An Atheist’s Version of Dante’s Inferno July 14, 2009

An Atheist’s Version of Dante’s Inferno

By Guest Contributor
July 14, 2009

Here’s an interesting book idea.

S.A. Alenthony (a pen name) rewrote Dante’s Inferno, but from an atheist’s perspective — Same poetic style and everything.

It’s called The Infernova.

Infernova

One major difference is that punishments would be offered to “televangelist-frauds, pedophile-priests, prophets” and more. And instead of Virgil as a guide, Alenthony goes with someone a bit more familiar:

Of bushy gray hair he had no lack,
and his moustache too was brushy and wild.
He looked familiar. I tried to think back:

where had I seen him? At this he smiled,
for my confusion was likely quite plain.
He spoke up then, his southern drawl mild:

”I can see I’ll have a bit to explain.
The whys and wherefores, I’ll reach presently.
But introductions first: I’m Mark Twain.”

As it turns out, I have a few copies of the book to give away.

Since we’re talking about The Inferno, here’s the question for you all: Who do *you* think deserves to go to Hell? (If it existed, of course.)

Most creative answers (according to Alenthony) win a free copy of the book!

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  • Epistaxis

    Nobody.

  • MacCrocodile

    Maggie Gallagher and Carrie “Opposite Marriage” Prejean are forced to share a home for all eternity, and there is only one bed in the house! Bedtime will be strictly enforced in Hell, so they won’t be able to take turns sleeping or anything.

  • TK

    George Lucas and Steven Spielberg for raping Indiana Jones.

  • Iztok

    I think that if you believe in hell there is probably a good chance you should be the one deserving to go there.

  • If hell exists then it deserves only one resident: its creator.

  • ThatOtherGuy

    Yeah, I’m another finite-transgressions-do-not-merit-infinite-punishments guy.

  • Veritas

    The only people who deserve to burn in hell (fictionally, or not), are those who use the concept of faith to justify immorality.

    Sadly, Hemant already mentioned televangelists. I particularly dislike them. But even more, I dislike faith healers, such as Peter Popoff, whom I saw on Vision TV (Christian channel) the other day.

    It’s one thing to have your beliefs – that’s fine, and many religious folk I know are good people. Cafeteria Christians, most of ’em, but I’d rather know a good Cafeteria Christian than a Southern Baptist literal interpreting Christian. But hoo boy….when you use the beliefs or ignorance of others to get personally rich?

    You deserve the daily reverse-pineapple-in-the-rectum treatment for all eternity. Well, probably not, but you know…

  • Peregrine

    Fred Phelps arrives in hell to discover the souls of every gay person who’s funeral he picketed has turned the place into the swinginest gay bar in the afterlife. Techno music pulses in the air, as they dance and gyrate around him suggestively, rubbing up against him. He tries to leave, but finds the doors barricaded by the dead soldiers from Iraq refusing him passage.

    As he makes his way through the throngs of party goers, passing Ray Comfort, condemned for all eternity to perform fellatio on a banana, he spies a lonely figure sipping on a Mai Tai at a corner table. As he reaches the table, Jerry Falwell looks up, smiles broadly at him, and says “You know, this place ain’t so bad once you get used to it.”

  • Hell’s a bit harsh, don’t you think? Being for all eternity, and all.

    I’m more in line with a hell-like penitentiary, where people can go for a specific period of time.

    First in line? Bush and his insane clown posse, where they will be water-boarded.

  • It sort of depends on who’s there already. For instance, if most of the great thinkers, scientists, composers, etc. are already in Hell, then I’d say I deserve to go there too! But if it’s going to be filled with televangelists, leave me out.

  • Robin

    Arthur Finkelstein.

    He’s a gay man who married his long-time partner, when it became legal, in Massachusetts.

    Why does he deserve hellfire?

    Because he’s also a right-wing nutjob, who’s personally responisble for all manner of anti-gay rhetoric for the Republican party.

    In other words, he sold his soul.

    And in a perfect, designer-created universe, the bill needs to come due.

    Satan…meet Arthur. –

  • jemand

    I want to say… the people who want to put children in hell, they should go themselves. But ETERNAL torture… I don’t think anything anyone could ever possibly fit into their lifetime on earth would ever deserve that level of torture. So, the only being who ever deserved to be in hell? I’m with hoverfrog.

    Whoever MADE it for others.

  • Philosos

    The Catholic Church for covering up the abuse of children in their system. Abuse is one thing, but covering it up and moving around priests like musical chairs is another. They are just as criminal as the same people they get up every mass to preach against.

  • Pedofiles

    Rapists

    Serial Killers

    “Honor” Killers

    People that are in any way shape or form involved with child porn.

    People that kill in the name of their religion.

    People that burn “witches”

    People that fly airplanes into “buildings”

    People that behead others

    People that intentionally do things that hurt others just to line their pockets.

    The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

  • CP

    Anyone who believes – sincerely believes – that others are going to Hell.

  • Alan E.

    I think everyone should at least do a little stint in hell. Make it a like a “Scared Straight” program. Once people get a real taste of what hell is actually like, then they might reconsider what they think as “hell worthy.” Here’s the kicker, once people realize that there is no hell, questions about the existence of heaven and “supreme beings” will lead to more humanists. With more humanists, hopefully people will conclude that we are in this world together and we are stuck with each other in this one, and only one, life. The only H E Double Hockey Sticks is the one we create on Earth (and maybe other planets in the future, although anyone living on Mercury or Venus, especially since it has an alternating hot and “cool” side, will think they are living in hell for the few moments that they might be alive there).

  • «bønez_brigade»

    People who say anything critical of George Lucas.

    [BTW, I think Peregrine winz this one.]

  • dwimmerlaik81

    I think Conspicuous Consumers should occupy a level of hell wherein they’re forced to dress like hobos, trapped in a shimmering lake of Cristal that drains away when they try to drink from it, and are always grasping at the tantalizingly dangling branches of trees that grow Coach bags and BMW keyfobs.

  • I think maybe God deserves some time in Hell. I checked out that book some people wrote about him and he sounds like a real asshole, what with the mass murder, rape, etc.

    If he existed of course 🙂

  • Daniel

    If hell actually existed, I’d send myself because:
    1. I can admit when I’m wrong.
    2. God/Jesus seem like smarmy jackasses and I don’t think I’d like to spend a lot of time hanging with them.
    3. I’m not so spiteful that I’d wish hell on somebody else.

  • TheLoneIguana

    I always thought “pride” was too general a word for a sin, but “smugness” definitely should get you a few years in a pit somewhere.

    This means Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and most other hate-spewing talk radio wastes-of-oxygen.

    I’m thinking the best version of hell for them would be a world where no one pays any attention to them at all.

  • Ed

    People who bring babies into rated-R movies

  • James H

    I don’t have their names, but I nominate the parents of Marjoe Gortner. In the name of holiness, they set their child on an immoral, unrighteous path as a young Pentacostal minister, evangelist, and revivalist.

    Televangelists who fleece the faithful are one thing. But to take a child and lead him down that path is a special kind of evil.

  • Ben E

    He’ll is a horrible place, right? The kind of place that you wouldn’t wish on anyone? In that light, I would say no one. Which makes me a bit more forgiving than any god.

  • Gevaudan

    Parents who allow their children to die instead of seeking medical help because they [pretend to] believe that faith healing will cure them – and when the law comes after them, they quickly hire a lawyer to defend their actions. These ppl belong in Hell (if it existed).

  • Tyler in SoCal

    Joseph Smith and his magic Underwear alongside Ron L Hubbard.

  • Liudvikas

    Peace and prosperity seemed tiring,
    for lord and creator of this plane.
    So thought he of the plan so cunning:

    From now on, he would make a place,
    of fire, torture, pain and suffering.
    Now each and every shall be afraid, for sure.

    And so it was, the chaos stunning,
    irony the greatest of the history.
    Wars were waged, over fear of dying.

    Generations came and gone, but told same story:
    Worship him or we shall make sure you be gone.
    And so it was for long, the same grim story.

    But there came this writer humble,
    told he unto you, to be relieved.
    The only worthy of this place is those who send you there.

    Finally again for once we celebrated,
    peace and prosperity came back,
    to be here among us forever and never again to be rejected.

    P.S. This was the first time I’ve ever rhymed anything and I am really bad at this, so this all trouble better be worth it 😀

  • Richard

    I don’t like the idea of eternal punishment for temporary sins.

    But Christian heaven might make an appropriate purgatory.

    There’d be fluffy clouds, eternal singing and harp music. There’d be no sex, no people from other denominations, no conflict and no pressure for personal development.

    It would be the sort of milquetoast world that people want for earth. And, I suspect that the monotony of it would drive people mad.

    How many years could a sane person stand a realm where there was nothing to do but talk to other small-mined people or sing praise songs?

    I’d fill it with the people who think they’d want to go to such a place, and keep them there for so long as they thought this Heaven was a good idea.

  • Saint Splattergut

    Robert Mugabe, that ugly bitch.
    His version of hell would be a Zimbabwe where nobody gives a flying rat’s ass about him, where he is only a ghost.

  • mikespeir

    If it’s got Mark Twain in it, it’s got to be good.

  • AJ

    People who talk in movie theaters, door-to-door salesmen, people who drive below the speed limit in the express lane, people who ride Segways, couples who sit on the same side of the booth when there’s nobody on the other side, and people who don’t know how to use self-checkout lanes.

  • megan

    Really? No one has said Dick Cheney yet?

  • Exploiters, anyone that attempts to control others, and anyone who forces their beliefs/ideas/morals onto others

  • Pepe Silvia

    Walter Peck of the EPA, for shutting down the containment unit.

  • Peregrine

    @Pepe Silvia

    I miss him. Did he ever get my fruit basket?

  • Who deserves to go to Hell? – Me

    Why? – I need a vacation.

    Seriously, the original Inferno seemed like a blast.

  • Joe

    Anyone who has sincerely wished that someone else should go to hell. (and for full disclosure I don’t sincerely wish that they do…)

  • Nick

    Any nonbeliever who has ever yelled the phrase “Go to hell!”

    And hypocrites.

    PS — I’m guilty of the first one.

  • Mark Twain will explain that hell is a temporary “dream state” of consciousness that the brain goes through just before you die. It is different for everybody. Each person brings their own baggage into this “dream state”. He will take you on a guide of some of the more interesting “dream states”.

  • SarahH

    No one deserves to suffer for eternity for finite crimes. There are people who should be locked away forever, in order to protect other people, and there are people who deserve punishment for finite crimes, but eternal suffering is overkill for anybody.

    If there really is a life after death, I’d hope that rehabilitation would be possible for people who’d spent their first life behaving horribly.

  • grazatt

    Are there any fantasy creatures (centaurs,harpies,etc) in this version of hell like there weere in Dante’s book?

  • Fastthumbs

    From my (materialistic atheistic) viewpoint,

    This whole conversation is inane because there’s no hell, no heaven, and no afterlife. You only have the here and now. It’s up to you and your community whether it’s a heaven or a hell on this world in this indifferent universe.

    Speculating on the properties and personality of “heaven/hell” plays into the hands of Xtians…

  • Ben

    People who pray for your eternal soul.

  • Takma’rierah

    Whoever thought it was a good idea to replace my morning commute music with some talk show.

  • If pressed, I would say that the Christian god deserves most to go to hell, simply for “creating the universe in such a way that it should be subjugated under him for eternity.”

    If he were real, I mean. That’s total bull****.

  • Ubi Dubium

    All my friends!

    I woudn’t want to be lonely when I get there!

  • I deserve to go to Hell! Seriously! I mean, come on — life is tough. I work long hours. I’ve cracked the 100-hour mark in a single week. I deserve some relaxation and play. Do I really want to go to Heaven and sit around worshiping and adoring God for the rest of eternity alongside all the people who have ever sent me e-mail forwards about angels (and Obama the muslim)? Man, that’ll make me miss the 100-hour work week! No, send me to Hell. Let me party it up and engage in orgies and have a good time. Besides, I know my girlfriend and kitty are going (she’s evil, and cats don’t go to heaven) and I want to be with them. Come on, please? Send me!

  • Devynn

    Any married couple that claims it’s not just the husband and wife making love, but it’s also Jesus.

    Who knew Christians were into that?

  • One word: Clowns.

    Oh, and Dan Simmons had a mightily entertaining concept of this called “Vanni Fucci is Alive and Well and Living in Hell.” It’s in his short-story compilation, “Prayers to Broken Stones.”

  • @AJ:

    “…couples who sit on the same side of the booth when there’s nobody on the other side…”

    So how’re they supposed to hold hands and snuggle from across the table? That’s its OWN kind of hell.

  • CybrgnX

    Hell is nothing more then revenge on a grand scale and is a worthless endevor.
    Execution of a person who has repeatedly shown to ‘incurable’ of acting in a way that causes great harm to others is not revenge but just eliminating the perpetuator of the harm…At worse it is self-defense.
    To torture for eternity is no better then the person you are torturing.
    So the concept of HELL is a ‘soul stealing’ idea, & I feel sorry for the poor minded people who continue its concept.
    Besides I think of HELL as it is shown in ‘Job: A Comedy of Justice’ as a place for people with intelligence to go after death to have a really good time as the holier-then-thou are all in heaven being bored to tears bumping their heads on the clouds. In that context I’m going to HELL!!!

  • hockeyfight

    this is the literary equivalent of the creation museum.

    reproducing dante in the “same poetic style” is akin to describing the earth scientifically in the language of intelligent design.

  • I don’t think anybody deserves to go to hell. And just like that, I’m more compassionate than God.

  • GT

    Like most people commenting here, I neither believe in hell nor wish it on anybody. But if I had to damn someone for eternity, it would be Hemant, because the thought of being punished like Tantalus made me giggle. You’re in a room with all the best books ever written, but they’re all on shelves that move out of your reach, and you’re waist deep in fresh baby blood that recedes when you try to drink it.

  • I haven’t a clue who should be sent other than those that are already listed (pedophiles, rapists, serial killers, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, blah blah blah). I would just like to state that I giggled at this post merely because it brought back memories of my explaining the name we gave our dalmatian (Which happens to be Dante’s Inferno [“Dante”]) to my fundy mother in law who has never read The Divine Comedy.

  • absent sway

    “People who bring babies into rated-R movies”

    This disturbs me as well. I just watched “Bruno” and I saw at least five kids looking to be under the age of ten exiting the theater afterward. Let me put my old prude hat back on and say that my feelings about this one haven’t changed much since I was a fundy. Bruno’s not for kids and I reserve the right to judge parents who take young children along to see it. I will stop short of condemning them to hell, however. 😉

  • trixr4kids

    I nominate Ann Coulter for hell. It’s like this: She’s being interviewed for hellevision. She’s talking really, really fast, and she can’t stop. She begins to slaver like a rabid dog. The interviewer (an angel named Christopher Buckley,) is armed with facts. He calmly counters every lie Ann tells with evidence and states his sources (since this is an otherworldly realm, it’s possible to hear both speakers at the same time. The interviewer isn’t speaking constantly, though).

    Ann is furious at being contradicted and mortified that she’s drooling, yet she can’t stop talking. Some inner need drives her; the words pour out of her mouth faster and faster. Her voice gets higher and higher; her contralto has become a screech. The audience is laughing–not at her “jokes”, but at her. She’s getting saliva all over her black mini cocktail dress. Still she talks on, desperately–

    And so on.

  • Hey, lots of great responses!

    I just wanted to make a point about my book, as a few people have already brought this up…

    The whole Christian notion of infinite punishments for finite “sins” or crimes is, of course, a mockery of justice. When I first came up with the idea of writing an atheist’s satire of The Inferno, this was the first dragon I knew I’d have to slay.

    So one of the main points of the book is, this revised version of hell isn’t meant to be real. It’s a simulation existing in a dream, a Disney-ride full of animatronics, if you will. Just how it gets set up that way, well, you’ll have to read the book… 🙂

  • People who deserve to go to Hell are those who want to go there, mostly those who buy passages to any of the following:
    Hell, Arizona, U.S
    Hell, California, U.S
    Hell, Michigan, U.S.
    Hell, Grand Cayman, the Cayman Islands
    Hell, Norway

  • Chakolate

    An imaginary place deserves an imaginary inmate: god. And who better to suffer there than the lowlife who created it?

  • Chakolate

    Oh, but if hell does exist, I’d like to go, please. Especially if heaven is filled with Christians.

  • Hey, do I get extra points for being closer to the truth than anyone else in my previous comment? 🙂

  • We don’t believe in hell, this is just for fun. My input: The people that make Cambodian men, women, and children slave in the ruby mines.

  • postsimian

    Rex Grossman. This is a guy who helped build the hopes of one of the most hopeless sports fanbases in the country (Chicago. Cubs fans, I’m looking at you, too), only to shatter it to pieces in a fantastic display of incompetence. Even Congress couldn’t deliver that kind of disappointment.

    As an aside–if there is a heaven, Prince automatically gets in for playing Purple Rain in the middle of a monsoon with a gigantic boner silhouette projecting from his guitar at the halftime show.

  • Tony

    First, I’d have define Hell as a place of complete chaos, free of reason and logic, cause and effect. Then, I’d realize that Hell already exists in the minds of believers of gods, demons, witches, and magic. Hell would therefore be making those believers live their beliefs, as they expect others to do, free of logic and reason, effect and cause. They would be forced to live the contradictions and inane dogma, suffering as their tenuous hold on rational thought slowly slips away. Leaving only enough of a residue coherence to realize what they have lost. Welcome to Hell.

  • revatheist

    Any person, being, god, etc. who had a hand in creating, maintaining, or condemning others to hell would belong there.

  • Aside from the usual, I’d send anyone who truly believes that anyone else will go to hell just because they have differing beliefs. And I don’t just mean those that don’t think hell will be a place of suffering, or that only believers go to heaven and everyone else just dies, etc. – I’m talking about those who think – and *want* – people to burn in everlasting torment as punishment for their beliefs.

    The point is for them to be proven wrong, and to have it shown to them firsthand that their beliefs aren’t immune from scrutiny and aren’t correct just because they’re *their* beliefs. Mind you, I’d really rather prefer no one was tormented or anything, but it’s kind of hard to say “told you so” after you’re dead if there’s no afterlife.

  • Matthew

    The pope. He’s responsible for the deaths of god knows how many Africans by telling them to eschew medical advice and not to use the barrier method of contraception. He’s literally responsible for the deaths of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.

    Then we have to consider how he’s fucked up our bio-sciences, caused drama in the Middle East and has generally been a royal douchebag.

    If anyone deserves hell, it’s the tag team of Benedict and John Paul II.

  • Mathew Wilder

    Me!

    (Do I win a free copy for saying that?)

    Seriously, I think this is a cool idea for a book, up there with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. (BTW, I also think Peregrine wins.)

  • Actually, I think it’d be hard to beat Niven & Pournelle’s Inferno, where a science fiction writer goes to the place Dante described and starts trying to figure it all out from his own perspective. Ingenious. (And I gather Pournelle is a Catholic.)

    After all, most science fiction writers have been atheists. Asimov. Heinlein. Vonnegut. (Orson Scott Card is the great exception – a superb writer, but a Mormon too.)

    Anyway, I second the notion that the only being that deserves hell is its creator.

  • Maggie

    I deserve hell.

    Everyone deserves hell.

    This is assuming that heaven is for perfect people and hell for imperfect people…

    This is one of the reasons why I love my God who saved me.

  • skinman

    Miley Cyrus

    I have a 6 year old daughter. She has recently become entranced by all the tween Disney personalities: Jonas brothers, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, etc. But the worst, most obnoxious is Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana. Why should Miley go to hell? Because her show says it is okay for children to mock their parents, to lie, to do anything they feel like and that it will all be okay as long as they can act sweet and promise to never do it again. Of course the following week it is the same old thing. The fact that her actual father is complicit in this abomination is unbelievable. He is either a fool or too busy counting the money his little cash cow brings in. Probably both. On top of this her Hannah Montana personanlity makes incredibly bad music. I feel physically ill every time I get into the car and have to listen to a teenager sing about the difficulties of her lovelife. Seriously, how often could she have possibly been burned in her short existence?

    So, Miley dear, you deserve to go to hell. As punishment for all the torture you have heaped upon the parents of young girls. Dick Cheney and the CIA could’ve learned a lot from you.

  • Philology

    This question dances neatly along the line of whether Hell exists or not, and I think many have fallen for the easy answer, declaring alternatively that either Hell does not exist or that we’re ultimately more compassionate than a mythological God if we selflessly declare that no one _ought_ to go to Hell.

    But for the religious, Hell serves as a cathartic way to justify that the “wrongs are righted” and that the truly evil are punished. I can see the desire for it, as we’re often left as secularists with no ‘force’ to punish the truly evil. In the absence of an deity, how can we accept the evil? We’re either left dissatisfied with a society that is so steeped in religion that it fails to punish those religious evils or jailed as vigilantes who exacted our own human punishment.

    So if I were to imagine a Hell, a place where I could send the most evil of the evil, I’d pick one group.

    That group? Educators who deliberately mislead.

    The easy answer again would be child molesters and rapists, murderers, etc. But ultimately, I think we all pay a bigger price to those who make the deliberate choice to mis-educate our youth. Molesters and rapists and murderers are one-off crimes. They hurt one or two or a few, but the justice system generally incarcerates them and removes them from society for their obvious crimes. And oftentimes, these are crimes of passion or insanity, done ONCE as a reaction to a trigger, not consciously premeditated.

    But the teachers who make a conscious decision every day to teach children, the pride of our future and the building blocks of an intelligent society, absolute lies? They’re the ones who deserve Hell. They’re the ones in Madrassas teaching children that it’s okay to strap bombs to themselves, as Mohammmed or Allah will vindicate them in the afterlife. They’re the ones deciding EVERY day to teach that the year is only 6000 years old, forever undermining a student’s perception of geology, astronomy, physics, the environment, anthropology, evolution, and our fundamental role on this planet.

    They’re the ones who make a determined effort to paint contraception as evil and ineffective in an effort to advance an indefensible moral code about chastity and devotion to the Lord.

    Every single day, every single time they teach things they know to not be true, whether to advance a moral or philosophical code, they’re creating evil. They’re creating people who will die for their cause, derail millions of dollars of federal aid to Africa because it might teach the efficacy of contraception. They’re pushing day after day to get absolutely sound science like Evolution removed from our schools, in an effort to MISEDUCATE the children of our society.

    Education is the building block of everything we do, and those who deliberately miseducate create monsters and evils far greater than those perpetrated by simple murderers and thieves.

    They’re the ones who deserve Hell, if such a place even exists.

  • me

  • The biblical description of hell (which inspires Dante’s version) comes from the bible, “dictated by God”. This is also where He tells us what a swell guy he is. The bible itself, however, contradicts that conclusion. God gives us free will, only to rain hellfire down on us if we choose anything other than what he wants. His own account of things show Him as envious (kicking Adam & Eve out of the garden), prideful (forcing pharaoh to refuse Moses’s requests so that Moses can try out his new powers), and bigotted (Sodom).

    God is not as good as he claims, and I submit that hell is probably not as bad as he claims either. We never hear Satan’s side of it. Remember he’s in hell because he wanted the adoration God received, he wanted to be His equal.

    So what can we definitively say about hell?

    1)Satan has no reason to do God’s will he is, afterall, already in Hell;
    2) His interests are better served by catering to his minions rather than torturing them, thereby securing the adolation he desires; and
    3) God has sent to hell every rockstar, pornstar, actor, scientist, free thinker, revolutionary, celebrity, drug addict, alcoholic, etc, etc. You get my point, all the cool people are there.

    Heaven, on the other hand, is full of bible thumpers, prudes, and morons.

    I know this was a long ass post, but the point is: Who deserves to go to Hell? Anyone with a brain!

    (Hopefully this comment earned me a VIP table in Club Inferno)

  • Mike

    Well if real, it’s alot of confusion, suffering and mess
    with Jimmy H rocking out! Send me! Sounds like Woodstock!
    Also have Jehovas Whitness’s have to answer the door to Atheists for all time.

  • Satan has no reason to do God’s will he is, after all, already in Hell

    To get around this “free-will of Satan” problem, I can think of the following:

    1. Deny that Satan has free will. But then he becomes God’s puppet.

    2. Claim that Satan is really an aspect of God similar to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

    3. Claim that Satan has free will but for some reason, ALWAYS chooses to maintain the torture chamber.

    Of course not believing in God or Satan is the most simple solution. The problem simply goes away.

  • Chris

    As freethinking people who, you know, read books it should be noted that in the Inferno Satan doesn’t run hell, he’s a prisoner himself (He’s stuck in the ice in the ninth level between Hell and Purgatory; Dante and Virgil crawl down/up him and through to the other, less read, books.).

  • Valerie Kelley

    The current pope arrives in hell, light in his stupid red loafers. (P.S. I am bisexual, so that is not a slam on gay people. I just think his shoes are dumb. Rod Stewart could not have gotten away with them in the ’70’s.) He is placed there for arguing against sending condoms to Africa to help stop the spread of AIDS and saying that condoms make the plague of AIDS worse instead of better.

    He is forced to wear a condom for all eternity in hell whilst being forced to have gay sex with men who died in Africa of AIDS. However, the condom actually does NOT protect him against AIDS since he lied in life and said that they do not. He catches AIDS and gets sicker and sicker but never dies in this hell, all the while still wearing a condom continuously.

  • Indigo

    The people who decided that hotdog buns should come in packs of 8, even though hotdogs come in packs of 10, so that anybody buying less than 40 can’t come out even.

    The people who put shredded wheat (serving size 2) in packages of 3.

    And most of all the people who decided to rate school bus capacity based on elementary school children. (If we can fit 75 9-year-olds on the bus, we can fit 75 high school students, with backpacks!)

  • Wendy the Dante scholar

    What’s ironic about all this is that Dante’s text IS an atheist text, so cleverly and subversively written in the classical traditions that scholars and even the church itself didn’t figure it out. (which he’d hoped for since he’d be KILLED for that)

    He is writing ironically after losing his faith. He repeatedly points to the earth being circular, and it’s path AROUND the sun, in defiance of the church.

    Read it very carefully, as a backwards allegory condemning the church. He is listing the names he feels should survive, not burn.