Epicurean Or Christian Legal Paradigm
In Christian societies, the legal paradigm is based upon the belief, that real justice is not the task of society, but it is their god's job in the afterlife. This belief favors the transgressors occasion to become recidivists.
Their previous and future victims are at a disadvantage.
Their previous and future victims are at a disadvantage.
- Christian faith postpones the reward for sufferings to the afterlife. This serves as a justification to expose people to sufferings and to unnecessary risks of suffering without their consent and against their will. They are not given a choice, if they want to suffer and be rewarded or not.
- Christian faith requires victims to forgive without justice or amends. They are not only supposed to yield doing justice to their god, they are even scared to be punished themselves in the afterlife if they refuse to forgive.
- Christian faith requires the victims to accept their fate as their god's will. Therefore society does not take legal precaution to protect the innocent from becoming victims.
- Christian faith enables transgressors to have the delusion, that their god has forgiven them. As a consequence, they do not earn the forgiving of the victims and make no amends.
The legal paradigm of a society, where justice is truly not biased by religion, should focus on the Epicurean principle of not harming and of a basic right of not being harmed. Such a legal system should focus on the protection of the innocent. Persons, who have proven to be dangerous to others by having harmed them personally by crimes like murder, rape, robbery, assault etc, should be locked away forever, not as punishment, but to protect the innocent from becoming victims.
Punishment for the evil doer after a crime cannot undo the damage to the victim. Society's primary duty is prevention and protection, punishment is not a substitute. Every time, when a victim gets seriously harmed and traumatized by a recidivist, who has been released from jail, this is an outrage. This crime on the victim has indirectly been committed by the society, that fails to protect the innocent.
It is a very drastic thing to do to lock someone away for a lifetime. But comparing this with the plight of the victims, who are damaged, mutilated, traumatized also for a lifetime, the suffering of someone, who has proven to be dangerous is more justified than the suffering of an innocent victim. The evil doer had a choice, the victim has none.
There is the legal principle to rather release a criminal than to lock away someone, who is innocent of the crime he is accused of. This also is an implicit legal choice between two kinds of sufferings. The unfortunate person innocently in jail suffers less than the victim, who is seriously and irreversibly harmed by the recidivist criminal, because he has been wrongly acquitted.
In an ideal society, every person can be at any place and at any time of the day or night, without being in danger of becoming a crime victim.
This is another hen or egg question: Is the delusion of a god's justice in the afterlife a rationalization to cope with the innate easiness of harming others without a bad conscience due to animal instinctive urges, or do people harm others without a bad conscience as a consequence of the Christian delusion?
