Problem of Incoherence

[Tim the turtle]

Okay Dragoon, I do see where you're coming from, but I really don't think I'm moving the goalposts. We may be assuming that God exists, but that doesn't mean that atheism (although presumed wrong) is unjustified. The fact that a large number of atheists exist is still proof that Gods divine revelations are not obvious and that is something that can be argued utterly independent of his existence, which is what I'm doing. That was my point, that divine revelation should be obvious and I think my argument that it is not still stands perfectly well.

I don't expect you to reply to this post, that's perfectly fine and I appreciate debating with you, but I absolutely disagree that I'm moving the goalposts here.

 

[Dragoon952]

Okay Dragoon, I do see where you're coming from, but I really don't think I'm moving the goalposts. We may be assuming that God exists, but that doesn't mean that atheism (although presumed wrong) is unjustified. The fact that a large number of atheists exist is still proof that Gods divine revelations are not obvious and that is something that can be argued utterly independent of his existence, which is what I'm doing. That was my point, that divine revelation should be obvious and I think my argument that it is not still stands perfectly well.

I don't expect you to reply to this post, that's perfectly fine and I appreciate debating with you, but I absolutely disagree that I'm moving the goalposts here.

I'm still online, so just so you know, no hard feelings. I think it just shows the importance of making sure that all parties are debating the same subject under the same premises. When you cross the streams it gets all kinds of weird

 

[Profesco]

There really is a logical problem with attributing these things (like sadism) to God (presupposing God exists). Much like the stick longer than itself, could an omnipotent, omniscient being create a creature that has greater moral character than himself? To create a creature that can judge him rather than the other way around? So, I think it's more of a sign of hubris to believe in a creator God and think we can stand in judgment of him.

The Bible, just as an example, gives no information as to the motivation of why he does certain things. For instance, if my view stands and is assumed to be ok, then would he have been better off not creating human beings in the first place rather than creating us knowing the consequences? Why did he choose one over the other? Not sure. But he did, and we can't possibly know what it would be like if he didn't.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding in this notion that God is different in both parts of the Bible. He isn't. There is no personality change. He is judge in the old testament, and he is judge in the new testament. He is "compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness" in several descriptions in the old testament, and is described the same way in the new (to the point that Christ died on the cross). Actually, it's kind of funny we're having a conversation about hell but then say judgments in the old testament are of a vengeful God that isn't present in the new testament. The old and new testaments are meant to tell different parts of the whole story and need to be taken together.

What I had considered the ironic beauty of my previous post was that I was, quite literally, not applying any judgements to God. It was specifically worded to be that way. I gladly acknowledge for our purposes here that I, or we as humans, can't understand, judge, or interpret God or His actions, either fully or even in part to the best of our ability, given that He is supposedly on such a distinctly different level of existence itself than we are.

Thus, my post dealt solely with human beings: our definitions of His characteristics and our definitions of His doings, as translated through the Bible*; as well as our definitions of psychopathy, maladaptive behavior, and antisocial personality disorder. All I did was notice that some of the descriptions of things we humans have claimed of God also happen to be descriptions of things we humans claim of sociopaths. That is not a statement about God or values; it is simply a statement about definitions.

Also, your diagnosis is kind of silly. Not because it isn't well thought out, but I just don't understand how you can use terms that define interaction between humans in the same vein as interactions between an omnipotent, omniscient, all seeing god and his creation.

No, it is silly. I chuckle at it myself. Like I said, it's amusing that this is a possible interpretation of the state of things.

As far as differentiation between humans and "an omnipotent, omniscient, all seeing god and his creation," well, the words and definitions are all the same, regardless of who they apply to. We are not so different that language itself loses all meaning. Not that the religious don't make a good try at it, lol (see below).

Spoiler: *

I have heard very devout fundamentalists claim that the Bible is literally the word of God (in person, not translation), which would seem to invalidate the idea that He is inconceivable and immune to understanding or judgement or even logic, which then necessarily opens the door for Him, as well as His actions and possible motivations, to be understood and judged in terms of our logic. Now, I see no problem with the idea that we can evaluate God using our capacity to reason, but the folks who swear that's not possible are frequently the same fundamentalists who swear that the Bible is God's literal word. Color me confused. ^_^;

On the other hand, I am inclined to say that everything in the Bible is (and would need be, given God's proposed inherent inconceivability) simply a collection of human interpretations and expressions, which would seem to support the validity of the similarity of descriptions of God and sociopaths. Yet I'm willing to consider the remote possibility that fundamentalists (or even more reasonable believers) would not appreciate this interpretation either. Again, I must confess some confusion. ^_^;;

 

[GhostAnime]

Or are they ridiculous because it's using circular logic and God is somehow invisible to criticism because he's God?

Give a reason why the definitions apply to our parents but not God (who supposedly ACTS like a parent). Using voodoo language like "He's mysterious" doesn't answer the question; it avoids it.

 

[TheFightingPikachu]

Infinity, Eternity, and More

Hmmm...I guess I should have posted here sooner.

So, you argue this being is still worthy of worship? Let's look at a few scenarios if he were to exist.

Disclaimer: These are only my feelings.

Scenario 1: God can do anything (or anything logically possible), but does not stop evil in the world.

Scenario 2: God isn't able to stop evil in the world.

Actually, you are just restating the Logical Problem of Evil for an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent God. You didn't acknowledge my statement that an extremely powerful (though not omnipotent) god could still be worthy of worship. Please read the next part:

Another argument you might make for scenario one is that evil is necessary. This makes a lot more logical sense to me (especially if this being doesn't have an afterlife), but this still doesn't make me want to worship him. So, what would we be then? Entertainment? Bleh.

Classical theism, including Christianity and other religions, very often includes some idea of organized, supernatural opposition to the deity. In Christianity, the devil is the most notable supernatural opposition to God, so I'll just refer to the devil (by using that term, I'm not requiring belief in him).

The devil provides a perfectly logical reason why a powerful (yet non-omnipotent), fully good god would still be worthy of worship. For example, the god might not stop evil in the world as much as we might think he ought if in fact he must save his power to fight the devil in the end. If this devil has our worst interests in mind, you can imagine how logically-necessary it is for any omnibenevolent god to fight him.

That is the idea I previously tried to convey. The Logical Problem of Evil really can't guarantee a logical reason not to worship a deity lacking one of the three "omni" attributes without more information.

Also, I want to applaud your point about evil--it is a very important one. While I wouldn't hold to the necessity of evil in an absolute (yin and yang) kind of sense because I believe evil itself had a beginning, evil does provide a necessary alternative in this present world.

Edit:

because of past expaerience with him

Also, if that was an intentional dig at the pretentious use of "daemon," I want to let you know it was clever and gave me a good chuckle, kudos. X3

O.O

*blink* *blink*

Hahahahaha! Oh that is hilarious! When I first saw that, I asked my brother, "Who said that?" I didn't even recognize it as something I said! It was one of the most ridiculous typos I've ever made. Good catch, man! I wish I'd done that on purpose!


Now then:

We were both using abstract thoughts, and we both came to the same conclusions in the problems you presented. Certainly, speaking of something like "1/2 infinity" is not a conceivable concept, much like "infinity" itself is not a conceivable concept - they are merely describable, and I illustrated the differences in descriptions used in each problem. The very same differences you described in order to achieve your different answers! I said nothing that contradicted your work or results, I simply stressed that "having different definitions" is not necessarily interchangeable with "undefined."

May I ask what made my post of such dubious quality?

I only came in to clarify the meanings behind the math, so I'm not aware of the exact context in which you had been speaking, but I imagine the only difference between your post and mine was that the point I stressed made some portion of your argument in some way less finally definitive.

I'm glad you asked. Let's take a closer look at what you said. You started out by saying this:

This seems to have also been addressed already, but because it was such a good-sounding argument, was fun to read, and provoked some intellectual stimulation, and because I'm bored I'll try to further settle the point.

As has been pointed out, both by The Director and the Ask a Scientist scientists, "infinity" easily cycles through definitions, making the quoted statement above tricky to calculate. In your example, FightingPikachu, I'm afraid you've come to a slightly off conclusion: the "infinity" you ended up with as answers is different each time, not because infinity minus infinity can be whatever you wish by its nature, but because one of the "infinity"s you used in each problem was a differently-defined infinity. I'll do the math below. ^_^

This was right before the quote you gave.

Which means, my word Profesco! You quoted yourself out of context! (Did you misplace yourself while you were writing that response?) You clearly claimed, as the emphasis I added indicated, that my conclusions were unsound!

Before you came to the thread, I was actually thinking of asking you to analyze what The Director said, because I was sure you had the mathematical background to reject it. (Though, kudos for vanquishing him!) You see, you can't just put 1/2 infinity or infinity minus 20 in parentheses and work as though those count as separate figures. As mathematicians have shown, all of those (as you put it) "different infinities" are all actually the same size! I suppose my purpose was served anyway, because The Director based his proofs against omni attributes on this statement:

As any infinite= any other infinite

Since he very quickly abandoned that to respond to my argument (claiming that what I said involved "different infinities"), he removed the foundation of his own argument.

While I would agree that infinity may not be fully comprehensible to humans, it has been used in mathematics in such ways that I'm certain that I can comprehend it to some degree, and I'm sure you can too.

Anyway, to make it clear, what made your post less than your usual quality was its mathematical inaccuracy. "1/2 infinity" equals infinity. There are different sizes of infinity, but each of the ones I mentioned was of the size Aleph 0. That was the point. (Just ask for more details and I'll show you another very good Britanica quote...without dropping an encyclopedia on you LOL.)

I actually applaud Pullman for his frank sincerity though. In my mind, daemons were the most honest interpretations of what has been a trend in the media for a while, starting with Digimon, and going to Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon; having monster partner(s) and using them as an expression of yourself, in other words, getting daemons. Yu-Gi-Oh is the the most obvious example, and Pokemon I believe is the McDonalds of daemon-collecting, the best marketed, the most "dolled up", hardest to make a credible argument against as a Christian. I could do it though, and have done it, for the fun of it.

I really don't think that Pokémon is similar to what you are describing. As I said once before on these forums, the problem with way too many of the Christian condemnations of Pokémon is that they absolutely refused to acknowledge the science-fiction context. Too many Christians refused to let the Pokémon creatures be...just critters with no inherent evil. Too many sought to call these critters "demons" without any proof.

BTW, did you notice Pullman's incoherent morality? It's right there in the paragraph in which you originally described Pullman's stroy. I bet Profesco and GhostAnime got it!

This exists in today's life and works. Think of video games. There is only one ultimate end. There is no end where the game permanently ends and punishes you by not allowing you to play anymore. We die, get game over, and may even get frustrated; however, we start over and try again. Eventually, we complete the game and get rewarded. Do people not use free will when playing video games now?

Uh, haven't you heard of video games which have multiple endings? I freely admit that I can't give you example, but I've heard some of these even feature some characters dying. In these games, people use their free will to choose which outcome they want. And what you said doesn't even take arcade-style high score-getting games into account. The outcome may be "Joe beats his best friend Don's score" or "Joe does not beat his best friend Don's score" or even "Joe's and Don's mutual ex-girlfriend Alice gets a high score and posts it on the games website, and neither of them can beat it."

Your argument has just been pwned.

This got me to thinking (which has terrible consequences for all involved, usually), and it's actually sort of amusing that we can really attribute some qualities of "psychopathy" to the Judeo-Islamic-Christian conception of God.

If we're using the Bible as a trustworthy source for accounts of His behavior, then we can certainly place God comfortably under the definition of unstable; the typical bipolar comparison of the Old Testament's wrathful God to the New Testament's more paternal version ought to be sufficiently indicative of that. As far as mentally ill goes, I'd have to wonder about handfuls of little recommended practices and forbidden things, like sacrifice, slavery, stoning, and not eating certain foods on certain days. The food rules make me think of OCD, actually.

And many of the symptoms fitting a diagnosis of antisocal personality disorder can be ascribed to God as well: A tendency toward aggression, cruelty or indifference to animals, inadequate control of temper, a tendency to violate the rights and boundaries of others, parental neglect or abuse of children, consistent irresponsibility, the ability to charm or influence others, a grandiose sense of self, extreme arrogance or boastfulness, and so on and so forth.

Mind you, of course, that I'm not saying any of this as actual claims on God or His nature; since it has been argued that we do not know the mind of God, and indeed cannot considering He is fully excused from all applications of our mortal logic and experience, all discussions and interpretations of Him necessarily must work from our human perceptions and definitions of things. And here we have a conundrum where some of our perceptions and definitions of God's behaviors and motivations happen to be consistent with some of our perceptions and definitions of instability, mental illness, and antisocial personality disorder - outright psychopathy. This just seems an amusing observation, an eyebrow-raiser.

Though Dragoon952 already mentioned that there is no ultimate discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments, I'd like to add my own observation to the mix. The biggest problem with what you have said is that the Bible reports that Jesus taught about hell a whole bunch. I've heard some Christians even gos os far as to claim that Jesus had more to say about hell than any other New Testament author did. (I personally do not have the data in front of me at the moment for this stronger claim, so I don't use it as evidence. Suffice it to say, the Bible does report Jesus as saying a lot about hell.) Since Jesus had a lot to say about hell, this entirely blows apart the claim of bipolarity.

And you seem to be channeling Phillip Pullman when you say, "grandiose sense of self." If you made the world (even as a powerful-yet-non-omnipotent being), that would make you pretty grand.

Also, the mention of slavery being "recommended" by the Bible is actually a strawman argument. When people say "slavery," the most common picture is of black slavery, which was undeniably wrong and unjust as a practice. But in ancient times, slavery had no racial element. Furthermore, one could sell himself into slavery as a means to pay off a debt (instead of say, bankruptcy laws). In short, slavery in the Bible is not the "evil" that skeptics repeatedly claim.

Since it is close to Christmas, I want to tell you a little story about a Christmas song. My mom recently read the story of the spiritual "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and I heard about a group called the Jubilee Singers. If you take a look at that article, you'll see that they chose the name because of a rule in the Mosaic Law. You see, slaves were meant to be freed every Jubilee. These were black people who had been slaves, yet they did not fault their God for allowing some form of slavery. They truly undrestood what it means to be free in Christ.


--
Tim the turtle, let me just say that I hardly know where to begin with all that you've said against the idea of hell. But perhaps most importantly, your view seems to be along the same lines as the frequently-repeated "a loving God would never send anyone to hell argument." But this is the wrong question to ask when we consider the alternative. Would you believe a loving God should force everyone to spend eternity with Him?

 

[CSolarstorm]

I really don't think that Pokémon is similar to what you are describing. As I said once before on these forums, the problem with way too many of the Christian condemnations of Pokémon is that they absolutely refused to acknowledge the science-fiction context. Too many Christians refused to let the Pokémon creatures be...just critters with no inherent evil. Too many sought to call these critters "demons" without any proof.

BTW, did you notice Pullman's incoherent morality? It's right there in the paragraph in which you originally described Pullman's stroy. I bet Profesco and GhostAnime got it!

Did you read what kind of demon I am actually comparing Pokemon to? Daemons, in the spelling of His Dark Materials, are benevolant spirits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(classical_mythology) I did not implicate any evil in saying that Pokemon follows the trend of His Dark Materials and Digimon. Pokemon is about monsters, and the word monster comes from Latin for "abherrant occurance" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster meaning that the etymology of monsters is ironically much worse than the etymology of demons.

And really, Pokemon is science-fiction? Both His Dark Materials and Digimon are science fiction as well. I always thought Pokemon was a genre of its own. XD

Which part of Pullman's incoherent morality are you talking about? The fact that Lyra lies to thwart evil, or the mercy killing of a fraudulent God? Pullman writes about a fictional Catholic church in a reality that is pre-Christian and more ancient Greek with an antagonist (Metatron) that is ancient Semitic.

 

[Profesco]

O.O

*blink* *blink*

Hahahahaha! Oh that is hilarious! When I first saw that, I asked my brother, "Who said that?" I didn't even recognize it as something I said! It was one of the most ridiculous typos I've ever made. Good catch, man! I wish I'd done that on purpose!

Ah well, maybe it can be called a Freudian slip, then. Pretty amusing regardless.

You clearly claimed, as the emphasis I added indicated, that my conclusions were unsound!

I do beg pardon for splitting hairs, but I think it's important to note that I only said your conclusion was slightly off, not unsound (recall our mathematical conclusions were the same - and I assure you I wasn't claiming my own conclusion was unsound before I'd even concluded it!). It's perfectly possible to have a brilliant conclusion that still could use a bit of humble readjustment.

You see, you can't just put 1/2 infinity or infinity minus 20 in parentheses and work as though those count as separate figures. As mathematicians have shown, all of those (as you put it) "different infinities" are all actually the same size!

Anyway, to make it clear, what made your post less than your usual quality was its mathematical inaccuracy. "1/2 infinity" equals infinity. There are different sizes of infinity, but each of the ones I mentioned was of the size Aleph 0. That was the point. (Just ask for more details and I'll show you another very good Britanica quote...without dropping an encyclopedia on you LOL.)

Then here is where we simply used different thought and speech, I suppose. Numerically, 1/2 infinity and infinity minus 20 must be the same, but in order to mentally work with them in the examples you gave, you must modify them in terms of language, else there would be no point in giving an example where infinity is modified by any sort of numerical quality - it simply wouldn't mean anything. You can see the way I turn from numerical to linguistic concepts in the first problem: from the number "infinity" and its modification of 1/2, which are numerically indistinguishable, as shown by our mutual conclusion of "infinity," to the linguistic representation "total amount of marbles" and its respective modification of "1/2 the total amount of marbles," which are necessarily distinguishable from one another by definition.

I don't believe I tried to argue that 1/2 infinity and infinity were inequal; merely that the terms were being used to convey distinguishable, definable figures (linguistically speaking, if you prefer) and therein ought to lay the real relation to our discussion - the linguistic/conceptual understandings of "infinity," not the numerical ones. That is what I meant by suggesting your conclusion was slightly off - not unsound, but maybe only slightly misaligned in terms of usefulness to the debate.

And even supposing I had made a numerical claim contrary to yours, I must have failed given that my results on the problems I mimicked from you were the same as yours anyway. Considering that I used your modifications of infinity and your math problems, and achieved your same results, to tell me that my math was inaccurate would be to say that your math was inaccurate. So if that were reason to claim my post was of poor quality...

Do you see where I became offended? If you'll pardon me baring my ego for a moment, I had thought both of our discussions of the infinity problems were of respectable quality, and even downright sophisticated for a couple of young forumrats like we two.

And you seem to be channeling Phillip Pullman when you say, "grandiose sense of self." If you made the world (even as a powerful-yet-non-omnipotent being), that would make you pretty grand.

A justified grandiose sense of self is still a grandiose sense of self. The definition applies.

Also, the mention of slavery being "recommended" by the Bible is actually a strawman argument. When people say "slavery," the most common picture is of black slavery, which was undeniably wrong and unjust as a practice. But in ancient times, slavery had no racial element. Furthermore, one could sell himself into slavery as a means to pay off a debt (instead of say, bankruptcy laws). In short, slavery in the Bible is not the "evil" that skeptics repeatedly claim.

Oh, by the way, pardon my use of only "recommended" and "forbidden." I was shorthanding any and all forms of advocacy, condonement, support, negligence, oversight, suggestion, et cetera, et cetera to be found in the Bible. It was more to highlight the very odd, unusual, and sometimes absurd little rules and such found in there. The food rules, particularly, have always tickled me. Cloven hooves matter?

And Bible be darned. Slavery is "evil" regardless of which race the enslaved are.

These were black people who had been slaves, yet they did not fault their God for allowing some form of slavery. They truly undrestood what it means to be free in Christ.

How very Christian of them, I guess.

Forgive me for not only not being impressed, but even noticeably sick with indignation and disgust. In this case, it seems more like Christians are justifying evil done in the name of their god just so that their god can still wear a mask of flawlessness. I don't accept or respect that. Not even remotely. I don't even prefer to think instead that God is evil. I would have interpreted such a travesty as "God did not and could not condone slavery in any form since He's a good guy, so people of the time must have misunderstood Him or misappropriated their religion to suit their purposes since people are endlessly fallible, and slavery is in fact an unconscionable evil." But the idea that Christians would rather enslave other human beings - and what's scarier, teach the people they enslaved to not find fault with that - than either admit they or their god had made a mistake is why I do not participate in the religion myself.

Though Dragoon952 already mentioned that there is no ultimate discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments, I'd like to add my own observation to the mix. The biggest problem with what you have said is that the Bible reports that Jesus taught about hell a whole bunch. I've heard some Christians even gos os far as to claim that Jesus had more to say about hell than any other New Testament author did. (I personally do not have the data in front of me at the moment for this stronger claim, so I don't use it as evidence. Suffice it to say, the Bible does report Jesus as saying a lot about hell.) Since Jesus had a lot to say about hell, this entirely blows apart the claim of bipolarity.

I looked up a Christian blog (I think it was a blog, anyway...) where the believer counted uses of the words love and mercy versus wrath and [some other unpleasant term, I can't recall off the top of my head] in both the old and new Testaments, and found that in the OT, the benign words had a showing of 64% to the malign words' 36%, and in the NT, the shares were 80% to 20%. His (or her) interpretation was that the difference in percentage of compassionate words to wrathful ones, 16%, was not a big enough difference to qualify as different at all.

Which is fine by me. Interpretations of and meanings taken from the Bible by its followers are naturally going to be more favorable than interpretations and meanings taken by its critics. I'll even grant that those giving the Bible preferential treatment even have the more valid standing ground than the others. What I said, however, was that this alternate view was possible based on the definitions that people have of things; definitions that do not change when applied to God (or, probably more accurately, the human interpretations of God's purported acts and commands as translated through the Bible). Because the definition of certain qualities fit the accounts in the Bible - though there are of course multiple interpretations available, some more valid than others - the connections can viably be drawn.

That said, I made and make no claims about God, so all the stylings of refutation against my comments fall on deaf ears. This view is not an attack on God or religion - in fact is not even the view I hold myself - so there is nothing to defend against.

I understand, though, how such a possible view will naturally feel like an attack on God to His believers, so since I doubt I can do any more than I have already tried to make it clear that this understanding of the situation is not related to God or Christianity so much as it is to us silly ol' human beings and our penchant for talking ourselves into steaming piles of you-know-what, I will leave the silly view explanation here as it stands: no more than a silly view.

 

[GhostAnime]

The devil provides a perfectly logical reason why a powerful (yet non-omnipotent), fully good god would still be worthy of worship. For example, the god might not stop evil in the world as much as we might think he ought if in fact he must save his power to fight the devil in the end. If this devil has our worst interests in mind, you can imagine how logically-necessary it is for any omnibenevolent god to fight him.

That is the idea I previously tried to convey. The Logical Problem of Evil really can't guarantee a logical reason not to worship a deity lacking one of the three "omni" attributes without more information.

"More information" ? Like what? I think we have enough.

So you argue it is necessary for the devil to exist? That still doesn't explain eternal punishment.

Uh, haven't you heard of video games which have multiple endings? I freely admit that I can't give you example, but I've heard some of these even feature some characters dying. In these games, people use their free will to choose which outcome they want. And what you said doesn't even take arcade-style high score-getting games into account. The outcome may be "Joe beats his best friend Don's score" or "Joe does not beat his best friend Don's score" or even "Joe's and Don's mutual ex-girlfriend Alice gets a high score and posts it on the games website, and neither of them can beat it."

Is this a serious response?

I hope not.

 

[Tim the turtle]

But perhaps most importantly, your view seems to be along the same lines as the frequently-repeated "a loving God would never send anyone to hell argument."

That is my view, yes. I thought that would have been obvious by now. Though I might say that I go further than that. A God who does sent people to hell is not simply not a loving one, he is a malign one.

But this is the wrong question to ask when we consider the alternative. Would you believe a loving God should force everyone to spend eternity with Him?

Also no. He should just leave people alone after they have died, thank you very much.

 

[ASB]

A God who does sent people to hell is not simply not a loving one, he is a malign one.

And a benevolent God would pollute Heaven with all sorts of evildoers and make it as corrupt as the world is today with its murder and drugs and abortion and homosexuality and whatnot? Would that be preferable? I think not.

 

[Tim the turtle]

And a benevolent God would pollute Heaven with all sorts of evildoers and make it as corrupt as the world is today with its murder and drugs and abortion and homosexuality and whatnot? Would that be preferable? I think not.

A benevolent God would not allow something as mind-numbingly unjust as heaven to exist in the first place.

 

[ASB]

Unjust? You reap what you sew.

 

[Tim the turtle]

No one on Earth has ever managed to sew enough good seeds to deserve reaping something like heaven.

 

[ASB]

John 3:16. Read it.

 

[Tim the turtle]

I have, it's an utterly despicable sentiment and you're proving my point perfectly. Eternal life is not a just reward for believing in Jesus Christ. It is not a just reward for anything that one can do on this earth.

 

[CSolarstorm]

If heaven is infinite and more holy than earth, which is barbaric, full of sin and death, why is it that our actions on earth have so much bearing on whether or not we go there? Why do our chances at immeasurable infinity rest on earth? You'd think that the test or the cause and effect would rest on something at least somewhat proportional.

 

[TheFightingPikachu]

The (Undefined) Afterlife--Logically Possible

Which part of Pullman's incoherent morality are you talking about? The fact that Lyra lies to thwart evil, or the mercy killing of a fraudulent God? Pullman writes about a fictional Catholic church in a reality that is pre-Christian and more ancient Greek with an antagonist (Metatron) that is ancient Semitic.

Metatron?! Wow. Well, I don't know how to explain it, but...I know that guy!

Anyway, the incoherent morality emerges quite starkly due to the fact that it is wrong for a god to lie about making the world, but it is somehow not wrong to lie to get rid of him.

And it should be relatively obvious that Pullman chose "daemon" not solely to be Greek, but also to oppose the God of the Bible, which is clearly his thesis. (And note how, even in the article you quoted, in earlier times, "daemons" were not distinguished from "theoi" or gods, always considered false or evil in the Bible when they are opposed to God.) Protest if you must, but Pokémon has about as much connection to "daemons" as do birds, bugs, snakes, squirrels, fish, and monkeys. They're not spirits (even when the Pokémon are described as spirits, they're born from eggs, physical, etc.).

And Bible be darned. Slavery is "evil" regardless of which race the enslaved are.

You don't seem to see the difference between, "Let's go kidnap some people to work for us," and "I am in debt, so I will sell myself into slavery so that I can continue to live."

How very Christian of them, I guess.

Forgive me for not only not being impressed, but even noticeably sick with indignation and disgust. In this case, it seems more like Christians are justifying evil done in the name of their god just so that their god can still wear a mask of flawlessness. I don't accept or respect that. Not even remotely. I don't even prefer to think instead that God is evil. I would have interpreted such a travesty as "God did not and could not condone slavery in any form since He's a good guy, so people of the time must have misunderstood Him or misappropriated their religion to suit their purposes since people are endlessly fallible, and slavery is in fact an unconscionable evil." But the idea that Christians would rather enslave other human beings - and what's scarier, teach the people they enslaved to not find fault with that - than either admit they or their god had made a mistake is why I do not participate in the religion myself.

Then can you explain, without using the phrases "weak-minded" or "brainwashed," why they have not, in more than a century, changed their name?

Or do you count Fisk University as a symbol of oppression?

I don't believe I tried to argue that 1/2 infinity and infinity were inequal; merely that the terms were being used to convey distinguishable, definable figures (linguistically speaking, if you prefer) and therein ought to lay the real relation to our discussion - the linguistic/conceptual understandings of "infinity," not the numerical ones. That is what I meant by suggesting your conclusion was slightly off - not unsound, but maybe only slightly misaligned in terms of usefulness to the debate.

But you did argue that 1/2 infinity and infinity were inequal. I believe it was unintentional, but to get your different results you had to use parentheses in a way that was actually deceptive (though I do not mean you were being deceptive). Parentheses rules dictate that you simplify things in parentheses (something clearly possible), which your example specifically avoided.

That is precisely where I disagreed. I'm sure you can see now that it was for good reason. My disagreement was not with your equation results, though I may have forgotten for a period of time that you got the same three results I got. I was solely arguing mathematics (not anything different). My point was solely about mathematics because The Director's "proof" against "omni"-attributes was meant to be mathematical, and mine was a mathematical response.

Seriously though Profesco, there was nothing off about my conclusion, even slightly! This is the exact same method mathematicians have used for determining that division by zero is undefined.

Simply put, the rules of parentheses are not to be disregarded--even by linguists or philosophers.

"More information" ? Like what? I think we have enough.

So you argue it is necessary for the devil to exist? That still doesn't explain eternal punishment.

Well, take a look at the IEP article (section one) again. These are the claims of the atheologions

(6) If God is omnipotent, he would be able to prevent all of the evil and suffering in the world.
(7) If God is omniscient, he would know about all of the evil and suffering in the world and would know how to eliminate or prevent it.
(8) If God is perfectly good, he would want to prevent all of the evil and suffering in the world.​

Statements (6) through (8) jointly imply that if the perfect God of theism really existed, there would not be any evil or suffering. However, as we all know, our world is filled with a staggering amount of evil and suffering. Atheologians claim that, if we reflect upon (6) through (8) in light of the fact of evil and suffering in our world, we should be led to the following conclusions:

(9) If God knows about all of the evil and suffering in the world, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, is powerful enough to prevent it, and yet does not prevent it, he must not be perfectly good.
(10) If God knows about all of the evil and suffering, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, wants to prevent it, and yet does not do so, he must not be all- powerful.
(11) If God is powerful enough to prevent all of the evil and suffering, wants to do so, and yet does not, he must not know about all of the suffering or know how to eliminate or prevent it—that is, he must not be all-knowing.​

From (9) through (11) we can infer:

(12) If evil and suffering exist, then God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good.​

Since evil and suffering obviously do exist, we get:

(13) God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good.​

Note the use of "either" in the final statement (to which I've added emphasis). By "more information," I simply mean that even if the Logical Problem of Evil is shown to prove the logical impossibility of a God being all three of the "omni"-attributes, it can't tell us which attribute might be less than "omni" or by how much. That means that such a god could be all good without being absolutely omnipotent.

Is this a serious response?

I hope not.

Note serious face. (What do you mean you can't see my face?! Oh...internet. Okay.) It is not completely sound to use video games as a comparison to life for one key reason: Humans can transcend the system in which a video game is played. The most obvious way to do this is to just stop playing. (One's game console could also cease to function, etc.) Now for humans, is there any way to get beyond the system in which we live? That depends on how the system is defined. If it is thought to include only physical life and consciousness, then suicide is one way to go beyond that system (death in general works the same way without the intent to kill oneself). But if the system includes physical, earthly life and an afterlife, then, no there is no way to get beyond the whole system because dying only takes you to another plane of existence.

Also no. He should just leave people alone after they have died, thank you very much.

Are you saying...?

A benevolent God would not allow something as mind-numbingly unjust as heaven to exist in the first place.

Holy cow--you're actually saying it outright! I thought you might be, but thought sure I must be mistaken! Your first statement was loaded with hidden assumptions, but I couldn't ascertain which assumptions were hidden in it. (I likely don't even yet fully see how much you have assumed without stating it.)

Tim, though you are an atheist/agnostic (I forget), I thought sure you wouldn't argue for the absolute logical impossibility of beings like us surviving beyond natural death (and don't leave out the word "natural").

That was largely the point of my question about God forcing people to be with Him forever. We can talk about flames later--right now, let's talk about what naturally flows from logic. Since nobody on earth today has seen hell (I'm not counting the several Charismatic/Pentecostal Christian authors who have written books claiming to have been there and back), that doesn't necessarily have to even be considered part of the Logical Problem of Evil. The existence of evil in the world can be seen by all (as such, the problem can't help but be related in some way to the evidence in front of us). However, since you have invoked the idea of an afterlife, I have attempted to provide some logical evidence that at least some form of afterlife (with multiple options) is a logical necessity of such a God making beings who survive natural death.

God cannot force everyone to be with Him for eternity. Similarly, He cannot cause everyone to just cease to exist after physical life is done because this would involve everyone--from Hitler, Stalin, or Mao on the one hand to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and the apostle Paul on the other--getting the exact same end for their lives, which would be unjust.

 

[CSolarstorm]

Metatron?! Wow. Well, I don't know how to explain it, but...I know that guy!

Anyway, the incoherent morality emerges quite starkly due to the fact that it is wrong for a god to lie about making the world, but it is somehow not wrong to lie to get rid of him.

And it should be relatively obvious that Pullman chose "daemon" not solely to be Greek, but also to oppose the God of the Bible, which is clearly his thesis.

I think he did choose daemon to write about a Grecian environment as well as pit it in stark contrast against the Hebrew paradigm. The two goals went very well together since Grecian culture doesn't recognize good and evil in the same way as Hebrew myth. It was more about keeping cooperation and recongizing who had power in Grecian myth.

 

[GhostAnime]

Note serious face. (What do you mean you can't see my face?! Oh...internet. Okay.) It is not completely sound to use video games as a comparison to life for one key reason: Humans can transcend the system in which a video game is played. The most obvious way to do this is to just stop playing. (One's game console could also cease to function, etc.)

And.. why is this relevant exactly? I'm not saying life is exactly like a video game. I used video games as a working example of a type of system that could theoretically work without punishing someone eternally. Don't take the example literally.

It's as simple as this: the person keeps failing until they change.

Note the use of "either" in the final statement (to which I've added emphasis). By "more information," I simply mean that even if the Logical Problem of Evil is shown to prove the logical impossibility of a God being all three of the "omni"-attributes, it can't tell us which attribute might be less than "omni" or by how much. That means that such a god could be all good without being absolutely omnipotent.

Maybe if you keep playing around with semantics. When you're talking about the ability to stop evil (which isn't exactly a contradictory concept), all you really have to do is replace "omnipotent" with "ability to stop evil".

Which is really what the argument is focusing on anyway; it's not focusing on God doing literally anything but merely having the ability to do away with something.

 

[Tim the turtle]

TFP, what's your actual point against me? I certainly do believe that heaven and hell are unjust, but I'm using the traditional Christian view of such things. I would be all in favour of a God who devises seperate punishments and rewards for each individual that were fitting for the deeds committed here on Earth. That would be the very definition of justice. But that is not what the traditional views of heaven and hell are, and I find them to be very unjust. My comment that God should simply 'leave us alone after we die' must be taken in that context and no other.

Although I would not at all find it particularly unjust if God did leave us alone, for to do otherwise would make a mockery of human justice, of our own sense of right and wrong, and I believe that this is an important thing that God should want to nuture within us.

So no, I do not wholly leave out the possibility of life after death, but if it is the traditional view of heaven and hell (and I point out that very few religions differ from the idea of eternal suffering/reward) then I think it is entirely unjust.