From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 9:33 AM To: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Best argument for justness of hell? "India" wrote: > Suppose you find yourself in hell one day, and you're given to > understand you're there in part because you rejected the notion > of worshiping God. Is being in hell going to make you change > your mind and decide that God is just and deserves worship? Your hypothetical fails because of your qualification "in part". If I'm in Hell *only* because I believe God is unjust, then God is indeed unjust. If I'm in Hell also because of injustices I've committed against others, then I'd be truly repentant (if I weren't already), and I wouldn't deserve eternal suffering. > Is it going to change your mind on any of the things > that the Bible says are wrong but that you think are right? Of course not. > Or would you require "teaching" - an understanding of why > God deserves worship and why his rules are morally right? You beg the question to assume that there is some "teaching" God could possibly do to make me believe that e.g. God killing Egypt's firstborn sons was not wrong. You can't prove Hell is just by assuming Yahweh is just. > While the parent in a sense wants their child to be punished > (as opposed to spoiled, for instance), the parent also doesn't > want their child to be punished - they don't enjoy seeing the > child they love experience pain, even if it is deserved. This analogy fails, because Hell is eternal punishment for past sins, and is explicitly not an attempt to reform the sinner. > > > [sin] is rebellion against an infinitely righteous and > > > deserving God. > > > > This is not an argument that such a rebellion is infinitely wrong. > > A clean plate is made dirty by a single spot of dirt. A clean plate is not made infinitely dirty by a single spot of dirt. > A dirty plate is not made clean by cleaning a single spot on it. A dirty plate is indeed made clean by cleaning only the finite amount of dirt on it, and does not require infinite cleaning. > > you cannot defend the proposition that > > such repentance would be impossible (or even less likely) to > > be offered in Hell than on Earth. > > The only reason I can think of for your stance that people would > be more likely to repent in Hell I didn't say it would be more likely; I just denied your assumption that it would be impossible (or even less likely). > is that suffering would make > people want to undo whatever resulted in their suffering. That is indeed one reason why it might be more likely, but being more likely is irrelevant to our argument. Your argument assumes that repentance would be impossible, which seems obviously false. > Are you going to love God if you're suffering in hell? If a punishment is just, then suffering the punishment should not prevent the punishee from recognizing the punisher's justness. > Are you going to change your mind on all the objections > you have to Christianity because of suffering? I would indeed no longer object that Christianity is not supported by credible evidence. My other objections would remain. Your argument here remains blatantly circular, which is no doubt why you did not answer (or even quote) my earlier objection: This is blatantly circular reasoning. It's the same as saying "you deserve Hell because you do not acknowledge that you deserve Hell." > If you're going to repent if > you go to hell, just what it is you would repent of? As perfect as I may seem :-), I cannot say that that I have never been unkind to my fellow humans. > If you "repent" and God lets you out of hell, but you're still > not going to follow God or deem him worthy of worship, > what's God supposed to do with you then? You again seem to assume that any repentance in Hell must be insincere, and that questioning the justness of eternal suffering is itself sufficient reason to deserve eternal suffering. The latter notion is quite sick and twisted, and indeed what one might expect in the scenario I described earlier in which Satan is posing as God. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net