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when he or she is told hell exists.

It's the parent or clergy-person who sets that child up for the psychological terror of believing in a mind-reading, cruel deity. It's the parent or clergy-person who sends a child to that hell, that fear of thought crime, that catch-22 saying "be yourself, but control your own feelings and thoughts." These parents and clergy-people are guilty of legal, but immoral, child abuse, and it's their responsibility to realize this and put a stop to it.

We can't control our thoughts or feelings, and trying to do so leads only to varying levels of cognitive dissonance and denial. Most children can't even control their actions - yet they're being told, by those who teach about hell, to believe in overblown and unreal consequences rather than the real consequences of immoral action. This is wrong - it replaces moral understanding and empathy with terror, nightmares, and oppressive thinking styles.

After all, belief in hell doesn't inherently deter people from doing actual evil: it deters them from allowing their allegiance to stray from a particular leader or authority figure who claims to speak on behalf of an imaginary terrorist in the sky, for example, the god of the Abrahamic religions. Hell doesn't convince people to do the right thing, it convinces them to stop thinking for themselves and follow rules which, due to the traditionalism rampant in religious circles, are usually no longer useful or helpful.

Things change, and commandments grow obsolete. Political laws morph to accommodate this in modern cultures, while religious ones hardly do. Sure, some of the basics are okay, like "love your neighbor," and "turn the other cheek," and "don't steal," but these rules are only fitting to most situations, not all situations. Further, they have their own reasons for being important - we don't need a book, a deity, and his threats to tell us how to be moral.

Love and kindness help humans to function together, societally, politically, and personally. We need it from one another, and we feel good giving it to one another, not on the basis of reward or punishment after death, but because we are naturally empathetic. When we love, it feels good intrinsically - that is, in and of itself. We like being kind. We like sharing. We like giving, and we enjoy it because we love to see others happy, and have good reason to think others want us to be happy as well. It's a part of who we are: we human beings have a lot of good-natured drives inside us, and the more we nurture them, the less apparent it is that we need ideas of hell and heaven in order to keep them.

Yes, hell is an idea used by leaders to control their populations. While it isn't really needed anymore - if it ever was - it served its purpose in its time. Now, we have democracy, in which the leaders no longer have ultimate control, and it's evident that this way, people can be happy and lawful without being afraid of fire and brimstone. It's time for hell (and heaven, for that matter) to be put to rest in the history books, and start teaching young people about ethics and morality. It's time to stop terrorizing them by telling them that it's virtuous to oppress themselves.

People are better than hell, and it could be argued that no human deserves to suffer in the ways hell is said to make them suffer - that's right, not even child molesting pastors. With the right encouragement, we can form functional communities of healthy, sensitive people, without putting anyone through mental hell at all.

Learn more about this author, Currie Jean.
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