If repentance is the action of repenting; a sincere regret or remorse, then it seems to me that anyone, whether religious or not, can engage in it.
If it's done on one's deathbed, is it any less sincere? How can any of us tell the degree to which it is sincere? Does the timing of it mean that it is being used as a "get out of jail card" for the religious? How can you tell?
I don't doubt that fear of eternal damnation spurns some folks to beg forgiveness, but I distrust anyone who says that they are sure of another's motivation.
I wonder if positing knowledge of another's intentions, particularly the religious by the non-religious, isn't pure smugness.
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@CyberLN: "I distrust anyone who says that they are sure of another's motivation."
I don't think we can be really sure of the motivations of deathbed occupants. I'm sure some of them are sincere, if only out of fear. But if religion has the moral value that it's proponents claim, redemption after a lifetime to doing harm to others shouldn't be an option.
And I would guess that a significant number of those peddling this idea of repentance and redemption are motivated by power and influence, bequests and donations.
I am sure the whole will/bequest thing plays a huge role, especially these days. Wills and bequests is a huge portion of churches wealth gathering.
Really, so we can live our lives and then beg for forgiveness on our deathbed and this counts. It is awesome how gullible theists are in believing their gods are so lame they cannot tell the difference between true believe and convenient belief.
The world only knows 11th hour piety from humanity. That's to say a repentant person's imminent mortality is eliciting one final plea to immortality. Who wouldn't? All mankind as we, and the missionaries know it, that has been offered immortality by exposure to some form of religious conjuring will seek it at the 11th hour despite a lifetime observing and displaying divergent conduct. The final deception or sincere regret?
And, you are correct in questioning sincerity.
I believe all mankind questions everything of a metaphysical nature by simple evidence of its natural inquisitiveness to resolve that which it does not understand. Religious doctrine does not provide for, or service that resolve. It only suppresses it. This leaves it suspended, weightless, and without a foothold to properly ground itself in explanation. Fear is the one thing that motivates people towards, but not fully embracing, notions of explanations and resolve embodied in religious pretense. Fear being common but not to the same depths in all people, some will take the religious lure (theists) while others will hold out (agnostics) while others resolve themselves to the truth (atheists). At the last hour of life will all of them repent as necessary to their last-gasp logic?
In the strictest sense of the word, repentant man describes a person who openly denounces living his life away from the teaching of theism and embraces it in a turn of character. What motivates him to do that is varied but most commonly his imminent death, and as a final plea for whatever forgiveness he needs to achieve immortality.
Right.
In the non-strictest sense of the word, repentant man can also be one who rejects living his life of piety at that last hour, for whatever reason motivates him to do so, but by convention we call him unrepentant man.
I don't think sincerity and repentance will ever live an honest moment together.