1. A moral saint can respond in a saintly way to everything the wicked can do to her.
2. If there is no afterlife, then a moral saint cannot respond in a saintly way to being instantly murdered.
3. The wicked can murder the moral saint.
4. So, there is an afterlife.
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Moral sainthood and the afterlife
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6 comments:
I see 1 as far from obvious. What would be wrong if she couldn´t respond in a saintly way to instant murder? Isn´t sufficient that she wouldn´t respond in non-saintly way? No-response-at-all (of the murdered one) falls into the enclosure of non-responding in non saintly way. If someone would object that it would be bad if such a murder would be left without a proper answer, we could point to a possibility of some other human providing the response.
1. seems implausible to me. Suppose a wicked person were to do something wicked to a moral saint without the moral saint’s knowledge that the thing had been done. For example, suppose I slander a moral saint and she never discovers that I had slandered her. I don’t think she could respond to being slandered. Even if the slander wound up affecting her in some way (say, she wasn’t hired), her saintly response would be to not being hired, rather than a response to being slandered.
A more plausible rule is this:
Possibly every response from a moral saint is saintly.
But that won’t work in your argument.
Matthew:
One can respond to the unknown harm by praying for everyone, including everyone who has harmed one, maybe. Still, maybe I can say that your case is also a case for an afterlife.
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In any case, I am not claiming for the argument any merits besides soundness. It might be question-begging.
1 Seems a little bit of an equivocation no?
What way do you imply 'everything'?
Everything causally possible?
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