaven presided over by such a God must be below the lowest hell. I want no part in any heaven in which the saved, the ransomed and redeemed will drown with shouts of joy the cries and sobs of hell -- in which happiness will forget misery, where the tears of the lost only increase laughter and double bliss. 

The idea of hell was born of ignorance, brutality, fear, cowardice, and revenge. This idea testifies that our remote ancestors were the lowest beasts. Only from dens, lairs, and caves, only from mouths filled with cruel fangs, only from hearts of fear and hatred, only from the conscience of hunger and lust, only from the lowest and most debased could come this most cruel, heartless and bestial of all dogmas.

Luke The Historian

From the Errancy discussion list, 8-18-97:

TILL

Otsen has cited the amazing historical accuracy of Luke as an argument for biblical inerrancy, as if he somehow believes that because one biblical writer was accurate in some geographical, political, and social matters, he was therefore right in everything he wrote and that the entire Bible must, as a consequence, be inerrant. In an earlier posting, I listed over two dozen references that Luke made in the book of Acts to extraordinary events. I challenge Otsen to present to us some kind of extrabiblical evidence to prove that at least some of these events actually happened. Until he can do this, he is in effect arguing that because Luke knew the geography of the region he wrote about and the names of some public officials and such like, we can thereby know that Luke was also accurate in his reporting of the various miracle claims found in his gospel and the book of Acts. 

I'll use just one example to show how fallacious this line of reasoning is. In *The Twelve Caesars,* the Roman historian Suetonius recorded many events and named many public officials that are universally accepted as historically accurate. However, Suetonius also stated that when Roman officials were arguing over where the body of Julius Caesar should be cremated, two "divine forms" came down with torches in hand and set fire to the funeral couch (Penguin Books, 1989, p. 52). Suetonius also stated that a man who had just recently purchased the mansion that had been owned by the grandfather of Caesar Augustus went to sleep in the room that had been the nursery of Augustus, and in the night he was "hurled out of bed by a supernatural agency and found lying half-dead against the door, bedclothes and all" (p. 56). Suetonius further claimed that Emperor Vespasian healed a blind man and a lame man by just touching the lame man and spitting on the eyes of the blind man (p. 284). Tacitus made this same claim.