Why I Am Not a Christian

hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.” He repeats that point again and again as well. I must say that I believe this entire doctrine—that hell-fire is a punishment for sin—is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that introduced cruelty into the world and subjected humanity to generations of torturous suffering; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you take Him as His chroniclers represent Him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.

There are other matters of less importance. There is the instance of the Gadarene swineA biblical event where Jesus cast demons out of a man and into a herd of pigs, causing them to drown., where it was certainly not very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush down the hill to the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotentHaving unlimited power., and He could have simply made the devils vanish; yet He chose to send them into the pigs. Then there is the curious story of the fig-tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember what happened regarding the fig-tree: “He was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when He came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: ‘No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever’ . . . . and Peter . . . . saith unto Him: ‘Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away.’” That is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for