What of the mentally infirm?
Offline This question is aimed more towards Christians and others with a reward/punishment system for an afterlife. One thing that bothers me about it is the question of how a divine entity or law would punish those who are mentally deficient or have mental conditions that would have them classified as 'not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect' within the judicial system. If they are held to the same standards as a normal person, note that the 10 commandments alone aren't the whole guideline, then this God seems frankly cruel. These people would be considered by a human system to be worthy of lesser punishment or providing them with aid instead of torment. If they are judged differently then instead the question of culpability becomes a necessary one, what is required for one to be 'culpable' to the law of a divinity, and to what degrees? If the Messiah is the only way in whatsoever, and if so then what of those who die before their minds could even comprehend the gospel, or those who die before childbirth? For that matter what of someone with amnesia or Alzhiemers disease, they can't confess sins they don't remember, and in some cases their personalities change radically. In the latter case their mental faculties begin to slip faster and faster, I could point out the cruelty of such a disease but I'll leave it to the question of forgiveness, are the culpable for their actions in this state? Are they as culpable as they would be a fully functioning human being? And if so then how is your divinity worth worshipping?
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Which also leaves another question. Often times, the theist argument seems to be that people are formed "perfect" by God and it is the "sinful" nature of man and his free will that causes all of the trouble. Hmm, so if God created people to be exactly the way that he intended for them to be, would that not imply that people who are born with mental illnesses and such were created that way by God because he wanted them to be that way ? If that were the case, why would they need to be forgiven at all ? Why would God need to forgive a man for the very nature that God gave to him ?
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
Well, those are all fair questions. Of course I would not be so bold as to assert the real answers.
What of the mentally retarded or the autistic? I know a number of them who have violated god's laws on at least one level. However, from what I can tell, they could not have known that what they did was a problem.
What about the children? Specifically the children directly killed by god? The flood is the obvious one but the children of Sodom are a close second. What did god have against a baby in it's crib when he was punishing his parents?
For that matter, remember that god does not even get around to telling man that putting your willy in non-girly bits is a problem for another couple of books. So how could the dudes who wanted to rape Lot's angel visitors have know that that would piss god off badly enough to set off a volcano nearby?
Here I will note that god is just fine with Lot's daughters get him totally wasted so that they could play bouncy bouncy a few days later. Twice even!
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I don't mean that being retarded or anything like that is a sin, I mean more like the culpability question, if a person wouldn't have the capacity to understand that what they did was wrong could they still be punished.
I don't mean that being retarded is a sin either. What I have in mind for those examples is if something that a tard does would otherwise be a sin, is it still a sin?
Let me give you an example of a guy I knew a few years ago:
So there is this autistic guy. Part of his diagnosis is that he simply does not have his brain wired for sexual activity. Seriously, this is a guy who could walk through the playboy mansion and not sport wood.
Somewhere along the line, his father decided that he needed to get laid and bought him a hooker. OK, daddy and the hooker are both going to hell by standard rules. I don't have a comment on that in this context.
However, the autistic guy learned that his own personal Rahab was a person who could make him feel special inside in a way that he simply did not understand. So he asked daddy to have her come back Over and over. The hooker finally called an end to the deal because it was too creepy for even a hooker to be getting involved with.
So in this context, we have a guy who is not wired for sex asking for a hooker. Has he committed the sin of lust?
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