I was raised LDS and while I no longer practice any religion I still think the Mormon concept of heaven is an interesting one.
(Imma skip some of the finer details here for clarity - but I’m happy to explain further if anybody has questions.)
Mormons believe that (almost) everyone goes to heaven - eventually. Upon death, evil people go to Hell until they repent their sins. After truly repenting and recanting their hateful ways, their soul ascends to heaven. The LDS concept of Hell isn’t one of physical tortures - Hell is simply a perfect understanding of your sins - your own shame and regret, from truly understanding the pain you inflicted upon your spiritual siblings.
So ol’ Adolf would be left to stew in a celestial timeout, alone with the weight of his sins - from every petty insult to the pain of every child slaughtered by his command. Damned to remain there until he is truly, utterly sorry. Not the false sorrow seeking to relieve the pain of a guilty conscience, but the harrowing sorrow that comes only with the true recognition of one’s own responsibility and the willingness to do anything required to make amends and never sin again.
Any Hitler who emerged from Mormon Hell would be a very different person from the one who went in.
[Digression: regarding “almost” everyone going to heaven - if you want to be truly eternally damned in Mormon theology you have to follow a simple, two step process.
Have a “perfect knowledge” of God - e.g. meet Him face-to-face.
Act against Him anyway.
Mostly it’s Lucifer and his minions that qualify. Maybe Judas Iscariot too. Such souls are damned to “Outer Darkness” from which there is no release. Still not a place of fire and brimstone though.]
The problematic bit here is if the person (say, Hitler, in this case) is a true psychopath. This is where the mind/body (or soul, if you prefer) dichotomy starts to fall apart. I do not believe that free will exists, but I can give a light version of this that doesn’t depend on a complete rejection of free will.
We know as a medical fact that a history of traumatic brain injury (tbi) has a strong correlation with violent and aggressive behavior. Over half the people in prisons for violent crime have a history of tbi, versus about 10% in the general public. We can find similar correlations to other events that are known to physically alter people’s brains, from malnutrition to childhood trauma to growing up in a system of racism and violence. These experiences literally and physically rewire brains and alter neuroanatomy. These neuroanatomical changes result in neuropsychological changes, which result in behavioral changes. Think about today’s story of the banking manager who was recently arrested for shoplifting a couple of hundred dollars worth of goods from Target. She is a kleptomaniac (not sure if that’s the current term, apologies if not). She has no more conscious control over her actions than a person with epilepsy has control over their seizures.
Now, if your physical form were to go away, those impulses would theoretically be gone. You couldn’t feel any guilt over them - you had virtually no control. If you keep your physical form (as some Catholics believe), you’d theoretically keep your neuroanatomy. Then your “repentance” would have to be god fixing your brain, as it were, which raises the question why he didn’t just do that in the first place.
Obviously there’s way more problems just around this subject than I’m getting into here - memories of trauma that altered your limbic system, genetic and epigenetic drivers of behavior… is there a “fix” for that? - but the root of the problem is that the religions, in order to identify a behavior as “sin,” have to make assumptions about behavioral plasticity and more importantly a behavioral driver separate and apart from the physical brain, that’s just implausible. The facts are simply incompatible with that kind of redemption.
Agreed! What’s the level of personal responsibility for sins (or virtues!) vs our surroundings or flukes of neurology.
The older I get the more tragedies I see and fewer villains.
In Mormon theology such influences are considered as well! The flip side of understanding your own sins is that others will understand them too - so if you killed someone during a psychotic break beyond your control, your victim will see and understand exactly what happened. It’s the truest form of empathy. Seeing through the eyes of everyone you ever interacted with, for good or ill.
I was raised LDS and while I no longer practice any religion I still think the Mormon concept of heaven is an interesting one.
(Imma skip some of the finer details here for clarity - but I’m happy to explain further if anybody has questions.)
Mormons believe that (almost) everyone goes to heaven - eventually. Upon death, evil people go to Hell until they repent their sins. After truly repenting and recanting their hateful ways, their soul ascends to heaven. The LDS concept of Hell isn’t one of physical tortures - Hell is simply a perfect understanding of your sins - your own shame and regret, from truly understanding the pain you inflicted upon your spiritual siblings.
So ol’ Adolf would be left to stew in a celestial timeout, alone with the weight of his sins - from every petty insult to the pain of every child slaughtered by his command. Damned to remain there until he is truly, utterly sorry. Not the false sorrow seeking to relieve the pain of a guilty conscience, but the harrowing sorrow that comes only with the true recognition of one’s own responsibility and the willingness to do anything required to make amends and never sin again.
Any Hitler who emerged from Mormon Hell would be a very different person from the one who went in.
[Digression: regarding “almost” everyone going to heaven - if you want to be truly eternally damned in Mormon theology you have to follow a simple, two step process.
Mostly it’s Lucifer and his minions that qualify. Maybe Judas Iscariot too. Such souls are damned to “Outer Darkness” from which there is no release. Still not a place of fire and brimstone though.]
That’s sounds amazing!
The problematic bit here is if the person (say, Hitler, in this case) is a true psychopath. This is where the mind/body (or soul, if you prefer) dichotomy starts to fall apart. I do not believe that free will exists, but I can give a light version of this that doesn’t depend on a complete rejection of free will.
We know as a medical fact that a history of traumatic brain injury (tbi) has a strong correlation with violent and aggressive behavior. Over half the people in prisons for violent crime have a history of tbi, versus about 10% in the general public. We can find similar correlations to other events that are known to physically alter people’s brains, from malnutrition to childhood trauma to growing up in a system of racism and violence. These experiences literally and physically rewire brains and alter neuroanatomy. These neuroanatomical changes result in neuropsychological changes, which result in behavioral changes. Think about today’s story of the banking manager who was recently arrested for shoplifting a couple of hundred dollars worth of goods from Target. She is a kleptomaniac (not sure if that’s the current term, apologies if not). She has no more conscious control over her actions than a person with epilepsy has control over their seizures.
Now, if your physical form were to go away, those impulses would theoretically be gone. You couldn’t feel any guilt over them - you had virtually no control. If you keep your physical form (as some Catholics believe), you’d theoretically keep your neuroanatomy. Then your “repentance” would have to be god fixing your brain, as it were, which raises the question why he didn’t just do that in the first place.
Obviously there’s way more problems just around this subject than I’m getting into here - memories of trauma that altered your limbic system, genetic and epigenetic drivers of behavior… is there a “fix” for that? - but the root of the problem is that the religions, in order to identify a behavior as “sin,” have to make assumptions about behavioral plasticity and more importantly a behavioral driver separate and apart from the physical brain, that’s just implausible. The facts are simply incompatible with that kind of redemption.
Agreed! What’s the level of personal responsibility for sins (or virtues!) vs our surroundings or flukes of neurology.
The older I get the more tragedies I see and fewer villains.
In Mormon theology such influences are considered as well! The flip side of understanding your own sins is that others will understand them too - so if you killed someone during a psychotic break beyond your control, your victim will see and understand exactly what happened. It’s the truest form of empathy. Seeing through the eyes of everyone you ever interacted with, for good or ill.