The Judgment portion of

And the Atheist Shall Lie Down with the Annihilationist

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A growing number of Christians are abandoning the traditional Christian doctrine that the lost will suffer eternal torment in favor of the belief that after the Judgment, the lost will be annihilated. But annihilationism gives atheists (or naturalists—a naturalist is someone who believes that nature is all there is) exactly what they most desire: no prospect of suffering eternal torment because their consciousness will cease. In other words, for all intents and purposes, naturalists hope for annihilation. Thus, the atheist shall lie down with the annihilationist.

At the outset I need to make two words of clarification. First, there are annihilationists who believe that the wicked will be punished for a limited or “terminal” time before they are ultimately annihilated, but for this post I’m focusing solely on the “straight annihilationist” view (i.e., there is no interim torment prior to annihilation). So, from here on out, when I use the term “annihilation,” I mean “straight” annihilation even though I don’t keep using that modifier.

Second, although I hold that Scripture teaches the eternal torment of the lost, I realize that what I’m writing here isn’t a defeater of annihilationism. That can only be done by the proper exegesis of various passages pertaining to the final state of the wicked. This is a corollary argument to the debate between annihilationists and those who hold to eternal torment.

Now, as I wrote in my book Immortal: How the Fear of Death Drives Us and What We Can Do About It?, I do think that annihilation is, all by itself, a fearful prospect—after all, the end of your existence is the end of all you know and have and love. But the fear of eternal torment dwarfs the fear of annihilation to insignificance. After all, annihilation is precisely what atheists expect to happen to them when they die and annihilation is also the ultimate objective of many Buddhists.

Nirvana & Annihilation

Tens of millions of Eastern religionists hope to be annihilated. The ultimate goal for the large majority of Eastern religionists is nirvana, which is defined as “Literally… ‘blowing out’ or ‘becoming extinguished,’ as when a flame is blown out or a fire burns out.”1 Now it is true that for many, like Mahayana Buddhists, your consciousness in some form continues, but in Buddhism’s oldest existing and most conservative school, Theravada Buddhism, nirvana is the actual cessation of anything that is you. In no sense do you go on as a conscious being. Theravada Buddhists believe you will ultimately be extinguished or annihilated. This is called “nirvana without remainder.”2 So the ultimate goal for tens of millions of Buddhists is annihilation. Christians who preach annihilation then not only give Theravada Buddhists what they seek, they make those Buddhist’s ultimate objective easier to achieve because then the Buddhist only has to die once to achieve annihilation.  

The Sadducees Expected Annihilation

The Sadducees believed in annihilation. Mark 12:18 tells us, “And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection.” Similarly, in Acts 23:8 we read: “For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection.” Even outside the New Testament we learn from Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews 18.1.4, “But the doctrine of the Sadducees is this; that souls die with the bodies.” Further, Josephus in The Jewish War, 2.8.14, writes of the Sadducees: “They also take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades.” So, as opposed to living in desperate fear of annihilation, instead of trusting Jesus who had offered them eternal life, the Sadducees were satisfied with annihilation.

Naturalists Expect Annihilation

Every naturalist of which I am aware (and I’ve studied many of them regarding their fear of death for my book Immortal) is hoping for and expects annihilation, except for the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno.3 Annihilation is a part of their world view. Karl Marx, whose notions killed at least one hundred million people, famously called religion the “opiate of the masses” and expected annihilation. Likewise, Charles Darwin expected that when he died his consciousness would cease; in other words, he expected annihilation. Thus, annihilationists offer the godless precisely that for which they hope. In fact, some of Darwin’s last words just prior to his death were, “I’m not the least afraid to die.”4 But we know what he thought about eternal punishment.

The Galápagos Islands like a “cultivated part of hell”

Darwin found the Galápagos Islands to be “A jagged field of black, basaltic lava pockmarked with huge fissures, and covered everywhere with stunted, sun-burnt brushwood.”5 In Scientific American Christoph Marty writes that Darwin “complained in his report that the land, overheated by the midday sun, lent the sweltering air a closed and oppressive feeling, like an oven; and it smelled very unpleasant, ‘like one might imagine the cultivated part of hell.’”6

So, it’s no surprised that Darwin wrote in his autobiography, “I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, my Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.”7 In other words, Darwin, may not have liked but expected the prospect of his annihilation, but he was horrified by the idea of eternal torment.

Epicurus: “Death means nothing to us”

The Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE) wrote: “You should accustom yourself to believing that death means nothing to us, since every good and every evil lies in sensation; but death is the privation of sensation.”8 Epicurus continues, “This, the most horrifying of evils, means nothing to us, then, because so long as we are existent, death is not present and whenever it is present we are not-existent.”9 This is often abbreviated “When we are here death is not. When death is here we are not.” In other words, Epicurus rejected Socrates and Plato’s belief in the immortality of the soul and defined “dead” to mean “does not exist” and if you don’t exist then you are not dead—or at least you can’t experience death because you no longer exist.

Sam Harris: The “gospel of atheism is essentially nothing”

Similarly, Sam Harris told an audience of 4,000 atheists at a “Big Think” conference in Australia, “The good news of atheism, the gospel of atheism, is essentially nothing, that nothing happens after death. There’s nothing to worry about, there’s nothing to fear, when after you die you are returned to that nothingness that you were before you were born. Now this proposition is very difficult to understand and most people seem to mistake nothing with something…. If we are right and nothing happens after death, death therefore is not a problem. Life is the problem.” 10 

Sam Harris finds much solace in Buddhism. Atheist Victor Stenger in his book The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason, agreed: “I made my own independent study of Eastern philosophy…. I find that when stripped of any implication of supernaturalism I agree with Harris that Eastern philosophers uncovered some unique insights into humanity and the human mind…. The sages’ teachings are marked by selflessness and calm acceptance of the nothingness after death.”11

Bart Ehrman: “We won’t exist with consciousness after we die”

Similarly, agnostic New Testament professor Bart D. Ehrman, in answer to someone who asked whether death was “terrifying” and how to “get over” that fear, replied on his Facebook page, “Now my view is that death is the end of the story. We didn’t exist with consciousness before we were born. And we won’t exist with consciousness after we die.” Thus, continued Ehrman, the thought of death “does not greatly bother me anymore. It’s the reality of life.”12 So in that quote, Ehrman admits that the thought of his cessation of consciousness “does not greatly bother” him. But, Ehrman in his book, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer, wrote that he “still wondered, deep down inside… Will I burn in hell forever?” He said, “The fear gripped me for years and there are still moments when I wake up at night in a cold sweat.”13 Does the prospect of annihilation bother Ehrman? He said “not greatly” so. But he’s terrified at the prospect of eternal torment.

Stanford Emeritus Professor of psychology Irvin Yalom gushes about Epicurus, “The more I learn about this extraordinary Athenian thinker, the more strongly I recognize Epicurus as the proto-existential psychotherapist….”14 Yalom writes that “Generally I introduce the ideas of Epicurus early in my work with patients suffering from death terror.”15 Yalom’s answer for death fears is that no one needs to fear annihilation.

“Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo”

Of course, the idea of their non-existence upsets people, but then Epicureans appeal to what is called the symmetry or mirror argument. The symmetry argument is that it didn’t bother you to not exist before you were born so why would it bother you to not exist after you’re dead? These are, the Epicureans say, mirror images. Indeed, there was the popular Roman saying found engraved on some ancient tombstones, “Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo,” which means “I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care.” Atheist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, “If what makes death seem so terrible to us were the thought of not being, we would necessarily think with equal horror of the time when as yet we were not. For it is irrefutably certain that not being after death cannot be different from not being before birth, and consequently is also no more deplorable.”16

The Epicurean philosopher Lucretius put it this way: “Why do you not depart like a banqueter who is sated with life, and embrace untroubled quiet with a calm mind, you fool?”17

New York University philosopher Thomas Nagel writes, “If one thinks about it logically, it seems as though death should be something to be afraid of only if we will survive it, and perhaps undergo some terrifying transformation.”18 Indeed, eternal torment would be a terrifying transformation.

Mark Twain: Annihilation is a “holiday”

Mark Twain, who mocked Christianity, put the best spin on the Epicurean argument that we’re going to be annihilated: “Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born—a hundred million years—and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.”19

So Twain considered annihilation to be a never-ending holiday! But here’s what Twain thought of Christianity. Twain, in a letter to his wife, wrote that “the Deity that I want to keep out of the reach of, is the caricature of him which one finds in the Bible. We (that one and I) could never respect each other, never get along together. I have met his superior a hundred times—In fact I amount to that myself.”

Notice Twain saying “we could never get along.” Although I’m not going to develop this point here, I argue in my book, Why Does God Allow Evil? that the occupants of eternal torment will be eternally unrepentant.20 Even annihilationist John Stott wrote that perhaps “‘eternal conscious torment’ is compatible with the biblical revelation of divine justice, [if] the impenitence of the lost also continues throughout eternity.” I agree. 

Whatever Jesus meant when he spoke of “everlasting fire” (Matthew 18:8; 25:41) and the place where the “worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48), what terrifies the wicked is that this doesn’t mean annihilation but eternal torment. Thus Christians who teach annihilationism give atheists exactly that for which they hope, and so the atheist shall lie down with the annihilationist.

The Fear of Eternal Torment Leads Many to Repent

As an almost-13-year-old, I heard Billy Graham preach a sermon entitled “Heaven and Hell.” When he finished, I was convinced that I was headed for eternal torment so I “went forward” and committed my life to Christ. Thank you, Jesus! Similarly, deceased atheist Christopher Hitchens’s brother Peter Hitchens was an atheist like his brother, but one day he was at a museum and was looking at a painting that depicted hell (the damnation section of that painting is above). Peter writes:

Still scoffing, I peered at the naked figures fleeing toward the pit of hell, out of my usual faintly morbid interest in the alleged terrors of damnation. But this time I gaped, my mouth actually hanging open. These people did not appear remote or from the ancient past; they were my own generation. Because they were naked, they were not imprisoned in their own age by time-bound fashions…They were me and the people I knew. One of them—and I have always wondered how the painter thought of it—is actually vomiting with shock and fear at the sound of the Last Trump…I had a sudden, strong sense of religion being a thing of the present day…A large catalogue of misdeeds, ranging from the embarrassing to the appalling, replayed themselves rapidly in my head. I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned…21

So Peter Hitchens, who formerly expected his annihilation, had a realization of his sinful condition and the prospect of eternal torment led him to seek eternal life in Jesus. He then published a book that contradicted the work of his famous atheist brother Christopher Hitchens.22

If you’re a true Christian then you’ve escaped the prospect of eternal torment and now can enjoy the prospect of eternal glory. I’ve written a post on that glory!

Books

  1. “Nirvana,” Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/nirvana-religion, accessed October 13, 2020. [↩]
  2. Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University, 2014), 589-590. I’m indebted to the personal correspondence with Donald S. Lopez, Jr., for guiding me to this entry. [↩]
  3. Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic sense of life in Men and Nations, Anthony Kerrigan, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University, 1990), 49. [↩]
  4. See Philip Appleman, “Darwin’s Example,” Free Thought Today, Freedom from Religion Foundation, Vol. 23, No. 6, August 2006, https://ffrf.org/outreach/convention/item/13009-darwins-example, which they reprinted from the May/June 2006 issue of The Humanist, accessed February 4, 2021. For the actual quote see, Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: Including an Autobiographical Chapter, vol. 3 (London: John Murray, 1888), 358. Interesting that the edition I reviewed online had the name plate of Stephen Jay Gould in it. I suspect, in spite of Darwin’s proclamation, that he didn’t look forward to the cessation of his existence but, again, that’s nothing compared to fear eternal torment. [↩]
  5. Charles Darwin as quoted by Christoph Marty, “Darwin on a Godless Creation: ‘It’s like confessing to a murder,’” Scientific American, February 12, 2009, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/charles-darwin-confessions/, accessed February 3, 2021. [↩]
  6. Ibid. [↩]
  7. Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin: 1809-1882, Nora Barlow, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), 87. [↩]
  8. Epicurus, “Letter to Menoeceus,” The Art of Happiness, trans. George K. Strodach and Daniel Klein, (New York: Penguin, 2012), 156. [↩]
  9. Epicurus, “Letter to Menoeceus,” 156-157. Emphasis mine. [↩]
  10. Sam Harris, “Sam Harris: On Death,” Big Think, Jun 2, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_Uahu9XNzU, (accessed June 28, 2018). [↩]
  11. Victor J. Stenger, The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2009), 30. Emphasis mine. [↩]
  12. “Bart D. Ehrman author page,” Facebook, September 18, 2016. https://www.facebook.com/AuthorBartEhrman/posts/1210103929061399, (accessed June 29, 2018). [↩]
  13. Bart D. Ehrman, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 127. [↩]
  14. Irvin D. Yalom, Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death (San Francisco: Wiley, 2008), 2. [↩]
  15. Yalom, Staring at the Sun, 82. [↩]
  16. S. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, vol. 3, (repr., 1883, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1948), 253. [↩]
  17. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, trans. Walter Englert, (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2003), 87, Book 3, 935. [↩]
  18. Thomas Nagel, What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy (New York: Oxford University, 1987), 94. [↩]
  19. Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, vol. 2, eds., Benjamin Griffin and Harriet Elinor Smith (Berkeley: University of California, 2013), 69. [↩]
  20. I developed that the lost are eternally unrepentant in my book, Why Does God Allow Evil?: Compelling Answers for Life’s Toughest Questions. [↩]
  21. Peter Hitchens, The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 102-103. [↩]
  22. A special thanks to my good friend Virginia Thompson for reminding me to discuss the Sadducees. This has been adapted from my book Immortal: How the Fear of Death Drives Us and What We Can Do About It. [↩]

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