A while back I saw Rick Perry receive thunderous applause
for the number of executions in the state of Texas. More
recently I saw his video in which he claims that he is not
ashamed to admit he is a Christian. Thanks to Rick, I started
thinking about God and punishment.
On many conceptions of God, God punishes and rewards people
for their deeds and misdeeds when they reach the afterlife.
This afterlife might be in Heaven or Hell. It might also be
a post first life Resurrection in the flesh followed by
judgement and reward or punishment. In any case, those who
believe in God generally also believe in a system of divine
rewards and punishments that are granted or inflicted post
death.
Interestingly, people who believe in such a divine system
generally also accept a system of punishment here on earth.
Some, like Perry, strongly support capital punishment here
on earth while also professing to be of the Christian faith
(and thus believing in divine punishment).
The stock justifications for punishment (like executions)
include retribution, reparation, and deterrence. In the case
of retribution, the idea is that a misdeed warrants a
comparable punishment as a just response. In the case of
reparation, the idea is that the wrongdoer should be
compelled to provide compensation for the damage done by
his/her misdeeds. Deterrence, obviously enough, aims at
motivating the wrongdoer to not do wrong again and to
motivate others not to do wrong.
When it comes to punishment, it seems reasonable to accept
certain moral limits. At the very least, the severity and
quantity of punishment would need to be justified. At the
very least, the punishment should be on par with the crime
in terms if its severity and quantity (otherwise it merely
creates more wrong). Punishment without adequate moral
justification would seem to be morally unacceptable and
would seem to be wrongdoing under the name of punishment
rather than justice.
Getting back to God, suppose that God exists and does
inflict divine punishments for misdeeds. If this is the
case, then it would seem to be unreasonable, perhaps even
immoral, for human courts to inflict punishment for crimes
that God also punishes.
First, if God punishes people for their misdeeds, then
there is no need to seek retribution for crimes here on
earth. After all, if someone believes in divine justice,
they would also need to believe that mortal retribution
is unnecessary-after all, whether we punish the wrongdoer or
not, just retribution shall occur after the wrongdoer dies.
If we do punish a wrongdoer, then God would presumably need
to subtract out our punishment from the punishment he
inflicts-otherwise He would be overdoing it. As such, mortal
retribution is simply a waste of time-unless, of course, it
takes some of the load of an allegedly omnipotent being.
Second, if God rewards good deeds and punishes misdeeds,
then there would seem to be no need for reparations here on
earth. After all, if someone steals my laptop, then God will
see to it that s/he gets what s/he deserves and so will I.
That is, all the books will be balanced after death. As
such, if someone believes in divine justice, then there
seems to be little sense in worrying about reparation here
on earth. After all, if we will just be here for a very
little while then what will my laptop matter in the scope of
eternity? Not a bit, I assure you.
Third, if God inflicts divine punishments and hands out
divine rewards, it would seem absurd to try to deter people
with mortal punishments. If someone believes that murderers
are not deterred by the threat of Hell (or the hope of
Heaven), then they surely would not think that the mere
threat of bodily death would have deterrent value. To use an
analogy, if I knew that a friend of mine would shoot anyone
who tried to hurt me, it would be odd of me to tell someone
who threatened to harm me that I would poke them with a
toothpick. After all, if the threat of being shot would not
deter them, the threat of a poke with a toothpick surely
would not work.
It might be argued that we need to punish people here
because not everyone believes in God. To use an analogy, if
I told people that I am protected by a sniper armed with a
.50 caliber rifle, they might still make a go at me if they
did not believe in the sniper. As such, I would want to show
them my pistol to deter them. Likewise, to deter
non-believers we would want to have jails and lethal
injections to scare them away from misdeeds. After all,
while some people might not believe in God, everyone
believes in prison.
Of course, the fact that we rely on prisons and other
punishments for deterrence does seem to indicate that we
regard God’s divine justice as having very
little deterrence value-unless, of course, it is claimed
that criminals are atheists or agnostics.
There is also the usually concern that God does not seem
particularly concerned with deterring misdeeds. After all,
while religious texts present various threats of divine
punishment, there is no evidence that God actually punishes
the wicked and this certainly cuts into the deterrence value
of His punishments. To use an analogy, imagine if I told my
students that cheating in my class would be punished by the
Chair of Student Punishments for Philosophy Classes and the
punishment would take place after graduation. Imagine that a
student turned in a plagiarized paper and cheated like mad
on the tests, yet I did nothing and simply entered in grades
as if everything was fine and nothing happened. Imagine
that the students never see the alleged chair and the only
evidence they have for her existence is the fact that she is
listed on my syllabus and a little sign I put up on an empty
office. As might be imagined, the students would
not deterred from cheating.
If there really was a Chair of Student Punishment for
Philosophy Classes, she would make an appearance in the
class and administer punishments as soon as she was aware of
the violations. The same would seem to be true of God.
Crudely put, if He does exist and metes out justice, then we
would not need to punish (at least in the case of the
misdeeds that concern Him). If we do need to punish, then it
would seem that either He does not exist or He does not
dispense divine justice.
