The Theistic Paradigm in a Nutshell

[Rhondazvous]

Interesting fact; The phrase "the end justifies the means" was mistranslated from Machiavelli's "The Prince".

The phrase in Machiavelli's original is "si guarda al fine", which translates more literally as "the end result must be considered", i.e. the end result must be weighed against the means needed to achieve it, which is morally a very different thing. Machiavelli was aiming more for something along the lines of "whatever does the greatest good to the most people". (A good example would be Edward Jenner risking the life of one boy by injecting him with smallpox to prove his vaccine worked. Maybe it's not definite that this was worth the risk, but nevertheless, Jenner made a sincere assessment of the likely benefits as set against the possible cost).

But you are right that the theist paradigm does indeed seem to be "The end justifies the means". Many theists do indeed believe that enduring simply anything is worth the pie-in-the-sky prospect of heaven, especially if the suffering in question is being endured by someone else (e.g. your whole family died of plague, so let me lecture you about how God is punishing you for not being virtuous enough. All your friends died of AIDS, so let me lecture you about how it's a punishment for their lewd behaviour). The prospect of heaven will indeed lure them into any logical twist, and any condemnation, however egregious.

Lecturing does no good. It was all predestined. They had no choice in plague, virtue, AIDS, lewd. But then I guess they were predestined to lecture and could not help themselves either.

Wish more were predestined to eat lead. Well, not really, as a non-predestined atheist that would be cruel. Is selective mutism too cruel to wish for?

I might give up atheism temporarily if it meant I could claim to be predestined to kick a particularly obnoxious theist's ass.