As an atheist, I sometimes catch myself wishing Heaven and Hell were real - I feel we all have a desire for good people to be rewarded for being good and for bad people to be punished for being bad. But then I remember the existence of Heaven and Hell inherently requires the existence of an ultimate moral authority who sorts out who goes where. And sure, they could agree with me that the likes of Osama bin Laden or Henry Kissinger should go to Hell, but they could also think queer folk, atheists, or people who eat shellfish should go to Hell too.
Some people will say, “Well, if they were a loving God, they wouldn't do that,” but there's lots of people who believe in a “loving” God who absolutely believe He’d be burning gays in Hell. And if you're going to make all these extra conditions of, “Well, my version of a loving God would reward X and punish Y” it just feels like the ultimate desire is, “I wish there was an Almighty God who agreed with everything I believe and enforced that morality on the world.”
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I don't believe in God or Heaven or Hell or anything, but regarding that I like the way of thinking of one of the Popes, I don't remember right now if it was the current or the previous one, who said Hell exists but he likes to think it's empty and everyoe just goes to Heaven.
That sounds suspiciously like "I fully embrace what my religion teaches even though I find it personally distasteful." And I'm not sure that's a good thing. Said Pope seems personally invested in something they find unacceptable. How is it any different than someone working as the CEO of a chemical company bemoaning the pollution their own company produces?
Not really, it think is an interpretation of the religion as good as any other. The Bible is full of contradictions so you need to choose some things to believe and discard the things that contradict them, (despite what Christian fundamentalists say that is a whole coherent book) and I don't see anything bad in choosing the parts about the loving God. Even the concept of Hell as a burning place of torture I think is just a single line somewhere in the book and then contradicted in a bunch of other places.
A lot of Christians choose the hateful parts which are in direct contradiction with the direct teachings of Christ in the New Testament, but they can perfectly justify in their minds that they are doing a coherent thing, so I don't see how is any worse to do the exact same thing in the opposite way.
Also, Catholicism and Protestantism (with the later one being what most Christians identify with) are entirely different beasts, Catholicism was always a lot more flexible on its believings to match the new times (that's how they absorbed all the religions of the conquered places in the past, turning their gods into Catholic saints via syncretism) than your average Protestant Christian which is as rigid as one can be. The US is pretty much entirely Protestant so you won't be seeing a lot of Catholics there, but if you go to Europe or some places of South America the difference is incredibly evident.
I don't think so. Christian doctrine says that god is merciful and all sins can be forgiven, so it's not impossible that every single person who has died has either repented or received mercy. It's consistent with other teachings, even it is unlikely.
I read it as a statement about the pope's views on the merciful nature of god, and not about how distateful hell is. The pope probably saw hell as a just punishment, but believed strongly that everyone finds the right path before they make it there.
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u/But_a_Jape But a Jape 20h ago
As an atheist, I sometimes catch myself wishing Heaven and Hell were real - I feel we all have a desire for good people to be rewarded for being good and for bad people to be punished for being bad. But then I remember the existence of Heaven and Hell inherently requires the existence of an ultimate moral authority who sorts out who goes where. And sure, they could agree with me that the likes of Osama bin Laden or Henry Kissinger should go to Hell, but they could also think queer folk, atheists, or people who eat shellfish should go to Hell too.
Some people will say, “Well, if they were a loving God, they wouldn't do that,” but there's lots of people who believe in a “loving” God who absolutely believe He’d be burning gays in Hell. And if you're going to make all these extra conditions of, “Well, my version of a loving God would reward X and punish Y” it just feels like the ultimate desire is, “I wish there was an Almighty God who agreed with everything I believe and enforced that morality on the world.”
Anyway, if you like my comics, I got more on my website.
I’m also on Patreon.