{"id":3280,"date":"2009-11-14T07:52:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-14T15:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=3280"},"modified":"2009-11-14T07:52:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-14T15:52:00","slug":"heaven-for-climate-hell-for-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/heaven-for-climate-hell-for-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Heaven For Climate, Hell For Company"},"content":{"rendered":"

The front page of my New York Post<\/em> this morning, following the news that foreign terrorists are to be brought to New York to be tried\u00a0in civilian courts, showed a mock-up of a New York City postcard featuring the Twin Towers, over-written with the message: “Welcome to New\u00a0York\u00a0\u2026 NOW DIE!” The subhead is: “9\/11 fiends coming here for trial\u00a0\u2014 next stop is hell.” \u00a0[Note:\u00a0 This is the print edition. They don’t seem to reproduce the print front page on their\u00a0website<\/a>.] \u00a0[Note also: \u00a0The wording there follows that on a popular T-shirt you can buy in NYC tourist shops: \u00a0WELCOME TO NEW YORK. NOW GO HOME.] \u00a0One of the headlines inside (pages 4-5) reads: “Now send these fiends to hell!”<\/p>\n

Similarly, President Obama, memorializing those who were killed at Fort Hood, said: “We know that the killer will\u00a0be met with justice\u00a0\u2014 in this world, and the next.”<\/p>\n

“In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath,” observed Dr. Johnson. I suppose the same is true of tabloid headlines and presidents\u00a0speaking in the diction of “ceremonial deism.”\u00a0 I always find myself wondering, though, how many people, and to what degree, really\u00a0take comfort in these references to cosmic justice. I vaguely recall that most Protestant theologians, and some Catholic ones, have long since\u00a0concluded that hell is probably empty. The very conservative and orthodox RC Paul Johnson, in his Quest for God<\/em> is careful to qualify his\u00a0remarks about hell accordingly (see the Johnson quote on \u00a0p. 175 of We Are Doomed<\/em>:\u00a0 “Those who find themselves in Hell\u00a0\u2014 if anyone\u00a0does\u00a0\u2026” etc.)<\/p>\n

In popular belief\u00a0\u2014 below the level of academic theology and argumentative log-rolling, I mean\u00a0\u2014 is belief in hell still widespread? Is even belief in an\u00a0afterlife? I mean real belief, real gut behavior-moulding conviction.<\/p>\n

Speaking of lapidary inscriptions, here is George Orwell, writing\u00a062 years ago<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Skelton is not an easy poet to get hold of, and I have never yet possessed a complete edition of his works. Recently, in a selection I had\u00a0picked up, I looked for and failed to find a poem which I remember reading years ago. It was what is called a macaronic poem\u00a0\u2014 part\u00a0English, part Latin\u00a0\u2014 and was an elegy on the death of somebody or other. The only passage I can recall runs:<\/p>\n

Sepultus est among the weeds,
\nGod forgive him his misdeeds,
\nWith hey ho, rumbelo,
\nRumpopulorum,
\nPer omnia saecula,
\nSaecula saeculorum.<\/p>\n

It has stuck in my mind because it expresses an outlook totally impossible in our own age. Today there is literally no one who could write of death\u00a0in that light-hearted manner. Since the decay of the belief in personal immortality, death has never seemed funny, and it will be a long time before\u00a0it does so again. Hence the disappearance of the facetious epitaph, once a common feature of country churchyards. I should be astonished to see a\u00a0comic epitaph dated later than 1850.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The kinds of intellectual convolutions Dinesh D’Souza goes through in the book I posted\u00a0about<\/a> last week, are interesting to those who are interested, no doubt. I think Orwell is right, though. The widespread, bone-deep conviction of\u00a0an afterlife, the conviction that could generate those comic epitaphs, died out among European Christians sometime in the 19th century. You’ll get an\u00a0affirmative answer\u00a0from big majorities if you poll Americans (or even Europeans) on belief in the afterlife, but actual behavior suggests this belief is a pale shadow of its\u00a0former self.<\/p>\n

And of course, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his pals don’t think they are going to hell at all. Last year they all offered to plead guilty before a\u00a0military tribunal and accept execution. They think they did meritorious acts, for which they will be rewarded in heaven. Likewise with the suicide\u00a0pilots and bombers. Now that<\/em> is belief in an afterlife.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The front page of my New York Post this morning, following the news that foreign terrorists are to be brought to New York to be tried\u00a0in civilian courts, showed a mock-up of a New York City postcard featuring the Twin … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3280"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3281,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3280\/revisions\/3281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}