Death of Babies

[Justin108]

As morbid as the title may be, there is something about this that has always confused me in the Christian dogma and that is the fate of dead babies.

Do dead babies go to heaven?

If your answer is no then God is sick and evil for sending innocent babies to hell for absolutely no fault of their own. Sadly enough, Mark 16:16 suggests this and makes no exception for babies.

If your answer is yes then there are several problems with that aswell:
1. It isn't supported by the Bible so this is but wishful thinking
2. Where is the fairness in it? A baby is born and dies and goes straight to heaven while the rest of us have a good chance of ending up in hell. Isn't it unfair for babies to get a sure thing by going straight to heaven? With this in mind, it would be even altruistic to kill a baby since you are saving them from potential hell?

[Justin108]

First, I do not know whether babies go to be with Adonai or not. The Sciptures are not clear on the matter. However, if they do not, that is not all it does. For some it helps them to appreciate the blessings that they have for as long as they have them. As Paul speculates regarding all who do not eventually go to be with Adonai, (Rom. 9:22-23) "What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,".

In other words, god kills babies just to show people that he can?

do not recall using the term "planned", as the quotation marks seem to imply. However, the command you mention is binding on man. If a deity chooses to mitigate the effects of following that command, then that deity is no more incompitent than the mechanic who puts a fuel regulator on a race car. That mechanic may figure that the driver has so much to think about, it is better that such things be regulated seperately.

If god commands something that is ultimately ill-advised then god is incompitent.

I am not criticizing your moral system. Since , I know little of prescriptivism apart from it being based on logic, I am enquiring regarding how it applies. For example, if the assertion that it is immoral to kill in general and kill babies in specific is a conclusion based on reason, one should be able to show how prescriptivism comes to that conclusion.

Prescriptivism bases moral conclusions on golden rule consistency. In other words, ask if an action is moral by asking whether you would have it done unto yourself and then being consistent with your conclusion. If god were a mortal entity that would cease to exist after death, he would not with to die.

Regarding my views on the matter, they are based on the Scriptures as I stated in the post you just responded to.

In other words, everything god says is automatically moral. Correct? So if god called rape, murder, torture, etc. correct, they would become moral in your view?

Well, we have not established that one life form not killing another is a generally accepted rule or principle. As I stated before, humans kill other life forms, spiders, dogs, cats and even fetuses merely because they are an inconvenience and this is not seen as immoral. Why is a deity not afforded the same privilege, even though a deity does not have DNA. Again, must one have DNA to kill something else with DNA

I never said anything about DNA. If one kills simply to kill then one is immoral. Does god kill simply to kill? Then he is immoral. Does god have a reason? Then you must present the reason. You cannot simply say "god probably has a reason. I just don't know what it is".

A further consideration is gods inconsistensy regarding the meaning of human life. Some humans are as children to him while others are as insects? Is that how you see it? You seem to paint the picture that just as men crush bugs, god crushes humans. Yet he calls (some of) us his children? Are men not more than animals in the theistic world view? Are we not "in the image of god"? Do we not have souls? You seem inconsistent in your world view. One moment we are special, the next we are insects.

Well, a deity generally does not have a mortal existence. In fact, it is mortal existance that we are discussing. Why is it immoral for an immortal being to create some mortal beings and allow them to live for a short duration and create others to live for a longer period of time, given that some will eventully cease to exist altogether?

A person who lives for a few decades has the chance to go to heaven. A person that lives for a day does not. Unless you believe all children go to heaven, which would bring me back to whether killing infants would then be in their best interest as it would guarantee eternal life.

A person that lives for a few decades has a life that in the theistic world view can get him into heaven. Supposing children do not automatically go to heaven, a child that is born just to die thereafter had no life. His brief existence only resulted in the mourning of his family. His purpose was to bring suffering.

Are you saying that SIDS is a mystical event that has no cause? Also, a deity need not be bringing it into existance just to have it die. He could have brought the child into existance to live, albeit for a short time.

SIDS causes, as the name implies, "instant death". The point is it does not deteriorate the child slowly as cancer would. I brought it up as a counter to your excuse that god killed the child as a mercy so he does not suffer from his disease. A child dying from SIDS has no long lasting disease that would be merciful to end. It is a sudden death. The causes of SIDS is the delicacy delicacy of the infant. It is often found that the infant simply stopped breathing or that his body temperature was too high and he was too young and fragile to withstand even the slightest stresses of the world. The point is, under SIDS, your "death as a mercy" does not apply.

As for his short life... again I ask what possible reason is there to bring a child into such a short life? All it does is bring misery. Your objections to this misery has failed. You cannot realistically argue that an infant death brings anything of worth to the world.

No, I acknowledged that one would go through a greaving process. However, it appears that your philosophy includes the concept of victimology. There is something to show for it, if one chooses to learn from the experience. If one chooses to see it as a personal afront for the rest of ones entire life, then you are correct, there is nothing to show for it and no joy in it. However, if one chooses to rather relive the joy, anticipation and marital bonding that was theirs before the death they can move on and make lemonade out of lemons, as the saying goes.

For the child's death to have had a purpose, the family must be better off with his death than they had been before. The BEST case scenario is that the family accepts the death and moves on. At BEST they would be as well off as they were before but to call his death purposeful, it must result in a better-than-before outcome. What can be gained from the child's death?