TRiG.

While your selection of specific historical writers would seem to validate your assertions, a more thorough review of current theologies is readily available to anyone who wishes to review it.

Your views are certainly valid from your perspective. But those who are not anti-theistic may find a broader range of views and more complexity than anti-theists present.

And Edwards thought that people in heaven would positively enjoy watching the suffering of the damned, because it would make them feel more blessed.

When they shall see how miserable others of their fellow-creatures are …; when they shall see the smoke of their torment, … and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries, and consider that they in the mean time are in the most blissful state, and shall surely be in it to all eternity; how they will rejoice!

Edwards was not a nice person.

For the full horrors and disgust of the Catholic belief in hell, I’ll recommend the passage in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist.

As a further anecdote, in The God Delusion Dawkins tells the tale of a woman who was sexually abused as a child. Also, her best friend died when she was young. She was told that her friend was now in Hell, because she had belonged to the wrong religion. This woman now feels that the hellfire stories were a worse form of child abuse than the sexual abuse was.

Timothy Kincaid is misinformed about Christian theology. Whatever the beliefs of his own sect, it is certainly Christian orthodoxy that the vast majority of humans go to Hell. It may be less commonly believed these days, but it remains the belief of a great number of Christians.

TRiG.

Priya Lynn is misinformed about Christian theology.

At the core of the “hell” doctrine (for most Christians) is the notion that reward or punishment are tied to free will. The doctrine includes what is generally called “the age of accountability” and refers to the point beyond which a person is of significant maturity to decide to do good or ill and can comprehend the eternal consequences.

There are widely diverging opinions about the age of accountability and about hell itself (look up what the Adventists believe and how that differs from what Calvinists or Catholics believe) and most of that can be found on the internet.

When Edwards wrote Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, I don’t think he had little children in mind.

I am unaware of any Christian sects that believe “that little children not only will be – but should be – thrown into fire where their flesh will burn for eternity.”

What about Jonathan Edwards, prominent Calvinist theologian and, it seems, thoroughly nasty man?

TRiG.

The views expressed by this correspondent probably match the views of 10-15% of Americans (maybe more, maybe less) and it seems pointless to me to characterize this sizable segment of our opponents as sociopaths.

I caution against lumping the beliefs of all Christians together. While a great many Christians believe in the existence of a hell, there are significant variations between what that means or even what qualifies one to “go” there.

A not-insignificant number of Christians believe hell to be less about “painful, terrible fate” and more about separation from God. And I am unaware of any Christian sects that believe “that little children not only will be – but should be – thrown into fire where their flesh will burn for eternity.”

But you are quite right that a great many Christians operate under the assumption that their belief in hell entitles them to interfere in your life. They even think that it makes them “loving” to do so.