40 Million Americans… Going to Hell?

Another atheist billboard defaced in a Subway:

I guess they think putting a smiley face after it makes their bigotry and hatred okay.

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67 Comments

  1. They’ll deny that it’s bigotry and hatred, though. They’ll say that it can’t be them who hates us, they’re not the ones sending us to hell. No, it’s all down to their imaginary friend! Yes, not only is it the case that GodDidIt (TM), but it’s also the case that GodExcusedIt (TM).

    It’s hard to talk sensibly with anybody who falls back on those arguments.

  2. Yay 40 million people will burn forever and ever (and ever). What great news this is! This is the kind of news that really puts a smile on your face :D

    • That’s what Christianity does for you, I guess. Turns you into a sadist.

    • Well, in fact it is great knews. We could solve all our energetic problems with a device that could burn “something” forever :-)

      Moreover, it is not 40 million, those are only the atheists whic would be burning in hell. But of course, depending on the winner, all religious people who did fail to choose the truly one (TM) sect are going to be also burning in hell for all the eternity…

  3. Now of course if atheists were to place some snide remark under their posters, there would be major outcry on the bigotry that atheist (AKA:satanists) impose and a full investigation to find the culprits.

    I guess the smiley face makes it all ok.

  4. 40 million Americans are going to hell.
    “But he loves you!” – Carlin

  5. Someone needs to add “you first” below the grafitti.

  6. At least the Hard Rock Cafe in hell has better music.

  7. Religious people wouldn’t put a smiley after it. They don’t dare making fun of things like this.

    My guess is it was some kid having fun. And I actually thought it was a bit amusing.

    • Yeah, me too. I really can’t get worked up about this.

      Someone should add “in style”. Together with the smiley that would send a nicely confusing message.

    • That’s exactly what I thought as well, Bubba.

      I suppose of a member of Phelps’ congregation might get a kick out of 40 million people going to hell, but most Christians would be far too upset about such a statement to add a =) (at least in my experience).

    • Oh, I don’t know. I’d guess it’s a Christian teenager. I did stupid things as a Christian teenager and I’d guess there are other stupid Christian teenagers who would find doing something like this amusing.

      I’m guessing they had some friends around and thought this would be cool. Doesn’t mean they actually think people going to hell is funny when you talk to them one on one. They may even feel guilty about it. People do stupid things to impress peers.

  8. But it was phrased in the form of a question! Seriously, they were just asking for an answer!

    I kid, I kid :)

  9. “I desire to go to hell and not to heaven. In the former I shall enjoy the company of Popes, Kings, and Princes, while in the latter are only beggars, monks and apostles.”
    -Niccolo Machiavelli

  10. Are you sure that’s a smiley face and not an arrow pinting to where we’re all gonna go?

  11. Surely they mean Hell, Norway?
    http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell,_Norway

  12. When we all get down there, the Devil says to the Christians that “I’m afraid the Jews were right”. It’s all on video:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68VpeHCjA-s

  13. Well, we all know God loves vandalism.

    Blessed be the vandals for theirs is a seat at the right hand of the lord.

  14. I don’t think its a smiley face. It look more like an arrow pointing down (since atheists are so stupid we may have thought hell is up and ended in heaven).

  15. Smiley Faces do make everything better.

    Example:

    I eat Babies :)

  16. The smiley face after the threat of eternal torture indicates that they are sadists. Not surprising really…….

  17. 40 million Americans good without God? Well let me play Devil’s advocate. How many of that 40 million are actually good? They are Americans after all.

    • @Nomad

      I’m usually quick to put the boot into Americans, but I’m offended by your implication that Americans without God are unlikely (or less likely) to be good. While not American, as an Athiest I’m implicated in this too.

      Tell me when an American atheist last allowed their child to die rather than see a doctor (i could trot out any number of topical issues eg gay rights, abortion, freedom of speech).

      Give me ONE example of an atheist doing someting “bad” simply because they dont believe in god. People don’t “do” things they “don’t” believe in something.

      • On the other hand, I am an atheist and (though I’m normally a nice guy) am capable of being a very bad man indeed. If I were religious, I could fool myself that the sky-daddy gave me ultimate forgiveness for it, I suppose.

        I think you might be reading too much into Nomad’s post. To me he’s just saying that religion is pretty irrelevant to how you behave, and I agree.

      • I don’t generally intend to offend, but that is sometimes the byproduct of making a provocative statement. I think Custador has the right interpretation:

        “religion is pretty irrelevant to how you behave”

    • Man oh man, Nomad. If you play devil’s advocate for advertising copy, you must never get a wink of sleep.

      • Just pointing out the underlying and (probably) unintended assertion: all atheists (in America) are good. I guess the syllogism would go something like this.

        1 Homer is an atheist.
        2. Atheists are good.
        3. Homer is good.

  18. New billboard to be posted near that one:

    “Millions know that vandalism is immoral and illegal without God. Do you?”

  19. Only a loving god would torture people forever.

  20. Deus ex was an amazing game for it’s time. If only my damned disk would work.

    • Just torrent the disc image and then use daemontools (or comparable software) to mount it. It isn’t even illegal, since you own the original disc.

      FWIW, Deus Ex is still my all-time favorite game. Have you played it with Shifter?

      • It certainly is a great game. I also enjoy System Shock 2 and the Thief series (still playing fan missions *praise the builders*)

      • I used to like daemontools until I found out it installs a rootkit (which will not be uninstalled with the rest of the application). It’s not a malignant rootkit that tries to do harm, but if, for some reason, it causes your machine to become unstable, good luck getting rid of it. I managed to, but it took me a day to figure out, using various tools.

        • do you know of a cleaner image mounting package that can run game disks?

          • I haven’t tried any alternative mounting apps, but surely there must be some adequate, free ones. Here’s a starting point. Let me know if you find anything useful.

            If you don’t need to mount an iso image but simply want to burn it directly to a disc, I recommend InfraRecorder.

          • One more thing: The purpose of the daemontool rootkit is to disguise the fact that the image is running on an emulated disc drive. This is done in order to prevent some forms of copy protection, where applications refuse to execute if they’re not run from a hardware drive (the thought behind it being that if you’re running it virtually you didn’t buy it). So if you run into this problem, daemontools is the way to go – provided you can live with a rootkit.

  21. If we are really generous and grant the number 2 billion christians to christianity that means that almost 5 billion of the world’s population will suffer and be tortured till the end of times. And this is purely based pretty much on where people are born. Such a system!
    Imagine if a politician had this sort of power, imagine the outrage. But for God of course this is alright. And people praise this…monster.

  22. I’d rather go to hell than to the boredom that they say heaven will be like.

    • This is a tangent, but I’ve never understood this argument. If heaven is boring, then by definition, I don’t think we could reasonably call it heaven. The point is that it is a perfect existence, sans death, violence, hatred, etc. A perfect existence can’t just be defined by what isn’t present, though, and I think a perfect existence would have to be interesting basically by definition.

      This is a completely subjective train of thought, obviously, and I don’t even have biblical justification for any of this (much less empirical,) at least not off the top of my head. But it seems to me if you accept the idea of heaven at all, it would make sense to acknowledge that it wouldn’t be boring.

      Anyway, sorry for tangent.

      • I think its pretty telling that the best definition for heaven most Christians come up with is that its like church, but forever. No wonder Christians fight harder to stay alive on average then people with no faith.

  23. I’ve moved past any consideration to take the rantings of the clinically delusional seriously.

    Pat Robertson and Ray Comfort (and most of the flock) line up right beside the homeless guy outside my local Starbucks who writes “Jesus” in huge chalk letters on the sidewalk and sleeps on a sewer grate.

  24. I’ve actually written an entire book on this topic–”Hell? No! Why You Can Be Certain There’s No Such Place As Hell,” (for anyone interested, you can get a free ecopy of my book at my website: http://www.thereisnohell.com), and one of the points I talk about is this type of Christian.

    Most, or I’d like to believe most, are a little uncomfortable with the idea that God intends to torture billions of people in the worst way for all eternity. They usually try to relabel Hell as a mere “separation from God.” But there are still a number of hard core Fundamentalists who insist that flames of Hell are literally that, and who are even looking forward to seeing everyone who doesn’t believe them get their come uppance. Of course, they’re missing the core message of Jesus altogether.

  25. I sometimes get this kind of happy-go-lucky version of someone telling me I’m going to hell.
    My usual response is “I’ll save you a seat” and return the smile to them.

    Works 60% of the time, every time.

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