Understood. But this seems to be something you believe as a brute fact as opposed to something that you can support logically. Would you agree with that?*
I can start with three postulates: define Heaven as a place completely in union with God, define Hell as a place completely without God, and define sin as a choice that will bring you further away from God, and therefore Heaven. From here, I can say that a sin is something that harms your relationship with yourself, your relationship with God, or your relationship with others. Weakening any of these relationships will decrease your unity with God and make it harder to be in ultimate union with Him when you die.
Now for a person to commit a mortal sin, it has to be a sin (by definition), the person has to know it is a sin (Otherwise it would be a venal sin. If a person knows that something is a sin, and commits it anyways, it shows something severely wrong with their relationship with themselves and their relationship with God.) and the person has to act from their own volition. (Otherwise they didn’t choose to sin, and without choice there can be no commitment.)
By definition, the wrong thing to do is never the right thing to do. And we are meant to fulfill our Creator’s plans, which include one day living in union with him. Therefore sinning, something that prevents us from living in union with God, is never the right thing to do.
Indeed, and I suppose the same argument could be made here. That the possibilities of love and good are greater in the whole of humanities future than my own and my future is my own to give.
Yes I would be interested. Thanks.
Earlier in the thread someone talked about why not killing the child could be a sin of omission, using an example of a bolder. Let’s say that you are at the top of the hill, and a giant boulder is starting to roll downhill. There are children playing in it’s trajectory, and by the time it has reached them, it will have enough momentum to cause significant damage to the children. With the momentum it has now, it won’t damage you if you stop it. Not stopping the boulder would be a sin of omission.
Now say that the boulder is moving fast enough to damage your hands, but will most likely kill the children at the bottom of the hill. You still have a responsibility to stop the boulder, and not doing so would still be a sin of omission, because allowing the boulder to hit the children would damage your relationship with others (the children won’t be there and their parents will be upset with you) and damage your relationship with yourself (letting children die would cause you much distress.) Self-harm is a sin (it hurts your relationship with yourself, and probably with God depending on the reasons behind it), and it is in this case as well. However, because you are doing the right thing, the effects of the sin are limited to the damage that occurs in your hands, and do not affect your soul.
Next is the scenario where the only way to save the children is to throw yourself under the boulder before it reaches them. In this case there is no right or wrong choice. Either thing you do will harm your relationship with others and yourself (you’ll be dead.) The better thing to do would be to imitate Christ and sacrifice your life for theirs, but no one’s going to blame you too much for choking (or objectively choosing in .002 seconds to not die). We honor St. Kolbe because he did something hard, something that he believed to be the right thing. He let pity and love overcome his survival instincts, and we respect this.
However, the case of a person choosing to sacrifice their eternal rest for the lives of everyone on the planet is something completely different. Lives are important. They are the reason for this universe. However, a person’s soul is more important than their life. Everyone is called to go to Heaven, so there should never be a scenario where going to Hell is the right thing to do. Saying that your sacrificing your soul is the right thing to do is a sin of pride, similar to the sin of pride that a few suicide victims fall into. You are saying that there is no way that God could have known or planned for the situation that you found yourself in, that your sorrow and burden is too great. Two wrongs (murder and pride) do not make a right.
Just out of interest, if the aliens gave you a gun and demanded that you commit suicide or they’d kill everyone else on earth (but leave you alive). What do you think would be the moral thing to do?*
The reason I ask this is that (from my understanding of Catholic teaching) suicide is objectively a mortal sin and hence inherently wrong (just like murder of an innocent). *
Alternatively (in case my understanding of Catholic teaching is wrong) what if the aliens demanded you kill an adult human and that human understood the situation and told you to go ahead?*
If the aliens demanded that I kill myself or the world would end, I would without hesitation. Even the slim chance that they would keep their word would be worth it to me. But this case is similar to the boulder, where a person throws themselves under a boulder to save a group of children. It would not be a sin, because I am doing it to purposefully save other’s lives, and my life is my own to sacrifice.
If the aliens told me to kill someone who also wanted me to kill them, I would as well, because the person explicitly gave me control of their life, and we are both doing it to save lives and not end them.
Ugh, stupid space considerations. I don’t mean to skip statements, there’s just a 60000 character limit. I think I answered everything above, but if you have any further questions, just ask.
And it is a pleasure discussing with you.
) in Hell, what do you want, a gold star? You can’t be made into a saint, because by definition a saint is someone in Heaven. The problem is I’m not quite sure what I’m arguing against. Or if I’m even arguing at all.