Appeal to Motive and the presumed selfishness of God

[2PhiloVoid]

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.

As far as I remember, I've given no verbal indication that I've obtained anything in the way of 'all knowledge,' especially not of the sort that pertains to the personage of Jesus Christ. But really, what kind of evidence are you looking for? I have to ask, because up till now, I have little evidence to suppose that you're anything else but a Nihilist in Shakespearean garb ...

 

[zippy2006]

Perhaps you can summarise?

All I am doing is moving our conversation to a thread where that conversation is on topic. Did you follow the link?

 

[InterestedAtheist]

As far as I remember, I've given no verbal indication that I've obtained anything in the way of 'all knowledge,' especially not of the sort that pertains to the personage of Jesus Christ. But really, what kind of evidence are you looking for? I have to ask, because up till now, I have little evidence to suppose that you're anything else but a Nihilist in Shakespearean garb ...

I'm genuinely puzzled by your answer. How should I know what kind of evidence I'm looking for? You're the one who believes in God. Presumably you have some reason for doing so. If it is a good reason, then share it, and I will believe too. Are you not aware that this is how the process of persuading people works?

In short: why do you believe God exists?

 

[InterestedAtheist]

All I am doing is moving our conversation to a thread where that conversation is on topic. Did you follow the link?

I haven't been on these forums for a while, and yes, it did give me some trouble.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I'm genuinely puzzled by your answer. How should I know what kind of evidence I'm looking for? You're the one who believes in God. Presumably you have some reason for doing so. If it is a good reason, then share it, and I will believe too. Are you not aware that this is how the process of persuading people works?

In short: why do you believe God exists?

I think I gave something of an answer to this type of question to another poster not so long ago [ below ]

Driving Force

Let's just call it..............."Solomon Syndrome".......

 

[Silmarien]

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.

My point was pretty plain. And then I restated it, again pretty plainly. You're the only one who seems to have had any trouble understanding it, but no worries.

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 would actually take the exact opposite approach. I would start by questioning to what extent we can truly speak of suffering as being finite--survivors of violent crimes do have to deal with the consequences for the rest of their lives. Their assailants may have repaid their debt to society after a couple of years, but the wound to the victim is still there. Once something has happened, it can't be undone. It is in a certain sense eternal, and if we are factoring in the possibility of an afterlife for the criminal, then we ought to for the victim as well. Their victimhood does not go away after a set period of time. The slate is never wiped clean. At least, not from this side.

That said, I think we ought to question the notion of punitive justice entirely and ask whether even infinite punishment can truly redeem the reality of suffering. (I find the punitive interpretation of hell odd for a number of reasons--for one, I think the Gospel is painting something other than "eye for an eye" style justice, so I'd fit these pieces together differently.)

 

[InterestedAtheist]

My point was pretty plain. And then I restated it, again pretty plainly. You're the only one who seems to have had any trouble understanding it, but no worries.

Okay. If you wish, we can leave it at that.

 

[Moral Orel]

I would actually take the exact opposite approach. I would start by questioning to what extent we can truly speak of suffering as being finite--survivors of violent crimes do have to deal with the consequences for the rest of their lives. Their assailants may have repaid their debt to society after a couple of years, but the wound to the victim is still there. Once something has happened, it can't be undone. It is in a certain sense eternal, and if we are factoring in the possibility of an afterlife for the criminal, then we ought to for the victim as well. Their victimhood does not go away after a set period of time. The slate is never wiped clean. At least, not from this side.

That said, I think we ought to question the notion of punitive justice entirely and ask whether even infinite punishment can truly redeem the reality of suffering. (I find the punitive interpretation of hell odd for a number of reasons--for one, I think the Gospel is painting something other than "eye for an eye" style justice, so I'd fit these pieces together differently.)

If their suffering ends, then who cares if their "victimhood" never ends? If it isn't affecting them anymore, then what debt needs to be paid for something with no effect? I agree suffering from one act goes on long after that act, but it's still finite.

As far as the Gospel goes, if we think that all humans deserve Hell, and God chooses to spare some people because of grace, then we've already shown that He isn't just. He can be shown to be unjust even by painting Him in a positive light.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

I think I gave something of an answer to this type of question to another poster not so long ago [ below ]

If I'm understanding what you wrote correctly, you see evidence of God in the existence of the Devil, as shown by the presence of evil in the world?
But you also say that there is no evidence of a driving force of the creation or evolution of the world.

So, I'm left with a question for you: why did you become a Christian? Presumably you did so for what you would consider to be good and sufficient reason. What was it?

 

[Silmarien]

If their suffering ends, then who cares if their "victimhood" never ends? If it isn't affecting them anymore, then what debt needs to be paid for something with no effect? I agree suffering from one act goes on long after that act, but it's still finite.

How do you know it's finite? If we're working under the assumption of immortality of the soul, then both parties are still around eternally. How do you know that it wouldn't continue to affect them eternally if there were no eternal redress? My problem with this argument is that a lot is taken for granted when you accept the notion of eternity and then declare certain things to be finite. We don't know that they really are.

As far as the Gospel goes, if we think that all humans deserve Hell, and God chooses to spare some people because of grace, then we've already shown that He isn't just. He can be shown to be unjust even by painting Him in a positive light.

Well, I'll defend a Reformed position up to a certain point, but I draw the line at predestination. If God is choosing to spare certain people but not others, we're working under blue and orange morality and anything goes. I don't see the injustice inherent in offering it to everyone, though, even if not everyone signs up.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

I speak in all good faith when I tell you that I honestly do not think God exists.
Therefore, I will not "sign up". Will I get sent to hell for that?

 

[Moral Orel]

How do you know it's finite? If we're working under the assumption of immortality of the soul, then both parties are still around eternally. How do you know that it wouldn't continue to affect them eternally if there were no eternal redress? My problem with this argument is that a lot is taken for granted when you accept the notion of eternity and then declare certain things to be finite. We don't know that they really are.

According to Christianity, suffering ends. If we're talking about Hell, we're talking about Christianity.

Well, I'll defend a Reformed position up to a certain point, but I draw the line at predestination. If God is choosing to spare certain people but not others, we're working under blue and orange morality and anything goes. I don't see the injustice inherent in offering it to everyone, though, even if not everyone signs up.

I think you missed the point. It doesn't matter if God offers a deal to everyone or not, if everyone deserves Hell, and someone doesn't go to Hell, then that is unjust. Someone didn't get what they deserve. Whether God is fair about how He goes about being unjust doesn't make Him just.

 

[Silmarien]

According to Christianity, suffering ends. If we're talking about Hell, we're talking about Christianity.

Sure, but we don't really know how that works. That's one of the big mysteries--how suffering can be redeemed at all. Punitive eternal hell would be a strange mechanism to allow for the end of suffering, but it's circular to rule it out simply because suffering ends.

I think you missed the point. It doesn't matter if God offers a deal to everyone or not, if everyone deserves Hell, and someone doesn't go to Hell, then that is unjust. Someone didn't get what they deserve. Whether God is fair about how He goes about being unjust doesn't make Him just.

That isn't how justice works, though. Even mundane criminal justice makes room for mercy in various ways, and we can't really say that the concept of parole is unjust because it doesn't involve the full weight of the justice system.

At a certain point, though, I think the legal metaphors break down and conceptualizing things in the terms of a courtroom is harmful rather than helpful. I prefer the Eastern Christian view of sin as spiritual illness.

 

[Moral Orel]

Sure, but we don't really know how that works. That's one of the big mysteries--how suffering can be redeemed at all. Punitive eternal hell would be a strange mechanism to allow for the end of suffering, but it's circular to rule it out simply because suffering ends.

We don't need to know how it works. Suffering is finite. Justice would mean that the punishment is equitable to the suffering caused. We don't burn people at the stake for shoplifting. Comparing finite things to infinite things is on a grander scale than even that.

At a certain point, though, I think the legal metaphors break down and conceptualizing things in the terms of a courtroom is harmful rather than helpful.

I agree with this since I think our "Justice" system should be less about vengeance and more about rehabilitation, so I'm going to just ignore your previous analogy, lol. No offense.

I don't think justice is always the best thing. Grace is better than justice in my opinion, but they are mutually exclusive. No one deserves grace, that's the whole point of grace. By granting clemency to someone that deserves punishment you are being graceful, but unjust.

I think vengeance is a bad thing, though. And punishment for no other end than causing more suffering is nothing more than vengeance, even if it's just. When my kid reaches for a cookie and I swat his hand it isn't because he deserves the pain of getting his hand swatted because he did something I told him not to, it's to teach him not to do that again.

Just a metaphor, by the way. I never had to hit my kid. And although I'm sure at the time he felt like "time-outs" were Hell, they don't make for a good analogy to gnashing teeth. Swatted hands are pretty close though.

 

[devolved]

Suffering is finite. Justice would mean that the punishment is equitable to the suffering caused.

As Salmrien keeps pointing out, whatever concept of justice you are using now is limited in its scope for managing immediate human relationships. As such it follows some pragmatic limits in order to maintain some integrity of society.

Consider the floodgates principle, for example. There's a limit on justice purely out of concern that it would result in "system overload".

The point being, you can't viable carry the concept into metaphysical discussions about justice, since we don't really know the far-reaching impact of any given action.

As a simple thought experiment, let's say that you flipped a light switch out of curiosity as to what it does, and then you find out that it killed a million children. Could you go on living normal life knowing that your action ,even if unintentional, resulted in that massive scale of death and suffering? But, we may be flipping a bunch of similar switches daily, and we have no clue. And at times we flip those with full underanding of certain consequences, but we flip anyway, because we are hooked into a system where these switches are linked to "making a living"

And the complexity of these relationships make it very difficult to discuss justice in metaphysical context without implying that God as a judge who can rightly see the broader view ... would be a far better judge than any of us.

 

[Chriliman]

We don't need to know how it works. Suffering is finite. Justice would mean that the punishment is equitable to the suffering caused. We don't burn people at the stake for shoplifting. Comparing finite things to infinite things is on a grander scale than even that.

I agree with this since I think our "Justice" system should be less about vengeance and more about rehabilitation, so I'm going to just ignore your previous analogy, lol. No offense.

I don't think justice is always the best thing. Grace is better than justice in my opinion, but they are mutually exclusive. No one deserves grace, that's the whole point of grace. By granting clemency to someone that deserves punishment you are being graceful, but unjust.

I think vengeance is a bad thing, though. And punishment for no other end than causing more suffering is nothing more than vengeance, even if it's just. When my kid reaches for a cookie and I swat his hand it isn't because he deserves the pain of getting his hand swatted because he did something I told him not to, it's to teach him not to do that again.

Just a metaphor, by the way. I never had to hit my kid. And although I'm sure at the time he felt like "time-outs" were Hell, they don't make for a good analogy to gnashing teeth. Swatted hands are pretty close though.

I hear people say “grace and mercy are the suspension of justice”, but why wouldn’t it be more just to show grace and mercy through forgiveness and restoration rather than simply imprison or kill someone for what they did?

As this relates to an afterlife, let’s say you murdered someone and then you met them again in the afterlife, would they be just to forever torment you for murdering them? Would it not be more just to forgive you and live in peace for eternity?

 

[Moral Orel]

I hear people say “grace and mercy are the suspension of justice”, but why wouldn’t it be more just to show grace and mercy through forgiveness and restoration rather than simply imprison or kill someone for what they did?

How is that "just"? It may be good, but not everything that is good is "just".

I was careful not to use the word "mercy". Sometimes mercy is just. Forgiveness by grace isn't though. An eternal Hell shows a distinct lack of mercy in God though.

As this relates to an afterlife, let’s say you murdered someone and then you met them again in the afterlife, would they be just to forever torment you for murdering them? Would it not be more just to forgive you and live in peace for eternity?

I suppose it would be just for them to murder me right back... If I murdered someone, and it led to a life of peace, it would be just to reward me for that, lol.

 

[Chriliman]

How is that "just"? It may be good, but not everything that is good is "just".

I was careful not to use the word "mercy". Sometimes mercy is just. Forgiveness by grace isn't though.

Can you give examples?

An eternal Hell shows a distinct lack of mercy in God though.

Agreed, assuming God has the will and power to stop the torment.

I suppose it would be just for them to murder me right back... If I murdered someone, and it led to a life of peace, it would be just to reward me for that, lol.

Wether it leads to a life of peace is up to them, not you, since you were in the wrong, but yes, their forgiveness would be kind of a gift to you, relieving you of the guilt of your actions.

 

[Silmarien]

We don't need to know how it works. Suffering is finite. Justice would mean that the punishment is equitable to the suffering caused. We don't burn people at the stake for shoplifting. Comparing finite things to infinite things is on a grander scale than even that.

I don't think you can compare shoplifting to the communal weight of guilt of thousands of years worth of complicity, either direct or indirect, in human suffering. You can claim that this is finite, but the mark that indifference leaves on one's soul may well not be. So I would still disagree with you on a pretty basic level here.

Which is really my whole point. These sorts of objections to hell rely upon certain notions of what justice is, subjective impressions of what is and isn't an appropriate punishment. There is no objective standard by which to measure this type of stuff, so we're left at appeals to emotion and intuitive arguments. (I think that's only valid if you go so far into the realm of intuition matching up to reality that you can claim that a universalist God is a better God than an infernalist one, which would be a super interesting attack on the doctrine of hell, but only really available to defenders of the ontological argument. Others can't have it both ways.)

 

[2PhiloVoid]

If I'm understanding what you wrote correctly, you see evidence of God in the existence of the Devil, as shown by the presence of evil in the world?

Yes, this is correct.

But you also say that there is no evidence of a driving force of the creation or evolution of the world.

No, I'm saying that the various---and obviously piecemeal---epistemic indices presented in the Bible give us some direction in our becoming more epistemically mindful about how God decides to communicate with us within the contexts of recent human history, by which I mean human history as it has been for the last several thousand years, and not earlier than that.

All of this I've just stated above is to be held in contradistinction to our typical importation and reliance upon socially constructed contexts of modern understanding about the concept of "design," especially when we overreach when attempting to perceive "design" in our world and then attempt to apply this to our present notions about "deep time" lying outside of recent human history. In other words, I think the Biblical writings pertain specifically to where we are at recent human existence and has basically nothing to do with how God would have or could have communicated with some Australopithecines or some other earlier evolutionary relatives.

In relation to this thread's OP, what I'm saying here is my way of inveighing against the thesis that "God is has been Selfish" in the ways that He has chosen to create us and our world or in the ways in which He communicates with us, however seemingly indirect they may be.

So, I'm left with a question for you: why did you become a Christian? Presumably you did so for what you would consider to be good and sufficient reason. What was it?

I'm not so sure that the reasons for my becoming a Christian are as relevant to your inquiry as are the reasons I have found cumulatively for remaining a Christian, especially when the two frameworks are somewhat contrasting in nature.

As for the reasons I now have, I can't say that I've ever actually sat down and catalogued all of them, but I think that if one peruses in full the various threads I've created here on CF, one can begin to get a feel for where I stand now, and a picture of more-or-less why. If you want, I can give you a list of the influences in my thinking that were present in the 1st year of my becoming a Christian over 33 years ago, but I'm not seeing how doing so would necessarily serve as a basis for anyone else to enter into a state of Christian belief.