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March 18, 2024 - Dennis Prager Show
04:59
Should Hell Be Empty?
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And I obviously hope you read it.
There's no charge.
The title of the column is The Pope Hopes No One is in Hell.
We should.
That is, we should hope someone is in hell.
I hope one day nobody will be, but right now I hope there will be.
So I am continuing the reading of my column.
As of this moment, I fervently hope that some people are in hell, or...
Whatever one wishes to call punishment after life, just as I hope some people are in heaven.
Or whatever one wishes to call reward in an afterlife.
Why?
Because if no one is punished after death, that would mean either there is no God or equally depressing, it would mean God is not just.
It should be added that if no one is punished, the corollary would mean that no one is rewarded.
Pure logic dictates it is not possible to have an afterlife in which people were rewarded but not punished.
It would mean either everyone is rewarded, which would mean there is no justice, or only some are rewarded.
But if only some are rewarded, that means that those who are deprived of reward are thereby punished.
It shows how little serious thought is given to the subject that a vast number of people...
Do not think the existence of a heaven and a hell are important subjects and or dismiss them as religious nonsense.
This absence of serious thought can be easily demonstrated.
Let's imagine a society in which there were no rewards or punishments.
I suspect almost no one, though not no one as we shall see, thinks that would be a good society.
How many people would want to live in a society in which murderers and rapists were never punished, while people who engaged in exceptional goodness were never rewarded?
If that doesn't make the case, let's not imagine the whole society.
Let's imagine a school.
Would you send your child to a school In which students who routinely disturbed their classes and flunked all their subjects were never punished, and students who excelled behaviorally and academically were never rewarded?
I assume not.
So why then would anyone want such a scenario for all of life?
Why would anyone want people who committed terrible evils not to be punished, and people who committed heroic self-sacrificing good acts not to be rewarded?
That is why I wrote there is an absence of serious thought on this issue.
What people would find utterly objectionable in their society or even just their children's school, they are at peace with regarding life.
But there is more to this issue.
People are in fact increasingly at peace with no reward or punishment in this life.
This is the egalitarian impulse.
More and more people are in fact advocating such a society.
No more retributive justice.
No more merit-based standards.
No more valedictorians.
No more failing grades.
No more SATs.
Indeed, no more standards.
No more bail.
No more punishment if you are caught stealing less than $1,000 worth of goods.
No more prosecutors who prosecute.
Only equity.
I am convinced that is what animated Pope Francis' words.
Note that he said he was stating his opinion, not church dogma, and as a man of the left, he is uncomfortable with reward and especially punishment.
As an egalitarian, the thought that anyone is in hell disturbs him.
So why do people who think like the Pope oppose rewards and punishments?
Because rewards and punishments mean that one must make judgments about better and worse, morally, academically, and in most other spheres of life.
It's better to just assume no one is better than anyone else.
That is what has animated participation trophies.
No one, not even a team, is better or worse.
In much of the contemporary intellectual world, the greatest sin is judging sin.
And then, when you do away with sin, you do away with hell.
End of issue.
Or end of column.
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