A question for those of you who believe in an omnibenevolent God but also in hell: How do you reconcile the two?
Some believers invoke the “free will defense”, but this makes no sense to me. It seems that God could easily save everyone, sending no one to hell, without violating anyone’s free will. Here’s how I described it recently:
It’s similar to a technique I’ve described in the past whereby God could have created a perfect world sans evil without violating anyone’s free will.
Here’s how it works:
1. Before creating each soul, God employs his omniscience to look forward in time and see whether that soul, if created, would freely accept him and go to heaven or freely reject him and go to hell.
2. If the former, God goes ahead and creates that soul. If the latter, then he doesn’t, choosing instead to create a different soul that will freely accept him and go to heaven.
Simple, isn’t it? Any omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God could easily come up with something like this or better, rather than sending billions of souls to hell with no chance of a reprieve.
Theists, how do you respond?
I doubt that.
People have been predicting the second coming for a long time. And it never happens. But they keep predicting anyway.
Apropos of this:
keiths:
How Christianity Works
h/t Grania at Jerry Coyne’s place
If believers gave up because promises weren’t kept, the first Christians would have given up when the return did not happen.
Or, your reasoning could be faulty. Why do atheists insist on interpreting the bible as if they were in fact Christian fundamentalists?
The text doesn’t lend itself to metaphorical reading. There are numerous modern prophecies that have failed without causing believers to abandon their church.
So?
I don’t think this is true. Lots of unhappy people wish they were someone else.
The emphasis is on “logically”. Sure everybody unhappy wishes to be someone else, but it’s irrational to wish so.
(I can’t believe I am defending Torley, but there’s no doubt whatsoever about this particular point.)
Perhaps because people like you won’t give their interpretation
That’s more your level.
I don’t either.
Let’s say some of my properties are essential (like, maybe coming from a particular sperm and egg, or being a thinking thing) and others are contingent (like, maybe, having brown hair or liking Meshuggah). I can’t even tell whether I have “radical free will” or not. In fact, I might have this property only on alternate Thursdays for all I know. I grant that having or not having it might (for all I know) be an essential property of mine. But I don’t see why I couldn’t wish that I were free (if I’m actually not) or wish that I were not free (if I actually am).
Is there a logic of wishing?
I would not have thought so.
Yes, there is, if you want to distinguish reasonable hopes from wishful thinking. If you think these two are the same thing, no problem. As you were.
That’s an interesting question.
All You Want to Know About Hell
In that case, there’s no such thing as a “logical wish” anyway. A wish is by its very nature a product of the emotions, not the intellect.
So, we conclude from Gregg that no christian should believe that god would ever want to send anyone into eternal hell, and since god always does what god wants, no one is ever going to be sent to eternal hell.
Fine by me.
Now go do something useful and tell all your christian friends to stop torturing their children with stories about how they’re going to hell if they don’t obey dad and mom. Tell them to find a more humane, loving, (and christian) way of raising decent children.
But what if I am a pragmatist when it comes to child rearing?
However, my own personal experience was a spanking, not a lecture on hell.
What does “pragmatiist” have to do with lying to one’s children that they could be going to hell? It “works”, makes them behave for a moment, so it’s worth it? So it’s worth knowing yourself to be an impotent liar who can’t keep your kids behaving decently without holding the threat of hellfire over their heads? Worth creating lifetime trauma and fear for your children? Worth teaching your children by example that the way to be a big strong grown-up is to always be on the side of the scariest monster?
Umm, not “you” personally, “you” in general and in hypothetical pragmaticism.
Plenty of christian children get raised with both spankings and threats of hellfire. It’s not exactly either-or, is it. (Although, lucky you.) And plenty of children – now adults – tell us that they’d far rather have had more beatings than have had the torture of being told they deserved hell.
Even just telling children that hell exists – not they they personally are going to hell, just that it exists as a place – can be so traumatic that people remember their grief and fear about it decades later.
So quit with your piddly excuses now. Go do something useful and tell all your christian friends to quit that shit.
On the subject of pragmatism: Neither I nor my children were spanked.
No one in my extended family (over 50 first cousins, counting in-laws) has ever been arrested. Among all my known relatives there have only been three divorces.
What’s the point of brutality again?
It seems to be a favored way to control people by certain governments.
That’s pragmatism for you!
Mung,
What are your views on hell?
C’mon. You know the proper phrasing of that is “Mung, do you have a quote or link to somebody else’s views on hell that you can give when asked your opinion, which you can later disclaim as ‘not your opinion’ or ‘I never said that’ when some issue comes up?”
Sal, for goodness sake, if you think this, leave the Dark Side!
Or at least have the courage to reject the evil god that you think there is evidence for. Even if science indicates an omnipotent designer, there’s absolutely no reason for any of us to worship that designer, any more than the fact that tyrants plainly exist obligates us to support them.
If I thought your god was real, I hope I would have the guts to opt for hell rather than curry favour in the hope I’d picked the right rhetoric to get me to heaven.
At least we will be in good company when we get there – The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. Please join us!
🙂
I would also add that my own version of Pascal’s Wager is that any god worth worshipping isn’t going to hold it against people who honestly conclude that she doesn’t exist.
Not against people who reject the portrayal of her in a great deal of supposed “revelation” literature in favour of something more like the Love she is sometimes claimed to be.
the key word is “honestly”
quote:
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
(Rom 1:19-20)
end quote:
peace
Right. Any god worth worshipping doesn’t mind if you honestly don’t feel like worshipping gods. This point surely makes a god worth worshipping.
Great.
Why should the fact that something is written in Romans and alleged by many to be true prevent me from honestly coming to the conclusion that it is false?
I’m not understanding your point. Can you clarify?
keiths, just what is it that you think either the Jewish, Christian or Muslim sacred writings teach about hell and why do you think they advocate for or against your version of it?
Of course keiths can answer for himself, but my answer is to refer you back to the books you yourself have linked in this thread.
Christians can’t agree amongst themselves what their “sacred writings” teach about hell, as your selected authors prove. Some advocate for one version, some for another, some for apparently no version at all.
Mung, why would you bother asking keiths such a meaningless question?
I think it would be much more rational for you to lay out exactly what your view of hell is, and perhaps you can even add what specific verses of what “sacred writings” you believe advocate for your particular view.
What about it, Mung? Are you willing?
Mung seems to have spent a bit of time reading scripture. Why won’t he simply summarize his findings?
hotshoe, to Mung:
How about it, Mung?
Because I have very little interest in attempting to engage with someone who is not actually interested in meaningful dialogue.
I don’t see it as a meaningless question.
Would the following questions have been more meaningful?
Hey, keiths, what were your beliefs about hell when you decided to abandon Christianity and how did they factor into your decision if at all?
If your beliefs about hell did factor into your decision, were you aware at the time that Christians disagree among themselves about hell?
How much time did you actually spend researching the subject before making up your mind about it?
See, then we can make it all about what keiths believed!
Instead I’m choosing to ask to what extent keiths has ever actually engaged the subject matter, it at all.
I was actually thinking of starting a thread this morning called Sunday School for Skeptics, or Bible Lessons for Non-Believers, and talking about hell. But what would be the point?
So I set out my position and then someone says, yeah, but that’s just your belief, other Christians don’t believe that. As if I don’t already know that.
I am perfectly capable of playing the keiths “what do you believe game.” I’d rather have a discussion in which it’s not assumed from the outset that I am the one who needs to change my beliefs.
Gregg also writes:
If keiths wants to evangelize for atheism isn’t he in the wrong place?
It would be very interesting, Mung, please do.
In response to your other comments – yes, I know that not all Christians have the view of hell that many atheists object to, although that in itself raises the question – how does one go about deciding which view is the “right” one? It’s not an empirical question (I would assume you would agree) so by what process of discernment does one arrive at a “better” view of hell, or for that matter, any other theological entity, than other less (accurate? sound? useful? consistent?) ones?
Well, yes, I’d say if any of us wants to evangelize for atheism, we’re in the wrong place.
There’s only a handful of self-identified theists around here who could hypothetically be targets for evangelism, and even fewer (or none) who could be seen as likely to change their minds and de-convert.
I’d like to think I’m not “evangelizing” – probably a bit of self-deception on my part – but I think my comments lately show what I’m trying to get at: not trying to de-convert but trying first to get the apparently-reasonable christians to take a loud, public, overt stance for a version of christianity which is not as inherently damaging as the versions we usually hear preached in public in the US. Second trying to get the apparently-unreasonable christians to move their own faith away from the inherently bigoted and damaging versions towards a more accepting and humane version which is compatible with our secular democracy.
Given that we cannot possibly rid the world of christianity, we do need to hammer down the sick dangerous edges of it.
Mung,
We’re not assuming that. You haven’t told us what you believe about hell, remember? We don’t know whether your beliefs make sense.
I believe that hell doesn’t exist. What do you believe about hell, and why?
Typical keiths deflection. Here were the questions:
Hey, keiths, what were your beliefs about hell when you decided to abandon Christianity and how did they factor into your decision if at all?
If your beliefs about hell did factor into your decision, were you aware at the time that Christians disagree among themselves about hell?
How much time did you actually spend researching the subject before making up your mind about it?
Only you get to ask and have answered questions?
Well Mung?
Keiths did answer the question. There is no hell. It is fiction.
Now would be a good time to answer a question about hell.
Is it fiction, a metaphor, something like purgatory, annihilation, torture, what?
And what exactly does scripture say?
…says Mung, as he frantically tries to deflect attention away from the question I asked first:
If you are ashamed of your views or of your inability to defend them, just say so. It won’t surprise any of us.
Mung has started a new thread called Munging Hell.
Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t give Mung’s views on hell. It simply denies one very narrow version of hell:
Come on, Mung. It’s starting to look like NewMung is no better than OldMung. You can do better.
keiths, lighten up ffs. Give him a chance to tell us.
keiths has been getting a drubbing of late and is looking for some payback. irked to no end I won’t play along. Those are the breaks.
Lizzie,
He’s had plenty of chances, Lizzie. I’ve asked him, and so have OMagain, hotshoe and petrushka. He’s avoiding the question.
Please pay attention.
A mindreader and delusional? How delightful.
Very next post: Mung dodging…