Appeal to Motive and the presumed selfishness of God

[2PhiloVoid]

By the way, since we're now arguing about the same things on two different threads, perhaps we should just move our discussion to one of them? The other one?

Anyway, goodnight now!

Good night, my friend! Happy sheep hunting!

 

[2PhiloVoid]

By the way, since we're now arguing about the same things on two different threads, perhaps we should just move our discussion to one of them? The other one?

Anyway, goodnight now!

...and yes, perhaps we can put all of this over onto one thread.

 

[Moral Orel]

Yes? You could freely make the right choice if you had full information on the consequences and sequelae of it, but that is certainly not possible for humanity. So inevitably imperfect choices would occur, but that limitation does not apply to God. That is the whole point of the Fall, and Sin begets Sin. Further, humans cannot merely choose according to our Natures what we prefer, for we are beholden to the Moral Law of God. God however, is the standard of the Moral Law, the Good, so there is no incongruence.

When humans fail to adhere to God, that choice is imperfect, but the result of our imperfect knowledge and our fallen nature. The man Jesus of Nazareth could freely choose 100% perfectly, according to Christians - and via being in-Christ, we other humans could one day do so as well, through Christ flowing through us (what Influence in the Moral Influence atonement really means). I hope this clarifies, but I fail to see the contradiction. God determined this whole play was worthwhile we find ourselves in, to create sons of God. It is not that everyone would make an incorrect choice, but someone would - and the knock-on effect of one sin is to beget others and to muddy our moral decision making in entirety, as in Adam eating after Eve. It alters the playing field as it were.

So what happens if God designs a creature to have the same nature as Himself? Liking all the same things, and disliking all the same things. That creature would be making free choices based on his nature, right?

 

[zippy2006]

On the other hand, obviously nobody does deserve to go to a place of eternal, conscious torment.

But that's not an argument. It's more akin to the emotional appeals Hitchens pointed out.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

But that's not an argument. It's more akin to the emotional appeals Hitchens pointed out.

Interesting point. Obviously, I do think "emotional appeal" is a logical fallacy - and yet...
When it comes to the case of saying "Do you think that this person, or any person, deserves to be tortured, in the most horrible ways, for eternity...
Well, I have to say, "Are you mad? Nobody deserves that!"

Would you disagree? If so, why?

 

[Silmarien]

Interesting point. Obviously, I do think "emotional appeal" is a logical fallacy - and yet...
When it comes to the case of saying "Do you think that this person, or any person, deserves to be tortured, in the most horrible ways, for eternity...
Well, I have to say, "Are you mad? Nobody deserves that!"

Would you disagree? If so, why?

I am going to sound like a radical Marxist, but I think it needs to be said:

Nine million people die of starvation every year. Countless others die of treatable diseases, are trafficked into sexual slavery, or any number of other terrible fates. Human civilization has historically been built upon exploitation, conquest, and misery, and even the victims have been complicit in crimes of their own. And here we are, arguing on an internet forum, utterly oblivious to some of the horrors taking place in the world beyond. For the most part, we can't even conceptualize it, but there's a certain consent implicit in turning away from it.

I prefer the existential to the punitive picture of hell, but I don't think you actually have an argument here. I could just as easily take this picture of culpability and social sin and say that there may well be nobody who doesn't deserve eternal torment.

 

[zippy2006]

Interesting point. Obviously, I do think "emotional appeal" is a logical fallacy - and yet...
When it comes to the case of saying "Do you think that this person, or any person, deserves to be tortured, in the most horrible ways, for eternity...
Well, I have to say, "Are you mad? Nobody deserves that!"

Would you disagree? If so, why?

Answered here, in a thread devoted to the issue.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

I am going to sound like a radical Marxist, but I think it needs to be said:

Nine million people die of starvation every year. Countless others die of treatable diseases, are trafficked into sexual slavery, or any number of other terrible fates. Human civilization has historically been built upon exploitation, conquest, and misery, and even the victims have been complicit in crimes of their own. And here we are, arguing on an internet forum, utterly oblivious to some of the horrors taking place in the world beyond. For the most part, we can't even conceptualize it, but there's a certain consent implicit in turning away from it.

I prefer the existential to the punitive picture of hell, but I don't think you actually have an argument here. I could just as easily take this picture of culpability and social sin and say that there may well be nobody who doesn't deserve eternal torment.

If there's a point to that, I missed it.
As far as I can see, the true point is: what could a human being have done that was so bad that he then deserves to be punished, in the most horrible way possible, forever?

 

[InterestedAtheist]

Answered here, in a thread devoted to the issue.

Perhaps you can summarise?

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

So what happens if God designs a creature to have the same nature as Himself? Liking all the same things, and disliking all the same things. That creature would be making free choices based on his nature, right?

Have you read the opening of the book of Genesis? This is what God did, making man in His Image.

As I said, evil is only a shadow. No one does evil for evil's sake, but to chase a Good - be that the serial killer chasing pleasure or the shoplifter trying to get food, or whatever. We humans do like good things, but we are often confused on how to reach these 'goods'. We do though have a sense of how we ought to act to reach them, a moral sense in other words. This we often neglect or suppress, and the more we do so, the easier it becomes - the more we habituate to evil actions.

Humans aren't perfectly knowledgeable, so we often fail to see the consequences of our actions - as Eve failed to see the consequence of eating the Fruit in the Garden. The Serpent told her she would become 'as gods', meaning living perfectly according to her nature, essentially for the Self. This was an attempt to achieve a good outside of the Fount of Goodness, a mistake, a missing of the mark. In doing so, she brought down Adam, as Sin begets Sin, and a false nature in opposition to the Image of God was set up - the Fall, resulting ultimately in death, as God is the sustainer and fount of existence itself. This false idea of the Self outside of the purview of God, still attempts to reach what is Good, ie what is of God, as its nature is just perverted or bent, not wholely novel, and that moral sense of how things ought to be still gnaws at the roots thereof.

So a nature akin to God would only result in perfect choices if that being was perfectly knowledgeable on consequences, or defers perfectly to God who is. The latter is a goal of Christianity, to thus embrace our true natures as sons of God. So we can make free choices based on His nature, though such things are profoundly muddied by the pernicious consequence of our and others' sin. Hence the Incarnation and Atonement. Why we were created as imperfect beings, with free will, to me speaks of God wanting free children instead of automata, but much speculation can be exhausted on such questions without clear answers.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I am going to sound like a radical Marxist, but I think it needs to be said:

Nine million people die of starvation every year. Countless others die of treatable diseases, are trafficked into sexual slavery, or any number of other terrible fates. Human civilization has historically been built upon exploitation, conquest, and misery, and even the victims have been complicit in crimes of their own. And here we are, arguing on an internet forum, utterly oblivious to some of the horrors taking place in the world beyond. For the most part, we can't even conceptualize it, but there's a certain consent implicit in turning away from it.

I prefer the existential to the punitive picture of hell, but I don't think you actually have an argument here. I could just as easily take this picture of culpability and social sin and say that there may well be nobody who doesn't deserve eternal torment.

That sounds like Father Zosima in the Brothers Karamazov, bowing before all, and ultimately accepting collective guilt for all human sins. After all, each time we purchase a product or rest in leasure, are we not complicit in the pyramid of suffering that brought us that? In the wage slave, the economic tyranny? How do you set that right? By giving away all your wealth as the rich young man was advised to do? Or simply as the preserve eating Father Zosima did, by merely doing as best as one can in your circumstance and not to shun such pleasures like a Pharisee or the severe Father Ferapont?

As the Grand Inquisitor makes plain, Jesus' ways are too hard - but then again, "my Yoke is light".

 

[Moral Orel]

Have you read the opening of the book of Genesis? This is what God did, making man in His Image.

As I said, evil is only a shadow. No one does evil for evil's sake, but to chase a Good - be that the serial killer chasing pleasure or the shoplifter trying to get food, or whatever. We humans do like good things, but we are often confused on how to reach these 'goods'. We do though have a sense of how we ought to act to reach them, a moral sense in other words. This we often neglect or suppress, and the more we do so, the easier it becomes - the more we habituate to evil actions.

Humans aren't perfectly knowledgeable, so we often fail to see the consequences of our actions - as Eve failed to see the consequence of eating the Fruit in the Garden. The Serpent told her she would become 'as gods', meaning living perfectly according to her nature, essentially for the Self. This was an attempt to achieve a good outside of the Fount of Goodness, a mistake, a missing of the mark. In doing so, she brought down Adam, as Sin begets Sin, and a false nature in opposition to the Image of God was set up - the Fall, resulting ultimately in death, as God is the sustainer and fount of existence itself. This false idea of the Self outside of the purview of God, still attempts to reach what is Good, ie what is of God, as its nature is just perverted or bent, not wholely novel, and that moral sense of how things ought to be still gnaws at the roots thereof.

So a nature akin to God would only result in perfect choices if that being was perfectly knowledgeable on consequences, or defers perfectly to God who is. The latter is a goal of Christianity, to thus embrace our true natures as sons of God. So we can make free choices based on His nature, though such things are profoundly muddied by the pernicious consequence of our and others' sin. Hence the Incarnation and Atonement.

If Eve really had the same nature as God, being made in His image, then it wouldn't matter if she lived according to her own nature, the Self, right? She would still only be doing things that she and God both like, and she wouldn't do things that she and God don't like. If she only did things she liked, and didn't do things she didn't like, then the only way she could cause a problem is if she liked something God didn't like, or if she didn't like something that God did like.

See, I don't think humans are confused about how to get the things they like. A serial killer does in fact get pleasure that he likes. He knows how to get it, so he does. The trouble is that he doesn't dislike killing people. If he disliked killing people, then he wouldn't get pleasure from it and he'd go read a book instead. Like, totally. Nobody "like" this post. Okay, I'm gotten the puns out of my system...

But last, and possibly least, why not give humans perfect knowledge of consequences?

Why we were created as imperfect beings, with free will, to me speaks of God wanting free children instead of automata, but much speculation can be exhausted on such questions without clear answers.

I saved this bit for last because that's something I would sort of agree with. It's fine if God doesn't want automata, I get that. I just think that if God is perfect and makes free choices, then He could create perfect beings who make free choices. I think it's a false dichotomy to say it's either a Fallen world, or robots.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

If Eve really had the same nature as God, being made in His image, then it wouldn't matter if she lived according to her own nature, the Self, right? She would still only be doing things that she and God both like, and she wouldn't do things that she and God don't like. If she only did things she liked, and didn't do things she didn't like, then the only way she could cause a problem is if she liked something God didn't like, or if she didn't like something that God did like.

See, I don't think humans are confused about how to get the things they like. A serial killer does in fact get pleasure that he likes. He knows how to get it, so he does. The trouble is that he doesn't dislike killing people. If he disliked killing people, then he wouldn't get pleasure from it and he'd go read a book instead. Like, totally. Nobody "like" this post. Okay, I'm gotten the puns out of my system...

The Serpent promises Eve she would become 'as gods'. The fact is that Eve was in a dependant relationship upon God, as we all are in some sense, when God is conceived as creator and sustainer of what exists. To set-up as the Self, is to repudiate dependance, to exist for herself. Now does God want beings similar to Himself? - Yes, hence we become sons of God. Did Eve go the right way to achieve this? - No. We become 'as gods' by allowing God to fill us, by being in-Christ, not to set-up alone. Instead of embracing a relation to God, mirrored within God by the perfect love between Father and Son, Eve chose poorly. The intention to come into fullness of existence, to become 'like gods', isn't contrary to Nature - it is the goal of each Christian to emulate Christ after all. Doing so somehow outside of relation to God, however is an error.

The serial killer feels pleasure, but that pleasure would pale into insignificance before the bliss of the presence of God, but his chosen attempt to reach pleasure, is precluding the greater pleasure. I don't know if you know any pharmacology, but there is a concept of where adding an agonist at a drug receptor, in presence of a stronger potency drug, decreases overall effects because the one agonist effectively antagonises the stronger drug's effects. Thus misplaced pleasure, leads to perdition, as ultimately it drives that person away from where pleasure or what is good, actually originates.

But last, and possibly least, why not give humans perfect knowledge of consequences?

Well, "if you eat of the fruit you shall surely die". As I said before, I don't think Free Will applicable to God as a concept, and likewise, the more you hedge free choices by caveats to be fulfilled, the less free they become. The point perhaps is for man to realise our full dependance upon God, to thus enter into a relation as sons of God that mirror the Son of God. Ultimately, to freely choose God requires that such a choice be limited as little as possible I think, to subsequently show more value - or perhaps it is merely a consequence of being imperfect beings, as inevitably being created, we are less perfect than the Creator?

I saved this bit for last because that's something I would sort of agree with. It's fine if God doesn't want automata, I get that. I just think that if God is perfect and makes free choices, then He could create perfect beings who make free choices. I think it's a false dichotomy to say it's either a Fallen world, or robots.

How? How could a Perfect God create Perfect beings with free choices, without limiting that freedom? Such beings are paradoxically less perfect, since less free, hindered as such in the choice they make. This differs from God, I AM that I AM. God being the fount of existence, what He wills Is. There is no limitation, except His own chosen limits.

 

[Silmarien]

If there's a point to that, I missed it.
As far as I can see, the true point is: what could a human being have done that was so bad that he then deserves to be punished, in the most horrible way possible, forever?

If you didn't understand my post, I would suggest rereading it. It was a version of the Reformed counterclaim that everyone deserves hell. That's not my position, but if we're looking at things simply through the lens of just desserts, I find it considerably stronger than your emotional plea to the contrary.

That sounds like Father Zosima in the Brothers Karamazov, bowing before all, and ultimately accepting collective guilt for all human sins. After all, each time we purchase a product or rest in leasure, are we not complicit in the pyramid of suffering that brought us that? In the wage slave, the economic tyranny? How do you set that right? By giving away all your wealth as the rich young man was advised to do? Or simply as the preserve eating Father Zosima did, by merely doing as best as one can in your circumstance and not to shun such pleasures like a Pharisee or the severe Father Ferapont?

As the Grand Inquisitor makes plain, Jesus' ways are too hard - but then again, "my Yoke is light".

I love that book. And yeah, I think Dostoevsky has good answers to things in general.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

If you didn't understand my post, I would suggest rereading it. It was a version of the Reformed counterclaim that everyone deserves hell. That's not my position, but if we're looking at things simply through the lens of just desserts, I find it considerably stronger than your emotional plea to the contrary.

I did reread it, and still didn't get anything from it. If you want to make your point plainly, I'll be happy to respond. Otherwise, we'll leave it there.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I did reread it, and still didn't get anything from it. If you want to make your point plainly, I'll be happy to respond. Otherwise, we'll leave it there.

So, how's your math coming along?

 

[InterestedAtheist]

If you didn't understand my post, I would suggest rereading it. It was a version of the Reformed counterclaim that everyone deserves hell. That's not my position, but if we're looking at things simply through the lens of just desserts, I find it considerably stronger than your emotional plea to the contrary.

I did reread it, and still didn't get anything from it. If you want to make your point plainly, I'll be happy to respond. Otherwise, we'll leave it there.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

So, how's your math coming along?

I've counted several pages so far where you've failed to say anything worth responding to. It's really getting quite funny. Do please tell us more about how you know everything and we know nothing. Be careful not to make any actual arguments, though. That would spoil your record.

 

[Moral Orel]

If you didn't understand my post, I would suggest rereading it. It was a version of the Reformed counterclaim that everyone deserves hell. That's not my position, but if we're looking at things simply through the lens of just desserts, I find it considerably stronger than your emotional plea to the contrary.

I think the sticking point is the "eternity" part of it all. I tend to agree with your point generally, that we're responsible for the things we could change but shrug our shoulders at, so you make a good case against folks who say, "I never hurt nobody!". But it doesn't add up to eternity. Even if I'm responsible for all the suffering that happened before I was born, and all the suffering after I die, and in-between, and even the suffering I really couldn't possibly know or do anything about, it doesn't add up to eternity. There's a finite amount of suffering that will exist, so an infinite punishment can not be just.

 

[devolved]

I think the sticking point is the "eternity" part of it all. I tend to agree with your point generally, that we're responsible for the things we could change but shrug our shoulders at, so you make a good case against folks who say, "I never hurt nobody!". But it doesn't add up to eternity. Even if I'm responsible for all the suffering that happened before I was born, and all the suffering after I die, and in-between, and even the suffering I really couldn't possibly know or do anything about, it doesn't add up to eternity. There's a finite amount of suffering that will exist, so an infinite punishment can not be just.

I think there's a different way to look at it at the level of "archetypal continuum". Keep in mind that I'm not approaching this subject from the POV of strict fundamentalist type of literalism which insists on an extra-dimensional concept of hell where souls are tortured the moment that a "bad person" dies.

In the West, the procedural presets of scientific reductionism and proprietor-driven market capitalism tend to abstract the plurality of "self" and instead present the idea of self as a discreet individual that is responsible for some success or failure. And there seems to be a generic ignorance of the continuum spans over enormous amount of transactions in time and space that are compounded into resultant "I". In the past we used to communicate some plurality of "you" in its adult and mature form, as it still does exist in many other languages.

So, the context of "eternal" is merely a commentary on transcendent nature of that continuum. Some cultural presets may contribute to perpetual suffering of some isolated group of people that could be caught in a perpetual cycle of birth and rebirth in a rather hellish conditions. If you take some isolated parts of this world, it's not that difficult to see that as the case. And as such, certain ideologies may prevent and guard from outside intervention that could break the cycle... and literally lock these people in the "eternal torment" of this cyclical inability to see the problem.

From that POV, the Christian narrative is rather straightforward. In order to break the cycle, one must become "one of" these people in context of engaging that ideology on the ground level, and subversively sacrifice one's self-interest to point out the problem with established norms that perpetuate these conditions. That's a very typical archetype we find over and over again..., for example:

Ignaz Semmelweis - Wikipedia

Of course, it's a poser case for "belief perseverance", but you see all of the recurring themes of Christian narrative of some ideal that's at odds with the present order is "born" in a culture that rejects that ideal. Naintaining existing structural paradigm contributes to its suffering. That novel idea gains some following, but may be rejected and "killed", but if it's subversive-enough, it subsequently "resurrects" and is established as de-facto paradigm, improving and saving lives in process.

But, continual rejection of these ideals results in cyclical hell, which is in that sense eternal.

In a nutshell, that's the archetypal meaning of the Gospel narrative. It creates context and room for subversive ideals to manifest and contribute to our collective well-being, and points out the problem with "killing" the Christ. Of course, these narratives are personified and conceptually communicated by personifying these ideals and ideas in order for these to be memorable. And these narratives case then ironically take the orthodox form of people and entities that we must believe in to be saved to avoid the literal hell and gain access to literal afterlife. But even in that form these tend to ingrain some conceptual framework that incorporates celebration of some form of cyclical injection of novelty, and celebrating when such novelty contributes to cultural progress of some sort. The idea is that we don't need to live in some context of cyclical suffering, and we should both inject novelty and re-examine orthodoxy to see whether it contributes of our suffering.

So, it should be quite obvious to anyone who can notice historical patterns in sociology as these relate to generic progress of humanity that happens through these "jumps" of establishment of norms, some of which turn out to be placeholders for ignorance that many defend as viable. The new breakthrough ideas and ideals surface that challenge these placeholders and rituals surrounding these. Some are killed off. Some survive "death and persecution" and live on to establish the new paradigms... and so on and so on. Of course on the other end of "eschatological context", there are sets of ideas that either seek to intentionally exploit through deception and control, or these are ignorantly perpetuated by adherents through some form of social pressure... so you have the typified narrative of Mark of the beast being in the forehead (knowingly deceiving), or in the right hand (mechanic execution of these ideals).

And then, in a linear context of that timeline (as opposed to cyclical) there are people who follow the beast (our primitive impulses, like fear, hunger, sex and dominance), which leads them to perpetuate false ideology that contributes to cyclical suffering, although it may benefit few. And then there are cultures that follow the other set of ideologies that not only cyclically adopt new and viable ideals, but also build mechanisms for these ideals to make a comeback if these are temporarily disrupted by some disastrous scenarios (second coming analogy), or unification and strengthening of these ideals through numbers that take over and root out the paradigms of the past that perpetuate these "beastly" ideologies.

Of course it's not the typical reading you will find in churches today, because there's currently no conceptual framework to accommodate the "unveiled" context for these narratives, and of course such cultural framework didn't exist in the past. So, these narratives were reified and systematized into ritualistic memorization of "historical fact", which are in actuality serve as a subversive means to instill behavioral and conceptual patterns.

So, these narratives are esoteric in a sense that these were used to establish conceptual paradigm for human progress at the level of individuals and societies where such progress was simply impossible to explain in "plain terms" without it being rejected and killed off. So, now... looking at these with all due diligence of "broader perspective" it makes far more sense for me than it did during my stage of Christian experience, and following state of confronting the dissonance between the literal meaning of that narrative and reality that we find ourselves in. But, I think that the point of these narratives is to serve as that "guiding light" for human development, whether you think these were inspired by some transcendent being or a group of exceptional individuals that launched this ideology to alter historic trajectory... which IMO turned out for our collective best.