25. AN ATHEIST THAT FEARS HELL IS STILL AN ATHEIST - A Student Writes on Why He Can Still Be Scared of Something He No Longer Believes In

As you may have gathered from the title, I fear hell. Yet I am an atheist. You may think the two are mutually exclusive and that there is no way in an atheist's mind he can fear hell. After all, atheism means to disbelieve in God and all that comes with believing in Him - including hell. However, I was not always an atheist, I used to believe in Islam until I decided it couldn’t be true.  

The concept of hell itself is contradictory and that alone should make me unfearful of it. Hell is a place of the most unimaginable suffering, but it is also a place where you will survive that suffering so that you will carry on serving your punishment.  If you will survive the suffering to continue suffering it, I could imagine far worse suffering which one cannot survive.  Therefore it cannot be the most unimaginable suffering and therefore is not the worst punishment. This alone should make me unfearful of hell, however it does not. 

Let me define what I mean by being a ‘fearful’ in this context.  I do not mean ridiculously scared. My fear is very small, almost too small to describe, nonetheless it is still there.  It may be a forty-five second thought on the fact that I might go to hell while turning on the gas hob or seeing a house fire - thinking of the fire to be scorched all over my body with Satan laughing down his unimaginable terror upon me because of the most supposedly atrocious sin I have committed: to not believe in God. Yet this is a blip and I carry on living my life without a second thought about hell until the next time comes. Even though I fear hell, and you may be thinking how much of an unconventional atheist I am, I will show you that it is possible to have a fear attributed to something that I do not believe. Therefore, by extension, that it is possible for me to fear hell despite being an atheist through what I have experienced during my life. 

To have a fear of something one must believe that the thing which is feared could be achieved. For example, a fear of heights entails that there are heights in this world where you would be fearful, like mountains or at the top of a roller coaster. However, mountains exist and hell, in an atheist's belief, does not. How about fearing a nightmare though?  The nightmare itself does not exist in reality.  I cannot go someplace to experience that fear like I might go to a mountain to experience what an acrophobe fears. I know that the nightmare is not real, yet to me it might be very real whilst asleep. However nightmares do not originate from nothing.  The most likely cause is that there has been an event in your life to cause that nightmare, so if we revisit that event then there is something real that you are fearful of like the mountain that you do not want to experience. I do not want to experience hell as I fear it, yet I believe that hell does not exist. This doesn’t follow; therefore, I must be a theist in order to fear hell and I am faking my atheism. 

However, if the acrophobe is in a place where there are no heights, he will still fear them even though heights do not exist.  The acrophobe may not show it or pay attention to that fear, but deep down it will still be there. If a person who suffers nightmares is awake, he will still fear the nightmare, even though the nightmare is not being experienced. Therefore, even though I do not believe in God anymore I can still fear hell, because the idea and fear of hell has been within me for so long and is ingrained within me so much that it is hard to escape from it. Therefore, it is plausible for me as an atheist to fear hell. 

At home, the religious aspect of my life was not really important.  I sometimes prayed, had a belief in God and therefore a belief in hell. This belief, like all religious beliefs, was taught through indoctrination as I did not have a choice, like many people do not. I have parents who believed in God and therefore they taught me to believe in God.  I do not blame them though as they were probably indoctrinated by their parents as well. Jehovah's Witnesses will often come to the door telling me that the only way I can be saved from sin and ensure a path to heaven and avoid hell is to follow their religion. All this exposure from religion had one common theme: that if I did not believe in God, I would go to hell, the most undesirable place imaginable. Therefore, I learnt to fear hell. Learning something is easy, however unlearning something may never be done. For example, as a drummer, I know how to play a rudiment like a single paradiddle.  Even though I have not played for some time, with a bit of practice I am sure I would pick it up quickly.  I cannot unlearn this skill as it is within me. If I learned to play something new like double paradiddle then my previous skills are not erased, they are still there. I have also learned to nurture the fear of hell.  As an atheist I have not practiced religion for a few years, however, just because I went from belief in God to a dis-belief in God does not mean that all the religious beliefs I held are overruled straight away, or in a simplistic and straightforward manner. This fear of hell stays with you forever.  This is because, like the nightmare, it is hard to overcome something that you can fear or the fact you cannot unlearn fear. 

When I was at Primary School, every week, all six-hundred and fifty students sat down in the hall with the cross to the left of us and the school prayer pasted in all its supposed glory on the wall. We all put our hands together and prayed to God, then sang a hymn - the indoctrination begins in a British school! It is argued that whatever is taught in schools is ‘age-appropriate’ and ‘educates’ students. When singing a hymn like ‘The Lord of the Dance’, the line ‘with a devil on your back’ would be cut out, so as not to frighten us. However why is it warranted that such lines can be cut out as they may not be ‘appropriate’ so children cannot hear them, yet religion can still be taught as it is?  Religion encompasses the fundamental belief in a hell, a place of eternal torture to those who commit sin or do the most atrocious thing possible - disbelieve in God. Is this warranted? I do not think any sin warrants eternal torture, and I emphasise the word eternal, it is not a like couple of years in prison with a cockroach in your cell and bad food, but a place of unimaginable suffering which will cause the most unimaginable amount of pain forever and ever and ever. This belief is far worse than singing a line from a hymn. Yet it is acceptable to be taught. If a child learns one way to add fractions which is the right way or one way to spell a word which is the right way therefore they will correlate what a teacher says with facts and so when it comes to teaching about hell, yes flags may be pointed out like ‘opinion’ or ‘belief’ destroying this correlation, but these words do not matter when it comes to saying that ‘whoever does not go to heaven will end up in hell and be tortured for eternity’. Therefore, like adding fractions or spelling the idea of hell sticks to us and some, like me, cannot get rid of it.

Then I moved to a comprehensive school which I was very thankful for (as a Catholic school was an equally likely option). I was able to distinguish a belief from a fact, there were no crosses dotted around, there was no morning prayer and no mention of God. The familiarity of God had gone but I could sense that what I was taught at a young age remained with me and forever will. Even though we in the United Kingdom live under a secular government, God still plays a role (not least in compulsory Religious Studies).  Like in the school I currently attend, where God pops up in various places, like the school’s motto.  It may go unnoticed that with any sign of God comes the belief in hell, a place of eternal torture, but it does, as subtle as it may be, and this can genuinely drive people to live this fear in their everyday lives, wasting their lives with it. I do not think any amount of fear is worth this, therefore as little and as unnoticeable the role of God may be in our lives it can indoctrinate us to fear hell. 

My somewhat strong belief in God started to decrease as I discovered what atheism was and that reasons for there not being a mysterious being were far stronger than there were for the proposition. Therefore, I stopped practicing my religion and turned to atheism. We all go through transitions in our lives, but we never forget what has happened, what we used to believe, or what we thought was right.  These stay with us like the fear of hell has stayed with me.

In conclusion, for me as an atheist hell is a small fear which I carry due to my experience with religion. This fear is completely plausible for me to have, even though I do not believe there is a hell, and therefore, despite its seeming contradictions, can still be warranted. 

Author: Yaaseen Baksh, Student at King Edward VI Aston