Would it be moral for the State to make heresy illegal?

[St_Francis]

Well, in the OT, God did not have a problem instructing people to kill, sometimes entire towns if but one person there committed blasphemy!! How would you feel if you lived in that town and never committed blasphemy, but since one guy did, now you and your entire town must die by order of God?

I recognize the NT got rid of these laws, but still, it shows at one time, God WAS apparently ok with it.

In 1 Kings, God instructs them to kill all the people in an area, because they had worshipped Ba’al, *except *for the 7000 who had not abandoned God. I think that when God instructed the death of an entire town or nation, He knew that all those who would die were guilty. Maybe because those who didn’t want to worship evil had left? Maybe because God ensured that angels would arrange their departure? Any way you look at it, I’m sure God did the right thing.

 

[Fixed_Gauge]

Would it be moral for the state to punish heresy with the death penalty?

I’m only asking about the moral aspect. So I’m not interested in the likelihood or posibility of any state doing this, but simply if, let’s say, Monaco made heresy illegal, would Catholics be able to deny it as immoral? St Thomas Aquinas says that murder of the soul (heresy) is worse thsn murder of the body, and many heretics were killed in the Spanish Inquisition. I know the numbers are greatly exaggerated, but let’s be honest, heretics were killed for being heretics, and repentabt heretics were mercifully strangled. ISIS executes those who don’t convert to Islam, but that’s immoral because islam is wrong. It’s a different story when talking about Catholicism because Catholicism is the correct religion. And if you accept that the state exists to help us be more virtuous, then stopping heresy fron spreading using lethal force would be justified.

It probably wouldn’t be prudent to kill heretics because ideas can spread over the internet and so on, but again, my question is about the morality of this. So was it moral to kill those heretics back during the Spanish Inquisition?

There doesn’t appear to be anything inherently immoral about making heresy illegal. Considering that the laws of the state may be used to limit evil or unnatural behavior among its citizens (as well as punish those who disobey), one may easily argue that because heresy is a form of evil that can be committed by inhabitants of a state, their government has every right to enforce law upon those who participate in this immoral activity.

After all, certainly heresy, if widespread enough, could be very damaging for the well being of a tribe of citizens (even if the citizens don’t agree that it would be bad for them). Would it not seem reasonable that a government take action to protect its people?

Think about it another way. A live and let live attitude will never get anywhere, because some group will eventually grow tired of putting up with the other opinions, seize power, and start to write its views into law. Isn’t it better that the ones in power create a Catholic state, rather than a radical Islamic or militant atheist government?

 

[JimG]

Interesting question. In the west, we may be approaching a point where it will be heretical and criminal to oppose same sex marriage.

 

[Darryl_Revok]

There doesn’t appear to be anything inherently immoral about making heresy illegal. Considering that the laws of the state may be used to limit evil or unnatural behavior among its citizens (as well as punish those who disobey), one may easily argue that because heresy is a form of evil that can be committed by inhabitants of a state, their government has every right to enforce law upon those who participate in this immoral activity.

The problem is that words like “immoral”, “evil”, “unnatural” presuppose a level of validity and truth to a specific set of religious/moral guidelines; the only way enforcement of these guidelines works if a government is run by a specific sect.

After all, certainly heresy, if widespread enough, could be very damaging for the well being of a tribe of citizens (even if the citizens don’t agree that it would be bad for them). Would it not seem reasonable that a government take action to protect its people?

At what level does protection become active harm? If enough citizens engage in a certain heresy, then it becomes impossible to control. The only choice is accommodation or destruction. Take the situation of the Huguenots in France. They could either convert under duress, or take flight. Half a million chose to do so: to England, Germany, and the American colonies. In the end, this greatly damaged France, economically, politically, and morally. What’s worse, the Revolution left these efforts all moot.

Think about it another way. A live and let live attitude will never get anywhere, because some group will eventually grow tired of putting up with the other opinions, seize power, and start to write its views into law. Isn’t it better that the ones in power create a Catholic state, rather than a radical Islamic or militant atheist government?

The very act of “seizing power” and “[writing] views into law”, no matter what the ideological basis, inevitably taints the new regime with the stain of illegitimacy. All this does is ensure that the citizens resent the new form of government, and will most likely undermine it at the earliest sign of weakness. Franco seized power and wrote his views into law. Right after he died, Spain wasted no time in allowing abortion, divorce, same-sex marriage, et. al. Mussolini ended up dangling from a rope. Pinochet and his henchmen are anathema. And so on, and so on.

 

[Casilda]

What then is the relation of law to morality? Law cannot prescribe morality, it can prescribe only external actions and therefore it should prescribe only those actions whose mere fulfillment, from whatever motive, the state adjudges to be conducive to welfare. What actions are these? Obviously such actions as promote the physical and social conditions requisite for the expression and development of free—or moral—personality… Law does not and cannot cover all the ground of morality. To turn all moral obligations into legal obligations would be to destroy morality. Happily it is impossible. No code of law can envisage the myriad changing situations that determine moral obligations. Moreover, there must be one legal code for all, but moral codes vary as much as the individual characters of which they are the expression. To legislate against the moral codes of one’s fellows is a very grave act, requiring for its justification the most indubitable and universally admitted of social gains, for it is to steal their moral codes, to suppress their characters.
ATTRIBUTION: R.M. MacIver (1882–1970), Scottish sociologist, educator. The Modern State, ch. 5, Oxford University Press (1926).

 

[BornInMarch]

If a heresy is cruel (demands human sacrifice) or a scam (“I can teach you the secrets of the universe if you give me all your Earthly Possessions!”) then yes the State should make it punishable (by death, exile, or prison sentence).

Those are the only two instances where it is justified.

Even if Islam was correct, ISIS would be doing their faith a disservice because their violent aggression turns people away from it. Also, ISIS is breaking the tenants of their own religion (the Koran also has a “thou shall not kill” part).

Likewise, if a catholic nation punished heresy with death, it would cause other potential converts to fear Catholicism and to form misconceptions about the faith. Also, the whole “thou shall not kill” aspect of our faith might hinder such a policy.

 

[Captain_America]

OP: In my book, you give away everything when you call the decisionmaker here “the State” rather than “the People.”

This is a democracy. People can have many reasons to vote (yes, I once ran into a woman who voted for Clinton because she liked his hair).

A MAJOR motivator in people’s lives is their values, their core commitments, their vision of justice, the good, the purpose of it all.

Yes, it’s moral for a democracy to make decisions based on the moral claims of its people (in fact, that’s really at the end of the day what we do do).

With respect to heresy, I would take it this way: the government we make really should have provision for the moral education of its people: people learn the important things we believe in. I think offenders to this don’t really need punishment.

 

[Conradine]

I’m not the right person to judge on a moral ground.
I can say it would be useless and harmful to public well being.

 

[Ignatius]

Would it be moral for the State to make heresy illegal?

It would be meaningless, there is no way to determine what denominations basis for heresy to use.

 

[JimG]

It would be meaningless, there is no way to determine what denominations basis for heresy to use.

The state will use its own definition of heresy, although it doesn’t use the word heresy. What the state deems heretical will be subject to civil penalties. Witness some of the ‘human rights tribunals’ in some places.