Sunday, August 5, 2018

Wishing Nonexistence Upon Others

I often wish that irrational people, people who care about their emotions more than they care about logical and moral truths, did not exist.  All the side effects of irrationality and emotionalism--cultural constructs, false ethical ideas, injustice, and disunity--would cease to exist entirely if the people who indulge in these things did.  Unintelligence and immorality only exist because unintelligent and immoral beings do.

I am not ashamed of admitting this--it is not even a sinful desire.  In fact, it is entirely just, as long as it is accompanied by a desire for the humans in question to choose salvation instead of damnation and annihilation (2 Peter 3:8-9).  Despite its moral permissibility, statements and attitudes like this are almost universally rejected by Christians.  And yet their rejection does not make it unjust.

Mental nonexistence is the exact thing that God himself will reduce the souls of the unsaved to (Ezekiel 18:4, Matthew 10:28).  And if God, whose nature is the standard for morality, will punish the wicked with nonexistence, then the cessation of their conscious existences must be just.  How, then, can it be immoral to wish this nonexistence upon them, when this is exactly what they deserve?  It is unjust to wish for someone to not receive a just fate if they actively remain in their ideological and moral errors.  As long as one does not forgo the desire for the redemption of the wicked, it cannot be evil to wish for them to not exist; if an incorrigibly irrational, selfish, and cruel person will not change for the better, then it is just to wish for that person to cease to exist.  There can be nothing wicked about wanting someone to receive exactly what they deserve.

It is one thing to wish that people who have not directed their minds towards alignment with reality did not exist.  It is an entirely different thing to actively murder or execute people for ideological offenses that the Bible never prescribes death for.  Of the two, only the latter is actually wrong.  It follows that Christians should only treat the latter as evil.

There is never an obligation to tone down one's righteous aggression for the sake of someone's feelings, even when it manifests itself in a genuine ferocity that terrifies, irritates, or offends others.  No one has to be as verbally harsh with opponents of rationality as I am.  But there is nothing problematic if they do display the same harshness to the incorrigibly stupid and self-absorbed.

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