Horia Plugaru

Well, are you an Orthodox Christian? If "No", then my ASC still applies to you. Earlier you wrote ,remember?

Anyways, is this supposed to be a criticism of ASC's P2 and P3? Please, make your point clearer.

ManM

Horia Plugaru,
Your logic reminds me of when I was a child. Every Christmas Eve I would go to sleep as early as I could so that Christmas morning would come sooner. Now that I am older (and hopefully wiser), I realize that I was simply missing out. The presents would be there when I woke up regardless of when I went to sleep. And so in reality, I lost out on all the Christmas Eve festivities. It was my foolish lack of patience which caused me to miss those experiences, and I gained nothing in their place.

I feel the same way about your argument. I know that I will meet God one of these days, and nothing is going to change that. It would be foolish to sacrifice years of my life and gain nothing for the trouble. And while sleep may provide the illusion of time passing faster, I know that the reality of the situation is quite different.

Desire is only painful for someone without reason. I know that I cannot speed up time, so why would I allow my desire for the future to cloud my judgment in the present? It is much wiser to practice patience than to allow your desires to inflict pain. And so your assumption that desire is necessarily painful happens to be incorrect. Desire might be painful for some folks, but for others it is not.

Actually, yes I am. But I object to your argument on other grounds as well.

That comment by Metropolitan Hierotheos directly challenges your P3. Death is not required to be as close to God as possible. But such a rebuttal uses a specific denomination's theology and hence is not a very robust counter-argument. Therefore I have chosen to attack your argument by limiting it's scope even further. So far your ASC applies to Christians who don't agree with the theology behind the Nicene Creed and Christians who foolishly lack patience. As for the first bunch, I suspect they are relatively few in number. As for the second bunch, you might very well have an audience.

[ October 22, 2002: Message edited by: ManM ]</p>

Horia Plugaru

ManM:

Again and again you ignore the same fundamental thing. Keep in mind that for a Christian the desire to be as close to God as possible is extremely strong. Moreover, for a Christian, this desire is extremely important (I might even say that it is by far the most important for him).
Therefore, a more accurate analogy would be this: lets say that mother M very strongly loves her child C. In this present evening, C suffers a serious injury and enters into a complicated surgical operation. M finds out that C is in this situation and rushes to the hospital. The doctor tells her that they will know whether C will survive only tomorow morning. Clearly, M very intensely desires to know whether C will survive.
Now don't you think it is reasonable to say that her life from that moment until morning will be pure hell? Agony? Extreme suffering?

Imagine how it would be to tell M: "Well, desire is only painful for someone without reason. It is much wiser to practice patience than to allow your desires to inflict pain." Does this sound credible? I think that in fact this is not only implausible, but actually totally unrealistic and even cynical. M's desire is so strong that there is nothing--besides taking sleeping pills or something like that--M could do to ease her suffering in any significant way.

Returning to your example, even if a child's desire to see his presents is indeed strong, I do not think it is that strong or important for him. Moreover, Christmas Eve is in itself a very pleasent period--almost as pleasent as the day you receive your gifts-- so yes, no wonder you feel sorry now that you missed it repeatedly so that Christmas would come sooner.
If, on the other hand, one will say that, for a child, the day he receives his presents is in reality by far more important than the Eve--his desire being indeed very strong--, then there still exists an important disanalogy and your example is not convincing. If that was the case, then you actually did the most reasonable thing when you chose to sleep instead--so that morning will come faster (at least from your point of view). Probably you regret it now because now you do not care so much about receiving presents, but if you were a child again, you will do the same thing.

But I think you will gain something: peace of mind and/or release from agony.

As for the first bunch I don't really think it is small. Au contraire (see my responses above). The second bunch, as even you admit, is important. And there is a third bunch too. Those who do not have the extraordinary capacity to rationally and totally control their most intense desires for long periods of time.

No small number at all.

ManM

Horia Plugaru,
We seem to be at an impasse, as we disagree about the power of desire.

I have seen similar things happen, and the reaction is not as clear cut as you think. I've seen people in extreme panic, and I've seen people calmly praying for the health of their loved one. So from experience, I would say it is not reasonable to claim that her life will necessarily be pure hell.

Prayer could do it. Hope could do it. Faith could do it. A belief in an afterlife could do it. But nit-picking analogies apart never accomplishes anything, so moving on...

Since desire is not necessarily painful, the importance of the future event doesn't matter. You are still missing out on the intermediary events if you choose to go to sleep. Let's use mathematical terms to be perfectly clear. The decision is between X and X+I, where 'X' is the desired (but inevitable) occurrence of something, and 'I' is the intermediate experience between the current time and the time of 'X'. You are claiming that the desire for 'X' necessarily makes 'I' a negative number, thus making 'X+I' less desirable than 'X'. I am claiming that the desire for 'X' does not necessarily make 'I' into a negative number. I do not think there is a way to resolve this difference between us via logical argument. We are each speaking from a different set of experiences.

I'm not so sure I'd consider those people Christians. But that is a discussion for another day.

Actually, these people would fall under the second group: people without patience. And might I add that the ability is not extraordinary, but has been practiced by people ranging across all cultures, from Buddhists to Stoics to Christians. I suspect you find it extraordinary in the same way some people find firewalkers to be extraordinary. Their "remarkable" ability is born from experience. Likewise, the power of the will over an undesirable emotion (via prayer, or some other technique) is also born from experience.

Horia Plugaru

ManM:

I never said that a person in M's situation will necessarily suffer so very much. It sure seems logically possible that some might suffer less. (How much less is not very clear though.)
I've also seen people--very few--that did not seem so very affected in this kind of situations--here I shall assume that they indeed loved their injured ones very strongly and that they were not agonizing "on the inside". However, also from experience, I think it's safe to say that by far the most reactions were like the one described by me: intense suffering and horrible anguish. Surely then, my example has a significant probabilistic force.

Personally, I never understood how exactly prayer, faith and hope could ease M's suffering in any significant way. After all, we see that there are many people--many times even very religious people--in exact situations who prey and hope and, nevertheless, the result is disappointing to say the least. So how is M supposed to be feeling better even if she does these things when she knows that many devout believers were not helped at all by God in similar cases? (Not to mention that in such cases other persons actually lose their belief in God or become more skeptical; or the intensity of their faith becomes less). As for the afterlife, how would M know that she will go to heaven or that C will go there? The prospect of eternal separation is also very frightening. So no, I do not think that faith... could make the intensity of M's desire to know whether C will survive any lower--not in any significant measure, anyway.

Nevertheless, I think you will agree that even if those things are more helpful than I think they are, M still suffers badly. She is still under serious pressure. Nobody would want to be in that kind of situation. Many are even afraid to remember it. Such an experience is a nightmare no matter how you look at it. I find it really hard to believe that anyone would agree to live a whole life under such pressure and tension. It is very improbable that many people would choose to experience such a strong desire to know (or to do) something constantly in their lives even if there are some things they could do to somehow ease their suffering.
If Christians love constantly God so very, very much all their life, their desire to be as close to him as possible will be constantly very intense. However, it is improbable that most of them could endure this extreme pressure for long periods of time. It's implausible to think that they won't take at least one wrong step--meaning that they won't succumb to the temptation to take their life to escape from all this suffering at least once in their life. So why not kill yourself right now and spare the (very probably) useless efforts?

Moreover, even if many of them could endure this pressure--but don't lose sight of the anguish they would experience in all this time--there is still an important problem. If you cannot fulfill your most important and most intense desire, what's the point of living? Surely, a life under these conditions seems hallow, pointless to an important measure.
So now we must ask: is it worth to go through all this intense pain just to live a life that right from the beginning does not seem very satisfying? Hardly.

It depends on how intense and how important this desire is--and don't ignore the time period it takes to fulfill it either.
If, for example, I strongly desire to watch my favorite TV show which will begin in half an hour, but meanwhile I can read an article that is also important to me--although not as important as watching the show--it is clear that the desire to watch the show in this half an hour will not be very painful. It would be obviously absurd to commit suicide under these conditions.

But now suppose that I am very hungry and I very strongly desire to eat something but I am kept in a cage and I receive--very rarely--some very bad and also insufficient food while I watch others often eating excellent food (this, by the way was a torture procedure in the Middle Aegis). Now you could say that my desire to eat like they do is very strong and very painful. If I would know that this would happen to me for the rest of my life--lets say 50 years from now--I think that, indeed, the most reasonable thing to do under these circumstances would be to commit suicide.
Likewise, since, as I repeatedly said, the Christian's desire to be close to God as soon as possible is extremely strong, this desire--which is the only one relevant to our discussion--is indeed extremely painful.

Now since we cannot know how much happiness and suffering will we experience in life, I will say that the probabilities to experience each are 50/50. Moreover, since a Christian who doesn't want to kill himself is already suffering much, I definitely think that, for him, 'I' is negative. The happiness he will normally experience is balanced by the suffering he will normally experience. But, in the Christian's case, along the usual amount of suffering we will all probably experience, he also suffers very much from being separated from God. The result then is clearly negative: "normal" happiness -{"normal" suffering + intense suffering from separation from God}= -I. Logically. And one might also wonder whether constantly living under this important pressure, a Christian can indeed fully enjoy his happy moments.

Your position on this is inconsistent. First you suggest that they are Christians but that they are just a few of them and now you don't say anything about their number but only that in fact they are not Christians. Will you make up your mind?

Quite correct. My mistake. It is important though to notice that these people are far more than you apparently think. And I don't agree that you could say about the most of them that they "foolishly" lack patience. In addition, I think that indeed we can speak of a third class. It is clear that, even if people could totally control their most intense desires, this requires years of training, practice and efforts. But there may very well be Christians so old and ill that the probability to live through all this period is remote for them. They should also reasonably kill themselves.

Practiced? I don't think so. Sure, they all wanted very much to be capable of having such an ability--like most of us, I might add--but whether they actually managed to acquire it is not clear at all. In absolutely all sources I have on Stoicism, it is written that this ability was simply an ideal--and an (almost) impossible one really. In the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London: Routledge we read:

In their book The Greek Philosophy (Senaget, 1999), G. Popps and A. Blake say similar things on page 129.
In L'etonnement Philosophique. Une histoire de la philosophie (Gallimard, 1983), Jeanne Hersch admits that the Stoic ethic was utopian and that it is totally unconvincing and unrealistic--precisely because humans cannot even come close to the Stoic ideal of controlling their most intense and important desires for long time intervals. According to Hersch--who also cites Dostoievsky in support of her position--humans are far more vulnerable than the Stoics apparently thought. See p. 73.

As for the Christians, I think you would agree that most of them have troubles with controlling even their sexual impulses for 6-7 days--even if they know that indulgence would mean a sin--let alone for whole years. So why do you think that they will be capable of resisting and controlling their most intense and important desire (and the suffering this desire brings) a whole lifetime?! Sure, you might say that saints were able to control themselves in this manner. Even so, they are relatively few and it would be almost hilarious to think that most Christians could become like them. Moreover, I have doubts about these "saints" too. See for example St. Theresa's <a href="http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/shields_18_1.html" target="_blank">case</a>. Remember also St. Augustine's words: "God, give me chastity and continency; only not yet". In addition, many respected and appreciated priests were found guilty of committing serious offences (sins) like pedophilia.

Therefore, it is not quite clear that all those individuals you mentioned were really able to rationally and totally control their most intense desire for long periods of time as you and most Christians (who believe in a general resurrection or not) should.

And by the way, I don't think that firewalkers are extraordinary at all. See <a href="http://www.pitt.edu/~dwilley/fire.html" target="_blank">this</a>.
On the other hand, yes, I think that the ability of a drug-addict, for example, to resist the temptation to get high again for long periods of time without giving in at least once and when he has the best quality "stuff" at his disposal is indeed extraordinary. Show me many people that can control themselves under such circumstances and I will believe you. Until then, my point stands unrefuted: The vast majority of humans cannot deal with their most intense and important desire for long periods of time. Most of them would prefer to be anesthetized--sleeping profoundly, for instance--instead of living such a nightmare.

Horia.

ManM

Horia Plugaru,
Let me begin by pointing out that Pele wasn't the only one who practiced soccer. Neither is the sage the only one who practices self-control. I'm not going to reply to several of your comments because I don't think they will lead to a discussion relevant to the original topic.

This just seems contrary to the way people act. The mother desires more than anything that her son be well. But she doesn't nap until he recovers... Instead, she stays up all night at his bedside spending time with him. Even if the sickness is temporary and she can do nothing about it (a common cold), the mother stays with her son. She chooses to prolong the time (from her perspective) before she sees her son well. I (and I suspect many of us) have been that son. This situation is the exact opposite of what you predict. The mother very strongly (even painfully) desires for her son to be well, and so she should sleep until he gets over his cold? That is not what happens.

Also in your analogies you seem to be confusing the desire for a future event to happen faster with a physical addiction or necessity. These are obviously two different things. A child does not desire Christmas presents in the same way he desires food. A person does not desire God in the same way he feels hungry at dinner time.

The solution to your original argument is simply patience. Desire does not torment the patient man. Your defense is that patience cannot exist. I think your position is far less believable than mine.

To catch a sunset over the Gulf of Mexico on an autumn evening. To watch the squirrels chase after each other across the trees. To walk down the beach with the woman you love. (I can use rhetoric as well! ) My most fervent desire is for the life of the age to come; when there will be no more pain or death. I know that day will eventually come. So why would I give up my life for sleep? This idea of yours that patience entails living a nightmare is pure fiction.

If you are just going to re-assert that waiting for something is an unbearable torment that trumps everything else, I think our discussion is at an end.

Horia Plugaru

ManM:

No, but Pele was one of the very few who achieved excellence in playing soccer. To be capable of controling yourself as Christians should requires great excellence and I am not sure that there are even few who can do that.

?!

It is important to notice that I didn't say that she could simply go to a "normal", natural sleep. Of course she would be too troubled to simply go to sleep and fall at sleep with no problem. I explicitly said that she could ease her suffering by taking sleeping pils or something like that.
It is clear that many people who are under tremendous pressure for long periods of time usually do exactly this: start to drink, to take drugs and yes, they commit suicide etc. in order to ease their suffering.
If M will be constantly under this tremendous pressure for long time intervals and she would know that no matter how much time will pass, she won't find out whether C will survive or not, I submit that she will do exactly this. And there are other important points here that I made and that you didn't dispute:

You are missing the point. The point is that in all those cases people are under very serious pressure and tension. They all very, very strongly desire something and they can hrdly resist the temptation.

No, my defense is that patiente in very specific cases is EXTREMELY improbable. Moreover, scholars like Hersch, Popps and those from Routledge seem to agree with me.

I think this answers your question:
If you are just going to continue to ignore the essential fact that for a Christian, his desire is EXTREMELY strong, I think that indeed uor disscution is finished.
Nevertheless, I must admit that this disscution was very interesting and I really enjoied debating with you. You helped me to see new ways of improving the case for ASC.

I think that in the end though, you should seriously ask your self: Do I really love God maximally?

Regards,
Horia.

ManM

Horia Plugaru,
This analogy of yours is off the mark. We are talking about a situation where there is no uncertainty. The mother knows her son will be well at some point in the future. She desires her son to be well. What does the mother do in that situation? Does she take sleeping pills to make the time go faster? Or does she spend that time with her sick son? Using your logic, if the mother does not take sleeping pills, then she must not really desire to see her son well. I find this absurd, but it is exactly the conclusion your logic requires. Likewise, it is just as ridiculous to claim that the Christian does not love God if he chooses life over sleep. Loving mothers stay at the side of their children, even if it is just a cold. I know mine did. The Saints (people who maximally loved God) did not commit suicide. These facts force you into either believing that mothers who stay next to their sick children do not desire them to be well or that your perception of human nature is wrong. If you are going to hold the first position, I don't know what to say other than that you are obviously and horribly wrong. If you grant the second position, you should consider my claim that the desire for a future event is not necessarily painful. It is quite possible to live in the present, and more people do it than you suspect.

[ October 29, 2002: Message edited by: ManM ]</p>

Horia Plugaru

ManM:

Again you miss the point of my analogy. When I gave you my example with M and C, I wanted to ilustrate what a very strong desire is and that it isn't as easy as you think to rationally and totally control your most intense and important desire--even for a short period of time, let alone for a whole life time. M is under such a serious pression precisely because she doesn't know at all whether C will survive. If you change the premise of my original example--saying now that in fact M will know, then we are talking about something entirely else.

But even so, M should still take sleeping pills. If you want to exactly accomodate this example to the Christian's case, then it will be like this:
Presently, C is seriously sick (I say seriously sick in order to make M's desire to see C healthy again very strong , just as your desire to be as close to God as possible is very strong). M knows that C will get well sometime in the future but she does not know exactly when: in 2 days, 6 months or 50 years (because you don't know when you will die). Also M knows that there is absolutely nothing she could do to hasten C's getting better or to at least ease C's suffering (if you don't commit suicide there is nothing you can do to hasten your meeting with God, in other words, to achieve your intensely desired goal--or at least to ease your suffering). Moreover, since M desires so very strongly that C will get well as soon as possible , every day which passes is like a torment to her (just like your days in which you are separated with God are a constant torment). She would like to see C walking again, smiling again, talking again, enjoying life etc. etc. but she constantly finds C gravely ill (you want to be close to God as soon as possible which will make your most intense desire come true, but every day you find yourself separated from God). This depresses her and causes her serious anguish. The more time passes, the more her suffering accentuates, intensifies (the more time passes and you are not as close to God as you intensely wish, the more your suffering intensifies).
But now suppose that one tells M (as I've told you): if you will take sleeping pills you will dream a pleasent and peaceful dream or you will feel nothing at all. Therefore, your agony and personal anguish won't exist anymore. Moreover, the minute you will wake up you will find C perfectly healthy and very well.

I believe that the most reasonable thing for M to do in this particular situation is to take the offer as soon as possible. In my previous responses I gave you several reasons in support of this conclusion.

The same conclusion will hold also if you'll consider my other examples--with the hungry man:

and with the drug-addict:

Incorrect. It is exactely because M intensely desires her son to be well that she suffers so very much. And it is precisely because she suffers so very much that she should take sleeping pills--remember that M cannot do anything to hasten the doctor's response in my original example or to ease C's suffering in my second example.

If by this you mean that I am wrong when I say that the vast majority of humans cannot rationally and totally control their most intense desires for long time intervals, I don't think at all that I am wrong. And as I have already showed, eminent scholars agree with me.

Yes, but if my ASC is correct, they were (or will be from now on) inconsistent if they cho(o)se not to commit suicide. See also what I said about saints in my previous response.

Horia.

[ October 30, 2002: Message edited by: Horia Plugaru ]</p>

ManM

I changed the premise to make your scenario analogous to your original argument. It is not a question of if I will see God, but when. And so in your analogy, there shouldn't be uncertainty regarding the son's health.

Nice rhetoric. In my experience, a mother in this situation does exactly the opposite: she spends as much time she can with her sick son. And so on one hand I have your rhetoric, and on the other I have the actions of real mothers. This leads to a dilemma for you.

You believe that people experience extreme pain from a strong desire that goes temporarily unfulfilled. Let's assume for a moment that you are correct. In my experience, people in pain seek relief, or at the very least, do not prolong their suffering without reason. Therefore, if your claim was correct we should see evidence of people seeking relief. To the contrary, we see mothers who stay at their children's side, many times even neglecting their own sleep. That means that they are actually prolonging their intense pain. This directly conflicts with the observation that people in pain seek relief. So, are mothers masochistic? Or do mothers who stay with their children not desire for them to be well? Or is there some other reason mothers have for prolonging their pain? Or maybe, just maybe, desire doesn't have the impact you think it does.

This is how you dodged the dilemma before, but I want a clean response. You say that a mother should take sleeping pills. My mother didn't. Did she not love me? Did she enjoy the pain she was experiencing?

I addressed these bad analogies before. A desire for God, a desire for a child's health, or a desire for Christmas presents is not analogous to a need for food or a physical addiction. Hunger is painful because your body needs food. A physical addiction occurs when pain is involved in quitting. There are no painful physical side effects involved when a child waits for his Christmas presents.