My views on objective morality

[bennyboy]

. . . and will burn us in fire for all eternity if we do anything He doesn't like.  You keep forgetting to include that part.

"Anything He doesn't like" means anything evil, though. And it also means doing it purposely with full knowledge and consent of the will, and with no remorse. That's the Catholic position anyway, not necessarily the position of every Christian denomination.

But it doesn't acknowledge how a person arrives at that state.  We know now how people end up that way-- abuse as children, neglect of parents, poverty, brain developmental issues, etc.  I could go to places in American ghettoes and say that just by being born into that environment, a person has a huge chance of going to hell, because he will HAVE to harden his heart to much evil in the world just to be tough enough to survive in that environment.

How many catholic priests have put young people into a life-long full-tilt, then felt bad about it later in life, begged forgiveness, and gone on to Heaven? How many kids have had not only their bodies but their sense of self-determination (aka free will) robbed, and hardened their hearts because it's the only way they can get out of bed without having a nervous fucking breakdown? If I had been raped as a child, I wouldn't be looking to open my heart to God's grace. I'd be developing telephoto pictures in a darkroom in my basement, and stockpiling a collection of machine guns. AND IT WOULDN'T BE MY FAULT.

This is my view of Catholicism. It amounts to institutionalized victim-blaming. Over and over and over, poor and underprivileged people die on the street in a state of stress and ongoing terror that you call hardness of heart. And the rich, white people of privilege get to lie in death's bed, ponder their lives, and confess. The victims go to Hell, and their abusers go to Heaven. This is what the idea of the grace of God means to me.

Fuck that.