Take all the pain and suffering that has been experienced since life on this earth began, and all the future pain and suffering that will ever be experienced. Every heartbreak, every slow death by disease, every mutilation. Every slave beaten by their master. Every chicken locked in a cage.
Condense all that suffering into a single drop of water. The pain and suffering that a single soul doomed to Hell will feel would be as if all the oceans were overflowing onto the land. An infinite crimson sea.
When people talk about the problem of evil, they are usually gesturing to the droplet rather than the infinite well of suffering. But the latter is far more terrible.
What possible merciful god could allow such infinite suffering?
I always thought this was a bit of an underrated point, that if we all deserve infinite suffering in eternity it’s hard to see why we should feel bad about the suffering we experience in this life. If I had to come up with a defense I guess it would be something like “while we live, God’s goodness is in us, but after we die (unsaved), it’s all stripped away, so we don’t deserve moral consideration anymore”
Well actually that was a pretty common medieval attitude. Obviously you cared for your own personal suffering—animals react to pain, but a general sense that humans had the evils of the world coming was quite common.
Seems to me Ethan is coming from a system of morality that is alien to modern western people - in ancient Near East how bad offense was, WAS proportional to their social standing and punching up was seen as worse than punching down.
Western civilization inverted it, now we sympathize with underdogs and believe punching a disabled person is worse than punching a CEO so the idea that someone could merit infinite suffering for offending the biggest being is unthinkable for us.
The infinite dignity defense of Hell is also inconsistent. If every action taken against God is infinitely bad because God has infinite dignity, then any action taken in favor of him must be infinitely good. Likewise, if any sin, even one committed against other people that has nothing directly to do with God, is an offense against God, then any good deed is an action in God's favor (beyond just the symmetry, this is also implied by what Jesus teaches - "whatever you do for the least of these, you do to me"). So even if we accepted that actions targeting God have infinite moral weight, and that all humans have sinned against God since even ordinary sins are against God, and that desert is real and scales according to the moral weight of the actions taken, and everyone is culpable for their sins against God (even those who don't know that these sins are infinitely grave, or even don't know that God exists at all), we still don't get to the conclusion that everyone deserves Hell. We actually come to the opposite conclusion, that those who have done more good than bad, by ordinary standards, deserve Heaven, since God's infinite dignity means that actually the overall amount of merit they've gotten is infinity, and only those who have (culpably) done more bad than good deserve Hell. And this would mean that desert can't serve as an answer to the problem of Hell at all without contradicting Catholic doctrine, since Catholicism says that no one can merit Heaven by their own power - you need Jesus's sacrifice and the grace provided by the Church. So either God still tortures undeserving people forever, making him morally monstrous, or it's possible to get into Heaven by doing enough good to deserve it, contrary to Catholicism. I'm honestly shocked that anyone takes the desert explanation seriously because I think this problem with it is so obvious (I thought of it in about ten seconds of the first time I heard that explanation in theology class at Catholic school, back when I was still a Catholic and therefore desperately wanted to accept any explanation that would make Hell make sense). And yet this is a common explanation among both Catholics and Protestants and is often extended into an explanation of why the crucifixion was necessary that requires even more insane assumptions.
And that's not even where the problems with the desert explanation end. Even if you accept that desert is real and makes it genuinely good for someone who deserves it to be harmed all else equal, it would obviously sill be bad if an offender got what they deserved in a way that the offendee themself didn't want and in fact desired the opposite of. If you "deserve" to suffer because of what you did to one person, but that person actually doesn't want you to suffer and in fact desires your wellbeing extremely strongly, then obviously it will still be bad if you suffer. After all, what could possibly be good about it? It's not good for you - it's positively bad for you. It's not good for the offendee - once again, it's bad for them, since they desire you wellbeing. And it's not good for any third party either. But this is exactly the situation we're in with people supposedly deserving Hell for offending God. If being all-loving means anything, it means that God doesn't want his creatures to suffer eternally. And Christianity makes it very explicit that God wants all his creatures to be united with him in Heaven, regardless of what they deserve, and he incarnated on Earth to die on the cross for this very purpose. But if God desires that his creatures not suffer forever, it makes absolutely no sense to say that they ought to suffer anyway because they deserve it for wronging God. This would only make things even worse by wronging God even more, since he would now have to see his creatures suffer and never be united with him, contrary to his will. I really can't imagine a more implausible view of desert than one that says that it will still be good to let most people suffer in Hell in this scenario.
And of course, I share your judgement that appeals to a few Catholic Saints who thought they deserved Hell does absolutely nothing to diminish my confidence in these judgements. For one, it's very easy to cherry pick to find a few smart, reflective people throughout history who disagreed with absolutely any claim you could make. This really should not do anything to reduce your confidence - it's obvious that given the huge number of people who have existed, and even the huge number of well-respected people, that some of them will believe crazy things. It would be a good reason to temper your confidence if a large portion of people who you consider epistemic peers or authorities held some judgement, and they had come to this judgement through their own reasoning, evidence, or intuitions, which you had no reason to think was strongly biased. Obviously, I don't think this is at all the case, since I don't think there are any secular moral philosophers at all, even the ones who strongly disagree with me on other issues, that think ECT could be just. Even most Christians, including people who have spent years studying theology, don't understand how it can be just, leading many to reject the doctrine despite the tradition behind it and confirmation bias, and leading the remainder to usually attempt to soften it as much as possible while still considering it to be one of the parts of their faith that they wrestle with. Virtually no one actually finds it intuitive or thinks they could derive it through reason. People only believe it because it's a commitment of their faith, and that includes Padre Pio and Alphonsus Liguori. Given this, I don't think I have any reason whatsoever to defer to their judgements. Non-Catholics don't even have to consider these two moral exemplars or epistemic authorities of any sort, let alone people who deserve such strong deference.
I am a very hopeful universalist, so I have no real interest in defending ECT at all costs. However, I think two points are worth mentioning:
1) You say that you don't share the intuition about "The higher the status of the being, the higher the blameworthiness". OK, that's fine, but Muse really shouldn't care. Like, at all. It is well-known that your moral views are *highly* idiosyncratic. What he should care about is whether the average person would accept such a principle and it seems incredibly obvious to me that such a principle (or at least a very similar one) is part of common sense morality, independently of theistic considerations. Common sense morality doesn't prove anything, but it at least suggests that the view isn't blatantly insane.
2) Regarding your point about non-moral peer-disagreement: What you would need to show for your argument to work is that *among people who are as informed about Fatima as Ethan Muse* there are loads of intelligent people who disagree with Muse's conclusion that it was a genuine miracle. But who are these people supposed to be? I don't know of a single person who is as knowledgeable on that miracle as Muse and who rejects it. Surely there are *some* people, but in order for your response to work you don't need "some" but rather "a very seizable number". What is the evidence for THAT?
1. Well I linked places where I argued against it. But you're right, those moral intuitions aren't the ones that are decisive enough that they should change Ethan's mind.
2. Loads of people. Scott, Mark Grant, etc. And even those who don't display selection effect--Fatima boosters are likelier to look into it carefully.
Wait, you genuinely think Scott Alexander knows as much about the miracle as Ethan Muse? Come one. (I don't know about Mark Grant, but as I said - one counterexample wouldn't be nearly enough of a defeater, I think)
Well, what Scott knows about the miracle has led him to conclude it’s not a miracle despite being interesting, and what Ethan has learned about it has led him to conclude, somehow, that it is evidence in favor of Catholicism so strong it being false is 1*10^60 against or some such absolute foolishness, ignoring that e.g Ethan’s whole world being a Truman Show effort to trick him would be vastly more likely and a million other things.
So I would say Scott knows a lot more about it actually, and Ethan has completely lost the plot.
I mean... have you seen Muse's appearance on Pints With Aquinas? I don't think there is any reason whatsoever to think Scott Alexander could talk about the miracle at this level just because he wrote a decent blog entry on the topic.
Having the details memorized is not trivial. The fact that Ethan is so intimately acquainted with the actual, factual basis of the Fatima event is an enormous boost to his credibility. Alexander really is not at that level, and his blogs on it are noticeably more superficial and limited (though still excellent and well above the average) as a result. IMHO.
They had it in blogging form and I think Scott was more convincing. I agree Muse would win a verbal debate, but that is due to a general principle that Muse always wins verbal debates with everyone on every subject.
Common-sense morality does have a principle like you describe, but the result about ECT is very sensitive to the way it’s formulated. Here is an alternative formulation that I’d argue is more natural: “The more bad someone has done, the more they deserve their misfortune.” After all, babies stereotypically are the worst people to hurt because they are morally blameless. Under this formulation, and assuming God is morally blameless, hurting God would be as bad as hurting a baby. But not worse, let alone infinitely worse.
Meanwhile, there’s another reason babies are stereotypically the worst people to hurt: they can’t defend themselves. “The weaker someone is, the worse it is to hurt them” – this is another common-sense principle tightly intertwined with the first one. (It’s also a Christian principle!) But here of course there’s a great disanalogy to God, who by assumption has zero weakness. If we apply the same naive linear scaling that’s used to justify ECT, then the badness of hurting God should also be multiplied by zero.
Yet another closely related principle is: “The worse off someone is, the worse it is to hurt them.” In part this is a ‘hierarchy of needs’ sort of economic principle (the more economically comfortable you are, the less you’ll suffer from any material harm). In part it’s a purely moral principle that benefit can offset suffering and vice versa. Either way, God again seems not-so-bad to hurt. For the economic aspect, God’s material needs are trivially met. For the moral aspect, while perhaps God has experienced infinite suffering, God has also experienced infinite pleasure, so the factor ends up being either undefined or neutral.
Anyway, if you’re truly only looking for “not blatantly insane” then none of this matters. Almost no view is blatantly insane on a topic with so much uncertainty. (And if you have 10^60 evidence for something then you should probably believe it even if it does seem blatantly insane.) But establishing this point as an actual defense of ECT is a tougher sell.
I disagree that your first principle is "more natural", because it (without my principle) gets obvious cases wrong: For example, I think it is more obvious than anything that it would be much worse to spit on Jesus' feet than to spit on the feet of someone with severe down syndrome, even if they have the same level of moral culpability - 0. Not because of anything about moral desert, but because of what spitting at Jesus' feet would say about YOU - it's agent-centred, not patient-centred. Do you disagree it would be worse to spit on Jesus' feet, knowing him to be God incarnate?
I don't think sin is bad because it hurts God, whom I take to be immutable and impassible - it is wrong because it corrupts the soul.
Regarding the non-insanity part: Let me clarify, it's not just that the probability isn't 1^60 low. It's that if you understand what mortal sin is in Catholicism (grave matter AND deliberate consent AND full knowledge), then - conditional on Christianity - I think this might actually be true.
Toward the end of the discussion, Ethan was pretty dismissive of the comparison between stealing gum and hating God. But there are mortal sins, as understood by Rome, there mortal sins just as trivial. Denying the infallible Marian dogmas, for example, which are taught ex cathedra. Even doctrines within the ordinary magisteria (not ex cathedra) are binding upon the intellect and will, and obstinate denial of them is a mortal sin for believers, and non-believers--good luck!
I'm glad that you connected this to non-human animals. Classical theists who don't believe in something like universalism (for all sentient beings, not just humans) face the same problem as those who affirm ECT.
I'm much closer to your camp than his, but I think you don't give enough weight to the difference between punishment and random/arbitrary suffering.
It's perfectly coherent to hold that someone when someone "deserves punishment," their suffering is good only insofar as it constitutes the punishment, but any incidental non-punishment suffering they might encounter is still bad.
I mean, suppose I'm a jailer and a prisoner in my care has been sentenced to receive 30 lashes. Further suppose that I'm cool with this and I think it's actually good that he be lashed. I think I would still feel that if, while I was escorting him to the lashing post, he were about to hit his head on a doorframe or trip on a rock and bang his knees, I ought to try to warn him or catch him so he wasn't injured randomly on the way.
I do find that view pretty implausible. If a person deserves infinite punishment, then why would it be good to benefit them? And if it is, then why can't God benefit people alongside punishing them? Intuitively it seems if there's desert, it would be bad to benefit Hitler but good if he suffers.
Okay -- it would also be my duty to prevent some random sadist from breaking in and giving him a few lashes for fun. I wouldn't just count those against his 30 and call it good.
But would it be because he didn’t *deserve* those lashes? It seems like you would want to prevent the sadist breaking in for other reasons, like setting a precedent that private citizens can’t interfere with the justice system, preventing the satisfaction of the sadist’s impulses, etc. once you grant the guy deserves 30 lashes, I don’t see overall matters who he gets them from, at least insofar as his “deserving” them.
I'm with you on this - can't understand how a finite offense could justly receive infinite punishment.
I saw an interesting approach to this in a Jewish source once, which gives a list of specific individuals who get eternal hell, while everyone else is punished for a finite period. One of the listed people is the biblical king Jeroboam, who is known for inventing a false religion which his nation adopted in place of the true religion. As long as the descendants of this nation follow the false religion, the amount of harm attributable to Jeroboam continues to increase. So he gets infinite punishment for an effectively infinite amount of sin. The rest of us, with finite sins, do not.
I think his intent included, or should have included, the knowledge that the descendants would follow the new religion indefinitely. That was relatively predictable.
Probably mentioned earlier, but for goodness sake my response would be to point to an obvious omission in this argument of scaling of justified suffering. To what extent does the perpetrator knows the consequences of their actions? The feelings and damage done by stepping on the toes of an endlessly dignified entity is certainly not a known consequence.
Greco-Roman Christians misread the Gospels because they didn’t understand Jewish concepts of the afterlife. They ported their cultural ideas about sinners being tortured forever in Tartarus over to their new religion. And perma-torture was simply more useful for behavior modification.
When you read Jesus in the context of the Jewish tradition (the Mishnah, the Talmud), it seems pretty clear that he taught that evil people would be erased from existence, not tortured for eternity.
Someone who thinks the evidence for Catholic Miracles is as good as Ethan does should just be generally disregarded. He’s bad at reasoning and is wasting all of our time.
I can't take these religious arguments seriously, but they make me think: I have some friends who I wish were more virtuous. They are very vindictive though. So if I convince them that they should live a virtuous life such that anyone who wrongs them gets punished more, is that virtuous of me because or creates more virtue in the world, or is it sinful because it's manipulate? 😅
> I mean, first of all, if I am confident in anything, I’m confident that nice people that I know shouldn’t be made to suffer for all of eternity. Insofar as the view conflicts with that judgment, I can know it to be false.
Take all the pain and suffering that has been experienced since life on this earth began, and all the future pain and suffering that will ever be experienced. Every heartbreak, every slow death by disease, every mutilation. Every slave beaten by their master. Every chicken locked in a cage.
Condense all that suffering into a single drop of water. The pain and suffering that a single soul doomed to Hell will feel would be as if all the oceans were overflowing onto the land. An infinite crimson sea.
When people talk about the problem of evil, they are usually gesturing to the droplet rather than the infinite well of suffering. But the latter is far more terrible.
What possible merciful god could allow such infinite suffering?
It’s hard to imagine a creature more monstrous than Ethan’s idea of God. I suppose one who didn’t also let some people go to heaven would be worse.
In such a case, there would be something to be said for consistency
I always thought this was a bit of an underrated point, that if we all deserve infinite suffering in eternity it’s hard to see why we should feel bad about the suffering we experience in this life. If I had to come up with a defense I guess it would be something like “while we live, God’s goodness is in us, but after we die (unsaved), it’s all stripped away, so we don’t deserve moral consideration anymore”
Well actually that was a pretty common medieval attitude. Obviously you cared for your own personal suffering—animals react to pain, but a general sense that humans had the evils of the world coming was quite common.
This is strong reasoning! Great essay
Seems to me Ethan is coming from a system of morality that is alien to modern western people - in ancient Near East how bad offense was, WAS proportional to their social standing and punching up was seen as worse than punching down.
Western civilization inverted it, now we sympathize with underdogs and believe punching a disabled person is worse than punching a CEO so the idea that someone could merit infinite suffering for offending the biggest being is unthinkable for us.
The infinite dignity defense of Hell is also inconsistent. If every action taken against God is infinitely bad because God has infinite dignity, then any action taken in favor of him must be infinitely good. Likewise, if any sin, even one committed against other people that has nothing directly to do with God, is an offense against God, then any good deed is an action in God's favor (beyond just the symmetry, this is also implied by what Jesus teaches - "whatever you do for the least of these, you do to me"). So even if we accepted that actions targeting God have infinite moral weight, and that all humans have sinned against God since even ordinary sins are against God, and that desert is real and scales according to the moral weight of the actions taken, and everyone is culpable for their sins against God (even those who don't know that these sins are infinitely grave, or even don't know that God exists at all), we still don't get to the conclusion that everyone deserves Hell. We actually come to the opposite conclusion, that those who have done more good than bad, by ordinary standards, deserve Heaven, since God's infinite dignity means that actually the overall amount of merit they've gotten is infinity, and only those who have (culpably) done more bad than good deserve Hell. And this would mean that desert can't serve as an answer to the problem of Hell at all without contradicting Catholic doctrine, since Catholicism says that no one can merit Heaven by their own power - you need Jesus's sacrifice and the grace provided by the Church. So either God still tortures undeserving people forever, making him morally monstrous, or it's possible to get into Heaven by doing enough good to deserve it, contrary to Catholicism. I'm honestly shocked that anyone takes the desert explanation seriously because I think this problem with it is so obvious (I thought of it in about ten seconds of the first time I heard that explanation in theology class at Catholic school, back when I was still a Catholic and therefore desperately wanted to accept any explanation that would make Hell make sense). And yet this is a common explanation among both Catholics and Protestants and is often extended into an explanation of why the crucifixion was necessary that requires even more insane assumptions.
And that's not even where the problems with the desert explanation end. Even if you accept that desert is real and makes it genuinely good for someone who deserves it to be harmed all else equal, it would obviously sill be bad if an offender got what they deserved in a way that the offendee themself didn't want and in fact desired the opposite of. If you "deserve" to suffer because of what you did to one person, but that person actually doesn't want you to suffer and in fact desires your wellbeing extremely strongly, then obviously it will still be bad if you suffer. After all, what could possibly be good about it? It's not good for you - it's positively bad for you. It's not good for the offendee - once again, it's bad for them, since they desire you wellbeing. And it's not good for any third party either. But this is exactly the situation we're in with people supposedly deserving Hell for offending God. If being all-loving means anything, it means that God doesn't want his creatures to suffer eternally. And Christianity makes it very explicit that God wants all his creatures to be united with him in Heaven, regardless of what they deserve, and he incarnated on Earth to die on the cross for this very purpose. But if God desires that his creatures not suffer forever, it makes absolutely no sense to say that they ought to suffer anyway because they deserve it for wronging God. This would only make things even worse by wronging God even more, since he would now have to see his creatures suffer and never be united with him, contrary to his will. I really can't imagine a more implausible view of desert than one that says that it will still be good to let most people suffer in Hell in this scenario.
And of course, I share your judgement that appeals to a few Catholic Saints who thought they deserved Hell does absolutely nothing to diminish my confidence in these judgements. For one, it's very easy to cherry pick to find a few smart, reflective people throughout history who disagreed with absolutely any claim you could make. This really should not do anything to reduce your confidence - it's obvious that given the huge number of people who have existed, and even the huge number of well-respected people, that some of them will believe crazy things. It would be a good reason to temper your confidence if a large portion of people who you consider epistemic peers or authorities held some judgement, and they had come to this judgement through their own reasoning, evidence, or intuitions, which you had no reason to think was strongly biased. Obviously, I don't think this is at all the case, since I don't think there are any secular moral philosophers at all, even the ones who strongly disagree with me on other issues, that think ECT could be just. Even most Christians, including people who have spent years studying theology, don't understand how it can be just, leading many to reject the doctrine despite the tradition behind it and confirmation bias, and leading the remainder to usually attempt to soften it as much as possible while still considering it to be one of the parts of their faith that they wrestle with. Virtually no one actually finds it intuitive or thinks they could derive it through reason. People only believe it because it's a commitment of their faith, and that includes Padre Pio and Alphonsus Liguori. Given this, I don't think I have any reason whatsoever to defer to their judgements. Non-Catholics don't even have to consider these two moral exemplars or epistemic authorities of any sort, let alone people who deserve such strong deference.
Speaking of animals and Hell being a bad idea, can I interest you in animal universalism? https://www.online-literature.com/george-macdonald/hope-of-the-gospel/12/
Obviously true.
I am a very hopeful universalist, so I have no real interest in defending ECT at all costs. However, I think two points are worth mentioning:
1) You say that you don't share the intuition about "The higher the status of the being, the higher the blameworthiness". OK, that's fine, but Muse really shouldn't care. Like, at all. It is well-known that your moral views are *highly* idiosyncratic. What he should care about is whether the average person would accept such a principle and it seems incredibly obvious to me that such a principle (or at least a very similar one) is part of common sense morality, independently of theistic considerations. Common sense morality doesn't prove anything, but it at least suggests that the view isn't blatantly insane.
2) Regarding your point about non-moral peer-disagreement: What you would need to show for your argument to work is that *among people who are as informed about Fatima as Ethan Muse* there are loads of intelligent people who disagree with Muse's conclusion that it was a genuine miracle. But who are these people supposed to be? I don't know of a single person who is as knowledgeable on that miracle as Muse and who rejects it. Surely there are *some* people, but in order for your response to work you don't need "some" but rather "a very seizable number". What is the evidence for THAT?
1. Well I linked places where I argued against it. But you're right, those moral intuitions aren't the ones that are decisive enough that they should change Ethan's mind.
2. Loads of people. Scott, Mark Grant, etc. And even those who don't display selection effect--Fatima boosters are likelier to look into it carefully.
Wait, you genuinely think Scott Alexander knows as much about the miracle as Ethan Muse? Come one. (I don't know about Mark Grant, but as I said - one counterexample wouldn't be nearly enough of a defeater, I think)
Well, what Scott knows about the miracle has led him to conclude it’s not a miracle despite being interesting, and what Ethan has learned about it has led him to conclude, somehow, that it is evidence in favor of Catholicism so strong it being false is 1*10^60 against or some such absolute foolishness, ignoring that e.g Ethan’s whole world being a Truman Show effort to trick him would be vastly more likely and a million other things.
So I would say Scott knows a lot more about it actually, and Ethan has completely lost the plot.
I mean... have you seen Muse's appearance on Pints With Aquinas? I don't think there is any reason whatsoever to think Scott Alexander could talk about the miracle at this level just because he wrote a decent blog entry on the topic.
I think he knows relatively similar amounts. Muse knows more probably, but it's mostly that he has more exact details memorized.
Having the details memorized is not trivial. The fact that Ethan is so intimately acquainted with the actual, factual basis of the Fatima event is an enormous boost to his credibility. Alexander really is not at that level, and his blogs on it are noticeably more superficial and limited (though still excellent and well above the average) as a result. IMHO.
Interesting, I disagree. I would definitely pay money to watch a Muse vs Alexander debate...
They had it in blogging form and I think Scott was more convincing. I agree Muse would win a verbal debate, but that is due to a general principle that Muse always wins verbal debates with everyone on every subject.
For what it's worth, Scott's written two blogs on it, and has witnessed the phenomenon himself, in person
Common-sense morality does have a principle like you describe, but the result about ECT is very sensitive to the way it’s formulated. Here is an alternative formulation that I’d argue is more natural: “The more bad someone has done, the more they deserve their misfortune.” After all, babies stereotypically are the worst people to hurt because they are morally blameless. Under this formulation, and assuming God is morally blameless, hurting God would be as bad as hurting a baby. But not worse, let alone infinitely worse.
Meanwhile, there’s another reason babies are stereotypically the worst people to hurt: they can’t defend themselves. “The weaker someone is, the worse it is to hurt them” – this is another common-sense principle tightly intertwined with the first one. (It’s also a Christian principle!) But here of course there’s a great disanalogy to God, who by assumption has zero weakness. If we apply the same naive linear scaling that’s used to justify ECT, then the badness of hurting God should also be multiplied by zero.
Yet another closely related principle is: “The worse off someone is, the worse it is to hurt them.” In part this is a ‘hierarchy of needs’ sort of economic principle (the more economically comfortable you are, the less you’ll suffer from any material harm). In part it’s a purely moral principle that benefit can offset suffering and vice versa. Either way, God again seems not-so-bad to hurt. For the economic aspect, God’s material needs are trivially met. For the moral aspect, while perhaps God has experienced infinite suffering, God has also experienced infinite pleasure, so the factor ends up being either undefined or neutral.
Anyway, if you’re truly only looking for “not blatantly insane” then none of this matters. Almost no view is blatantly insane on a topic with so much uncertainty. (And if you have 10^60 evidence for something then you should probably believe it even if it does seem blatantly insane.) But establishing this point as an actual defense of ECT is a tougher sell.
That's a very thoughtful reply.
I disagree that your first principle is "more natural", because it (without my principle) gets obvious cases wrong: For example, I think it is more obvious than anything that it would be much worse to spit on Jesus' feet than to spit on the feet of someone with severe down syndrome, even if they have the same level of moral culpability - 0. Not because of anything about moral desert, but because of what spitting at Jesus' feet would say about YOU - it's agent-centred, not patient-centred. Do you disagree it would be worse to spit on Jesus' feet, knowing him to be God incarnate?
I don't think sin is bad because it hurts God, whom I take to be immutable and impassible - it is wrong because it corrupts the soul.
Regarding the non-insanity part: Let me clarify, it's not just that the probability isn't 1^60 low. It's that if you understand what mortal sin is in Catholicism (grave matter AND deliberate consent AND full knowledge), then - conditional on Christianity - I think this might actually be true.
Toward the end of the discussion, Ethan was pretty dismissive of the comparison between stealing gum and hating God. But there are mortal sins, as understood by Rome, there mortal sins just as trivial. Denying the infallible Marian dogmas, for example, which are taught ex cathedra. Even doctrines within the ordinary magisteria (not ex cathedra) are binding upon the intellect and will, and obstinate denial of them is a mortal sin for believers, and non-believers--good luck!
I'm glad that you connected this to non-human animals. Classical theists who don't believe in something like universalism (for all sentient beings, not just humans) face the same problem as those who affirm ECT.
I'm much closer to your camp than his, but I think you don't give enough weight to the difference between punishment and random/arbitrary suffering.
It's perfectly coherent to hold that someone when someone "deserves punishment," their suffering is good only insofar as it constitutes the punishment, but any incidental non-punishment suffering they might encounter is still bad.
I mean, suppose I'm a jailer and a prisoner in my care has been sentenced to receive 30 lashes. Further suppose that I'm cool with this and I think it's actually good that he be lashed. I think I would still feel that if, while I was escorting him to the lashing post, he were about to hit his head on a doorframe or trip on a rock and bang his knees, I ought to try to warn him or catch him so he wasn't injured randomly on the way.
I do find that view pretty implausible. If a person deserves infinite punishment, then why would it be good to benefit them? And if it is, then why can't God benefit people alongside punishing them? Intuitively it seems if there's desert, it would be bad to benefit Hitler but good if he suffers.
Becuase that would be suffering in excess, for someone who deserves *infinite* punishment, it can't ever be excessive
Okay -- it would also be my duty to prevent some random sadist from breaking in and giving him a few lashes for fun. I wouldn't just count those against his 30 and call it good.
But would it be because he didn’t *deserve* those lashes? It seems like you would want to prevent the sadist breaking in for other reasons, like setting a precedent that private citizens can’t interfere with the justice system, preventing the satisfaction of the sadist’s impulses, etc. once you grant the guy deserves 30 lashes, I don’t see overall matters who he gets them from, at least insofar as his “deserving” them.
I'm with you on this - can't understand how a finite offense could justly receive infinite punishment.
I saw an interesting approach to this in a Jewish source once, which gives a list of specific individuals who get eternal hell, while everyone else is punished for a finite period. One of the listed people is the biblical king Jeroboam, who is known for inventing a false religion which his nation adopted in place of the true religion. As long as the descendants of this nation follow the false religion, the amount of harm attributable to Jeroboam continues to increase. So he gets infinite punishment for an effectively infinite amount of sin. The rest of us, with finite sins, do not.
Seems wrong, because blameworthiness is intrinsic to your intent when you do acts. It should depend on things outside you like how your acts turn out.
I think his intent included, or should have included, the knowledge that the descendants would follow the new religion indefinitely. That was relatively predictable.
Probably mentioned earlier, but for goodness sake my response would be to point to an obvious omission in this argument of scaling of justified suffering. To what extent does the perpetrator knows the consequences of their actions? The feelings and damage done by stepping on the toes of an endlessly dignified entity is certainly not a known consequence.
Greco-Roman Christians misread the Gospels because they didn’t understand Jewish concepts of the afterlife. They ported their cultural ideas about sinners being tortured forever in Tartarus over to their new religion. And perma-torture was simply more useful for behavior modification.
When you read Jesus in the context of the Jewish tradition (the Mishnah, the Talmud), it seems pretty clear that he taught that evil people would be erased from existence, not tortured for eternity.
Someone who thinks the evidence for Catholic Miracles is as good as Ethan does should just be generally disregarded. He’s bad at reasoning and is wasting all of our time.
I can't take these religious arguments seriously, but they make me think: I have some friends who I wish were more virtuous. They are very vindictive though. So if I convince them that they should live a virtuous life such that anyone who wrongs them gets punished more, is that virtuous of me because or creates more virtue in the world, or is it sinful because it's manipulate? 😅
> I mean, first of all, if I am confident in anything, I’m confident that nice people that I know shouldn’t be made to suffer for all of eternity. Insofar as the view conflicts with that judgment, I can know it to be false.
An excellent kind of argument.