Christopher Hitchens - William Shakespeare - John Milton - Melford Spiro -
There is something positively wicked ... You can’t be a God person and a good person ... What is moral about vicarious redemption? Christopher Hitchens, Freedom from Religion Foundation 2007
I think vicarious redemption is the most immoral idea in circulation. Christopher Hitchens v Peter Hitchens, debate 2008
I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins on to a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There’s no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man’s debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
if men were to be saved by merit, what hole in hell were hot enough for him? William Shakespeare, Henry IV I ii 107-108, Sir John to Prince Harry
Yea, at that very moment
Consideration like an angel came
And whipped th’ offending Adam out of him,
Leaving his body as a paradise
T’envelop and contain celestial spirits
Never was such a sudden scholar made;
Never came reformation in a flood
With such a heady currance scouring faults. William Shakespeare, Henry V I i 28-35, Canterbury to Ely
Say, heavenly pow’rs, where shall we find such love?
Which of ye will be mortal to redeem
Man’s mortal crime, and just th’ unjust to save. John Milton, Paradise Lost III:213
And now without redemption all mankind
Must have been lost, adjudged to death and hell
By doom severe. ibid. III:222
While other religions view the satisfaction of certain desires as the mark of salvation, Theravada Buddhism teaches that the extinction of desire is the prerequisite to salvation. While other religions hold up eternal life as the consequence of redemption, the redemptive goal of Theravada Buddhism is release from any and all forms of life. While other religions provide assistance to man in his quest for redemption, Theravada Buddhism teaches that in this quest one can rely on no one and on nothing but oneself: neither gods nor priests, neither church nor sacraments, nor faith nor works are of any avail. Melford Spiro, Buddhism and Society, 1982