thebeardslastcall Posted November 25, 2015 Posted November 25, 2015 I appreciate your concern, but I think I am being misunderstood. I haven't given any reason to belief in Hell other than a belief in eternal justice, which I have not justified, but simply taken as a starting point. If eternal justice exists, then it is possible Hell exists as well. And for anyone not to believe in eternal justice, is for them to believe in the universe as almost wholly a tragedy. Does that explain it or am I missing a subtlety? How do you define eternal justice (which should include a definition of injustice as well I think)? Do you think a world with life without your definition of injustice is possible or desirable? If you believe in Heaven or Hell does that mean you believe in eternal life (no possibility of death)? Do you view 'eternal life' as a contradiction or no? Is the 'justice' of heaven and hell eternal while the 'injustice' (as you see it) on Earth eternal or not eternal? If an injustice, by your definition, occurs on Earth, and then the murdered person (if that can meet your requirements) goes to heaven, forever, and the murderer goes to hell forever, is that or does that seem like justice to you? Do you believe in Hell (regardless of whether or not you've given sufficient reason to here)? Do you have more reasons to believe in Hell than you've given or does your belief or possible belief in Hell rest or hinge upon your thinking eternal justice is desirable and Hell is the only way to provide it?
ShadowWhoWalks Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 I would like to inquire about who judges whether something is just or not. Is it physical laws?Do we make arbitrary claims, or use our intuition to recognize an absolute standard which already exists?
dsayers Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 I would like to inquire about who judges whether something is just or not. Could you elaborate? Because your question as is doesn't make sense to me. If you and I decide to trade X for Y, then we are the ones deciding if the exchange is just. As long as we're both free to decline, the exchange is voluntary, and what others might think in terms of whether it's just or not is irrelevant.
J. D. Stembal Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 I'm not going to get in to an apology of the Church in this thread, but merely note that it is not Catholics committing acts of terrorism like the Moslems do, nor does Catholic doctrine encourage it. Please take the blinders off. http://terrorism.about.com/od/groupsleader1/p/IRA.htm
thebeardslastcall Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 Do we make arbitrary claims Mostly this one. or use our intuition to recognize an absolute standard which already exists? And most use the first one based on this one in the self-preservation sense. That is they use intuition to do what they think will give them survival, however well or poorly adapted their intuitions may be to their current environment, which has drastically changed over the last couple hundred years. Survival is an absolute standard of sorts which exists and drove the evolution of those intuitions, but only further survival will prove whether they were sufficiently adept and adaptable intuitions to continue surviving in an ever changing world. For example the evolved sense of tribalism to survive leads people to adopt somewhat arbitrary justice claims based not on general philosophy and reason, but based on a desire to survive even if it means having a contradictory and convoluted definition and application of 'justice'. Meaning they're subverting the notion of justice for self-preservation, which in many ways is the natural development of all tools, language included. They're another tool in the survival belt, lie if it works, tell the truth if it works. As philosophers we like to pretend we are above this, but while we can aim for greater universal truths they will only hold up if we acknowledge that they must support the base truth of the need for survival or they're dead in the water. This is the rock many stumble on when dealing with 'reason' and other such terms as well. Part of my prior questioning was to point out how most have a weak sense of justice based merely on what feels comfortable and understandable to them. Christians often say God is beyond comprehension, but what they're really saying is that not believing in their ideas of God, justice, heaven, and hell is incomprehensible to them, or subconsciously they view it as suicidal in their tribe, so they default to a belief in these things. In the name of self preservation they vigorously deny the obvious truth that they don't know jack squat and won't accept their own stupidity as a valid reason to not believe in God. If something is incomprehensible then the only smart and true position to have is that you must NOT believe in such a thing. They use this exact justification for one side of the equation, but not the other, as if accepting they have no reason to believe in either is an invalid position. If most people were honest they'd say "I'm too dumb to believe in God and I'm also too dumb to be an atheist, neither one makes sense to me, this world is scary and I'm just trying to survive, so I'll play along with my tribe to do so". This is the basic stance on a great many issues because people are just winging their way through life because that's how you survive, you can't dig deep into all topics and sometimes many people find themselves unable to dig deep into any topics, so they're never a chef, always just a cook copying other people's recipes because they never feel able to innovate. They just want their meal and are content using someone's recipe to do so, afraid to not mess up the recipe, so they follow it precisely, because they don't understand it at all, because they've never been a chef. This approach is fine for a while. This works well for most people, but these people need some innovators in the mix to help them adapt to new situations and to advance or make progress otherwise they're just a stagnant species in a stagnant environment. The current environment is changing fast, however, and there is a lot humans can benefit from innovations and a great number of innovations humans will need to continue to survive, especially in this time of fierce competition. This is why we're so entrenched in all these political and philosophical wars, because we're shifting from a stable state through a turbulent state and these shifts from one stable state to another is always tough. Philosophers see this as a good opportunity to leapfrog forward into a new era of peace and innovation, but others are seeing the same opportunity to take it in another direction. The problem with this approach is that it's the same as saying, "All of my Porsche's are red." Totally true, because I have no Porsches. I wouldn't call that a true statement. I'd call it a false statement because it requires that you have one Porsche at the least to satisfy the condition. Otherwise you'd have to say the statement "All of my Porche's are green" is also a true statement. "All of my Porche's don't exist" would be the most true statement of that nature. It seemed like the point of your statement was to point out the falsity of the claim, but then you didn't call it false, but true, because you don't see it as a lie or non-truth to make a claim to the state of something that doesn't exist. A Porsche that doesn't exist has no properties. A Hell that doesn't exist doesn't serve justice or injustice, it has no properties. A more accurate translation would have been "If I had a Porsche, I think it would have to be red", but he doesn't have one, so he has no red one. He's saying his dogmatic notion of eternal justice is required because he can't conceive of the universe being anything other than almost wholly a tragedy and also stating he can't conceive or live with the idea that the universe is wholly a tragedy. So he's scared to go down what he perceives as an endless rabbit hole because he denies there's any way out of it and it leads to a depressing state for him. In truth and practice that depressing state he's afraid to confront is likely just him afraid to confront the opposition in his environment, which includes his own ego, to such changes and how this will force him to adapt in uncomfortable ways, which his entrenched adapted fear center tells him not to do for survival sake, because most people survived by not rustling too many feathers and this is fear is heavily ingrained. This means a great many people are easily made to believe in religions, it doesn't mean we naturally do believe in religions. It's not natural for humans to run around like crazy, but put them in a cage with a dangerous animal and then it's pretty 'natural'. Most people say, see, it's human nature to run around like mad and needed to survive and philosophers are like 'let's get rid of the damn dangerous animal and free ourselves from the cage and then you'll see such behavior isn't human nature, but merely a local adaptation to a crazy dangerous and insane environment. That got rather long-winded, hope I didn't lose too many people.
Donnadogsoth Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 How do you define eternal justice (which should include a definition of injustice as well I think)? Do you think a world with life without your definition of injustice is possible or desirable? If you believe in Heaven or Hell does that mean you believe in eternal life (no possibility of death)? Do you view 'eternal life' as a contradiction or no? Is the 'justice' of heaven and hell eternal while the 'injustice' (as you see it) on Earth eternal or not eternal? If an injustice, by your definition, occurs on Earth, and then the murdered person (if that can meet your requirements) goes to heaven, forever, and the murderer goes to hell forever, is that or does that seem like justice to you? Do you believe in Hell (regardless of whether or not you've given sufficient reason to here)? Do you have more reasons to believe in Hell than you've given or does your belief or possible belief in Hell rest or hinge upon your thinking eternal justice is desirable and Hell is the only way to provide it? 1 - How do you define eternal justice (which should include a definition of injustice as well I think)? That every sin is paid for. Sin is injustice, a violation of natural law. 2 - Do you think a world with life without your definition of injustice is possible or desirable? Given God as the sole source of life, no, it's not possible. Its desirability is therefore realistically unimaginable. 3 - If you believe in Heaven or Hell does that mean you believe in eternal life (no possibility of death)? Yes. 4 - Do you view 'eternal life' as a contradiction or no? No. 5 - Is the 'justice' of heaven and hell eternal while the 'injustice' (as you see it) on Earth eternal or not eternal? Heaven and Hell's justice is eternal, yes. Temporal (Earthly) injustice can receive either eternal or temporal punishment, so whether it is eternal or not eternal depends on human volition, if you see what I mean. 6 - If an injustice, by your definition, occurs on Earth, and then the murdered person (if that can meet your requirements) goes to heaven, forever, and the murderer goes to hell forever, is that or does that seem like justice to you? It seems awful and unimaginable simultaneously. It certainly counsels against suicide. 7 - Do you believe in Hell (regardless of whether or not you've given sufficient reason to here)? Yes. 8 - Do you have more reasons to believe in Hell than you've given or does your belief or possible belief in Hell rest or hinge upon your thinking eternal justice is desirable and Hell is the only way to provide it? I don't know if Hell is the only way to provide eternal justice. Nor am I satisfied that Hell is what popular religious and cultural depictions show it to be. My understanding of Hell and eternal justice flow from two sources within Western civilisation. One, the Church, which emphasises that Hell is real and eternal and utterly undesirable, but which has never described it officially except that it is, to paraphrase, “an apartness from God.” Two, the wisdom of Lyndon LaRouche, in his description of the immortality of the human soul as achieved through Agape, in terms of man being in the image of God and thereby capable, at least in theory, of participating in Creation. In this latter sense, to squander one's life by remaining outside of Christ is to buy “apartness from God”. So the two merge.
Donnadogsoth Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 I wouldn't call that a true statement. I'd call it a false statement because it requires that you have one Porsche at the least to satisfy the condition. Otherwise you'd have to say the statement "All of my Porche's are green" is also a true statement. "All of my Porche's don't exist" would be the most true statement of that nature. It seemed like the point of your statement was to point out the falsity of the claim, but then you didn't call it false, but true, because you don't see it as a lie or non-truth to make a claim to the state of something that doesn't exist. A Porsche that doesn't exist has no properties. A Hell that doesn't exist doesn't serve justice or injustice, it has no properties. A more accurate translation would have been "If I had a Porsche, I think it would have to be red", but he doesn't have one, so he has no red one. He's saying his dogmatic notion of eternal justice is required because he can't conceive of the universe being anything other than almost wholly a tragedy and also stating he can't conceive or live with the idea that the universe is wholly a tragedy. So he's scared to go down what he perceives as an endless rabbit hole because he denies there's any way out of it and it leads to a depressing state for him. In truth and practice that depressing state he's afraid to confront is likely just him afraid to confront the opposition in his environment, which includes his own ego, to such changes and how this will force him to adapt in uncomfortable ways, which his entrenched adapted fear center tells him not to do for survival sake, because most people survived by not rustling too many feathers and this is fear is heavily ingrained. This means a great many people are easily made to believe in religions, it doesn't mean we naturally do believe in religions. It's not natural for humans to run around like crazy, but put them in a cage with a dangerous animal and then it's pretty 'natural'. Most people say, see, it's human nature to run around like mad and needed to survive and philosophers are like 'let's get rid of the damn dangerous animal and free ourselves from the cage and then you'll see such behavior isn't human nature, but merely a local adaptation to a crazy dangerous and insane environment. That got rather long-winded, hope I didn't lose too many people. On Porches, I thought about pointing that out and discarded the notion. You said it better than I would have. My defense of Western civilisation could be considered a massive Terror Management project, of which defending Christendom is a part, though not the only part. I fear that all that is green and good in the world that I have inherited from my ancestors will perish. Since outside of that project is the chill of hedonism, postmodern intellectual bankruptcy, and apathy as Western civ is erased from history, and I fancy myself noble enough to hate that prospect, I lend myself to the battle. Just because it's Terror Management doesn't mean it isn't true. Terror Management is just how humans cope with a loss of meaning, but to say that no meaning is the right one detonates TMT itself.
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