SeN: "Hope for immortality" is a Useful Salve for Childhood "rape and strangulation."

[Doctor Scratch]

Just when you think you've seen it all, the Mopologists deliver in shocking fashion. In the most recent post on SeN--possibly a side-effect of too much arguing over whether or not atheism is more "evil" that theism--Dr. Peterson offers up this off-the-charts-deranged opening paragraph:

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.

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?

In any event, DCP's whackadoodle post goes on (and on and on and on):

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.

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.

And then, wouldn't you know? The whole thing turns into yet another plug for the validity of NDEs:

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.

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.

[Gadianton]

Yeah, it's really tone deaf to reminisce on all the horrors the innocent have suffered while stirring a Dr. Pepper, and then casually advance your own easy solution.

DCP's moral theory is deeply schizophrenic. Here, he alleges common ground he has with atheists. But this shouldn't be allowed thanks to the gazillion words he's invested in telling atheists that they have no grounds for evaluating good and evil. According to DCP, everything is blind matter in motion with no meaning, for atheists. Since "justice" isn't possible in his account of atheism because "justice" is just a string of letters that light up on a screen, then under his account of atheism, there is no problem to solve. So why create one?

If God is required to imbue the word "justice" with meaning and to make what we do amount to more than moving particles of matter around, then God has arbitrarily stacked the deck for however it is that the world's moral components end up. DCP surely believes in free agency, so I'm not saying that God made Hitler bad. Hitler chose to do the things that he did. However, God is the one who set the bar. Had not God set the bar at all, then (per DCP on other days of the week) all Hitler did was move clumps of particles around in a slightly different fashion than most other people do. Without God, there would be no such thing as murder. But even with God, Hitler is only a murderer to the extent that God equated "murder" to certain classes of particle moving-about.

So it's an entirely manufactured problem for the God of DCP to have this horrible bag of injustices wrought by Hitler. And it just so happens, that God also created mankind with whimsical urges, including a hunger for clumps of particles to be in certain configurations that line up with God's definitions of justice. Normally, on other days of the week, DCP tells everyone that tastes and preferences of people are meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Our tastes for something do not make it right or wrong. But as a compliment to God's pal, DCP, for the sake of DCP's moral theory, we are assured that our whimsical desires just happen to be calibrated to line up with the externally created decrees of God that constitute justice. Thanks God! You're a real pal!

Or are you?

Because now we have externally created decrees for certain matter states that constitute "justice" and we have human passions that hunger for these states to appear, but we have a world where these states rarely do appear. It doesn't really matter why that's the case. We can say it's due to "agency" or whatever, but we can blame God, ultimately, since he is the one who decreed the meaning of the matter states to be what they are, such that there is a deficit of justice. But hold up, because a self-righteous DCP blames everyone else for a problem entirely manufactured by his incompetent God. According to DCP, we have to hope that there is a God and an afterlife, because God made sure to hold out on us unless he's in the picture being hoped for.

It's really similar to the Book of Mormon teaching that the air we breathe is a loan from God. We didn't ask to be created, but here goes DCP's god, creating us as creatures who will die horribly and painfully without air, and then "loaning" us the air and expecting gratitude. DCPs idea of justice is just more of the same god as "crime boss" mentality.

[Moksha]

Revenge is a powerful motivator. With proper theology, revenge is a dish that can be served cold. Isn't that right, Mr. Anubis? (Besides his own case, Mr. Anubis has multiple boxes filled with Midgley dossiers to pursue, especially those laden with downvotes). Judges and executioners Porter Rockwell, Cain, and Bruce R. McConkie presiding.

[Don Bradley]

I can certainly sympathize with an atheistic perspective on questions like this, and even specifically on Dan Peterson's arguments. In fact, I approached these very arguments quite skeptically when I first heard them from Dan about 15 years ago, as an ex-Mormon atheist.

Around that time, I was on a research trip to the BYU library and ran into Dan there. Despite having know each other while I was a student and having gotten along fine then (albeit in person and at a time before I'd lost my faith), he and I had been going head to head on ZLMB and the FAIR boards for a couple years at this point. I had made it a sort of personal mission to refute what was put forward by his Freethinker alter ego (who I at first did not realize was him) and then later by Dan posting under his own name. We were coming from opposite angles on most everything.

In spite of that tumultuous history, we had a long, interesting, and pleasant conversation that day in the periodicals section of the Lee Library. Somehow the topic turned to beliefs about God and about life after death. In good measure we discussed pretty much exactly what's in this Sic et Non post. I offered the problem of evil and suffering as the primary reason for my disbelief in God, giving the example of the Holocaust. Dan commented along the lines that if death is the end, then Hitler wins - he truly succeeded in exterminating much of the Jewish people: they are forever gone. I couldn't argue with that, but at the time I didn't understand the argument he was building on it. Whether or not Hitler won was, so far as I could see, irrelevant to whether people really continue beyond their deaths.

Dan's presentation of his reasoning in writing now actually clarifies his reasoning a good deal, indicating that he's not arguing that victims of violence must survive their deaths because otherwise the perpetrators win, but rather that our sense of justice gives us reason to hope that such victims survive their deaths. I think this point is difficult to disagree with, and that is the case regardless of whether one thinks of it in terms of the need for punishment or repentance on the part of the perpetrators. Forget accountability for the perpetrators for now and just think of fairness for the victims. If a child murderer and all his victims both suffer the same fate (extinction at death), then they are actually dealt with quite unequally and unjustly by life: the murderer got to live life into adulthood while the children had their lives brutally, and permanently, cut short. Our sense of justice should, and does, recoil at murderers having such absolute and final power over their victims. Justice demands not only some accountability for the perpetrator but also some setting right of things for the victims.

Back to my conversation with Dan, I had expressed that I did see death as the end, since I saw consciousness as entirely dependent on brain function--hence, when the brain stops functioning, consciousness would cease. Dan brought up near-death experiences. I had studied those years earlier and had once put stock in them, but explained that I now saw them as events in the brain. Dan described specific near-death experiences with which I was unfamiliar but in which the experiencer appeared to have veridically observed surrounding events while brain activity was entirely flat. I was skeptical about these, but open, and later read more about one of these cases.

As I described my belief that death was the end, I told Dan that I wished it weren't so--that I would love to see lost loved ones again. Without missing a beat, he told me confidently, and with reassurance, "You will." I remember feeling surprised at his degree of confidence in this, and wishing I could at all share it.

I didn't leave this conversation believing in God or an afterlife. But the experience was positive enough that it became a turning point in the dynamic of our online interactions--we tangled far less after this.

While it had seemed to me from Dan's writing that he cast atheists in a needlessly negative light, when it came to how he treated this particular atheist in real life, I found him reasonable, generous, and kind.

I've since, as you know, changed my views on God, but if I stopped believing in a God and an afterlife again, I would still hope for some kind of ultimate justice. How can we not?

Don

[Moksha]

I've since, as you know, changed my views on God, but if I stopped believing in a God and an afterlife again, I would still hope for some kind of ultimate justice. How can we not?

Don

Pretty sure justice from true believers can take on different hues. For instance, justice from St. Julian the Hospitaller would undoubtedly look different than justice from the Reverend Cotton Mather.

[dastardly stem]

I don't understand Dan's position on the grounds that each life he summarily condemns was scripted before they were born. Could the play that is this life have unrolled if there was no knowledge of what would happen before God breathed life into a person? How should anyone be held accountable for a life they didn't choose? Or would he suggest GOd allowed each person to choose their life and their circumstance? That can't be since it is said God knows us so well he places obstacles and puts us through ringers for our own benefit. If we agreed to all of it before the world was, then it was only so because God chose every circumstance and every eventful occurrence for each of us.

Apparently while spirit intelligence Hitler and Hussein joined the chanting crowds amongst the noble and great ones, they had a spark of devilish intent. God allowed them to march with the throngs because he needed some evil ones else no one would be able to embrace the good, or some such thing. He needed psychopaths and narcissists so he could find reason to really stick it to any non-psychos who get confused, lose their way and indelibly get caught up in Lucifer's chains. But the drama wouldn't unfold if the Hitlers and Husseins weren't broken psychologically, or if their biological make-up wasn't destined. It wouldn't unfold if their arbitrary seeming circumstance wasn't plucked perfectly to enhance their evils. What was HItler if he lived on a remote sparely inhabited island pre-Jesus? Nah...I mean everything that was Hitler made him. He wasn't just some innocent pure soul ready to be filled with good, peace and joy. The ugly intents were with him before the world was, apparently. On the plan of God Hitler and Hussein had no choice at all. They were simply used creatures for God's purposes, doing exactly what He needed them to do.

It's no wonder that so many God enthusiasts have on the basis of their presumed moral high ground gone on to murder and maim by the millions. To God it's a rolling play that requires such things, and so, apparently, He even ordered such evils.

Why feel the need to condemn any one person when it was God who declared He needed the evils that Dan exploits? Hitler and Hussein did what God needed them to do, they did what God either commanded, or tricked Lucifer to command.

[huckelberry]

He needed psychopaths and narcissists so he could find reason to really stick it to any non-psychos who get confused, lose their way and indelibly get caught up in Lucifer's chains. .......

Dastardly stem,
This sounds so silly that a person might consider whether the theoretical theology it is based on has some shortcomings.

[Dr Moore]

Even assuming, hypothetically, there is in fact no God, it's ridiculous to assert that evil people somehow "win" the final victory at anything.

Humanity -- including all of its atheists -- has managed to improve upon itself through social healing and evolution since the dawn of recorded history.

To be born today as human number N+1 means increasingly high odds of inheriting the sum benefits of all of humanity's collective learning -- the good, bad and ugly. On balance metrics such as health, lifespan, access to basic needs, educational and socialization opportunities are all becoming more robust and healthy over time. For a species with so much chaos and variability on whatever "good vs evil" spectrum can be objectively defined, I think humans are doing pretty well.

It's all a matter of framing, is it not? Sure, if you insist on solving for the egocentricity of any individual person, then bad outcomes are horrific (and hence the appeal of an all-knowing, personal God). But solve for the perpetuation and durability of the species, and the picture is rather encouraging in the scheme of things.

[Philo Sofee]

Even assuming, hypothetically, there is in fact no God, it's ridiculous to assert that evil people somehow "win" the final victory at anything.

Humanity -- including all of its atheists -- has managed to improve upon itself through social healing and evolution since the dawn of recorded history.

To be born today as human number N+1 means increasingly high odds of inheriting the sum benefits of all of humanity's collective learning -- the good, bad and ugly. On balance metrics such as health, lifespan, access to basic needs, educational and socialization opportunities are all becoming more robust and healthy over time. For a species with so much chaos and variability on whatever "good vs evil" spectrum can be objectively defined, I think humans are doing pretty well.

It's all a matter of framing, is it not? Sure, if you insist on solving for the egocentricity of any individual person, then bad outcomes are horrific (and hence the appeal of an all-knowing, personal God). But solve for the perpetuation and durability of the species, and the picture is rather encouraging in the scheme of things.

Well said! This is Alan Watts stance of understanding. There is ALWAYS competition, fighting, and death, but the overall health of a system depends on this. It can't be eradicated. And our health as a species is going strong.

[Moksha]

LaneWolfley • 11 hours ago
Thank you for these interesting observations. Mormonism is a distinct variation of the Universalist tradition, I think. Think about it: even Hitler eventually gets a crown of glory, resurrection and immortality in a Kingdom of unimaginable splendor!

Louis Midgley LaneWolfley • 6 hours ago • edited
Yes, the gospel of Jesus Christ is good news even for the likes of Hitler. One can even hope that he has had a profound change and turned around, since that is still possible.