C.S. Lewis always was good at coming up with pithy quotes. And what does this one mean? In what way do people choose to send themselves to hell and in what way do they choose to stay there?
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Appeal to Motive and the presumed selfishness of God
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C.S. Lewis always was good at coming up with pithy quotes. And what does this one mean? In what way do people choose to send themselves to hell and in what way do they choose to stay there?
durangodawood
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Really?
The Bible talks about being "consigned to" hell. "Thrown in" to hell. For the sake of "punishment".
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You're question isn't so much ridiculous as it is complex. Of course, being the Annihilationist that I am, I can't really go the whole hog with my fellow Christians on the issue of Hell. No, my temerity in choking the life out of this typical grievance is of a different philosophical nature, one that has more in common conceptually with instances of noting how a number of people refuse to put sun-block on (100%, preferably) before waltzing out under the variegated essence of the light of the sun.
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You're question isn't so much ridiculous as it is complex. Of course, being the Annihilationist that I am, I can't really go the whole hog with my fellow Christians on the issue of Hell. No, my temerity in choking the life out of this typical grievance is of a different philosophical nature, one that has more in common conceptually with instances of noting how a number of people refuse to put sun-block on (100%, preferably) before waltzing out under the variegated essence of the light of the sun.
No, it's actually a very simple question. The problem is, the answer is "Of course a loving God wouldn't torture people".
The problem is, if you're a Christian you believe that God is loving and the presence of hell in theology forces you to reconcile this in some way. For example:
* People "send themselves to hell".
* People deserve to be tortured.
* Hell doesn't actually exist.
Or, as I said earlier in the thread, and as is now being demonstrated:
"What mental gymnastics Christians have to go through to make excuses for God!"
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All powerful does not mean the being can do the impossible.
You (or any being) cannot make the choice for an individual and also make the choice the independent autonomous free will choice with likely alternatives by the individual.
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I quite agree that your question itself is simple, or rather I should say it's simplistic and somewhat reductionistic. I mean, if you want to play 5th grade dodge-ball and while doing so pretend you're really playing an all-star game of rugby to its fullest extent, then I guess I can't stop you from imagining that this is the case. But whatever game you'd be playing, the rest of us would simply look on in amusement, such as I am doing at the present time with your question.
Are you sure that really is the problem? Of course a loving God wouldn't torture people. But, it could also be that a Loving, yet Holy and Righteous God just isn't compatible with things (people, too) which choose to remain 'unholy' and 'unreconciled.'
You're conclusions could seem to be necessitated by empathic sensibilities for the first two possibilities, which wouldn't make them true though, even if I do see your point. However, the third conclusion, that of Hell [Hades] not existing or of having some limitation as to its structure, could instead be arrived at through a case enacting... a fuller (more correct?) Biblical interpretation. Fortunately for you, I won't have to bend over backwards here to defend that position since it's not allowed.
Last time I checked, gymnastics was a highly skilled endeavor. In Christianity, we might refer to at least some aspects of "mental gymnastics" as Hermeneutics and Exegesis, a field of study that is, as far as I've seen, considered to be academically legitimate. If you haven't engaged this kind of mental exercise, you might try it sometime!
It can make a world of difference for the would-be expositor, a world of difference between Exegesis and Eisegesis, and between perhaps really understanding what one is talking about when he chooses to talk about the God of the Bible versus doing just enough to get by while reading the Bible but still remaining in a state of solipsism, of sorts.
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I was already making an analogy to a machine, and you doubled down and made an analogy to an inanimate object. Programming is just an analogy to His nature. Assuming He didn't have a designer, there is no "beyond" in question. See, it seems like the significant part of being human is choosing our nature, or at least choosing to have God change our nature to something better, however you want to look at it. But God didn't choose His nature, and He is incapable of choosing to change it. I could go out and murder a bunch of people and that would certainly change my nature from the generally upbeat chap that I usually am. But God can't choose to do anything other than the "perfect" choice. If it doesn't matter that God can't change His nature, then what's the point in us having a nature we can choose to change?
Think of this. If God is love, could He choose to just stop loving you? If He can't choose to not love you, did He really choose to love you? And if He didn't choose to love you, is it really love? Isn't He only doing what He must do? I don't think the lack of a creator makes for any sort of meaningful distinction from a machine if this is the case.
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I'm not going to answer for Quid, but in thinking about your questions here, and being that they do seem to be pertinent, I'm of the mind to ask a couple of questions in return, not as a rhetorical response, but rather as a pointer to additional pondering among us all: What is it we think we're doing when we interact with Siri, Alexa or Cortana? Are we "relating" with them? And is "relating" with us one of God's ultimate objectives, even if not directly now, then later?
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I understand that this is a position some people take. However, I can see two problems with it.
First, there is no evidence for it in the Bible. So far as I can tell, this is just a position that people take because it makes them feel better than the idea that a loving God punishes people like some ancient tyrant king.
Second, this doesn't make sense on its own terms. Why on earth would people choose to go to hell, or choose to stay there?
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Chriliman
Everything I need to be joyful is right here
Have you read up on the evidence that suggests ‘hell’ as we understand it today wasn’t even in the original manuscripts that many of our modern Bibles were translated from? It’s interesting.
Chapter 16 - Hebrew and Greek words mistranslated to mean Hell – Gods Plan for All
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Am I correct in saying that you yourself do not believe in the existence of a literal hell? If so, then you and I are - to an extent - on the same side here, both of us agreeing that a literal hell is a ridiculous idea. I'd like, before we carry on, to clear that question up.I quite agree that your question itself is simple, or rather I should say it's simplistic and somewhat reductionistic. I mean, if you want to play 5th grade dodge-ball and while doing so pretend you're really playing an all-star game of rugby to its fullest extent, then I guess I can't stop you from imagining that this is the case. But whatever game you'd be playing, the rest of us would simply look on in amusement, such as I am doing at the present time with your question.
You might make yourself clearer here. Are you referring to the rules of Christian Forums not allowing Christians to defend the non-existence of hell?
This is rather my point. Gymnastics is indeed a highly skilled endeavour, and mental gymnastics a very necessary thing for a Christian apologist, since the plain and obvious truth is that hell does not exist, and nor does God. When defending a proposition with such threadbare and even absurd evidence and arguments, a high degree of debating skill is a necessity. Why, someone might even get so good at it that they get over-confident and say some rather ill-advised things about their opponents being simplistic and reductionistic.
Well, now, you might want to reconsider that statement. It is true that there is a great deal to be learned from the Bible. In the fields of archaeology, history, linguistics and classics it has a much to offer. And indeed, there are plenty of very learned people who do excellent work in these fields at universities, translating and investigating and mapping. If you want to have a full understanding of the history of the English language, for example, a knowledge of the Bible is essential. These people do useful, important and fascinating work, and you won't find me saying any different.In Christianity, we might refer to at least some aspects of "mental gymnastics" as Hermeneutics and Exegesis, a field of study that is, as far as I've seen, considered to be academically legitimate. If you haven't engaged this kind of mental exercise, you might try it sometime!
But when it actually comes to divining the intentions of the character "the God of the Bible" - well, that's quite a different matter. Academia may find it interesting, the games that apologists and theologians play, but nobody actually takes them seriously, nor should they. And when you say that a person should speak Hebrew or Greek, or spend ten years studying theology before they're competent to dismiss some Bronze-age stories (the Old Testament) and Roman cultic myths (New Testament) as nonsense - well, the rest of the world simply looks on in amusement, and points out that you Christians can't even agree among yourselves about...honestly, more or less anything.
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Yes, you are correct, partially. As for the existence of a "literal" hell, I am under the general impression that there has been some form of less than desirable 'holding place' for the those who were (maybe are) the dearly departed, and we call that place, or a portion of that place, depending on which combination of theologians one ends up hearing from, HADES.
And if HADES is still in operation today behind the metaphysical veil, then my own hermeneutical conclusions lead me to believe that it will be done away with, along with that other very literary personage we all know as -- DEATH! As for some eternally churning, burning conflagration fit for bunch of red devils, no, I'm afraid I'm not very convinced that this idea is a bona-fide interpretation. So, at least on that final point, we have some agreement.
Yes. I am referring to the rules. Since I'm an Annihilationist, I cannot sit here and dispense to you my hermeneutical prowess and offer you ALL of the highways and byways of my step by step thinking in this regard. At least not here.
It might also be said that the Critical Hermeneutics involved in reading the Bible is more or less the same as that which is should be applied to the reading of any work of literature, whether it is fiction or non-fiction. It's not as if Christians invented the notion of applying ones rational capacities for the application of hermeneutics anyway. Of course, I'm sure you already know this, being the intellectual chap that I see you are.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. There are limits to just what the Bible offers us, academically speaking.
Yes, it most certainly is.
I'm quite sure that's the case. The public, in fact, more often than not, doesn't consistently take much in the way of any fuller or deeper levels of rational evaluation of the world seriously ... No, they tend to ignore scientist, philosophers, as well as various theologians.
Oh, you don't know my position, do you? I would never say that a person has to know Hebrew or Greek or spend a number of years studying theology to dismiss Bronze-age stories. No, many people dismiss the Bible specifically, with competency or no competency, and more often from sheer emotional reason than anything else, I think. And there could very well be several reasons for this---Metaphysical and epistemological reasons, but we wouldn't have to get into those now since I'm not sure you find anything related to the Bible to be credible to begin with. However, despite that, I'm sure we can say together that we both just love that little word 'reason'! It's such a helpful apparatus of the mind ...
[By the way, feel free to let me know of any egregious errors I may make in grammar or syntax, among other things. English has never been one of my strongest points, even though amazingly enough, it's my native language. It's my only language, really.
So, please know in advance that I will defer to your gracious knowledge in things English. It's the least I can do.]
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Indeed I have. It's quite possible that the belief in hell is a Christian belief, but that's not my problem. From my point of view, it's not at all remarkable that a religion should evolve in its views about the afterlife. From your point of view, however, you have to explain how, if hell doesn't exist, you have to explain why the Bible quite clearly refers to it - for example, the story of the rich man being tormented (Luke 16:19-31, the sheep being divided from the goats (Matthew 25:41-46) and the Lake of Fire mentioned in Revelation 20:11-15.
I'm afraid you may not be able to explain it on these forums, however. As I understand it, it's against the rules to do so? So we may have to stop here.
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You are doing what many people tend to do with all - religious, scientific, and political narratives, and that would be falling into the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
Biblical narrative has its own language that speaks concepts via cultural archetypes much like scientific narrative leverages concepts of the existing frameworks to paint some conceptual reality that can't be described any other way.
So, many next gen physics students are running around speaking about photons and electrons as reified entities that exist in some reductionist isolation apart from models that are used to describe these.
The same with religion. Religion has language. That language is not "modern English". So you can run to definitions from modern English and begin to reify religious concepts. Religion is a philosophical framework that, in case of Judeo-Christianity, draws on early agrarian and tribal conceptualization of transcendent realities.
In case of hell, it's the word used for the trash deposits burning outside of large cities. These were smelling and constantly burning. That's the context of the "eternal fire" and many of these conceptual imagery. The idea is that hell is at the bottom of human experience. Heaven is at the top. It's a hierarchy of relationships when it comes to certain human being. It's not a singular place.
So, when you read these parables, these are structured as archypal concepts leveraging the word-concepts that refer to typical cultural understanding. In case of Helenized Jewish culture that was Hades, so Jesus uses Hades-based narrative to describe archetypal states.
When you watch a film about superheros you are not under impression that the images on the screen are real. The writers clearly trying to convey some narrative that's grounded in moral reality that you live in, but they are hooking into some transcendent narrative to act it out as a memorable story. And that's what religion is as a meta-narrative. When you run to reification means to falsify it... it's like standing up in a movie theater and complaining about how unrealistic the film is. The premise of the film is not in the equivalent reality. It's in archetypal narrative that we can relate as human beings.
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Hell is not a punishment, it's a tangent consequences for making wrong choices... largely those associated with ignoring ideals that maintain healthy bodies, families, and societies... Which leads to worst existence imaginable, followed by death. Cyclical recurrence of that "cultural state" is the idea of "eternal death". The idea is that certain cultural states are inescapably awful, and that it only takes "external salvation" to remedy these situations. These cultural mindsets are unable to improve their own condition. Hence, these cultures can be "perpetually alive" in a state of worst experience imaginable.
Punishment is usually a form of correction. Hell is not a punishment anymore than drunk drivers get punished by dying in the accident.
If you read OT prophetic narrative it's usually presented as a dichotomy. Follow X and you will have healthy society and prosperous future. Ignore it and do Y, and you will have disasters and loss of sovereignty.
Hell narrative follows similar archetypal message. Rejection of ideals is disasterous in its consequences.
In Jesus story about Rich man and Lazarus the concept is inverted. People who displace and channel resources are the cause of hellish circumstances, so they are in the archetypal center of that death fire. But they contribute to the "cultural death" that equalizes both, and they are at disadvantage and suffer far more than the poor who are used to these circumstances.
So, these's a lot of archytypal reality encoded I in these religious narratives. Unfortunately, most try to reify it into some literal reality that they either believe in or reject.
These narratives talk about tangents of "biologically-immortal" humanity that can exist at both extremes. If you consider who you are... You are a copy of a copy of a copy of some variation of both genetic and cultural "human tangent". Granted that you will have kids or you have some participatory influence on future generations, that tangent doesn't end with you. It keeps on progressing to some direction towards proverbial heaven or proverbial hell.
These narratives structure archetypes of consolidated human experience that spanned millennia. So, these encapsulate certain tendencies and predict eventualities with certain degree of accuracy... Understanding the eventual tangent of these tendencies.
Hence, you can look at Revelation as some rave of a lunatic, or you can look at it as archetypal narrative of a "stream of consciousness" that lays down some generic predictions about our collective future using conceptual lexicon of that day. So, in order to understand it, you have to think conceptually and not literally. These are not narratives about concrete forms of reality in a sense that these point to something specific. It's a generic narrative.
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I'm a big fan of sic-fi, and I honestly think we'll make sentient robots someday, but our interactions with the likes of Siri and gang are nothing more than button pushes with our voice right now. Folks aren't "relating" to them any more than I relate to my XFinity remote from Comcast. "Change the channel to Rick and Morty".
As for God wanting to relate to us, I leave that up to you Christians to tell me, and I'll have to compartmentalize who's opinion belongs to who. Things get even more complicated when you consider the Trinity and you have differing opinions about which member of the Trinity wants a relationship, if not all of them. As an unbeliever, I certainly won't get it right, as I'm constantly reminded.
Of course, my questions would apply to Jesus too, since He's supposed to be perfect as well.
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God crafted reality itself. Hell isn't an unavoidable consequence of bad choices, it's the God created system working as designed. Hell is a punishment in the same way that life in prison is a punishment.
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This is a typical example of diving into fallacy of misplaced concreteness when reading a narrative that meant to set cultural concepts of moral being.
First of all, if you read Biblical narrative, hell isn't a place that dead people go to after they die. It's a narrative constructed from reading of rich man and Lazarus narrative which describes some place that's nothing like heaven and hell. It's some conceptual place where people on the other side can see and talk to each other. It's a narrative vehicle that structures moral relationships. It's not presented as doctrine on literal reality.
Even if you decide to argue against some concrete reification of that narrative, in the very least read it as is... Death is a form of "stasis" or "sleep". People are the resurrected after second coming. Some to "eternal life" and other to annihilation. Revelation 20 and 21 sums up that narrative on the lake of fire. There's no one in it until these events unfold, and when they do there's a whole bunch of conflict and bad guys trying to kill good underthe direction of bad ideology, and there's a resurrection of both good and bad and the bad are thrown in the lake of fire, which is the second death. That lake seems to be on Earth and as follows that "righteous walk on the ashes of the wicked".
So, if you are going to reify a narrative, at least reify the correct one
.But why would you reify it in the first place? It's a narrative that structures relationship between opposing extremes as unfolding "good vs evil" epic. I would argue that it's not there to tell you about specifics of our future or to outline the meta-reality of afterlife.
Yes, most Christians today would reify it as such, and most atheists reject that reification... But so do I and increasing number of Christians that don't see it as the point of the story.
So, if you have problems with people burning forever in hell... First of all, it's not even a viable literal reading of Biblical narrative. But secondly, why would you insist that it should be literal and argue against as such... When I clearly don't present it to be as such?
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