This will be my concluding statement for this discussion.
I think it’s become quite clear that there’s no good reason for thinking that our motive for following God will effect our eternal destiny. We’ve looked at this from a number of different angles, and yet, no good reasons have been forthcoming.
You restated your position that there are certain assumptions required in order to form a valid argument, but I’ve already refuted this claim, pointing out that not only is it unsupported by the evidence, but it’s actually a self-defeating theory of knowledge. There’s been no response on those points.
You brought up your claim that my motive is the reason for my own unhappiness with following the will of God, but I refuted this when I pointed out that there are lots of other possible reasons for people to feel unhappy with doing God’s will, and I presented two pieces of evidence to that effect, while you have produced no evidence in support of this position. Therefore, I think it seems pretty clear that the weight of the evidence is against this second claim, and we therefore have no good reason to believe it. This claim, therefore, has virtually no weight in this discussion.
You quoted two questions that you asked me about the basis for my own beliefs, but I answered those questions in full, and in any case, a question is neither an argument, nor a piece of evidence. Therefore, they can’t be refutations of anything, simply because they don’t assert anything, much less prove it.
You have, however, offered one argument in this last post, which stated the following…
- God is perfectly good.
- A perfectly good being would want his servants to be as good as itself.
- An action isn’t good if the primary motivation is the promise of a reward.
- Therefore, we aren’t serving God unless we do it altruistically.
This is what’s known as a “syllogism.” A series of premises (in this case, numbers 1 through 3,) are presented, followed by a conclusion statement (number 4,) which follows from them. Syllogisms can indeed function as a very strong form of proof, provided that all of the premises are true, and the logic by which the conclusion is derived is valid.
Now, in this case, unfortunately, there are problems in both of those areas. For one thing, premise 3 is the very thing I was questioning, and the very thing that I’ve found so dubious since this discussion began, and no evidence has been offered on behalf of it. If the conclusion of the argument were worded just a little differently, I would almost call it question-begging, on that score.
However, even if you take all three premises of the argument for granted as being absolutely true, the conclusion still doesn’t follow from the premises. All that would follow would be that we aren’t fulfilling God’s desires by being motivated by the promise of rewards. However, it wouldn’t follow that we’re not “serving” God. In any case the obligation to fulfill the desires of God in exchange for salvation is not in any sense a Christian idea, and in fact, somewhat reminds me of a Muslim view of the world, in which obedience to the will of Allah is what results in eternal rest.
Finally, I think we can have good reasons to doubt premise 2 as well. For example…
P1. Desiring something which is impossible would be an incoherence, and therefore, and imperfection.
P2. A perfect being can’t have imperfections.
P3. God is a perfect being.
P4. It is impossible for certain “goodnesses” of God to be possessed by creatures, such as, for example, having a necessary existence.
C. Therefore, God does not desire us to have all the goodnesses that he has.
So, with all of this taken into account, I think we can conclude that the argument, as you presented it, is not a good one.
Lastly, I’d like to clarify a couple of misunderstandings. You remarked that you didn’t claim to have better knowledge than me of my own position, yet you continued to insist, to the very end, that I hold a position which I don’t hold. Therefore, you are claiming that I am wrong about my position, and you are right, and therefore, that you have superior knowledge of my position than I do.
You remarked that self-evidence is a basis, but this is only so if the thing is not an assumption. You explicitly referred to your “RAOVA” as assumptions. That’s what the first “A” stands for. Therefore, they can’t be self-evident in this way.
You also said that I contradicted myself by stating that the assumptions are self-evident. However, that’s not the statement I made. My statement was that your statement -implied- that they were “so self evident, that trying to find a basis for them is futile.” However, when I said this, I was not endorsing your view. This was only a thought experiment, to follow your assessment through to its own logical conclusion.
Finally, with regard to semantics, all I can say is that it’s a deep, rich, rewarding field of philosophical study, and whenever you’ve got a little extra time on your hands, I suggest you check it out. I find semantics to be not just a delightful topic for discussion and debate, but an engaging subject for recreational thought as well.
So in conclusion, I feel I’ve seen no good evidence that motive effects our eternal destiny. On the other hand, the verses I referred to from the second chapter of Romans provide, I think, good evidence that in fact, it is our actions; not our motives, on which we’re ultimately judged. There are other verses that support this view, of course, but as things stand right now, I think I’ve seen enough to determine that it is actions, not motives, that we will be judged on.
Now, if you’d like, you can make a concluding statement of your own.
