September 10, 2002

To the Atlanta Journal/Constitution

Note to the editor: In this time of asserted justification of horror in the name of religion, it is helpful to consider the relationship of the conscience to alleged voices of God. This letter considers Abraham's attempted slaying of Isaac as a case in point, and one which is important to all three, major, Western religions. My letter on this subject now follows:

Occasionally people claim to have heard the voice of God and that he commands something terrible. Fortunately we have a criterion, valid for all the world, to distinguish the voice of God from other voices. A command can be assumed to be of God if corresponds to the Golden Rule; it is certainly not of God if it conflicts with that Rule; and it may be of God if the commanded action is morally indifferent.

Accordingly we must in all honesty condemn Abraham if he meant to kill innocent Isaac, and only praise and honor him if not. In his defense I theorize that Abraham merely acted out the killing of his son and would have indeed acted it out all the way to the knife in Isaac’s heart had not his hand been stayed, but I suspect that his faith assured him that his hand would be stayed. In this sense we can compare Abraham morally with a magician doing a trick involving the plunging of a knife through the heart of a “victim” on the show stage; neither Abraham nor the magician suffers the least pangs of conscience with regard to a wrong, for both know that no murder will take place and no one will die; and they differ only in the magician knowing the how of the trick, and Abraham not.

Undoubtedly Abraham was prepared for this moment of truth by virtue of the episode at the Gate to Egypt. There his faith faltered in the face of danger and instead of defying and perhaps even mocking the king (as he would have been able to do had his faith in the promising voice been perfect) he resorted to a half truth to make his own escape. Later, after the miraculous birth of Isaac in his and Sarah's old age and ashamed of his weak faith, Abraham will have come to think that it would be impossible for his voices to be in error, i.e., it would be impossible for Isaac to be killed, no matter how hard Abraham might try, for the fulfillment of the voice's promise depended upon his continued life. [It cannot be argued that Abraham was morally right to kill Isaac because he expected a resurrection, for that would mean that he would then intentionally kill Isaac for his own purpose and that would be murder. And per the Golden Rule God will not command murder.]

Consistently with this, by the way, the bombers of 9/11 could be justified in their own minds only if they could have assumed that God would stop the completion of their mission; but this they most assuredly did not assume, for all evidence points to their confident expectation of the completion of an action forbidden by the moral law.

Best regards,

--
Philip McPherson Rudisill

10/05/02. An after thought. Suppose these dive bombers of 9/11 thought that in this way the victims killed would immediately enter the most cherised of all possibe realms and find unadulterated happiness. Then they might be considered as we would a doctor bringing people to good health, and thus morally praiseworthy, even though of course they would have to then be thought as lunatics, much as would a man who thought that objects got smaller when at a distance (and not merely that they looked smaller).

03/30/05 I just discovered this quote from somewhere in Kant's Conflict Among The Faculties,

"If God should really speak to man, man could still never know that it was God speaking. It is quite impossible for man to apprehend the infinite by his senses, distinguish it from sensible beings, and recognize it as such. But in some cases man can be sure the voice he hears is not God’s. For if the voice commands him to do something contrary to moral law, then no matter how majestic the apparition may be, and no matter how it may seem to surpass the whole of nature, he must consider it an illusion."