Huh? There are times when even I--the B.H. Roberts Chair of Mopologetics Studies--am left speechless by the Mopologists' antics. Seriously, what the hell? This--*this* is the defense of a belief in the afterlife? Pretty much all of the wires are crossed here: a supernatural afterlife is desirable because "revenge" or "justice" is possible in some way? This makes absolutely no sense, especially in the context of LDS theology. Unless you want to label Hitler, Stalin, etc. as "Sons of Perdition," then they still get to achieve a degree of "Eternal Glory," per LDS doctrine. And isn't one of the main annoyances of the Mopologists the fact that a baptism for the dead was done for Hitler, Stalin, and other villainous people?Sic et Non wrote:One reason for hoping that there is a life after death, a world to come, is the deep human desire for justice. This can be regarded from two different angles. One is the wish to make things right. We’re naturally revolted by the thought that the murderer is permitted to write the last chapter in the life of his victim, that, for example — to be quite blunt about it — the last few minutes of a child might be focused on the horrifying, hopeless, painful, and, in a sense, utterly solitary experience of rape and strangulation. We want the story to end happily. We don’t want Stalin and the Gulag, the Cambodian “killing fields,” or Hitler’s death camps to have the last word. This scarcely proves that the human soul is immortal, but it does demonstrate, I think, that a hope for immortality can be motivated by factors other than the mere personal fear of death.
In any event, DCP's whackadoodle post goes on (and on and on and on):
Okay: so he's setting up an argument of sorts. It's a classically Mopologetic argument (i.e., "Under what circumstances is revenge justified?"), but still. Let's keep reading:DCP wrote:I want to concentrate here, though, on the desire for cosmic justice. This shouldn’t be confused with a lust for vengeance or retribution. It may overlap with that, but it’s quite distinct. (More on that later.)
There are, simply, or so it seems to me, certain humanly-committed evils that are so egregious, so awful in their scope, that no earthly punishment really suffices to satisfy our sense of justice. Consider serial killers, for example. Many of them have killed dozens, even scores, of victims. One is believed to have murdered as many as 250 people. Several others are in that vicinity. No number of years in prison, no single death (whether by painless lethal injection or hydrogen cyanide in a gas chamber or by firing squad or hanging) seems really commensurate with what such criminals have done. Even those who approve of capital punishment, hearing of their deaths, must inevitably shrug their shoulders, unsatisfied. Something seems lacking. Justice has perhaps been done. But, in another sense, justice has not been done, and cannot have been done. Not fully.
Wait a second... Did Saddam Hussein really do that with the wood chippers? Or is DCP conflating this with Fargo? Who knows? The post continues:SeN wrote:When Hermann Göring took cyanide at Nuremberg shortly before he was to be hanged for his crimes, many (probably including himself) felt that he had cheated justice. Hitler’s suicide in that Berlin bunker was, many thought, too quick and easy. Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro died in their beds, essentially of old age. Saddam Hussein’s execution seemed inadequate recompense for his gassing of Kurdish villages, putting political enemies into wood chippers, and myriads of other such crimes.
LOL!!! "I don't think that mine does." Sure. But it *might*. I mean, how much does he want Gerald Bradford or Loftes Tryk or Ed Decker to suffer? It is extraordinarily weird to watch a Mopologist squirm like this, in such a public venue, about his personal desire to see his enemies suffer. Sure: it's being framed in a more general, theoretical way, but there can be no doubt that these flights of fancy apply equally well to his personal enemies.DCP wrote:Now, I don’t know that Professor Berger would have agreed with me in what I’m about to say, but here it goes anyway:
I’m not sure that our souls demand unending torture in Hell for egregious wrong doers before they’ll be satisfied. I don’t think that mine does. What we demand at a minimum, though, or so it seems to me, is a genuine and genuinely sorrowful acknowledgment by the wrongdoer of the pain and injury that he or she has caused. Not simply a painless slipping away without having ever come to terms with it.
And then, wouldn't you know? The whole thing turns into yet another plug for the validity of NDEs:
Well, hey: some people are seemingly incapable of even saying "I'm sorry": such as the Mopologists. Has Midgley apologized to Gina Colvin, or to Sandra Tanner, or to Grant Palmer? Did DCP apologize to Gerald Bradford (or his family) or to John Dehlin, or Grant Palmer, or Blair Hodges, or to Chino Blanco? If we are to view this post as sincere, then the Mopologists had better be thinking long and hard about what their own "life reviews" will look like.I take comfort in reports from near-death experiencers of the “life review” that they undergo, during which they witness a three-dimensional “playback” of the actions of their lives in the presence of a loving guide who seeks to encourage their learning from it. They recount that they could feel the pain that they had caused others. (Imagine how horrible such a “life review” would be for a Hitler or a Genghis Khan or an Attila the Hun! You want them to experience Hell? That would be Hell.) But that the purpose of the exercise was to help them to understand and to grow. I like to think that even the worst might someday have a shot — perhaps, it’s true, after untold eons — of finding wholeness and forgiveness and of moving forward. But there is no “cheap grace,” to borrow Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s phrase. It’s not a matter of simply mouthing the words “I’m sorry.” True penitence is required. And that, I think, is what we both hope for ourselves and wish from others.
