Heaven, hell, they both look crappy to me


So Hank Fox sent along a couple of videos: one’s funny, and the other is “funny.”

An atheist goes to heaven—it’s Robot Chicken. You know what to expect. “It’s so…it’s so…uh, what’s the word?” “Ironic?” “Yeah, ironic.”

An atheist goest to hell—this one is not ironic. It’s so earnest, it’s painful to watch. It alternates between a couple of swishy dancers frolicking to hackneyed techno, and shots of gargoyles and flames accompanied by screams, all overlaid with scrolling text telling us that “Atheists Will Burn In Hell” and “God Loves Us”.

Comments

  1. says

    Yeah back in my more brainwashed/Baptist days I used to wonder if I *really* wanted to even go to heaven. It sounded like they were having a lot more fun in hell. ;)

  2. says

    Do we know which particular DeathCult™ produced that second video, the oh-so-earnest one?

  3. Lance R says

    Oh. Now it all makes sense! Atheists are just ignorant. Wow…
    (/sarcasm)
    Pascal’s wager, bad lighting, cheesy special effects, and crappy techno music. How could I not believe? Oh… right. I still have my brain.

  4. Silmarillion says

    Well that second video proves one thing – atheists definitely have better dress sense.

  5. Alexander Vargas says

    Hahaha man we should PAY fundies to do more of those videos…just look at the guy euphemistically contorting to the crackle of burning atheist flesh and techno hahaha
    The day someone does something as cheesy, crappy and lame as this to defend evolution I will amputate some important part of my body…
    Hilarious

  6. says

    Don’t you love how WE’RE ignorant, but THEY can’t even spell properly? Besides, if video #2 is right about “god” providing “oppurtunity” that makes atheists & other non-Xians succeed … doesn’t that mean THEIR “god” is helping US?

    Re: great white wonder’s post:
    The paper’s editorial said: The pumping station is being built to deliver badly needed water to farmers who risk losing soybean, cotton and rice crops in the next few years because the area is running out of water.

    Maybe they shouldn’t be farming there, or should try raising more drought-tolerant plants. It would be a LOT less expensive to change crops than build this irrigation project the paper talks about.

  7. says

    I’d almost hope there was heaven and hell, so that when I die, I can meet PZ there.

    I want to pay him back for a recent comment where he implied that I was whipped. ;-)

    I have a hard time following a god who damns the most creative minds to eternal damnation. “Companions, the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators, the creator seeks – those who write new values on new tablets.” – Nietzsche

  8. kamensind says

    What is it that there’s such a large hardcore of people in this country who seem to have become intellectually stuck somewhere in the dark ages. And how come they can never spell worth shit ?

  9. T_U_T says

    Re: great white wonder’s post:

    Is there something wrong with the software here ?
    It apparently posts comments on the wrong places…

  10. BruceH says

    kamensind, you probably know that spelling was very fluid in the dark ages. This would explain why fundies can’t spell even in the modern age.

    It’s funny because it’s true.

  11. Shannon says

    The gift of salvation is free! God is all-loving and all-merciful!!

    Believe it or go to a place that is so hot you’ll scream for eternity. Demons will rip you apart and satan will grind your bones into Carnation Instant Breakfast. Your skin will be torn off then healed overnight so that it can be forcibly removed again the next day. The fire will melt you, burning forever as you scream in torment and are tortured for the rest of existence. Sharp pointy things will be inserted into every orifice again and again. Coprophagia. Pain. Humiliation. Forced sodomy. Torture.

    But remember…God loves you.

    Sorry, George Carlin moment.

    That second one was even funnier than the first. I have a gay friend in Colorado who will be thrilled and delighted to know that hell is a techno dance club. He’s often suspected it.

  12. Great White Wonder says

    jay

    Maybe they shouldn’t be farming there, or should try raising more drought-tolerant plants. It would be a LOT less expensive to change crops than build this irrigation project the paper talks about.

    Very reasonable thoughts. There are indeed other ways to argue

    But instead of that reasonable discussion, we are going to have a discussion about a really really awful bit of “science” about the “rediscovery” of the ivory billed woodpecker and how that “rediscovery” now appears to be a sham designed to abuse the Endangered Species Act.

    This problem was obvious to a lot of people but — for whatever reason — appeared to escape the attention of the few dozen folks who put their names on well-publicized article in Science last year …

  13. Great White Wonder says

    TUT

    Is there something wrong with the software here ?
    It apparently posts comments on the wrong places…

    So sorry to interrupt the yuk-yukking with a serious issue.

    The videos are funny. Ha ha.

    Happy?

  14. T_U_T says

    Stop being touchy. I thouhgt your ‘out-of-context’ comments were result of a technical glitch. Nothing more.

  15. says

    As an atheist and techno musician, I must emphatically state that said “music” is hell of not techno.

    But it is probably what I’ll be forced to listen to in hell.

  16. Carlie says

    Oh, Jay beat me to it. I thought the same thing – what kind of God is that anyway, if the atheists have all kinds of success due to that invisible hand? Wouldn’t it make more sense if all the Christians had wonderful lives and the atheists lived in torment and failure? Man, that god’s a bastard.

  17. ROF says

    So, anyone know what’s happened to Hank Fox? Or at least his home page? Seems like I’ve got nothing but “404” for the best part of the last week when I try to check over there.
    o
    o

  18. says

    The message of the second video is that certain hardcore Christians are humorless, uneducated, and untalented.

    I already knew that.

    If they want to make good propaganda videos, they should hire some atheists for wit, some queers for style, and some Satanists for high-energy music.

  19. DFX says

    If there is a God, my guess is he’s not going to be too happy about all his “devout followers” spewing hate. I haven’t read much of the bible, but the little I remember I seem to recall something about only God being capable of casting judgement on us.

  20. ColinB says

    Kinda reminds me of Blackadder the 1st’s episode “The Archbishop” – where Prince Edmond is made Archbishop by his father the King in order to convince wealthy lords to sign over their lands to the crown, rather than the church…

    http://www.ucf.ics.uci.edu/~lmeeker/part1.html#P1E3

    Edmund: Well, well, let’s take Hell: You know, Hell isn’t as bad as it’s cracked up to be.

    Graveney: What?

    Edmund: No, no, no, no. No, you see, the thing about Heaven, is that Heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in Heaven, like, uh, well, singing, talking to God, watering pot plants…

    Graveney: Ew…

    Edmund: Whereas Hell, on the other hand, is for people who like the other sorts of things: adultery, pillage, torture — those areas.

    Graveney: Really?

    Edmund: Mm! Give your lands to the Crown, and once you’re dead, you’ll have the time of your life!

  21. j says

    Oh, my head hurts. I think it was the scrolling red text that did it. Ugh. I have to go lie down now.

    My favorite sentence was at the very end–something like “Believers Will Have Eternal Peace They Do Not Argue Over ‘Laws Of Nature’ That Deny God.” No kidding.

  22. Pierce R. Butler says

    Listen carefully to the Disco Hell soundtrack at the 2:05 & 4:45 points – now we have proof that Satan is really Santa!

  23. says

    Listen carefully to the Disco Hell soundtrack at the 2:05 & 4:45 points – now we have proof that Satan is really Santa!

    James Randi is not Satan!

  24. David says

    Um. Everybody be afraid! BE VERY AFRAID! IF YOU DO NOT REPENT THE BALROG WILL EAT YOUR SOUL!

    Yes, a balrog.

    That “gargoyle” is nothing of the kind.

    http://www.daereth.net/arda/hildebrandt/balrog.jpg

    The guy is picture is Gandolf the grey, fighting a balrog, in the mines of Moria in a old calendar picture of The Lord of the Rings.

    Some of the news coverage on 6/6/06 used the same image oddly enough. And Stephen Colbert called them out on it. It’s also how I recognized the picture.

    I just think it’s amusing. According to Colbert “A devil is a fallen angel who refused to follow God and followed Satan into Hell; Balrogs are Maiar who refused to follow Eru and followed Morgoth into Thangorodrim”. — Although, later he got called out as they followed Morgoth into Udun rather than Thangorodrim as Thangorodrim was not actually built at the time of Morgoth’s expulsion.

    Rather funny though, balrog… not devil.

  25. Smart_Cookie says

    Yes, ROF. I was going to ask the same question about Hank Fox. His site hasn’t been up for a few days now. PZ – any idea?

  26. Robert says

    you know, I just thought of a new version of Pascal’s wager that makes a more compelling argument (although I’m still an athiest)

    If you believe in God and you’re right you get to mock all the non-believers in the end, but if you’re wrong no-one gets to mock you.

    If you don’t believe in god and you’re right you can’t rub it in any one’s face, but if your wrong you get humiliated…

  27. judy wyatt says

    I emailed Hank to ask him why his website was no longer accessible. He was kind enough to report that he’s in the midst of planning a job change, and felt that he needed more time to devote to his latest project. I hope we get to learn about this project soon and why that necessitates the removal of his website. I told him I missed his website.

    I’m sure he will be pleased that several of you are also missing his wise words. But it’s apparent that he continues to spread his thoughts through other blogs anyway!

  28. Dale Stanbrough says

    “[Atheists] Believe Their Success Is Only Due to Their Own Hard Work.”

    Presumably the producers of this crap believe that God helped them out.
    If so, then may heaven help God!

  29. North of 49 says

    Pierce: “…Satan is Santa.”

    I thought so too at the first point on the soundtrack, (though it seemed he was trying to squeeze out a stubborn bit of constipation), but at the second I recognized it — it’s Jabba the Hutt. I note that at about 03:43 they also ripped off the 2001 Space Odyssey soundtrack, the eerie chorus Bowman hears when he’s off inside the space-warp or wormhole or really cool intergalactic escalator or whatever it was.

    Somebody had to watch both those movies to steal the sound bits, and neither of them mentions Heaven, Hell, God, Satan or the Bible. Tut-tut.

    Also, what’s with the extremely slow text crawl? Geared to their target audience’s comprehension speed, perhaps?

    Finally, “God is Love and Forgiveness” — except for this extensive list of exclusions. Now, God is supposed to know all, and didn’t somebody (a human, granted) say “To know all is to forgive all?” Difficult to reconcile those; why, one might almost think it was incoherent.

  30. says

    Did you ever read Isaac Asimov’s proof that Heaven is hotter than Hell? It had something to do with Hell having a lake of burning sulphur, so Hell can’t be hotter than the boiling point of sulphur or the lake would evaporate. I forget what he used to pin down the minimum temperature of Heaven: rivers of gold, perhaps?

  31. j says

    Monado, is it this one? I got it from Pharyngula’s Infidel Quotes.

    The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, “Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days.” Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that … The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E) temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed …[However] Revelations 21:8 says “But the fearful, and unbelieving … shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
    [From “Applied Optics” vol. 11, A14, 1972]

  32. makhita says

    Of the top 25 nicest people I know, some are christians. However, of the top 25 most evil and mean people I know, every single one of them is a christian. The second video only reinforces that.