While certain inquirers know an intellectual life that passes from disbelief and then doubt to reach faith; some might be surprised to learn that atheism and its timid cousin, agnosticism, are reckoned among sins, at least for those marked as believers. It is a vice against the virtue of religion. The reason is that a natural faith alone and ignorance of the supernatural is closed to the Jewish inheritance of salvation history and its fulfillment in the saving name of JESUS. More so than not, an uncertainty about God is associated with a denial of an afterlife, either heaven or hell. No matter whether there is ignorance or outright denial, human freedom must be exercised. Attaining the age of reason, each of us begins to make choices that pertain to our eternal destiny. Accompanying this search for meaning is the movement of the Holy Spirit and the mysterious providence and election of God.
The atheist must suffer a terrible surprise in awakening from the dead. Expecting oblivion, he finds that there is both happiness and misery awaiting souls on the other side. He has squandered his chances and finds not mindless sleep but a nightmare awaiting him. This raises a question. Is hell the same for all the damned? There are some who failed to respond to God’s overtures through ignorance, others through fear or weakness, and many due to pleasure and proximate goods placed before God and neighbor. The worst among the damned have sinned through malice. Is Dante correct, are there levels to hell for different kinds of sinners? One would suspect that distinctions would be mandated by divine justice.
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