Capital Punishment and Everlasting Hell: Conflicting Moral Intuitions?
I was doing a little study recently on philosophical defenses of the traditional view of an everlasting hell, and something mentioned by Michael Murray in his article on the subject in Reason for the Hope Within caught my attention and made me think. Although I’m not going to go into a full-scale defense of the traditional view now, the basic idea is that an everlasting hell is the only kind that does justice to both the seriousness of the crime of rejecting the infinitely worthy creator and the dignity that we have as free and responsible creatures. It is this latter point that caught my attention.
What is interesting that when we think about the difference between capital punishment and a life sentence, we intuitively see capital punishment as the more severe penalty and one to be avoided if possible. Furthermore, I’m betting that most of the people who think the idea of an everlasting hell is revolting would also be against capital punishment. But why do we intuitively judge capital punishment worse than life in prison? Presumably, because we think that the intrinsic worth of persons is so high that their continued existence, even a very limited one, is better than their lack of existence. But what is interesting is that the difference between capital punishment and a life sentence seems strongly analogous to the difference between an everlasting hell and the annihilation view. Just as in a life sentence, on the everlasting view, the condemned person continues to exist in hell, but they are stripped of the good things they previously enjoyed (obviously, there is a difference in that in hell this stripping is total, whereas it is only partial for the person serving a life sentence). Similarly, just as in a case of capital punishment, on the annihilationist view, the person is snuffed out of existence.
What is interesting is that, if these two situations are truly analogous in the relevant ways, and if our intuitions are correct about the death penalty being worse than a life sentence, then we should think that the view of an everlasting hell is morally better than the annihilationist view. Obviously, we don’t all think this way (and I would bet most don’t), but it’s not clear exactly why on the face of it.