Humans having children and Hell

[Nimeniton]

Since you have established that personal experience is not proper evidence to back the argument as evidenced in the quote from you:

I have little choice but to dismiss that argument.
It is based on what “happened to me in meditation.” and is little more then assertion of belief…

Fair enough. Then let me add it is not just my experience but the experience of others. Buddhist meditation teachers spoke of this phenomena amongst themselves It is also something discussed by Buddhist authors. They for example put the focus of the beginner down to practice in previous lives. Fortunately I am not on a Buddhist board so I will not be required to disprove their assertion. This still is not a scientifically rigorous argument but I think it adds a little weight but obviously not enough to convince you.

 

[Nimeniton]

Nevertheless, it is their choice. And the world is full of examples of people choosing the worst possible thing for themselves in spite of better decisions readily available.
Would you argue that a students failure to do his homework is really not his fault?
Agreed, in some instances it may not be. But that would hardly cover all instances of a student choosing to fail rather then do their homework.
Each bad decision - each sin - makes the next that much easier.
For a lifetime of bad choices, the final one is frighteningly possible.

.

I am in agreement with you how habits are formed and strengthened. I do not deny that people make choices, I argue that they either do not make them with full knowledge or with full capacity. In the example of the student this demonstrates knowledge but not full capacity. The Catholic position is one of limited free will. One still needs God’s grace.Total free will would fall into the error of the Pelagian heresy. You are arguing for a partial culpability. But this still assumes moments of pure free will. I see no reason to assume that such a thing exists.

 

[Nimeniton]

Thanks for the kind words, Nimeniton, and since you asked for one, I’ll play moderator. First, vz71, I think you have been quibbling. I’m not interested in proving it, just a third party observation. I can understand Nimeniton getting annoyed. Second, it’s rare to get an interlocutor who is as reasonable as Nimeniton, who actually makes reasonable arguments and doesn’t just ignore criticisms of alleged flaws in those arguments, so I think we should treat his (name removed by moderator)ut as valuable here. I don’t think we have any reason to treat his views as the kind of dogmatic nonsense that we often get from posters on these forums (notwithstanding, of course, that there may well be flaws in his views and arguments which do need to be pointed out). Your demanding an apology from him was really not necessary IMHO.

Well, I had made a mistake and this was due to a failure to double check my facts, so my apology was in order. I, of course make mistakes, get obsessed , miss the points that people are making etc. I do push my arguments to the limit but have been known to acknowledge mistakes. Vr71 may be surprised to hear that in my youth I supported free will to an extreme that would make Pelagius blush. In fact I was an admirer of Pelagius. But my views have changed over time.

I have learnt a lot from the Catholic boards and one is challenged with subtle and sophisticated arguments. It was not until I started to visit the Catholic boards that I realised the crudeness of the positions of some of my fellow atheists. The common atheist positions of assumed intellectual superiority and that Christians do not have a rational position to support their beliefs is particularly embarrassing. I am even beginning to wonder whether I should redefine myself as an agnostic.

 

[Nimeniton]

Yes, of course it’s possible to have a criterion, or rather, it’s necessary. That was implied by what I originally said: “you would have to know what “good” is, as well as knowing what/who God/“God” is, before you would understand that God is perfectly good.” And as I mentioned, this criterion must be applied to the God that one has personally encountered, or to the God that one has understood conceptually, in terms of his nature. The latter presumably applies here, and that is where we note that God is good by definition. Whether he actually exists or not, a perfectly good God is the one we believe in. That is beyond doubt, and so you have to recognize the burdens of proof accordingly.

Ok Well, if the burden of proof is with me to argue that God is not good, I will not get very far. Because it cannot be disproved that God may not have some “hidden” higher motivation and superior purpose that makes apparent evil actions moral. I was hoping to put the onus of proof on you. Ok I will think this through some more. But now is not the time, far too sleepy.

 

[Nimeniton]

If free will didn’t exist we would have no guarantee that your conclusions - or those of anyone else - are true!** The truth makes us free but we have to be free to arrive at the truth**. Otherwise all our thoughts are beyond our control…

If free will exists we still do not have a guarantee that our conclusions are correct.

 

[Nimeniton]

“most” gives the game away…

How would you prove that assertion? If it is based on unwilled thoughts what is it worth?

I hope I put the word “willed” in inverted commas. One is often unaware how a thought came into ones mind. So in that sense it is unwilled. The thought can also pop into one’s mind to stay with a thought because it is positive. One has the experience of “will” because one is aware of what one is doing. However, that “will” arises because of prior conditions which were not willed. Vr71 dictionary definition of free will says that there should be no unwilled prior conditions.

To state that we have awareness of thoughts does not imply that they are freely willed. To see if one has unwilled thoughts one just has to sit and observe one’s thoughts.

 

[Nimeniton]

“most” gives the game away…

How would you prove that assertion? If it is based on unwilled thoughts what is it worth?

Sorry answered this badly. One can have the thought suddenly arise “This is wrong”. This thought is unwilled. We did not choose to have that thought. Sometimes we are saved from unskilful actions by such thoughts. So an unwilled thought can be very useful.

 

[Nimeniton]

But according to you we never choose freely…

Yes, but I do not argue that we do not choose. It is the word “free” I am taking issue with.

 

[Nimeniton]

I don’t know about convincing quotes, necessarily, but James 1:13 comes to mind:

12 Blessed is the man that endures temptation: for, when he has been proved, he shall receive the crown of life which God has promised to them that love him. 13 Let no man, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted by God. For God is not a tempter of evils: and he tempts no man. 14 But every man is tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn away and allured.

Concupiscence, of course, is an impediment to the exercise of free will, but it presupposes the existence of the free will which is to be impeded. Same goes for temptation, which is different from compulsion: the former acts upon free will, the latter overrides or destroys it. We could take the specific verses from Paul you mentioned earlier (you choose one to start with if you like) and discuss what they actually imply vis-a-vis free will. We’ll probably get into difficult questions again about what Paul really meant.

You have presented a simplistic view. The Bible can of course *verbally *contradict itself and manifestly does. That is why it must be read according to the “analogy of faith,” meaning it must be interpreted as to its intention in particular passages according to its relation to the faith as a whole (where ‘faith’ refers to a set of revealed propositions that we know to be true because God has revealed them to us).

Yes, I would accept that quote as convincing that James supported free will. It also seems to contradict other passages in the Bible. And I agree it would probably be a very thorny discussion. I have just read the Catholic encyclopedia’s piece on free will and the variety of types of free will and determinism was enough to bewilder this poor brain.

You raise the point of revelations and that is also of interest to me. Not just revelations but any command from God. How does one discern what comes from a good source and what comes from an evil source? Marcion for example thought that the God of the New Testament and the Old Testament were quite different beings, the latter being of a lower order.

 

[tonyrey]

If free will didn’t exist we would have no guarantee that your conclusions - or those of anyone else - are true!* The truth makes us free but we have to be free to arrive at the truth***

That is true but the success of science proves that they often are. If we had no control whatsoever over our thoughts our chances of reaching the correct conclusion would be negligible. There are innumerable ways of making a mistake but only one way of being right.

 

[tonyrey]

Yes, but I do not argue that we do not choose. It is the word “free” I am taking issue with.

Precisely. You believe it is not **we **who do the choosing. We only seem to be making choices because - according to you - we are compelled to make them by events beyond our control. In other words you regard yourself and everyone else as a biological machine…

 

[tonyrey]

Sorry answered this badly. One can have the thought suddenly arise “This is wrong”. This thought is unwilled. We did not choose to have that thought. Sometimes we are saved from unskilful actions by such thoughts. So an unwilled thought can be very useful.

The fact that** sometimes** we don’t choose our thoughts does not imply that we never do so, i.e. that we have** no control whatsoever **over our thoughts. If it did we would be just impotent spectators of events acting according to our script.

 

[Thoughtfulone]

Precisely. You believe it is not **we **who do the choosing. We only seem to be making choices because - according to you - we are compelled to make them by events beyond our control. In other words you regard yourself and everyone else as a biological machine…

To insert myself into this argument here, I don’t think Nimention is saying that our lack of total free will is necessarily related to biology. Carl Jung, as an example, would have argued a similar position and he believed in the collective unconscious as something that shapes our thoughts, motives and choices. This is not necessarily biological, but is even spiritual in nature.

 

[Steel_Pinwheel]

Why should humans choose to have children if there’s a possibility their child will choose Hell?
If existence in Hell (for a human) is worse than not being born at all (sorry if I’m understanding that wrong) isn’t it better for humans to choose not to have children at all?

I think this thread shows that people who defend eternal torment are desperately trying to rationalize the concept of Hell with having children.

Speaking for myself, not the church, I don’t believe in eternal torment. We die, we sleep in hades, the grave, until the resurrection. We are raised to eternal life if we are saved else we are destroyed in the Lake of Fire. So, your biggest risk as a parent is having a miserable kid who, in the end, is destroyed. Perhaps their most miserable moment will come at the moment of judgement when they realize what they’ve done.

Most of the verses in the Bible about Hell are clearly misrepresented.

 

[tonyrey]

I think this thread shows that people who defend eternal torment are desperately trying to rationalize the concept of Hell with having children.

The words of Jesus are quite clear…

Speaking for myself, not the church, I don’t believe in eternal torment

In that case you cannot believe in the reality of evil or free will.

. We die, we sleep in hades, the grave, until the resurrection. We are raised to eternal life if we are saved else we are destroyed in the Lake of Fire.

God is the Creator not the Destroyer. Would you destroy your children simply because they reject you?

So, your biggest risk as a parent is having a miserable kid who, in the end, is destroyed.

That would be far worse than having a miserable kid who rejects you but gets pleasure and satisfaction out of living for himself.

Perhaps their most miserable moment will come at the moment of judgement when they realize what they’ve done.

No one goes to hell unwittingly. They realize full well what they are doing; otherwise their fate would be unjust. They aren’t condemned by God; they condemn themselves:
“Hallowed be my name, **my **kingdom come, my will be done - even if it’s in hell!”

 

[Betterave]

You misunderstand me. I stated that “Each choice we make is unrelated to what choices others make - if it is genuinely ours” in the context of probability… It is absurd to suppose that our free choices depend on how many free choices have been made by others.

That makes no difference. Your statement is still false. Clearly our choices (as well as our beliefs) are probabilistically related to the choices others make (and the beliefs others have).

 

[tonyrey]

To insert myself into this argument here, I don’t think Nimention is saying that our lack of total free will is necessarily related to biology. Carl Jung, as an example, would have argued a similar position and he believed in the collective unconscious as something that shapes our thoughts, motives and choices. This is not necessarily biological, but is even spiritual in nature.

Whether our our thoughts, motives and choices are shaped by biological or spiritual factors is irrelevant.** In either case **we would lack free will…

 

[Betterave]

You raise the point of revelations and that is also of interest to me. Not just revelations but any command from God. How does one discern what comes from a good source and what comes from an evil source? Marcion for example thought that the God of the New Testament and the Old Testament were quite different beings, the latter being of a lower order.

That a very good question. First, I’d point to something Pope Benedict XVI once said (when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, I believe). When asked how many paths there are to God, he answered, “There are as many paths as there are people.” So people are different and there are different ways of discerning God. Classic big headings for different ways include: through goodness, through truth, and through beauty. Obviously these aren’t exclusive, but different people are drawn more strongly to particular modes of grasping the divine.

Second, to give a very simple, very general answer: we discern God, and good from evil, simply by doing our best to do so. We remain fallible, our minds and wills are often divided and we are drawn to the evil that we despise and fall into errors in our reasoning, and so we are left with doing our best while recognizing our weakness, but also the strength that comes from relying on the grace of God, which we believe he has promised to us.

Now you might ask why we believe God actually promised that to us, and the start of an answer is already obvious: because we need it. But we also get into revelation proper there and we believe that we receive the assurance of the truth of God’s revelation through Jesus Christ and the Church by the grace of God, just as that revelation claims. [Obviously that’s not a logical proof, since it would be circular from the perspective of a merely formal logical proof, but real reasoning whereby we grasp reality is always circular, so circularity is not a problem here.]

 

[Steel_Pinwheel]

The words of Jesus are quite clear…

Yes, they are, such as His parables about “Hell” based on Jerusalem’s public garbage dump, where trash is destroyed, not tortured.

That would be far worse than having a miserable kid who rejects you but gets pleasure and satisfaction out of living for himself.

Having a kid die is far worse than having a kid that is tortured for eternity?!?

No one goes to hell unwittingly. They realize full well what they are doing; otherwise their fate would be unjust. They aren’t condemned by God; they condemn themselves:

People who lack your beliefs would go to Hell unwittingly. If God doesn’t do the condemning, then where does the torment come from?

 

[vz71]

I have not argued that psychic ability is necessary to know this. This is a straw-man. Psychic ability is not required.

Other then the testimony of the person in question, I am uncertain exactly how it is we would know what the person is thinking at any given time.
You may be able to roughly approximate, but you run a great risk of being proven wrong.
People surprise me all the time.
I would find it difficult to believe you are never surprised by what someone thinks or does.
That is why I believed you were making reference to psychic ability.
If you wish to deny it, no problem. But that leaves unanswered as to how exactly you can know what is going on in someones head.

My experience as a Buddhist minister and that of the prison pastors including the Catholic one was that prisoners would ingratiate themselves with you in order to get early parole. One has to simply observe their behaviour. So you know they would like to leave prison but they never ask can they leave right now because they know the request will be refused. You could check this out with your local prison chaplain.

Without doubt, that would normally be the case.
But…this is far from a normal case. And you simply cannot know.
It may well be that he does not want release because he has chosen for eternity to be away from God and knows that outside of hell God is present.
Or it could be your own theory is correct as to what he is thinking.
In either case, we do not know.

But this as well provides a compelling evidence for free will.