This next post is a continuation on my three-part series entitled “A Devil’s Question” concerning this question, posed by an atheist some time ago on the blog site WartburgWatch.com.

“If you agree than an innocent child goes immediately to heaven for all eternity when they die, and you also agree with the commonly held position that only a minority of adults become Christians and make it to heaven, then, especially in an unbalanced mind, that could justify killing children. An ill individual could easily believe that they are actually doing a good thing, ensuring that those children receive a life of bliss at Jesus side that they might not otherwise have.

I am not trying to be cruel or insensitive, but if you are going to look for answers or possible reasons then no idea should be automatically excluded because it is unpleasant.”

Murdering children in order to compel them to heaven makes their existence functionally irrelevant. Individual self-awareness and ownership thus of one’s reason, and therefore ownership of one’s own self is and can only be the ultimate meaning of human existence.  That is, if we are able to exist at all, by the intention and resolutely conscious action of a Divine Creator (NOTE: thanks to John Immel for his persistence in proclaiming this TRUTH in the face of even Christian opposition…it is by this persistence that I realized that not only is he right, but it is the ONLY way man can possibly exist as a self-aware entity) then it must be for the purpose of each individual consciousness to be the sole owner of his or her self; for any other reason for creation of the human being is impossible because it constitutes a redundant act of the Omnipotent Perfection; which of course is impossible because it would mean that the Divine Omnipotent Perfection is not perfect after all.  For it is obviously impossible that man can BE God for God (the single greatest reason why I utterly and categorically reject any form of determinism from any field of study or any religion or philosophy; it is a lie because it means that creation itself is redundant; thus, impossible).  And, in addition, if the purpose of our creation is to be merely an extension of a collective functioning as LIKE a single entity, with a single consciousness and a single purpose, then it is redundant that God should have made us individually self-aware; for there is only a need for a single created consciousness to exist and to fulfill the purpose of his/her creation (for what meaningful, philosophical, or moral thing can the collective do that the individual single entity cannot do, and really, do better and more efficiently when it comes to intent and meaning?)  All numbers do is determine how much.  And “how much” is irrelevant as far as philosophy is concerned.  “Is” and “is not” relating to “why” and “why not” is the length and breadth of philosophy, and one does not need math for this (a terrible disappointment to the Pythagoreans among us, I know).  God needs only one number of created consciousnesses in order to establish the moral and existential dichotomy, and to exhibit the supremacy of His meaning, power and LOVE, and this number is:  one.  And it’s pretty hard to make it a numbers game if the only number you have to work with is ONE.  (Which again, is why all meaning is going to always be metaphysically based, not physically.  So much for the philosophy of science…sorry, Mr. Hawkings.  Metaphysics is alive and well, Doctor, I’m afraid.)  Thus, in light of the vast number of human consciousnesses in existence, we can conclude this:  The numbers are simply a function of how much, and so instead of loving just one person, which would still be perfect love, God decided that He wanted the “how much” to be MORE than ONE, while still keeping the essence of ONE, that is making consciousnesses individual.  God has chosen to love more than ONE single individual consciousness.  Because…why not?  One love is perfect.  One love extended to many is no less perfect, but it has the advantage of being spread over many more “ones’s”; and in this case, more IS better, because the more people there are, the more dispersed is that perfect love; it spreads, grows, and allows man to be the conduit of it to his fellow man; which, if this is a wonderful thing that God can do, why NOT allow man to do the same thing seeings as how it isn’t at all redundant to share God’s love; for true freedom is being as much like God as man can be without seeking to make God a redundant hypocrite by attempting to usurp His power (like Satan does; he wants to be God instead of God, which is irrelevant and metaphysically nonsensical; but then…he’s a liar, so…).

Killing, then–among the many other reasons it is so abominable–limits the reach of perfect love, which, in light of there being more than ONE person, limits man’s purpose…not necessarily for God, but for himself, which is again to be as much like God as possible because this is the very definition of individual freedom, which again is the sole reason man can BE.

To BE, and to BE like God.  And God is eternally LIVING as Himself.

THAT’S perfect freedom, and so killing, being antithetical to God’s purpose, as the Creator, MUST be antithetical to man’s rational purpose.  By God allowing man to reproduce, God’s love can be extended to more individuals.  Which…more love is always a good thing.  Not necessarily a more perfect version of love, but an extension of perfect love, which is GOOD, because any extension of good is GOOD.  Extension by imitation is no redundancy.  Duplication is redundancy.  And within this, the functional existential truth remains unchanged in light of God’s love and mercy:  man is created to be HIMSELF, alone, and owned and possessed by no one else.  Thus, the reason any ONE exists is:  to exist to themselves.  The foundation of the purpose of creation is the INDIVIDUAL, and the individual’s divinely mandated right to claim and possess him or herself.  To be the sole doer and to bear sole responsibility for his or her volition.  Anything that detracts from this (determinism, the enforcement of biblical “roles”, the coercion into collective group think, forced altruism/morality via force or violence, etc.) detracts from the divine purpose of man.  And it is impossible to be the sole doer and to bear sole responsibility for volition if one has been murdered.  To put it bluntly, if not a bit vulgarly:  a person cannot fulfill his or her divine purpose for living if he or she is dead. 

The reason that God demands that no man murder another is precisely because of this: by violating the right of individuals to own themselves, we make existence moot. Through murder you claim the right to possess another human being; to commit larceny of the body.  It is immoral at its root, because the entire point of God Creating is for Creation to EXIST and to BE itself, and this is particularly true with regards to human beings; and it can thus never be a “loving” thing–or anything in accordance with God’s rational purpose–to murder anyone.

Now, moving on to another facet of my argument, which is that the of killing-children-as-mercy posit dooms all humanity to hell in the end.

The idea behind the greatest commandments (love God, love human beings) is to affirm the relevancy of existence. If we are to assume that murdering children leads to salvation for them, and is a “loving” thing to do, the inevitable outcome is instead, as I just said, a destruction of all humanity.  NO ONE is saved at the end of human existence, is the logical conclusion of the proposition. At the end of the string of murders is no one left but the adults, and they have forsaken Christ and their moral innocence by renouncing God’s purpose for Creation: to exist.

I’ll elaborate.

Since it is morally and metaphysically impossible to murder out of love–as I have explained above–it is also inevitable that this scheme designed to “make sure all the little ones go to heaven” is doomed before it even starts. There is only one way to get to heaven, and that is be morally innocent.  (A fact which is lost on I think even the majority of Christians in the U.S. who have traded in Jewish foundational philosophy as the grounds for the Christian faith for pagan Greek metaphysics.  Oh…don’t believe me?  Ever heard of “penal substitution”?  This is the idea that Jesus was punished for our sin.  That he wasn’t a “sacrifice” for sin at all, but was punished (wrongly, by definition then, making God UNJUST) for the bad stuff WE did.  Which has nothing to do with the Jewish ritual of the sin or Passover sacrifice, because you cannot render man morally innocent, which is how man must be to God for salvation, by punishing for sins…again, by definition.  So again, nothing to do with the Torah.  NOTHING.  Because it is a FALSE western, pagan, neo-Greek (read “medieval European”) metaphysical idea).

Anyway.  Through murder, we renounce the moral innocence we obtained through Christ.  And really, to appeal to rank common sense:  who is willing to condemn themselves to hell in order to send a child, who may or may not accept Christ (even if we DO believe in the reality of “chance”), to heaven? If he or she (the child) were to choose Christ, then the murderer would have renounced Christ for nothing by declaring God a liar and proclaiming that murder is, in fact the primary GOOD man can do in the world, and that to DIE is the singular purpose for LIVING. No…no rational Christian, or even person, I submit, could agree to the “logic” of this idea.

Then again, I know a LOT of Calvinists, so…who said rationality has anything to do with anything?  Heck, even NON-Calvinists agree that there really IS a “paradox” between free will and predestination, making the root foundation of Christian metaphysics impossibly contradictory and destroying all anti-Calvinist arguments, no matter how otherwise rational, in the process, and thus conceding the determinist’s entire argument…aaaaand by conceding Reformed determinism they also make anyone’s argument about pretty much anything moot and pointless, leaving us nothing left to do except admit that we don’t really exist.  We are either God, or nature, or…nothing.  But certainly not ourselves.

But…whatev.  No one said this blog stuff was going to be easy.

Or even read.  LOL

Anyway.

My point is this:  Don’t we think that it is better that those who will choose Him are saved, rather than EVERYONE go to hell by declaring that God is a liar and demanding it be morally accepted that dying is the point to living? Better than man condemning the entirety of his race to hell by rendering his very existence pointless with his evil ideas? This is really the logical conclusion of this kill-the-kids-for-their-own-spiritual-good proposition. As is the case with the Calvinists–which I still maintain have much more in common with atheists than either one of them realize–metaphysical inconsistency forms the basis of this argument.