“God doesn’t send you to hell. You send yourself”

Heard it before. They are the words of a psychopath. Here’s why:-

Someone puts a gun to a victim’s head and says “love me and worship me, or I will blow your brains out.”

Victim says no I won’t. Blam. Victim dies… Only a psychopath would claim that the victim pulled the trigger, that it was the victim’s fault.

Let’s crank the analogy up a notch.

A new even more sinister psycho sets up a modern PC. So that it’s microphone is able to use speech recognition. A USB port is connected to a servo mechanically connected to the trigger of a gun. This gun is pointed at the head of a victim.

The PC is now set to run a program such that if it does not recognise the words “I love you PC programmer and I worship you” say in an hour, then it activates the servo, pulls the trigger and our victim is dead. So in our new analogy, the words aren’t spoken, victim dies. Call it sociopathic or psychopathic, but only a certified looney-toon would say that the victim had blown his own brains out. In the same way yaweh/jesus/third-bit setting the whole thing in motion and then claiming innocence is absurd.

Not quite there yet.

To make it a bit more like Christianity…

Instead of a gun, connect the PC to electric irons and place them very near to the skin of our victim.

Not close enough to kill, but real, long-term torture. Now it’s more like hell.

All we need now is an accomplice. Someone who circles our hapless victim, muttering such heart-warming sayings as “Unless you tell your captor you love him and worship him, you will burn – and remember he loves you”.

And the last exquisite nuance – The Stockholm Syndrome. Keep him captive long enough, spout the platitudes long enough and eventually the victim will come to cherish his tormentor.

Christianity – Beggars belief.