One Hell of a Problem w/
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2022
- I’m joined by Counter Apologist and Ryan from Real Atheology to discuss eternal conscious torment.
First, we take a look at the views of William Lane Craig, who famously denies the possibility of an actual infinite in the context of the kalam, yet seems to affirm the existence of an actual infinite in his defense of everlasting torment. Craig grants that finite sins merit finite punishment. But since rejecting a relationship with God is not a finite sin, eternal conscious torment is justified. (Craig seems to hold that our guilt is an actual infinite, not our punishment, which is a potential infinite.)
We also touch on free will, postmortem salvation, the rejection of God, religious diversity, universalism, guilt, and David Bentley Hart's case that everlasting torment is morally indefensible.
Clarification: When it comes to rejecting God, I used the words “ignorance or limitations/imperfections” several times (e.g., “No one would reject a relationship with a being of perfect love without some ignorance or imperfection”). “Ignorance” in this context would include lack of knowledge of God’s existence or his exact nature. “Imperfection” or “limitation” was usually intended to refer to our rational faculties. So if a person is rejecting a being of perfect love, I think that person must be lacking information or ability to assess that information, most likely. As David Bentley Hart argues, “no rejection of God on the part of the rational soul is possible apart from some quantum of ignorance and misapprehension and personal damage.”
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I just finished reading That All Shall Be Saved last night. I got interested in Universalism thanks to Emerson's recent obsession. DBH makes a good case and maybe it will be helpful for some Christians but I'd say Emerson's 16 Minute video on Hell takes down ECT just as well in much less time.
Excellent discussion/One of the best so far! Thank you!
Just subscribed to all three of you. Thanks for providing thoughts and discussion on these important topics.
Many of us watching have struggled for decades with the dogma put out by Christians.
Personally, I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and shunning is a key weapon used to coerce its members into compliance and fear.
6:03 i’ve heard this whole “infinite god, infinite offense, infinite punishment” before, but i just thought of something: why is it only our sins that are counted this way? if i bless god or do right by an infinite god, it’s not counted towards me infinitely, but somehow my sins are supposedly infinitely offensive? it’s special pleading on top of special pleading
Pretty sharp observation.
That's a great point. If there was any truth to it, a person should absolutely get credit for "good works."
At 9:55 (John), perfectly on point as one could ever be! A loving and all-knowing God doesn't set us up for failure!
What do you think of this line of defense an apologist may take for the idea that infinite sins can exist even though the past can't be infinite wherein He/she may argue that an infinite past represents an actually number of things being instantiated (i.e an infinite number of events), but an infinite sin only instantiates an infinite property, and not an infinite number of things? Further, it may be clarified that an infinite property is one that simply lacks a limit.
I don't think Craig has addressed this, we usually use the frailty of the victim and their relative powerlessness to the perpetrator as indicating a greater wrong, ie punching a frail older person that is likely to die as worse than punching a healthy trained boxer who will hardly feel the punch but also respond by beating me up.
Best line of a great convo: warmed-over Biola crap 😅
I think low bar bill is up to sumpthin when he says that one time in hell you can never get out. You need to believe that he is loving you. How will you acomplish that for an entity that is litteraly torturing you 24/7?
Didn't Craig say an actual nfinite to the past was impossible, not an infinite to the future
How do you reconcile someone normally being a decent person with them believing this? Like when i hear someone say they believe that i immediately look at them as either being delusional or being literally one of the most vile people ever to live. Like if someone actually thinks that a person deserves hell how could that not reflect on who they are as a person.
I say this as someone that was a universalist and started leaving when i realized just how much of a sack of dirt the god most Christians around me worshipped actually was by any moral system tied to actually caring about peoples wellbeing.
Christianity is certainly a delusion.
either they don't really believe it or they aren't a decent person. they might seem like it most of the time, but so do many serial killers
Most Christians don't do theology, so they haven't fully thought out their positions. But that being said, the New Testament is pretty clear there is a punitive judgement for all unbelievers after death, for their rejection of the true God and their sins.
@JesusChristWayTruthLife777 so is this punishment for actively and knowingly rejecting him or would someone who looks for the truth and cannot bring themselves to believe in this life find themselves suffering this punishment.
*Bad people do bad things, but it takes religion for good people to say, do and justify abhorant things.*
Christopher Hitchens.
Simplification of Steven Weinberg. quote.
I feel more comfortable putting trust in things that are unchanging. A fickle god scares me. I would also add that a god that is growing along with us as apposed to already being perfection allowing most to be placed in a state of neverending torment is even worse.
38:00 there just is no rational counter-argument. Its too insane at this point. The only thing I can conceive of is the usual "god works in mysterious ways" but even Craig avoids resorting to that line, though I have seen him use it as a defense in other cases. It would be nice to hear what you have to say against that
Why only allow until death can we repent of our sins if Gods all loving and ever patient, we should have gotten and eternity to decide that get punished in hell for our crimes look into our hearts, finally repent and join the lord up in heaven that’s the kind of universalism I can get behind.
"Sheal =hell= covered grave. " I heard once that hell wasnt an everlasting fire and brimstones cliche. That it didnt say that in any part of the bible.
Rather, that hell meant a covering or grave thats covered.
Which, I i mean if I wanted eternal life i wouldnt want to be made poisonous to animals and bugs with preserving liquids and then buried. It seems like a huge waste of energy for other things on this planet.
Hm? I wonder how long my energy could be used on this planet after i die...
Heres the only link to this teaching i kinda described . . Sorry not a theologist or a follower
th-cam.com/video/iZA-sGDVe-E/w-d-xo.html
The problem is within the issue of sin vs acts & hell vs the lake of fire. Sin isn't being held against us under the new covenant (Jesus). Our acts are what will be judged and corrected at the great white throne. Whether we're free moral agents or not, God is already aware of it well in advance and adding in that God has no ego, there's no way we can piss him off or disappoint him by our choices in life. His will is that we are all saved, so I believe he will get what he desires, wants, and wills. (1 Tim 2:4)
Fire is symbolic - For our God is a consuming FIRE (Hebrews 12:29)
You say this like you know it is true. How do you know that? Story book?
@@lil-al What do you mean by "story book"? These are things I've learned over the years in studying Scripture and watching content with various advocates in the same belief sets, as this is my personal belief as well. It's not something I know, but something that makes more sense to me than eternal conscious torment or conditional immortality. Even though I'm a hopeful Universalist, I feel confident in the potential reality of it being true, and it would absolutely be good news if it were, as the Gospel seems to hint towards strongly in many ways.
To Ryan's comment about the trauma that the doctrine of Hell. It was the issue that broke my faith in my thirties as a preacher. It was a moral awakening that made the notion of a loving God impossible. Before I stopped believing He existed, I hated Him.
nice title
This excerpt from Lindsey Hall's dissertation (Swinburne's Hell and Hick's Universalism) may of interest on the transworld depravity issue. Even if it's a move that works, Craig doesn't actually have any help in defending an eternal hell.
"It is clear to us that God has not made beings who always freely choose to do good and thus Plantinga’s account succeeds in offering an explanation of why the actual world is the best possible world God could make, even with the amount of evil it contains. Craig however cannot appeal to our experience of the world. He assumes that in this world some are damned and therefore develops an explanation which shows this to be the best possible world God could actualise. But how does Craig know that some are damned? Neither he nor anyone else (except, of course, God) can know this. Thus Craig’s argument for transworld damnation, does not have the advantage that Plantinga’s argument for transworld depravity has, in that he is not seeking to explain a state of affairs of which we have direct experience.
However, if not all creaturely essences are transworldly damned why did God not only actualise the essences that were free from transworld damnation? Craig would presumably resort to the response that God had to actualise a certain number of the transworldly damned in order for there to be any saved. But why should this be the case? In what way can there being a number of saved rely on there also being a number of lost? Plantinga claims that God actualises the transworldly depraved, because these are the only free people who can be actualised. However Craig can make no comparative claim. The transworldly damned are not the only people that God can actualise and thus it seems there is no convincing reason for thinking that God would actualise any transworldly damned essences, let alone a majority of transworldly damned."
It doesn't make sense that God should be offended by disbelief.
Not least because he created it.
It's not about His offense. It's about what the source of life is. When you sin you depart from God into death. Hell is final death.
Hell isn't created by God.
@@joshua_finch But hell isn't death. Death I get, but infinite torture no.
To us there are different kinds of living things that die in their own different ways. With this conversation we're talking about the soul dying. It's not annihilation.
The most evil being imaginable is one who creates the most amount of conscious agents for the sole purpose of causing them the greatest possible degree of torment for the longest possible duration. The biblical god says the majority of the beings he supposedly love will end up in hell having the greatest degree of suffering for the longest possible duration. The god of the Bible is a moderate step of difference from the most evil being imaginable.
good job none of it's true eh.
And says "be fruitful and multiply" despite the way being narrow and most being condemned to Hell. Imagine that- procreation or monkhood, and you're gambling with the eternal life of your child
And yet Christians call this God a greatest conceivable being.😑
"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isa. 5:20.)
@@examinetruth5392 do you think a being who creates conscious beings knowing he is going to have them tortured for all eternity sounds good?
If you were given the power, would you snap your fingers and erase the universe such that it never was, such that nothing that has ever existed ever came into being? If not, and I submit that no rational human being would do so, does this not prove that the world is in some sense good as it appears at face value, even without consideration of an afterlife? Now add in an afterlife in which all the pain and suffering of every sentient creature is healed, redeemed, transfigured, and you've gone a long way toward answering the problem of evil. But then again, add in eternal conscious torment for any sentient being and the whole argument collapses.
I think we should talk about pre-life more. Christians have no real answers about that because the Bible is pretty much silent on the topic.
Hell is just like our reality here on earth.
If you completely remove all emotional response, even someone like Hitler doesn’t deserve ETERNAL, NEVER ENDING torture. There’s nothing anyone can do in this short life on earth to warrant that type of unfathomable punishment. Any being that would impose that has absolutely no love inside of it and is the epitome of evil.
I’m of the view that no one deserves any amount of suffering as a “punishment” for wrong doing. Either rehabilitate wrong doers or, if that isn’t possible, prevent them from doing further harm either by locking them up or otherwise. Hell, the main reason that I’m against the death penalty is that “humane” executions (i.e lethal injection/electric chair) are hideously torturous. If there was genuinely a 100% painless execution method then my view might be different.
@@renegadesofanarchy289 Agreed.
@@renegadesofanarchy289Based.
Hell is like an incarnation of opposition and an absolute Inversion of who God is, in a sense you become a part of a "body of Satan".
1) It is a depersonalization of humans as this eternal movement away from God diminishes you -so you are changed in hell as saved people will be changed/divinized... so your apprehension, act of judgment are given up, you are not what you were as you have embraced evil to it's core and all the entailments and dysfunctions follow.
2) I'ts a mingling chaos that will be incapable of love -not even themselves, will have spite, malice, ill will, uncontrollable crave, perfect rage and frustration because it can't obtain what it wants, unremitting sin without gratification or end, so it is a constant grumbling and thunderous hatred that is lashing out -among themselves and towards God.
It can start on this earth within a person, but it becomes fully apparent and realized in Hell, and God reflecting his maximal Justice in creation will allow it to go on forever.......
How does maximal justice equate to neglect on the parrt of God that begins in this world and is then broken only by an arbitrary exacerbation of the sinner's "choice?" Others would beg to differ, what makes your belief in this "righteousness" of Hell different? That it says so in a book?
There is no need for a depersonalization of humans, as if anyone could embody "evil" or the "body of Satan"- that would be as if to imply Satan is a being on par with God that is a polar opposite when even he is not a perfect representation of evil. Pure evil culminates in final self-destruction, not this strange torture state sustained by God but never bettered.
You will say there is nothing to embetter, but that is highly presumptuous; is it logically necessary for Hell to produce the change you mentioned, and not one of repentance and purgation?
Nevermind the obvious cynicism and sadism of your belief that makes me question your humanity, much less of the poor saps in this Hell you've conjured up.
@@TheEternalClown
I'ts very simple, justice against the damned is itself a good, and I trust that God's decrees are Holy and Just.
If God, knowing that we would stray from Him, chose not to create, then He would be bound by our actions. There are no prior determining conditions on God's decrees, the only thing which determines God is His own promises and His own prior ordinations.
"Satan"=Opposition can't be on par with God, it's basically Death and Disorder. You can say it's a formless Orgy without equilibrium, raging like rabid dogs
barking their blasphemies and curses, which will be their hymns in comparison to the Order of Worship in Heavenly Liturgy,
this "body" of Chaos hates God and utilizes their autonomy contrary to their nature, this demands a perpetual removal from God's Glory, they know fully what God represents and who God is and what they rejected, they deliberately choose to invert themselves, their evil desires consume them.
Every act of knowing or willing we have this kind of prior awareness, or this co-awareness of the infinity of being, we can deliberate and sinners obstinately sought to exalt themselves without first giving thanks and acknowledging God as the source of their life.
They defile their bodies, seduced they steal the pleasures and mock God, they attach themselves to fragile and perishable things.
the addicted are doomed.
it can start in this world willfully, and you see how gradually all that remains is a soulless husk driven by the hollow desires, but in Hell the difference is that their acts don't produce any gratification anymore, so you can picture this kind of Fury without avail.
What is trapped in hell is pure evil!
PS
You don't need to have a formal membership card and an ascent to a proposition, Creed help you to know more truths and Church is clearly manifested, so you can join yourself to Christ and internalize the Gospel, but you can be inculpable (Invincible ignorance) in certain things and God will know your heart, so there is always a chance for all people. Intelligent evil will shrink and shrivel, and in its disgraceful condition will suffer in Hell.
for our existence to be fulfilled and perfected means that it is joined to the archetype of which it is the type!
Live up to the light God has given to you, love charity, truth, justice, peace, joy, goodness, and you are already reaching towards God!
@@absolutelyoptimistictheology "they that used to be nursed in scarlet have clothed themselves with dung"
@@examinetruth5392 Get your head checked, sicko; I won't accept such a misanthropic, unempathetic, arrogant, and hypocritical creed if it died on the cross a second time.
You're just making perverted fan-fiction in which people from disagreeable to disgusting moral states are utterly lost and "given over to" a self-exacerbating state of torment and sin; no Godliness in allowing, much less facilitating such a thing, even less creating it. Indeed, God created all of the preconditions for thud Hell of yours; He indirectly created and willed for those who you say will go there to be damned. He is both the author of evil and His own defeat- what kind of victory is found in the majority of your creation being claimed by the devil? Fiddling with ontology ("they're no longer children of God but of the devil!") doesn't change the intrinsic horror of the situation. What is trapped in heaven is equally pure evil for creating, maintaining, and encouraging people to go to Hell through sheer neglect and a lack of desire to see that all are saved. A second chance? A temporary purgation through Hell? A beatific vision? No, all are damned by a religion that is founded on sophistry and God of the gaps.
All of what you have said is presumption; the "hollow and temporary desires" may not actually be as such, it is only so according to your scriptures. Some may say familial ties are temporary and interfere with one's relationship with God, others beg to differ. In either case, I see no moral superiority.
It is only pure evil because of God's arbitrary hardening of their state, not through any fault of their own, but through God's soulless system.
@@examinetruth5392 And you fool- who is to say "justice against evil" is constituted by punishment, much less such a disproportionate one? It is hardly an infinite crime, but a finite action with (if God takes it as such) infinite properties- a wonderful opportunity for God to show that infinite mercy they like to speak of, u less a greater mercy and patience can be conceived of than that of your God's, in which case you seem to be following some pagan counterfeit.
I would rather say it is arrogant and evil to thank God for my making and to subject myself to Him- He is an idea men have molested me with as a child and that I then defended and excused for years like an abused housewife. I had no choice, I had no evidence, I still have nothing but coercion and confusion; dozens of world religions, each equally valid, each bearing long lineages of sages and mystical experience. Not one, single, answer that the entire creation professes, but a jumble of dubious traditions that contradict each other and internally (based on the different sects and schools of thought I see that still have not been refuted with finality due to the faithfulness of it all). How can I lie to myself and attribute anything to a God, arrogantly, against the truth of the matter, which would ask that I withhold that judgement until proofs are presented?
Besides, I don't see how any of the paltry sins in that list of boogeymen deserves infinite punishment on any intuitive level.
I wouldn't be asking God to not create knowing it would beget evil (some kind of incompetent demiurge you've concocted) but to create such that evil does not exist.
Get angry at the way I talk, don't get angry- I don't care. All I hate are people that sell me heartless messages with a smile on their face.
I think Craig would say that the sin against God is not a quantitative infinite, but rather a qualitative infinite. I don't think he would argue that people have committed an actual infinite amount of sins against God, which would be a quantitative infinite if true, but rather that the kind of sin that he talking about is a qualitative infinite sin in virtue of that sin being committed against a qualitatively infinite being. Craig doesn't say that God is infinite in a quantitative sense, but rather a qualitative sense. Now I'm not sure that this works and all, but I think that's his view. I think he would shy away from any sort of quantitative infinite whether it be God, or the sin committed against God.
If you are saying W L Craig is an abhorantly shocking excuse for a human being with a finely tuned I.d.i.o.t. complex, then I agree with everything you've just said.
If this is what Craig is saying then he is more irrational, illogical and a bigger idiot.
Someone committing an offensive act being infinite because the quality of the being offended is infinite means that being needs to learn to let shit go. It also means that any act that is pleasing to the infinite being is also infinite. So how would that be logically squared?
If this is Craig's view, he's making his god out to be a nutcase with emotional issues.
But if his god is all powerful and all living and capable of forgiving these qualitatively infinite sins with a human meat sacrifice and blood magic, he should be able to also be able to simply forgive with just his will. No virgin meat sacrifice required. No holding eternal grudges for slights committed by puny humans.
@@Yossarian. Well I certainly didn't say that, so does that mean that you now disagree with my comment? I also never said that I agreed with Craig. I was just laying out what *his* view is. But no, although I disagree with Craig on many things he says, I wouldn't call him an "abhorrently shocking excuse for a human being with a finely tuned I.d.i.o.t. complex". I reserve those types of characterizations for people like Darth Dawkins, Kent Hovind, Matt Powell, Matt Adams, John Lee, Matt Slick and a few more that I can't recall the names of at the moment. But as for WLC, he may be wrong about a lot, but I don't see him as being dishonest or stupid. The man has a Phd in Philosophy and has had many cordial and productive dialogues with others in a respectful manner that people can learn from. What has WLC done such that you would characterize him in the way that you did? Because I'm pretty curious now...
@@phillipjackson1517
I know you didn't say anything negative about W.L.C.
I was just messing.
But only because your admiral attempt at trying to unravel what WLC actually believes, does by virtue of the subject matter, come across as convoluted.
The concept of sin is utter B.S. to my mind and as such is a non-subject. You can philosophise the pants of it but it will still be B.S. when you've all agreed on an outcome.
This is in no way a dig at you by the way. I can see that you don't agree with his premise anymore than I do.
As far as him being abohrant; all literal theists are. They side with a petty minded, jealous, mass murdering, infanticidal maniac?
He actually justifies his loving gods slaughter of new borns!
Hes an idiot because he holds absolute certainty in the supernatural.
He bases his workd view on pascal wager.
But then why would one not state that the punishment isn’t of infinite period but rather of infinite quality, that is if there was a sin of infinite nature, for which there has not been any criteria given, what is it based upon? But in that case wouldn’t an infinite death (punishment followed by extinction) be the case, because it is not quantitive but qualitative?
Great show!
This great. Thank you for having the past and present of the Real Atheology crew on to discuss this with you.
I'm a secret Buddhist, trying to fool God into thinking I'm a Christian rejecting Jesus, all the fun sins included, wagering that Annihilationism is true, to get my shortcut to Nirvana.
All this stuff is so so beyond me, I wasn't raised adhering to any religion. But that is exactly why I'm so interested in it. Religion is basically my hobby. It is unbelievably outlandish for me, that there are actually people who believe all of this stuff.
Great video!
Technically speaking we're all in a relationship with God as he's inside us all, even if we're unaware of it.
Regardless of what we do or how we act, ultimately our connection to God will be naturally strengthened and he'll be ALL IN ALL.
How do you know? Story book?
14:50 I find this even worse because of the existence of angels. Angels started in heaven, and only a third of them are going to hell. Meanwhile, around 90% of humanity are not Christian’s.
Of course, angels don’t even have the chance to accept Jesus . Humans do !
Angels have full knowledge to base their acceptance or rejection on. We humans do not have such knowledge. We have faith but even the highest level of faith is just not full knowledge
Hell is locked from the inside- people choose to go there. Why would you think that spending eternity with whom you consider an abhorrent being, God, be heavenly instead of Hellish?
Can they choose to leave?
@@spectrepar2458 They never will, they are exactly where they always wanted to be, away from God and the center of their own Universes.
@@geoffrust6787 so happily in their own little world?
@@spectrepar2458 Not "happily" unless you think endlessly focusing on despair, regret and hopelessness, is happiness. They are not "tortured" by external forces or by God, instead they are tormented by the truth, a truth that they can never ignore or forget. They turned from love for which they have an endless bottomless thirst but which they also hate and fear powerfully and endlessly.
Think of how spite and bitterness turned someone you know from goodness to an internally poisoned wretch (I think of my M-in-Law- who after her divorce twenty years before I met her daughter just declined- she wallowed in self-pity and hatred to the point that we could not allow her around her grandchildren anymore because she could not even show love to my six and five year old boys- they were male you see and thus were part of the problem- she used to be creative and sociable but over time she cut off all her relationships and friendships over perceived betrayals and slights until there was no one left- but it was never her fault)--> but eternally filled with hate and pride and fear and envy and self-loathing- but also being aware that you are doing it all to yourself and being so unwilling that you are no longer able to change. That is hell.
@@geoffrust6787 did you watch the video before commenting because they adressed this?
It's pretty funny when you think about it. A bunch of people thousands of years ago made up the most fantastic concoction of random, inconsistent and illogical stories and now these poor apologists have to explain how it can possibly make sense. Ahem, *rich* apologists, I mean.
Amazing show so far.
A great conversation, thoroughly enjoy the entire thing! keep up the great work
Humoring bad philosophy is the wrong way to go about the conversation. Why does anyone care about Craig? Plantinga?
It's just silly that we are trimming the twigs of the rotten branch instead of breaking it off at the root.
We already know theistic philosophy is bunk, debating the finer points of it is just fruitless when the entire base is pure fiction.
In the end the concept of hell, as craig describes it, is the equivalent of godly honor killing ... doesn't sound better that way
The problem with Universalism and Soul Building, is that God needs sin and evil so as to Soul Build.
So, on the one hand, God does not want sin and evil but on the other hand, He wants sin and evil. Imagine Jesus telling a someone in the next life, “I wanted you to be raped and tortured on Earth because if you were not raped and tortured, then I would not be able to Soul Build you in the way you needed to be.
Universalism has similarities to Calvinism. God hates the sin and evil but at the same time wants all the sin and evil. In Calvinism, God regenerates all of His Elect so that they want Him. In Universalism, God brings it about that everyone will want Him.
If God can cause everyone to want Him, then He could have done that from “the get go” and bypassed this whole World of sin and evil.
if god doesn't _send_ you to hell, why does anyone go? i'm off to the beach, me and my free will.
besides, if satan rejects god, and i reject god, why would i get eternal torment? me and satan are buddies - i think this brimstone nonsense is propaganda made up by god and hell is heaven 2.0, with musicians, writers, artists, maybe the occasional philosopher, but also comedians.
does craig ever answer the question asked?
I'm a Christian but enjoy the philosophically educated disagreement. I think a lot of theology is missed though, and Western theology assumed. So what is missing is address of an Eastern idea (not D B Hart, but the orthodoxy he is alleged to represent) that it is a chosen illness to be such as to go to hell. It's not exactly a legal thing. The legal was always a metaphor to the church. The idea of offended dignity or guilt quanta is thoroughly Western from Anselm... Instead one chooses not to be with God in this life, and He gives you all the chances possible to see the choice, so after death it is finalized, no change is possible, and God allows this choice to continue. The only surprise to, say an atheist that goes to hell, is that in fact God exists... and then your choices will be seen more than clearly, as the wrong ones, but nonetheless fully free. So it is a place of regret. The punishment is to feel God's revelation and love, yet to have a character fixed upon hatred of Him, Life, Truth, Beauty, Justice etc, where hatred includes failing to love and live according to these emanations. But this final apocalypse and eternal consciousness of God's being, has to happen if God exists. Because you had your opportunity. He is able to arrange all you need as an opportunity in one life. And the just must be separated and rewarded.
some of us really couldn't care less about god and what he wants, so we spend our time more constructively than reading theology, which is like comics, but less sex.
In short it seems the Western ideas are presented as required. But I don't believe these, yet I believe hell. And second, the idea of God being able to give all the choices needed in one life is arbitrarily denied.
Atheists will say of course I would love Beauty Truth Love (God's names). But the meaning of all these things is different for Eastern Christians. Love requires the virtue of humility and purity for example. This is not easy. Humility is not accurate self assessment. Virtue in the classical and Eastern sense is very lost. But Aristotle comes close. Virtue is not easy or had by simply getting factual information.
@@joshua_finch lol, didn't read that either.
@@joshua_finch why is it people who believe in god think what they have to say is of ANY interest to anyone but themselves? is it a innate desire to preach? cos theists really, really, really, no really, have a hard time shutting up and listening. they sort of shut up but wait their turn to start talking again. watch tjump, pinecreek, paulogia, they will sit and listen - and be able to repeat back what has been said - for about 80% of their chats, while theists, just blather on, and on.
I don’t think this view fares any better.
Rationality =/= self-interest. A rational being is not necessarily someone who wishes only the best for themself and your framing of such a rational yet self-destructive being as being "insane" and in need of "intervention" is disgustingly paternalistic. I suggest you re-assess the value you place on personal autonomy, especially considering you're a free-will compatibilist now.
How is it wrong, however? Is that it- that it feels "disgustingly paternalistic?"
Rationality does equal self-interest. Self-interest can include loving loved ones. It is in your self-interest to have good friends and family and business relationships. Rationality is only possible to the individual, I cannot make you rational, you have to do that for yourself, for yourself, i.e., you have to choose to be rational for the sake of getting what you want.
I have never heard that rationality *is* self interest. It is a component of it, particularly in a legal sense, but it isnt one in the same.
@@ExistenceUniversity Wrong. If one does not desire the things you listed then it is not in one's interest to have those things. Rationality can only tell an agent how to accomplish their desires, not what those desires should be. Reason can only ever be a slave to the passions, to quote David Hume.
@@ExistenceUniversity Furthermore, if one's desires do not involve the enrichment and preservation of the self then one can act rationally in pursuit of those non-self-interested desires. If the desire is for self-destruction then rationality can give you an efficient plan for it, as much as it can formulate a plan for self-enrichment.
Seems like God has got some serious ego issues going on....
Well said!