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lisper comments on Is Spirituality Irrational? - Less Wrong
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"The LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him". Again, I don't see how God could have possibly made it any clearer that the intent of putting the mark on Cain was to prevent the otherwise very real possibility of people killing him.
If you're not sure, then you must believe that there could be circumstances under which killing six members of a person's family as punishment for a crime they did not commit could be justified. I find that deeply disturbing.
No, it simply refers to an evil state of being. It says nothing about what brought about that state. But it doesn't matter. The fact that it specifically calls out thoughts means that the Flood was at least partially retribution for thought crimes.
Sure, and so are everyone else's.
A Muslim would disagree with you. Have you considered the possibility that they might be right and you are wrong? It's just the luck of the draw that you happened to be born into a Christian household rather than a Muslim one. Maybe you got unlucky. How would you tell?
But you keep dancing around the real question: Do you really believe that killing innocent bystanders can be morally justified? Or that genocide as a response to thought crimes can be morally justified? Or that forcing people to cannibalize their own children (Jeremiah 19:9) can be morally justified? Because that is the price of taking the Bible as your moral standard.
Looking at another translation:
(footnote: "Many commentators believe this sign not to have been like a brand on the forehead, but something awesome about Cain’s appearance that made people dread and avoid him. In the Talmud, the rabbis suggested several possibilities, including leprosy, boils, or a horn that grew out of Cain. But it was also suggested that Cain was given a pet dog to serve as a protective sign.")
Looking over the list, most of them do say something along the lines of "so that no one would kill him", but there are a scattering of others. I interpret is as saying that the sign given to Cain was a clear warning - something easily understood as "DO NOT KILL THIS MAN" - but I don't see any sign that it was ever actually necessary to save Cain's life.
There is a fallacy at work here. Consider a statement of the form, "if A then B". Consider the situation where A is a thing that is never true; for example 1=2. Then the statement becomes "if 1=2 then B". Now, at this point, I can substitute in anything I want for B, and the statement remains morally neutral; since one can never be equal to two.
Now, the statement given here was as follows: "If someone kills Cain, then that person will have vengeance laid against them sevenfold". Consider, then, that perhaps no-one killed Cain. Perhaps he died of pneumonia, or was attacked by a bear, or fell off a cliff, or drowned.
I don't see how it's possible to be in an evil state of being without at least seriously attempting to do evil deeds.
I see I phrased my point poorly. Let me fix that. My moral intuition is closer to what is in the Bible than it would have been had I been raised in a different culture. While the theoretical Muslim and I may have some disagreements as to what extent the Bible is God's Word, I think we can agree on this rephrased point.
I have considered the possibility. My conclusion is that it would take pretty convincing evidence to persuade me of that, but it is not impossible that I am wrong.
Are you familiar with the trolley problem? In short, it raises the question of whether or not it is a morally justifiable action to kill one innocent bystander in order to save five innocent bystanders.
Ordinary English doesn't work like that. "If X, then Y will happen" includes possible worlds in which X is true.
"If you fall into the sun, you will die" expresses a meaningful idea even if nobody falls into the sun.
Exactly. "Did not" is not the same as "can not." Particularly since God's threats are intended to have a deterrent effect. The whole point (I presume) is to try to influence things so that evil acts don't happen even though they can.
But we don't even need to look to God's forced familial cannibalism in Jeremiah. The bedrock of Christianity is the threat of eternal torment for a thought crime: not believing in Jesus.
I think a lot of Christians would say that the eternal torment isn't for the crime of not believing in Jesus but for other crimes; what believing in Jesus would do is enable one to escape the sentence for those other crimes.
And a lot of Christians, mostly different ones, would say that the threat of eternal torment was a mistake that we've now outgrown, or was never intended to be taken literally, or is a misunderstanding of a threat of final destruction, or something of the kind.
Not for "other crimes", but specifically because of the original sin. The default outcome for humans is eternal torment, but Jesus offers an escape :-/
Some Christians would say that, some not. (Very very crudely, Catholics would somewhat agree, Protestants mostly wouldn't. The Eastern Orthodox usually line up more with the Catholics than with the Protestants, but I forget where they stand on this one.)
Many would say, e.g., that "original sin" bequeaths us all a sinful "nature" but it's the sinful thoughts and actions we perpetrate for which we are rightly and justly damned.
(But yes, most Christians would say that the default outcome for humans as we now are is damnation, whether or not they would cash that out in the traditional way as eternal torment.)
Wouldn't Protestants agree that without the help of Jesus (technically, grace) humans cannot help but yield to their sinful nature? The original sin is not something mere humans can overcome by themselves.
They probably would (the opposite position being Pelagianism, I suppose). But they'd still say our sins are our fault and we are fully responsible for them.
This sounds like making people feel guilty on purpose.
Fair enough, but a lot of those "other crimes" are thought crimes too, e.g. Exo20:17, Mat5:28.
Jesus was pretty clear about this. Mat13:42 (and in case you didn't get it the first time he repeats himself in verse 50), Mark16:16.
Oh yes. I wasn't saying "Christianity is much less horrible than you think", just disagreeing with one particular instance of alleged horribilitude.
Actually, by and large the things he says about hell seem to me to fit the "final destruction" interpretation better than the "eternal torture" interpretation. Matthew 13:42 and 50, e.g., refer to throwing things into a "blazing furnace"; I don't know about you, but when I throw something on the fire I generally do so with the expectation that it will be destroyed. Mark 16:16 (1) probably wasn't in the original version of Mark's gospel and (2) just says "will be condemned" rather than specifying anything about what that entails; did you intend a different reference?
There are things Jesus is alleged to have said that sound more like eternal torture; e.g., Matthew 25:46. Surprise surprise, the Bible is not perfectly consistent with itself.
On hell:
It seems pretty obvious to me that descriptions of hell could easily be just metaphorical. There is a perpetual, persistent nature to sin—it's like a never-ending fire that brings suffering and destruction in way that perpetuates itself. Eternal fire is a great way to describe it if one were looking for a metaphor. It's this fire you need saving from. Enter Jesus.
Honestly, it's a wonder to me hell isn't treated as an obvious metaphor, but rather it is still a very real place for many mainstream Christians. I suppose it's because they must also treat the resurrection as literal, and that bit loses some of it's teeth if there is no real heaven/hell.
Yeah but Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
That's ingenious, but it really doesn't seem to me easy to reconcile with the actual Hell-talk in the NT. E.g., Jesus tells his listeners on one occasion: don't fear men who can throw your body into prison; rather fear God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell. And that passage in Matthew 25, which should scare the shit out of every Christian, talks about "eternal punishment" and is in any case clearly meant to be happening post mortem, or at least post resurrectionem. And that stuff in Revelation about a lake of burning sulphur, which again seems clearly to be for destruction and/or punishment. And so on.
If all we had to go on was the fact that Christianity has a tradition involving sin and eternal torment, I might agree with you. But what we have is more specific and doesn't seem to me like it fits your theory very well.
Yes, I think that's at least part of it. (There's something in C S Lewis -- I think near the end of The problem of pain -- where he says (or maybe quotes someone else as saying) that he's never encountered anyone with a really lively hope of heaven who didn't also have a serious fear of hell.)
I don't think "sometimes an omnipotent superbeing can stop you being consumed when you're thrown into a furnace" is much of an argument against "furnaces are generally better metaphors for destruction than for long-lasting punishment" :-).
Hm. Not worth getting into a line-by-line breakdown, but I'd argue anything said about hell in the Gospels (or the NT) could be read purely metaphorically without much strain.
A couple of the examples you've mentioned:
Seems to me he could just be saying something like: "They can take our lives and destroy our flesh, but we must not betray the Spirit of the movement; the Truth of God's kingdom."
This is a pretty common sentiment among revolutionaries.
I think it's a fairly common view that the author of Revelation was writing about recent events in Jerusalem (Roman/Jewish wars) using apocalyptic, highly figurative language. I'm no expert, but this is my understanding.
The Greek for hell used often in the NT is "gehenna" and (from my recall) refers to a garbage dump that was kept outside the walls of the city. Jesus might have been using this as a literal direct comparison to the hell that awaited sinners... but it seems more likely to me he just meant it as symbolic.
Anyway, tough to know what original authors/speakers believed. It is admittedly my pet theory that a lot of western religion is the erection of concrete literal dogmas from what was only intended as metaphors, teaching fables, etc. Low probability I'm right.
This was just a joke funny to only former fundamentalists like me. :)
Yeah, that's a better example.
I wasn't speaking about "did not". I was speaking about "will not", which is distinct from "can not" and is a form that can only be employed by a speaker with sufficient certainty about the future - unknown to me, but not to an omniscient being.
According to official Catholic doctrine:
In other words, trying to do the right thing counts.
Jesus very plainly disagreed:
"Mark16:16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned."
At best, that means that trying to do the right thing counts if you're ignorant of Christianity. Most people aren't ignorant of Christianity, and rampant proselytization makes things much worse since with more people who have heard of Christianity, fewer can use that escape clause.
In fact, it doesn't just apply to knowing Christianity's existence. The more you understand Christianity, according to that, the more you have to do to be saved.
And even then, it has loopholes you can drive a truck through. "Can be saved", not "will be saved"--it's entirely consistent with that statement for God not to save anyone.
It could be that (1) if you are ignorant of Christianity you can escape damnation by living a good life, but (2) living a good enough life is really hard, especially if you don't know it's necessary to escape damnation, and that (3) for that reason, those who are aware of Christianity have better prospects than those who aren't.
(Given that the fraction of people aware of Christianity who accept it isn't terribly high, that would require God to be pretty nasty, but so does the whole idea of damnation as commonly understood among Christians. And it probably sounded better back when the great majority of people who knew of Christianity were Christians at least in name.)
I don't think that you are, in a practical sense, disagreeing with me or lisper, even if on some abstract level Christianity lets some nonbeliever be saved.
The only thing I'm disagreeing with you about here is the following claim: that from "nonbelievers can be saved" or even "nonbelievers can be saved, and a substantial number will be" you can infer "proselytizing is bad for the people it's aimed at because it makes them more likely to be damned".
"The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight." -- Terry Pratchett, Eric
I disagree. Most people are ignorant of Christianity.
I don't mean that most people haven't heard of it. Most people have. A lot of them have heard (and believe) things about it that are false; or have merely heard of it but no more; or, worse yet, have only heard of some splinter Protestant groups and assumed that all Christians agree with them.
It is quite possible that a large number of people, hearing of the famous Creationism/Evolution debate, believe that Christianity and Science are irreconcilable and thus, in pursuit of the truth, reject what they have heard of Christianity and try to do what is right. This, to my understanding, fits perfectly in to being a person who "is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it".
I don't see how that follows. Seeking the truth and doing God's will in accordance with your best understanding thereof seems to be what everyone should be doing. What "more" do you think one should be doing with a better understanding of Christianity?
That is true. If God were malevolent, opposed to saving people, then He could use those loopholes.
I don't think that God is malevolent.
They didn't get them from thin air. They got them from Christians. This amounts to a no true Scotsman defense--all the things all those other Christians say, they aren't true Christianity.
If that counts as being ignorant, the same problem arises: It's better to be ignorant than knowledgeable.
Christianity says you should do X. If you are only required to follow Christianity to your best understanding to be saved, and you don't understand Christianity as requiring X, you don't have to do X to be saved. But once you really understand that Christianity requires you to do X, then all of a sudden you better do X. Following it to the best of your understanding means that the more you understand, the more you have to do.
And I'm sure you can think of plenty of things which Christianity tells you to do. It's not as if examples are particularly scarce.
The way God is described by Christians looks just like malevolence. If God really saves people who follow Christianity to the best of their understanding, without loopholes like "maybe he will save them but maybe he won't so becoming more Christian is a safer bet", Christians wouldn't proselytize.
In some cases they got them only very indirectly from Christians. And in some cases they got them from the loudest Christians; it would be no-true-Scotsman-y to say that those people aren't Christians, but it's perfectly in order to say "those ideas are certainly Christian ideas, but they are not the only Christian ideas and most Christians disagree with them".
It sounds as if you're assuming that improved understanding of Christianity always means discovering more things you're supposed to do. But it could go the other way too: perhaps initially your "best understanding" tells you you have to do Y, but when you learn more you decide you don't. In that case, a rule that you're saved iff you act according to your best understanding would say that initially you have to do Y but later on you don't.
(E.g., some versions of Christianity say that actually there's very little you have to do. You have to believe some particular things, and hold some particular attitudes, and if you do those then you're saved. Whether you murder people, give money to charities, help your landlady take out the garbage, etc., may be evidence that you do or don't hold those attitudes, but isn't directly required for anything. In that case, converting someone to Christianity -- meaning getting them to hold those beliefs and attitudes -- definitely makes their salvation more likely.)
I bet he can. But that's not the same as being able to think of plenty of things Christianity says you have to do, on pain of damnation.
I do largely agree with this, with the qualification that it depends which Christians. I think some do genuinely have beliefs about God which, if true, would mean that he's benevolent. (I think this requires them to be not terribly orthodox.)
I think CCC is trying to say that those aren't Christian ideas at all and that people who think that that's what Christianity is like are mistaken, not just choosing a smaller group of Christians over a larger one.
It isn't "you do the exact set of things described by your mistaken understanding of Christianity, and you are saved". It's "imperfect understanding is an excuse for failing to meet the requirement". Improved understanding can only increase the things you must do, never reduce it. In other words, if you falsely think that Christianity requires being a vegetarian, and you fail to be a vegetarian (thus violating your mistaken understanding of it, but not actually violating true Christianity), you can still be saved.
Everything that Christianity says you should do, is under pain of damnation (or has no penalty at all). It's not as if God has some other punishment short of damnation that he administers instead when your sin is mild.
You make an excellent point. There are a number of things being proposed by groups that call themselves Christian, often in the honest belief that they are right to propose such things (and to do so enthusiastically), which I nonetheless find myself in firm disagreement with. (For example, creationism).
To avoid the fallacy, then, and to deal with such contradictions, I shall define more narrowly what I consider "true Christianity", and I shall define it as Roman Catholicism (or something sufficiently close to it).
One example of X that I can think of, off the top of my head, is "going to Church on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation".
It is true that one who does want to be a good Christian will need to go to Church, while one who is ignorant will also be ignorant of that requirement. Hmmmm. So you have a clear point, there.
I think that one reasonable analogy is that it's a bit like writing an exam at university. Sure, you can self-study and still ace the test, but your odds are a lot better if you attend the lectures. And trying to invite others to attend the lectures improves their odds of passing, as well.
CCC may be claiming that the Bible (in this translation?) does not accurately represent God's motive here. But that just calls attention to the fact that - for reasons which escape me even after trying to read the comment tree - you're both talking about a story that seems ridiculous on every level. Your last paragraph indeed seems like a more fruitful line of discussion.