Mortal Sin

[Fat Bottom Gurl]

Spoiler Alert for Dexter Show Episode "Easy as Pie" - if you've not seen this episode yet, then do not read any further.

In the Dexter episode Easy as Pie, the Camilla character is dying of cancer and is in great pain. She tells Dexter that she watched her husband die in a similar fashion and while she would have liked to have assisted him to die, being a Catholic it would be a mortal sin to do so. She herself wants to die, but again she cannot commit suicide because of her religious beliefs. She asks Dexter to help her - since he is not Cathloic it would not be a mortal sin for him.

Dexter brings her a Key Lime Pie and puts a lethal substance into it and he tells her that this pie will "help her" She understands that Dexter has added something to the pie and she willingly eats the pie - and dies.

Now - how is this any different than if she had taken an overdose of pills (that Dexter could have handed her)? Hasn't she still committed suicide - albeit "assisted" suicide?

Just made me wonder about the reasoning of religious minds.

 

[shadron]

For a catholic the sincere intent to commit the sin is the sin, not necessarily the actual act. It makes sense that is is true; the only reason why we use the act to judge legal guilt is that the intent is not apparent to anyone but the actor. Guilty as charged, at the point where she asked Dexter to help her out, if she really trusted him to follow through, regardless of the later consequences.

She's also sinning by leading Dex into sin (I suppose you'd look at it as "increasing his burden"). She's guilty of not properly training her mind about the consequences of her actions (thinking she's getting around her sin by passing it off). Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. Its a great way for the show's writer to show how much he doesn't know about religion.

The nice thing about arguing ethics with god is that he can judge all these things that are hidden from all the rest of us. This is actually a very good argument; while you think you might "get away" with something in the real world of humans, between you and god everything is an open book.

 

[Achán hiNidráne]

She tells Dexter that she watched her husband die in a similar fashion and while she would have liked to have assisted him to die, being a Catholic it would be a mortal sin to do so. She herself wants to die, but again she cannot commit suicide because of her religious beliefs.

What often floors me is that religious people, in the face of the obvious and admitted cruelty and hypocrisy, will not get a clue and come to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, their religion is WRONG!

THIS is what makes religion absolutely evil: Terrifying people with stories of damnation and everlasting torture into not trusting their own moral intuitions, thus rendering them incapable of making truly ethical decisions.

 

[jimmygun]

It is amusing that religious people say that the particular will of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, vengful god can so easily be tricked.

 

[shadron]

What often floors me is that religious people, in the face of the obvious and admitted cruelty and hypocrisy, will not get a clue and come to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, their religion is WRONG!

THIS is what makes religion absolutely evil: Terrifying people with stories of damnation and everlasting torture into not trusting their own moral intuitions, thus rendering them incapable of making truly ethical decisions.

The problem I see here is that "trusting [people to exercise] their own moral intuitions" can lead to rather backwards results. Giving nutters free rein to shoot or stab or choke as their conscious or conscience tells them to do is probably not an overall plus in society. Not that religion is any big help in this case... And, using imagined punishments is never a really good idea, because some day one may actually come to realize they're not real, and their propped-up values system breaks down.

 

[shadron]

It is amusing that religious people say that the particular will of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, vengful god can so easily be tricked.

That seems to be typical of casual religionists (usually those who inherited it from their parents) who have never been challenged to think about what they stand for. Unfortunately, the other kind, who convert, have a tendency to become fanatics, so, overall, the naive are to be preferred.

 

[Scazon]

Well God can clearly change his mind, otherwise there'd be no point in praying. When my mother, a Catholic, was seriously ill a few months before her death, she asked me what was the Church's current teaching on euthanasia. I knew just enough about it to tell her that they were agin it- but also that any priest worth his communion wine would look politely the other way. There's a huge gap between official dogma and the beliefs and practices of the punters.

 

[shadron]

Nope, god can't change his mind.

Right after Martin Luther broke with the Catholic church, Protestantism became finely divided over a number of what we'd consider useless theological points. John Calvin took Scotland for a walk (along with Zwingli in Switzerland) with the idea that god already knows what is going to happen in the future, so trying to propitiate him is useless. You should spend your life living the proof that you are in the elect, but you are never assured, and you can't really do anything about it anyway. A truely joyful religion, which is not really emphasized today.

"...they (Calvinists] maintain that the act of choosing [good or evil] cannot be the difference between salvation and damnation [and therefore charity is not a virtue to them]. Rather, God must first free the individual from his or her enslavement to sin, and then the regenerated heart naturally chooses the good. The individual does not cooperate but is freed and irresistibly follows God. (--predestination^WP)"

Humanism with a touch of hedonism is much easier on the twisty-thought gland.

 

[Bikewer]

I remember reading The Fatal Shore, a history of the colonization of Australia. Although the place was in general a penal colony, it was found by the authorities that they needed a special place to keep particularly nasty/recalcitrant convicts. So, they shipped them off to a small island where they labored cutting timber for the Royal Navy, under especially brutal conditions.
So brutal in fact, that there are letters from the (predominantly Irish) convicts to the effect that they would willingly commit suicide rather than go on, but that the authorities refused to send a priest to take their confessions.....

Pre-suicide confession? An interesting concept....