A "god" absent of guilt

So I was hanging out with Terry today, and he was doing the reading for one of his classes while I was desperately trying to figure out how to make up my needed blog credits. I've been to both of the signs and wonders so far, and I'm going to another tonight, but I haven't been able to blog about any so far.

Anyways, I started reading over his shoulder. And one sentence that comes up is, "But they're opposites. Self-righteousness is precisely the absence of guilt." This line comes from Isa Ben Adam on page 70 of the book A Refutation of Moral Relativism.

As soon as I read that line, the popular anime Death Note popped into my head. In this series, the main character that the storyline follows, Light Yagami, receives a Death Note, which is considered the deadliest weapon in the world. "The person who's name is written in the notebook, will surely die."

Light develops the idea that he can use this book to kill off the word's criminals. He takes the role of a god, passing judgment on the wicked of the world. In the beginning, he has to make a choice, where he is debating to keep using the death note to rid the world of evil, or to get rid of it because if he uses it, he then becomes a murderer.

He decides to keep it. Through this he gains a god-complex. He loses all feeling of guilt as he writes millions of names in the notebook. As the series goes on, he look at himself more and more as a god. The sense of self-righteousness.

self-right·eous

adjective

1. 1.

   having or characterized by a certainty, esp. an unfounded one, that one is totally correct or morally superior.

   "self-righteous indignation and complacency"

This wasn't so much as to promote either the book or the anime/mange, but just to show something that I found interesting.