And in Atlas Shrugged, John Galt endured the horrible pains of electrocution without making a sound. Room 101 was an author’s personal (And I think rather cynical and pessimistic) speculation on what all humans would do in that type of situation. It is not valid as actual empirical evidence.
Neither is John Galt, especially when he told his torturers how to fix their device when it broke down. John Galt is an idealized super-hero, but I would bet the farm that even he would have folded, if
Dagny (such a horrible, disgusting name
) would have been exposed to such torture.
I find it difficult to believe that no human being could withstand the physical and mental torture of room 101. Some would succumb to it, certainly. But all people?
Well, let’s not put this to test. The concept is that for everyone there is something totally impossible to endure, and I find it very plausible. Some super-heros might take longer to “fold”, but reality shows that “everyone confesses at the end”. And not all tortures are physical.
That’s a much bigger claim than the one I’m making. BTW, if what you are saying is correct, then everyone in those situations would attempt to take their own life. I don’t think that even all the Jews in the concentration camps, one of the most horrible places immaginable, attempted to take their own lives.
True, since the saying “dum spiro, spero” is a correct observation. People keep hoping, even against all odds.
I think that most people who choose suicide do so because they want to escape the pains of this life, not because they long for non-existence.
Of course, if there would be any other way to escape their predicament, they would choose that. I met many old people, who felt that life is just a pain, and all they wanted was to have it over with. My wife’s aunt is 84 years old. She lost her only daughter 10 years ago. She is akin to the vet’s horse, she has so many health problems. All she wants is to die. But her instinct to cling on to life is strong, she cannot wish to commit suicide. But her wish is still to end it all.
I don’t know if they really consider the consequences of their actions. It seems that most often, people choose suicide when they are emotional compromised, not when they are at their most rational.
Undoubtedly. But their desire to “escape” definitely conquered their “assumed” fear of nonexistence.
Well, there is the empirical evidence that some people* are * able to endure incredible amounts of torture without attempting to bring an end to their lives, especially people with a purpose. Consider many of the saints. Consider Jesus, who willingly died on the cross. Consider the early christians, used as fuel for city lamps or fed to the lions in the colloseum. Though ultimately, the bigger the claim, the more backing is needed. You are the one making the bigger claim.
Those examples are not “empirical”, just like Winston Smith or John Galt are not empirical either. I would think that some people did endure torture up until death, but all it means is that the torturers were amateurish. But I suggest that we do not go into the details of “how to torture people efficiently”.
There are a couple of other things I’d like to mention along these lines. Hell is often depicted as a place of eternal punishment of fire and brimstone. I’d like to make a few points. First, the people who go to hell choose to go there, and choose to stay there throughout eternity. Second, the pain they feel is because of how separated they are from God. Since God is the source of existence, the souls in Hell exist, but only barely. Third, I don’t think Hell is much worse than the worst pains felt on earth. I think heaven is far further above the world than hell is below it.
That is just empty speculation. And no one volitionally bangs of the doors of hell, demanding admittence. But this does not belong to this thread.
This is the best I can come up with as a response to this:
I have no idea why, and it seems incredibly unfair, but God seems to judge all of us in a sort of collective way.
If you say: “incredibly unfair”, you are very right, or it might even be an understatement. To punish some innocent for the misdeeds of someone else is the antithesis of “justice”.
Through the sin of one man we have fallen from grace, by the sacrifice of one man we recieve it again. Thus, it seems possible that each of us can affect the orientation of another’s soul. With this in mind, perhaps some moral agents will only do good if there are a certain amount of people in the world who choose to do bad, and that the number of these moral agents is greater than then the number of moral agents created who choose to do evil. Just a thought.
Interesting observation, but there is a problem with it. If some agents are able to do “good deeds”, if there are other agents, who do “bad deeds”, then those “good deeds” are contingent upon the “bad deeds”, and as such they are not really free.
But this is not the point. With the “contemplation” mentioned before, God can choose those agents and moral dilemmas, which do
not presuppose some other agent to do those “bad deeds”. I promised to give you a mathematical proof that there is a possible world, where the number of moral agents is NOT limited, where the number of morally significant problems is also unlimited - and no one makes an immoral choice. As such the number of “savable souls” is also unlimited. I did that. Since there is a universal assumption that God “wishes” to maximize the “heaven-bound souls”, and now it is proven that it can be done without anyone being “hell-bound”, what else is there to say?
