Hell?s tentacles and the idea of morality without an afterlife

Questions:
"if there was no afterlife, would that be an end to a/the BASIS for morality and accountability in life? Why/how (not)?...And by afterlife, I am specifically referring to the free will choices of Heaven and Hell (maybe Purgatory if you're Catholic)?Of course materialist might argue we are/should be accountable for our actions on earth while we live on it since they believe this is the only life we have...And how do they justify it?"


What could be the basis for a morality outside of a worldview that believes in an afterlife (at which time injustices will be settled)? It could come from the universe itself in something like karma, or it could come from humans. It is hard to see how impersonal forces (such as karma) can hold us accountable (Lewis has some good words on this), and we don?t meet all that many people who believe it. That being said, since I have moved to California I have talked with a number of people in various businesses (as I was shopping) who have mentioned karma or something like it, in passing?the idea is definitely not dead.

Among the thought lives of those you are thinking of, there are two poles of the human origin of morality: the individual and society. The first one is raw egoism: what I say goes. The idea that society creates moral principles and trains its members up in them through the evolutionary process and through social training is much more sophisticated and attractive, but no less empty. What prevents a whole society from deciding that the weak members must be eliminated (such as in Nazi Germany)? Was there a rational justification of what they did, from an evolutionary perspective that posits society as the origin of morality? Of course there is. But this answer is unacceptable to most of us. Many of us will hold our rejection of this conclusion more strongly than the principles that led to the conclusion, and consequently will reject the principles (premises) (these principles would include the atheistic form of evolution).

Let?s look from another angle. If this world holds the only justice that there will ever be, then there is no justice. Period. Not just many, but the vast majority of wrongs are not directly accounted for in this life.

Even as we say that, there is another side to it for the Christian. Imagine Lewis was right when he said that this world, for those who end up going to Heaven, will have been a prelude to heaven. If so, then all the beauty of this world will be seen and remembered for its participation in true beauty, and all the ugliness will be fit into its proper place as well, that is, the place God had for it as part of all those things that work together for our own eternal good?the dark threads the weaver weaves into the beauty of his work. We will look back on it with deep appreciation.

On the other hand, for those who end up in Hell, this world will have turned out to be a pre-extension of its ugliness, Hell itself extending its tentacles into every nerve ending of this life. The ugliness of this world will be seen in its fullness and will increase the misery of the empty existence that hell will be. But far worse will be the beauty of this world. Just think about who is more miserable: Priam?s grandson, thrown from the walls of Troy, or King Priam himself, father of fifty great warriors, all slain by Achilles; his wife and daughters taken and ravaged, his city, the greatest city there was, utterly destroyed; Athena?s temple defiled. And all before his eyes. The greater the glory, the greater the misery when it is lost. Those who have known the great beauty of God?s creation more profoundly (whether it be the scientist, who sees it in his observations, or the artist who sees it in her art, or the lover in his beloved) will be the more miserable for having known it.

From this perspective, there most certainly is justice, not only in the world to come, but in this world as well. Here is Plato as well. When we are unjust, we defile our own souls. The more unjust we are, the more defiled. The sickest, ugliest, nastiest soul is the absolute tyrant (such as Hitler or Stalin), who was above rebuke, whose whim was the death of millions. Here is a soul so sick as to be almost unrecognizable as human. The image of God is all but wiped clean from it, the last and smallest traces longing for the death of the body so that they can escape the flames and return to the glory in which they belong.

Here, justice is built into the nature of life. But this kind of justice short-circuits the atheist's worldview. It is there, but it cannot be accounted for.