I’ve been sitting here trying to decide whether you’re making a really good point, or one that’s fatally flawed. If a day or two of torture could actually produce an eternity of bliss, I’m wondering why it wouldn’t be worth doing. The problem is that it’s just too big an If. You have to assume that Heaven (i.e. the possibility of an eternity of bliss) does exist; and that it’s possible to cause someone to sincerely convert by torturing them; and that such a conversion would suffice to get them into Heaven. And my (and I think other people’s) objection to the torture technique is based on the fact that we reject one or more of these assumptions.
I’m not sure if there is an answer because philosophers have been debating this question for ages and still haven’t conquered it. My personal view is that it is impossible to rectify a Good & powerful God with Evil. Could you possibly find a way to justify someone who promotes concentration camps as good? If not, you’ll never find a way to do it when you feel God is the one behind it. Maybe there is something here.
I don’t agree but we’ll leave that for another thread.
Here’s why I think this isn’t true.
“Conversion” or “faith” is something that can only be done internally and voluntarily. It is a process of surrender. Belief through physical coercion is no belief at all. It only serves the delusion of those fools that would justify it.
Jesus described the Pharisees who prayed publicly only to be seen by others. He said “They have their reward” The same principle applies. Those who would justify physical force for conversion only serve themselves. They would be the ones who claimed to cast out devils in his name and Jesus said “you never knew me” He also said not to put our treasure in the temporary which corrupts with time. That means not to surrender our souls for the sake of preserving the physical body. He who saves his life will lose it.
We are called to relieve suffering as a physical expression of love and in recognition of our unity.
The problem isn’t with the people like you, who don’t believe it; the problem is with people like the Inquisition ( and modern equivalents ) who do believe it.
I largely agree, but that doesn’t mean people won’t try anyway. Not to mention, a lot of people seem to think that forcing people to go through the motions is conversion.
IMHO, even if the idea that any suffering in life is trivial compared to the afterlife ( which I don’t believe ) is true, it’s an unhealthy idea. It tends to produce nasty behavior, and a callous attitude towards others.
I think the problem is that you all think you know what you’re talking about, when really you know nothing at all. You talk about the Inquisition and how it was undertook by people of the Church, but do you really know what was going on? Do you know who these people were, what their intentions were, or how a planet and its people are ruled over? Think about that before you try to explain suffering or your own religion.
True. It’s even reflected in those who want to legislate their religious beliefs to protect society.
To be fair, you’ve said more than once that religion deserves no special treatment and I agree. I think that also means that religion deserves no special condemnation for merely reflecting what runs through so many aspects of our humanity. The desire to control things and manipulate others is reflected in government and business and just human relations in general. Religion has no unique form of this.
Don’t I know it. I’ve seen it a bunch and it always seemed unfortunate and a little pathetic. “Say the magic words and get a ticket to heaven” It’s ludicrous.
I would say you’re blaming a human failing on something that is just an idea. People can be honorable caring theists or atheists. People can be arrogant selfish atheists or theists. It’s not an idea that makes it so.
By all means, enlighten us.
I never expected to be defending the Spanish Inquisition! 
I think the number one reason they’re wrong is that the existence of heaven is known, at the final resolve, through faith, and faith is not an adequate justification for actions affecting others like this.
I do believe that people can be truly converted under duress - consider the Stockholm Syndrome. But pain inflicted upon others for an uncertain award, without consent, is never justified.
So, while it would be interesting to discuss whether torture is justified given that heaven exists, it is wrong because such a thing is not certain.
Someone’s ruling our planet? I must have missed the memo.
The Stockholm Syndrome is an interesting psychological phenomenon but I still resist true conversion through duress. I think tradition is a powerful conversion tool in the sense that children taught certain dogma from youth as eternal truths can have a very hard time recovering and asserting their own intellectual, and emotional freedom. In this emotional duress it can appear that they are indeed converted but IMHO their conversion may be in form only. It is only real when you realize you are free to choose, have some concept of what you are choosing, and choose for yourself.
Add to that, acts of cruelty, even when the motivation is “getting someone to heaven” are damaging to the person who commits them. The process as described by Jesus {whom the Inquisitors professed} is to demonstrate the love of God through our own acts of love.
As I see it, allowing someone, including ourselves, the uncertainty you speak of is an act of love. Trying to compel that person from uncertainty to certainty through any means {torture being the most extreme} is not an act of love, and contrary to what Jesus taught. It, therefore, cannot be used in service to Christ, or as a path to heaven.
It probably helps if you at least throw into dubiety the conventional notion of God as a separate humanlike (albeit immortal and all-powerful) consciousness.
a) If you go out and stub your toe, your toe hurts. From this shall we conclude that you do not have a generally benign attitude towards your toe? Your toe, presumably, makes no assessments of it and doesn’t worry overly much, but if we pretend that it could …?
b) Behold, universe is. Spacetime and energymatter: like so! And all of its little subsets and subprocesses, like meteors and evolutionary life-development and the general principles of social-individual intelligence, is this cool or what? God said: I like doing/being universe, this is fun! C’mon, meteors hardly ever fall on people’s heads, if meteors were a recurrent risk, people would’ve either not evolved there or evolved to inhabit areas safer from meteor strikes or evolved to be better able to dodge them. And genocide? Hey, the reason your stomach rolls at the notion is because the laws governing behavior for an individually-conscious social species like yours say that y’all got to outgrow that kind of behavior (war, too, btw) or you die off eventually. No biggie, if that were to happen, a more appropriately developed individually-conscious social species will evolve more successfully in some other system, and their society and culture will be quite glorious. Oh, please, quit taking it so damn personal! You are not the individual creature you appear to think you are! You are me, silly! A tiny local manifestation of me, same as everything else! You are me having fun being universe. In your case, being a representative example of a specific species, heck even a specific subcultural group within a cultural motif in a specific timeframe of that specific species etc etc, on one planet blah blah blah, you know the routine.
c) Quit that. Quit that now! It does not mean I do not care about you. The ultimate laws governing That Which Is, including what it is all in the process of becoming, ultimately favor only good things. You have opportunities and promise within that. You do not need to be a passive spectator in the darkened movie theatre of your own life, go out there and observe and make things good. Are you not me in disguise? Did I not say you were?* Go forth and look upon the others, the other people and the other beings and the other things that exist, and recognize them as also me in disguise and deal with all accordingly!
- for you Judeo-Christian folk, check out Psalms 82. Not that the notion is in any way specific to JudeoChristianity — if anything, more to show that even here, where the typical offhand conceptualization is generally quite different, you will still find this.