Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

...because people would not really be choosing God. They would be choosing 'not hell'.


It would be like placing a person in cage out over a cliff then asking them 'You like me right?' Any answer they give would not be representative of how they truly felt about you.


As such a second chance in hell would not represent what a person truly sought after in life.


Thoughts and comments welcomed,


Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

not a theist

But this is exactly what Christianity does.
It threatens us with hell and then asks us to make a decision. Doesn't that deprive of us free choice more than better evidence for the existence of God does?
Or are you saying that the threat is okay as long as it's not credible?
But if it's not credible, why does Christianity make it in the first place?
And if it is credible, your argument doesn't work because you said that a threat of that sort would impair our freedom (which BTW is exactly what bd demonstrated that it wouldn't do.)

[ April 06, 2002: Message edited by: not a theist ]</p>

not a theist

Let me add:
The oddest part about SOMMS's position on this is that if we believe that Christianity is true, we are then deprived of our practical freewill to decide against following it.
For any who don't see how his position entails this I will demonstrate (though I think it's rather obvious).

[ April 06, 2002: Message edited by: not a theist ]</p>

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

It sounds more like you have a problem with the mans religiosity (as do I) rather than a problem with God.


Thoughts and comments welcomed,

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

bd-from-kg

SOMMS:

So it isn’t knowledge of God that would destroy free will “practically”, but knowledge of Heaven and Hell? Then why doesn’t God give us knowledge of God, but not knowledge of Heaven and Hell? Then we could indeed be free to choose Him without coercion of any kind, without the glories of Heaven and the despairs of Hell staring us smack-dab in the face.

One possible reply is that knowledge of God’s nature intrinsically involves knowledge of Heaven and Hell; the two cannot be separated. The answer to this requires us to examine more closely what you mean by saying that this knowledge would destroy free will “practically”.

Let’s imagine a situation where the incentives were reversed – where doing the “right” thing would cause Smith enormous suffering and doing the wrong thing would bring him indescribable joy. Is Smith’s free will destroyed “practically”? Well, suppose that he does the right thing anyway. Surely he would be deserving of enormous praise? But one deserves praise only for actions that were done freely. So if Smith deserves praise, if must follow that he acted freely. It would seem that his free will was not destroyed, “practically” or otherwise. Similarly, if one were to choose to reject God even in the face of the knowledge of Heaven and Hell, wouldn’t you be deserving of blame? But if so, it must be that in rejecting God you would be acting freely. And of course if follows that in accepting God you would also be acting freely.

What you really mean is that, given the incentive structure created by Heaven/Hell, one is not deserving of great praise for accepting God. If Heaven is a reward for doing the “right” thing and Hell a punishment for doing the “wrong” one, in effect this incentive structure is coercive.

However, the presence of coercion is not decisive in determining how praiseworthy an action is. For example, suppose that Brown sees a young girl in danger of drowning in a pond. He’s a good swimmer and the pond is quite shallow, so he can save her with almost no risk, although it will make him late for an important meeting and his clothes will be ruined. He chooses to save her anyway. Now suppose that, in addition to the factors mentioned, he knows that he will receive a large fortune for saving her, but will face a long jail term and total hatred and rejection from everyone he knows if he doesn’t. Is his action still praiseworthy? I say yes, because he would have saved her anyway. In effect Brown has two motives for saving the child: (1) It’s the right thing to do, and (2) It’s in his interest. But in Brown’s case either of these motives would have been sufficient in itself, and the first does not involve any element of coercion. And therefore his action is praiseworthy – in fact, just as praiseworthy as if the coercive element had not been present.

Of course, here on earth this principle is difficult to apply, because we do not know what a person’s actual motives were, and in particular whether the “altruistic” motive in the case above would in fact have been sufficient. But God knows. He can read the human heart (or so we are told); he knows exactly what our motives are, and what their relative strength is. Thus He knows exactly how worthy of praise or blame each of our actions are. So God would have no trouble sorting out the motives in this case and determining that Brown’s act is in fact deserving of praise – just as praiseworthy, in fact, as if the coercive element had not been present, because he would have made the same choice in any case.

Now there are a great many “virtuous” reasons for choosing to follow God. If our nature is such that we find goodness at all admirable, we will admire God for His infinite goodness; if we have an ounce of gratitude, we will be grateful to Him for creating us; etc. For such reasons many people, given certain knowledge of God, would chose to follow Him regardless of the coercive Heaven/Hell incentive structure. No doubt most of these people would also choose to follow Him because of the promise of Heaven and the threat of Hell, but this does not change the fact that they are deserving of praise (and of course of being rewarded) for choosing Him because they would have done so even without this coercive element. Others will reject God in spite of the coercion. Still others would reject God if it were not for the Heaven/Hell business, but are inclined to accept Him because of it.

Now Christians say that what God really wants is for us to accept Him freely, out of love (or gratitude, or some other “virtuous” motive). But if so, He can place no value on a decision to follow him based on a desire to reach Heaven or avoid Hell. In other words, the purpose of Heaven and Hell must not be to induce people to accept God, but to reward those who would freely accept Him and punish those who would freely reject Him if they knew nothing of Heaven and Hell. If so, those in the third category above will be rejected. Since God can read our hearts, He can (and presumably does) sort out those in the first and third category with no trouble. And He could do so even if we had certain knowledge of Heaven and Hell. Thus the “coercive” incentive structure created by a knowledge of Heaven and Hell is not a justification for depriving us of certain knowledge of God, even if this knowledge intrinsically includes a knowledge of Heaven and Hell.

__________________________________

But all of this is just a sideshow. The real, insurmountable problem with the “free will” justification for God’s hiddenness is point 5 of the OP: Free will is not enhanced by ignorance, nor reduced by knowledge. It seems to me that this point is really self-evident if one thinks about it, and it totally demolishes this justification independently of any of the other arguments. So far no one has even addressed this crucial point. (I’ll have more to say about it later in any case.)

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

bd-from-kg,
Quite the opposite.

If God were as much a fact as gravity one would have the same 'choice'of rejecting the doctrine of God as they would the doctrine of gravity. God as undeniable fact (gravity) completely obviates the act of one choosing God. (We should talk about your point 5).

The 'acceptance' of God (your words) would have *nothing* to do with the motivation of one's heart. This and only this is what God is truly interested in...not what a person knows(mind), but their motives(heart). This and only this is why God gave us freedom. This and only this is how God judges man.

In some ways, heaven and hell are completely superfluous to this process. That is they come
completely after the fact. However, it is important to realize that personal experience (note I did not say knowledge) of either one would completely distort a persons motivation for choosing God.


No.
Praise has nothing to do with it.

We are not selling cars here.

Heaven and hell are not 'incentive structures' to get man to choose God. God did not create them for the purpose of 'sweetening the deal' and selling his set of values to mankind.

Now some (poorly misguided) fundies may try to sell YOU on tha Good Book...cause iffin you believe yor a goin to the Perly Gates an iffin you don't yor goin ta HELL SINNER!! HALLELUIAH!!!

&lt;NOTE TO GOD: Please..please help these people.&gt;
...but God does not. He did not create a really cool place called heaven and a really lame placed called hell then send out a message saying 'Hey Mortal Man...if you follow me LOOK! You get a condo in heaven!! If you don't...oooh...goverment housing in hell.'

This is not to say however that heaven and hell do not influence ones actions. If one truly seeks God for his salvation then one is doing just that...truly seeking God.

This is why ones judgment comes BEFORE their sentencing. If it came afterwards one would not really be *seeking* God for his salvation as much as they would simply be *saying* something to escape hell.


Not true.

See above: seeking God for salvation is completely different then merely saying something to get out of hell.
The former involves acceptance, acknowlegdement and willful subjegation to God's soveriegn authority, action...the actual seeking of God, and adoption of Gods values. The latter entails none of these, in hell: God's authority is fact...it means nothing to 'accept, acknowledge and subjegate' oneself to it...no more than we ''accept, acknowledge and subjegate' ourselves to the law of gravity. The utterance 'I want to get out of hell' is not 'seeking out God', and there is no meaning in 'adopting his values'.


Not so...see above.


A beautiful red herring. True...but not the issue at hand.

Free will (the ability to choose) is not affected by the knowledge one has. The CHOICE one makes using free will most certainly IS.

And this is the real issue at hand: If God forced his existence upon us (like gravity) one could not really choose to accept/deny God anymore than one could choose to accept/deny gravity. This is not saying that free will would be reduced in any way. We would still have THE ABILITY to choose, but we would never have to MAKE THE CHOICE. Even if we did make that choice it would be completely trivial (ie 'I accept gravity.')

In short if God were fact ones acceptence of him would be totally trivial and utterly meaningless. It would be completely devoid of any motive of the heart...which is the thing God cares most about.


Interestingly enough, ones admission into heaven or hell is based entirely upon this choice: whether or not they sought God and his values.


In this way both heaven and hell are both exactly what their occupants have strived for.


Thoughts and comments welcomed,

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Grumpy

I'm sorry, I thought this thread had the words "Divine Hiddenness" in the title. But apparently we're assuming that there is no such thing, and that God makes himself blatantly obvious to anyone who searches (in this world). Someone must have invented this philosophical construct because they themselves had a little difficulty finding God.

Luckily, this person will ultimately find God, in a way, in Hell. Because only in Hell will they know for certain that A) God exists, and B) they can never commune with it.

So is hell supposed to be the everlasting uncertainty about where God is, or the tragic certainty that you blew your one opportunity (while made of flesh) to get good with God?


I guess for people who never seek God, Hell is irrelevant; they don't know what they're missing.

bd-from-kg

SOMMS:

While my prose is not terribly elegant or beautiful, most people find it reasonably clear. So it’s surprising that you managed to misunderstand my entire line of argument so completely.

Obviously by “accepting God” I mean the same thing that you describe more fully as “acceptance, acknowledgment and willful subjugation to God's sovereign authority”. We’re on the same page here.

Yes. That’s what I said.

That’s also pretty much what I said.

The argument that certain knowledge of God (by which I mean knowledge of His existence, nature, and purposes) would be “coercive” (and thus would interfere with our “free will”) is based on the “incentive structure” created by Heaven and Hell. It may well be that the purpose of Heaven and Hell are not to exercise a coercive influence on our decision to accept or reject God (In fact I discussed this idea at some length in my last post.) But a knowledge of Heaven and Hell will have that effect regardless of God intent or purpose. At least it would seem that it would. But if it doesn’t, the “free will” justification of God’s hiddenness fails.

Yes. That’s what I said. What is it exactly that you are saying is “not true”?

And yet again:

This is really perplexing. We seem to be in complete agreement on this point, yet you seem to be under the impression that we have a serious difference of some kind.

Remarkably, in this long reply to my last post you completely ignored the heart of its argument, which is found in the paragraphs starting with “However, the presence of coercion is not decisive...” and ending with “Thus the ‘coercive’ incentive structure created by a knowledge of Heaven and Hell is not a justification for depriving us of certain knowledge of God...” Of course, it’s possible that you find this argument irrelevant on the grounds that knowledge of Heaven and Hell does not create an “incentive structure” in the first place, much less a “coercive” one. But in that case, you agree with the thesis I’m arguing here, which is that God’s hiddenness cannot be justified by the (supposed) fact that certain knowledge (in my sense) of God would unavoidably involve certain knowledge of Heaven and Hell, which would tend to be coercive, and thus would interfere with our ability to freely accept Him.

As for your comments on point 5 from the OP, they seem to be based entirely on your mistaken notion that by “knowledge” of God I mean accepting the fact of His existence.

With respect to the argument outlined at the end of the last paragraph, the fact that free will cannot be reduced by knowledge or enhanced by ignorance is hardly a “red herring”; it is a refutation.

Curiously, you yourself put the final nails into the coffin of the “free will” justification of God’s hiddenness with the following statements:

In other words, if I understand you correctly, heaven and hell are the natural, inevitable results of one’s choices and not a reward or punishment for them. But this wipes out the “free will” or “coercion” argument completely. As the second example under point 5 in the OP makes clear, it is ridiculous to describe warning someone of the natural and inevitable consequences of a choice they are considering as “coercion”. No one in his right mind would dream of complaining that someone who gives them a better understanding of the possible consequences of their actions is thereby “coercing” them or infringing on their “free will”. So if you’re right about the nature of Heaven and Hell, the “free will” justification for God’s hiddenness is a non-starter.

Amos

<strong>After a few quadrillion years in Hell, it would dawn on even the most determined, stubborn rebel that his torment is never going to end, and that he has made a terrible mistake.</strong>

The difference between heaven and hell is that both are spend in eternity but only one is spend in the presence of God. To be in hell is to be on fire for God while in the absense of God until we die . . . nonetheless.

luvluv

I don't really want to get into this (these things tend to go on for days) but I think I started it so I guess I owe it to all involved.

bd I first want to say that almost all of your objections were raised by other people in the "If God exists, why is he hiding" thread, and myself and several others answered almost all of them there. I declined to respond to this post for several days because it is a drain on my time to have to repeat myself, but I feel like it is necessary now.


"A. If we knew for certain that God existed and truly understood His nature and purposes, we would have no choice but to accept and follow Him."

bd if you had been following the "If God exists, why is He hiding thread" you would know that I never argued that a knowledge of God would always lead to someone choosing to obey God. But it would mean that everyone who had chosen to obey or disobey God did so under direct coercion.

On that thread, I was not arguing that God's objectively known presence would be determinative, just that it would be too influential to call any decision made by anyone truly free.


"C. Our free will is so valuable that God is justified in exposing us to the possibility of eternal damnation by withholding vital knowledge from us."

He is not withholding vital knowledge from you. It's freely availiable if you want it. But God is not compelling you to believe it.

Where all of your Smith analogy's breakdown is they are excluding the presence of religion on this globe. A real analogy would be one in which Smith is about to head toward a bridge that is going to collapse under him. Smith sends a man to Smith to tell him that the bridge is going to collapse under him. Smith can either believe that man and go another way, or not believe that man and drive to his doom. God has not withheld the knowledge of the possibility of damnation from humanity, most civilizations have always had some version of it. But God never compelled anyone to believe it. More on the Smith analogy to come.

"In fact, many Christians such as William Lane Craig argue (or at least speculate) that those who ultimately reject God would have done so in all possible worlds – that is, that it is in their fundamental nature that they will reject God no matter what."

I don't agree with that, so I can't argue for it. But I would say that it won't get us anywhere for you to try to use the theories of select Christians do disprove any of the theories of the people on this board. What good would it do, in my discussions with you, to bring in the opinions of other scientists you may disagree with in order to disprove your opinions? It doesn't really move the discussion forward one way or another unless someone you are currently in debate with has argued the position. No one here has.

"But for any given person there are some possible worlds in which he will have as perfect and complete a knowledge and understanding of God as is humanly possible. Certainly those who take this position (or even consider it logically coherent) cannot argue that we would have no choice but to accept God if we had perfect understanding of Him."

Again, no one is arguing that.

"Moreover, this argument implies that people like Moses and the disciples, who supposedly looked at God in the face and were given incontrovertible knowledge, amounting to certainty, of His existence, nature, and purposes, had no choice but to accept God and follow Him.
Yet there is no suggestion, either in the Bible or in Christian teachings, that these people were thereby deprived of moral agency. On the contrary, they are (with the exception of Judas) revered as moral exemplars."

First of all, I argued strenuously and at length on the other thread that if God wanted humans to have free choice, at some point He was going to have to reveal Himself as a choice. Therefore, it does follow that at some point someone was going to have revelation of Him.

Secondly, I do not know that Moses or any of the Apostles are held up as moral exemplars in comparison with those in the Bible who had to accept God on faith. The Bible generally holds up people like David (who had to stand up to Goliath in faith) Abraham (who left his home in faith) and Noah (who built an ark before it rained, on God's say-so) as being more virtuous than those who had direct knowledge of God. In fact, the virtue of faith is the highest virtue in the Bible... and those who in the Bible demonstrated it on the least evidence are viewed as the most outstanding examples of virtue.

Also, remember the statement of Jesus himself "You have seen, and believed. But blessed is him who has not seen, and believed" The implication of which seems to be that faith is viewed in the Bible as being a greater virtue if it is arrived at in the absence of confirmable, verifiable evidence. It would also seem that Jesus credited Thomas with less virtue than he would have credited the others who believed in the absence of evidence, because in the presence of evidence Thomas was not free to disbelieve.

It is the choice to believe or disbelieve that is the essential choice. To choose to believe God's existence, and more importantly his character, is the only moral freedom humans have. All others are derivative of that first decision. Thomas was essentially deprived of that choice, and Jesus mentioned that his decision was less virtuous than if he arrived at that decision without evidence.

I argued on the other thread that prophets do indeed have less moral agency than the rest of us, but they sacrifice their moral agency in order to provide us with a free choice. Yes, certainly prophets do disobey God (Jonah, for example), but they do not have the choice to disbelieve in God. To that extent, their decision to follow God was coerced.

Your second objective, the one about the chocolate and the strawberries, tends to assume that the major choice in life is between God and the devil, between Heaven and Hell. This is not the Christian viewpoint. The essential choice in your life is between God and yourself. Between what you know God wants you to do and what you want to do. The knowledge of God's existence would make this decsion more difficult. To live the Christian life is not like deciding between strawberries and chocalte if one is allergic to chocolate. It is like deciding whether to eat chocolate, which you love, or whether to fast, which you know in this case God wants you to do that day. That choice would very much be interferred with if God appeared to you and told you not to eat the cake.

Hell is not filled with people who have chosen the devil over God, but with people who have chosen THEMSELVES over God.

"After a few quadrillion years in Hell, it would dawn on even the most determined, stubborn rebel that his torment is never going to end, and that he has made a terrible mistake. At that point he would obviously want to end his rebellion. So why doesn’t God allow him to do so? The traditional Christian response is that when a rebel dies (or perhaps at the Last Judgment) he undergoes a spiritual death and loses his free will; thus he is unable to change his original decision and accept God. But why would God do this? If the preservation of the rebel’s free will is the justification for allowing him to experience eternal torment, what is the justification for destroying this very free will which has cost him so dearly? If interfering with one’s free will is such a terrible thing that God refuses to do it even when it is being used to make a horribly ill-advised decision, how can it be right for Him not only to interfere with it, but to annihilate it?"

Again, there is much on this subject on the other thread. In short, though, it is my opinion and the opinion of many Christians that hell is not an imposed state, it is a natural outcome. Like one loses free will when one becomes addicted to drugs, one can also become addicted to his own Will. C.S. Lewis described this Will best when he said it is exemplified in a childs "willingness to kill or be killed, rather than to obey".

A relationship with God on some level requires obedience, which is the willful sacrifice of your free will in order to do God's will. It is a very difficult skill to master. A corallary to this principle is that the more one voluntarily gives up his free will in order to obey God, the more in control of himself one is. If I can deny myself chocolate, or sex, or alcohol, as the consequence of cultivating my will-power in order to obey God, I am more free than an individual who has no will-power and who has great difficulty in disobeying his basic impulses (sex, temper, hunger, etc). Further, the more one gives in to his impulses, the less control one has over those impulses. The more I engage in loose behavior, the harder it will be for me to discipline myself should the need arise.

Now, those in hell, as I said before, are there because they choose themselves, their own impulses, rather than God's. It is my theory that the continued submission to one's impulses naturally entails less and less control over one's impulses. The more you nurture and indulge your desire for anger or revenge, for example, the more difficult it will be for you to one day change your mind and forgive. The person who is in hell, because of the lack of self control, will continue to give in to his urges and will steadily grow worse until he has no self-control, really, no SELF, left to combat his baser impulses. He will, in effect, BECOME his baser impulses, with their being no "I" to make a decision to turn around. He will simply BE anger or murder or lust or whatever he has indulged in, and will have no more ability to control himself or come to a rational decision as your most basic animal.

This is a long way to say that God does not take away someone's ability to choose in hell, they have given it away as a natural consequence of indulging their instincts over their morals. They have given up self-control to their desires, not knowing that it is possible to be ruled, and eventually dominated, by one's desires. Your hypothetical person in hell will be much less able to change his mind after a hundred years of torment than he would before he got there. Also, I argued on the other thread that the torment in Hell will derive from the abuse that the people their inflict on each other, again in exercising their anger, resentments, violence, etc.

I don't understand your points about Smith. I don't see there relevance.

I'll read further down and make some more comments later.

[ April 08, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>