Richard Dawkins on The problem of hell
Dawkins regards teaching children the doctrine of hell as a form of psychological abuse worse than many of the physical abuses the Church has been prosecuted for.
Richard Dawkins's treatment of hell in The God Delusion (2006) is less philosophical than Russell's and more focused on the psychological damage the doctrine inflicts — particularly on children. He devotes an extended section to what he calls 'the child as victim,' arguing that frightening a small child with vivid imagery of eternal fire is a form of mental cruelty whose effects can persist for a lifetime.
Dawkins cites the testimony of adults who grew up Catholic and carried fear of hell into adulthood, as well as correspondence from readers describing recurring nightmares and chronic anxiety induced by religious instruction in childhood. He makes the deliberately provocative case that this psychological harm can be, in some instances, more lasting than the physical abuses for which Catholic clergy have been prosecuted — not because one is trivial but because indoctrination is rarely treated as a harm at all.
On the doctrine itself, Dawkins echoes the standard philosophical objections. Eternal torment is categorically disproportionate to any finite offence; a loving God could not devise or sustain it; and the fact that Christians themselves increasingly soften or quietly abandon the doctrine is evidence that our moral intuitions now outstrip the theology they were supposed to be grounded in.
“Horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was in the cases of priestly paedophilia, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.”