Hell and Justice

[tbieter]

"The doctrine of Hell has political implications as well. The second American president said that it was the most politically important of the theological doctrines. With Plato, John Adams knew that there are crimes that cannot be adequately known about or punished by existing polities, and therefore Hell renders justice complete.

Without a doctrine of Hell, furthermore, our individual actions have no real risk and no real meaning. If there is nothing that we can do that results in such a dire possibility, then nothing we do is really of much importance. On the hypothesis that there is no ultimate sanction, to do evil and to do well have the same effects and the same meaning. I have always, thanks to John Adams, Plato, and Dante, looked upon the doctrine of Hell as the guarantee of the importance of each of our actions. 12" James V. Schall, On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs, pp. 78-79 (Emphasis added)
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"Dennis McGuire, who admitted to raping and killing a pregnant woman named Joy Stewart in 1989, was put to death in an Ohio prison Thursday morning. He was the first U.S. inmate to be executed using a new combination of drugs, midazolam and hydromorphone, which his attorneys had called an untested and inhumane method of capital punishment.

Strapped to a gurney in the execution chamber, McGuire thanked Stewart’s family for their “kind words” in a letter he apparently received from them.

“I’m going to heaven, I’ll see you there when you come,” he said through a microphone held by the warden. (Emphasis added)

McGuire acknowledged his guilt in a letter to Gov. John Kasich last month. Stewart was newly married and eight months pregnant when she was killed."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html

Do you believe in the existence of a Hell, of an ultimate Last Judgement ?

Do you believe that a doctrine of Hell is necessary to a belief in a doctrine of ultimate Justice?

If one does not believe in a Hell, a Last Judgment, and an ultimate Justice, was McGuire's rape and murder of Stewart just a "brute fact", just an event without any meaning?

Any other comments are welcome.
_______________
"This relates to the easily misunderstood notion of what Anscombe calls brute facts. In her essay “On Brute Facts” she writes: “In relation to many descriptions of events or states of affairs which are asserted to hold, we can ask what the ‘brute facts’ were; and this will mean the facts which held, and in virtue of which, in a proper context, such-and-such a description is true or false, and which are more ‘brute’ than the alleged facts answering to that description” (Anscombe 1981a, p. 24). http://www.iep.utm.edu/anscombe/
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http://www.amazon.com/Unseriousness-Hum ... s+v+schall

[Skip]

How many events are witnessed and documented, compared to how many that no human being - or none who can record what they experience and/or witness - has seen?

Do events have intrinsic meaning, or are they assigned meaning by human experiencers/witnesses/recorders/interpreters ? Does what happened to an elephant in Kenya, 1109/18/3/1582 have meaning? If so, to whom? And if/when meaning is either found in or attributed to an event, is it the same meaning to all who experience/witness/record/interpret that event?

Never mind. I we don't catch an punish the perp - indeed, if we don't even try because he was well-connected, or bribed us, or the victim was on our 'naughty' list - it's okay, because God will pick up the slack. We would have maybe put him in jail for 10 years, or electrocuted him for 30 seconds, but God will burn and prod and humiliate him for eternity. So that's okay, right?

.... right?....

[bobevenson]

The concept of hell is allegorical (see the book of Revelation).

[tbieter]

How many events are witnessed and documented, compared to how many that no human being - or none who can record what they experience and/or witness - has seen?
It is a number that no human being can know. You state an impossibility.

Do events have intrinsic meaning, or are they assigned meaning by human experiencers/witnesses/recorders/interpreters ?
Both
Does what happened to an elephant in Kenya, 1109/18/3/1582 have meaning? If so, to whom? And if/when meaning is either found in or attributed to an event, is it the same meaning to all who experience/witness/record/interpret that event?

Never mind. I we don't catch an punish the perp - indeed, if we don't even try because he was well-connected, or bribed us, or the victim was on our 'naughty' list - it's okay, because God will pick up the slack. We would have maybe put him in jail for 10 years, or electrocuted him for 30 seconds, but God will burn and prod and humiliate him for eternity. So that's okay, right?

.... right?....

So you don't believe in a Hell or an ultimate Justice? Why not just say so directly?

[Kuznetzova]

tbieter does not genuinely want to discuss a Doctrine of Ultimate Justice in any philosophical context, instead he wants to demagogue the audience here and confuse the word "Justice" with "revenge".

I definitely would not confuse the phrase Doctrine of Ultimate Justice with some emotion I might feel that can be described as a desire for revenge.

At base of this situation that we value pregnant married women, as human beings. We see them as sacred and deserved of our protection and nurturing. Our sense of revenge mostly derives from our "manly duty" to protect vulnerable women. When we fail to rise to this challenge, we feel we need to correct our error post-hoc by really taking out our masculine hominid rage on the perpetrator -- as if the level of rage we experience will somehow overcome our earlier failure to protect the vulnerable! Haha!


Anyways --- there have been situations where a pregnant woman is raped and murdered, but where our cultural and political ideologies gloss over the crime.

Have you forgotten the My Lai Massacre? I haven't.
American soldiers slaughtered civilians. Men, women, children.

Code: Select all

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre

Now, here is answer to all the questions the OP has listed. The murder of Joy Stewart must be of equal wrong as the murder of Vietnamese villagers. While you may not subjectively feel this "in your gut" -- you may nuance your position, add in extra extraneous dimensions because your political and national barriers must be maintained, psychologically for you to make sense of the world around you. The american soldiers who perpetrated these crimes get their wrists slapped, do they not? However, a Doctrine of Ultimate Justice would demand equivalence between these crimes.

Joy Stewart rape and murder is an equal wrong as the murder of a single woman in My Lai.

This is what a Doctrine of Ultimate Justice sounds like.

tbieter I don't think you, (with your Bible-thumping discussions of "Hell" and "Punishment") are ready to seriously discuss justice. You have not transcended a juvenile expression of rage and revenge. And don't take that as a personal insult. Probably 80% or more of Americans aren't ready either.

[QMan]

This is like ground hog day. The topic keeps coming up again and again. Just do a generic search for "hell".

Therefore, here it is again, some information concerning this topic:

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This is a description of hell copied from the Medjugorje web site. Sounds perfectly logical to me. When you get to the other side, you are who you are, based on your life. God illuminates you and you choose where you belong. If you deserve hell you know it and will choose to go there. God does not condemn you, but you choose your own condemnation based on the facts.

Please note that there are also descriptions of purgatory and heaven.

The following is what Marija has shared about hell:


Question: Marija, have you ever seen hell?

Marija: Yes, its a large space with a big sea of fire in the middle. There are many people there. I particularly noticed a beautiful young girl. But when she came near the fire, she was no longer beautiful. She came out of the fire like an animal; she was no longer human. The Blessed Mother told me that God gives us all choices. Everyone responds to these choices. Everyone can choose if he wants to go to hell or not. Anyone who goes to hell chooses hell.

Question: Marija, how and why does a soul choose hell for himself for all eternity?

Marija: In the moment of death, God gives us the light to see ourselves as we really are. God gives freedom of choice to everybody during his life on earth. The one who lives in sin on earth can see what he has done and recognize himself as he really is. When he sees himself and his life, the only possible place for him is hell. He chooses hell, because that is what he is. That is where he fits. It is his own wish. God does not make the choice. God condemns no one. We condemn ourselves. Every individual has free choice. God gave us freedom.


Meant to post this link to a complete description of heaven, purgatory, and hell.
(Note, this is up-to-date Medjugorje link.)

http://www.medjugorje.com/medjugorje/he ... -hell.html

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Copied above material from PN forum "Catholicism and Hell" thread below:
(Note, this has old non-working Medjugorje link in it.)

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=10834&p=146318#p146318

[Kuznetzova]

bluh

[QMan]

QMan,

Right. Just ignore the entire THREAD and all the material in this THREAD.
IN CASE YOU FORGOT, this is the Political Philosophy section of a philosophy website.
This is not a bible study on the theological mythemes of Hell in the Christian Religion.
The original poster was talking about justice.
The original poster mentioned "Ultimate Justice" six or seven times in his leading post, but you will ignore all that, right?
Just hijack this thread with links because you saw the trip-word "Hell" listed in one of them.
And now you inundate us with Catholic materials about "Hell".

Completely disagree with you. It is highly relevant that this topic has been dealt with in the PN fora.

[Arising_uk]

...

Do you believe in the existence of a Hell, of an ultimate Last Judgement ?

No.

Do you believe that a doctrine of Hell is necessary to a belief in a doctrine of ultimate Justice?

Obviously for the theist but its not necessary to the concept of "justice".

one does not believe in a Hell, a Last Judgment, and an ultimate Justice, was McGuire's rape and murder of Stewart just a "brute fact", just an event without any meaning?

Depends what you mean by "meaning"? Are you saying that the meaning of this brutal fact is to justify the existence of a 'Hell' and the need for a 'Last Judgement'?

[Kuznetzova]

arising_uk, You are being coy here. You are acting like there is no blatant emotional message nor a journalistic tone to tbieter's post. There is both.

"Hell" is a place where tbieter gets to exact his emotional revenge on people that make him personally enraged. So the basic formula is Justice=Emotional Revenge. It is just that silly (in this context). Let's call it for what it is.

[Arising_uk]

Personally I don't think Tom's post has come down on either side. He's just positing thoughts about the positions, as if you'd notice the criminal thought he was going to 'heaven'.

[SpheresOfBalance]

Do you believe in the existence of a Hell, of an ultimate Last Judgement ?
No, not at all, as no human has totally free will! That one lives in a society, lends to ones will, mixed with potential physical/mental handicap, such that any creator of the universe would know all this, and much, much more, then how to be held accountable, by such an all knowing creator to such an unimaginable extent? There is nothing but an endless amount of extenuating circumstance, beyond most humans control, lest they have PhD's in psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, etc. and even still!

Do you believe that a doctrine of Hell is necessary to a belief in a doctrine of ultimate Justice?
For many, of course! While some see no need for, so called, justice, and still others see other factors such as karma and death as, so called, justice enough!

If one does not believe in a Hell, a Last Judgment, and an ultimate Justice, was McGuire's rape and murder of Stewart just a "brute fact", just an event without any meaning?
In terms of the universe, quite possibly no meaning whatsoever, in terms of humanity, with all their plethora of emotion (fear), of course, there will always be meaning! Who wants to die? Let alone at the hands of a cowardly, more powerful/stealthy, madman? Fear, the sickness, and the savior, all at the same time! Knowing "all," I'm sure, the only cure, millennia away, on one, of many, possible horizons!

Any other comments are welcome.
There is no such thing as justice, only a bunch of cowardly man animals, feebly trying to make sense of it "all!" The entirety of "all" humanity, "all" inclusive!!!!

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"This relates to the easily misunderstood notion of what Anscombe calls brute facts. In her essay “On Brute Facts” she writes: “In relation to many descriptions of events or states of affairs which are asserted to hold, we can ask what the ‘brute facts’ were; and this will mean the facts which held, and in virtue of which, in a proper context, such-and-such a description is true or false, and which are more ‘brute’ than the alleged facts answering to that description” (Anscombe 1981a, p. 24). http://www.iep.utm.edu/anscombe/
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http://www.amazon.com/Unseriousness-Hum ... s+v+schall

SOB in Blue!

[Blaggard]

There's no justification in an omnibenevolent God consigning his sons and people, which, by his own author he loves absolutely and unendingly: for being born in the wrong place on Earth, or just for being utterly neglected as a child and turning to sin, consign to eternal damnation and punishment one child of this world and I am better than God; even the most evil man on Earth deserves a chance, there is simply no reason for an all loving God to consign anyone to that sort of eternity even if they did say that Halibut was good enough for Jehova. So the only hell that would make sense is the Jewish one, the hell of not being near God, but in the grave, dead. That said though Christians are pretty dumb that they would make up such a theologically inconsistent nonsense, but it wouldn't be the first time or the second or the 1000th. Papal bull in more ways than one knows, and then Protestant bull too.

More on topic: religion has no place in politics, politics is shit enough as it is without bringing that apologist shit storm into the equation. If man had half an idea how to follow his religion then maybe just maybe it would be a political matter but seperation of Church and state is so vital that after millions died because it was not and was used as another excuse to justify murder, you too should stand up and say if one word of any religious dogma is uttered in your house or congress, then shout and mock that man down as they do in the houses of parliament. We have our privy councillors, heaven forbid they bring one word of God into the chambers, last time that happened Tony Blair faced such derision he could not be heard and was asked to sit down by the speaker or leave the chamber. God has no place in politics, he never will.

"Render unto Caesar that which is Caesers and to God that which is Gods"

Jesus on the law.

[Blaggard]

The concept of hell is allegorical (see the book of Revelation).

the whole of revelation is allegorical and most likely referred to the days in which it was written and days soon to come, and about Rome, rather than a second coming in a future so far beyond the writers scope as to make his words ludicrous if contextualised as such. Nero was born on the exact day that was said in revelations and reserved for the beast according to Kabbalah. The Jews for the most part had fled Israel or were exiled, they were only prophesying a return to that state, and using the same allegory they had done for centuries becuase under persecution one must have the faithful understand but not be subject to the unfaithfulls wrath. the Temple would be rebuilt soon after, in classical times, The whore of Babylon (clearly a reference to Rome) riding a 7 headed dragon or Rome on the 7 hills of Paletine was struck down as predicted and ultimately the faith won: Rome became Catholic. For example the beast was struck in the head and almost died in revelation, Nero was likewise struck as was known to St John the Divine, the list of analogies are endless... If you have a logical bone in your body revelations is only a prediction of what was soon to come, the fact it has been taken beyond that is a misunderstanding of Jewish allegorical writings at the time.

Preterism is more viable I think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preterism

[Skip]

So you don't believe in a Hell or an ultimate Justice? Why not just say so directly?

I don't believe in ultimate anything, including justice, but I think we could try a little harder to approximate some consistent application of it.
The hell idea is just silly.