Philosophical musings...

There's an idea that I have that I think might be a bit more unusual than most folks realize.

See, I believe that there's never anything inherently good about pain or suffering.

Now, that "inherently" is a really tricky idea. It's pretty easy to explain, though. I'm saying that, if something happens because of pain (or suffering - I'm using 'pain' for generic 'suffering' because it's short), and you could cause the exact same thing to happen, without pain, overall, the universe is a better place.

The easy application is that, when you have a cost free way to alleviate pain, you should use it. If you have food that will go bad, but could feed someone who's hungry and wants it, you should feed that person. If a person is feeling down, and you smile at them, and cheer them up, you've done something good.

But harder application is that vengeance is wrong. Now, that means that, if someone steals, won't steal again, and has returned what was stolen and paid reasonable damages, the odds are it would be wrong to punish that person for that person's own sake.

A lot of people think that doing something wrong merits punishment, even if the wrong has been undone. I disagree with that idea.


I think there *ARE* times when you could impose penalties morally, regardless of that. To some degree, applying punishment to provide deterrance is reasonable, especially in a human society,where we never know if someone has repented of wrongdoing. Plus, if the penalty for stealing is returning what you stole, and reasonable costs, why not steal? If you get caught, you just have to give it back, and pay a bit...

But,the really tough application of this theory is that I also feel that the common Christian idea of divine justice is completely wrong. ("Common" meaning "Frequent", not "something all Christians hold in common".)

There are multiple ideas of divine justice: most Christians seem to believe in hell (eternal punishment for wrongdoing); the Catholic church has purgatory, where one is punished for sins that don't totally damn a person. A HUGE number believe that Jesus had to die horribly and painfully in order to satisfy God's sense of justice. There was a sin committed, so someone had to suffer.

I reject all of those notions. All of them put some intrinsic goodness on suffering. All of them have wickedness being balanced by pain.

But it's not pain that erases wickednes... it's happiness that does.

This notion came to me while I was dealing with just how pervasive sexual assault was. I was dealing with another person's pain over being raped, and I was thinking about how I'd like to hurt the people who caused this pain, and then suddenly, I realized that I didn't want that at all.

I wanted the woman who'd been raped to be better. That was all that was really important.

That's not to say I didn't want the rapist to be punished... but that the real harm wasn't an unpunished rapist, but an unhealed victim.

It was later on that this idea developed into the idea that pain could never erase that crime, and that the whole concept of vengeance was screwy.

If someone stole $1,000 from you, you might want revenge. But if someone picked up $1,000 that belonged to you, handed you a different set of bills worth one thousand dollars, and you realized that somehow the money had doubled (economics aware people: let's pretend that this could happen miraculously without hurting anyone or anything. Yes, I know, it's impossible... that's why I said "miraculously"), you probably wouldn't be angry at the person, and probably wouldn't want revenge (even though the person did, technically, steal your money).

If you can prevent hurt, or erase hurt, *THAT* is what will fix things. Vengeance might be pragmatic at times (e.g., making sure that 'crime does not pay') but it's nothing, in and of itself.

That made me sure that, if the Christian view of the universe is correct (an all powerful, all wise, all good deity running things) that the Universalist heresy was, in fact, correct.

(I read, on a website about Unitarianism, that the reason for the name "Unitarian Universalists" was a pair of Christian heresies. If I'm remembering right, the Unitarian heresy was that Jesus wasn't God. "There's only one God... thus, Jesus couldn't have been Him." The Universalist heresy was that everyone, eventually, would make it to heaven, because God couldn't/wouldn't leave someone to suffer for eternity.)

I suppose, in the end, that is what might have predicted my break with Christianity... because I don't know of any specific Christian church that doesn't consider universalism a heresy.

Philosophical musings...

There's an idea that I have that I think might be a bit more unusual than most folks realize.

See, I believe that there's never anything inherently good about pain or suffering.

Now, that "inherently" is a really tricky idea. It's pretty easy to explain, though. I'm saying that, if something happens because of pain (or suffering - I'm using 'pain' for generic 'suffering' because it's short), and you could cause the exact same thing to happen, without pain, overall, the universe is a better place.

The easy application is that, when you have a cost free way to alleviate pain, you should use it. If you have food that will go bad, but could feed someone who's hungry and wants it, you should feed that person. If a person is feeling down, and you smile at them, and cheer them up, you've done something good.

But harder application is that vengeance is wrong. Now, that means that, if someone steals, won't steal again, and has returned what was stolen and paid reasonable damages, the odds are it would be wrong to punish that person for that person's own sake.

A lot of people think that doing something wrong merits punishment, even if the wrong has been undone. I disagree with that idea.


I think there *ARE* times when you could impose penalties morally, regardless of that. To some degree, applying punishment to provide deterrance is reasonable, especially in a human society,where we never know if someone has repented of wrongdoing. Plus, if the penalty for stealing is returning what you stole, and reasonable costs, why not steal? If you get caught, you just have to give it back, and pay a bit...

But,the really tough application of this theory is that I also feel that the common Christian idea of divine justice is completely wrong. ("Common" meaning "Frequent", not "something all Christians hold in common".)

There are multiple ideas of divine justice: most Christians seem to believe in hell (eternal punishment for wrongdoing); the Catholic church has purgatory, where one is punished for sins that don't totally damn a person. A HUGE number believe that Jesus had to die horribly and painfully in order to satisfy God's sense of justice. There was a sin committed, so someone had to suffer.

I reject all of those notions. All of them put some intrinsic goodness on suffering. All of them have wickedness being balanced by pain.

But it's not pain that erases wickednes... it's happiness that does.

This notion came to me while I was dealing with just how pervasive sexual assault was. I was dealing with another person's pain over being raped, and I was thinking about how I'd like to hurt the people who caused this pain, and then suddenly, I realized that I didn't want that at all.

I wanted the woman who'd been raped to be better. That was all that was really important.

That's not to say I didn't want the rapist to be punished... but that the real harm wasn't an unpunished rapist, but an unhealed victim.

It was later on that this idea developed into the idea that pain could never erase that crime, and that the whole concept of vengeance was screwy.

If someone stole $1,000 from you, you might want revenge. But if someone picked up $1,000 that belonged to you, handed you a different set of bills worth one thousand dollars, and you realized that somehow the money had doubled (economics aware people: let's pretend that this could happen miraculously without hurting anyone or anything. Yes, I know, it's impossible... that's why I said "miraculously"), you probably wouldn't be angry at the person, and probably wouldn't want revenge (even though the person did, technically, steal your money).

If you can prevent hurt, or erase hurt, *THAT* is what will fix things. Vengeance might be pragmatic at times (e.g., making sure that 'crime does not pay') but it's nothing, in and of itself.

That made me sure that, if the Christian view of the universe is correct (an all powerful, all wise, all good deity running things) that the Universalist heresy was, in fact, correct.

(I read, on a website about Unitarianism, that the reason for the name "Unitarian Universalists" was a pair of Christian heresies. If I'm remembering right, the Unitarian heresy was that Jesus wasn't God. "There's only one God... thus, Jesus couldn't have been Him." The Universalist heresy was that everyone, eventually, would make it to heaven, because God couldn't/wouldn't leave someone to suffer for eternity.)

I suppose, in the end, that is what might have predicted my break with Christianity... because I don't know of any specific Christian church that doesn't consider universalism a heresy.