If you’re like me, you have often observed crowds of people standing about in the Brickyard. These crowds are usually circles and are clustered around some religious fanatic who is laying down the law about everyone’s immortal soul.

I am always tempted to go up to these preachers and give them a piece of my mind, but I never have the guts. However, no guts are required in print. So here, then, is what I have to say to these campus preachers, and indeed any purveyors of the Christian religion.

“Hey, wait, Mr. Preacher, Mr. Preacher. Isn’t it true that God has already ordained who is to go to heaven and who is to go to hell?”

“Yes, young man, it is true! God has decided before the beginning of time who was to go to heaven and who was to go to hell!”

“So nothing we do really matters, then.”

“You accept Jesus, young man! You accept Jesus and your sins are washed away!”

“And that’s all that matters?”

“That’s all that matters, my son! Are you ready to have your sins washed clean?”

“That’s not what I meant at all. I meant the opposite of that. So if I don’t have my sins washed away, I go to eternal torment?”

“Eternal torment! For ever and ever! Gnashing of teeth! Pulling of joints! Tearing of –“

“And that happens to everyone who doesn’t accept Jesus?”

“All of you are sinners! Every one of you!”

“So, Gandhi, for example. He’s in hell?”

“Gandhi is in hell!”

“I don’t buy any religion that sends Gandhi to hell and tortures him forever. No ifs, ands or buts. If God would do that, then he is — but let me not blaspheme.”

“And who are you to judge God?”

“I do not judge God. I judge the world by my conscience, which I presume God has given me for a reason. And my conscience tells me that Mahatma Gandhi does not deserve to be tortured eternally. And if someone did it, it would be … worse than anything I’ve ever done. And I have done many bad things.”

“Gandhi was a sinner! We have all sinned, and fall short –“

“Now come, come, that’s ridiculous. If you were God, would you create people who could live up to your expectations, morally or people who were doomed to fall short? Which makes more sense to you?”

“But God gave us paradise! He gave it to us!”

“The whole thing was a set-up, though. God knew Eve was going to take the apple, and they were both going to eat it. He put it there for precisely that reason, in fact, so that Eve could come and pluck it off the tree and doom humanity.”

“But he had to give us the choice! We reject God of our own free will!”

“Why would he create people, knowing full well that he was gonna torture them eternally?”

“Who are you to question God, young man?”

“His creation.”

“God created –“

“Why does God create Sammy X, who dies and goes to hell for eternity? Why bother to create him?”

“It is God’s will!”

“Then why does my heart tell me that’s wrong?”

“Because you have not given yourself fully up to Jesus!”

“No, I most certainly have not. Your religion, sir, makes no distinction between the innocent and the guilty. It condemns all mankind to one of two extremes — perpetual bliss or perpetual torture — based entirely upon whether they have accepted Christ as their savior. Why would God do that? It makes no sense, and therefore it isn’t so.”

“Then who was Jesus Christ, then?”

“He was … oh, he was, the son of God, I suppose.”

“And why did he come to Earth?”

“To start a religion.”

“He came to be crucified for your sins!”

“Yeah, that is a problem, actually. ‘Cause why would Jesus allow himself to be crucified? And why would all these miracles about him be authenticated? If half of them are true, he was more than a prophet, certainly …”

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