One of the more obvious observations to make about the New Christians is their cognitive dissonance with this idea of hell. Of course the Bible is such a pieced-together, contradictory, non-unifying book taken to fit the context of whoever decides to use it to their advantage. We would expect with this book to get a million different narratives. We have the doctrine of hell and I recall hell very much growing up. As I've mentioned before, as a child I watched in church-related activities horror films of the "End Times" and heard countless sermons on the burning flesh and gnashing of teeth that is synonymous with hell as a destination for those that are not "saved". The terror one can feel as a child with these baseless threats can be traumatizing. Maybe the New Christians realize this and that's why their sermons don't have quite that same "fear-based" punch to the child-gut they used to.
Many New Christians feel the need to bend and stretch their worldviews to fit with a more progress (frankly healthier) modern society we are so lucky enough to live in. This is a good thing but many of the fundamentalist within Christianity despise the "watering down" of fear-based sermons or softening on stances like homosexual rights. I stand with the New Christians that ignore verses in the Bible that seem obvious to most fundamentalists or Biblical literalists that promote bigotry, homophobia, sexism, racism, and fear. We want a better society as a whole and the best way to do that is to reform religions and make them more secular and cultural rather than dogmatic. Religions of the future will hopefully resemble something more evolved, better adapted for a healthy society overall and not just blind adherence to a Bronze Age rulebook.
To date many of my New Christian friends (those that try to modernize that old-time religion for a younger generation, and research and vastly growing worldviews like atheism and agnosticism) have never approached me either via email, by phone, or in person about their concern of my eternal damnation in hell. Why? I have asked at least one of my New Christian friends. His answer was essentially - what's the point? I know all the usual Christian narratives that involve hell being for those that reject god and I don't accept that as true. My New Christian friend said he respected me enough to expect me to have my intellect (not just my heart - aka emotions) bring me to Christ once again.
I have another suggestion... My New Christian friends do not actually believe in a literal hell. God's so evasive you see, the God most of the New Christians argue for is a deistic god - a simple debate between the "god or no god" question, using various methods to try and prove that - to this date none are successful by the way, obviously you may have figured that out by now if you've been paying close enough attention. The distance on the bridge that would connect a deistic God or Godlike-notion to the God of the Bible or any other "holy" text is insurmountable. All one has to do is take a few hours reading the Bible or the Koran and seeing that THIS god is unbelievable and could not exist.
Take what that piece of shit Duck Dynasty guy Phil Robertson said recently about atheists. Fantasizing about raping, murdering, beheading, and dismembering an atheist in front of his atheist family. Someone that would do that to an atheist could on his death bed say that magical prayer that gets you into heaven (AKA accepting Jesus death and resurrection in your heart blah blah) and they would be forever spared from the lake of fire and be in the presence of the almighty, all-loving creator of the cosmos. At the same time the atheist that just had his penis severed off in front of his recently raped wife and children gets to then suffer some more in hell! Yay!... Oh and like forever too! Seems fair. Of course this absurd loophole is what you get when you try to square a circle logically with barbaric superstitious doctrines... but I've heard a few New Christians say that Sam Harris is the one that is being so laughably ridiculous when trying to give a scientific basis for morality!
Please. Look at your logically-contorted worldview first before nitpicking.
Don't get me started on peaceful, loving people like Gandhi burning in hell for picking the wrong god and/or religion.
So my dear New Christian friends - I offer that you do not actually believe in a hell. May I suggest a more watered-down easier liberal version of the doctrine of hell in your holy book... Maybe hell is a representation? (sort of like the genetically and biologically not possible "first two humans" Adam and Eve). Maybe hell could just represent a sort of nothingness like the Jehovah Witnesses think. Maybe they got that one right, no? Maybe hell is just NOT getting to go to heaven (which as Christopher Hitchens rightly points out sounds like a celestial North Korea which sounds fucking awful doesn't it?!).
New Christians, unlike the pastors and traveling evangelists that scared my delicate psyche growing up telling me stories of burning forever in a lake of fire I must reiterate that you do not actually believe in hell. I am a proud atheist and i know for sure you do not /actually/ believe I will spend eternity burning. Not just because many of the New Christians reading this are close friends and maybe even some family members that know overall I'm a decent guy that does his best to treat others fairly, love more than hate my fellow human being (otherwise known as humanism). No, it's not JUST because you feel it quite uncomfortable to tell someone you care about that he will writhe in pain from a burning sensation that will literally never end (apparently we have skin in the afterlife). It's because it's a clear example of your cognitive dissonance, it's a clear example of paying lip service only to the doctrine of hell in your antiquated superstition.
We can simply accept that this cosmos is all that there ever was, is, or could be as far as we know and the natural world has natural laws that govern the way it operates. Our species (or kind if you prefer ;) have figured out many of these natural laws, some we haven't yet I'm sure, but what you have to ask yourself is if you need to be intellectually immature and malformed or have a scientifically sound view of reality and this cosmos.
OK here's an atheist's altar call... Now bow your heads and close your eyes - Just kidding.. but you do have a choice right now.. not between heaven or hell or some false dichotomy between Jesus or nothing, but a real choice between REALITY or MAGIC. Do you want to accept that a supernatural Male Being (Father/Son/and Spirit all in one) decided to magically POOF our species into existence millions of years ago after dinosaurs ruled the Earth for 65 million years? Or do you want to accept the scientific fact that we like all other species of animals connected to the evolutionary tree of life are another species of animal.
You have got to let go of this "special creation" juvenile mental thought-turd. Maybe you are scared if you accept the fact of human evolution you will become a communist or that nihilism is all that there is in exchange. No! Please stop that! It's not true and it's certainly insulting to our intelligence because we are smart enough to differentiate between psychology, anthropology, and sociology with the evolutionary sciences and human biology. In 2015 in a technologically advanced, industrialized, free nation there is zero excuse for you siding with MAGIC over reality! We know magic isn't real. Teenagers and some children have figured this out already. Fairy tales die as one turns into an adult. Right? Well, they should and there is no excuse for grown men and women to think supernatural MAGIC is an actual answer to ANY QUESTION!!! Do yourself a favor and let go of this notion of mystical, magical afterlife destinations like heaven and hell and grow up enough to face the highly more accurate choice of "what it was like" before you were born is "what it is like" after you die. Just nothing. Nothing nothing nothing. Choose nothing because you choose to use your brain that NO god gave to you.
*Originally posted 5/8/15 on my blogger account: https://godsaiditibelieveitthatsettlesit.blogspot.com/