.... and while it's legitimate to focus on something else, it is NOT legitimate or wise to make up a falsity and shove it into the place of the true but incomprehensible thing. That's just asking for problems.
Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
I've been thinking about this some more for a few days.
It seems to me that this is effectively saying something like this:
1. There is an ultimate reality
2. There are various explanations of reality, some contradictory
3. One therefore has to chose one of the explanations and reject the others.
I think the contrast is with an alternative series of thoughts
1. There [probably] is an ultimate reality but there are all kinds of difficulties with even defining the ideas and words we mean when trying to think about ultimate realities
2. Humans have come up with explanations which attempt to explain stuff. They're all necessarily either wildly oversimplified or wrong.
3. Importantly, there is no way to rank these ideas anyway, so one is making choices based on other factors
4. That doesn't mean these ideas are useless, as they speak to something deep about human psyche and motivations
I think ideas are a completely separate category of thing to ultimate realities. The concept of hell, and what that does or doesn't do to people who believe in it is a whole other thing than whether it exists.
Quite. But it's the second question which matters to me.
If you can't persuade yourself that it exists then isn't it just better to assume it doesn't?
In this life, maybe.
But in the next life? Ah, there’s the rub.
Not really. If going to hell is as arbitrary and stupid as you are all discussing here then it seems like you are chasing your tails trying to understand what you need to do to avoid it.
The simplest explanation is that it's a stupid idea created and expanded to keep believers in line.
Simplest ≠ Truest
If something is complex and incomprehensible that is not really much different to being impossible to understand. At some point a thing that is too complicated to understand is a pointless waste of thinking space even if it is true, one is better focussing on something else.
That's quantum physics out then.
Quantum physics allows for testable (falsifiable) hypotheses. Theism does not.
Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
I've been thinking about this some more for a few days.
It seems to me that this is effectively saying something like this:
1. There is an ultimate reality
2. There are various explanations of reality, some contradictory
3. One therefore has to chose one of the explanations and reject the others.
I think the contrast is with an alternative series of thoughts
1. There [probably] is an ultimate reality but there are all kinds of difficulties with even defining the ideas and words we mean when trying to think about ultimate realities
2. Humans have come up with explanations which attempt to explain stuff. They're all necessarily either wildly oversimplified or wrong.
3. Importantly, there is no way to rank these ideas anyway, so one is making choices based on other factors
4. That doesn't mean these ideas are useless, as they speak to something deep about human psyche and motivations
I think ideas are a completely separate category of thing to ultimate realities. The concept of hell, and what that does or doesn't do to people who believe in it is a whole other thing than whether it exists.
Quite. But it's the second question which matters to me.
Any deity or metaphysical entity that exists in the same conceptual space as God is another attempt to describe the reality that our God is an attempt to describe.
For sure. But logically, where attempts to describe that reality are mutually incompatible then only one such attempt can actually be correct. Unless, I suppose, you posit a “blind men describing an elephant” situation, in which case all attempts are inaccurate due to being incomplete.
I've been thinking about this some more for a few days.
It seems to me that this is effectively saying something like this:
1. There is an ultimate reality
2. There are various explanations of reality, some contradictory
3. One therefore has to chose one of the explanations and reject the others.
I think the contrast is with an alternative series of thoughts
1. There [probably] is an ultimate reality but there are all kinds of difficulties with even defining the ideas and words we mean when trying to think about ultimate realities
2. Humans have come up with explanations which attempt to explain stuff. They're all necessarily either wildly oversimplified or wrong.
3. Importantly, there is no way to rank these ideas anyway, so one is making choices based on other factors
4. That doesn't mean these ideas are useless, as they speak to something deep about human psyche and motivations
I think ideas are a completely separate category of thing to ultimate realities. The concept of hell, and what that does or doesn't do to people who believe in it is a whole other thing than whether it exists.
Quite. But it's the second question which matters to me.
If you can't persuade yourself that it exists then isn't it just better to assume it doesn't?
In this life, maybe.
But in the next life? Ah, there’s the rub.
Not really. If going to hell is as arbitrary and stupid as you are all discussing here then it seems like you are chasing your tails trying to understand what you need to do to avoid it.
The simplest explanation is that it's a stupid idea created and expanded to keep believers in line.
Simplest ≠ Truest
If something is complex and incomprehensible that is not really much different to being impossible to understand. At some point a thing that is too complicated to understand is a pointless waste of thinking space even if it is true, one is better focussing on something else.
That's quantum physics out then.
Quantum physics allows for testable (falsifiable) hypotheses. Theism does not.
Science is a series of testable hypotheses. So even quantum physics makes sense to someone.
I accept my wording might have been sloppy but I'm saying that difficult science is a different thing to theological concepts that nobody understands and accepts without qualification, sticking plasters or ignoring uncomfortable parts.
I don't know why people compare religion and science in any case. I suppose if you portray religion as a series of hypotheses, it kind of works, but that's poisoning the well, isn't it? I mean, you're starting with premises that suit you.
I don't know why people compare religion and science in any case. I suppose if you portray religion as a series of hypotheses, it kind of works, but that's poisoning the well, isn't it? I mean, you're starting with premises that suit you.
If I remember my Philosophy of Science correctly, this also happens in science. Take the time when Darwin came out with his Origin of Species. There were several alternative theories of evolution already out there, Lamarckism being the most prominent. The biggest difference with scientific premises, though, is they can be tested and adaptive to new information.
To the comment that simplicity is not equal to facts. I think that is also an axiom of science. It tries to explain reality in the simplest terms possible. But as time goes on, accepted theories will be adapted until they reach a point, where a simpler theory fits existing data better. Take astronomy. It was Ptolemy who first came up with a mathematical model to predict planetary motion, though he assumed the earth was the center of the universe, and for a long while his model worked. But as astronomers developed more data, the existing math models became much more complicated. Then people like Newton developed a simpler model through calculus, and now we have instruments like the James Webb Telescope helping to rewrite what we know of the universe. And it is very complicated; but, mark my words, someone or a group of someones are trying to boil it down to the simplest of terms.
I had an uncle who was an astronomer. A believer, but an astronomer too. He had a plaque on his wall that said:
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”
— Psalm 8:3–4
"Religion" is a rather squishy category until you get into particular religions, I think. Buddhism, Shintoism, and Christianity are very different animals doing different things, even if all three of them can coexist in Japan.
Oftentimes it's just a shorthand for "Christianity," but I think that's a bit eurocentric of us, no? Even this fixation on the word "beliefs" is fairly Christian, since that itself is a word of primary importance to the Apostle Paul. Other religions don't put nearly so much weight on it, and some religions would regard it as a terrible notion.
I don't know why people compare religion and science in any case. I suppose if you portray religion as a series of hypotheses, it kind of works, but that's poisoning the well, isn't it? I mean, you're starting with premises that suit you.
I can't really get my head around considering truth claims - be they scientific or religious - any other way. I want to believe things that are true. The premises "suit me" inasmuch as they're the only ones that make any sense to me.
I don't know why people compare religion and science in any case. I suppose if you portray religion as a series of hypotheses, it kind of works, but that's poisoning the well, isn't it? I mean, you're starting with premises that suit you.
I can't really get my head around considering truth claims - be they scientific or religious - any other way. I want to believe things that are true. The premises "suit me" inasmuch as they're the only ones that make any sense to me.
I don't know why people compare religion and science in any case. I suppose if you portray religion as a series of hypotheses, it kind of works, but that's poisoning the well, isn't it? I mean, you're starting with premises that suit you.
I can't really get my head around considering truth claims - be they scientific or religious - any other way. I want to believe things that are true. The premises "suit me" inasmuch as they're the only ones that make any sense to me.
Yeah, but which premises?
That religion makes truth claims about reality which may or may not be true. To that extent they are comparable to scientific hypotheses.
I don't know why people compare religion and science in any case. I suppose if you portray religion as a series of hypotheses, it kind of works, but that's poisoning the well, isn't it? I mean, you're starting with premises that suit you.
I can't really get my head around considering truth claims - be they scientific or religious - any other way. I want to believe things that are true. The premises "suit me" inasmuch as they're the only ones that make any sense to me.
Yeah, but which premises?
That religion makes truth claims about reality which may or may not be true. To that extent they are comparable to scientific hypotheses.
How do you see religious truth claims?
I think "claim" is the wrong concept of word when talking about philosophical or religious ideas. When Plato talked about the Forms, I don't take this to be a right/wrong claim about the state of reality, but a way of understanding it. Something that one either accepts as a useful axiom to hang your thoughts around or garbage.
When I was in NZ I visited an extinct volcano which has a complex Māori story about gods and goddesses. It also happens to be a place with good views across Auckland, so the Māori people lived there for centuries.
One could ask whether the Māori stories are reflecting real events. I can't remember the details so it isn't for me to recite them here, but I think we can probably both accept that we don't believe in gods who live in volcano craters.
Or one can think about what role those stories have in Māori culture, what this says about that community in the past and today.
For me, being interested and attempting to listen for these things is more important than assessing if they are true/false.
Yeah, some things you can see that way and to the extent I believe in Christianity I see much of the Bible as mythological. But there comes a point where the question of whether there's some reality behind it becomes important - if there's not in some objective sense a risen ascended Christ then I don't see the point of acting as if there is.
One cannot look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting if there's not an objectively existing God to actually do the resurrecting. Religions do make and depend on truth claims.
It feels to me like you're describing studying the phenomenon of religion, which is all good and well and fascinating in its own right, whilst I'm talking about actual belief.
I don't know why people compare religion and science in any case. I suppose if you portray religion as a series of hypotheses, it kind of works, but that's poisoning the well, isn't it? I mean, you're starting with premises that suit you.
I can't really get my head around considering truth claims - be they scientific or religious - any other way. I want to believe things that are true. The premises "suit me" inasmuch as they're the only ones that make any sense to me.
Yeah, but which premises?
That religion makes truth claims about reality which may or may not be true. To that extent they are comparable to scientific hypotheses.
How do you see religious truth claims?
I feel a million miles away from your approach. I meditate every day, and some days reality seems material and that's that, and on other days reality seems non-material and creative. So I wrestle with all that.
Well that's true, but even if that specific thing is true there's no obligation to accept all the other baggage that's built up around it. As other people have explained in this thread, it is possible to believe in one thing like the resurrection without needing to believe in a literal hell.
Well that's true, but even if that specific thing is true there's no obligation to accept all the other baggage that's built up around it. As other people have explained in this thread, it is possible to believe in one thing like the resurrection without needing to believe in a literal hell.
Quite so. The number of things I definitely don't believe in horrifies the more conservative types.
I don't know why people compare religion and science in any case. I suppose if you portray religion as a series of hypotheses, it kind of works, but that's poisoning the well, isn't it? I mean, you're starting with premises that suit you.
I can't really get my head around considering truth claims - be they scientific or religious - any other way. I want to believe things that are true. The premises "suit me" inasmuch as they're the only ones that make any sense to me.
Yeah, but which premises?
That religion makes truth claims about reality which may or may not be true. To that extent they are comparable to scientific hypotheses.
How do you see religious truth claims?
I think "claim" is the wrong concept of word when talking about philosophical or religious ideas. When Plato talked about the Forms, I don't take this to be a right/wrong claim about the state of reality, but a way of understanding it. Something that one either accepts as a useful axiom to hang your thoughts around or garbage.<snip>
Are you suggesting Plato was putting forth the Forms as a metaphor, and didn't really believe in their existence? That seems a mighty big claim given 2600 years of philosophical inquiry telling the opposite.
For me, being interested and attempting to listen for these things is more important than assessing if they are true/false.
Yes but was it more im portant for Plato? Or are you just projecting a 21st century attitude (Reality isn't as important as feelings) back two and a half millenia?
I don't know why people compare religion and science in any case. I suppose if you portray religion as a series of hypotheses, it kind of works, but that's poisoning the well, isn't it? I mean, you're starting with premises that suit you.
I can't really get my head around considering truth claims - be they scientific or religious - any other way. I want to believe things that are true. The premises "suit me" inasmuch as they're the only ones that make any sense to me.
Yeah, but which premises?
That religion makes truth claims about reality which may or may not be true. To that extent they are comparable to scientific hypotheses.
How do you see religious truth claims?
I think "claim" is the wrong concept of word when talking about philosophical or religious ideas. When Plato talked about the Forms, I don't take this to be a right/wrong claim about the state of reality, but a way of understanding it. Something that one either accepts as a useful axiom to hang your thoughts around or garbage.<snip>
Are you suggesting Plato was putting forth the Forms as a metaphor, and didn't really believe in their existence? That seems a mighty big claim given 2600 years of philosophical inquiry telling the opposite.
For me, being interested and attempting to listen for these things is more important than assessing if they are true/false.
Yes but was it more im portant for Plato? Or are you just projecting a 21st century attitude (Reality isn't as important as feelings) back two and a half millenia?
I'm not making any statement about what Plato believed. I'm just describing how I engage with things I don't believe in, which isn't a 21st century attitude to anything.
There are many beliefs I don't believe in. I don't have to second guess whether people "really believed" in the thing, because it seems more important to me to consider the impact of those things.
Platonism historically led to x y and z beliefs and behaviours.
There's also something of an irony implicit in Plato's Forms. If the parable of the cave suggests that humans perceive shadows on the cave as being the actual thing, and therefore imperfectly understand these eternal but external realities that exist out there in the ether, how then does Plato understand it enough to write it down? How can we be sure that his theory of Forms isn't just a more complex shadow on the cave wall?
Yeah, some things you can see that way and to the extent I believe in Christianity I see much of the Bible as mythological. But there comes a point where the question of whether there's some reality behind it becomes important - if there's not in some objective sense a risen ascended Christ then I don't see the point of acting as if there is.
One cannot look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting if there's not an objectively existing God to actually do the resurrecting. Religions do make and depend on truth claims.
It feels to me like you're describing studying the phenomenon of religion, which is all good and well and fascinating in its own right, whilst I'm talking about actual belief.
This leads me to wonder what the status is of truth claims that will never be resolved, or proven, one way or the other.
As far as we living human beings are concerned, I think that the chances are vanishingly small of any questions about hell being resolved during our lifetimes.
Our own fleeting lifetimes might not be the same as "never", but I think they are functionally equivalent for all the difference that it makes to our discussions and our lives.
I'm sure these questions won't be resolved. That doesn't mean it's impossible to be right or wrong about them - it just means that we won't know for certain whether we're right or wrong.
What's the difference between it being impossible for us to be be right or wrong, and us not knowing whether we're right or wrong?
Are there any ways in which this difference impacts our lives?
Two hedgehogs are waiting on the side of the road. They're having a conversation about passing cars.
I think we can be fairly sure that neither would have a decent guess about what a car was, who the humans are and where they were going.
Now imagine a billion hedgehogs. One out of the billion somehow guesses that there's a human in the car wearing a pink shirt.
That one-in-a-billion guess is factually correct. But also is possibly the least important thing about that particular car, and says nothing about cars in general.
Reality is obviously far more complex than the hedgehog could ever understand.
As far as we living human beings are concerned, I think that the chances are vanishingly small of any questions about hell being resolved during our lifetimes.
Our own fleeting lifetimes might not be the same as "never", but I think they are functionally equivalent for all the difference that it makes to our discussions and our lives.
That is, the question is about our lives, ie up to the point of our deaths, not after.
What's the difference between it being impossible for us to be be right or wrong, and us not knowing whether we're right or wrong?
Are there any ways in which this difference impacts our lives?
It matters if you will be condemned to endless suffering at some point, as the afterlife is then effectively a continuation of your lived experience.
That is, the question is about our lives, ie up to the point of our deaths, not after.
This appears to me to be begging the question - you're assuming your answer as a premise. If it matters what happens after death then it matters what happens after death regardless of whether it makes a difference in this life.
But there are it seems to me not differences but something more fundamental. To say there is impossible to be either right or wrong in our beliefs is, as I said, what Harry Frankfurt called bullshit. Bullshit is an instrumental attitude to our beliefs and assertions such that we adopt them to either project a particular image of ourself or to instil a particular emotional reaction in other people. An instrumental attitude to our beliefs goes along with - makes easier and enables - an instrumental attitude to other people. (I note that in philosophy there is a skeptical problem about other minds. The difference between the way we view people if we think we can't ever know beyond skeptical doubt what other people think and feel and how we view them if we think it's impossible for us to be right or wrong about what other people think and feel is huge.)
There is a fundamental difference between viewing the world and other people as something that is just there to be instrumentally useful in our ends and projects and viewing it as something that is there independently of our ends and projects and of what we happen to know or believe about it.
One other consideration is to ask just how far it's true that we cannot know. Not being able to know is not a binary on/off state: there may be things that are completely beyond our ability to talk about meaningfully, and there are things that we can easily talk about, but most things are somewhere in between. Aquinas argued that while God was fundamentally unknowable, we could still talk about God in that creaturely concepts like love, wisdom, and knowledge are images of God in so far as we can talk about them. Our creaturely concepts of justice are images of God's justice. That means that 'justice' does not suddenly lose its human meaning when applied to God. So that if we assert that something - eternal punishment - is just for God then we equally assert that the closest human approximation to that is just for humans.
The argument from justice against the eternity of Hell is that no close human approximation to eternal punishment could be considered just, and therefore as human justice is a participation in the divine justice, eternal punishment cannot be part of the divine justice.
I've read and thought about Frankfurt's "On Bullshit" quite a few times now. I recognise part of what you say here, but I'm not entirely clear how you think it relates to the conversation about hell.
Bullshit, I think, would be putting on a show of belief because it gave some incidental benefits. I'm a politician interested in the Sikh vote and suddenly I become photographed looking very Sikh.
I need to read it again now, but I don't think even doing things ironically would count as bullshit per Frankfurt.
As far as I can understand the point you are responding to, someone is saying that there's an issue that can't be resolved in this lifetime and so.. maybe it's not worth worrying about for other reasons.
To me this is a bit like a response to the conspiracy theory about a lizard race controlling the planet. Sure there are things we don't know about the planet and sure there could be some weirdness going on that means we are not perceiving the reality of things.
But for other reasons we dismiss this possibility as remote and instead focus on stuff that's more likely, such as the control of many aspects of life by the super-wealthy. Lizards might be a possibility but of all the things.
What's the difference between it being impossible for us to be be right or wrong, and us not knowing whether we're right or wrong?
Are there any ways in which this difference impacts our lives?
It matters if you will be condemned to endless suffering at some point, as the afterlife is then effectively a continuation of your lived experience.
That is, the question is about our lives, ie up to the point of our deaths, not after.
This appears to me to be begging the question - you're assuming your answer as a premise. If it matters what happens after death then it matters what happens after death regardless of whether it makes a difference in this life.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
It seems to me that those who say the afterlife doesn’t matter and we should just focus on this life don’t really believe that Hell (or the entire afterlife, or even God for that matter) is real.
Personally, I agree with St Paul on this one. If Jesus is not truly risen from the dead then the whole religion is pointless.
But there are it seems to me not differences but something more fundamental. To say there is impossible to be either right or wrong in our beliefs is, as I said, what Harry Frankfurt called bullshit. Bullshit is an instrumental attitude to our beliefs and assertions such that we adopt them to either project a particular image of ourself or to instil a particular emotional reaction in other people.
Yes again. I think there are some people who don’t really believe that God and the afterlife are actual factual reality, but seek to use religious belief to instil certain “desirable” values (charity, self-sacrifice, obedience, etc) in the population. From that perspective it wouldn’t matter if the beliefs were true, only that they had the “right” impact on our lives.
What I can’t imagine is someone who believes the afterlife is real, and Hell is a genuine possibility, but one that doesn’t matter to them. It just doesn’t compute. I mean, in Risk Register terms even if your likelihood of going to Hell is minuscule, the impact of it happening is infinite, so the overall level of risk is also infinite!
What's the difference between it being impossible for us to be be right or wrong, and us not knowing whether we're right or wrong?
Are there any ways in which this difference impacts our lives?
It matters if you will be condemned to endless suffering at some point, as the afterlife is then effectively a continuation of your lived experience.
That is, the question is about our lives, ie up to the point of our deaths, not after.
This appears to me to be begging the question - you're assuming your answer as a premise. If it matters what happens after death then it matters what happens after death regardless of whether it makes a difference in this life.
Doesn't this just assume the converse premise? And if something doesn't make a difference in this life, in what way does it matter in this life?
But there are it seems to me not differences but something more fundamental. To say there is impossible to be either right or wrong in our beliefs is, as I said, what Harry Frankfurt called bullshit.
The basic idea in On Bullshit appears to be the absence of respect for truth. It looks to me as if you don't agree with the nature of truth that I believe in. Or maybe the way that I believe it. Either of which you're entitled to do. Or even if you want to call my beliefs bullshit. I believe that we are all innately irrational creatures, who tell ourselves the narratives we need to hear, including about our own rationality. Maybe this is one of the things that gives me an abidingly deep commitment to truth.
Bullshit is an instrumental attitude to our beliefs and assertions such that we adopt them to either project a particular image of ourself or to instil a particular emotional reaction in other people. An instrumental attitude to our beliefs goes along with - makes easier and enables - an instrumental attitude to other people. (I note that in philosophy there is a skeptical problem about other minds. The difference between the way we view people if we think we can't ever know beyond skeptical doubt what other people think and feel and how we view them if we think it's impossible for us to be right or wrong about what other people think and feel is huge.)
There is a fundamental difference between viewing the world and other people as something that is just there to be instrumentally useful in our ends and projects and viewing it as something that is there independently of our ends and projects and of what we happen to know or believe about it.
All of which is interesting but, as Basketactortale said, I'm not clear how this relates to the discussion. But it does seem to be being presented as some kind of binary. In contrast to the two views above, I believe that there is such a thing as society, and that it, and the people in it, matter.
One other consideration is to ask just how far it's true that we cannot know. Not being able to know is not a binary on/off state: there may be things that are completely beyond our ability to talk about meaningfully, and there are things that we can easily talk about, but most things are somewhere in between. Aquinas argued that while God was fundamentally unknowable, we could still talk about God in that creaturely concepts like love, wisdom, and knowledge are images of God in so far as we can talk about them. Our creaturely concepts of justice are images of God's justice.
I presume this is what you believe. I believe that it is impossible to know whether or not this is true.
That means that 'justice' does not suddenly lose its human meaning when applied to God. So that if we assert that something - eternal punishment - is just for God then we equally assert that the closest human approximation to that is just for humans.
The argument from justice against the eternity of Hell is that no close human approximation to eternal punishment could be considered just, and therefore as human justice is a participation in the divine justice, eternal punishment cannot be part of the divine justice.
The idea that there is such a thing as a "closest human approximation" to eternal punishment is an intriguing claim, given the degree of disagreement there was about it on the relevant thread(s).
I mean, in Risk Register terms even if your likelihood of going to Hell is minuscule, the impact of it happening is infinite, so the overall level of risk is also infinite!
Surely an infinitesimal probability multiplied by an infinite impact could generate a risk level of any size from infinitesimal to infinite depending on how those factors are derived?
What's the difference between it being impossible for us to be be right or wrong, and us not knowing whether we're right or wrong?
Are there any ways in which this difference impacts our lives?
It matters if you will be condemned to endless suffering at some point, as the afterlife is then effectively a continuation of your lived experience.
That is, the question is about our lives, ie up to the point of our deaths, not after.
This appears to me to be begging the question - you're assuming your answer as a premise. If it matters what happens after death then it matters what happens after death regardless of whether it makes a difference in this life.
Doesn't this just assume the converse premise? And if something doesn't make a difference in this life, in what way does it matter in this life?
If the next life is a direct continuation (in some form or other) of this one, then what happens to you after death matters just as much as what will happen to you tomorrow, next month, or in ten years’ time. And that remains the case even in the extreme scenario where nothing you can do will change it in any way.
I mean, in Risk Register terms even if your likelihood of going to Hell is minuscule, the impact of it happening is infinite, so the overall level of risk is also infinite!
Surely an infinitesimal probability multiplied by an infinite impact could generate a risk level of any size from infinitesimal to infinite depending on how those factors are derived?
As long as the likelihood is greater than zero, it has to be taken seriously due to the infinitely massive consequences of it happening.
I mean, in Risk Register terms even if your likelihood of going to Hell is minuscule, the impact of it happening is infinite, so the overall level of risk is also infinite!
Surely an infinitesimal probability multiplied by an infinite impact could generate a risk level of any size from infinitesimal to infinite depending on how those factors are derived?
As long as the likelihood is greater than zero, it has to be taken seriously due to the infinitely massive consequences of it happening.
This doesn't make any sense to me. According to some, we will be reincarnated into animals in the next life depending on actions in this life.
Does that therefore mean that we should all behave in ways that mean we'll not be reincarnated into cockroaches?
Reincarnation is a serious thing that could influence your future lives for thousands of your lives into the future. So according to your measure, the consequences mean that you should take it seriously.
This doesn't make any sense to me. According to some, we will be reincarnated into animals in the next life depending on actions in this life.
Does that therefore mean that we should all behave in ways that mean we'll not be reincarnated into cockroaches?
Reincarnation is a serious thing that could influence your future lives for thousands of your lives into the future. So according to your measure, the consequences mean that you should take it seriously.
I can say this about that. While I have never been able to square an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God with hell as a real thing, what does scare the crap out of me is a God who loves me enough to give me as many lives as I need in order to balance the energies I set in motion through my thoughts words and deeds.
Having to feel through everything, but everything, that my intentions and carelessnesses, insensitivities, malices and ignorances inflict upon others is the worst kind of vision of the afterlife I can conjure for myself.
Christ gave me the antidote in the Great Commandment, but how stubbornly I turn away from it. Truly the wages of sin is death, because how often can I do what is so injurious to myself before I finally die of my intractible stubbornness?
What's the difference between it being impossible for us to be be right or wrong, and us not knowing whether we're right or wrong?
Are there any ways in which this difference impacts our lives?
It matters if you will be condemned to endless suffering at some point, as the afterlife is then effectively a continuation of your lived experience.
That is, the question is about our lives, ie up to the point of our deaths, not after.
This appears to me to be begging the question - you're assuming your answer as a premise. If it matters what happens after death then it matters what happens after death regardless of whether it makes a difference in this life.
Doesn't this just assume the converse premise? And if something doesn't make a difference in this life, in what way does it matter in this life?
Inside the United States, I don't need a passport to get around (yet). But if I want to go to Europe, I need a passport. So the passport doesn't matter in this country. But it's in this country where I do the things I need to to secure a passport. So you might well ask, if it doesn't matter i n this country, in what way does it matter in this country?
I mean, in Risk Register terms even if your likelihood of going to Hell is minuscule, the impact of it happening is infinite, so the overall level of risk is also infinite!
Surely an infinitesimal probability multiplied by an infinite impact could generate a risk level of any size from infinitesimal to infinite depending on how those factors are derived?
As long as the likelihood is greater than zero, it has to be taken seriously due to the infinitely massive consequences of it happening.
This doesn't make any sense to me. According to some, we will be reincarnated into animals in the next life depending on actions in this life.
Does that therefore mean that we should all behave in ways that mean we'll not be reincarnated into cockroaches?
Reincarnation is a serious thing that could influence your future lives for thousands of your lives into the future. So according to your measure, the consequences mean that you should take it seriously.
Quite. Marvin's post seems to assume Christianity is the only game in town, afterlife-wise speaking.
I mean, in Risk Register terms even if your likelihood of going to Hell is minuscule, the impact of it happening is infinite, so the overall level of risk is also infinite!
Surely an infinitesimal probability multiplied by an infinite impact could generate a risk level of any size from infinitesimal to infinite depending on how those factors are derived?
As long as the likelihood is greater than zero, it has to be taken seriously due to the infinitely massive consequences of it happening.
This doesn't make any sense to me. According to some, we will be reincarnated into animals in the next life depending on actions in this life.
Does that therefore mean that we should all behave in ways that mean we'll not be reincarnated into cockroaches?
Reincarnation is a serious thing that could influence your future lives for thousands of your lives into the future. So according to your measure, the consequences mean that you should take it seriously.
Quite. Marvin's post seems to assume Christianity is the only game in town, afterlife-wise speaking.
Aye, well, there's the rub as they say. Multiple truth claims all saying we need to do X to be sorted for life after this one for contradictory values of X. And dire consequences for guessing the wrong X.
It's so, so, easy to be drawn towards "it's all bollocks isn't it?" I mean, at least with the two doors and the guards one of whom always lies and the other who always tells the truth there's a trick to it. This is lots of doors and every door except the one to the Emerald City has a tiger with a gun behind it. With hundreds of guards none of whom are guaranteed to lie or tell the truth.
I re-read Frankfurt's "On bullshit" yesterday. This time I saw him describe the person who has no real interest in the truth and who just says whatever is expedient to get specific desirable ends. Sometimes they exaggerated, sometimes they make stuff up, sometimes they just have a fever-dream and don't seem to be able distinguish what is or isn't true.
Perhaps they are even like Goebbels, trying to sow sufficient confusion that people hearing lose the ability to distinguish truth from lies.
So maybe that is what is being suggested here. That those who are in the "can't know the reality of the afterlife in this life" camp are bullshitting. Either we are hiding behind a curtain sniggering, or have long fingers over a illuminated globe with the objective to sow confusion.
I'd like to offer an alternative mental model. I've been reading an interesting book about the love of learning. The book claims that the truly authentic life of the mind involves learning for the sake of learning, putting aside all other considerations such as financial or status benefits.
It's a provocative read, that somehow being exposed to the audience of authors from history, be it "classical literature", philosophy, art and historical accounts forces the close and focussed reader to examine themselves and leads to personal growth. I'm not sure if I agree with this narrative for various reasons, but I like it.
One point that I think is well made is about the difference between shallowness and depth. Shallowness broadly meaning the act of skipping across various topics to be satisfied. Maybe one spends a few minutes on a Wikipedia page, thinks "oh that's interesting, I must tell my wife over breakfast". Depth implies a real wrestling with the topic. As my daughter puts it, falling deep down the rabbit-hole.
I guess I could be being shallow on the topic of hell. It's not something that makes much impact on me mentally. I'm here because I'm interested at the moment, possibly for ulterior reasons - I'm curious what this idea does to people. Next week I'm quite likely to be thinking about structural racism, or the habitats for kiwi birds, train tickets pricing or vegan food.
But even if you want to describe me as a shallow bullshitter by these definitions, it seems unkind to lump other people who post here into the same group. They seem to me to be taking the subject seriously, they seem to me to be thinking hard, using sources that are available to them, sometimes it seems over many years.
They've just come to other conclusions.
So in short, call me a bullshitter if you like. Maybe that coat fits. But please don't suggest that other people have come to other conclusions because they are shallow or bullshitting.
… Having to feel through everything, but everything, that my intentions and carelessnesses, insensitivities, malices and ignorances inflict upon others is the worst kind of vision of the afterlife I can conjure for myself.
Christ gave me the antidote in the Great Commandment, but how stubbornly I turn away from it. Truly the wages of sin is death, because how often can I do what is so injurious to myself before I finally die of my intractible stubbornness?
Our capacity for which appears almost limitless. I've long considered this one of the more compelling illustrations of our innate irrationality. And maybe what small sliver of hope there is, exists in us being able to comprehend this.
Doesn't this just assume the converse premise? And if something doesn't make a difference in this life, in what way does it matter in this life?
Inside the United States, I don't need a passport to get around (yet). But if I want to go to Europe, I need a passport. So the passport doesn't matter in this country. But it's in this country where I do the things I need to to secure a passport. So you might well ask, if it doesn't matter i n this country, in what way does it matter in this country?
If no-one in the USA wanted or needed to go to Europe, the availability of appropriate documentation to go to Europe wouldn't matter to anyone in the USA. And I note that you wouldn't need a passport to be deported to Europe, or to be rendered to (places in) Europe under a variety of military and civilian laws. And if a sufficiently-resourced someone in the USA wanted you in Europe, they'd find a way to get you there, regardless.
Quite. Marvin's post seems to assume Christianity is the only game in town, afterlife-wise speaking.
Aye, well, there's the rub as they say. Multiple truth claims all saying we need to do X to be sorted for life after this one for contradictory values of X. And dire consequences for guessing the wrong X.
I'm not sure if there is a way of asking the question that doesn't presume one premise or the other. Furthermore, I think that this is one of a category of questions about issues such as religion, where trying to think about the answer from the perspective of knowable or unknowable truth isn't that helpful. Which is why I reckon approaching this aspect of belief from the perspective of faith is rather more reliable.
It's so, so, easy to be drawn towards "it's all bollocks isn't it?" I mean, at least with the two doors and the guards one of whom always lies and the other who always tells the truth there's a trick to it. This is lots of doors and every door except the one to the Emerald City has a tiger with a gun behind it. With hundreds of guards none of whom are guaranteed to lie or tell the truth.
And there might not really be a door to the Emerald City either. (Or an Emerald City.)
What's the difference between it being impossible for us to be be right or wrong, and us not knowing whether we're right or wrong?
Are there any ways in which this difference impacts our lives?
There is a fundamental difference between viewing the world and other people as something that is just there to be instrumentally useful in our ends and projects and viewing it as something that is there independently of our ends and projects and of what we happen to know or believe about it.
All of which is interesting but, as Basketactortale said, I'm not clear how this relates to the discussion. But it does seem to be being presented as some kind of binary. In contrast to the two views above, I believe that there is such a thing as society, and that it, and the people in it, matter..
That hardly seems to be a contrast with either of the two views above, since it is something of a platitude. But would you believe that people matter even if we don't know about them?
Our creaturely concepts of justice are images of God's justice.
I presume this is what you believe. I believe that it is impossible to know whether or not this is true.
Knowledge is a high bar, especially if you start to factor in skeptical doubt (is it possible to know you're not a brain in a vat?).
Generally in philosophical cases we settle for supported by some sufficient weight of rational argument, even where we're aware that other people coming from different premises may find that they believe rational argument supports a different conclusion.
In this case I think any account of the relation between God and ethics that differs substantially falls foul of one horn or the other of the Euthyphro dilemma ( does God command us to love our neighbours because it's good or is it good because God commands it). A god for whom it's not true would be an idol.
So in short, call me a bullshitter if you like. Maybe that coat fits. But please don't suggest that other people have come to other conclusions because they are shallow or bullshitting.
I was talking to pease, who believes in Hell and advocates other people believing in Hell, despite thinking that not only we can't know whether we're right or wrong about Hell but that it doesn't matter if we're right or wrong. pease is advocating believing in Hell for reasons other than that he thinks belief in Hell is true. I wasn't calling him a bullshitter; I was observing that advocating beliefs for reasons other than thinking those beliefs are true meets the technical definition of bullshit. (One is a judgement of an action, which is acceptable on this board, and one is a categorisation of a person, which is not acceptable.)
I was not talking to you. I do not know why you think I was talking to you. If you don't advocate believing in Hell then I was not talking about you. I do not know why you think I was talking about you.
…But even if you want to describe me as a shallow bullshitter by these definitions, it seems unkind to lump other people who post here into the same group. They seem to me to be taking the subject seriously, they seem to me to be thinking hard, using sources that are available to them, sometimes it seems over many years.
They've just come to other conclusions.
So in short, call me a bullshitter if you like. Maybe that coat fits. But please don't suggest that other people have come to other conclusions because they are shallow or bullshitting.
I think the specific issue arises in the following passage from On Bullshit:
One who is concerned to report or to conceal the facts assumes that there are indeed facts that are in some way both determinate and knowable. His interest in telling the truth or in lying presupposes that there is a difference between getting things wrong and getting them right, and that it is at least occasionally possible to tell the difference. Someone who ceases to believe in the possibility of identifying certain statements as true and others as false can have only two alternatives. The first is to desist both from efforts to tell the truth and from efforts to deceive. This would mean refraining from making any assertion whatever about the facts. The second alternative is to continue making assertions that purport to describe the way things are but that cannot be anything except bullshit.
One problem with this particular definition is that it assumes that anyone who wants to question what we mean by truth, and whether it is possible to know truly how some things are, is invariably doing so out of disrespect for truth. This is an argument that is likely to appeal rather more to essentialists than non-essentialists. (It appears that Frankfurt was not a fan of postmodernism.)
In relation to discussion of an issue, the idea is that honest participants say only what they believe to be true - correct descriptions of reality - and that honest discussion involves consideration of these facts, or to determine these facts. The problem with this is that it identifies as bullshit a lot of what at least some of us consider to be sincere, honestly made, descriptions of the way things are. The end of On Bullshit makes this clear that this is intended.
But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them. Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial — notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.
Maybe we should have a close read of the essay? It's not that long, it might be interesting to see how other people perceived it. At least one person here is seeing things in it that I've not seen.
To me the essence of it is this passage
Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or
opportunities to speak about some topic are more excessive than his
knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic
As far as I understand it, the point isn't that someone is postmodern, but that they're talking for the sake of talking. If there is any truth at all in what they say, it is accidental. Inauthentic. Shallow.
Comments
Quantum physics allows for testable (falsifiable) hypotheses. Theism does not.
What question? Those are all statements.
Science is a series of testable hypotheses. So even quantum physics makes sense to someone.
I accept my wording might have been sloppy but I'm saying that difficult science is a different thing to theological concepts that nobody understands and accepts without qualification, sticking plasters or ignoring uncomfortable parts.
If I remember my Philosophy of Science correctly, this also happens in science. Take the time when Darwin came out with his Origin of Species. There were several alternative theories of evolution already out there, Lamarckism being the most prominent. The biggest difference with scientific premises, though, is they can be tested and adaptive to new information.
To the comment that simplicity is not equal to facts. I think that is also an axiom of science. It tries to explain reality in the simplest terms possible. But as time goes on, accepted theories will be adapted until they reach a point, where a simpler theory fits existing data better. Take astronomy. It was Ptolemy who first came up with a mathematical model to predict planetary motion, though he assumed the earth was the center of the universe, and for a long while his model worked. But as astronomers developed more data, the existing math models became much more complicated. Then people like Newton developed a simpler model through calculus, and now we have instruments like the James Webb Telescope helping to rewrite what we know of the universe. And it is very complicated; but, mark my words, someone or a group of someones are trying to boil it down to the simplest of terms.
I had an uncle who was an astronomer. A believer, but an astronomer too. He had a plaque on his wall that said:
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”
— Psalm 8:3–4
Oftentimes it's just a shorthand for "Christianity," but I think that's a bit eurocentric of us, no? Even this fixation on the word "beliefs" is fairly Christian, since that itself is a word of primary importance to the Apostle Paul. Other religions don't put nearly so much weight on it, and some religions would regard it as a terrible notion.
I can't really get my head around considering truth claims - be they scientific or religious - any other way. I want to believe things that are true. The premises "suit me" inasmuch as they're the only ones that make any sense to me.
Yeah, but which premises?
That religion makes truth claims about reality which may or may not be true. To that extent they are comparable to scientific hypotheses.
How do you see religious truth claims?
I think "claim" is the wrong concept of word when talking about philosophical or religious ideas. When Plato talked about the Forms, I don't take this to be a right/wrong claim about the state of reality, but a way of understanding it. Something that one either accepts as a useful axiom to hang your thoughts around or garbage.
When I was in NZ I visited an extinct volcano which has a complex Māori story about gods and goddesses. It also happens to be a place with good views across Auckland, so the Māori people lived there for centuries.
One could ask whether the Māori stories are reflecting real events. I can't remember the details so it isn't for me to recite them here, but I think we can probably both accept that we don't believe in gods who live in volcano craters.
Or one can think about what role those stories have in Māori culture, what this says about that community in the past and today.
For me, being interested and attempting to listen for these things is more important than assessing if they are true/false.
One cannot look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting if there's not an objectively existing God to actually do the resurrecting. Religions do make and depend on truth claims.
It feels to me like you're describing studying the phenomenon of religion, which is all good and well and fascinating in its own right, whilst I'm talking about actual belief.
I feel a million miles away from your approach. I meditate every day, and some days reality seems material and that's that, and on other days reality seems non-material and creative. So I wrestle with all that.
Quite so. The number of things I definitely don't believe in horrifies the more conservative types.
Perhaps they need to be horrified at times. Perhaps we all do ...
Did I say it was an issue?
Forgive me for interfering though.
Are you suggesting Plato was putting forth the Forms as a metaphor, and didn't really believe in their existence? That seems a mighty big claim given 2600 years of philosophical inquiry telling the opposite.
Yes but was it more im portant for Plato? Or are you just projecting a 21st century attitude (Reality isn't as important as feelings) back two and a half millenia?
I'm not making any statement about what Plato believed. I'm just describing how I engage with things I don't believe in, which isn't a 21st century attitude to anything.
There are many beliefs I don't believe in. I don't have to second guess whether people "really believed" in the thing, because it seems more important to me to consider the impact of those things.
Platonism historically led to x y and z beliefs and behaviours.
As far as we living human beings are concerned, I think that the chances are vanishingly small of any questions about hell being resolved during our lifetimes.
Our own fleeting lifetimes might not be the same as "never", but I think they are functionally equivalent for all the difference that it makes to our discussions and our lives.
This isn't very difficult, in my experience. It's kind of how conservative human mindsets work.
Are there any ways in which this difference impacts our lives?
Two hedgehogs are waiting on the side of the road. They're having a conversation about passing cars.
I think we can be fairly sure that neither would have a decent guess about what a car was, who the humans are and where they were going.
Now imagine a billion hedgehogs. One out of the billion somehow guesses that there's a human in the car wearing a pink shirt.
That one-in-a-billion guess is factually correct. But also is possibly the least important thing about that particular car, and says nothing about cars in general.
Reality is obviously far more complex than the hedgehog could ever understand.
It matters if you will be condemned to endless suffering at some point, as the afterlife is then effectively a continuation of your lived experience.
But there are it seems to me not differences but something more fundamental. To say there is impossible to be either right or wrong in our beliefs is, as I said, what Harry Frankfurt called bullshit. Bullshit is an instrumental attitude to our beliefs and assertions such that we adopt them to either project a particular image of ourself or to instil a particular emotional reaction in other people. An instrumental attitude to our beliefs goes along with - makes easier and enables - an instrumental attitude to other people. (I note that in philosophy there is a skeptical problem about other minds. The difference between the way we view people if we think we can't ever know beyond skeptical doubt what other people think and feel and how we view them if we think it's impossible for us to be right or wrong about what other people think and feel is huge.)
There is a fundamental difference between viewing the world and other people as something that is just there to be instrumentally useful in our ends and projects and viewing it as something that is there independently of our ends and projects and of what we happen to know or believe about it.
One other consideration is to ask just how far it's true that we cannot know. Not being able to know is not a binary on/off state: there may be things that are completely beyond our ability to talk about meaningfully, and there are things that we can easily talk about, but most things are somewhere in between. Aquinas argued that while God was fundamentally unknowable, we could still talk about God in that creaturely concepts like love, wisdom, and knowledge are images of God in so far as we can talk about them. Our creaturely concepts of justice are images of God's justice. That means that 'justice' does not suddenly lose its human meaning when applied to God. So that if we assert that something - eternal punishment - is just for God then we equally assert that the closest human approximation to that is just for humans.
The argument from justice against the eternity of Hell is that no close human approximation to eternal punishment could be considered just, and therefore as human justice is a participation in the divine justice, eternal punishment cannot be part of the divine justice.
Bullshit, I think, would be putting on a show of belief because it gave some incidental benefits. I'm a politician interested in the Sikh vote and suddenly I become photographed looking very Sikh.
I need to read it again now, but I don't think even doing things ironically would count as bullshit per Frankfurt.
As far as I can understand the point you are responding to, someone is saying that there's an issue that can't be resolved in this lifetime and so.. maybe it's not worth worrying about for other reasons.
To me this is a bit like a response to the conspiracy theory about a lizard race controlling the planet. Sure there are things we don't know about the planet and sure there could be some weirdness going on that means we are not perceiving the reality of things.
But for other reasons we dismiss this possibility as remote and instead focus on stuff that's more likely, such as the control of many aspects of life by the super-wealthy. Lizards might be a possibility but of all the things.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
It seems to me that those who say the afterlife doesn’t matter and we should just focus on this life don’t really believe that Hell (or the entire afterlife, or even God for that matter) is real.
Personally, I agree with St Paul on this one. If Jesus is not truly risen from the dead then the whole religion is pointless.
Yes again. I think there are some people who don’t really believe that God and the afterlife are actual factual reality, but seek to use religious belief to instil certain “desirable” values (charity, self-sacrifice, obedience, etc) in the population. From that perspective it wouldn’t matter if the beliefs were true, only that they had the “right” impact on our lives.
What I can’t imagine is someone who believes the afterlife is real, and Hell is a genuine possibility, but one that doesn’t matter to them. It just doesn’t compute. I mean, in Risk Register terms even if your likelihood of going to Hell is minuscule, the impact of it happening is infinite, so the overall level of risk is also infinite!
The basic idea in On Bullshit appears to be the absence of respect for truth. It looks to me as if you don't agree with the nature of truth that I believe in. Or maybe the way that I believe it. Either of which you're entitled to do. Or even if you want to call my beliefs bullshit. I believe that we are all innately irrational creatures, who tell ourselves the narratives we need to hear, including about our own rationality. Maybe this is one of the things that gives me an abidingly deep commitment to truth.
All of which is interesting but, as Basketactortale said, I'm not clear how this relates to the discussion. But it does seem to be being presented as some kind of binary. In contrast to the two views above, I believe that there is such a thing as society, and that it, and the people in it, matter.
I presume this is what you believe. I believe that it is impossible to know whether or not this is true.
The idea that there is such a thing as a "closest human approximation" to eternal punishment is an intriguing claim, given the degree of disagreement there was about it on the relevant thread(s).
Surely an infinitesimal probability multiplied by an infinite impact could generate a risk level of any size from infinitesimal to infinite depending on how those factors are derived?
If the next life is a direct continuation (in some form or other) of this one, then what happens to you after death matters just as much as what will happen to you tomorrow, next month, or in ten years’ time. And that remains the case even in the extreme scenario where nothing you can do will change it in any way.
As long as the likelihood is greater than zero, it has to be taken seriously due to the infinitely massive consequences of it happening.
This doesn't make any sense to me. According to some, we will be reincarnated into animals in the next life depending on actions in this life.
Does that therefore mean that we should all behave in ways that mean we'll not be reincarnated into cockroaches?
Reincarnation is a serious thing that could influence your future lives for thousands of your lives into the future. So according to your measure, the consequences mean that you should take it seriously.
I can say this about that. While I have never been able to square an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God with hell as a real thing, what does scare the crap out of me is a God who loves me enough to give me as many lives as I need in order to balance the energies I set in motion through my thoughts words and deeds.
Having to feel through everything, but everything, that my intentions and carelessnesses, insensitivities, malices and ignorances inflict upon others is the worst kind of vision of the afterlife I can conjure for myself.
Christ gave me the antidote in the Great Commandment, but how stubbornly I turn away from it. Truly the wages of sin is death, because how often can I do what is so injurious to myself before I finally die of my intractible stubbornness?
AFF
Inside the United States, I don't need a passport to get around (yet). But if I want to go to Europe, I need a passport. So the passport doesn't matter in this country. But it's in this country where I do the things I need to to secure a passport. So you might well ask, if it doesn't matter i n this country, in what way does it matter in this country?
Quite. Marvin's post seems to assume Christianity is the only game in town, afterlife-wise speaking.
Aye, well, there's the rub as they say. Multiple truth claims all saying we need to do X to be sorted for life after this one for contradictory values of X. And dire consequences for guessing the wrong X.
It's so, so, easy to be drawn towards "it's all bollocks isn't it?" I mean, at least with the two doors and the guards one of whom always lies and the other who always tells the truth there's a trick to it. This is lots of doors and every door except the one to the Emerald City has a tiger with a gun behind it. With hundreds of guards none of whom are guaranteed to lie or tell the truth.
Perhaps they are even like Goebbels, trying to sow sufficient confusion that people hearing lose the ability to distinguish truth from lies.
So maybe that is what is being suggested here. That those who are in the "can't know the reality of the afterlife in this life" camp are bullshitting. Either we are hiding behind a curtain sniggering, or have long fingers over a illuminated globe with the objective to sow confusion.
I'd like to offer an alternative mental model. I've been reading an interesting book about the love of learning. The book claims that the truly authentic life of the mind involves learning for the sake of learning, putting aside all other considerations such as financial or status benefits.
It's a provocative read, that somehow being exposed to the audience of authors from history, be it "classical literature", philosophy, art and historical accounts forces the close and focussed reader to examine themselves and leads to personal growth. I'm not sure if I agree with this narrative for various reasons, but I like it.
One point that I think is well made is about the difference between shallowness and depth. Shallowness broadly meaning the act of skipping across various topics to be satisfied. Maybe one spends a few minutes on a Wikipedia page, thinks "oh that's interesting, I must tell my wife over breakfast". Depth implies a real wrestling with the topic. As my daughter puts it, falling deep down the rabbit-hole.
I guess I could be being shallow on the topic of hell. It's not something that makes much impact on me mentally. I'm here because I'm interested at the moment, possibly for ulterior reasons - I'm curious what this idea does to people. Next week I'm quite likely to be thinking about structural racism, or the habitats for kiwi birds, train tickets pricing or vegan food.
But even if you want to describe me as a shallow bullshitter by these definitions, it seems unkind to lump other people who post here into the same group. They seem to me to be taking the subject seriously, they seem to me to be thinking hard, using sources that are available to them, sometimes it seems over many years.
They've just come to other conclusions.
So in short, call me a bullshitter if you like. Maybe that coat fits. But please don't suggest that other people have come to other conclusions because they are shallow or bullshitting.
If no-one in the USA wanted or needed to go to Europe, the availability of appropriate documentation to go to Europe wouldn't matter to anyone in the USA. And I note that you wouldn't need a passport to be deported to Europe, or to be rendered to (places in) Europe under a variety of military and civilian laws. And if a sufficiently-resourced someone in the USA wanted you in Europe, they'd find a way to get you there, regardless.
I'm not sure if there is a way of asking the question that doesn't presume one premise or the other. Furthermore, I think that this is one of a category of questions about issues such as religion, where trying to think about the answer from the perspective of knowable or unknowable truth isn't that helpful. Which is why I reckon approaching this aspect of belief from the perspective of faith is rather more reliable.
And there might not really be a door to the Emerald City either. (Or an Emerald City.)
Knowledge is a high bar, especially if you start to factor in skeptical doubt (is it possible to know you're not a brain in a vat?).
Generally in philosophical cases we settle for supported by some sufficient weight of rational argument, even where we're aware that other people coming from different premises may find that they believe rational argument supports a different conclusion.
In this case I think any account of the relation between God and ethics that differs substantially falls foul of one horn or the other of the Euthyphro dilemma ( does God command us to love our neighbours because it's good or is it good because God commands it). A god for whom it's not true would be an idol.
I was not talking to you. I do not know why you think I was talking to you. If you don't advocate believing in Hell then I was not talking about you. I do not know why you think I was talking about you.
I know you were not talking about me, you were vaguely pointing at something and imagining that we all understood what you were talking about.
As I said, the only person who could be accused of bullshit here is me. Certainly not anyone else.
In relation to discussion of an issue, the idea is that honest participants say only what they believe to be true - correct descriptions of reality - and that honest discussion involves consideration of these facts, or to determine these facts. The problem with this is that it identifies as bullshit a lot of what at least some of us consider to be sincere, honestly made, descriptions of the way things are. The end of On Bullshit makes this clear that this is intended.
To me the essence of it is this passage
As far as I understand it, the point isn't that someone is postmodern, but that they're talking for the sake of talking. If there is any truth at all in what they say, it is accidental. Inauthentic. Shallow.