(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Thu, 4/12/12, António Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: António Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires
> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Date: Thursday, April 12, 2012, 5:32 PM
> But Marc, what about the conviction
> of innocents? Let's hope God compensates them? What if they
> aren't otherwise pleasing to God, but innocent nonetheless?
> In the view of many theists, Man should not take away that
> which only God can give.
> You said you were done, but the question I'm asking is a
> different one. Not about treating guilty individuals kindly,
> but about carrying out irreversible sentences on innocents.
> Guilt, in legal terms, means that which has been proven in
> court. That's very different from what guilt means morally.
> Moral guilt is absolute. Judicial guilt can never be.
> 
Okay, since you asked for one more elaboration.

Innocents are the exception rather than the rule with all these appeals currently in place (in the US, anyway).  No justice system is perfect. 

There are two parts of me you are talking to - the merciful theist who believes that God will in the final analysis, in this world or the next, allow justice.

Then there is the other side, if you convince me there are no absolutes and no cosmic eternal justice - that mankind is simply an accident.  Accidents happen.  Heart surgery occasionally results in patient fatality; the legal system is no more perfect than that.

In the United States I feel like those who are completely blameless are very rarely incarcerated unjustly, unless it be for "he said, she said" cases of rape/molestation.  It is a straw man argument in some sense to justify treating dangerous and repeat offenders with kid gloves.  I am not an administrator of justice, because I would always err on the side of mercy, but I think it is a weakness in my character, where I would fail to live up to what should be done.  I would want a more stern administrator of justice than myself.

There are innocent casualties in every battle, but sometimes the end justifies the means, or all those who gave their lives for something did it for naught.  Justice is much the same, though it lacks the nobility of World War II.