Is Jeffrey Dahmer in Heaven?

[BishopM 114]

This is where I lose faith in religion. How can someone who lived a pious life, was a good person, supported their family and raised their children right go to the same heaven as a monster who lured people to his home where he would brutally kill them, do disgusting things to their bodies, and then eat them, just because they repented at the end?

Without a doubt, this is one of the most difficulty points of theology to wrestle with...if we wrestle with our own minds. I personally have a hard time with it as well, as with many Christians (even my closest Priest).

[Danno 1,228]

This is where I lose faith in religion. How can someone who lived a pious life, was a good person, supported their family and raised their children right go to the same heaven as a monster who lured people to his home where he would brutally kill them, do disgusting things to their bodies, and then eat them, just because they repented at the end?

I hear what your'e saying but then again, I have known quite a few parents with this same ability to forgive all when the child finally gets it right.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

I heard it through a reliable source that he is in fact in heaven, living out eternity as a vegan.

Have you never heard the screams of the carrots as they are ripped without mercy from the ground!?!?

[HeatDeath 430]

This is where I lose faith in religion. How can someone who lived a pious life, was a good person, supported their family and raised their children right go to the same heaven as a monster who lured people to his home where he would brutally kill them, do disgusting things to their bodies, and then eat them, just because they repented at the end?

If it makes you feel better, my mother has the same sticking point. It's very common.

This is because one of the most insidious aspects of our damage is that it makes us think that we are basically good people, and that the universe, at least in middle-class Western Civilization [herein defined as including anybody with the network bandwidth and access to technology to post on a web forum], is at least basically similar to what God had in mind when He made us and the universe, and is unfolding more-or-less the way it should.

The universe is damaged. Very, very damaged. Sentient beings die. All the time. So often that if the sun were to dim each time our number was reduced by one, it would be a continuous 1 hz flicker that everyone would soon learn to ignore. This is not how things are supposed to be. Most humans, everywhere, seem to have at least a dim realization of this, that the universe is damaged in some way, that death is bad, and wrong, and a symptom that something very dark, some damage to the universe itself has occurred, and is occurring.

And we are damaged with it. Not just the Hitlers, Dahmers and Mengeles, but all of us. Each and every one of us. The most spiritually dangerous thing about being in a reasonably prosperous middle class is that we become capable of pretending that as long as we have oxygen at standard temperature and pressure, and live in an ecosystem that generates enough food to survive, and have friends and family we can get along with reasonably well, and even have a little technology to entertain us and make us comfortable and healthy for a short while, we can be fooled into thinking that everything is still ok, and that we are still ok with it. It isn't. And we aren't.

This is what Jesus meant when He said it is harder for a rich person to go through the eye of a needle than it is for them to enter Heaven. God can't even begin the process of fixing us until we see that we are broken, and poor, and miserable, and starving and naked.

This reality, this fact that almost everyone seems to miss, of the extreme spiritual poverty of humanity, in in the midst of apparent riches, is not unique to Christianity. And everywhere it crops up, it is accompanied by the same devastating accusation: that we somehow caused this damage, both to the universe, and to ourselves. The Abrahamic religions do not have a monopoly on the myth of the Garden of Eden. The idea that human action caused immense spiritual damage and distortion to the entire universe, and us with it, is virtually a human cultural universal. Every culture on this planet, from Polynesia to India to Egypt, and yes, to ancient Israel and from them to the modern West, remembers something like this occurring. They may call the human agent Eve, or they may call her Pandora. They may call the place Eden, or Babel, or something else entirely. But the entire human race, when not drunk on it's own magnificence, remembers something going terribly, terribly wrong, and it being our fault.

We can't correct it ourselves. But if we can at least force ourselves to look at it, and see it, to stop staring into our laptops and ipods, into our exercise regimes, self help programs, and man made religions of rules and regulations, to stop pretending that our utter spiritual and moral poverty is, at worst, a slight blemish on an otherwise awesome creation that we can buff out given the right technology or the right ideology or the right social organization, to at least see the damage and the wounding for the deep and apparently fundamental twisting that it is, God can begin to fix us. It will take a death and resurrection for us to be fixed, but He wlil do it, because He loves us, if we let Him.

[HeatDeath 430]

For those of you for whom it's just too big a pill to accept, all at once - who feel that seeing the damage of the universe would in some way force them to acknowledge a God they don't believe in and don't want to believe in, here is a beautiful essay by a Jewish atheist, a very aggressive atheist for that matter, dealing with the death of his brother, which describes very eloquently the same damage I am trying to show you. His horror at just how far the universe is from anything any sane mind would intentionally create is something atheists and theists can share. [i freely admit to borrowing some of his verbiage, hereby returned, to try to also make his point.]

If I wasn't already convinced that death has already been defeated, that a man came and preached the supreme importance of love and the spiritual damage of humanity, allowed Himself to be killed, and rose from the dead to prove His point, I would, like this author, still be horror-struck at the inhumanity of the universe, and resolutely determined to fight it with every last breath in my body. Because atheists and theists do not really disagree about the damage - just about what has been and remains to be done to fix it.

You can be a child of God, or a child of the Enlightenment, and still see the damage to the universe for what it is - an evil and a horror. But once you see the damage, please do consider: Whatever caused this damage: did it damage us? What might that damage be preventing us from seeing?

http://yudkowsky.net/other/yehuda

Edited October 13, 2010 by HeatDeath

[Ban Hammer 12,867]

Have you never heard the screams of the carrots as they are ripped without mercy from the ground!?!?

i knew bugs bunny was evil!

[^_^ 5,021]

If it makes you feel better, my mother has the same sticking point. It's very common.

This is because one of the most insidious aspects of our damage is that it makes us think that we are basically good people, and that the universe, at least in middle-class Western Civilization [herein defined as including anybody with the network bandwidth and access to technology to post on a web forum], is at least basically similar to what God had in mind when He made us and the universe, and is unfolding more-or-less the way it should.

The universe is damaged. Very, very damaged. Sentient beings die. All the time. So often that if the sun were to dim each time our number was reduced by one, it would be a continuous 1 hz flicker that everyone would soon learn to ignore. This is not how things are supposed to be. Most humans, everywhere, seem to have at least a dim realization of this, that the universe is damaged in some way, that death is bad, and wrong, and a symptom that something very dark, some damage to the universe itself has occurred, and is occurring.

And we are damaged with it. Not just the Hitlers, Dahmers and Mengeles, but all of us. Each and every one of us. The most spiritually dangerous thing about being in a reasonably prosperous middle class is that we become capable of pretending that as long as we have oxygen at standard temperature and pressure, and live in an ecosystem that generates enough food to survive, and have friends and family we can get along with reasonably well, and even have a little technology to entertain us and make us comfortable and healthy for a short while, we can be fooled into thinking that everything is still ok, and that we are still ok with it. It isn't. And we aren't.

This is what Jesus meant when He said it is harder for a rich person to go through the eye of a needle than it is for them to enter Heaven. God can't even begin the process of fixing us until we see that we are broken, and poor, and miserable, and starving and naked.

This reality, this fact that almost everyone seems to miss, of the extreme spiritual poverty of humanity, in in the midst of apparent riches, is not unique to Christianity. And everywhere it crops up, it is accompanied by the same devastating accusation: that we somehow caused this damage, both to the universe, and to ourselves. The Abrahamic religions do not have a monopoly on the myth of the Garden of Eden. The idea that human action caused immense spiritual damage and distortion to the entire universe, and us with it, is virtually a human cultural universal. Every culture on this planet, from Polynesia to India to Egypt, and yes, to ancient Israel and from them to the modern West, remembers something like this occurring. They may call the human agent Eve, or they may call her Pandora. They may call the place Eden, or Babel, or something else entirely. But the entire human race, when not drunk on it's own magnificence, remembers something going terribly, terribly wrong, and it being our fault.

We can't correct it ourselves. But if we can at least force ourselves to look at it, and see it, to stop staring into our laptops and ipods, into our exercise regimes, self help programs, and man made religions of rules and regulations, to stop pretending that our utter spiritual and moral poverty is, at worst, a slight blemish on an otherwise awesome creation that we can buff out given the right technology or the right ideology or the right social organization, to at least see the damage and the wounding for the deep and apparently fundamental twisting that it is, God can begin to fix us. It will take a death and resurrection for us to be fixed, but He wlil do it, because He loves us, if we let Him.

It sounds to me like someone with your point of view might be supportive of policies that lead to more poor and starving and naked people.

Two more dots connected.

Edited October 13, 2010 by \

[HeatDeath 430]

It sounds to me like someone with your point of view might be supportive of policies that lead to more poor and starving and naked people.

Two more dots connected.

Wow. Just... wow. Really?

How could there possibly be more poor, starving and naked people? My whole point was that that classification already includes everyone, including me, and including you.

But if you think you're rich and comfortable and happy, I guess that's ok too. <shrug>

Edited October 13, 2010 by HeatDeath

[^_^ 5,021]

Wow. Just... wow. Really?

How could there possibly be more poor, starving and naked people. My whole point was that that classification already includes everyone, including me, and including you.

But if you think you're rich and comfortable and happy, I guess that's ok too. <shrug>

You're complaining about the middle class and their iPods and material comforts and how that's impeding humanity. It is a reasonable conclusion that you'd rather they be starving and their children dying of malaria.

[HeatDeath 430]

You're complaining about the middle class and their iPods and material comforts and how that's impeding humanity. It is a reasonable conclusion that you'd rather they be starving and their children dying of malaria.

Classic false dichotomy. You don't logic so good in the morning, do you?

No. I'd rather they be immortal beings of light and power. The emergence of the middle class is the greatest victory against the darkness humanity has ever achieved, so much so that I actually doubt we did it without outside help. The only danger of "middle-classness" is that a disturbing percentage of humanity are seemingly content to stop here, when 1.8 of us still DIE. Every. Single. Second.

It's like finding a homeless guy with a big tumor. You take him to the shelter, and he gets a bath, clean clothes, and a hot meal. But he's still dying of cancer. If he's like most of humanity, he will be in total denial about the cancer, and even once he acknowledges it's existence, he will still fight you every step of the way if you try to get him to come to the hospital to have it removed. He says it's a part of him, it's natural, and he likes it. Even if he admits to not really liking it, his next fallback will be to disbelieve that anything can be done about it, even though the hospital is right across the street, and he can plainly see tumors being removed in operating rooms through the street level windows. Even if he admits that it is possible to remove the tumor, his next fallback will be to impugn the motives of the surgeons.

This is not the thinking pattern of a rational human being. Can you see that?

Edited October 13, 2010 by HeatDeath

[^_^ 5,021]

Logic? I thought we were talking about immortality and God. My bad.

[HeatDeath 430]

Logic? I thought we were talking about immortality and God. My bad.

Yes, it was. You're a scholar and a gentleman for admitting it, and I accept your apology.

Are you willing to amend your error, by rereading what I said and attempting to take the ideas therein seriously, even if you disagree with them?

[^_^ 5,021]

Scholar and a gentleman? Take that back.

And no I can't take these ideas seriously. I'm not wired that way. Sorry.

[chri'stina 190]

If it makes you feel better, my mother has the same sticking point. It's very common.

This is because one of the most insidious aspects of our damage is that it makes us think that we are basically good people, and that the universe, at least in middle-class Western Civilization [herein defined as including anybody with the network bandwidth and access to technology to post on a web forum], is at least basically similar to what God had in mind when He made us and the universe, and is unfolding more-or-less the way it should.

The universe is damaged. Very, very damaged. Sentient beings die. All the time. So often that if the sun were to dim each time our number was reduced by one, it would be a continuous 1 hz flicker that everyone would soon learn to ignore. This is not how things are supposed to be. Most humans, everywhere, seem to have at least a dim realization of this, that the universe is damaged in some way, that death is bad, and wrong, and a symptom that something very dark, some damage to the universe itself has occurred, and is occurring.

And we are damaged with it. Not just the Hitlers, Dahmers and Mengeles, but all of us. Each and every one of us. The most spiritually dangerous thing about being in a reasonably prosperous middle class is that we become capable of pretending that as long as we have oxygen at standard temperature and pressure, and live in an ecosystem that generates enough food to survive, and have friends and family we can get along with reasonably well, and even have a little technology to entertain us and make us comfortable and healthy for a short while, we can be fooled into thinking that everything is still ok, and that we are still ok with it. It isn't. And we aren't.

This is what Jesus meant when He said it is harder for a rich person to go through the eye of a needle than it is for them to enter Heaven. God can't even begin the process of fixing us until we see that we are broken, and poor, and miserable, and starving and naked.

This reality, this fact that almost everyone seems to miss, of the extreme spiritual poverty of humanity, in in the midst of apparent riches, is not unique to Christianity. And everywhere it crops up, it is accompanied by the same devastating accusation: that we somehow caused this damage, both to the universe, and to ourselves. The Abrahamic religions do not have a monopoly on the myth of the Garden of Eden. The idea that human action caused immense spiritual damage and distortion to the entire universe, and us with it, is virtually a human cultural universal. Every culture on this planet, from Polynesia to India to Egypt, and yes, to ancient Israel and from them to the modern West, remembers something like this occurring. They may call the human agent Eve, or they may call her Pandora. They may call the place Eden, or Babel, or something else entirely. But the entire human race, when not drunk on it's own magnificence, remembers something going terribly, terribly wrong, and it being our fault.

We can't correct it ourselves. But if we can at least force ourselves to look at it, and see it, to stop staring into our laptops and ipods, into our exercise regimes, self help programs, and man made religions of rules and regulations, to stop pretending that our utter spiritual and moral poverty is, at worst, a slight blemish on an otherwise awesome creation that we can buff out given the right technology or the right ideology or the right social organization, to at least see the damage and the wounding for the deep and apparently fundamental twisting that it is, God can begin to fix us. It will take a death and resurrection for us to be fixed, but He will do it, because He loves us, if we let Him.

Well, I think you said that all very well.

[chri'stina 190]

I hear what your'e saying but then again, I have known quite a few parents with this same ability to forgive all when the child finally gets it right.

If we see God as a father, which I do, then we can't be mad when he can forgive a child for their mistakes when they are repentant. Now that I am a mom, I can't imagine the love for my son being completely severed. I have tried to live my life for God so far. I avoid doing or watching certain things. I realize that someone who made such horrible choices could go to the same heaven that I plan to go to. But if we were the ones to decide spiritual justice instead of God, we would probably be much more harsh and would have to end up pointing fingers at ourselves in the end.

If we tried to make a scale of "badness" to judge people when they die, it will differ from person to person depending on their own views. Some might think someone who does such and such isn't good enough for heaven, while another person will have a much higher or lower threshold for bad. That is why a perfect being who also has the role of Father has to dictate this, not us. And if I get to the same heaven as someone like Hitler if he repented, I don't regret my life on earth trying to be a Christian. Some people make this world worse, and some try to make it better, and some don't care either way. If I have a positive impact on anyone, and helped then, then why isn't that enough to live a life the way I do even if I go to the same heaven as people who did bad things. We need people on earth willing to do good to make up for all the bad that is done here.

Edited October 13, 2010 by chri'stina