Ex-Christians: How do you lose your fear of hell?

[Whateverist]

Sorry new guy, can't help you.  Even when I thought I was a believer I didn't take hell seriously, of course I was just a young kid so what did I know?  Now the idea of hell seems as laughable as that of a God.  But if I had an irrational fear of something I didn't think existed, I have no idea how one would deal with that.  Psychotherapy maybe?

[Fake Messiah]

KiwiNFLFan consider that in all of history, no one has ever produced any good evidence for existence of Hell or any afterlife. None.

Also what makes you think that being good Catholic will save you from Hell? There is no safe bet when it comes to believing in a god. There have been hundreds of thousands of gods that humans have claimed to be real, either in the past or today, and not one of them has a superior argument for his or her existence or any agreement on how we are supposed to worship these gods, and what happens to us when we die. Simply going along with the religion of your parents and neighbors is too risky. It is also intellectually indefensible. That's an accident of birth, not rational decision making.

[Aoi Magi]

When your "quest for truth" begins and ends within the confines of the very book you are trying to test, it is the height of confirmation-bias

Well, no. Confirmation bias is interpreting things to agree with existing beliefs. His knowledge of the Bible and doctrines that would answer many of his questions is limited. Seeking knowledge (true or not) that you don't have is definitely not confirmation bias.

lol...

Seeking knowledge is not confirmation bias but seeking knowledge to support preconceived notions without validating the basis of that notion is confirmation bias.

[Joods]

What you are describing is your quest to support your confirmation bias--not a quest to get to the truth. How about you read how Christianity answers the questions you pose? Christianity has been answering the very toughest questions for two thousand years by tens of thousands of people writing hundreds of thousands of books in hundreds of languages. It is important to realize, there are no new objections to Christianity that this generation stumbled upon.

You specifically mentioned the problem of evil. That has an answer. Broaden you scope beyond the Catholic Church--perhaps your objections to certain doctrines are answered by different thoughts on the matter.

Translation: 

[mlmooney89]

Logic helped me get over the fear of hell. I just kept looking at it from a logical side instead of emotional and realized that with all the contradictions and the way religion is set up in general it was too hard to believe any of it was true. People didn't know how the world or our bodies worked back then (not that we are experts now but we know a fuck ton more) so the only answers they could come up with when something unexplainable happened was that it was magic. Most of mankind are born to be sheep (in the sense that we just want to live our lives and we will play by the rules without issue) and the rest are the wolves. You can clearly see when the wolves came in and labeled this magic to control the sheep. Thus religion was born. If religion is man made so is heaven and hell and it's hard to be afraid of something made up.

I'm not saying it will happen over night but eventually you will look at the devil and hell like you would Krampus. Something made up to scare humans into behaving.

[KiwiNFLFan]

Thanks for the replies.

I've heard the rationalisations for hell before - eg "God is infinitely holy, our sins offend him infinitely, therefore there must be an infinite punishment". Even as a (Protestant) Christian I still didn't like the idea of hell, especially since the church I was involved in was a Calvinist church and Calvinism basically teaches that God creates people predestined for hell to bring him glory.

Playing devil's advocate for a minute here: I know it doesn't make sense for a loving God to torture people forever, especially for not believing the right thing. But what if despite this not making sense, this is how things are and you need to either become Catholic or burn in hell forever?

With regard to their not being any evidence for hell, what do you say to the fact that hell is mentioned in non-Abrahamic religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese folk religion and Zoroastrianism?

I do think that my OCD has a part to play in my fear of hell.

Stevell, 

I have thoroughly investigated Christianity in the past. In fact, I have been involved with all three main branches of Christianity - Catholic, Orthodox (both Eastern and Oriental) and Protestant. So I have "broadened my scope beyond the Catholic church". In fact, Catholicism and Orthodoxy have a far better claim to being the authentic Christianity than Protestantism does. Protestantism did not exist for 1500 years after Christ and there are writings from the early church fathers seem to attest belief in doctrines such as the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the necessity of baptism for salvation. Sola fide doesn't make an appearance for a long time. Anti-Catholic apologist Matt Slick is unable to find any quote from the church fathers that conclusively proves sola fide, although he tries (see here). Besides, it was the institutional church that decreed which books comprised the Bible, but you as a Protestant have rejected the four modern churches that descend from this church (Catholic church, Eastern Orthodox church, Oriental Orthodox church, Assyrian church of the East).

[KiwiNFLFan]

Thanks for the replies.

I've heard the rationalisations for hell before - eg "God is infinitely holy, our sins offend him infinitely, therefore there must be an infinite punishment". Even as a (Protestant) Christian I still didn't like the idea of hell, especially since the church I was involved in was a Calvinist church and Calvinism basically teaches that God creates people predestined for hell to bring him glory. 

Playing devil's advocate for a minute here: I know it doesn't make sense for a loving God to torture people forever, especially for not believing the right thing. But what if despite this not making sense, this is how things are and you need to either become Catholic or burn in hell forever?

With regard to their not being any evidence for hell, what do you say to the fact that hell is mentioned in non-Abrahamic religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese folk religion and Zoroastrianism? Are these simply attempts by man to control people through fear?

I do think that my OCD has a part to play in my fear of hell.

Stevell, 

I have thoroughly investigated Christianity in the past. In fact, I have been involved with all three main branches of Christianity - Catholic, Orthodox (both Eastern and Oriental) and Protestant. So I have "broadened my scope beyond the Catholic church". In fact, Catholicism and Orthodoxy have a far better claim to being the authentic Christianity than Protestantism does. Protestantism did not exist for 1500 years after Christ and there are writings from the early church fathers seem to attest belief in doctrines such as the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the necessity of baptism for salvation. Sola fide doesn't make an appearance for a long time. Anti-Catholic apologist Matt Slick is unable to find any quote from the church fathers that conclusively proves sola fide, although he tries (see here). Besides, it was the institutional church that decreed which books comprised the Bible, but you as a Protestant have rejected the four modern churches that descend from this church (Catholic church, Eastern Orthodox church, Oriental Orthodox church, Assyrian church of the East).

[Chad32]

Hell never had much of a hold on me, because my church didn't really focus on it. It was more of a "Isn't Jesus wonderful? Don't we all want to be good children like Jesus was?" kind of thing. I was told that Jesus wants to have a relationship with me, and god wants us to come to him willingly.

Eventually I decided that I can't worship a guy like that in good conscience. I just can't genuinely follow a guy like that, and even if I get into heaven by paying lip service, I'll likely get kicked out eventually anyway. Hell seems unavoidable, so there isn't much point stressing over it. Not like I can do anything about it.

[KevinM1]

Christians can’t even agree on what hell is. Some think it’s a true death. Some think that it’s a separation from god that is itself torturous because of the lack of god’s grace. Some think it’s a literal furnace or lake of fire.

But, here’s the thing - there’s no proof of hell, heaven, or any other kind of afterlife. Just unsupported, and, frankly, foolish assertions written by superstitious ancient people.

There is literally nothing to fear regarding any kind of afterlife. Such a thing doesn’t exist.

[Succubus]

...What is the best way to convince oneself that the Christian faith is not true? Is it to read the history of the early Christian church and the historicity of Jesus?...

Your quest is at an end. The Jesus of the bible does not appear in history.