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Pope's Hope for Hell
00:04:12
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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. | |
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Sin Away, Hell Ends
00:01:01
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| 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. | |