Still in Hell

OK, then, what about Hitler?

That's usually one of the first questions asked when one expresses a disbelief in the notion of Hell as a literal place of eternal, fiery torment. ("Literal" here referring to a literal interpretation of Dante's Inferno and more than a century of Hollywood movies and tent-meeting sermons.) I've even been asked that question after quoting Julian of Norwich:

"All will be well and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well."

"Yeah, well what about Hitler?"

And it's actually a good question. There are plenty of unseemly or even reprehensible reasons why someone might choose to believe in an eternal Hell, and we needn't spend much time on those. But there are also some better, more reasonable and nobler reasons. Such as the Hitler question.

That question is a way of stumbling toward the matter of ultimate justice. Hell, or something like Hell, seems necessary in a sense to satisfy our need to believe in ultimate justice. This is an actual thing, a real, measurable phenomenon that exists. Not the reality of ultimate justice itself, of course -- that may be true but can't be measured or proved -- but the reality of our desire for it.

That desire is a strange thing. We humans -- many, maybe even most of us -- seem to share two conclusions about the world in which we live: 1) It's not fair; and 2) It ought to be fair. There's a universe of evidence for the first conclusion there, which only makes the second notion that much stranger.

The belief that what is is not the same as what ought to be is a curious thing. It's not as though we had some counter-example to our own existence with which to compare this reality, so we could say, "Look over there at that world, where life is fair. I prefer that to this." Yet somehow we seem to feel that this hypothetical reality of a just world is more valid, more real, than the actual reality of the actual world and its relentless stream of reminders that justice is exceptional, rare and contrary to what actually is.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis pounces on this odd notion. If life is unfair, he argues, then where on earth did we get the idea of the categories of fair and unfair? Nowhere on earth, it would seem. He works at this until he's convinced it's a kind of proof of something transcendent. I think that overstates the case. Lewis' argument doesn't offer proof, or even evidence, but it may provide a kind of ... inkling (sorry).

Lewis is right, though, that this idea of some kind of ultimate justice is the stuff of religion. All religion.*

Consider again that parable Jesus told about the beggar Lazarus and the callous rich man. That parable describes a common phenomenon, almost a microcosm of this unfair, unjust world. The actual, real world we live in is filled with precisely this sort of situation. Lazarus' life was an unending stream of misery -- cold, hunger, physical pain, neglect and loneliness. The self-centered rich man, on the other hand, had the best food, the best house, the finest clothes and all the friends money could buy. And he didn't give a rip about Lazarus.

That doesn't seem fair. It isn't fair. We want to see such unfairness corrected. The world seems wrong and we want to see it made or remade right.

Every religion worth anything addresses this dilemma in two ways. First by requiring that its adherents practice both charity and justice here in this life. And second by extending the hope that such unfairness will ultimately be rectified, if not in this world, then in the next.**

The main concern of this eschatological hope for ultimate justice tends to focus on Lazarus and the injustices suffered by those like him. We want to believe that there will be something better for them than the vicious, miserable, unbearable fate they have been dealt here on earth. But we also think of the injustice perpetrated by the rich man in the story. He got away with it in the short term, but ultimately we want to believe that he and people like him will have to account for their self-centered cruelty, otherwise it would seem that existence is ultimately unfair -- that it will never be as just as it ought to be. So we want to see ultimate justice for both Lazarus and the rich man.

But note that ultimate justice is not the same thing as perfect or absolute justice. Thoughts of absolute justice tend to lead to the realization that, uh-oh, I'm probably not Lazarus in that story. I'm probably, at least sometimes, the other guy.

"Life is never fair," Oscar Wilde noted in An Ideal Husband, "And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not." That's an echo of an earlier playwright: "God's bodkin man, much better, use every man after his desert and who shall scape whipping?"

We hope for more justice than this world affords, but at the same time we hope for mercy to triumph over justice. Lazarus deserved better, but we don't necessarily want to "use every man after his desert."

So not perfect, absolute justice, then, but ultimate justice tempered by mercy.

Surely, though, there must be limits to this mercy. It's one thing for your or me or the rich man to be cut a bit of slack for our myopic self-absorption, but what about those driven by cruelty and evil to create Hell on earth? What about the mass-murderers and torturers, tyrants and oppressors?

Or, in other words, what about Hitler?

Whatever miserable end befalls a Hitler or an Amin or Stalin or Saddam Hussein in this world it still seems, somehow, inadequate. Those responsible for the suffering and death of millions can only suffer and die once themselves, and this seems disproportionate. It seems unfair. It is unfair.

For that unfairness, that injustice, to be addressed or redressed, it seems there needs to be some further accounting for such evils. Hell, or something like it, seems necessary then for the Hitlers of this world.

It's quite a leap, though -- and a baseless, insupportable one -- to jump from believing that ultimate justice requires some kind of accounting for evil to deciding that the precise form of that accounting must conform to the details of the fiery, eternal torment imagined by Dante and Hieronymus Bosch and Jack Chick and a thousand other (extracanonical) sources.

It's probably helpful, then, to distinguish two separate questions implicit in the cries of "What about Hitler?"

The first question is something like, "Do you believe that there will be some kind of ultimate accountability for evil?"

My answer to that question is yes. I believe there will be. I can't prove this, mind you, but I believe it. And this assertion -- that the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice -- can be defended and supported by that Bible we evangelical Christian types put so much emphasis on. The same defense and support cannot be found for the sordidly detailed idea of a sulfurous netherworld to which all non-RTCs will be consigned for eternity.***

The second question is trickier, something more like, "What, exactly, happens to someone like Hitler after he dies?"

That is, to borrow the president's rough paraphrase of the Book of Job, a question above my pay grade. To ask that question is to ask, in the words of the play cited above, about the "undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveller returns." In other words, I don't know. And anybody who says he does know shouldn't be trusted.

In that same story about Lazarus and the rich man, Abraham appears to say that we don't need some traveller to return from that undiscovered country -- that Moses and the Prophets tell us all we need to know. Moses and the prophets have a great deal to say about justice -- both the best approximation of justice we can have in this world and of the promise of a greater, ultimate justice to come -- but if they had anything to say about Hell they kept it to themselves.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* Although not exclusively of religion. When the late Carl Sagan helped to create the National Religious Partnership on the Environment, he said he wanted to work with religious groups because we were the "ought people," whereas he, as a scientist, wasn't concerned with ought, only with is. That struck me as intriguing, but Sagan's own actions belied the distinction. He wasn't enlisting the support of religious groups out of some arbitrary personal preference, but because he thought we humans ought to be taking better care of our environment than we were.

** When religion goes awry or becomes corrupt, it often results from or results in an emphasis on one of those two aspects to the neglect of the other. Corruption A: Emphasize the hope for eschatological justice to the neglect of justice in this world and you end up with the "pie in the sky when you die" opiate used to justify every oppressive caste system from Bombay to Alabama. Corruption B: Emphasize justice in this world to the neglect of the hope for eschatological justice and you begin thinking that you can impose perfect, infallible justice here in the temporal realm -- an idea that quickly gallops off into oppressive theocracy of one form or another.

Our history books and newspapers are so full of examples of both of those errors that it can be tempting to think that maybe religion itself is the problem. If we could just stamp out religion, we could end oppression and establish perfect justice. See again Corruption B above.

*** The eternal aspect of this idea of Hell is also troublesome. Part of the trouble here, as ever when we talk of "eternity," is that we tend to think of it in terms of "forever" or "a very long time" -- roughly the same mistake as thinking of "infinity" as meaning "a really big number." But it's also the case, as many have argued, that it seems unfair and unjust that temporal, finite wrongdoing would be consigned to an eternal, infinite punishment.

Then again, the idea of Heaven as eternal and infinite reward raises a similar question of proportionality, but you don't hear that raised as an objection. Stinginess offends justice; magnanimity does not. I wrote above that there must surely be some limits to mercy, but I'm not really sure that's true. If God is worthy of being called God, then God's mercy must be infinitely greater than my own.

Comments

[karpad]

"Yeah, well what about Hitler?"

What about him?

Suppose we're omnipotent. And we have a magical realm of sorrow-infliction. We can hold him literally accountable and make Hitler suffer every fate he inflicted, from torturous deaths in the camps to soldiers dying on the battlefield to relatives mourning the deaths of their loved ones. We could do this all at once, or stretch them out one at a time, so he only experiences one destroyed life at any given moment, layering them one after the other. In fact, since this is punishment, not trade, we'll make him endure it all twice.

millions and millions of lives of suffering, adding up to probably a billion years of pain, torment, sorrow and regret.

And that STILL isn't "eternal."

and then you add a whole 'nother layer since we're accepting the afterlife as fact. No crime becomes unforgivable, because nothing done while alive measures a substantial portion of your soul's existence. Murdering someone just speeds them on to God. You're denying them a right to live, a right to make choices and exist as they see fit, you're denying their family time with them in the mortal world, but all of that gets better when everyone is dead. Murder becomes an aggravated and painful version of stealing someone's plane ticket so they can't attend a family reunion.

I am aware that this phrasing seems glib, but this is part of the accepted package here. A loving, forgiving god would let everyone off the hook, and it is only by our lack of fundamental understanding of just how blissful unity with the Godhead is that it somehow seems unfair that everyone gets in. The idea of using eternal damnation as punishment seems beyond the scope of sanity, like someone declaring torturous death is a fitting punishment for stealing a candy bar. I can't imagine anything anyone could do that would justify eternity.

[Trevel]

One of the key things I've noticed in reading the Bible re: Hell -- Jesus only really mentions it in parables, and in most cases (the example you've been citing being the exception), it's the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. More specifically, it's Not At The Party. Which I think I like as the "definition" of hell -- the emphasis isn't really on how bad it is outside, but on much better it would be inside, at the party.

Of course from my perspective an eternal party would count as hell, but I'm sure God has something in mind for the introverts. too.

[CombatQueer]

It seems to me that I probably take part in the same basic failings that somebody like Hitler did. I'm occasionally greedy, mean, selfish. I like to imagine the best of myself and the worst of others. Sure, with me it hasn't lead to the deaths of millions, but stretching the two sets of harm over eternity, well, any two numbers, no matter how different that are in size, if you divide them by infinity, they come out to about the same thing.

Of course, you could say that if we're going to talk about stretching the meanings of any action over eternity, the same same thing would happen, so maybe that doesn't work.

I don't really know, but I like the idea of mercy.

[josh]

I know this is the internet and I can do what I want without fear of reprisal, but since you're a writer, Mr. Clark Slacktivist sir, I am wondering if you'll hunt me down and beat me with a soggy bible if I cut and paste this to my facebook, giving all due credit.

[mike.timonin]

"Go out into the highways and byways of America, your new country. Give the people, blanketed with a decaying and crumbling Calvinism, something of your new vision. You may possess only a small light but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men. Give them, not hell, but hope and courage. Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God."

John Murray

[Ka - wren]

CombatQueer, that's exactly what my favorite Sunday School teacher ever said. (I was 30 at the time.) "The only difference between all of us and Hitler is we lack his opportunities." Hitler couldn't have done his damage without millions of other people willing to actually perform evil acts. Heck, he didn't even come up with the idea of the death camps; that was the product of the people who attended the Wansee Conference. Punishing Hitler for eternity kinda lets the others off, doesn't it? Of course, the others wouldn't have committed their crimes without Hitler's inspiration and approval. It was an evil feedback loop.

I do, strongly, believe in some kind of eternal accounting and a kind of atonement for evil acts.

[pharoute]

Here's my Christian koan: if Hitler can't be forgiven what chance do you have?

[Tonio]

That struck me as intriguing, but Sagan's own actions belied the distinction. He wasn't enlisting the support of religious groups out of some arbitrary personal preference, but because he thought we humans ought to be taking better care of our environment than we were.

I disagree with Fred's point here. While I can't speak for Sagan, from his writings I strongly suspect that his point about "what is" was about the natural world and not human existence. His point about "ought" was most likely intended as a human response to the natural world. In any case, "ought" versus "is" seems to be another version of Gould's magisteria division.

[Froborr]

I would rather live in a world in which everyone was rewarded beyond their deserving, even Hitler, than one in which anyone was ever punished unfairly or rewarded less than they deserved.

So thanks, Fred. You've helped me boil down to a single sentence why I don't believe in justice.

[Tonio]

I imagine the next musical thread will be songs with "Hell" in the title. Judas Priest would score twice (three if you count Halford's solo work).

[Hawker Hurricane]

If God is just, then Hitler (Stalin, Pol Pot, etc) will be punished appropriately for thier crimes. Not eternally... but appropriately.

As I told a obnoxious internet Christian
If God is just, I have nothing to fear, even if I don't believe.
If God is unjust, you have nothing to gain, even if you do believe.

[Sylocat]

I think a perfect punishment for people like Hitler would be letting him into Heaven and simply showing him that all the people he hated and feared got in too. It'd piss him off to no end, so he'd get eternal frustration. The perfect punishment for him and his ilk.

This is why I think that, yes, even LH&J should go to Heaven: So they can be annoyed for all eternity.

[Zyzzyva]

When he got to the bit about Wilde and justice, my mind immediately went to Babylon 5:

You know... I used to think that it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.
- Marcus Cole

[arghous]

Then again, the idea of Heaven as eternal and infinite reward raises a similar question of proportionality, but you don't hear that raised as an objection.

Maybe there's a reason for that. Why, just last week you quoted (for the most part) the parable where the vineyard owner shelled out money for unearned work. It's all free lunches in heaven, man.

Until it all turns to crap, of course. After several billion years, even if you have to plant your face on the jeweled floor every thirty seconds to praise God, you'll have memorized in excruciating detail everybody's complete life and death stories by then. Heaven will soon be echoing with the painful groans of those having to constantly hear, "Have I told you about the time..."!

[Bugmaster]

Lewis' argument doesn't offer proof, or even evidence, but it may provide a kind of ... inkling (sorry)

Aaaargh ! You're going to hell for that pun, Fred ! Heeeeeeeellll ! ;-)

[Henning Makholm]

It is not even clear to me that Hitler was so exceptionally evil that we would need to exclude him from what we believe about justice and/or mercy in the general case.

Of course Hitler was evil. His work and policies caused a mind-numbingly horrific amount of human suffering, but was that because he was exceptionally evil? I don't think so; sadly, there are plenty of people who harbor equally deplorable ideas, lack compassion equally utterly, etc. What Hitler had over them was not "more evil", but -- in addition to the accident of history that made the ground ripe -- an extraordinary gift for oratory and organization.

Can one be more evil simply by virtue of being gifted at something? Or, conversely, does it make one less evil just to be an incompetent fool? I have trouble accepting that.

[Colin W]

I wrote above that there must surely be some limits to mercy, but I'm not really sure that's true. If God is worthy of being called God, then God's mercy must be infinitely greater than my own.

Origen would be proud! Just don't...you know

[Tom]

"I used to think that it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."

The acting was often ropey, but Babylon 5 came up with some great lines from time to time.

[kittehonmylap]

Another Lewis quote from my favourite book of his, Till We Have Faces,

"I cannot hope for mercy."
"Infinite hopes- and fears- may both be yours. Be sure that, whatever else you get, you will not get justice."
"Are the gods not just?"
"Oh, no, child. What would become of us if they were?"

Ultimately I think the point of life at all is for soul formation, to make ourselves into souls which are fit for Heaven. Hell is somewhere you go if keep saying "Won't!" "All get what they want; they do not always like it."

[Ruby]

The exposure I had to the "What about Hitler?" argument was in high school, when my lab partners informed me that Hitler was going to Heaven (because he was a Christian), and I was going to Hell. They made the same argument for Jeffrey Dahmer.

Heaven didn't seem all that enticing before that, and even less so after.

[Reynard]

Yeah, well what about Hitler?"

And then, of course, there's the flip-side -- which is one of the reasons that the "Know-Jesus-as-your-personal-Lord-and-saviour-and-you're-pretty-much-guaranteed-a-place-in-Heaven" school of Christianity has absolutely *NO* credibility whatsoever with me: The possibility -- however infinitesimally tiny -- that Hitler, before he pulled the trigger and took the coward's way out, accepted Jesus as *his* "personal Lord and saviour" and is in Heaven enjoying all the benefits that come with being at the right-hand of God. (And, yes; I *HAVE* heard this argument made, usually by very sincere -- and *very* capital-"C" Conservative Republican christians.) It's a shameful and pathetic argument for "salvation" (unless, of course, you're a hard-core Nazi) and I can only wonder what Jesus thinks whenever it's used.

Posted by pharoute: Here's my Christian koan: if Hitler can't be forgiven what chance do you have?

If Hitler (or any other historically heinous Big Bad) *can* be forgiven, why worry about the concept of Justice at all? Why not just *accept* that, for whatever reason, some people are above any Law -- even that handed down by God -- and get on with the rest of of our (after)lives.

[Joel Aufrecht]

"We humans ... seem to share two conclusions about the world in which we live: 1) It's not fair; and 2) It ought to be fair. There's a universe of evidence for the first conclusion there, which only makes the second notion that much stranger."

Science has a very interesting start on explaining conclusion #2. Experiments over the last decade have shown that an innate sense of fairness extends to other social animals: to other primates, and apparently to other mammals as well. The proposed explanation is that a group that behaves with fairness has a better chance of successful selection. The way to get a group to behave fairly is for the individuals in the group to expect fairness and to detect and get angry at unjust behavior.

This also explains the economics experiment where a pair of people are offered money, but only if one person proposes a division between the two and the second person accepts the division. A purely rational second person will accept a one penny out of a hundred dollars, since that's still one penny more than they had before the experiment. But humans will tend to reject anything other than 50-50. In the evolutionary explanation, this is because any potential ancestor that regularly accepted the short end of the stick without protest had lower chances of reproducing, so by now, all of us social animals descend from long lines of parents with senses of fairness.

That is to say, we experience an unfair universe, but we have evolved to expect and enforce justice in our societies, and human emotions are not so precise as to constrain our expectations of fairness to those things we can reasonably expect to influence.

[Leum]

I'm always uncomfortable with the bogymanization of Hitler; it makes people think he wasn't really human, that his atrocities weren't the sort of things that can happen again. The fact is that the Hitlers of the world remain, committing genocide, albeit on a smaller scale, today, right now as we're sitting on our behinds complaining that it's too difficult to stop them.

"What about Hitler?" you ask. I say, "Hitler is here, right now, working his evil. Don't worry about what justice he may or may not be receiving in the next world. Ask about the injustice you can stop in this one." Which is, I think, Fred's point.

Oh, and I think I just Godwined the thread behind any recognition. I think this means I lose, so Hell does exist, Hitler's there right now, and no act of genocide has been committed since his defeat. Sorry guys.

[Brandi]

"Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy."

We got this far without this GK Chesterton quote?

[hf]

He was quite the liar, wasn't he? ^_^

[greygelgoog]

For me, the issue of finite sin and infinite punishment is dependent on the idea of people seeking redemption. For many of us, our finite sins are finite because, best case scenario, we only ever do it once. Even if we repeat the same mistake, if we at least regret the mistake we're taking a small step in the right direction. We are striving to be better people, and even the most sinful of us can yet be redeemed.

Then there are the irredeemably evil, those who feel no regret for anything they've done wrong. These are the people whose approach to sin is like that of the worst dictators. "Yesterday I sure ordered a lot of arbitrary executions. Today we'll organize the army into rape-squads because those dirty [insert name here] all have it coming!" Probably not even the worst of us is considering rape and genocide, but for the irredeemably evil (of which, I like to think, there are few) the mindset is the same. Their sin is only as finite as their mortal lifespan, and if they could live forever they would gleefully partake in wickedness forever. And such would be the person to deserve eternal torment.

Now I feel like I have to elaborate on what I mean by evil, sin, and wickedness. But it's the small hours and I'm lazy.

[Ryan]

Oh, and I think I just Godwined the thread behind any recognition.

No no, you're doing fine. This whole entry is about ripping into the arguments that fall under Godwin's Law.

[Kit Whitfield]

One thing I feel strongly is this: whether or not there's a Hell, it's really, really bad for us to spend time actually wanting anyone to go there. If you're taking satisfaction in picturing someone screaming in fiery torment, there's something wrong with your compassion. Even in the modified versions of Hell, there's something deeply nasty about wishing it on people. (That's one problem I have with C.S. Lewis; I get the feeling from his works that he took a certain satisfaction in picturing the various damnations of those who disagreed with him, and that seems to me spiritually corrupt.)

Nobody's perfect about this. If I hear someone who did something terrible is going to prison, I feel an angry satisfaction at the thought. But anger is best used as a motor: you get mad because something's wrong, and if something's wrong you should do something about it. A serial killer kidnapped and murdered children? That's outrageous because children should be cherished. So cherish the children in your own life. A corrupt politician robbed the electorate to line his own pockets? That's outrageous because we should handle responsibility with probity and generosity. So make sure you're generous to the people who depend on you. Bad people are running the country? Get out and vote for better people.

If we're angry because something's wrong, we're wasting energy picturing punishment. We should be thinking about how to make things right.

And if we enjoy picturing someone in torment for a reason other than anger, we need to take a long, serious look at ourselves.

I don't know if there's a Hell. If there's an afterlife I'll find out; if there isn't I won't. But here and now, I think it sickens us to dwell with any desire or satisfaction at all on the damnation of others.

[Cat]

I think that justice for Hitler would consist of having him know, fully and firsthand, the totality of the pain that he created in the world. Even if it's for only thirty seconds; even if it's only for THREE seconds. After that, as far as I'm concerned, he can have all the heaven he wants. The same goes for folks like Fred Phelps. Heck, the same goes for any of us. I really do believe that the "evil" (in quotes, because I don't actually believe in evil) we do results from a failure of empathy. Absolute empathy solves the problem--and if there isn't a problem, if someone's done their best to treat their fellow humans well, then absolute empathy functions as the reward, too.

[random atheist]

"it can be tempting to think that maybe religion itself is the problem. If we could just stamp out religion, we could end oppression and establish perfect justice. See again Corruption B above."

Yes, exactly! There are times when I hear my fellow atheists making the argument that getting rid of religion would improve things, and I want to say, "What about Stalinist Russia, or Maoist China?" Because one thing that is achingly clear from those two lessons-from-history is that it's entirely possible to be a hateful idealogue, to set up a totalitarian system, and to cause enormous amounts of pain and suffering to people, without having a religious context for any of this.

I'm not saying atheism caused the atrocities in either of those countries and historic periods, btw. Just that getting rid of religion is too simplistic an answer to the problem of religious oppression.

Re Hitler: I remember reading, can't recall where (man, I suck at citation) that he had a deeply sadistic and abusive father. So while we can say with certainty that Hitler's acts were evil, can we say with certainty that Hitler was evil?

It's possible that we can say he was damaged beyond repair, that once he reached adulthood with that much hate locked in his heart he was, by then, unsavable. Some people are unsavable. Or possibly just never come across the thing that would have saved them. Either way, it's a tragedy, for them as much as the people they damage.

This is the thing, really: we want people who do bad, damaging things to suffer. But how do we know they aren't? How do we know that isn't why they're doing the damaging things in the first place? Maybe they've been hurt so badly themselves that now, like a child having a tantrum, they're lashing out wildly.

Would a kind, loving parent, such as the God of most monotheistic religions is supposed to be, see a child who has been hurt and is now screaming and raging, and want to punish that child? Or would they want to calm the child and soothe the pain?

I don't see how someone could believe in a loving God and still believe in post-death punishment, I really don't.

[Zeborah]

I don't *know* about heaven and hell, but I like to think of it with the sheep and the goats parable. Except that no-one is a sheep and no-one is a goat; rather each person is made up of a mixture of sheep and goats. So God will take each of us and divide the sheep from the goats, and he'll call the sheep to himself, and then he'll make a big yummy barbecue out of the goats.

If one were to consider this literally, then there might not be very much of Hitler left, but I think a little bit of him would still get to heaven. And definitely not all of me would, but all the *good* parts of me would. So by the time I die I'd like to have as many good parts and as few bad parts as possible.

[Michael Cule]

"As I told a obnoxious internet Christian
If God is just, I have nothing to fear, even if I don't believe.
If God is unjust, you have nothing to gain, even if you do believe"

And in my head, the obnoxious internet Christian replies:

If God is unjust, then you'd better start kissing his ass right NOW, sinner!

[bad Jim]

Continuing Joel Aufrecht's line of thought, it does appear that a sense of fairness is common among people and perhaps many mammals, but it doesn't have to be an innate, evolved trait. It's more likely to be learned. (Hey, these big brains have to be good for something, don't they?)

We can even infer that dogs can count by observing them when treats are passed out, because of their expectation of equal treatment. Whether they learned that from us or from their tussling as siblings, it seems to be a durable trait - though the dogs I know also cheat shamelessly, even more than my fellow citizens.

The point is that if you are going to keep encountering the same people over and over, which most humans have done since before they were human, they are going to remember your last interaction with them, and unless you are extremely powerful you are well advised to have treated them fairly before, else they will spit in your soup.

(However, I don't actually behave well because I fear the consequence of doing otherwise; I and people like me offer this rationalization to avoid the embarrassment of admitting that we do certain things because they're the right things to do, not out of any formal conviction but because we can't do otherwise.)

[Benjamin]

A quote that's always had a place in my heart, along the same lines as the Oscar Wilde quote: "Even the wicked get worse than they deserve." Willa Cather.

[Tonio]

When I was reading the Bible by myself as a teenager, it never occured to me think about heaven and hell as having anything to do with justice. Similarly, when I thought about hell as punishment for sins, the idea of hell as a redress of wrongs committed against others never occured to me. I thought the whole thing was about pleasing the Christian god and nothing more. I'm not saying I thought Christianity taught this - that was simply my conclusion from the heaven and hell concepts. It seemed natural and reasonable to expect that a god would demand that humans please him purely for his sake.

There are times when I hear my fellow atheists making the argument that getting rid of religion would improve things, and I want to say, I want to say, "What about Stalinist Russia, or Maoist China?"

I face a temptation to think that belief in the absence of evidence is the problem. But that's really about preserving the integrity of science. If there is a "real" problem, it's not religion but absolutism wedded to authoritarianism. Stalinism and Maoism strongly resemble authoritarian religions, but it's more accurate to say that both ideologies and authoritarian religions evolved from a common ancestor.

[random atheist]

"Stalinism and Maoism strongly resemble authoritarian religions, but it's more accurate to say that both ideologies and authoritarian religions evolved from a common ancestor."

I suppose my own similar-but-different attitude is that authoritarian ideologies and authoritarian religions come from the same place in the human mind: the place that wants to impose our will on others.

I don't think belief in the absence of evidence is the problem, because it's demonstrably true that people can believe things in the absence of evidence and still be nice people.

In fact, practically everyone in the world has at least one belief that they hold in the absence of any evidence to support it. I've come across people on the Internet who were positive, completely positive, that they themselves had no beliefs that were not supported by evidence... and who were totally sure that the world would be better if everyone was like that.

Which is not supported by evidence.

[Lurker]

After several billion years, even if you have to plant your face on the jeweled floor every thirty seconds to praise God, you'll have memorized in excruciating detail everybody's complete life and death stories by then.

I don't think you can measure time, if you have eternity. Eternity is where God is. While we are fish swimming in the river of time, God is on the river bank. (Or perhaps He is the river bank). At some point of time, the world ends, the river stops, and we are with God outside of time. (Or in case of Hell, without God, outside of time.)

In the heaven, we are seeing God's glory in full. As I write this, I see the Sun shining over a frozen gulf of sea. Behind the gulf, I see a beautiful, forested island. This beautiful piece of creation, which I now marvel, is but an infinitely small part of God's glory. In heaven, we'll see the totality of His glory: the greatness of this universe from its beginning to its end, at all scales reaching from quarks to humans, from humans to galaxy groups. And perhaps, an infinite number of other universes He has created. I believe that eternity is a short time for marvelling that kind of infinite diversity that is the glory of God.

[Francis D]

To me it's quite simple. There is only one crime I can think of that would merit spending eternity in Hell. Setting up the system by which others are condemned to Hell for eternity. Anything you have the power to do in this world is finite.

If Hell is a place of eternal torment then Hitler doesn't deserve it, but God does. It makes a complete mockery of any claims of God to be Just, Merciful, Compassionate, Loving (or Love), or Good. If such a God exists then I have two choices - either to kowtow to someone who makes Hitler look like a saint, or to side with Lucifer (there is no room for him and be damned. I hope I would have the courage to make the latter choice.

If Hell is eternal but no being spends eternity there (e.g. Hitler spends the time he impacted his cumulative victims reliving their experience and then is welcomed into heaven or chooses to walk into the darkness) then it ceases to be Hell and becomes a nasty take on Purgatory and the moral objections disappear.

And I'm really not adding anything new to this thread am I? Just a bullseye on one of my rant buttons.

[Amaryllis]

Perhaps the expectation of fairness also has something to do with our nature as "cooperative breeders." That is, other people besides the mother help to care for the helpless infant. This is true in various species, and very much true in humans, although apparently not so much so in the chimpanzees and great apes. After all, if you can trust other people with your baby, you'd think you could trust them with your own safety or your money. And since helpless infancy and almost helpless childhood extends so long in humans, we grow up trusting others to treat us well, and feel betrayed when that trust is violated.

Which reminds me (because this is apparently not the case with the "deepsmen") that Kit's new book is out yesterday in the UK - congratulations, Kit!

----
Lurker, that sounds lovely, although a bit chilly.
"When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's grace, then when we first begun."

----

(For the literalists, "sing God's grace" meaning "what Lurker said," not "plant your face" and shriek "Jesus is Lord.")

If God is unjust, then you'd better start kissing his ass right NOW, sinner!
To anticipate an LB Friday by a few hours and a dozen books, you have just summed up the entire plot of L&J's Kingdom Come.

[Kit Whitfield]

I remember reading, can't recall where (man, I suck at citation) that he had a deeply sadistic and abusive father. So while we can say with certainty that Hitler's acts were evil, can we say with certainty that Hitler was evil?

Similarly, I've read a book that suggests he was bipolar - and if that's the case, he was sick and needed treatment, and the real question is why people followed him.

(Not everyone, of course. I remember a rather delightful moment on a documentary called The Nazis: a warning from history, which interviewed a lot of contemporary people. There was one creepy guy who described Hitler looking into his soul, but there was another splendidly sane fellow whose remarks were more or less: 'Well, he had a scratchy voice and this stupid moustache and he shouted a lot. I didn't like him; I thought he was a weirdo.')

Kit's new book is out yesterday in the UK - congratulations, Kit!

Thanks! :-)

[Lee Ratner]

Jewish thinkers of a religious bent never really addressed what happened to Hitler after he died. Part of this is because Judaism beliefs on the afterlife comes down to it exists but we have no idea what it is. In some Jewish circles, mainly Orthodox ones, paradise is basically a big yeshiva/university where people get to study and pursue other geeky hobbies. This assumes that God makes everybody an intellectual/scholar when they die. I think this belief reveals a lot about us and probably horrifies many non-Jews and quite a few Jews to.

I have my own eccentric beliefs on this, that I admit have no support besides my belief that God is all good and filled with love and compassion. I believe that most people who can not get into heaven are reincarnated, as humans, and get to live again. This repeats until they get it right. The really evil people like Hitler and Pol Pot have their souls obliviated. They get no chance to try again.

[Mark H Foxwell]

In a class on Soviet history I saw a Belarussian film (made in 1985, so it was still a Soviet film titled in English Come and See, which, as the link I've provided recaps, is about Belarusian partisans resisting the Nazi invasion in 1943. It is quite the horror show, but:

\SPOILER WARNING! \FNORD! I want to talk about how the movie ends, you see. (The link doesn't talk about this part...)

After the protagonist and the people he knows have gone through the whole torture rack the Germans inflicted on them, and a near-end montage of the surviving (more or less) victims and the wreckage around them, he comes upon a portrait of Hitler--the kind of picture diligent (or reasonably unsuicidal) subjects of a typical 20th century dictatorship hang up in their offices and homes if they know what's good for them.

The partisan takes his machine gun and starts blasting away at it. We get a montage of Nazi-related events, running backwards with occasional cuts of the youth and his gun, hosing away layers of foul history with a stream of lead. Backwards, through the invasion, the height of Nazi power, the fighting for Nazi power--back and back to younger Hitler in the trenches of WWI--the partisan keeps firing. Back to a portrait of an obviously insufferable, sneering Hitler as a young boy--he keeps shooting.

Back to a portrait of infant Hitler, on his mother's lap. The partisan pauses, looks, blinks, starts to raise his gun again. Stops. Puts it down.

End of movie. Is great Soviet film.

/SPOILERS /FNORD!

[inge]

Kit: One thing I feel strongly is this: whether or not there's a Hell, it's really, really bad for us to spend time actually wanting anyone to go there.

When I imagine some big bad getting just dessert served the afterlife is more like this: http://xkcd.com/481/.

As I do not believe in the afterlife, I'd wish they'd get it in this life. Not likely, I know, so the next best thing is getting them out of the position where they can do "big" bad, and ideally get them to court that they'll at least understand that people do not approve, even if they'll never understand why.

[inge]

random atheist: I remember reading, can't recall where (man, I suck at citation) that he had a deeply sadistic and abusive father.

Alice Miller used Hitler as one of her case studies in "For Your Own Good". Her central thesis, IIRC, was that empathy is learned, and that children treated cruelly by people they (have to) trust and respect will become cruel to both themselves and others.

So while we can say with certainty that Hitler's acts were evil, can we say with certainty that Hitler was evil?

Does it matter?

[Tonio]

the place that wants to impose our will on others.

Ding! To echo a point I made in a thread last month, perhaps that place is created and/or nurtured by emotional trauma, the desperate desire to avoid repeating that trauma.

I don't think belief in the absence of evidence is the problem, because it's demonstrably true that people can believe things in the absence of evidence and still be nice people...In fact, practically everyone in the world has at least one belief that they hold in the absence of any evidence to support it.

I agree. I should clarify that I'm talking about beliefs about the universe, and the importance of scientific standards for determining the nature of the universe. Obviously, human imperfection means that we will sometimes fall short of those standards.

When I talk about maintaining scientific integrity, I suspect I sound like an obsessive Star Trek fan: "Wrong, dork! Ensign Jackson died in the tenth episode, not the ninth!"

It makes a complete mockery of any claims of God to be Just, Merciful, Compassionate, Loving (or Love), or Good.

I agree with that first point...

If such a God exists then I have two choices - either to kowtow to someone who makes Hitler look like a saint, or to side with Lucifer (there is no room for him and be damned. I hope I would have the courage to make the latter choice.

...but not with the second. That's too much like "You're either with me or against me." In that situation, I might go for a third choice and refuse them both.

[Pope Easier Rhino I]

I find it slightly odd that (a) people think the universe is unfair, and (b) we feel that a redress of this basic unfairness is "justice" whether divine or otherwise.

To begin at the beginning: the universe is fair. Brutally fair. That doesn't necessarily equate to the best result for you, or me, or anyone/thing, but the universe, at least where I'm sitting, doesn't choose sides. It's fairly consistent. Now individuals and groups and societies aren't fair, but that's not the universe's fault. If I'm not rich, that's not because the universe chose sides; it's because the universe, in its consistency, allowed humans to be unfair (if not having everyone be exactly the same in all respects can be seen as unfair).

But even if we accept that the universe is unfair, how exactly does punishment make it more fair? If you're a bad person, justice punishes you somehow, but it doesn't make my life any better. If you kick me in the knee, and the universe, in "fairness" equalizes that by kicking you in the knee too, then my knee still hurts. Justice, whether tempered by mercy for the punished or not, tends to wind up with more people suffering, not less.

The point was made some comments back that being good just because you're scared of the consequences isn't exactly the best. Not being Hitler because you're afraid that if you are Hitler, then you'll go to Hell... no reason not to be Hitler. You shouldn't be Hitler because it's wrong, and because it's unfair, not because you're afraid that justice will kick your ass.

This is the same argument I regularly use against the death penalty: killing someone won't undo their crime. So how is justice "fairer" than simply letting everyone into Heaven? Why do we spend a lot of time worrying about Hitler getting into Heaven, or wondering what punishment he will receive by the just hand of the Almighty? The just hand of the Almighty didn't smack him down before he could be bad (not that I'm arguing for this) nor did it redress his wrongs. For some things, it's hard to redress without undoing. Justice seems to be mostly about punishment, not redress, in any case.

So tell me how it's fair to punish someone? Or tell me how it's more fair than not punishing them?

[inge]

Lee Ratner: In some Jewish circles, mainly Orthodox ones, paradise is basically a big yeshiva/university where people get to study and pursue other geeky hobbies.

That could be (metaphorcially) heaven or hell, depending on whether there are tests and how crowded the place is.

Uni was more like hell to me, because is was made of confusion, noise, crowding, paperwork, and the library being out of the books you needed, but that was a fault in implementation, not concept.

[Quercus]

Of course slacktivist is really talking about a different question (and doing so very well, too) but in my opinion, talking about Hitler as an example is one of this country’s problems. Hitler was not a fount of absolute supernatural evil that singlehandedly caused all the suffering of WWII. He was in fact a lunatic who (as far as I know) never personally laid a hand on anyone.

Unfortunately, this country seems to be far too enamored of the easily solution: seeing opponents as absolute evil which doesn’t need to be understood or granted any potential humanity or validity in their complaints.

So if someone asked “What about Hitler?” I’d say the question really should be “What about the death camp guard? The one who never went out of his way to hurt anyone, but followed orders? Does he deserve Hell for an eternity?”

[Tonio]

To begin at the beginning: the universe is fair. Brutally fair. That doesn't necessarily equate to the best result for you, or me, or anyone/thing, but the universe, at least where I'm sitting, doesn't choose sides.

While I agree with your point, I wouldn't use "fair" to describe that indifference by the universe, because fairness is a human concept. I might use that word if the universe had consciousness or sentience.

[Cat Meadors]

Tangentially related: just yesterday I heard this This I Believe on NPR. Talk about some hardcore forgiveness, right here on Earth. (You should really listen to it, if you can, but that link also goes to the transcript.)

Not a Christian, so I don't have to worry about the "eternal" bit about Heaven/Hell. Both are just places your soul goes hang out for a bit while it's waiting for something else to do - pleasant or unpleasant, they both mean you've missed the point and have to try again. (Of course it's nicer to go to a Heaven, and nobody wants to go to a Hell, but we've already got the built-in idea that justice doesn't demand infinite punishment for finite badness, nor reward finite goodness with infinite, um, reward.)