When you install fear, guild and punishment by eternal torture as the basis of society, then the psychological make up of most people get distorted and life in general tends towards structural un-happyness. However, the doctrine of eternal punishment for unbelievers, executed in a fiery Hell and presided over by a Devil, has been the mainspring and driving force of Christianity. Armed with that belief, the church launched herself upon the Roman Empire, destroyed the pagan religions, extinguished pagan culture, overthrew classical civilization, and pushed the world into the Dark Ages. She filled the world with religious hate, fanaticism, intolerance of science and reason and even established the Inquisition. The most progressive and independent thinking men and women of society were persecuted, just because they resisted the Christian doctrines of fear, damnation, guild and blind obedience. We saw its anticlimax in the Burning Times.
Apart from this core message of his book, which has not lost anything of its actuality, Graves also provides a lot of historical data. Giving us insight in the origins of the many false assumptions the Christian faith build its' empire on. He shows that, mythologically, the God of the Old Testament and the Devil of the New Testament were "originally twin brothers known by the same titles", and that this God and this Devil were Chaldean sun-gods. The origins of the Devil, eternal punishment, Heaven and Hell are discussed, as well as evil itself within this context.