Dennis Prager Show - Should Hell Be Empty?
Aired: 2024-03-18
Duration: 04:59


=== Pope's Hope for Hell (04:12) ===

[00:00:00]  And I obviously hope you read it.
[00:00:03]  There's no charge.
[00:00:05]  The title of the column is The Pope Hopes No One is in Hell.
[00:00:09]  We should.
[00:00:10]  That is, we should hope someone is in hell.
[00:00:13]  I hope one day nobody will be, but right now I hope there will be.
[00:00:17]  So I am continuing the reading of my column.
[00:00:23]  As of this moment, I fervently hope that some people are in hell, or...
[00:00:27]  Whatever one wishes to call punishment after life, just as I hope some people are in heaven.
[00:00:31]  Or whatever one wishes to call reward in an afterlife.
[00:00:35]  Why?
[00:00:37]  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.
[00:00:47]  It should be added that if no one is punished, the corollary would mean that no one is rewarded.
[00:00:55]  Pure logic dictates it is not possible to have an afterlife in which people were rewarded but not punished.
[00:01:05]  It would mean either everyone is rewarded, which would mean there is no justice, or only some are rewarded.
[00:01:12]  But if only some are rewarded, that means that those who are deprived of reward are thereby punished.
[00:01:17]  It shows how little serious thought is given to the subject that a vast number of people...
[00:01:22]  Do not think the existence of a heaven and a hell are important subjects and or dismiss them as religious nonsense.
[00:01:32]  This absence of serious thought can be easily demonstrated.
[00:01:36]  Let's imagine a society in which there were no rewards or punishments.
[00:01:41]  I suspect almost no one, though not no one as we shall see, thinks that would be a good society.
[00:01:48]  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?
[00:02:00]  If that doesn't make the case, let's not imagine the whole society.
[00:02:04]  Let's imagine a school.
[00:02:07]  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?
[00:02:27]  I assume not.
[00:02:29]  So why then would anyone want such a scenario for all of life?
[00:02:33]  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?
[00:02:43]  That is why I wrote there is an absence of serious thought on this issue.
[00:02:47]  What people would find utterly objectionable in their society or even just their children's school, they are at peace with regarding life.
[00:02:57]  But there is more to this issue.
[00:02:59]  People are in fact increasingly at peace with no reward or punishment in this life.
[00:03:05]  This is the egalitarian impulse.
[00:03:14]  More and more people are in fact advocating such a society.
[00:03:19]  No more retributive justice.
[00:03:22]  No more merit-based standards.
[00:03:26]  No more valedictorians.
[00:03:28]  No more failing grades.
[00:03:31]  No more SATs.
[00:03:33]  Indeed, no more standards.
[00:03:36]  No more bail.
[00:03:37]  No more punishment if you are caught stealing less than $1,000 worth of goods.
[00:03:42]  No more prosecutors who prosecute.
[00:03:46]  Only equity.
[00:03:48]  I am convinced that is what animated Pope Francis' words.
[00:03:53]  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.

=== Sin Away, Hell Ends (01:01) ===

[00:04:03]  As an egalitarian, the thought that anyone is in hell disturbs him.
[00:04:08]  So why do people who think like the Pope oppose rewards and punishments?
[00:04:13]  Because rewards and punishments mean that one must make judgments about better and worse, morally, academically, and in most other spheres of life.
[00:04:28]  It's better to just assume no one is better than anyone else.
[00:04:33]  That is what has animated participation trophies.
[00:04:36]  No one, not even a team, is better or worse.
[00:04:40]  In much of the contemporary intellectual world, the greatest sin is judging sin.
[00:04:48]  And then, when you do away with sin, you do away with hell.
[00:04:56]  End of issue.
[00:04:58]  Or end of column.