True, I don’t know that, not for certain anyway. Tim, in his final time here on Earth, looked at some of his victims, made eye contact, and expressed no emotions whatsoever. I personally believe that no sincerely contrite person could do such a thing, given the nature of his horrific act.
Point is, you can’t fool God and sneak into Heaven.
The colonies had tried to redress their greivances with the government in England. The crown either ignored the colonies or made things worse (ala a tax on tea which then got dumped in the harbor).
Because Great Britain was a monarchy then there was little the colonies could do if they didn’t like what was happening. Basically they had to suck it up or rebel.
The United States today is far different. We have an elected government and freedom of the press among other things. Don’t like your congressman? Too liberal for your tastes? Get him or her voted out and get your own guy in there or run for office yourself. It happens all the time.
As to the other answers:
I believe what goboy has been telling us is pretty close to official dogma.
That said I have a problem with the notion that sin is sin and God doesn’t distinguish between them. Kill one person? You’re a sinner. Kill several million (ala Hitler or Stalin)? You’re a sinner. If Stalin was repentant he could be dancing in heaven while a guy who killed his family’s murderer burns in hell (assuming he didn’t repent)?
Sorry but I have a real problem with that. Probably one of the reason I eschew religion.
?authority
Whether it’s Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Limbo, his next incarnation, some other afterlife destination not previously named, or simply a state of no longer existing, your question is valid:
For my part, the answer is: YES.
And thst’e part of the problem I have with capital punishment.
Point one confuses Moral Philosophy with Political Decision Making- it can be immoral to do something under a moral code, but not criminal; similarly other acts can be crminal but not morally wrong.
Point two assumes that God’s mind can be known. Moral philosphy cannot rationally make this claim. All it can do is take the religious claims made by (say) the Catholic church and make decisions aboutthe rightness or wrongness under those rules. My point was that under Catholc Moral Philosophy, there is no difference between killing as an act in an unjust war and killing by an avowed terrorist. If the Catholic religion is a correct guide to God’s mind, then McVeigh or the pilot would be judged not on political rightness or wrongness of their actions, but by a moral law that would seem to equate these two actions. Catholic theology does not admit the moral agency of animals, and so lions and antelopes are no guide.
Personally I do not hold that all killing is wrong; only that avoidable killing is wrong.
In reply to the point about the American Revolution, it is worth noting that politically and criminally all the revolutionaries were committing treason, and could at that time have been sentenced to death quite legally and morally. As Benjamin Franklyn said ‘We must hang together, for if we do not, we shall surely hang separately.’ Of course, the revolutionaries won and became the establishment, and history is written by the winners. Had the cause been lost, we might today praise the patriot Benedict Arnold, and curse the name of that damned treasonist George Washington. Politics and criminality is no guide to morality.
This is not meant to excuse McVeigh, merely to point out that decisions about morality are culturally and temporally bound and that there are few absolutes.
Anybody remember that scene in “Hamlet” where he comes across his uncle asking forgiveness and decides not to whack him because he doesn’t want him to go to heaven and then after Hamlet tip-toes off, the uncle gets up and says he wished he really meant it when he repented? I think the moral here is: Don’t worry if the guy’s going to heaven or hell, just make sure the bastard won’t do anything as horrible again.
Actually there is no confusion of moral philosophy with political decision making in point one. It is strictly a statement of how I believe most governments in the world today would respond. Clearly the Iraqi’s viewed the issue differently than the United States but nevertheless I think the Iraqi’s would treat the bomber pilot as a soldier and not a terrorist if they got their hands on him. That he’d be beheaded either way sort of makes it a moot point however (at least for the bomber pilot).
You are correct that knowing the mind of God isn’t really possible (although I’d like to hear what the Pope would have to say about that). Nevertheless I didn’t pretend to know the mind of God. I said “If God…” and “I suppose…” and “I believe…” and “I suspect…”. I don’t think I ever pretended to know the mind of God. I tried to draw some logical conclusions from what I know of the world but I’m aware that the nature and mind of God need not fit anything I am familiar with.
As to the animals I realize that they don’t rank very well in the eyes of the church but I think the church would say that God did create the world and all the creatures in it. Presumably God could have made a world of vegetarians but instead we get a fairly vicious cycle of kill and be killed instead. Again, I don’t claim to know the mind of God but I would say that it is somewhat suggestive of God’s mind. I suppose it is always possible that God is just messing with our heads.
It is true that the victors write the history books. However, it is still possible to try and look back at history and see if what was done was justifiable and the winners don’t always like what they see if they’re honest with themselves.
The US and its allies won WWII but you still get discussions on whether things like the fire bombing of Dresden were justifiable. You eventually get apologies from the US government about how it behaved towards Americans of Japanese descent during the war.
I believe that there are some things that are empirically wrong.
I believe that there are HUGE areas of moral ambiguity between the black and white of right and wrong.
I believe that McVeigh’s actions were wrong in any context…even the one he defined for himself.
If hell exists my money is on hell for McVeigh.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Whack-a-Mole *
**
By your own definitions of morality (that morality is culturally and temporally bound) then every war is both just and unjust. The victors believe they were in a righteous battle and the losers feel they were overwhelmed by the heathen hordes. Since, as you say, morality changes over time and thus the views change one can never say with any certainty that a given war was just. As a result no one can say for certain whether a soldier is committing a sin since only God can be sure if the soldier was fighting for the cause of good against evil. Scary place to be if your a devoutly religious soldier.
I agree any empirical moral standard is near impossible to pin down. Nevertheless I think you can conceive of hypothetical situations where a given action was empirically wrong. Assume a man enters your house and murders your family. You know (for the sake of argument) that the man is not suffering from retardation or any mental disorder. You know that the man is not a visitor from the future trying to get rid of a potential evil in the past (ala Terminator). You know that this man did this out of some need for perverse self gratification…nothing more. Can you come up with a societal or moral framework where such a thing is ok? This isn’t survival of the fittest. This isn’t killing for food or a need to somehow support one’s own family. It’s just plain, downright senseless murder.
I don’t believe in heaven or hell either. Cetainly not in the stereotypical Christian sense. Like you I too believe he is just dead now and feeding the plants. I was merely pointing out that if such a thing as hell does exist then I think McVeigh makes an excellent candidate for residence.
[Hijack]
…so, goboy, should I tell my wife that our two stillborn children are suffering in hell right now?
[/hijack]
Sorry to hear about that. It’s the absurd Christian theories like the one goboy gave that not only drove me away from the religion that I was raised believing in, but has given me a total lack of respect for it as well as most of its members. One Catholic says everyone goes to heaven no matter what, the next says you go to hell unless you’re saved, it’s all really just a joke. It seems that there faith overrides there common sense.
Rest easy, there’s no such thing as a stillborn child. Only fetuses can be stillborn. To be a child it would have to have first been born.
tj
goboy you should include Seventh Day Adventists as Protestant. We also believe
Our sins are as filthy rags and unless we accept Christ we will be sent to hell when Christ returns.
We do disagree with most of our Protestant brothers in that we believe Hell is not some place where people are put to eternal burning torment. We believe that when the Bible says hell fires burn forever that what it means is that the effects of the fires will last forever. So Mangetout, your children are not burning in eternal fires suffering unthinkable torment, their souls are sleeping in the hand of God.
Now if our boy Tim has truly repented and accepted Christ he will rise from the dead when Christ returns and be taken to Heaven. The important word is truly and only God can judge. Remember the thief on the cross obtained last minute forgiveness and a promise of Heaven.
Oh, well I feel much better now that I know that the tiny dead infants I cradled in my hands and baptised with my own tears weren’t actually children at all.
To which I would say that, unreasonable and unjust as it might seem, mainstream Christian doctrine is that any sinner who truly repents will be saved, regardless of the magnitude of their sin (as viewed from the human perspective), and God has the final say in the whole deal.
Now we could rightly or wrongly argue all day about how fair/reasonable/logical that is, but we’re not going to avoid or change the fact that this is the mainstream church’s teaching.
Mangetout, if you paid attention to my posts , I said I am an atheist and I don’t believe any Christian dogma–I’m just passing on the standard party line on the rules for salvation. I’m sorry to hear of your family tragedy. While some fundamentalists might disagree with me, I was taught that children up to the age of 7, not having reached the age of reason, can enter heaven.
Deb2World, I didn’t intend to offend, it’s just that, while I know very little of Ellen G. White’s teachings, I know that the Adventists and other denominations disagree on important issues, and I didn’t want to speak for your POV. ditto for the JWs and the Mormons.
Sorry goboy, you’re right, I missed the bit about you being an atheist, anyway, I probably should have started another thread, instead of hijacking this one.
Mangetout, sorry to hear of your personal tragedy. I also agree with ** goboy**. In my Baptist church it is commonly taught that all such infants would be saved, because Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven belonged to such as these (Matt. 19:14).
?authority I do believe that goboy has it right when he says that eternal life is not earned but received through grace. All that is required to be saved is to confess your sins to God with a sincere, contrite heart and ask for His forgiveness in the name of Jesus.
Assuming that Tim did this, he is surely saved. If not, then there is no hope for any of us.
Well, I’m a Christian… and there’s only one part of the above with which I’d take issue. You say “God has the final say in the whole deal.” My understanding (which may be wrong, I am not St Thomas Aquinas, nor do I play him on TV) is that God has given us free will, which means that we decide whether or not to accept His grace. Sin is a voluntary separation of ourselves from God.
And, as others have pointed out, it’s not for us to comment on the state of anyone else’s soul. McVeigh wouldn’t have to convince anyone if he truly and sincerely repented; God would know. God is all-knowing, it’s in His job description…
I find some of the other thoughts in this thread interesting, particularly those about serving in the military. It seems to me that an excessive patriotism - putting love of country before love of God - might constitute a voluntary separation from God. And it seems to me, personally, that killing people, for whatever reason, is wrong… but there are circumstances where it might be necessary to fight evil in a literal sense. (Though it’s terribly easy to be wrong about this. The Albigensian Crusade - my choice for “low point” in the history of organized Christianity, and one which saw massacres which make McVeigh’s act look relatively minor - was conceived and executed by people who thought they were acting with the highest of motives.)
I don’t know. If I was called up to Her Majesty’s armed forces tomorrow, I’d like to think I’d have the courage to refuse on conscientious grounds. But, would I have been right to do so in, say, World War II?
