Reminds me of the doctrine that some Christians have, where anybody who dies before a certain age automatically goes to heaven, while people above that age can go to hell. The question then becomes: why don’t parents kill their children, thus saving them from the all-too-likely possibility of eternal torture?
(Fun fact: most people who believe in hell can be made very uncomfortable if you look at the unfortunate implications of what they believe.)
I was once in a debate in which I pursued that point at some length. I don’t think most people who believe in Hell find that particular point more difficult to rationalize than most of their other religious beliefs, but I bring it up because it led to a quote which, while only tangentially relating to rationality, strikes me as pretty memorable.
“That seems like an awfully selfish reason not to kill a million babies.”
I once read about a radical Christian sect in the early modern era that would kidnap newborn children, baptise them, and immediately kill them. I’m quite annoyed that I can’t seem to remember the source, and particularly whether it was a real or fictional sect.
Reminds me of the doctrine that some Christians have, where anybody who dies before a certain age automatically goes to heaven, while people above that age can go to hell. The question then becomes: why don’t parents kill their children, thus saving them from the all-too-likely possibility of eternal torture?
(Fun fact: most people who believe in hell can be made very uncomfortable if you look at the unfortunate implications of what they believe.)
I was once in a debate in which I pursued that point at some length. I don’t think most people who believe in Hell find that particular point more difficult to rationalize than most of their other religious beliefs, but I bring it up because it led to a quote which, while only tangentially relating to rationality, strikes me as pretty memorable.
“That seems like an awfully selfish reason not to kill a million babies.”
I once read about a radical Christian sect in the early modern era that would kidnap newborn children, baptise them, and immediately kill them. I’m quite annoyed that I can’t seem to remember the source, and particularly whether it was a real or fictional sect.