Many assent to a doctrine that certain sinners who die without asking for mercy face eternal imprisonment or infinite punishment in Hell is morally right as far as God is concerned. It is also an endorsement of a universe where this can happen or does happen. If a believer claims to accept Hell while not wanting it to exist, they’re either calling their own God unjust or secretly rejecting the justice they publicly defend. Accepting Hell means preferring it - even reluctantly - to universal mercy.
Hell-belief also requires imagining oneself aligned with God against others. It is never a neutral claim about a place of punishment—it is a psychological sorting mechanism: people like them deserve it, people like me do not. This elevates the believer over the rest of humanity.
Hell is unique among moral systems in demanding that one affirm infinite harm for others while expecting infinite safety for oneself. It turns tribal loyalty into a moral principle.
It depends on a contradictory view of human nature: humans must be seen as weak, confused, and easily misled—but also as fully responsible and capable of choosing eternal, irreversible rebellion with perfect clarity. No coherent psychology supports this, which shows the doctrine comes from punitive imagination, not reason.
Belief in Hell lets moral disgust disguise itself as piety. Resentment, fear, aggression, and feelings of superiority can be expressed as “God’s justice,” allowing dark impulses to be moralized rather than faced.
Hell-belief outsources moral violence. Instead of owning vengeful impulses, believers tell themselves they “leave it to God” while still emotionally benefiting from the imagined punishment of others. This is ethically worse than revenge because it avoids responsibility while preserving satisfaction.
Hell cannot survive without Othering. It requires dividing humanity into the saved and the damned, elevating one group while devaluing the other. Even silently, the belief implies that some lives matter infinitely less.
It reduces morality to submission. If the main goal is avoiding Hell and the method is obedience or correct affiliation, then morality becomes loyalty rather than compassion or justice. This mirrors authoritarian psychology, not ethical development.
Hell-belief damages empathy at its foundations. To affirm Hell is to believe that children, the misinformed, trauma survivors, or people born into other cultures can deserve infinite torment. Once infinite suffering seems thinkable for anyone, empathy is fundamentally compromised.
It also creates a double standard. Believers opposed to torture, committed to due process, or supportive of rehabilitation still affirm divine torture without appeal and deny the possibility of rehabilitation in the afterlife. This exposes that Hell is about defending doctrine, not justice.
Hell acts as a psychological mirror. The Hell someone believes in reveals the kind of God they would be if given absolute power. A belief in eternal torture reflects something about the believer’s own imagination, not human nature.
It also allows moral superiority without moral effort. One can live ordinarily yet see oneself as spiritually superior to billions simply for holding the right belief or belonging to the right group. This is grandiosity disguised as humility.
Hell-belief exploits human vulnerability. Fear of Hell hijacks uncertainty, guilt, social belonging, and survival instincts. Systems that use Hell operate like abusive relationships: “Without me, you’ll suffer forever.” This is coercion, not moral guidance.
In the end, belief in Hell is the willingness to affirm infinite suffering for other people in order to protect a worldview or a sense of being favored. It reveals inflated ego, diminished empathy, outsourced aggression, fear-based identity, and the need to see others as eternally inferior—even when wrapped in charm, kindness, or religious language.
Choice?
The Catholic claim that those who commit mortal sin (idolatry, adultery, homosexuality, schism, heresy, not praying etc) and die choose Hell and will get what they ask for is a strange one. They choose sin not Hell. You don't say a burglar who is caught chooses jail by what he has done. You say he has broken a law and that is the problem.
Talk about "It is their choice" is a cover for, "I don't have to do anything about it thank goodness." The fact that we are connected by our common humanity and are not really individuals no matter how hard we try to be is ignored. Choice is not an excuse for saying you can do nothing.
Vindictive in every way
Believing a doctrine can be objectively vindictive or subjectively vindictive or both.
If I decide you committed a crime just because I felt you were guilty then I am vindictive. If I decided it because of the evidence then it is completely different. And so it is with the idea of Hell. Christianity actually wants to believe in Hell. Some Christians say they don't like it. But when they accept Hell clearly they must also like it. They like it enough to accept it. You can dislike and like something at the same time. They like it more than dislike it. The Christians don't look for evidence that people can be stubborn enough to go to Hell for all eternity. No. They decide people can be bad enough just because Jesus Christ or somebody said so. If they started with evidence from human nature their adopting the belief might not be motivated by vindictiveness. Indeed evidence itself wouldn't justify belief that human nature could go to Hell and stay there. Proof would be needed. The less evidence the more vindictiveness lurks there. It may be stronger subliminally than consciously. But it is no less real.
Judgemental
To say one is condemned by one's choices is judgemental. To cast a negative judgment on the deeds and person of others is to try and make yourself feel superior. If you are really confident and happy with how you are as a person you will not do that.
A Roman Catholic prayer calls upon St Michael the Archangel to put Satan back in Hell. That sounds vicious. The Church may say that Satan belongs there and that we would send him back there not because we are bad but because we are so good that we give him what he wants. If that is what he wants then why does he have to be sent back? The Church says that if we go to Hell to suffer forever, it is what we have asked for and God kindly grants it. This is an obviously absurd teaching. It shows the Church is actually grateful to God for putting demons and people in Hell. The Church makes excuses for evil.
Instead of honouring human nature by saying we can't become evil enough to willingly stay in Hell forever, believers put the fact that the existence of Hell is stated in their scriptures and Catholic faith first. They prefer to accuse us of potentially infinite evil than to contradict their scriptures and religion. God is evil if he asks us to believe and so if Hell exists it is where he unleashes his vindictiveness.
Christianity preaches innocent until proven guilty and yet without proof it accuses you of being capable of living forever without God just out of spite! That is a tremendous accusation. The Church never worried about accusing Judas Iscariot and the Jews of murdering Jesus without proving it! The accusations against the forefathers of the Jewish people who died in the Holocaust are an insult to the dead.
The Uselessness and Vindictiveness of the Doctrine of Hell
The doctrine of Hell serves little practical purpose. It rarely deters people from sin—teenagers and young adults, who often feel invincible, are unlikely to fear eternal punishment. Even within Christian teaching, a person can repent on their deathbed and still escape Hell. Accepting such a horrific yet ineffective doctrine amounts to indulging in grim wishful thinking rather than encouraging moral behavior.
Christianity generally holds that even those who have lived sinful lives can enter Heaven if they repent and accept Jesus’ forgiveness at the end. Their repentance may be weak or imperfect, yet it is deemed sufficient for absolution. If salvation can be secured at the last moment, the doctrine of Hell cannot genuinely function to improve the world or guide behavior. Instead, its persistence points to a different conclusion: it exists less as a moral tool and more as an expression of retribution and vindictiveness.
I said Hell was judgemental now I am saying avoiding it is easy? Just but offering a mockery of forgiveness is judgemental despite its appearances. It insults the victims of a bad person for a start.
Evil a lack?
Christianity says we should not fear evil as if it were some kind of power. It says it is a lack and human beings distort good, put it in the wrong place and time, to do harm. What is the point of such a doctrine if a being becomes evil forever? It may as well be a power. Or it is a power - o its own way - and we don't want to say it.