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Monday, December 31, 2007

Regarding Keith Parsons: On Meaning and Punishment

Please note that this post has been moved to True Freethinker’s Atheism category.

2 comments:

  1. Hi, I liked your article. If it was me writing it, though, I'd stick to more exposing the reasoning behind the problem the atheist proponent is addressing.

    For instance, you covered the problem of temporal justice vs eternal justice that this particular atheist attempted poorly to criticize. Now, rather than looking at the temporal world and pointing out the inconsistency that exists, it'd maybe be better to eliminate that as a source of nay-saying altogether. This can be accomplished by weighing temporal guilt and eternal guilt. If you wrong a temporal man, under the American justice system, you deprive them of some natural right. The consequence is that your natural right is equally forfeit. This is the foundation of the law. However, if you wrong an eternal being, you've attached yourself with eternal guilt - you have slighted that eternal being in some way, which has eternal consequences. You can look at this the same way as the laws against murder. If you kill someone, you "eternally" deprive them of their natural right to life (their right to live, and pursue happiness). As a consequence, the natural balance is in depriving you of the same right.

    Now, if an eternal being exists and makes demands upon men - if that eternal being created men a certain way, and men became somehow corrupt - and that eternal being wishes to offer a simple solution for the problem of corruption in the human spirit, it exists as a balance. That eternal being has the same right to deny entrance to His house as you do to someone who refuses to accept your offer to come have dinner with you. Men, being in constant contention with God, have a hostile relationship with Him by nature. The Law was established to point that fact out. If a man smacks you in the face when you ask him to come have dinner with you, not only are you well within your right to be angry, but the consequence of that injury deserves a retribution to restore balance in the relationship between you and the person who slapped you. Well, such is our relationship with God.

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  2. Ian;
    Thanks for much for the comment and recommendations, I like your illustrations.
    aDios,
    Mariano

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