Eternal torture question

Suppose in the afterlife Hitler has been strapped to a device that will set him on fire for all of eternity. All that is needed to start this torture is the press of a button, and you have been given the task of pressing it. Would you press the button?

What if the person strapped to the maximum torture device is:

• A child molestor?
• A terrorist?
• A homosexual?
• An atheist?

Religious and non-religious may apply.

Of course not. I wouldn't be in hell. I will be in heaven and thus unable to press the button.

Besides, it is up to God to punish people in the afterlife. Not mere man.

Is this a one shot thing? Once the button is pressed it can’t be pressed again to turn off, so either press the button and Hitler burns for all eternity or don’t press it and what happens to him?

No.

Not under any circumstances.

Yup, one time. You have no say in what happens to him if you don't press it.

@Dayton3 - it's hypothetical. Do you know what that means? If you are able to press the button. God has sub-delegated to you.

Imagine a 5 mile diameter giant steel ball sitting in the middle of the desert.
Imagine every couple hundred years or so, the jet stream blows just right that a migrating bird goes off course, flies by the ball, and brushes his wing against it.
By the time the wing brushing grinds the ball away, it will only be the beginning of eternity.

There's nothing a human being can do on this Earth to deserve being punished that long.

Nothing.

It's like going to the gulag for a candy bar theft times a squillion.

People are punished to:
1. Exact justice
2. Engender their contrition, remorse, and, perhaps, rehabilitation
3. To serve as an example for others who would do the same

While Hitler would be deserving of the harshest punishment a reasonable and humane justice system could impose, eternal torture is just sadism.

While Hitler may never be capable of rehabilitation, there is not the possibility of it (or contrition or remorse) under an eternal torture regime.

As this punishment occurs in the afterlife, it cannot be considered an effective deterrent since none will know that it occurs.

Then yes of course. If God sub-delegated it to me then I have no responsibility whatsoever.

No, I would not push such a button. Even the worst of the worst holds some capacity for repentance. That said, there are those whom this planet is better off without.

Whilst I see slightly different priorities in incarcerating someone I agree, there would be no purpose beyond a very unhealthy sense of vengeance which would never be satisfied anyway.

This somehow seems appropriate here...

so......that's a "will not press" then?

a) I don't believe in hell, except in that which you make for yourself.

b) 'Eternal' anything is a nebulous concept, because if you think that the 'afterlife', whatever that is, exists outside of time, then there is no 'duration' as we think of it. If you inhabit 'heaven' between incarnations, you are there for 'eternity' but at the same time only a split second before you come back. If there is no time, then the concept of time has no meaning. In the same way, if you exist 'outside time' between incarnations, then a part of you is already there right now. In a manner of speaking, you experience this existence without having ever left. A dream in the mind of God, and all that.

c) I'm starting to think that maybe all of us are one consciousness, and the illusion of individuality is like being a wave in the ocean. A conflux of energy, transitory, and temporary, but made of the water that's always there. So in a manner of speaking, every kindness or cruelty you ever visit on someone else, you are visiting on yourself.

Lots of good books about stuff like this. The Tao of Physics; The Self-Aware Universe; the Holographic Universe; In Search of a Quantum God., and others.

So, could I push the 'eternal torture' button on Hitler? I think it's a null question. When he tortured, starved, and murdered six million people, maybe he really pushed it on himself.

That's....powerful imagery.

Off the top of my head I can't remember where it came from, but I recall reading a short story where a man faces eternal hellfire, figuring he would get used to it over time. Just as he begins to think it'll work the devil flips a switch from "hot" to "cold"....

I would not press it. That said Dayton had an interesting point which reveals much about the mindset of Christianity in general: Dayton said since God delegated him, he would press it. Perhaps if Dayton didn't torture Hitler, he would be pissing god off and end up getting tortured himself.

Call me but eternal torture after all physical existence as we know it is gone?
And if we don't think that the mastermind behind this plan should be the object of our gratitude & worship (what's not to love?) then we ourselves undergo eternal torture? That is incredibly twisted on so many levels. Bottom line: god is crueler than any mortal man could ever aspire to be.
He literally has an unlimited capacity (eternal after all) for cruelty just because he has that power. I'm not an educated man but it seems deep seated mental illness is a factor here - just sayin'

I heard it as: an eagle flies over a mountain once every thousand years and sheds a feather that drops on the mountain top. When the mountain is worn away by feathers, that is forever.

Of course, that's still a quantifiable (and fairly easily computable) amount of time, and forever is not a countable number.

If you want a sense of a very, very, very long time...

God is cruel.
God is to be feared.
But God also provides a convenient get out clause for personal responsibility.

I HATE when that happens! Only a shopping cart that veers off course from a stuck wheel can be worse than that.

No, the beginning of forever/eternity.
Any insane deep-time scenario a human can construct is still a sliver in eternity, because eternity is eternity.
When religious people imagine Hitler getting stabbed in the bum with a hot poker in Hell like an R-rated Bugs Bunny cartoon, they don't really imagine eternity, they just imagine that little vignette with "for about 100 years this happens, yeah, that'll do the trick", underneath.
They're not really grasping it.

I pre-flight all my shopping carts for that very reason. I give it a shove and let it go, to make sure it runs 'straight and true' before I'll take it on into the store.

damn I never thought of that! I'm totally doing that when I visit the store on my way home today.

Eternal torture? That's today at work. After doing 3 hours OT last night - taking photos at a company awards dinner where i was not allowed to eat - I was supposed get comp time by leaving at 1:00 today. Instead, I'm sitting here waiting for someone to finish compiling files that I have to put on a CD, and encrypt with software I've never used before.
Just fucking shoot me.

Never stood barefoot on Lego?

I do hope you stop said trolley rather than simply letting it plow into passers by.

I thought of this one when I read the OP.

Oh really... even for this?

Yup, in first year law school terms with fancier words, you got them all:
1. retribution, 2. rehabilitation, and 3a and 3b two kinds of deterrence.

3a. specific deterrence - this guy won't commit crime while in jail, and
3b. general deterrence - others know if they're caught they'll face consequences.

But item 1 seems to be the most important to the most people, some form of punishment/vengeance ("retribution").

No, would not.

Congratulations, you've gotten a glimpse.

Someone will push that button right? Out of all the people at least one - likely a significant percent - will push the button.

So to answer Rick’s question, yes. Yes I would. Because it is inevitable.