Either Serve Or Burn In Hell

[Chase_Emerick]

ateista

Do you obey and serve your parents? Do you not do what is asked of you by your parents? and if you refuse are you not scolded? Do parents not scold their children for their betterment? If we are given what we want all the time, then where is the love learned in charity and caring and forgiving others so they may be loosed from sin?

God is a loving FATHER his ways are not of our ways. Those suffering are suffering for the betterment of the world. If there weren’t any suffering there wouldn’t be any charity. Hes trying to communicate to you to A) be like his son Jesus and do acts of charity and good will. B) to worship him, to obey him, to serve him so that you may Enjoy everlasting life.

I’m not sure if something happened in your life to cause you to not believe in him, but I ask of you to trust in him.

We all have sinned. All of our hearts ache when we see such suffering. You must have faith in God, he knows whats best for us.

What would you rather? Live life die and be destroyed into oblivion or Live Eternally with him, your family and friends, Jesus, Mary, Joesph and all the angels and saints in everlasting joy?

I ask you to recite the chaplet of divine mercy.
for i believe its the most beautiful thing we could have ever been given. I also ask that you attend Mass at least once and see if it doesn’t change your perception.

God Bless.
You are in my prayers.

ewtn.com/Devotionals/mercy/dmmap.htm

 

[ateista]

Do you obey and serve your parents? Do you not do what is asked of you by your parents? and if you refuse are you not scolded?

I did. However, if I had not done it, they would not have chased me out of their house. And would not have cursed the ground under my foot for ONE little disobedience. One of the signs of love is forgiveness. At least that is how I see it. Your milage may vary.

Those suffering are suffering for the betterment of the world. If there weren’t any suffering there wouldn’t be any charity.

I would not complain about that. And those who suffer would agree with me.

God Bless.
You are in my prayers.

Very kind of you and thank you!

 

[ateista]

I think Contarini has the floor for the discussion with ateista, so don’t let this post drag away from his too much.

Your remarks ae always welcome.

Ateista you make several points about the sufferings of people (sorry I forgot to quote), which you use in attempt to discredit moral objectivity, or rather, God’s goodness, correct? If “quality of life” is how we define “value of life,” then we live in a scary world. At any moment, our neighbor could decide that our “quality of life” does not meet his standards, so he’ll kill us in our sleep “compassionately” so we don’t have to suffer through life with a mini-van instead of a Corvette.

Please read my little essay above. I tried to address your concerns.

 

[ateista]

But I would say that if your moral intuition tells you that something I ascribe to God is not good, then one of two possibilities is the case (leaving out the possibility that God does not exist, of course):

1. I am wrong in ascribing this thing to God; or
2. What I am ascribing to God does not in fact violate the “simple” moral intuition that lies at the base of your reaction.

Well, let’s continue. I will not quote everything you said, but I will try to reflect on them.

The major source of our disagreement lies in the fact that I consider the alleged attributes of God as a hypothesis, and you seem to treat them as axioms. If God’s goodness is an axiom, then there is a big problem.

Suppose we see something that our moral intuition (a very good selection of words!) deems improper.

Your stance says: “Since we see this incident, and it seems to violate our moral compass, we MUST be mistaken.” God would not allow this, if it did not have some “ultimate good”, to what we are not privy. It is a logically necessary state of affairs, which will lead to some greater good. If only we had more information, we would see that the act is morally justified.

We may see many of these seeming moral atrocities, and in each and every case we are mistaken. We do not have full information and that is why we are perplexed. If we had full information, we would understand. That is what follows from treating God’s goodness or benevolence as an axiom.

I don’t say that your stance is illogical. Not at all. It is very logical, based upon your axiom. But it has a serious corollary: “you cannot trust your moral instinct”! You must always assume that your moral instinct is wrong - when it comes to God. Do you see that?

My stance is different. It says that God’s benevolence is a hypothesis. When I see something atrocious, I follow my moral instinct and condemn it. In other words, I follow the duck principle: If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is very probably a duck. You see, if there would be some acceptable explanation, I would give the benefit of the doubt.

But there is none. When I hear arguments like “it is for the betterment of the world”, I cannot accept that, because it presumes that human beings are being treated as a “teaching material” totally depriving them of their dignity. The Catholic Church teaches that humans have an innate dignity and they cannot be treated as “objects”. Whether other humans or God treats people as objects is wrong. Of course there is another ancient Roman proverb: “Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi”. I vehemently disagree with this concept. If something is wrong for us to do, then it is wrong for God to do it.

Sure, we may be mistaken in our assessment. We may be mistaken once, twice, hundreds of times. But always??? What is the worth of our moral compass, if it is always wrong? Sorry, I don’t buy that.

Furthermore, what was a physically necessary suffering yesterday, is not physically necessary today. Our knowledge advances, and we can eliminate some suffering today, which we could not eliminate before. Is the necessity of suffering contingent upon the advancement of medical technology?

Suppose that a disaster strikes, and we run to the rescue. A randomly blown tire prevents us from reaching the victims in time, and so we cannot help all we could have if that tire would not have run into a nail. Such random acts do happen. Does that mean that the suffering we could not eliminate - somehow became necessary - due to a blown tire? It is said that God works in mysterious ways. But that mysterious? I don’t buy that either.

The problem for you is that you must treat each and every one of these incidencts as logically necessary for some greater good. After all, if God allowed unnecessary or gratuitous suffering, then God would not be “good” in any sense of the word. No matter how “good” is defined, it cannot cause or allow totally unnecessary suffering.

Treating God’s goodness as an axiom leads to these corollaries.

Let me put it this way: If God is “good”, then this is the best possible world. Quite a few times I heard this both from Catholics and Protestants. They say that God wants the best for us. If he could make the world better than he would. Therefore this is the best possible world. Logical? Sure. Reasonable? Not at all. After all, the world is not static, it is dynamic. Things change for the better and for the worse - sometimes quite randomly. So the “best possible world” is a changing phenomenon - which is sheer nonsense.

Well, I hope I did not bore you.

 

[ateista]

First, the fact that the gift of existence is sometimes accompanied by unbearably painful circumstances does not negate the fact that existence is in and of itself good.

Can you substantiate this? I am really interested in your argument.

In the second place, I question whether people who commit suicide are generally engaging in a rational act. Do you seriously want to argue this? One obvious counter-argument would be that people still committed suicide when they were told that they would go to hell if they did (something that of course few Christians believe today, precisely because we recognize that people who commit suicide are rarely engaging in some kind of calculated rejection of the gift of life).

We don’t have to go to the extreme of actual suicides. Old and sick people genuinely crave death, even if they do not carry it out. No, I don’t think that everyone who does commit suicide is doing it for irrational reasons, though I am sure there are some who do. By the way, the strong wish to get rid of pain is not irrational in my eyes.

 

[Nickkname]

So why does it have to be this way? Why can’t there be a third option for people who want nothing to do with either God or Satan? Why does refusing to serve God automatically mean a person is evil and deserve to be tortured in hell for all eternity?

God is the Creator, the Source and Summit of all goodness, and hence He is deserving of all our love, glory, honor, and service.

Out of infinite mercy the Lord willed to create us and gives us everything: life, bodies, souls, breathes, heartbeats, free-will, Earth, the Universe, each new day and new night, homes, families, friends, food, drink, sex, happiness, justice, peace, mercy, love, wisdom, revelation, crosses, redemption, salvation, the seven Sacraments, the Pope, the Priesthood, ministers, assosications and movements, spiritualities, the Word of God, and the Church Militant, Suffering, and Triumphant. And that’s not even a complete list of all the graces that God has given us!

Those who go to hell condemn themselves by their sins. God condemsn no one: He wants all to be saved, to share in His happiness - eternal and absolute happiness - in Heaven. If man goes to hell, it is because he chose hell by rejecting God, and having rejected God, he has chosen to loss his share in the divine beatitude - hence, he must suffer eternal and absolute torments. But God dose everything in His almighty love and mercy to save man, even going so far as to become man and die on a cross!

 

[mcs7474]

"I did. However, if I had not done it, they would not have chased me out of their house. And would not have cursed the ground under my foot for ONE little disobedience. One of the signs of love is forgiveness. At least that is how I see it. Your milage may vary. "

Our first parents sin was so much more than one LITTLE disobedience.

 

[ateista]

Our first parents sin was so much more than one LITTLE disobedience.

That is your opinion. Mine is different. But, be as it may, a loving parent forgives “transgressions” and does not chase his children out of his house. And does not curse the ground under their feet. That is the point! Not some squabbling whether the transgression was big or small.

 

[CentralFLJames]

That is your opinion. Mine is different. But, be as it may, a loving parent forgives “transgressions” and does not chase his children out of his house…

I admit from a human perspective you have a point here - but, I think there is an asymmetrical standard here that leads to fallacy . You imply a parent-child relationship originally existed. If this was a correct relational characterization then yes, it would seem to be incumbent on the higher ordered maturity of the parent to be tolerant as well as corrective of the child’s transgressions. In addition to the mistaken relationship I think what you are objecting to is the form of the correction in a sort of (child-parent) relational physchology.

The bigger problem here is that I don’t think a parent-child characterization is accurate. We have a case here among fallen humanity of somthing much greater. We have a Creator-Created personal relationship depicted in the imagery of the Genesis accounts. Our precursor, Adam, knew that God was much greater than himself and of a different nature. If he did not he would not have thought to grasp equality with God when Eve came to him to tempt him as a co-partner in disobedience as she had already independently decided on her own.

As an aside let me focus on Adam for a moment. He knew both God & Eve and had relations with each - the prior in a Creator sense & the latter as a peer sense (Adult-Adult). Do you disagree that the two relationships are radically different?

If so then you must see the transgressions at play between man and God are much much more egregious than a parent-child sort of tension. Adam, through Eve, elected to believe a complete stranger (The Serpent) that they had NO relationship with (except as cohabitants of creation). But clearly this creature was not seen as God like to Adam or Eve. Why did they listen?

To Eve the snake though a stranger to Eve had the illusions of possessing a wisdom greater than her own - even though God had given the first humans supremacy over all creatures by letting Adam name them. Eve elected to believe a complete stranger’s advise over the advise of God’s - her Creator. Also note that in so doing without consulting Adam, her husband, she took it upon herself to also mistrust Adam’s relationship with her since he was the one who told Eve that God had commanded they not partake of the fruit . As second created Eve took it upon herself to ignore the advise of her man as well as her equal but “at the side of” relationship to her man - from which she came. There is a double betrayal here (humankind-to-God and woman-to-man).

Partaking of the forbidden fruit was much more severe a transgression than anything a child could do to its parent since to do so was to accept the advise of a stranger over the will and desires of The Creator - who our original parents knew as both their friend and Creator. Not only that, but the motive for disobedience was to: 1) circumvent the natural debt of thanks and devotion owed out of paternal friendship to the Creator for their gift of life and; 2) to become completely independent of reliance on the Creator and; 3) to exceed their nature to become the Creator’s equal.

This act was a deliberate estrangement of love, thanks and devotion naturally owed the Creator for the gift of life and for the privilege of being the first humans of the new created race of humans they were clearly destined to birth and lead. The transgression was more than simple childish disobedience - it was a grave rejection of their created nature, purpose and natural indebtedness of thanks by conscious adult decision.

I think most people, including those who reject the Genesis story as “fairy tale” (ironically because they really identify with the sadness and apparent severity of the punishment) imagine that Adam & Eve were naive and so innocent and unsophisticated that they were just “duped” by a smarter and more intelligent being (Satan). But this is not so much the case. In their original unfallen pure human nature Adam and Eve were much much more intelligent, logical and rational than any of us can ever hope to be in our morally very distant fallen nature (which worsens from generation to generation - at least up till Christ time). We suffer an inherited blight that effects the nature of our very being. Adam and Eve would appear to us in their original unfallen nature as “super human” - perfect physically, intellectually, morally etc. Seeing us in our fallen condition and recollecting their own original nature they would see us as perverse and stricken with affliction. The would weep bitterly to see in us, their offspring, the effects of their original transgression that they propagated to us.

Back to my main point. Your perspective is asymmetrical. You are assuming that on one hand God was too severe and did not love us but on the other hand you are not looking at it objectively and not seeing how great the transgression was. Nor are you considering the degree of mercy God extended in even permitting the fallen human race to continue to exist. Humanity attacked God and sought to align itself with God’s worse enemy - Satan.

Adam & Eve’s transgression (in a Creator-Created relationship) was so severe that by any historical human standard it would have been just for God to annihilate the human race forever at the instant of that original transgression. What human leader has ever tolerated a direct confrontation to his authority? It is only in the recent Christian west where we have democracies that our leaders permit us to challenge them in a limited way - through the weapons of the voting ballot; when we fail to unseat them they tax us into oblivion or put us into modern share cropper roles and yoke us to unending labor to pay debts we can never repay. In all other places, kings, dictators and tyrants - murder those that dare to oppose them.

[continued]

James

 

[CentralFLJames]

[continued from prior]

God owes us nothing - life was a free gift. Conversely, humanity owes God EVERYTHING - thanks for every breath, every heartbeat, every dream. We owe, as a response to life every imaginable good thing we can do to show devotion and love to God for creating us.

Now, examine the religious facts as we believe them to see the lack of consideration for God’s Mercy.

God did not destroy humankind. No, God knew that for some theological and spiritual reason that disobedience through a deliberate act of free will would unsettle and pervert the natural Good he Created and woven into His Creation. He knew our disobedience would lead to man’s suffering and misery. Rather than change Creation to adapt it to a sinful man - he chose to change man to become more divine (a new Adam through the divine-human Jesus).

I think of this as a systemic cause and effect that relates to the natural laws God ordained to govern all of Creation. Breaking the natural order resulted in an offense to the natural order who paradigm required a natural response. Paradise was held special and reserved. It could not be made to suffer the consequence of the disorder that would ensue from the transgression. Thus the banishment from Eden was to preserve that domain as undefiled. It was outside “the garden” where man pretend to “be like God” and where man would have to suffer the consequence of his disobedience and use his own means to survive. In a sense God is letting his children play the “god” he desires to be but is still giving us a sand box of good-and-evil to play in - but with very real consequences.

So here we are in earth living as banished children having our taste of good-and-evil. Here we can chose to cooperate with God to get back to Him or to continue to disobey Him and eventually be completely seperate from Him if we want to go on believing in the serpent over God. But God’s love and mercy is seen in His salvation plan. He loves us so much that he manifest Himself though human estate (Jesus) to show us how to suffer for each other and to get back to the paradise we had before the fall and to ascend to even a higher nature than before - to “be like God” but this time by invitation not by self-serving disobedience. Before the fall the command was “do not partake of the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil”. It has now been replaced with a new thing - an invitation to “partake of the fruit of the Tree of Live”. All we have to do is stretch forth our hand and “grasp our portion” and trust God in the positive sense this time. Those that obey this time - get a new nature - a divine-human nature that is “God like”. I have to smile here at the wisdom of God in exploiting man’s proclivity to want to grab things that are way over his head and making it very easy to get back to Him by appealing to our natural appetite to be like him.

It all seems like a pretty good deal to me. After all the sadness and suffering since the original fall why would anyone be inclined to trust Satan this time and believe his new lie: “Do not eat the fruit from the Tree of Life - you will die anyway since you listened to me the first time and God could never forgive you for that and if he really existed he wouldn’t have made me would he?” I don’t know about you, but I am not about to make the same mistake Adam and Eve did and trusting God this time. The only alternative is to do nothing, not eat from the tree of life and simply die and return to the dust of the earth.

James

 

[DawnInTexas]

1. Q. Why did God make you?
   A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.

<-I love that. Sums it all up!
God Bless.
+Pax, -Dawn

Find @ LESSON FIRST: ON THE END OF MAN
catholicinformationcenteroninternet.org/Catechism/Part2/bk2ls1.html#RTFToC4

Baltimore Catechism Online:
catholicinformationcenteroninternet.org/Catechism/index.html

 

[ateista]

I admit from a human perspective you have a point here - but, I think there is an asymmetrical standard here that leads to fallacy . You imply a parent-child relationship originally existed. If this was a correct relational characterization then yes, it would seem to be incumbent on the higher ordered maturity of the parent to be tolerant as well as corrective of the child’s transgressions. In addition to the mistaken relationship I think what you are objecting to is the form of the correction in a sort of (child-parent) relational physchology.

First, thank you for your thoughts. Obviously you took a lot of time and effort to formulate them. I am not going to quote it in its entirety, it would consume too much bandwidth. But I will try to reflect on your points.

I agree that the relationship between God and humans is not that of a parent-child. That is at best an analogy, and I agree that it cannot be used accurately. But, of course you know that this analogy was not invented by me, it is always used by the believers themselves.

Moreover, when I question this analogy, I am frequently told that “spirtually” we are God’s children, he created us in his image, with free will, etc… So, I think that in this respect the analogy can be used, even though biologically we are a totally different species.

Adam and Eve would appear to us in their original unfallen nature as “super human” - perfect physically, intellectually, morally etc.

Here I start to disagree. First, it is not clear that the RCC still requires the literal interpretation of the Genesis. It accepts that humans actually evolved and were not created ex-nihilo in the Garden. But that is just a remark. The major point is that Adam and Eve (whatever physical characteristics they might have had) were definitely not moral agents.

The definition of a moral agent is someone who knows - understands the difference between right and wrong. It is not to be confused with someone, who has “theoretical” knowledge about “good and evil”, but has not practised “evil” yet! They became moral agents via the consumption of the forbidden fruit. The Bible calls the tree the “Tree of the Knowldge of Good and Evil”, not the “Tree of Good and Evil”.

Therefore the punishment they suffered, was doubly unfair. If they could not have known/understood that there is “right” and “wrong” at all, then they could not have known that disobedience is “wrong”. That is pure and simple logic.

Side note: It is a very bad idea to punish your dog (the dog is just an example of a being without understanding), when it misbehaves. A positive reinforcement of good behavior is much more effective than the negative reinforcement of bad behavior. Of course this is not something that the human writers of Genesis could have known about.

Back to the main theme. Even if some punishment would have been proper (for teaching purposes), it is manifestly unjust to have “one strike and you are out”. As the bare minimum, one allows a mistake to be made (knowingly or otherwise), points out the consequences, and lets the “pupil” learn from it.

But the problems do not stop here. God did not simply “chase” them out of the Garden, he put a curse on them. He cursed the creation. Therefore the “fall of man” is a misnomer. The disobedience itself had no “special” or physical consequences, except it angered God, who reacted with a curse. Man did not “fall”, God cursed him into a “fallen status”.

And even this is not all. When someone makes a mistake, even if some punishment is due, it is extermely unfair to punish the innocent bystanders, or the future generations of the offender. Usually it is explained by stating that actions have consequences, and the result of a mistake sometimes affect others. True, in general, but only in human instances. God is not constrained by physical laws. He can suspend them at will and can restrict the punishment to the offenders themselves, and could have spared the innocent.

You see, the assertion of God’s extraordinary powers do paint the believers into a corner. It cannot be stated that actions have consequences when you take God into consideration.

Sorry, one more remark. There is another attribute of God, which must be taken into considreation: God’s omniscience. He knew what will happen, and still allowed it. If he did not want it happen, he could have prevented it. Back to the adult-child analogy, but strictly for illustrating purposes, not as a literal analogy. If an adult knows (or has a good reason to assume) that a child will do something which has disastruous consequences for the child, and does not prevent it (allows it to happen), then he bears the full responsibility for the event.

Summary:

Adam and Eve were not moral agents before taking the fruit. Their disobedience was not a moral act. God did not simply chase them away, he cursed them. Love and mercy demands a second chance to be given. This life is not a second chance - it is not under the same circumstances. Justice demands that innocent bystanders be not punished. And prevention of an unwanted event is the moral responsibility of the one who knows about it and has the power to prevent it.

Therefore the story of the Genesis contradicts God’s love, God’s mercy and definitely God’s justice.

 

[Nickkname]

Ateista, you sound like you need to read the Catechism.

Here’s a link to it: vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

 

[jhblack]

(I’m not the best with using quotes here so… work with me lol)

Ateista:

First let me say I’ll get back to you about your post on the biological.

I wanted to address this beforehand: You stated that in your opinion you believe it to not be irrational, so therefore, to be quite rational, sound, and in fact the best decision for an elderly person (who is in pain) to take their own life, correct?

Taken apart, what do we have? Is it rational for all elderly persons to take their life at any moment, or at the onset of pain? Is this thought limited to the elderly, or is age a non-issue? I’m assuming you would say age is a non-issue. So life that is lived without pain has value until it is in pain, in which case it becomes expedient to cancel the pain by ending life?

Furthermore, is suicide, based on your rational, the only “rational” way to end pain by ending life, or can murder be acceptable? If one person decides that another person is in pain, is it not “rational” to cancel their pain by ending their life?

And by pain, what do we mean? Do we mean a temporary pain, a longlasting pain, or what? And who decides how to label these? Who decides what pain constitutes death, and what pain is tolerable? Is it each individual person who decides their pain threshhold, their ability to allow pain before death? Is the pain only to be physical, mental, or both? Should a clinic be opened to educate people on understanding pain threshholds so they know when to kill themselves?

If value of life diminishes based on a person’s subjective opinion, then all life becomes null and void at all times.

 

[jhblack]

Also I’d like to bring up a point in fairness: If one does not believe in God, one should not use His Word as evidence against Him. Afterall, if there is no God, then the Bible is superfluous. If one believes in a god or gods that is not the Christian God, then the Bible is still superfluous. However, if one believes in the Christian God, then one necessarily believes the Bible to contain religious truth on salvation; it is in the interpretation and understanding that we acquire the Truth, and therefore, Scripture study comes into play to understand what God has revealed to us. I hope that made sense for you.

Scripture was written, authored, for believers. (Correct me if I’m wrong, fellow Catholics )

 

[jimmy]

So why does it have to be this way? Why can’t there be a third option for people who want nothing to do with either God or Satan? Why does refusing to serve God automatically mean a person is evil and deserve to be tortured in hell for all eternity?

It is not a matter of deserving to be tortured in hell for eternity. It is a matter of being unfit for heaven. We were created for love which includes service. To avoid service is to reject our purpose and without that we can not come to the final end which is heaven. We will be left out. Satan was cast out and we could easily follow the same path. There can be no third choice because there is no third place. You have imagined it as if there are two equally valid places of existence that are opposing. But the fact is that there is only one, heaven. Hell only exists because some have chosen to reject God. So hells existence is dependant on the existence of heaven and not vice versa. Satan rejected God and consequently was cast out. Similarly if we reject God, who is love, then we will be cast out as well. This is the only choice that matters, will we love God(in this command of love our neighbor is included)?

 

[Contarini]

1. In a universe without life, there is nothing good or bad.

Obviously I would disagree with this, because I think being is itself good, but I’m not sure we need to debate it in order to proceed.

1. In a universe with life which is without a nervous system (vegetation type of life), there is biological good and bad, for each living being. Good is survival, bad is death. Good is the propagation of the genes. Of course this “good” is not something these beings are aware of, but they strive for it nevertheless.

1. In a universe with life where the beings have a nervous system, but no cognitive functions, the same applies. There is biological good only. There is no “moral” good here. The predator is not “evil” for killing the prey. However, this biological good is more complicated. The beings (animals) are not consciosly aware of it, but in this world there is pleasure and pain - something that vegetation does not experience. Pleasure is good, pain is bad. This is obvious from the observation, that animals seek pleasure and avoid pain.

1. Finally, in a universe where life is advanced to have cognitive functions, we have both biological and moral good. The biological good is still survival, and the seeking of the pleasure is still a biological imperative. However, this is tempered by considerations for others.

I would agree with the basic hierarchy you establish here, which actually corresponds very well to the medieval concept of the “great chain of being,” according to which you have “vegetative souls,” “animal souls,” and “rational souls,” each with its own “telos”–its own proper good that it naturally pursues–with the difference that rational creatures can consciously choose their good in a way that other beings cannot (which allows for the possibility of moral good and evil).

A fully selfish attitude is self-defeating. Sure, for a while it can bring temporary “gain”, but it interferes with others, who can and will resist. They will team up and prevent the fully selfish person to have “his way”. So, people will try to balance the selfish “good” (at the expense of others) and the cooperative “good”, where the individual may “suffer” a lesser plateau of biological good - for the short run, but on the long run it will be compensated.

I hope we can agree so far. We all know that there are psychpaths and sociopaths, and we also know that society will restrict their behavior.

I would say that this is the key point on which we disagree. Not of course on the existence of psychopaths and sociopaths, but on the basic categorization of good and evil in terms of what benefits the group. I would argue that you have created an atheistic version of the “Euthyphro dilemma.” You are doing exactly what you (falsely, with regard to mainstream Christian thought) accuse theists of doing–creating an external authority (society) whose approval or disapproval constitutes what is “good.” It would seem to follow (to cite another Platonic dialogue) that Thrasymachus in the *Republic *was right in defining justice as the “right of the stronger.” If an individual or group had the power to overcome the resistance of other individuals or groups and thus act for their own “biological good” without negative consequences, I don’t see that you have any account of why it would be wrong for them to do so. It seems to follow that evil is only evil as long as it is unsuccessful. People have traditionally thought that evil is unsuccessful in the long term because there is some kind of transcendent moral order (whether identified with a personal God or not) that will react to being violated. But many traditions posit a judgment after death in part (if not wholly, as you might argue) because it is obvious to most people throughout most of human history that selfishness is not uniformly and reliably self-defeating. Sure, it is self-defeating much of the time, for the reasons you give. But as long as you are relying on a pragmatic calculation of probable consequences, people will always be able to persuade themselves that they are exceptions. That is in fact almost always what people do when committing evil acts–they come up with some reason why what they do is not really evil after all. (And that’s why the catchy slogan that only religion makes good people do bad things is so clearly false. The world is not neatly divided into good and bad people. People have a tendency to try to make exceptions in their own favor, and religion is one of the things–but not the only one–that they can use to do this, just as it is one of the most powerful forces–but not the only one, at least not in a society where “religion” is one thing among others–restraining this tendency.)

 

[Contarini]

Someone who is totally selfish will be shunned as immoral. Someone who is totally unselfish is stupid.

The idea that morality can be best summarized as “unselfishness” is a relatively modern one. One could blame/credit Duns Scotus, the Protestant Reformers, Kant, or more probably a long historical process in which these figures played important roles (along with social and economic forces, etc.). But that is not how Aristotle or Aquinas saw it. Morality is not the same thing as altruism. Acting morally sometimes means acting against one’s biological good, because (in the traditional conception) we are not purely biological beings. We have a good as persons that transcends our “biological good,” and this good is not in competition with the goods of others, as biological good is. In my opinion this account explains everything yours does and is compatible with the evolutionary account you give, but avoids the weakness of your account–its dependence on a pragmatic calculation of how the group is going to react to my “selfish” behavior and how successful they are likely to be.

A further consideration–Aquinas suggests that the temporal order and the logical order of things often/generally relate to each other inversely. If one believes in an eternal Form of Being/Goodness which finite and material things imitate each in their degree, then the fact that nonliving, vegetable, animal, and rational beings develop in the order you describe doesn’t conflict with the idea that the good of rational creatures is primary–that in fact it comes closest to the form of Goodness that is the goal (and in monotheistic religions also the efficient cause) of the entire process. This may not be an objection you were going to make, but I wanted to bring it up just in case–and perhaps also to make the picture more complicated, which is fun!

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

The major source of our disagreement lies in the fact that I consider the alleged attributes of God as a hypothesis, and you seem to treat them as axioms.

I wouldn’t say they were axioms, because I don’t think the existence of God is an axiom. But I would say that goodness is part of the definition of God. The concept of God as I understand it includes the concept of goodness.

If God’s goodness is an axiom, then there is a big problem.

Suppose we see something that our moral intuition (a very good selection of words!) deems improper.

Your stance says: “Since we see this incident, and it seems to violate our moral compass, we MUST be mistaken.” God would not allow this, if it did not have some “ultimate good”, to what we are not privy. It is a logically necessary state of affairs, which will lead to some greater good. If only we had more information, we would see that the act is morally justified.

It seems to me that you have jumped here from actions that are ascribed to God in Christianity (such as the Flood) to the more general question of why God allows evil. These are obviously two different (though related) questions, and it would help if you’d tell me which one you are addressing.

If you are talking about actions ascribed to God which seem to be evil, then I never said that these actions must somehow be good. I very clearly said in my previous post that the answer may be that we are wrong in ascribing these actions to God. There are forms of theodicy that try to do this with regard to the bigger question of why God allows evil at all. We can discuss this if you like, but right now the point I want to make is that this is always an option. If God’s goodness is axiomatic (in the sense that it’s part of the definition of “God”) then it is always possible that the thing that appears to be bad may be something we are falsely ascribing to God. Whether we choose to conclude that the action in question is not really bad, or to conclude that the action cannot really be ascribed to God, is going to be decided on a case-by-case basis, and obviously we may not always be able to come to a firm conclusion on the matter. But we know that one of these two things must be true if God exists at all. What is never an option is to say that “God is not good,” and that includes the variant “God is not good in any way that corresponds to what we mean by goodness.” If God is not good in a way that has a meaningful relationship to our normal use of the word, then God does not exist. A very powerful being may exist, but that being is not worthy of the name “God.”

I don’t say that your stance is illogical. Not at all. It is very logical, based upon your axiom. But it has a serious corollary: “you cannot trust your moral instinct”! You must always assume that your moral instinct is wrong - when it comes to God. Do you see that?

No, it doesn’t mean this at all. This is exactly what I have denied over and over, in every stage of this conversation. Insofar as one accepts an “ultimate good” rationale, one does this because such a rationale is compatible with one’s moral instincts. For instance, in the general problem of theodicy which you raise, I would argue that given the very moral intuitions that make theodicy a problem, and given the great deal of goodness in the universe that we can recognize, and particularly given the Christian account of God’s paradoxical way of dealing with evil through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the Christian ethic of identification with those who suffer–given all these things, it is not incompatible with my moral instincts to trust in God in spite of the evidence to the contrary. This is not a decision not to trust my moral instincts. It is a decision to trust my moral instincts when they tell me that they have a value and an authority that transcend their social usefulness or their contributions to my survival; to trust my intuitive response to the beauty and goodness I perceive in the universe; to trust above all the story of Jesus, precisely because I perceive that story as the embodiment of goodness. And yes, that means that I trust that the things that seem to violate those instincts have an explanation. But that doesn’t mean that my instincts are generally unreliable. It means that my capacity to understand the universe and to reach true conclusions based on my observation of the world around me is limited and thus not wholly reliable.

 

[Contarini]

But there is none. When I hear arguments like “it is for the betterment of the world”, I cannot accept that, because it presumes that human beings are being treated as a “teaching material” totally depriving them of their dignity. The Catholic Church teaches that humans have an innate dignity and they cannot be treated as “objects”. Whether other humans or God treats people as objects is wrong.

I agree. The idea that humans are just cogs in a machine and that some of them must suffer for the good of the whole is morally repellent.

Of course there is another ancient Roman proverb: “Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi”. I vehemently disagree with this concept. If something is wrong for us to do, then it is wrong for God to do it.

I disagree that this statement always applies. I would say rather: if something is absolutely wrong, then it is wrong for God to do it. In other words, if the wrongness of the action for us can be shown to derive specifically from our position in the order of the universe, then it may not be wrong for God. In other words, might there be actions which *we *could not commit without a disposition incompatible with the flourishing of being, but which God *could *commit without such a disposition? I think there might. But we cannot therefore assume that any action at all would be permissible for God.

Sure, we may be mistaken in our assessment. We may be mistaken once, twice, hundreds of times. But always??? What is the worth of our moral compass, if it is always wrong? Sorry, I don’t buy that.

Neither do I. That is precisely the point I have made. Our moral compass may be sometimes wrong and need correcting. But it is not untrustworthy as a whole.

The problem for you is that you must treat each and every one of these incidencts as logically necessary for some greater good. After all, if God allowed unnecessary or gratuitous suffering, then God would not be “good” in any sense of the word. No matter how “good” is defined, it cannot cause or allow totally unnecessary suffering.

It is not necessary for each instance of suffering to have some specific necessity. It may be necessary to some greater good for us to live in the type of world in which these sorts of things happen.

Let me put it this way: If God is “good”, then this is the best possible world.

No. This does not follow. In fact, if God is infinitely good (“good” meaning “tending to make being flourish”) then it follows that no specific world can possibly be the best possible one, because God could always create a world with more beings with greater capacity for flourishing!

I have no problem believing that both Protestants and Catholics have made this argument, but Catholics in particular should know better (since I’m getting my argument from Aquinas!). This is Leibniz’ argument and it’s a bad one (I blame Calvin, though I have not persuaded too many people that my reading of Calvin is right).

Well, I hope I did not bore you.

Not in the least! But you have taken up a lot of time that could have been spent more dutifully but less enjoyably in grading!

Edwin