@sonship said
If you two rapists. One born in the first century AD (CE) and the other in 2000.

The first thought the sun circles the earth, sperm is just a jelly like substance, the stars are set against a black solid dome in the sky, doesn't know what curved space / time is but knows he can fall off a cliff, knows about sunburn but not about ultra violet light or infra-red ...[text shortened]... f his knowledge?

Which one will be more able to justify himself before God as to his crimes?

Anyone else?
I mean else?

If you two rapists. One born in the first century AD (CE) and the other in 2000.

The first thought the sun circles the earth, sperm is just a jelly like substance, the stars are set against a black solid dome in the sky, doesn't know what curved space / time is but knows he can fall off a cliff, knows about sunburn but not about ultra violet light or infra-red light, thinks garbage causes flies to be created.

The second rapist knows the earth goes around the sun, stars are huge gaseous disks billions of miles away, millions of sperm cells can potentially fertilize an egg, gravity is the effect of the curvature of space / time around mass, microscopic eggs from flies grow to be maggots and flies, understands why staying out in the sun light too long hurts his skin, and atoms are composed of neutrons, protons and electrons.

If these two rapists have to give an account for the women they forcefully violated leaving them pregnant and in misery, with haunting memories of violence, and possibly self hate - WHICH one of the rapists will be in a better situation because of his knowledge?

Which one will be more able to justify himself before God as to his crimes?

@sonship said
Which one will be more able to justify himself before God as to his crimes?

@sonship said

Which one will be more able to justify himself before God as to his crimes?

@FMF
No one can pretend to believe.
Probably no one can pretend that they use to either.

@divegeester
Don't trouble yourself longer on it.
It makes no sense to you.

@sonship said
Anyone else?
I mean else?

If you two rapists. One born in the first century AD (CE) and the other in 2000.

The first thought the sun circles the earth, sperm is just a jelly like substance, the stars are set against a black solid dome in the sky, doesn't know what curved space / time is but knows he can fall off a cliff, knows about sunburn but not about ultra ...[text shortened]... use of his knowledge?

Which one will be more able to justify himself before God as to his crimes?

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.
But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

~ Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999
US physicist (1933 - )

---------------
if i were intelligent i would weigh in with thoughts of my own

alas

@rookie54 said
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.
But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

~ Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999
US physicist (1933 - )

---------------
if i were intelligent i would weigh in with thoughts of my own

alas

@rajk999 said
Weinberg is mistaken. Religion cannot make a good person to evil things.

@rookie54

I've been enjoying your atmospheric Zen like poetry.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I think history is littered with people doing evil things in the name of God/gods.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I think history is littered with people doing evil things in the name of God/gods.

@sonship said
So very true starting, with Cain in Genesis and ending with Mystery - Babylon the Great in Revelation 17.

With atheism there is no final accounting.
Perpetrators dissolve peacefully into oblivion.

With God there IS a final accounting.
One of the reasons we tremble to pass judgment too easily on others.

You long for the former situation.
Christians recognize the latter.

@rajk999 said
Evil people do evil. Good people do good.
There are no exceptions