Short argues that the typical portrayal of God - and the ideas of heaven and hell - by mainstream churches is incorrect and not in line with Biblical teachings , and the concept of a heaven that only some can enter , and the alternative of a burning eternity in Hell , presupposes God not as a being of love , but an entity who torments people out of pure sadism , and as such , is more likely to drive people '' away '' from Christianity . Short points out that the idea of hell as a place of burning torment is not an idea derived from the Bible , but from the literary device in '' Dante 's Inferno '' . Short argues that the Bible provides that '' all '' persons get into heaven ( not just a select few ) , and the '' hell '' the Bible speaks of is not a place one goes to after one dies , but the suffering one goes through while alive if they become separated from God . This misreading of the Bible is the type of error , Short argues , that for those who believe in the goodness of people , would therefore be more likely to encourage them to choose atheism . " If I had to believe in that sort of '' monster God '' that most mainstream churches are proposing , I 'd still be an atheist , too . " Short also argues that , atheists tend not to focus upon the concept of the afterlife , because , if one dies with nothing beyond one 's life , then whether someone is good or bad , they get the same result , annihilation , and the only logical course of action for any person in such a state to live would be nihilism , to live for oneself without regard to how it affects others . It would mean that someone like Adolf Hitler , or Joseph Stalin would , at the end of their life , receive the same result as Mother Teresa ; no matter how bad or rotten you were , you get the same result as someone who was the holiest of holies . Also , he points out that if human beings have no existence beyond this life , " then the murder of six million Jews during The Holocaust is of no more significance than the killing of six million cockroaches when a tenement building is fumigated . " He quotes a speech by a priest in the book '' The Brothers Karamazov '' , who makes the point that morality can not exist without immortality , because if there is nothing beyond this world , then human beings are the same as animals ( we do not have a soul ) , and as a result , anything is permitted
The Holocaust
The Holocaust
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