Re: Hell; Just or Unjust & Excessively Cruel Punishment? (Esp for Rayback)
Reply #69 - May 13, 2009, 11:24 AM
Eternal hellfire is, by definition, an excessive punishment. Whether excessive punishment is cruel or not, I guess you can discuss, but I guessing the majority of people in the world would say that excessive punishment is cruel because it is excessive. In which case, Muslims as well as many other religious believers have to do a lot of re-thinking.
This is why I think eternal hell is excessive by definition.
All bad deeds in the world are finite. This means, they have become commited. In other words, there is a point at which a bad deed ends and another bad deed begins. There is no bad deed in the world that goes on forever, simply because eventually we die. Note that this means there is no limit to a person's evil, as a person could become more and more evil, and since there isn't a maximum conceivable age life of a human being, the amount of possible evil that could be committed has no limit. This is useful in a discussion on theodicy (the nature of evil) against those who claim that evil simply the absense of good, but right now I want to focus on the fact that the sum evil that can be commited by a human being will be finite. Potentially, a human can go on committing more and more evil, but in reality, at death, the amount of evil could be counted up into a round figure. To say "this human being committed an amount of evil of which there isn't a number, so his evil amounted to an actual infinite," would always be incorrect in all real scenarios.
Now we must ask what the purpose of punishment is. The most common definitions are as follows:
1) To reform the criminal
2) To protect society
3) Revenge
If we are trying to reform the criminal, then pain isn't a necessary factor in punishment. Rehabilitation is favourable instead. As soon as we believe the criminal is reformed, then he should be released. It may well be the case that a criminal will never be reformed. However, the attitude that should be taken is that this criminal may at some point in the future reform themselves and thus we should leave it open as an option and keep trying and putting our hope in the criminal. We should not adopt an attitude that says, this person shall suffer endlessly, as this reveals a hidden agenda different from trying to reform the criminal. Either way, most human beings probably would become reformed at some point, even moreso if humans could live forever. The purpose of punishment when it comes to Eternal Hell, therefore, cannot be to reform the criminal.
If we are trying to protect society from the criminal, it is necessary that pain is not and cannot be a factor. This is because a criminal does not need to be suffering pain in order to protect society, the criminal simply needs to be contained and separated from society. The purpose of punishment when it comes to Eternal Hell, therefore, cannot be to protect those in heaven. God wouldn't even need to put such criminals behind bars, he could just let them roam in heaven and it would be within his power to create a natural law that meant criminals cannot harm other people. Indeed, God could have created that natural law on earth, and is a common criticism of God being all-good. This is a separate point, however, saved for a discussion in theodicy.
What is revenge? It is to inflict punishment against the criminal out of spite. An eye for an eye ethic is typical of a revenge definition of punishment. It achieves nothing but the satisfaction of spite. Spite if anything has been seen as a vice in itself, rather than a virtue, for as long as ethical discussions have taken place. If the satisfaction of spite is not limited in anyway, then there is no concept of forgiveness, which is often considered as a virtue, especially by the major religions. This is because, in a situation where the purpose of punishment is revenge which is not limited, then the smallest crimes can be punished infinitely. This means that even years down the line after a crime has been forgotten about, somebody, if they wanted to, could bring it back to the criminals attention and you can do what you like against that criminal, because the revenge is not limited. This seems very cruel indeed, and it seems this is the type of punishment that people who go to hell will suffer; endless revenge for what they did, no matter how small. Somebody who inflicts this kind of punishment could not be a moral creature. What is then to be said of the God of the Abrahamic faiths who are supposed to be all-good?
The unlived life is not worth examining.
Topic: Hell; Just or Unjust & Excessively Cruel Punishment? (Esp for Rayback)