Though I've heard that for many of a religious persuasion fear of hell is an overriding influence on their lives, I don't know if I've ever believed it to be very prevalent. In the secular world I've inhabited for most my life, the issue of heaven and hell have almost never arisen, save in the ramblings of recently religious relatives of mine. Upon reading the works of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, it has become clear to me that a significant number of Muslims in the West still live in fear of hell, and many continue to live in the trap their tradition weaves for them out of that fear.

Learning more details about the secret lives of Muslims in the East and West has made me wonder how much religious fear influences other Westerners. Christianity contains much the same coercive threat of damnation as Islam, but how many Western Christians lead restricted lives because of that fear? I know that for some of my liberal religious friends hell remains a fate they wish to avoid. For how many does that dread lurk in the back of their souls?

I cannot answer that question right now, but I can do one thing: I can give a number of supremely good reasons not to fear hell.

This discussion cannot begin without saying that fear of hell is entirely unfounded. There is no evidence whatsoever that hell actually exists. Nobody has been to the land of the dead and measured its temperature, taken a geiger counter reading, or taken the barometric pressure. There are urban legends of scientists hearing the screams of the damned at the bottom of oil pits, but these are unsubstantiated stories. The only kind of "evidence" that proponents of hell can bring forth are near death experiences.

The problem with near-death experiences, however, is that we only have subjective accounts of them, and when humans are subjected to extreme conditions they are known to hallucinate. We can't confirm that a person's consciousness has left their body and entered another realm. We cannot tag the "soul" and trace it to find out where it goes. We don't have any way of knowing if such a thing as an immaterial soul exists in the first place. While it may often be comforting to interpret the facts in the context of traditional beliefs, doing so assumes the presence of elements we cannot detect and therefore cannot say are there.

So, the evidence for hell, or any kind of afterlife, is very thin. But what if hell did exist?

Many atheists say that if they were given irrefutable evidence that there is a god, a heaven, and a hell, that they would immediately pick up their bibles and start studying them. But exactly how wise is this course of action? In the Abrahamic traditions—the ones that emphasize heave and hell—disobedience to Yahweh/Allah through lack of faith or failure to abide by his moral laws is met with damnation. This, they say, is the greatest good. But is it?

Some say that by definition, god is good, and therefore all he does is Good, whether we may think so or not. But that is an absurd proposition. Whatever a diety does is what a diety does. By itself, it has no value attached to it. Why should we do what Yahweh/Allah wants? And if the definition of good is what god does, why should I care about what's good?

The concept of "good," you see, has a value. It implies a benefit to the individual, to humanity, to life. It implies a moral imperative: a respect for the lives of yourself and others. You should do what is good. And for it to have any weight, it needs a definition separate from the will of god. Otherwise, the reason for following the will of god is that it is the will of god—which is unconvincing—and not that it is good, which is more convincing.

Of course, one may say that to follow the will of god is always good because it is beneficial to us. Disobedience is punished with hell, so it is for our individual and collective good, and hence moral, to obey his laws so we do not incur his wrath. If you value or life and your family's life, you value the will of god.

But this is nothing short of blackmail and tyrrany, and irrationality. Moral good is based upon respect for life, starting with ours and extending to others. But "life" is not mere survival. To truly respect someone's life, you must allow for the cultivation and free expression of their natural faculties. A life without such cultivation is hardly a life worth living. And if god does not respect that autonomy, his rule is by nature immoral.

But, you argue, We do not matter! We are dust! Only god's will matters, and it is our duty to fill ourselves with love for him and serve him! But if we are nothing to be valued, then why obey? If our lives are not to be valued, why not let ourselves be damned to hell? You must have some sense of self-preservation to go along with such a god's will. And if you fill yourself with love and obedience to him—isn't that simply another way of finding value in your life?

And if you do, in some sense, value your life, your destiny, and the development of your faculties, you must respect that value in others, even if their ends are different than yours. To wage a campaign to stifle that light in the name of God and through fear of damnation would be immoral.

And why would god's will matter more than ours, anyway? Is it because he is more powerful? Is it because he can destroy us? It has already been shown that is not a good enough reason. If we are but flies to wanton boys, why should we respect god when he has no such respect for us? Above all, why should we respect a god that supposedly created us without any thought to the responsibility required to take care of such life, which we have already determined must have some value, and see fit only to judge them based on "imperfections" that are fundamentally of his making?

The final word, then, is that even if hell does exist, and it is the decree of a god that the unfaithful and disobedient will be sent there, we should not fear it. To fear hell would be to promote the reign of a tyrant god who values nothing but power—not love nor freedom. Even if it would be of immediate benefit to conform and survive to spend an afterlife in heaven, it would just perpetuate the slavery of mankind. It would be our duty to defy that god, even if it means our destruction.