How to make a difference with rhetoric, and the problem of hell

[sanshou]

sounds like more of those enlightened 'atheist morals', guapo

[el jefe]

hey give me a break, i'm one of those laid-back, "cool" atheists. i'm not like that activist guy from iidb.

[sanshou]

there's hope for you yet, buddy

[llanitedave]

Trolls win at all the lulz threads.

[ApostateAbe]

Trolls always win.

[Pingu]

Trolls always win.

Depends what you mean by win

[Pingu]

There are occasions I observe people discard Christianity in favor of a reasonable scientific model of everything. When that happens, I inquire and pay close attention to what caused it. It generally takes an especially intelligent and reasonable person for such a thing to happen. For everyone else, there is simply no way out. When it does happen, it is caused by many things, but I believe that there are a core set of issues that provide the impetus. I believe that three of those top issues are:

1. Science: Young-earth creationism
2. History: Jesus and the gospels
3. Theology: The problem of hell

Those tend to be the issues, I believe, where the Christian religion has its greatest apologetic vulnerabilities.

Maybe a lot of you have noticed this, but atheists tend to dominate the Internet. The type of people without religion tend to prefer the Internet, and the Internet is where the most free communication takes place. It also provides opportunity for investigative and time-invested argument and debate. This means that anyone can debate the way scholars debate.

The downside is that people often treat the freedom of communication with strangers as freedom to follow their instincts and be arrogant and rude, if not downright abusive, and so this style of communication permeates almost all debate about religion. I have found that the opposite style tends to be most persuasive. When people communicate in a style that is humble, polite, understanding and sympathetic, in additional to thoughtful, that is when they tend to be most persuasive. In the best theory of persuasion, the way to win a debate is to talk as though you are not having a debate.

Not long ago, on another forum, I was informed that some of my writings from a few months ago had a significant persuasive impact, strongly contributing to his or her loss of Christian faith. It was not necessarily the person I was communicating with at the time, but it was an observer all the same. It was a discussion about the Problem of Hell. Here it is:

I think a lot of people have nothing to lose when they accept adherence to Christianity out of fear of even the slimmest chance of eternal punishment (and of corresponding hope for heaven). Normal people are perfectly willing to shape their beliefs according to the perceived costs and benefits. And then there a few of us--and plenty of us here in this forum--who think it is abominable to accept obvious untruths for any reason whatsoever. We are people who value reason and belief in the truth, above anything else. When I imagine someone putting a gun to my head and telling me that I must stick a needle in my brain so that I believe a certain falsehood or else I must die, I could very easily imagine myself choosing death (though we are all much braver in our imaginations than we actually are). When we use the word, "integrity," we mean faithful adherence to that primary value of ours--truth.

For me, the fear of hell and the hope for heaven are fundamental to the theory that explains why both heaven and hell are untrue. They were designed by the Darwinian selection of religions to motivate people into adherence. What better way to maximize the survival advantage of a religion? Heaven and hell don't need to objectively exist in order for such evangelistic tenets to be very widely preached and believed, and it would make hardly the least bit of sense if they did exist, for reasons I would be happy to explain if you care (just let me know).

[The offer was accepted, so I continued.]

It has been my position that the Christian/Islamic heaven and hell are best explained as mechanisms of the popularization of belief systems--the old carrot and stick--and there is no better carrot than heaven nor a better stick than hell. You don't need to believe that heaven and hell objectively exist in order to make very good sense of the existence of those beliefs. But I am willing to go a step further. It would make hardly the least bit of sense if heaven and hell objectively existed.

If it were all about heaven, then there is little philosophical trouble. A benevolent God may grant forgiveness to anyone and give everyone their own happy little world. The trouble is with hell. Here is my argument:

1. Hell is part of a system of justice. It is the punishment for sins (Matthew 25:46).
2. The punishment in a sensible system of justice is well-known, unambiguous and certain to the society who must obey the laws.
3. The nature of hell is not well-known, not unambiguous and not certain to the society who must obey the laws.
4. Therefore, hell is not a sensible system of justice.

Point #2 is important. Of course, there have existed societies where the punishment for crimes are kept largely secret. If you do something wrong, you can be arrested and whisked away by strangers working for the state and never heard from again. The trial may be kept secret, the verdict may be kept secret, the punishment may be kept secret, except of course for rumors that swirl around the society. Nobody living in a free and fair democratic republic would claim that such a system of justice is sensible. But the insensibility goes well beyond our democratic prejudices--it doesn't even make sense in a tyranny. Any leaders of republics, tyranny or not, want the punishments for crimes to be openly publicized. That is the essential purpose of judicial punishment--to deter further crime. In the Christian/Islamic world view, the most perfect judicial system in the cosmos does not have open and well-publicized punishment for crime. The only knowledge of it comes from scriptural myth, the contents of which are easily corrupted and open to many conflicting interpretations, with no judge observably clarifying what the laws actually mean and what the punishment actually is.

There is a very popular Christian perspective nowadays that the fire of hell is merely metaphorical, that it is merely an eternity of darkness. That is what is proposed in Lee Strobel's popular apologetic book The Case for Faith. This, after two thousand years of Christians believing that the fire of hell is literal? If the fire can be metaphorical, then maybe hell itself is a metaphor, and it does not actually exist. When there is such a mystery in the law of a modern judicial system, then the men in black robes are happy to clarify it so that society knows what the law actually is. That is a very important judicial concern, among both tyrannies and free democratic republics.

This brings me to another important argument.

1. In a sensible system of justice, the punishment is proportional to the crime.
2. In the Christian/Islamic system of justice, all crimes are dealt the same punishment--eternity in hell.
3. Therefore, the Christian/Islamic system of justice is not a sensible system of justice.

Again, this makes sense only by thinking of hell as part of religions that wish to maximize the stick for non-adherents.

As a further alternative, heaven and hell exist, but they are not part of a sensible system of justice.

Why do you want to persuade people out of their faith?

[ApostateAbe]

Why do you want to persuade people out of their faith?

Hard to say, but more than anything I think I have sort of an extreme dogmatic value of my own and other people's belief in the truth.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Hard to say, but more than anything I think I have sort of an extreme dogmatic value of my own and other people's belief in the truth.

I agree with the bolded portion of your post. It's amazing how dogmatic atheists are, all while claiming they're not dogmatic at all!

I want to congratulate you for having the ability to admit how blinded you are by atheist dogma.

[teeth!]

I agree with the bolded portion of your post. It's amazing how dogmatic atheists are, all while claiming they're not dogmatic at all!

I want to congratulate you for having the ability to admit how blinded you are by atheist dogma.

I dunno about all this, but I do know that Bartholomew Roberts should be the admin of Teshi's heart.

[borealis]

I dunno about all this, but I do know that Bartholomew Roberts should be the admin of Teshi's heart.

That will never happen because bart will not learn to run a team of sled dogs. Until he learns to say 'Mush!' and mean it from the heart, Teshi will remain beyond his romantic reach.

[boba123]

I agree with the bolded portion of your post. It's amazing how dogmatic atheists are, all while claiming they're not dogmatic at all!

I want to congratulate you for having the ability to admit how blinded you are by atheist dogma.

So Bart - you find ONE - and PROJECT this one to ALL Atheists !!!!!!

My, My, Bart - aren't YOU the CLEVER Projector !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[llanitedave]

Why do you want to persuade people out of their faith?

Can't speak for Abe, but as long as people keep relying on their faith to inspire their politics and help run society into the ground, I'm all for talking them out of it.

[feelings]

run society into the ground

[feelings]

depends on what you mean by "depends on what you mean by..."

[llanitedave]

u 2, Nothing. u r running society into the ground.

[teeth!]

This thread reminds me why I think llanitedave has nothing worth contributing to anything.

[Pingu]

Hard to say, but more than anything I think I have sort of an extreme dogmatic value of my own and other people's belief in the truth.

OK - so not a very good reason, then

Can't speak for Abe, but as long as people keep relying on their faith to inspire their politics and help run society into the ground, I'm all for talking them out of it.

Well that makes some sense, but I'd rather concentrate on the politics I guess. Or at least on the inconsistency of the their moral positions.

[ApostateAbe]

OK - so not a very good reason, then

Yes. A lot of people pursue the truth because they think it will make the world a better place. I love the truth just for the sake of the truth. There is nothing more to it than that. If you think about it, it is no less reasonable that someone who tries to make the world a better place. Ask them, "Why do you want to do that? Why can't you just let the world rot?" And the answers are: "It benefits me, too," or, "Instinct," or "What a terrible consideration," or "Because God wants me to," or, "It's for the children," or "Because I want to." I think, "Instinct," is the only real good answer.

[llanitedave]

This thread reminds me why I think llanitedave has nothing worth contributing to anything.

Please put me on ignore, then. You'll feel so much better, your life will be serene.

[feelings]

my god this place is so opinionated!

[Koyaanisqatsi]

my god this place is so opinionated!

Says you!

[arachnophilia]

The downside is that people often treat the freedom of communication with strangers as freedom to follow their instincts and be arrogant and rude, if not downright abusive, and so this style of communication permeates almost all debate about religion. I have found that the opposite style tends to be most persuasive. When people communicate in a style that is humble, polite, understanding and sympathetic, in additional to thoughtful, that is when they tend to be most persuasive. In the best theory of persuasion, the way to win a debate is to talk as though you are not having a debate.

boy are you barking up the wrong tree. this is a forum where the common response to idiocy is "kill yourself".

anyways, the bit that i find interesting is that you do not include judaism in your descriptions of "the problem of hell" as it does not suffer the same faults. in judaism, everyone goes to the grave (שאול, sheol, "hell"), and people are judged based on rather clear-cut standards in a predetermined set of laws. and those laws, of course, aren't nearly as stringent as christianity makes them out to be -- death is not the punishment for every infraction no matter how small.

i've spoken before (on another forum) about the biggest challenge to my faith. it's not that christianity doesn't make any sense wrt: hell, it's that christianity doesn't make any sense about anything, especially the parts where judaism does. the two just don't seem related at all, philosophically. and since christianity claims it is rooted in judaism, you have to wonder about it's authenticity.

[teeth!]

boy are you barking up the wrong tree. this is a forum where the common response to idiocy is "kill yourself".

anyways, the bit that i find interesting is that you do not include judaism in your descriptions of "the problem of hell" as it does not suffer the same faults. in judaism, everyone goes to the grave (שאול, sheol, "hell"), and people are judged based on rather clear-cut standards in a predetermined set of laws. and those laws, of course, aren't nearly as stringent as christianity makes them out to be -- death is not the punishment for every infraction no matter how small.

Well, there's a lot of variety in how Jews talk about the afterlife.

[arachnophilia]

Well, there's a lot of variety in how Jews talk about the afterlife.

and not very many like equating their concepts with the christian "hell", even though that has its linguistic (and probably ideological) roots in the idea.