Reporter: Do you believe in God?
Toby: (shakes head) No.
Reporter: And in the Devil?
Toby: Yes! In the Devil, yes.
Reporter: How exciting! What is he like, have you seen him?
Toby: (shakes head) No.
Reporter: And in the Devil?
Toby: Yes! In the Devil, yes.
Reporter: How exciting! What is he like, have you seen him?
—from Toby Damnit (1968), directed by Federico Fellini
Your reward for virtuously refusing the Yozis' mercy is going to be a sudden, violent dismemberment, followed by being eaten alive by a blood-ape. Assuming you escape from their messenger, your new reward will be to live out your life, impotent and powerless, as someone else enjoys the stolen might of a Solar Exaltation and uses it to pave over the world and turn it into something more to his liking. Again, Jesus will not reward you.
Creation is a terrible, uncaring place. The gods are corrupt. Heaven is a sham and a scam, full of grifters and liars and con-men. The divine embodiment of virtue and righteousness hasn't left his pleasure dome in years. The average mortal is born into grinding poverty, breaks his back laboring for his entire life, and dies an ugly, undignified death. Then everything he is as a person is erased, his soul passes through an impersonal sorting system, and he begins a new life of pain and toil. His children will face more of the same. Those who stand up and stride forth and try to do something about this tend to get crushed under the tread of the truly mighty — corrupt provincial gods (which is most gods), their gifted sons and daughters, or the haughty Terrestrial Exalted.
Igor Bromhead: Heaven? Is there a Heaven?
Ualac: Igor Bromhead, of all men, you will most certainly never know... will you?
Ualac: Igor Bromhead, of all men, you will most certainly never know... will you?
—Hellboy: Box Full of Evil
"Lucifer is the father of our race, our creator. Your God may be a deadbeat, but mine... mine walks the Earth."
— Meg, Supernatural
Jon: Hang on. If these entities are all based on our fear, then what about the rest?
Gerard: No. There aren't any godlike powers of hope or love or whatever. At least not that I've seen. Just fear. I don't know why.
Gerard: No. There aren't any godlike powers of hope or love or whatever. At least not that I've seen. Just fear. I don't know why.
—The Magnus Archives, "Family Business"
"Things must have been so much less complicated before the Fall. Now we must deal with Hell – not the idea but the physical existence of it. They twist even time there. Hell thrives, but our saviour is ever absent."
—The Benighted Reverend, Fallen London, The Twelve-Fifteen from Moloch Street
Susannah found herself remembering the time she had asked her father, a quiet but deeply cynical man, if he believed there was a God in heaven who guided the course of human events. "Well," he had said, "I think it's sort of half 'n half, Odetta. I'm sure there's a God, but I don't think He has much if anything to do with us these days; I believe that after we killed His son, He finally got it through His head that there wasn't nothing to be done with the sons of Adam or the daughters of Eve, and He washed His hands of us. Wise fella."
Holden: (a vampire) Oh, my God!
Buffy: Oh, your God, what?
Holden: Oh, well, you know, not my God, because I defy him and all of his works. Does he exist? Is there word on that, by the way?
Buffy: Nothing solid.
Buffy: Oh, your God, what?
Holden: Oh, well, you know, not my God, because I defy him and all of his works. Does he exist? Is there word on that, by the way?
Buffy: Nothing solid.
"I suppose you could call me an agnostic. You see, I'm not sure about heaven... but I'm pretty sure hell exists."
—Tarnnote , The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, "Speak, Memory! (Part 2)"
