Danserr:
We didn’t discuss anything. You simply asserted that the principles of human behavior, that we all operate under all the time, do not apply to you and yours in this particular context. I’m expected to believe, prima facie, that your abasement to God has not the slightest thing to do with avoiding the Worst Thing Ever.
It seems that the crude caricature is all that any of us has available - I’ve never been relayed a concrete interpretation of heaven. Nonetheless, there are no shortage of devout Christians who are perfectly comfortable describing it in terms of eternal worship, praise, thanks, and submission to Our Holy Father. It’s always cheering when folks are willing to concede this much. Of course, this never stops them from turning around and calling it Paradise, or using words like Happiness and Joy to describe it.
You only think this because you have claimed that real love for the sake of another person is impossible, that people only act because it makes them feel good. You even went so far as to claim that when you help an old lady across the street, you do not do so out of any real concern or love for her, but only for the good feeling it gives you.
This is hardly coherent, but I will try to respond as briefly as possible.
If you wish to understand heaven better, see, Wright’s book on it. CS Lewis’s Weight of Glory and Great Divorce are also very good. Heaven is eternal worship. That it not a concession. Imagine. A little girl picks a bouquet of flowers for her mother. She presents them to her and the mother is quite rightly, pleased with the gift (though she had not need of it). The mother did not need the flowers, but the child needed to give them! Why? Because the child has been been given many good things, love, shelter etc. For her to not give the flowers would mean that she would be lacking in gratitude. But it is not a burden for her to give them, she does so happily, out of gratitude and love for her mother, and is pleased to do it. Likewise with us and God. We are happy to give our worship from love of gratitude of what God has done for us. Of course this would be part of eternal happiness.
I do not take this view of the problem of evil. I think there are other better answers, but even if I did, there would be nothing incoherent here, since life in this world would have provided enough evil for us to appreciate the joy of heaven. There would be no need for continued suffering (and indeed there is none).
This is true. The knowledge of good and evil gained by man at the Fall and experienced since that time everyday to one extent or another in this world of exile from God has one purpose, to drive us to choose the good only and to reject the evil, sort of like the Prodigal running away from the pigsty and into the arms of the father.
Thanks for the link. I’ve checked it out and bookmarked it.
Please explain precisely what you mean by that statement… and justify it.
All you’re doing here is denying brain chemistry. The simple fact of the matter here is that solidarity is good for us as a species. It’s undoubtedly helped us survive through the centuries. It’s so good for us, in fact, that we’ve evolved a reward-center in our brains that activates when we come to the aid of others in need. This is not conjecture - it’s a matter of fact.
Oh, of course, God is Jesus and Jesus is God. Jesus is both God’s son, and God himself. A complete paradox that let’s you justify basically anything. Even something that requires God and Jesus to be separate entities for the sake of a different argument.
No, it isn’t, actually. My point was you treat your existence as an Act of Love as though the alternative would’ve been unpleasant. And I’m saying it would not have felt like anything to you. It’s like asking, how do you feel about 1712? The answer is, you don’t feel about 1712.
I don’t need to admit this? No, indeed I don’t. You, on the other hand, do need to admit it and somehow square it in this tautology you’ve constructed. If God is Love, and cannot do something that is NOT-Love, what are we thanking him for, exactly?
ASimon;8734654 said:
You have ignored my point on the Atonement, which is to point out that your understanding of it is shallow and not a Catholic one. Changing the subject to mock the doctrine of the trinity is just a dodge and a red herring.
(I didn’t quote it all to save space)
If your wife hadn’t given you a Christmas present, you’d know she hadn’t given you a Christmas present. Which I presume would be unpleasant (or at least less pleasant than if she had given you one). So this analogy doesn’t work. To say that you’re grateful that God created you is only coherent if the alternative would’ve made you less grateful. The alternative to God creating you is God not creating you. Had God not created you, you wouldn’t be less grateful for that, because you’d be absent any feelings on the subject altogether.
Again here, I’m saying that one state is axiomatically better or worse than it’s opposite. I’m saying that it doesn’t leave itself open to a coherent value judgement like you’re trying to give it. Certainly there can be one made for being alive vs. being dead, but that’s not the comparison here. The comparison here is being alive (existing) vs. never having existed in the first place.
Your point on Atonement was irrelevant, that’s why I ignored it. God engineered a human sacrifice to forgive us our sins. Because he Loves us. Christian dogmas like to conveniently muddy the waters on this point, in claiming that Jesus was himself God, so essentially God martyred himself. I’m happy to grant that martyrdom can theoretically be an act of Love in limited cases, but offering up another human being for sacrifice is not a selfless act, much less an act of Love. Christian theism is the only context in which it such an idea can even be proffered seriously, and only then after we’ve stipulated that God is Love by definition, and could never do anything that isn’t Love.
As I said, I am not playing the same game as you. All I’m doing is making an argument to show why the game you’ve chosen to play is rigged against you, by its own design. I’m not arguing from a position within the system. I’m arguing from a position without. So there’s no contradiction here.
No, it just becomes one step removed from the traditional and commonly accepted meaning it’s been long given. The facts of human behavior (as illustrated by our own brain chemistry) simply do not support the idea of total and completely altruistic acts. Would that they did, but they don’t - and there’s no sense denying a mildly unpleasant truth just because it’s mildly unpleasant. The good news is, the implications of this reality aren’t particularly noteworthy. Why not? Because in this particular game, we really are all playing by the same rules. All of our brains more or less function the same way. And we aren’t helpless to obey these urges to commit randoms acts of kindness all the time (That probably do real damage to the meaning of love - if we couldn’t do anything else but express it all the time).
No, I’m not admitting that. Saying that we sometimes do A, while other times we do B, doesn’t necessarily mean that we are the authors of our Action A or Action B. It just means that the unknown or unknowable causal events in our brain that compel us to do anything sometimes compel us to do Action A, and other times Action B.
In that case all your conclusions are of dubious value because they too are the result of unknown or unknowable causal events in your brain - over which you have no control whatsoever…
I see, so you are back to denying free will, but saying that we should just pretend that we have free will. We should delude ourselves in order to motivate ourselves. Note some consequences that follow:
You are still trying to find a way to claim that I cannot say that it is better to exist than not to exist. Is this the point to which your rejection of Christianity has forced you? That you must try to claim that existence is no better than nonexistence?!
My point on the atonement is that Christians are not committed to the view that Jesus was a human sacrifice in say, the pagan Aztec sense. Since you still don’t understand this, then the point is relevant, and you have missed it. Still, we do agree that one person giving his life for another is an important act of love and self-sacrifice.
Not really, no.
It’s not a question of what I think but of the logical consequences of materialism which is self-destructive. If it were true my conclusions would be equally dubious!
A powerful post which makes me look forward to attempts to refute your points.
No, I’m not back to denying free will. I am only noting the illusion of free will as a matter of neuro-scientific reality. As I said earlier, it won’t do to simply ignore an inconvenient truth for all the damage it does the rest of your argument. Nor do I say we should delude ourselves into believing in altruism and free will. I’m simply saying that we do, as a matter of our own hard-wiring. And I tend to believe it’s quite crucial that we retain such illusions.
As I implied above, you can’t have it both ways. If God is Love, and demonstrates it at every turn, it’s nonsensical to be grateful to him for your being created. If creating you was an act of Love, not creating you would’ve logically been an act of Not-Love. He can’t do that (much like he can’t create the stone too heavy for himself to lift), so why praise him for it (unless God’s brain chemistry needs positive reinforcement)?
No, God’s not creating would not have been a demonstration of his love. It would not follow, however, that he is unloving, for being trinity, he demonstrates his love in that way (the Father and Son eternally love one another and so forth…).
So on one hand you don’t think we should delude ourselves into believing in love and free will, but on the other, you think it’s crucial we retain such “illusions.” Which is it?
But you have not. You have only ignored it and claimed that you are sure there is some answer to this, even though you do not provide it, nor have any idea what it is. At most you could claim that we should again pretend we can still have more morality, but this is just self delusion again. You example just show the majority trying to condition the minority to avoid socially taboo things, but it makes it impossible that a criminal really does something morally wrong.
ASimon:
And, you just proved my point: you chose to reject the premises! Thus, the “coercion,” if there actually was any, is but a fabrication in your mind, and subject to your exquisite whims. It was simply not coercive enough, I guess.
Again, I return to the mugger analogy (which you’ve conveniently ignored). The loaded gun is put to your head, and the mugger demands your wallet. Are you not being coerced into handing over your wallet? Do you really consider yourself “free” to decide what to do in that moment? You simply can’t - not unless you want to apply the most reductionist understanding of the concept (one that you would never apply in any other context).ASimon:
Apologies for not responding to this post earlier. Christmas, you know!
You are still failing to understand what real coercion means. Coercion means (particularly in the way you want it defined) that one is incapable of any other course or choice. I am still capable of making any number of other choices - even though I currently choose God! That I remain with this is also a choice. (BTW, I was agnostic, to the point of encroaching into atheism, for almost 40 years. I certainly chose to live as an atheist!)
At this point, you’re either not understanding that God’s existence is not a truism, or you’re pretending to not understand that. If you can’t at least pretend to imagine a Universe where God, heaven, and hell did not exist, then it seems silly to pursue this line of discussion.