On Parot Doctrine Again. The Problem of „Justice“

           I wrote about the “Parot Doctrine” some time ago in connection with separatism in Spain. Now I want to get back to this doctrine for another reason. There are also other cases that have been touched by this doctrine and this time it´s not so easy to deal with it. I talk about violent murderers of young girls who, thanks to the Parot Doctrine, have left prisons as well.

            The case is that the Supreme Court in Strasbourg have to be “just” to everyone – if they release the ETA terrorists, they have to release also other prisoners who are in the same situation. But still there´s a smell of absurdity in all this. The problem is that all the people are equal before the law and in case of a crime, it´s the result of a crime that counts. It means that it doesn´t matter what´s the motivation in committing a crime; if the result is death of other person, assassins, serial killers or terrorists end up in more or less the same sentence. And now, when I think about the psychopathic killer who brutally violated and then murdered three young girls some thirty years ago and today he can freely leave the prison, I just can´t understand the kind of justice that can permit this. But it´s simple, as I briefly sketched before – the justice have to obey laws and laws are in a vast majority consequencialist. What´s that mean? Only that there is considered only the deed, the final result of an act, not its purpose or intention. And rationally in most situations we are consequencialists – in ordinary life it doesn´t mean nothing more than utilitarism. But still I can´t help myself being somehow deontologistic in justice issues.

            Of course there´s a big problem in considering what the people are thinking before they do something or in a process of doing something. Maybe they think they are doing the great service for all the mankind and that the eternal life is waiting for them while they blow the bomb that is fixed to their body in the crowded bus. And maybe the murderer thinks he saves the little girl from this cruel world by cutting her head off .. I just want to demonstrate that each and every case has its own history and they can´t be classified simply according to corresponding laws. Because there is a difference between the case that you brutally kill with your own hands a young girl and know very well what you´re doing and the case that you blow the time-bomb under a politicians car (and know very well what you´re doing). I think here they should be considered the reasons and I also think that the reason “to satisfy my sadistic tastes” is little bit different from “to demonstrate a political inconvenience”. Yes, in both cases they are dead people as a result, and in both cases the people responsible for these deaths are sentenced for example to 30 years of prison. And eventually, in both cases the people responsible for these deaths are released after these 30 years of prison and you just have to ask “is that no one sees the difference between these two cases?”

            And at the same time we can say the justice is too consequencialist, we have to admit that sometimes it is deontologistic as well. For example in cases of self defence, or the favourite one these days, mental incompetence. So if there´s a kind of sentimental understanding at the side of a court in these cases and on the other hand they just let go a brutal murderer who even don´t regret what he had done, it´s highly incoherent.

            But, the problems don´t end up here, not at all! Let´s consider that the beast who killed those girls should get rotten in the prison until his final day. And let´s consider that prisoners live sometimes considerably better than the people with minimal income. Is this just? So we start to think about the death penalty, but yet it´s not enough! I have always thought about death penalty that it´s being so useless because those who are sentenced to death don´t even care – they would prefer death before living in prison for many years or until their natural death; so they understand death as a rescue, a redemption. And maybe some of them admit they deserve to die for what they have done but still it is a kind of escape – just die, that´s all, bye .. I don´t accept such a punishment. It´s somehow not enough for me. And of course there´s a problem of judicial errors – when the wrong person is sentenced to death, there´s no remedy.

            The Middle Ages is not my favourite epoch, but the only thing I always liked on it were those very elaborated torture methods and I seriously would put back the punishment of torture up to date. Why should the poor parents of all those murdered children live with the feeling that the guilty one is living a quite happy life in prison, with all the advantages like studying, doing sports, theatre and whatever else. And in case the guilty one is already dead, what´s the point then? The maniacs just should be taken to being tortured like in Middle Ages – they had very sophisticated kinds of torture then and I think these methods should be resuscitated and applied today as an effective punishment.

            So, to sum up, these days in only one case of one doctrine, we can see how many problems we actually have to deal with if we think about justice – consequencialism, deontology, death penalty, life in prisons, satisfaction of survivors or victims .. I think this is not my last word about judicial sphere.

On Christmas Part Two (The Historical View)

            Why do we celebrate Christmas? And what leads us, atheists, to celebrate it as well? Is there any explanation to why we spend the last days of the year like this? I think everything that has any historical background have to be explainable. But the explanations are diverse according to your country, religion or whatever can determine your life just because you believe in something.

            First, there is a well known story about a child being born in a stable somewhere in Bethlehem. There are some divine factors that are added to the story from the beginning, like the big light in the sky and angels´ singing at the time of the birth of Jesus, which is supposed to be a sign that something special was happening (literally that a messiah has been born). And then the most significant feature of the story: the mother´s virginity. This is basically what do Christians believe in. But you don´t have to be Christian to believe the story as well. As a child you believe all the stories your parents or your teachers tell you, on Christmas time you sing Christmas songs at school or in a choir, so your consciousness is full of this story and if you grow up to a Christian, it´s probable that you would still believe it.

Christians are not truth seekers. They just believe. I am a truth seeker. I don´t believe what anyone says until it´s proved. All right, I define what I mean by “truth” here – I mean something that is proved to be historically probable. In history there are only probabilities. You can´t say if something was like this if you weren´t there. Yes, there are manuscripts and other documents, however they can be fake or just wrongly interpreted due to misunderstandings. You have to search very carefully and choose those documents that are more probable by comparing them among one another. And that´s it – there´s no truth, only most probable story; and I will tell you now the most probable story.

            I´ll start with the main character of the story – Jesus. Who really was Jesus and why was his birth so special to some of us? What we can say is that there are no credible historical sources considering his life or death. But at least there´s a vast majority of contemporary historians and Bible interpreters who agree that Jesus was a real historical person. As far as we know about his parents, it was a woman called Maria and an unknown (but physically existing) man who obviously wasn´t Joseph, Maria´s husband. Maybe from there comes the strange story about a child born from a virgin – the family of Maria or/and Joseph simply couldn´t stand the shame and they just invented their version.

            But what is here of more interest is Jesus´ birth, isn´t it? So, there´s no evidence when he was really born, but it seems that it had to be at the time of the Roman census which can be historically dated to 7^th-6^th century B.C. (although that “B.C.” obviously wasn´t “B.C.” yet .. uff, it´s starting to be a bit confusing ..) under the reign of Herod the Great, the king of Judea.  So, it wasn´t a year 0 .. but of course Christians had to make from the birth of Jesus a special event, so they came with a year 0 and that´s the point.

            We can say, well, all right, but at least he could be born at December 25^th, that could have a value for us anyway. Well, I don´t like to disappoint someone, but this date is only a well developed fiction. This date was chosen by early Christian theologians on purpose to replace the old pagan festivities of the winter solstice (the Christians just envied the Romans their great Saturnalia festivities, or they just wanted to banish everything pagan and make it christian, so they made this “Grand Theft Saturnalia”).

More than illustrative!

            But hang on, we can also count the Jesus´ birth from another point of view – astronomy. There´s a speculation about the huge star (or shining of stars) that appeared when the child was born, so some contemporary specialists in astronomy tried to calculate the position of the planets at that time which could explain this appearance in the sky. And according to these calculations it could happen most probably from May to September, year 7 B.C. when a considerable light conjunction between Saturn and Jupiter occurred. Could be.

            And finally, where was baby Jesus really born? It´s not very probable he was born in Bethlehem in Judea, rather (and many New Testament´s notes tell it) he was born in Nazareth in Galilea. Once more, the place was chosen a posteriori on purpose by evangelists to fulfil a prophecy that the king of Izrael would be born in Bethlehem.

            So, we don´t know exactly when Jesus was born and the place of his birth is another fake information that many people ignore today. Also we can´t say nothing about his divinity – his mother was an ordinary woman and his pater incertus est. Another form of divinize the child could also be using a prophecy (again, a posteriori). This time it was Isaiah, chap. 7/14 where there´s said something about a virgin that conceive a son. But nothing like this had happened and can never happen, because it´s just a nonsense. So why should we believe in divinity of this child after all? Because he, as a poor step-son of a carpenter, became a well known illusionist? Come on .. Actually, I can give more space to the life of Jesus in some of the next posts. 

So, what are the conclusions about the historical meaning of Christmas? You can see that there is not much to talk about. It´s all (and its traditional habits as well) stolen from old pagan festivities and habits. So if today some atheists celebrate Christmas, it is or because they really celebrate the winter solstice, or they are so submerged in the western Christian-based society that they don´t care at all and celebrate it blindly with the majority of the people.

But, I would like to mention that also in pagan celebrations there are some divine features or rituals that shouldn´t have a place in a healthy mind of a good atheist. A good atheist is simply free from any transcendental belief or ritual. Everything that smells like rituality smells bad. And Christmas do smell.