Trying to understand your post, @Basketactortale . Are you suggesting that the the solution to the problem of 'hell' only arose with the earthly ministry of Jesus?
I apologise but I don't understand your question.
You said 'respect for your ancestors beyond 2000 years' -which I took to be the time since Jesus was on earth. If that's right then I was interested in clarifying what changed, with respect to hell, at that point in time.
In the first place, beliefs are subjective attitudes. That is, they're mental properties we, as individuals, have regarding things, rather than being qualities of the things we have beliefs about.
To address this again, subjective has more than one meaning.
I might talk about an objective judgement, by which I would mean a judgement based on beliefs about evidence as opposed to my personal inclination and preferences. From there, it's natural to talk about a subjective judgement, being one based more on personal factors rather than on neutrally evaluating the evidence.
But that is a different sense of subjective from the sense you're using 'subjective' in above. And it would be a fallacy of equivocation to move from 'beliefs are subjective attitudes, that is mental properties of individuals' to 'beliefs are subjective, that is based on personal inclination rather than neutral evidence'.
No, if a sufficiently compelling line of reasoning were offered, that was more compelling than an existing one, and which led to a different conclusion, then it would logically need to a change in conclusion, or belief. That's what a belief is to me - a conclusion reached from a line of reasoning from available evidence.
But I'm not sure of the why implicit in your formulation. If I didn't already believe a proposition were true, why would I try to convince myself it was? If I did already think it was true, then I wouldn't need to convince myself. It seems to postulate a set of propositions which I think are true but which I don't currently believe, which is a logical contradiction. "Believe" and "Think to be true" are synonymous.
As you've said before. And as I've said before, they might be synonymous for you, but they're not synonymous for me. There are a whole load of beliefs that I hold that have not come about as a result of a rational consideration of reasoned arguments. I suspect this is true for most of us. Why do we celebrate birthdays? What is it that we believe about birthdays that leads us to think that we should celebrate them?
KarlLB has said exactly what I would have. I’ve no doubt you’ll consider me self-deluded, but from the inside I can tell you that the process of changing one of my beliefs about God etc looks and feels precisely like the process of changing one of my beliefs about astronomy (and yes, I’ve done both). New evidence turns up, I look at it critically, I’m convinced (or not), and then I start incorporating the new understanding into my life. Very boring of me, really.
I don't consider either of you to be deluded.
I suppose part of the question I'm trying to address is that both of you appear to have beliefs about Hell that seem to cause you a certain amount of anguish. Do you want to hold onto these beliefs? If it were possible for you to intentionally change your beliefs about Hell, would you want to do so?
My personal experience that it is possible to change one's beliefs. Taking the current topic, I think where I differ from what you both describe is that, rather than being presented with a reasoned argument (which I'm not planning to do), I believe it is possible for someone to set out to change their beliefs about Hell themself.
And in this, if anything, I suspect that I'm the one who sounds more deluded.
Pardon me for wandering into the thread, but I was just again reminded...yet again...of how there are so many people I know who will never go near a fucking church in their lives because of the straight-up spiritual abuse they received from people who loudly and earnestly declared that they were True Christians...
...and of course soft spoken, gentle mainliners like me are frauds...
And it infuriates me to imagine God condemning such people even to the genteel first circle of eternal torment for crimes that were visited upon them.
Honestly, my God-given ethical sense simply will not tolerate it, so I'll just wave the wand of "Holy Mystery" and declare myself a soft universalist. Damning is God's job, not mine. But I have my suspicions.
[with apologies to anyone who may feel they resemble the people I'm angry at, I do not intend to attack anyone here, this is just a conversation I literally just had. I went to the ship to see if I could start a thread on it and voila! there was one!
I am aware there are conservatives with better sense, but I also am viscerally aware of the logical problem created by theological architecture.]
Trying to understand your post, @Basketactortale . Are you suggesting that the the solution to the problem of 'hell' only arose with the earthly ministry of Jesus?
I apologise but I don't understand your question.
You said 'respect for your ancestors beyond 2000 years' -which I took to be the time since Jesus was on earth. If that's right then I was interested in clarifying what changed, with respect to hell, at that point in time.
Are we not discussing the whole "believers go to heaven, the fallen go to hell" Christian theology?
Unless I'm missing something, this Christian idea is something from the Christian era.
No, if a sufficiently compelling line of reasoning were offered, that was more compelling than an existing one, and which led to a different conclusion, then it would logically need to a change in conclusion, or belief. That's what a belief is to me - a conclusion reached from a line of reasoning from available evidence.
But I'm not sure of the why implicit in your formulation. If I didn't already believe a proposition were true, why would I try to convince myself it was? If I did already think it was true, then I wouldn't need to convince myself. It seems to postulate a set of propositions which I think are true but which I don't currently believe, which is a logical contradiction. "Believe" and "Think to be true" are synonymous.
As you've said before. And as I've said before, they might be synonymous for you, but they're not synonymous for me. There are a whole load of beliefs that I hold that have not come about as a result of a rational consideration of reasoned arguments. I suspect this is true for most of us. Why do we celebrate birthdays? What is it that we believe about birthdays that leads us to think that we should celebrate them?
KarlLB has said exactly what I would have. I’ve no doubt you’ll consider me self-deluded, but from the inside I can tell you that the process of changing one of my beliefs about God etc looks and feels precisely like the process of changing one of my beliefs about astronomy (and yes, I’ve done both). New evidence turns up, I look at it critically, I’m convinced (or not), and then I start incorporating the new understanding into my life. Very boring of me, really.
I don't consider either of you to be deluded.
I suppose part of the question I'm trying to address is that both of you appear to have beliefs about Hell that seem to cause you a certain amount of anguish. Do you want to hold onto these beliefs? If it were possible for you to intentionally change your beliefs about Hell, would you want to do so?
My personal experience that it is possible to change one's beliefs. Taking the current topic, I think where I differ from what you both describe is that, rather than being presented with a reasoned argument (which I'm not planning to do), I believe it is possible for someone to set out to change their beliefs about Hell themself.
And in this, if anything, I suspect that I'm the one who sounds more deluded.
maybe, then, we should drop the whole "deluded" thing, since none of us appears to feel that way about the others!
Do I want to hold on to this belief? Dear God, no. If I could get rid of it, I would.
If it were possible for me to intentionally change my beliefs about hell,...
Well, here's the rub. "Possible" to me means one thing: That sufficient evidence has turned up to allow me to say, "Oh thank God, I was wrong." If that happened, I'd be incredibly glad.
But if you mean "Would you be willing to change your belief regardless of whether it corresponded to reality or not?" the answer is no. And that's because I can't tolerate error/falsehood/deception/lies of any sort in my personal understanding of the world. Not just on hell, but on pretty much everything. Heck, someone once convinced me I'd fucked up my understanding of Mercury's rotation and orbit, and I promptly spent some hours researching this and getting myself straightened out. I am not an astrophysicist and I am never likely to need that piece of data again. But I can't stand having errors in my mental database.
G'day! I'm currently 'down under' too and finding the Aboriginal art and artefacts fascinating.
I was in Madagascar last year and was struck by the veneration of ancestors there, not only among Animists either.
Not sure how to reconcile any of this save to borrow Abraham's phrase, 'Will not the God of all the earth do right?'
I learned much about the attempt to stamp out First Nation indigenous people, much of it in the name of Christianity. Did you know that people from many different language groups were rounded up and dumped into "missions" run by churches, where they were made to work for nothing? That there are clear legacies of this stuff with mothers having their children taken away for ridiculous reasons and people scratching a life in asbestos filled housing in former mission sites because they have nowhere else to go?
Today these groups have lost much of their languages and culture, many of their religious artifacts are in museums and their sacred places are built on.
In these contexts I don't see that the damage which cannot be undone was in any sense weighed against the value of spreading Christianity, including the doctrine of hell.
No, if a sufficiently compelling line of reasoning were offered, that was more compelling than an existing one, and which led to a different conclusion, then it would logically need to a change in conclusion, or belief. That's what a belief is to me - a conclusion reached from a line of reasoning from available evidence.
But I'm not sure of the why implicit in your formulation. If I didn't already believe a proposition were true, why would I try to convince myself it was? If I did already think it was true, then I wouldn't need to convince myself. It seems to postulate a set of propositions which I think are true but which I don't currently believe, which is a logical contradiction. "Believe" and "Think to be true" are synonymous.
As you've said before. And as I've said before, they might be synonymous for you, but they're not synonymous for me. There are a whole load of beliefs that I hold that have not come about as a result of a rational consideration of reasoned arguments. I suspect this is true for most of us. Why do we celebrate birthdays? What is it that we believe about birthdays that leads us to think that we should celebrate them?
KarlLB has said exactly what I would have. I’ve no doubt you’ll consider me self-deluded, but from the inside I can tell you that the process of changing one of my beliefs about God etc looks and feels precisely like the process of changing one of my beliefs about astronomy (and yes, I’ve done both). New evidence turns up, I look at it critically, I’m convinced (or not), and then I start incorporating the new understanding into my life. Very boring of me, really.
I don't consider either of you to be deluded.
I suppose part of the question I'm trying to address is that both of you appear to have beliefs about Hell that seem to cause you a certain amount of anguish. Do you want to hold onto these beliefs? If it were possible for you to intentionally change your beliefs about Hell, would you want to do so?
My personal experience that it is possible to change one's beliefs. Taking the current topic, I think where I differ from what you both describe is that, rather than being presented with a reasoned argument (which I'm not planning to do), I believe it is possible for someone to set out to change their beliefs about Hell themself.
And in this, if anything, I suspect that I'm the one who sounds more deluded.
maybe, then, we should drop the whole "deluded" thing, since none of us appears to feel that way about the others!
Do I want to hold on to this belief? Dear God, no. If I could get rid of it, I would.
If it were possible for me to intentionally change my beliefs about hell,...
Well, here's the rub. "Possible" to me means one thing: That sufficient evidence has turned up to allow me to say, "Oh thank God, I was wrong." If that happened, I'd be incredibly glad.
But if you mean "Would you be willing to change your belief regardless of whether it corresponded to reality or not?" the answer is no. And that's because I can't tolerate error/falsehood/deception/lies of any sort in my personal understanding of the world. Not just on hell, but on pretty much everything. Heck, someone once convinced me I'd fucked up my understanding of Mercury's rotation and orbit, and I promptly spent some hours researching this and getting myself straightened out. I am not an astrophysicist and I am never likely to need that piece of data again. But I can't stand having errors in my mental database.
It seems to me that at some level belief is a choice. Whilst it might feel from within that these things are a "package deal" and that one isn't being invited to decide which aspects to believe, surely the history of Christian belief says this isn't the case.
If a belief about something or someone is causing mental anguish, one would think that the natural thing to do would be to stop believing it, stop thinking and stop worrying about it. That's a choice.
So, to return to the topic of the thread, why do you believe it?
I'm not saying you must do anything, I'm saying that other Christians have taken other views on this topic whereas you appear to feel compelled to believe in something you seem to think is unpleasant.
No, if a sufficiently compelling line of reasoning were offered, that was more compelling than an existing one, and which led to a different conclusion, then it would logically need to a change in conclusion, or belief. That's what a belief is to me - a conclusion reached from a line of reasoning from available evidence.
But I'm not sure of the why implicit in your formulation. If I didn't already believe a proposition were true, why would I try to convince myself it was? If I did already think it was true, then I wouldn't need to convince myself. It seems to postulate a set of propositions which I think are true but which I don't currently believe, which is a logical contradiction. "Believe" and "Think to be true" are synonymous.
As you've said before. And as I've said before, they might be synonymous for you, but they're not synonymous for me. There are a whole load of beliefs that I hold that have not come about as a result of a rational consideration of reasoned arguments. I suspect this is true for most of us. Why do we celebrate birthdays? What is it that we believe about birthdays that leads us to think that we should celebrate them?
KarlLB has said exactly what I would have. I’ve no doubt you’ll consider me self-deluded, but from the inside I can tell you that the process of changing one of my beliefs about God etc looks and feels precisely like the process of changing one of my beliefs about astronomy (and yes, I’ve done both). New evidence turns up, I look at it critically, I’m convinced (or not), and then I start incorporating the new understanding into my life. Very boring of me, really.
I don't consider either of you to be deluded.
I suppose part of the question I'm trying to address is that both of you appear to have beliefs about Hell that seem to cause you a certain amount of anguish. Do you want to hold onto these beliefs? If it were possible for you to intentionally change your beliefs about Hell, would you want to do so?
My personal experience that it is possible to change one's beliefs. Taking the current topic, I think where I differ from what you both describe is that, rather than being presented with a reasoned argument (which I'm not planning to do), I believe it is possible for someone to set out to change their beliefs about Hell themself.
And in this, if anything, I suspect that I'm the one who sounds more deluded.
maybe, then, we should drop the whole "deluded" thing, since none of us appears to feel that way about the others!
Do I want to hold on to this belief? Dear God, no. If I could get rid of it, I would.
If it were possible for me to intentionally change my beliefs about hell,...
Well, here's the rub. "Possible" to me means one thing: That sufficient evidence has turned up to allow me to say, "Oh thank God, I was wrong." If that happened, I'd be incredibly glad.
But if you mean "Would you be willing to change your belief regardless of whether it corresponded to reality or not?" the answer is no. And that's because I can't tolerate error/falsehood/deception/lies of any sort in my personal understanding of the world. Not just on hell, but on pretty much everything. Heck, someone once convinced me I'd fucked up my understanding of Mercury's rotation and orbit, and I promptly spent some hours researching this and getting myself straightened out. I am not an astrophysicist and I am never likely to need that piece of data again. But I can't stand having errors in my mental database.
It seems to me that at some level belief is a choice. Whilst it might feel from within that these things are a "package deal" and that one isn't being invited to decide which aspects to believe, surely the history of Christian belief says this isn't the case.
If a belief about something or someone is causing mental anguish, one would think that the natural thing to do would be to stop believing it, stop thinking and stop worrying about it. That's a choice.
You can't just stop believing in things. I mean, I'd stop believing that Russia is invading Ukraine, that tens of thousands of Palestinian children weren't dead and that Trump was president of the USA if choosing to believe things changed reality.
No, if a sufficiently compelling line of reasoning were offered, that was more compelling than an existing one, and which led to a different conclusion, then it would logically need to a change in conclusion, or belief. That's what a belief is to me - a conclusion reached from a line of reasoning from available evidence.
But I'm not sure of the why implicit in your formulation. If I didn't already believe a proposition were true, why would I try to convince myself it was? If I did already think it was true, then I wouldn't need to convince myself. It seems to postulate a set of propositions which I think are true but which I don't currently believe, which is a logical contradiction. "Believe" and "Think to be true" are synonymous.
As you've said before. And as I've said before, they might be synonymous for you, but they're not synonymous for me. There are a whole load of beliefs that I hold that have not come about as a result of a rational consideration of reasoned arguments. I suspect this is true for most of us. Why do we celebrate birthdays? What is it that we believe about birthdays that leads us to think that we should celebrate them?
KarlLB has said exactly what I would have. I’ve no doubt you’ll consider me self-deluded, but from the inside I can tell you that the process of changing one of my beliefs about God etc looks and feels precisely like the process of changing one of my beliefs about astronomy (and yes, I’ve done both). New evidence turns up, I look at it critically, I’m convinced (or not), and then I start incorporating the new understanding into my life. Very boring of me, really.
I don't consider either of you to be deluded.
I suppose part of the question I'm trying to address is that both of you appear to have beliefs about Hell that seem to cause you a certain amount of anguish. Do you want to hold onto these beliefs? If it were possible for you to intentionally change your beliefs about Hell, would you want to do so?
My personal experience that it is possible to change one's beliefs. Taking the current topic, I think where I differ from what you both describe is that, rather than being presented with a reasoned argument (which I'm not planning to do), I believe it is possible for someone to set out to change their beliefs about Hell themself.
And in this, if anything, I suspect that I'm the one who sounds more deluded.
maybe, then, we should drop the whole "deluded" thing, since none of us appears to feel that way about the others!
Do I want to hold on to this belief? Dear God, no. If I could get rid of it, I would.
If it were possible for me to intentionally change my beliefs about hell,...
Well, here's the rub. "Possible" to me means one thing: That sufficient evidence has turned up to allow me to say, "Oh thank God, I was wrong." If that happened, I'd be incredibly glad.
But if you mean "Would you be willing to change your belief regardless of whether it corresponded to reality or not?" the answer is no. And that's because I can't tolerate error/falsehood/deception/lies of any sort in my personal understanding of the world. Not just on hell, but on pretty much everything. Heck, someone once convinced me I'd fucked up my understanding of Mercury's rotation and orbit, and I promptly spent some hours researching this and getting myself straightened out. I am not an astrophysicist and I am never likely to need that piece of data again. But I can't stand having errors in my mental database.
It seems to me that at some level belief is a choice. Whilst it might feel from within that these things are a "package deal" and that one isn't being invited to decide which aspects to believe, surely the history of Christian belief says this isn't the case.
If a belief about something or someone is causing mental anguish, one would think that the natural thing to do would be to stop believing it, stop thinking and stop worrying about it. That's a choice.
You can't just stop believing in things. I mean, I'd stop believing that Russia is invading Ukraine, that tens of thousands of Palestinian children weren't dead and that Trump was president of the USA if choosing to believe things changed reality.
I think you are comparing apples with rainbows in this example.
No, if a sufficiently compelling line of reasoning were offered, that was more compelling than an existing one, and which led to a different conclusion, then it would logically need to a change in conclusion, or belief. That's what a belief is to me - a conclusion reached from a line of reasoning from available evidence.
But I'm not sure of the why implicit in your formulation. If I didn't already believe a proposition were true, why would I try to convince myself it was? If I did already think it was true, then I wouldn't need to convince myself. It seems to postulate a set of propositions which I think are true but which I don't currently believe, which is a logical contradiction. "Believe" and "Think to be true" are synonymous.
As you've said before. And as I've said before, they might be synonymous for you, but they're not synonymous for me. There are a whole load of beliefs that I hold that have not come about as a result of a rational consideration of reasoned arguments. I suspect this is true for most of us. Why do we celebrate birthdays? What is it that we believe about birthdays that leads us to think that we should celebrate them?
KarlLB has said exactly what I would have. I’ve no doubt you’ll consider me self-deluded, but from the inside I can tell you that the process of changing one of my beliefs about God etc looks and feels precisely like the process of changing one of my beliefs about astronomy (and yes, I’ve done both). New evidence turns up, I look at it critically, I’m convinced (or not), and then I start incorporating the new understanding into my life. Very boring of me, really.
I don't consider either of you to be deluded.
I suppose part of the question I'm trying to address is that both of you appear to have beliefs about Hell that seem to cause you a certain amount of anguish. Do you want to hold onto these beliefs? If it were possible for you to intentionally change your beliefs about Hell, would you want to do so?
My personal experience that it is possible to change one's beliefs. Taking the current topic, I think where I differ from what you both describe is that, rather than being presented with a reasoned argument (which I'm not planning to do), I believe it is possible for someone to set out to change their beliefs about Hell themself.
And in this, if anything, I suspect that I'm the one who sounds more deluded.
maybe, then, we should drop the whole "deluded" thing, since none of us appears to feel that way about the others!
Do I want to hold on to this belief? Dear God, no. If I could get rid of it, I would.
If it were possible for me to intentionally change my beliefs about hell,...
Well, here's the rub. "Possible" to me means one thing: That sufficient evidence has turned up to allow me to say, "Oh thank God, I was wrong." If that happened, I'd be incredibly glad.
But if you mean "Would you be willing to change your belief regardless of whether it corresponded to reality or not?" the answer is no. And that's because I can't tolerate error/falsehood/deception/lies of any sort in my personal understanding of the world. Not just on hell, but on pretty much everything. Heck, someone once convinced me I'd fucked up my understanding of Mercury's rotation and orbit, and I promptly spent some hours researching this and getting myself straightened out. I am not an astrophysicist and I am never likely to need that piece of data again. But I can't stand having errors in my mental database.
It seems to me that at some level belief is a choice. Whilst it might feel from within that these things are a "package deal" and that one isn't being invited to decide which aspects to believe, surely the history of Christian belief says this isn't the case.
If a belief about something or someone is causing mental anguish, one would think that the natural thing to do would be to stop believing it, stop thinking and stop worrying about it. That's a choice.
You can't just stop believing in things. I mean, I'd stop believing that Russia is invading Ukraine, that tens of thousands of Palestinian children weren't dead and that Trump was president of the USA if choosing to believe things changed reality.
I think you are comparing apples with rainbows in this example.
Not really. If Hell is real it's as real as Gaza, the White House and Kiiv. And choosing to believe otherwise wouldn't make a smidgeon of difference to its reality.
In the first place, beliefs are subjective attitudes. That is, they're mental properties we, as individuals, have regarding things, rather than being qualities of the things we have beliefs about.
The problem here is that 'subjective' is polysemous, as is 'objective', and it is all too easy when not careful to move between attributing 'subjective' to the attitude and attributing 'subjective' to the object of the attitude.
To address this again, subjective has more than one meaning.
I might talk about an objective judgement, by which I would mean a judgement based on beliefs about evidence as opposed to my personal inclination and preferences. From there, it's natural to talk about a subjective judgement, being one based more on personal factors rather than on neutrally evaluating the evidence.
But that is a different sense of subjective from the sense you're using 'subjective' in above. And it would be a fallacy of equivocation to move from 'beliefs are subjective attitudes, that is mental properties of individuals' to 'beliefs are subjective, that is based on personal inclination rather than neutral evidence'.
Fair enough. Though I think these two uses are related (whether that's useful or not is another question), and I can think of different ways to take "based on".
No, if a sufficiently compelling line of reasoning were offered, that was more compelling than an existing one, and which led to a different conclusion, then it would logically need to a change in conclusion, or belief. That's what a belief is to me - a conclusion reached from a line of reasoning from available evidence.
But I'm not sure of the why implicit in your formulation. If I didn't already believe a proposition were true, why would I try to convince myself it was? If I did already think it was true, then I wouldn't need to convince myself. It seems to postulate a set of propositions which I think are true but which I don't currently believe, which is a logical contradiction. "Believe" and "Think to be true" are synonymous.
As you've said before. And as I've said before, they might be synonymous for you, but they're not synonymous for me. There are a whole load of beliefs that I hold that have not come about as a result of a rational consideration of reasoned arguments. I suspect this is true for most of us. Why do we celebrate birthdays? What is it that we believe about birthdays that leads us to think that we should celebrate them?
KarlLB has said exactly what I would have. I’ve no doubt you’ll consider me self-deluded, but from the inside I can tell you that the process of changing one of my beliefs about God etc looks and feels precisely like the process of changing one of my beliefs about astronomy (and yes, I’ve done both). New evidence turns up, I look at it critically, I’m convinced (or not), and then I start incorporating the new understanding into my life. Very boring of me, really.
I don't consider either of you to be deluded.
I suppose part of the question I'm trying to address is that both of you appear to have beliefs about Hell that seem to cause you a certain amount of anguish. Do you want to hold onto these beliefs? If it were possible for you to intentionally change your beliefs about Hell, would you want to do so?
My personal experience that it is possible to change one's beliefs. Taking the current topic, I think where I differ from what you both describe is that, rather than being presented with a reasoned argument (which I'm not planning to do), I believe it is possible for someone to set out to change their beliefs about Hell themself.
And in this, if anything, I suspect that I'm the one who sounds more deluded.
maybe, then, we should drop the whole "deluded" thing, since none of us appears to feel that way about the others!
Do I want to hold on to this belief? Dear God, no. If I could get rid of it, I would.
If it were possible for me to intentionally change my beliefs about hell,...
Well, here's the rub. "Possible" to me means one thing: That sufficient evidence has turned up to allow me to say, "Oh thank God, I was wrong." If that happened, I'd be incredibly glad.
But if you mean "Would you be willing to change your belief regardless of whether it corresponded to reality or not?" the answer is no. And that's because I can't tolerate error/falsehood/deception/lies of any sort in my personal understanding of the world. Not just on hell, but on pretty much everything. Heck, someone once convinced me I'd fucked up my understanding of Mercury's rotation and orbit, and I promptly spent some hours researching this and getting myself straightened out. I am not an astrophysicist and I am never likely to need that piece of data again. But I can't stand having errors in my mental database.
It seems to me that at some level belief is a choice. Whilst it might feel from within that these things are a "package deal" and that one isn't being invited to decide which aspects to believe, surely the history of Christian belief says this isn't the case.
If a belief about something or someone is causing mental anguish, one would think that the natural thing to do would be to stop believing it, stop thinking and stop worrying about it. That's a choice.
You can't just stop believing in things. I mean, I'd stop believing that Russia is invading Ukraine, that tens of thousands of Palestinian children weren't dead and that Trump was president of the USA if choosing to believe things changed reality.
I think you are comparing apples with rainbows in this example.
Not really. If Hell is real it's as real as Gaza, the White House and Kiiv. And choosing to believe otherwise wouldn't make a smidgeon of difference to its reality.
There are reasons to believe in physical locations. What reasons are there to believe in a hell? Why should one have to believe in the version of the doctrine you have in your head rather than another?
Hell is an idea. Gaza is a place. Do you really not see why those are different?
No, if a sufficiently compelling line of reasoning were offered, that was more compelling than an existing one, and which led to a different conclusion, then it would logically need to a change in conclusion, or belief. That's what a belief is to me - a conclusion reached from a line of reasoning from available evidence.
But I'm not sure of the why implicit in your formulation. If I didn't already believe a proposition were true, why would I try to convince myself it was? If I did already think it was true, then I wouldn't need to convince myself. It seems to postulate a set of propositions which I think are true but which I don't currently believe, which is a logical contradiction. "Believe" and "Think to be true" are synonymous.
As you've said before. And as I've said before, they might be synonymous for you, but they're not synonymous for me. There are a whole load of beliefs that I hold that have not come about as a result of a rational consideration of reasoned arguments. I suspect this is true for most of us. Why do we celebrate birthdays? What is it that we believe about birthdays that leads us to think that we should celebrate them?
KarlLB has said exactly what I would have. I’ve no doubt you’ll consider me self-deluded, but from the inside I can tell you that the process of changing one of my beliefs about God etc looks and feels precisely like the process of changing one of my beliefs about astronomy (and yes, I’ve done both). New evidence turns up, I look at it critically, I’m convinced (or not), and then I start incorporating the new understanding into my life. Very boring of me, really.
I don't consider either of you to be deluded.
I suppose part of the question I'm trying to address is that both of you appear to have beliefs about Hell that seem to cause you a certain amount of anguish. Do you want to hold onto these beliefs? If it were possible for you to intentionally change your beliefs about Hell, would you want to do so?
My personal experience that it is possible to change one's beliefs. Taking the current topic, I think where I differ from what you both describe is that, rather than being presented with a reasoned argument (which I'm not planning to do), I believe it is possible for someone to set out to change their beliefs about Hell themself.
And in this, if anything, I suspect that I'm the one who sounds more deluded.
maybe, then, we should drop the whole "deluded" thing, since none of us appears to feel that way about the others!
Do I want to hold on to this belief? Dear God, no. If I could get rid of it, I would.
If it were possible for me to intentionally change my beliefs about hell,...
Well, here's the rub. "Possible" to me means one thing: That sufficient evidence has turned up to allow me to say, "Oh thank God, I was wrong." If that happened, I'd be incredibly glad.
But if you mean "Would you be willing to change your belief regardless of whether it corresponded to reality or not?" the answer is no. And that's because I can't tolerate error/falsehood/deception/lies of any sort in my personal understanding of the world. Not just on hell, but on pretty much everything. Heck, someone once convinced me I'd fucked up my understanding of Mercury's rotation and orbit, and I promptly spent some hours researching this and getting myself straightened out. I am not an astrophysicist and I am never likely to need that piece of data again. But I can't stand having errors in my mental database.
It seems to me that at some level belief is a choice. Whilst it might feel from within that these things are a "package deal" and that one isn't being invited to decide which aspects to believe, surely the history of Christian belief says this isn't the case.
If a belief about something or someone is causing mental anguish, one would think that the natural thing to do would be to stop believing it, stop thinking and stop worrying about it. That's a choice.
You can't just stop believing in things. I mean, I'd stop believing that Russia is invading Ukraine, that tens of thousands of Palestinian children weren't dead and that Trump was president of the USA if choosing to believe things changed reality.
I think you are comparing apples with rainbows in this example.
Not really. If Hell is real it's as real as Gaza, the White House and Kiiv. And choosing to believe otherwise wouldn't make a smidgeon of difference to its reality.
There are reasons to believe in physical locations. What reasons are there to believe in a hell? Why should one have to believe in the version of the doctrine you have in your head rather than another?
Hell is an idea. Gaza is a place. Do you really not see why those are different?
If Hell is only an idea, then by definition you don't believe in it. The question is whether it is indeed just an idea or if it's real.
Trying to understand your post, @Basketactortale . Are you suggesting that the the solution to the problem of 'hell' only arose with the earthly ministry of Jesus?
I apologise but I don't understand your question.
You said 'respect for your ancestors beyond 2000 years' -which I took to be the time since Jesus was on earth. If that's right then I was interested in clarifying what changed, with respect to hell, at that point in time.
Are we not discussing the whole "believers go to heaven, the fallen go to hell" Christian theology?
Unless I'm missing something, this Christian idea is something from the Christian era.
No, if a sufficiently compelling line of reasoning were offered, that was more compelling than an existing one, and which led to a different conclusion, then it would logically need to a change in conclusion, or belief. That's what a belief is to me - a conclusion reached from a line of reasoning from available evidence.
But I'm not sure of the why implicit in your formulation. If I didn't already believe a proposition were true, why would I try to convince myself it was? If I did already think it was true, then I wouldn't need to convince myself. It seems to postulate a set of propositions which I think are true but which I don't currently believe, which is a logical contradiction. "Believe" and "Think to be true" are synonymous.
As you've said before. And as I've said before, they might be synonymous for you, but they're not synonymous for me. There are a whole load of beliefs that I hold that have not come about as a result of a rational consideration of reasoned arguments. I suspect this is true for most of us. Why do we celebrate birthdays? What is it that we believe about birthdays that leads us to think that we should celebrate them?
KarlLB has said exactly what I would have. I’ve no doubt you’ll consider me self-deluded, but from the inside I can tell you that the process of changing one of my beliefs about God etc looks and feels precisely like the process of changing one of my beliefs about astronomy (and yes, I’ve done both). New evidence turns up, I look at it critically, I’m convinced (or not), and then I start incorporating the new understanding into my life. Very boring of me, really.
I don't consider either of you to be deluded.
I suppose part of the question I'm trying to address is that both of you appear to have beliefs about Hell that seem to cause you a certain amount of anguish. Do you want to hold onto these beliefs? If it were possible for you to intentionally change your beliefs about Hell, would you want to do so?
My personal experience that it is possible to change one's beliefs. Taking the current topic, I think where I differ from what you both describe is that, rather than being presented with a reasoned argument (which I'm not planning to do), I believe it is possible for someone to set out to change their beliefs about Hell themself.
And in this, if anything, I suspect that I'm the one who sounds more deluded.
maybe, then, we should drop the whole "deluded" thing, since none of us appears to feel that way about the others!
Do I want to hold on to this belief? Dear God, no. If I could get rid of it, I would.
If it were possible for me to intentionally change my beliefs about hell,...
Well, here's the rub. "Possible" to me means one thing: That sufficient evidence has turned up to allow me to say, "Oh thank God, I was wrong." If that happened, I'd be incredibly glad.
But if you mean "Would you be willing to change your belief regardless of whether it corresponded to reality or not?" the answer is no. And that's because I can't tolerate error/falsehood/deception/lies of any sort in my personal understanding of the world. Not just on hell, but on pretty much everything. Heck, someone once convinced me I'd fucked up my understanding of Mercury's rotation and orbit, and I promptly spent some hours researching this and getting myself straightened out. I am not an astrophysicist and I am never likely to need that piece of data again. But I can't stand having errors in my mental database.
It seems to me that at some level belief is a choice. Whilst it might feel from within that these things are a "package deal" and that one isn't being invited to decide which aspects to believe, surely the history of Christian belief says this isn't the case.
If a belief about something or someone is causing mental anguish, one would think that the natural thing to do would be to stop believing it, stop thinking and stop worrying about it. That's a choice.
You can't just stop believing in things. I mean, I'd stop believing that Russia is invading Ukraine, that tens of thousands of Palestinian children weren't dead and that Trump was president of the USA if choosing to believe things changed reality.
I think you are comparing apples with rainbows in this example.
Not really. If Hell is real it's as real as Gaza, the White House and Kiiv. And choosing to believe otherwise wouldn't make a smidgeon of difference to its reality.
There are reasons to believe in physical locations. What reasons are there to believe in a hell? Why should one have to believe in the version of the doctrine you have in your head rather than another?
Hell is an idea. Gaza is a place. Do you really not see why those are different?
I’d suggest that you’re placing your thumb on the scales a little bit here. Just because you believe Hell is an idea rather than a place doesn’t mean others do as well. If you want to understand why someone believes what they do, it’s best not to impose your own suppositions on them.
I suppose part of the question I'm trying to address is that both of you appear to have beliefs about Hell that seem to cause you a certain amount of anguish. Do you want to hold onto these beliefs? If it were possible for you to intentionally change your beliefs about Hell, would you want to do so?
My personal experience that it is possible to change one's beliefs. Taking the current topic, I think where I differ from what you both describe is that, rather than being presented with a reasoned argument (which I'm not planning to do), I believe it is possible for someone to set out to change their beliefs about Hell themself.
Do I want to hold on to this belief? Dear God, no. If I could get rid of it, I would.
If it were possible for me to intentionally change my beliefs about hell,...
Well, here's the rub. "Possible" to me means one thing: That sufficient evidence has turned up to allow me to say, "Oh thank God, I was wrong." If that happened, I'd be incredibly glad.
But if you mean "Would you be willing to change your belief regardless of whether it corresponded to reality or not?" the answer is no. And that's because I can't tolerate error/falsehood/deception/lies of any sort in my personal understanding of the world. Not just on hell, but on pretty much everything.
I'm afraid that's not really the question I'm asking. I don't see the issue of corresponding to reality as being clear cut - I think all that any of us can say is whether something corresponds to our own current perception or understanding of reality. So the question might become something like "would you be willing to change your perception or understanding of reality?" But I suspect your answer wouldn't be any different, because I'm still asking a question that depends on a different understanding of what is possible from the one you have.
Heck, someone once convinced me I'd fucked up my understanding of Mercury's rotation and orbit, and I promptly spent some hours researching this and getting myself straightened out. I am not an astrophysicist and I am never likely to need that piece of data again.
Unless we ever get back to discussing General relativity…
But I can't stand having errors in my mental database.
You can't just stop believing in things. I mean, I'd stop believing that Russia is invading Ukraine, that tens of thousands of Palestinian children weren't dead and that Trump was president of the USA if choosing to believe things changed reality.
What about ceasing to believe in the importance of birthdays?
I assume LC believes in Hell because of what is written in the bible - if I get Pease's question correctly it would be something like - how do you end up believing in this particular interpretation of scripture (that you find so unpleasant).
So, if I might ask LC, is it your experience that God has told you about Hell directly and/or is it your experience that God has led you to this specific interpretation of scripture ? If not, how did you end up at this interpretation - is it something you came to from reading the bible, or from your theological education in a specific faith tradition ?
That's not a belief in the sense we're discussing things here. Among other reasons, the importance of birthdays (to whom or what? In what context? Producing what results or signs?) is a continuum, unlike the existence of hell.
The importance of birthdays is at base an opinion and therefore unprovable under any circumstances ever. The existence of hell is unprovable at the present time (and may it stay so for all of us, forever) but is in theory a thing that could be proven by experience.
I'm sure someone could phrase this better, and would be grateful to anyone who knows the name of the difference I'm fumbling to phrase.
That's not a belief in the sense we're discussing things here. Among other reasons, the importance of birthdays (to whom or what? In what context? Producing what results or signs?) is a continuum, unlike the existence of hell.
The importance of birthdays is at base an opinion and therefore unprovable under any circumstances ever. The existence of hell is unprovable at the present time (and may it stay so for all of us, forever) but is in theory a thing that could be proven by experience.
I'm sure someone could phrase this better, and would be grateful to anyone who knows the name of the difference I'm fumbling to phrase.
I think it's our old friends objective and subjective again.
The part I'm not understanding is why this conception of hell is necessary to believe. Clearly other Christians have believed other things about hell, but for some reason it seems that people believe in eternal damnation whilst also accepting that it is unpalatable.
I don't think it is like other geographical things.
I suggest that humanity has been aware of the moon for a long time. People came up with many stories about it, but how well those related to the physical composition was only revealed when we finally went there.
But hell is a whole other thing. It's like all the ancient stories about the moon - but without even having the ability to sit out on a dark night and look at it.
The part I'm not understanding is why this conception of hell is necessary to believe. Clearly other Christians have believed other things about hell, but for some reason it seems that people believe in eternal damnation whilst also accepting that it is unpalatable.
I don't think it is like other geographical things.
I suggest that humanity has been aware of the moon for a long time. People came up with many stories about it, but how well those related to the physical composition was only revealed when we finally went there.
But hell is a whole other thing. It's like all the ancient stories about the moon - but without even having the ability to sit out on a dark night and look at it.
Instead of the moon, consider a distant star. It's possible it may have a planet orbiting it. It may not. For the sake of argument, assume our ability to detect exoplanets is not up to ruling on the matter.
The planet, if it exists, which we cannot know, exists whether we believe it or not. Our beliefs have absolutely no bearing on its existence or otherwise.
I don't think it's like that. It's more like looking at the stars and seeing patterns that have some impact on human lives.
And then saying that it's just a true/false thing like whether cheese is or isn't made from goats milk.
I think you're begging the question. If Hell doesn't exist, then beliefs about it are arbitrary and matter only inasmuch as they affect the people holding them. But the existence of Hell is the question being asked, so a particular conclusion - it doesn't exist- can't be one of the premises.
The part I'm not understanding is why this conception of hell is necessary to believe. Clearly other Christians have believed other things about hell, but for some reason it seems that people believe in eternal damnation whilst also accepting that it is unpalatable.
I don't think it is like other geographical things.
I suggest that humanity has been aware of the moon for a long time. People came up with many stories about it, but how well those related to the physical composition was only revealed when we finally went there.
But hell is a whole other thing. It's like all the ancient stories about the moon - but without even having the ability to sit out on a dark night and look at it.
Instead of the moon, consider a distant star. It's possible it may have a planet orbiting it. It may not. For the sake of argument, assume our ability to detect exoplanets is not up to ruling on the matter.
The planet, if it exists, which we cannot know, exists whether we believe it or not. Our beliefs have absolutely no bearing on its existence or otherwise.
Okay, to clear up one problem—the primary issue (whether hell exists) is not the same thing at all as arguing about whether it is a geographic space on the lines of the moon or some distant star. Nobody here to my knowledge has argued that it is a physical space of that sort. Normally it is considered a spiritual state which one may or may not inhabit after death—that is to say, as a spirit, embodied or not. The after death bit already puts paid to the idea of this being geography as the moon or Vietnam is geography. For all the place-like descriptions in parables etc, I think it’s always been understood that hell is primarily a state of being—a state of eternal ruin, privation, condemnation, and loss. That’s what we’re arguing about, not the rather naive question of what we might find if we only looked far enough. It’s the idea that such a distressing state might exist that offends people, not geographic issues.
If you’re truly interested in location and other place details, nobody’s going to be able to answer, and a significant number of us will think you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Good has never given us that kind of information—what we know about final states like hell are necessarily couched in metaphorical language because that’s the only way we can grasp certain spiritual realities that come after this life. Might they be actual places? I suppose they might, if God chose. But for purposes of this argument, the emphasis is on “actual,” that is, real, and not on “ places.” Whatever hell turns out to be in the end from a classification standpoint, it is horrible.
KarlLB has said exactly what I would have. I’ve no doubt you’ll consider me self-deluded, but from the inside I can tell you that the process of changing one of my beliefs about God etc looks and feels precisely like the process of changing one of my beliefs about astronomy (and yes, I’ve done both). New evidence turns up, I look at it critically, I’m convinced (or not), and then I start incorporating the new understanding into my life. Very boring of me, really.
That is a comment worth re-reading and then reading again. It covers a lot of territory; not just the present discussion. Changing a belief takes a lot of work and evidence.
That's not a belief in the sense we're discussing things here. Among other reasons, the importance of birthdays (to whom or what? In what context? Producing what results or signs?) is a continuum, unlike the existence of hell.
The importance of birthdays is at base an opinion and therefore unprovable under any circumstances ever. The existence of hell is unprovable at the present time (and may it stay so for all of us, forever) but is in theory a thing that could be proven by experience.
I'm sure someone could phrase this better, and would be grateful to anyone who knows the name of the difference I'm fumbling to phrase.
I am aware of there a wide range of beliefs about hell, even if they don't quite stretch to being a continuum.
The original question (to KarlLB) was about the belief held by a significant number of people that birthdays matter and should be celebrated. I use the word "belief" because I think it does apply in the same way being discussed here - how human beings believe - even if these two things are of rather different degrees of immediacy and significance.
I'm intrigued by the idea that hell is in theory a thing that could be proven by experience.
Thanks, Lamb Chopped - I'm giving it some more thought.
That's not a belief in the sense we're discussing things here. Among other reasons, the importance of birthdays (to whom or what? In what context? Producing what results or signs?) is a continuum, unlike the existence of hell.
The importance of birthdays is at base an opinion and therefore unprovable under any circumstances ever. The existence of hell is unprovable at the present time (and may it stay so for all of us, forever) but is in theory a thing that could be proven by experience.
I'm sure someone could phrase this better, and would be grateful to anyone who knows the name of the difference I'm fumbling to phrase.
I am aware of there a wide range of beliefs about hell, even if they don't quite stretch to being a continuum.
The original question (to KarlLB) was about the belief held by a significant number of people that birthdays matter and should be celebrated. I use the word "belief" because I think it does apply in the same way being discussed here - how human beings believe - even if these two things are of rather different degrees of immediacy and significance.
Maybe, though I’m not completely convinced.
I think what @KarlLB and @Lamb Chopped are getting it is whether a belief is true, whether it is grounded in reality, whether it accurately perceives how things actually are. And what they are saying, it seems to me, is that they are unable to convince themselves into believing something apart from being convinced that that something is true whether they believe it or not. I strongly suspect that they are far from alone in that.
There are lots of people who choose to believe—or at least choose to act as though they believe—that climate change is not real, or is not really a problem, though my experience tells me that not many such people are found on the Ship. I suspect most of us here would say as much mental anguish that concern over climate change may cause us, we cannot simply choose to believe that climate change isn’t a problem so as to avoid that mental anguish.
I think this is the problem: the assertion that belief in hell is the same kind of thing as belief in climate change or the effectiveness of vaccinations. It's not.
That's not a belief in the sense we're discussing things here. Among other reasons, the importance of birthdays (to whom or what? In what context? Producing what results or signs?) is a continuum, unlike the existence of hell.
The importance of birthdays is at base an opinion and therefore unprovable under any circumstances ever. The existence of hell is unprovable at the present time (and may it stay so for all of us, forever) but is in theory a thing that could be proven by experience.
I'm sure someone could phrase this better, and would be grateful to anyone who knows the name of the difference I'm fumbling to phrase.
I am aware of there a wide range of beliefs about hell, even if they don't quite stretch to being a continuum.
The original question (to KarlLB) was about the belief held by a significant number of people that birthdays matter and should be celebrated. I use the word "belief" because I think it does apply in the same way being discussed here - how human beings believe - even if these two things are of rather different degrees of immediacy and significance.
Maybe, though I’m not completely convinced.
I think what @KarlLB and @Lamb Chopped are getting it is whether a belief is true, whether it is grounded in reality, whether it accurately perceives how things actually are. And what they are saying, it seems to me, is that they are unable to convince themselves into believing something apart from being convinced that that something is true whether they believe it or not. I strongly suspect that they are far from alone in that.
There are lots of people who choose to believe—or at least choose to act as though they believe—that climate change is not real, or is not really a problem, though my experience tells me that not many such people are found on the Ship. I suspect most of us here would say as much mental anguish that concern over climate change may cause us, we cannot simply choose to believe that climate change isn’t a problem so as to avoid that mental anguish.
This is a good example.
Another one might be the fact that x whom I care about has cancer. My belief that she has cancer causes me much pain. Nevertheless I would not seek to alter my belief (that she has cancer) unless she informed me she was cured.
I think this is the problem: the assertion that belief in hell is the same kind of thing as belief in climate change or the effectiveness of vaccinations. It's not.
It's not so much that the belief is the same. It's that if Hell exists it's as objectively real as climate change or vaccine efficacy. So therefore what matters to me is what is true, not what I'd like to be true.
As it happens I don't believe Hell as commonly imagined is real, as a result of a chain of reasoning not far unlike Rob Bell's (Love Wins). If I'm right then a lot of people are objectively wrong. To be honest it's the ones who will be disappointed who worry me.
I think this is the problem: the assertion that belief in hell is the same kind of thing as belief in climate change or the effectiveness of vaccinations. It's not.
It's not so much that the belief is the same. It's that if Hell exists it's as objectively real as climate change or vaccine efficacy. So therefore what matters to me is what is true, not what I'd like to be true.
As it happens I don't believe Hell as commonly imagined is real, as a result of a chain of reasoning not far unlike Rob Bell's (Love Wins). If I'm right then a lot of people are objectively wrong. To be honest it's the ones who will be disappointed who worry me.
Do you commonly go around worrying about other doctrines you don't believe in or is it just this one? There are various other ideas about the afterlife, what's so special about this one?
I think this is the problem: the assertion that belief in hell is the same kind of thing as belief in climate change or the effectiveness of vaccinations. It's not.
Why is it not? Can you demonstrate that it’s not, or how it’s not?
To be honest, it seems to me that the problem is that you are putting religious beliefs in a category of “things we choose to believe because we find it useful or helpful, or just find it more agreeable,” while the people who hold those religious beliefs put them in the category of “things I’m convinced are true, and cannot choose not to believe without being convinced I’m wrong about it being true.” As a result, the discussion is predicated on inconsistent assumptions about the subject under discussion.
That's also what makes it so frustrating to interact with you. You persist in telling us we can choose to change our beliefs and consider us unreasonable when we don't, though we've already told you that these fall into Nick's second category, not the first. You yourself would not and likely could not change your beliefs about, say, the dangers of drunk driving, regardless of how much happier it might make you to believe that nobody ever suffered as a result. You would tell us you could not change those beliefs. Just as we are telling you.
I think this is the problem: the assertion that belief in hell is the same kind of thing as belief in climate change or the effectiveness of vaccinations. It's not.
It's not so much that the belief is the same. It's that if Hell exists it's as objectively real as climate change or vaccine efficacy. So therefore what matters to me is what is true, not what I'd like to be true.
As it happens I don't believe Hell as commonly imagined is real, as a result of a chain of reasoning not far unlike Rob Bell's (Love Wins). If I'm right then a lot of people are objectively wrong. To be honest it's the ones who will be disappointed who worry me.
Do you commonly go around worrying about other doctrines you don't believe in or is it just this one? There are various other ideas about the afterlife, what's so special about this one?
This unfortunately does not feel like an emotionally safe space to discuss that.
I think this is the problem: the assertion that belief in hell is the same kind of thing as belief in climate change or the effectiveness of vaccinations. It's not.
Why is it not? Can you demonstrate that it’s not, or how it’s not?
To be honest, it seems to me that the problem is that you are putting religious beliefs in a category of “things we choose to believe because we find it useful or helpful, or just find it more agreeable,” while the people who hold those religious beliefs put them in the category of “things I’m convinced are true, and cannot choose not to believe without being convinced I’m wrong about it being true.” As a result, the discussion is predicated on inconsistent assumptions about the subject under discussion.
I'm not sure that it is like that.
Things that happen to you after you've died are in the category of unprovable, unfalsifiable, conjecture and ideas. Mix into this pot that there have been other contradictory ideas within Christianity never mind outside of it.
And yet you are telling me that's just the same as provable, falsifiable, data-driven concepts like the geographic location of Belgium, whether that person over there truly has tuberculosis or whether the planet is getting warmer.
I can't explain why a philosophical idea is different to a cancer diagnosis, no.
Also I think arguably those who have said that the belief in the one is the same as belief in the other have the onus to explain why they are the same.
I think it's fairly obvious why they are different kinds of thing.
Everything, at root, is different from everything else. That's why the onus is on you, not on us. We could come up with a zillion ways that the idea of hell is or is not different from a cancer diagnosis, and you could shoot them all down by saying, "That's not what I mean" and saying nothing more. That would be a huge waste of time. That's why the onus is on you--because otherwise you're expecting us to read your mind.
Your first three terms (data-driven, provable and falsifiable) are a pretty decent reply to what we were asking for. Next time just spit it out.
Now, of course, it's on us to reply. I'll do what I can.
Data-driven--well, I take this to mean that you believe in a cancer diagnosis because the data that supports it exists from a source you trust. I think that is reasonable, we call it the appeal to authority (because you yourself, I trust, are not an oncologist. If you are, that would be a different appeal.). You are trusting an oncologist to tell you, "Yes, this is cancer."
Provable--I take you to mean that it is possible to reach a yes or no answer about whether it is cancer (which is not possible, for example, in the case of the question of whether birthdays are important). Okay, I'll go for that.
falsifiable--this is the other side of "provable." The matter can be shown to be false, IF it happens to be false.
Based on these, I am happy to admit that "a cancer diagnosis" is a knowable thing, an objective reality that either exists or does not in a given case.
Now let's try hell. And let's do it with full respect for the fact that we are dealing with something that is different in our ability to access it right now than the cancer diagnosis is.
Data-driven--well, yes. I'd argue that the basic doctrine of hell is data-driven, though my appeal to authority is not to an oncologist, but to Christ's authority as recorded in Scripture. I would secondarily appeal to general experience of human nature and certain logical extrapolations. Before you say it, I am aware that not everyone is going to accept the authority of Christ, or the accurate reportage of what he said in Scripture. Those would be a whole set of subordinate arguments we'd have to have separately if you wished to pursue the matter. But yes, this is an appeal to authority, just as yours is---because most human "data-driven" objects rest on an appeal to authority, simply because one lifetime leaves us so little time to become experts ourselves in so little. You appeal to authority every time you trust a scientist, a judge, an eye witness, and so forth.
okay. Provable. Yes, I'd say hell is provable by personal experience. the hitch here is that you have to die first, due to the nature of hell. Before you take me up on that, I can equally well say that the surface of the latest exo-planet is equally provable by personal experience provided you can travel there--which at the moment is not possible. Nevertheless, no one doubts that the latest exo-planet possesses a surface, or surface analogue (I suppose it might be a water world). Therefore difficulty of access does not in itself place a statement in the "mere subjective opinion" category. It may push it into the "for future explorations" category--that is, unfinished business, just as the continents of the Americas were once unfinished business as far as proof goes--but not thereby "a mere matter of opinion, subjective."
Falsifiable. As I mentioned above, falsifiability is the other side of provability. Hell either does or does not exist. Die (under certain circumstances) and you (general you) will either prove hell or falsify it. You are not likely to be able to report your findings, but you will certainly have them.
So as I see it, the only real difference here between hell and a cancer diagnosis in terms of category is that one is more accessible, and the matter can be settled here and now. The other must wait for a bit. And there are plenty of universally-acknowledged objective realities that also must "wait for a bit" till we can access them and make proven statements about their qualities. So temporary inaccessibility can't be a disqualifier for the category of "objective reality."
Well no. We can know about an exoplanet without traveling to it and I can know about cancer diagnosis without being an oncologist. It's not actually about trust in the person (astronomer or medic) so much as the process of science. If I really wanted to, I could study and find out about the way these people come to their conclusions. It hopefully never is just someone saying something about planets or cancer "because I say so."
I don't accept any of the other descriptions you make about data, falsifiability or provability.
Something you know when you die is by definition not known when you are alive and therefore is conjecture when you are alive.
And "Because Christ said so" is perfectly acceptable provided a) he exists and is as described--that is, the Second Person of the Trinity who created all that is, and b) he actually said so--and for that, we'd have to turn to textual studies, for which I'll refer you to "The boring thread on how we know what we know about what Jesus said and did" (August 2024).
I assume LC believes in Hell because of what is written in the bible - if I get Pease's question correctly it would be something like - how do you end up believing in this particular interpretation of scripture (that you find so unpleasant).
So, if I might ask LC, is it your experience that God has told you about Hell directly and/or is it your experience that God has led you to this specific interpretation of scripture ? If not, how did you end up at this interpretation - is it something you came to from reading the bible, or from your theological education in a specific faith tradition ?
@Lamb Chopped your answer above - appeal to authority - is what I expected - would you be willing to answer these queries ?
Well no. We can know about an exoplanet without traveling to it and I can know about cancer diagnosis without being an oncologist. It's not actually about trust in the person (astronomer or medic) so much as the process of science. If I really wanted to, I could study and find out about the way these people come to their conclusions. It hopefully never is just someone saying something about planets or cancer "because I say so."
I don't accept any of the other descriptions you make about data, falsifiability or provability.
Something you know when you die is by definition not known when you are alive and therefore is conjecture when you are alive.
You are basically just stating that you only except knowledge established by scientific enquiry. (But @lambchopped’s point is that you personally didn’t conduct a scientific process, you rely on statements from those you trust about the results of scientific enquiry.) Religious claims are not scientific hypotheses.
Comments
You said 'respect for your ancestors beyond 2000 years' -which I took to be the time since Jesus was on earth. If that's right then I was interested in clarifying what changed, with respect to hell, at that point in time.
I might talk about an objective judgement, by which I would mean a judgement based on beliefs about evidence as opposed to my personal inclination and preferences. From there, it's natural to talk about a subjective judgement, being one based more on personal factors rather than on neutrally evaluating the evidence.
But that is a different sense of subjective from the sense you're using 'subjective' in above. And it would be a fallacy of equivocation to move from 'beliefs are subjective attitudes, that is mental properties of individuals' to 'beliefs are subjective, that is based on personal inclination rather than neutral evidence'.
As you've said before. And as I've said before, they might be synonymous for you, but they're not synonymous for me. There are a whole load of beliefs that I hold that have not come about as a result of a rational consideration of reasoned arguments. I suspect this is true for most of us. Why do we celebrate birthdays? What is it that we believe about birthdays that leads us to think that we should celebrate them?
I don't consider either of you to be deluded.
I suppose part of the question I'm trying to address is that both of you appear to have beliefs about Hell that seem to cause you a certain amount of anguish. Do you want to hold onto these beliefs? If it were possible for you to intentionally change your beliefs about Hell, would you want to do so?
My personal experience that it is possible to change one's beliefs. Taking the current topic, I think where I differ from what you both describe is that, rather than being presented with a reasoned argument (which I'm not planning to do), I believe it is possible for someone to set out to change their beliefs about Hell themself.
And in this, if anything, I suspect that I'm the one who sounds more deluded.
...and of course soft spoken, gentle mainliners like me are frauds...
And it infuriates me to imagine God condemning such people even to the genteel first circle of eternal torment for crimes that were visited upon them.
Honestly, my God-given ethical sense simply will not tolerate it, so I'll just wave the wand of "Holy Mystery" and declare myself a soft universalist. Damning is God's job, not mine. But I have my suspicions.
[with apologies to anyone who may feel they resemble the people I'm angry at, I do not intend to attack anyone here, this is just a conversation I literally just had. I went to the ship to see if I could start a thread on it and voila! there was one!
I am aware there are conservatives with better sense, but I also am viscerally aware of the logical problem created by theological architecture.]
Are we not discussing the whole "believers go to heaven, the fallen go to hell" Christian theology?
Unless I'm missing something, this Christian idea is something from the Christian era.
maybe, then, we should drop the whole "deluded" thing, since none of us appears to feel that way about the others!
Do I want to hold on to this belief? Dear God, no. If I could get rid of it, I would.
If it were possible for me to intentionally change my beliefs about hell,...
Well, here's the rub. "Possible" to me means one thing: That sufficient evidence has turned up to allow me to say, "Oh thank God, I was wrong." If that happened, I'd be incredibly glad.
But if you mean "Would you be willing to change your belief regardless of whether it corresponded to reality or not?" the answer is no. And that's because I can't tolerate error/falsehood/deception/lies of any sort in my personal understanding of the world. Not just on hell, but on pretty much everything. Heck, someone once convinced me I'd fucked up my understanding of Mercury's rotation and orbit, and I promptly spent some hours researching this and getting myself straightened out. I am not an astrophysicist and I am never likely to need that piece of data again. But I can't stand having errors in my mental database.
I learned much about the attempt to stamp out First Nation indigenous people, much of it in the name of Christianity. Did you know that people from many different language groups were rounded up and dumped into "missions" run by churches, where they were made to work for nothing? That there are clear legacies of this stuff with mothers having their children taken away for ridiculous reasons and people scratching a life in asbestos filled housing in former mission sites because they have nowhere else to go?
Today these groups have lost much of their languages and culture, many of their religious artifacts are in museums and their sacred places are built on.
In these contexts I don't see that the damage which cannot be undone was in any sense weighed against the value of spreading Christianity, including the doctrine of hell.
It seems to me that at some level belief is a choice. Whilst it might feel from within that these things are a "package deal" and that one isn't being invited to decide which aspects to believe, surely the history of Christian belief says this isn't the case.
If a belief about something or someone is causing mental anguish, one would think that the natural thing to do would be to stop believing it, stop thinking and stop worrying about it. That's a choice.
And the fact that other Christians have done X or Y doesn't mean I can or must do X or Y.
ETA that my unwilling belief in hell has nothing to do with any "package deal" nonsense.
I'm not saying you must do anything, I'm saying that other Christians have taken other views on this topic whereas you appear to feel compelled to believe in something you seem to think is unpleasant.
You can't just stop believing in things. I mean, I'd stop believing that Russia is invading Ukraine, that tens of thousands of Palestinian children weren't dead and that Trump was president of the USA if choosing to believe things changed reality.
I think you are comparing apples with rainbows in this example.
Not really. If Hell is real it's as real as Gaza, the White House and Kiiv. And choosing to believe otherwise wouldn't make a smidgeon of difference to its reality.
There are reasons to believe in physical locations. What reasons are there to believe in a hell? Why should one have to believe in the version of the doctrine you have in your head rather than another?
Hell is an idea. Gaza is a place. Do you really not see why those are different?
If Hell is only an idea, then by definition you don't believe in it. The question is whether it is indeed just an idea or if it's real.
I’d suggest that you’re placing your thumb on the scales a little bit here. Just because you believe Hell is an idea rather than a place doesn’t mean others do as well. If you want to understand why someone believes what they do, it’s best not to impose your own suppositions on them.
What about ceasing to believe in the importance of birthdays?
So, if I might ask LC, is it your experience that God has told you about Hell directly and/or is it your experience that God has led you to this specific interpretation of scripture ? If not, how did you end up at this interpretation - is it something you came to from reading the bible, or from your theological education in a specific faith tradition ?
The importance of birthdays is at base an opinion and therefore unprovable under any circumstances ever. The existence of hell is unprovable at the present time (and may it stay so for all of us, forever) but is in theory a thing that could be proven by experience.
I'm sure someone could phrase this better, and would be grateful to anyone who knows the name of the difference I'm fumbling to phrase.
I think it's our old friends objective and subjective again.
I don't think it is like other geographical things.
I suggest that humanity has been aware of the moon for a long time. People came up with many stories about it, but how well those related to the physical composition was only revealed when we finally went there.
But hell is a whole other thing. It's like all the ancient stories about the moon - but without even having the ability to sit out on a dark night and look at it.
Instead of the moon, consider a distant star. It's possible it may have a planet orbiting it. It may not. For the sake of argument, assume our ability to detect exoplanets is not up to ruling on the matter.
The planet, if it exists, which we cannot know, exists whether we believe it or not. Our beliefs have absolutely no bearing on its existence or otherwise.
And then saying that it's just a true/false thing like whether cheese is or isn't made from goats milk.
I think you're begging the question. If Hell doesn't exist, then beliefs about it are arbitrary and matter only inasmuch as they affect the people holding them. But the existence of Hell is the question being asked, so a particular conclusion - it doesn't exist- can't be one of the premises.
I'm saying that they're essentially the same kind of thing: ideas.
Places, stars, other true/not-true statements about cheese and yogurt are clearly different.
To the extent that I really don't understand what you are driving at.
My point is that "Hell is just an idea" is a conclusion. It's another way of saying "not real". So the statement can't be one of our premises.
Okay, to clear up one problem—the primary issue (whether hell exists) is not the same thing at all as arguing about whether it is a geographic space on the lines of the moon or some distant star. Nobody here to my knowledge has argued that it is a physical space of that sort. Normally it is considered a spiritual state which one may or may not inhabit after death—that is to say, as a spirit, embodied or not. The after death bit already puts paid to the idea of this being geography as the moon or Vietnam is geography. For all the place-like descriptions in parables etc, I think it’s always been understood that hell is primarily a state of being—a state of eternal ruin, privation, condemnation, and loss. That’s what we’re arguing about, not the rather naive question of what we might find if we only looked far enough. It’s the idea that such a distressing state might exist that offends people, not geographic issues.
If you’re truly interested in location and other place details, nobody’s going to be able to answer, and a significant number of us will think you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Good has never given us that kind of information—what we know about final states like hell are necessarily couched in metaphorical language because that’s the only way we can grasp certain spiritual realities that come after this life. Might they be actual places? I suppose they might, if God chose. But for purposes of this argument, the emphasis is on “actual,” that is, real, and not on “ places.” Whatever hell turns out to be in the end from a classification standpoint, it is horrible.
That is a comment worth re-reading and then reading again. It covers a lot of territory; not just the present discussion. Changing a belief takes a lot of work and evidence.
The original question (to KarlLB) was about the belief held by a significant number of people that birthdays matter and should be celebrated. I use the word "belief" because I think it does apply in the same way being discussed here - how human beings believe - even if these two things are of rather different degrees of immediacy and significance.
I'm intrigued by the idea that hell is in theory a thing that could be proven by experience.
Thanks, Lamb Chopped - I'm giving it some more thought.
I think what @KarlLB and @Lamb Chopped are getting it is whether a belief is true, whether it is grounded in reality, whether it accurately perceives how things actually are. And what they are saying, it seems to me, is that they are unable to convince themselves into believing something apart from being convinced that that something is true whether they believe it or not. I strongly suspect that they are far from alone in that.
There are lots of people who choose to believe—or at least choose to act as though they believe—that climate change is not real, or is not really a problem, though my experience tells me that not many such people are found on the Ship. I suspect most of us here would say as much mental anguish that concern over climate change may cause us, we cannot simply choose to believe that climate change isn’t a problem so as to avoid that mental anguish.
I think this is the problem: the assertion that belief in hell is the same kind of thing as belief in climate change or the effectiveness of vaccinations. It's not.
This is a good example.
Another one might be the fact that x whom I care about has cancer. My belief that she has cancer causes me much pain. Nevertheless I would not seek to alter my belief (that she has cancer) unless she informed me she was cured.
It's not so much that the belief is the same. It's that if Hell exists it's as objectively real as climate change or vaccine efficacy. So therefore what matters to me is what is true, not what I'd like to be true.
As it happens I don't believe Hell as commonly imagined is real, as a result of a chain of reasoning not far unlike Rob Bell's (Love Wins). If I'm right then a lot of people are objectively wrong. To be honest it's the ones who will be disappointed who worry me.
Do you commonly go around worrying about other doctrines you don't believe in or is it just this one? There are various other ideas about the afterlife, what's so special about this one?
To be honest, it seems to me that the problem is that you are putting religious beliefs in a category of “things we choose to believe because we find it useful or helpful, or just find it more agreeable,” while the people who hold those religious beliefs put them in the category of “things I’m convinced are true, and cannot choose not to believe without being convinced I’m wrong about it being true.” As a result, the discussion is predicated on inconsistent assumptions about the subject under discussion.
This unfortunately does not feel like an emotionally safe space to discuss that.
I'm not sure that it is like that.
Things that happen to you after you've died are in the category of unprovable, unfalsifiable, conjecture and ideas. Mix into this pot that there have been other contradictory ideas within Christianity never mind outside of it.
And yet you are telling me that's just the same as provable, falsifiable, data-driven concepts like the geographic location of Belgium, whether that person over there truly has tuberculosis or whether the planet is getting warmer.
It just isn't.
Also I think arguably those who have said that the belief in the one is the same as belief in the other have the onus to explain why they are the same.
I think it's fairly obvious why they are different kinds of thing.
Now, of course, it's on us to reply. I'll do what I can.
Data-driven--well, I take this to mean that you believe in a cancer diagnosis because the data that supports it exists from a source you trust. I think that is reasonable, we call it the appeal to authority (because you yourself, I trust, are not an oncologist. If you are, that would be a different appeal.). You are trusting an oncologist to tell you, "Yes, this is cancer."
Provable--I take you to mean that it is possible to reach a yes or no answer about whether it is cancer (which is not possible, for example, in the case of the question of whether birthdays are important). Okay, I'll go for that.
falsifiable--this is the other side of "provable." The matter can be shown to be false, IF it happens to be false.
Based on these, I am happy to admit that "a cancer diagnosis" is a knowable thing, an objective reality that either exists or does not in a given case.
Now let's try hell. And let's do it with full respect for the fact that we are dealing with something that is different in our ability to access it right now than the cancer diagnosis is.
Data-driven--well, yes. I'd argue that the basic doctrine of hell is data-driven, though my appeal to authority is not to an oncologist, but to Christ's authority as recorded in Scripture. I would secondarily appeal to general experience of human nature and certain logical extrapolations. Before you say it, I am aware that not everyone is going to accept the authority of Christ, or the accurate reportage of what he said in Scripture. Those would be a whole set of subordinate arguments we'd have to have separately if you wished to pursue the matter. But yes, this is an appeal to authority, just as yours is---because most human "data-driven" objects rest on an appeal to authority, simply because one lifetime leaves us so little time to become experts ourselves in so little. You appeal to authority every time you trust a scientist, a judge, an eye witness, and so forth.
okay. Provable. Yes, I'd say hell is provable by personal experience. the hitch here is that you have to die first, due to the nature of hell. Before you take me up on that, I can equally well say that the surface of the latest exo-planet is equally provable by personal experience provided you can travel there--which at the moment is not possible. Nevertheless, no one doubts that the latest exo-planet possesses a surface, or surface analogue (I suppose it might be a water world). Therefore difficulty of access does not in itself place a statement in the "mere subjective opinion" category. It may push it into the "for future explorations" category--that is, unfinished business, just as the continents of the Americas were once unfinished business as far as proof goes--but not thereby "a mere matter of opinion, subjective."
Falsifiable. As I mentioned above, falsifiability is the other side of provability. Hell either does or does not exist. Die (under certain circumstances) and you (general you) will either prove hell or falsify it. You are not likely to be able to report your findings, but you will certainly have them.
So as I see it, the only real difference here between hell and a cancer diagnosis in terms of category is that one is more accessible, and the matter can be settled here and now. The other must wait for a bit. And there are plenty of universally-acknowledged objective realities that also must "wait for a bit" till we can access them and make proven statements about their qualities. So temporary inaccessibility can't be a disqualifier for the category of "objective reality."
I don't accept any of the other descriptions you make about data, falsifiability or provability.
Something you know when you die is by definition not known when you are alive and therefore is conjecture when you are alive.
@Lamb Chopped your answer above - appeal to authority - is what I expected - would you be willing to answer these queries ?
You are basically just stating that you only except knowledge established by scientific enquiry. (But @lambchopped’s point is that you personally didn’t conduct a scientific process, you rely on statements from those you trust about the results of scientific enquiry.) Religious claims are not scientific hypotheses.