{"id":117,"date":"2009-01-03T13:38:25","date_gmt":"2009-01-03T13:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/richard-dawkins-and-really-bel.html"},"modified":"2009-01-03T13:38:25","modified_gmt":"2009-01-03T13:38:25","slug":"richard-dawkins-and-really-bel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/richard-dawkins-and-really-bel.html","title":{"rendered":"Really Believing in Hell (Keith)"},"content":{"rendered":"

But I was reminded of the incident later when I received a
\nletter from an American woman in her forties who had been brought up Roman
\nCatholic. At the age of seven, she told
\nme, two unpleasant things happened to her. She was sexually abused by her parish priest in his car. And, around the same time, a little
\nschoolfriend of hers, who had tragically died, went to hell because she was a
\nProtestant. Or so my correspondent had
\nbeen led to believe by the then official doctrine of her parents’ church. Her view as a mature adult was that, of these
\ntwo examples of Roman Catholic child abuse, the one physical and the other
\nmental, the second was by far the worst. She wrote:<\/p>\n

Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression
\n(from the mind of a 7 year old) as ‘yucky’ while the memory of my friend going
\nto hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of the priest–but I spent many a night being
\nterrified that the people I loved would go to hell. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That’s from Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion<\/u> – from
\na short section on the trauma, especially to young children, caused by belief
\nin hell: pp. 317-21 (the above passage is from pp. 317-8). If you get your hands on the book, I
\nrecommend that short section. This
\nsection, and especially Dawkins’s comparing sexual abuse to being taught nasty
\ndoctrines of hell were the subject of some great outrage. Though there are other bases for such
\noutrage, some of it was underwritten by thoughts to the effect that it’s absurd
\nto think believing in hell could be as harmful as sexual abuse. Never having been the victim of sexual abuse
\nmyself, knowing little about what that must be like, and having nothing useful
\nto say about it, I don’t want to get into the comparative issue here. But some of the outraged seemed to be quite sure
\nthat being taught nasty doctrines of hell could not be seriously harmful at
\nall, and that I do want to dispute. <\/p>\n

As someone who spent many sleepless, terrified nights as a
\nchild – at just around the age Dawkins’s correspondent was at the time of her
\ntrauma – over hell, I can certainly emphasize with the judgment this woman
\nexpresses. (Protestants take no back
\nseat to Catholics when it comes to hell-terror, I believe.)<\/p>\n


\nDawkins describes his interesting encounter with a promoter
\nof a terrifying account of hell as follows:<\/p>\n

Another of my television interviewees was Pastor Keenan Roberts…. Pastor Roberts’s particular brand of
\nnuttiness takes the form of what he calls Hell Houses. A Hell House is a place where children are
\nbrought, by their parents or their Christian schools, to be scared witless over
\nwhat might happen to them after they die. Actors play out fearsome tableaux of particular ‘sins’ like abortion and
\nhomosexuality, with a scarlet-clad devil in gloating attendance. These are a prelude to the pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance<\/i>, Hell Itself,
\ncomplete with realistic sulphurous smell of burning brimstone and the agonized
\nscreams of the forever damned. <\/p>\n

After
\nwatching a rehearsal, in which the devil was suitably diabolical in the
\nhammed-up style of a villain of Victorian melodrama, I interviewed Pastor
\nRoberts in the presence of his cast. He
\ntold me that the optimum age for a child to visit a Hell House is twelve.
This shocked me somewhat, and I asked him
\nwhether it would worry him if a twelve-year-old child had nightmares after one
\nof his performances. He replied,
\npresumably honestly:<\/p>\n

I would rather for them to understand that Hell is a place
\nthat they absolutely do not want to go to. I would rather reach them with that message at twelve than to not reach
\nthem with that message and have them live a life of sin and to never find the
\nLord Jesus Christ. And if they end up
\nhaving nightmares as a result of experiencing this, I think there’s a higher
\ngood that would ultimately be achieved and accomplished in their life than
\nsimply having nightmares. (pp. 319-20) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(These “Hell Houses” seem to be a variation on an old
\ntheme. For some vintage (“classic”) hell-terror-mongering, follow this youtube link<\/a>.)
\nWhen I was around 7, I got that message – that Hell is a
\nplace I absolutely do not want to go to – loud and clear. And it did terrorize me–And not just worries
\nthat I<\/i> might end up there, but terror at the thought of anyone<\/i> ending up in
\nsuch a place. The combination of eternal duration with unspeakable torment really got to me. In a later post I hope to
\ngo into the effects – some of them lasting to this day – beyond nightmares.<\/p>\n

But I was apparently getting the hell message too early: Pastor
\nRoberts seems to think that 12 is the best age (though I’m here just going by
\nwhat Dawkins writes). By 12, I wasn’t
\nany longer really terrorized by hell, though I still accepted a very nasty,
\ntraditional doctrine of hell – as I did all the way into my early 20s. (When I accepted the doctrine but was no
\nlonger terrorized by it, I did find it curious that I wasn’t so terrorized.)
\nWhy do some people who accept a traditional doctrine of hell
\nexperience debilitating terror of it, while others don’t? Why was I terrorized at 7, but not at
\n12? Why does debilitating terror tend to
\noccur among children (though some adults also suffer from it)?
\nThese are questions that I hope receive some serious
\ninvestigation. (And, again, if anyone
\nknows of any studies of this, please let me know.) All I can do is provide my own (non-expert) guess, which is
\nbased just on my own case and that of several other people I’ve talked to. <\/p>\n

My guess is that debilitating terror of hell is (at least
\noften) explained by the subject getting or having one cognitive ability before
\nor without having another (or having one of them to a much greater extent
\nbefore or without having the other to a significant enough extent): Having the
\nability to understand and appreciate the doctrine without (yet) having
\ndeveloped the ability to “quarantine” threatening “beliefs” from having the
\neffects beliefs of that content in some sense should have. (Since this – and especially my use of “quarantine”
\n– is all very vague, perhaps this shouldn’t even be thought of an explanation
\nso much as my guess as to the form that the right explanation will take.) <\/p>\n

As I’m tempted to describe it (and I often succumb to this
\ntemptation): When I was 7, but not when I was older, I really believed<\/b><\/i><\/u> a
\ntraditional doctrine of hell.<\/p>\n

The notion of belief seems to be a very messy one that I don’t
\nvery well understand, but it seems to somehow involve a very complex set of
\ndispostitions: dispositions to act in certain ways under certain circumstances,
\nto have certain emotions under certain circumstances, to form certain other
\nbeliefs under certain circumstances, etc. And it’s possible to have some of the relevant dispositions without
\nhaving others. And in such cases, it may
\nhappen that neither “yes” nor “no” is a very accurate answer to the question of
\nwhether the subject believes the item in question. To use some advanced, technical terminology:
\nThey kinda<\/b><\/i><\/u> believe it–and kinda don’t. By the time I was 12, though I still accepted a traditional doctrine of
\nhell, I only kinda believed it, as opposed to my earlier, terrorized self, who really believed<\/b><\/i><\/u> it. The “quarantining”
\nof the doctrine wasn’t a simple matter of fully retaining the belief while
\nblocking it from having some of its corrosive effects. Rather, it seems to me, it reduced the extent
\nto which I could accurately be described as believing the doctrine. In that sense, I didn’t really believe
\nit<\/i>.<\/p>\n

That – including such a use of the likes of “really believe”
\n– is how I’ve been explaining this matter since well before Dawkins’s The God
\nDelusion<\/i> came out. So the following bit
\nreally resonated with me (the italics are Dawkins’s own):<\/p>\n

\n
‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never
\nhurt me.’ The adage is true so long as
\nyou don’t really believe<\/i> the words. But if your whole upbringing, and everything you have ever been told by
\nparents, teachers and priests, has led you to believe, really believe<\/i><\/b>,
\nutterly and completely, that sinners burn in hell…, it is entirely plausible
\nthat words can have a more long-lasting and damaging effect than deeds. (p. 318)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But I was reminded of the incident later when I received a letter from an American woman in her forties who had been brought up Roman Catholic. At the age of seven, she told me, two unpleasant things happened to her. She was sexually abused by her parish priest in his car. 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