The preface to Dawkins’ The God Delusion chapter 8: ‘What’s wrong with religion? Why be so hostile?’ (p. 279).

“Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man – living in the sky – who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time… But he loves you!” (George Carlin)

Frequent response to this sort of statement: if anyone really got over their cognitive dissonance about believing this, *and* really affirmed their religion as Carlin describes it, *and* had an ounce of compassion for lost souls heading for hell, they’d go mad trying to convince people to avoid hell and do whatever they need to do to go to heaven… But even sectarian Christians who believe in the most literal hell don’t go crazy in their evangelism, so you can only draw three or four conclusions about all this, which are….?

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