(November 21, 2017 at 3:48 pm)purplepurpose Wrote: Eternal punishment for temporary crimes and eternal heaven for temporary work? It sounds unnatural. And yet people preach it like it's perfect God's word.
The motif of "getting even" is a natural emotion in our species. Even in other life, when the individual, or group is attacked, the rival, or invasive species will be reacted to.
The problem with religion, even crap like "karma" and "reincarnation", not just hell, is that they are a comic book reflection of our species behaviors.
An atheist parent in their right mind is going to want to beat the shit out of, or murder someone whom rapes their kid. But you can see that same protection in other species too. Try fucking with a mother gator's nest. Try fucking with a lioness's cubs.
Point being, there is no comic book punishment or reward being handed down to humans anymore than there is a Yellowjacket bee God causing them to chase you if you stumble on their nest and kill one of their members.
What we also evolved with as a species that gets chalked up to fantasy, is our other natural behaviors in displaying empathy and compassion. It is why we have grown to value courts, and lawyers, and move away from concepts of revenge.
The same parent, who'd feel like killing someone whom assaulted their child, would also not want that same child falsely accused of something they did not do.
We have grown as a species to greater or lesser degrees depending on time and geography, to value the idea that tit for tat doesn't always work.
I'd love to, for example (METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING ONLY) if I had the power, to beat the fuck out of the bullies on my street growing up. But what good does that do me now other than to satisfy my own emotions. I am sure they have kids now and spouses, my only wish would be that they don't teach their kids to do to me what they did to me.
The biggest example I can think of in modern history of why "leave them to rot" does not work, was what happened to Germany after WW1. I have no doubt if the rest of the world had not left them to rot, Hitler never would have rose to power. Now you look at what we did after WW2 with Germany and Japan, they are our allies now.
Point being. There is no magic to our species behaviors. There is no holy writing that will give us our morals. There is no magic explanation as to why we do good or bad to each other. We do, and we always will. But, we can seek explanations in natural terms instead of clinging to old mythology.
