I pointed out that it’s not unusual for Christians to struggle with or have misgivings about the concept of hell. And it’s not a secret either. There’s lots of writing. There’s lots of public discussion.
— Srap Tasmaner

Oh absolutely. But here I find these struggles are presented as segregated from ours. — Isaac

This is the problem with the thread. It purports to be a criticism of the doctrine of eternal punishment, but the title is"The moral character of Christians" as though no Christian has ever had the moral fibre to even consider the problem. The separation thus has to be maintained even as the difficulty is denied and puzzlement expressed at the feeble and off topic objections. and this from one who is won't to complain of the low quality of philosophy of religion on the site.

I gues they are saving it forever lol — hope

Because you're worth it.

I'm puzzling as to why some nonchristians feel a strong need to be so defensive. — Banno

It's a morality thing dude. We defend our brothers and sisters of every creed or colour or none. Solidarity, it's called.

Religion can be part of that system of the coercion that brings about our acquiesces to the powers that be. And, as Tutu showed, it can be part of the revolt. — Banno

I agree completely. So I don't think one can generalise about the moral character of Christians in the way that Lewis appears to be doing.

Rewards and punishments in this world are instruments of governance intended to incentivise moral behaviour in those inclined to immorality. They do this indirectly, through promises and threats. The government, for example might incentivise folks not to drink and drive by the threat of fine, loss of licence to drive, imprisonment torture or execution.

To the extent that this strategy is successful, the behaviour in question ceases to be a moral behaviour, and becomes common sense selfishness. Which is right and proper for merely human authorities, concerned with social functions. But from a moral god's perspective, where the concern is to produce freely moral subjects, such threats and promises are counter-productive, so sensible moral gods never make them. Rather it is the human authorities that do so for their own administrative purposes.

The confusion between gods and organised religions is one that philosophers would do well to disentangle, especially as 'believers' commonly fail to do so.

Trolls eat outrage. Isolation destroys trolls through starvation.

What solutions to this problem do you think would be the most effective, even if they might not be morally ‘good’? — Schrödinger's cat

War, famine, plague, and wild beasts human bestiality. The four horsemen of the applesauce.

But in case that's not enough, we can add in the flood, and the fire of global warming. Problem solved!

I sometimes liken personal identity to the identity of a cyclone in the atmosphere. One can identify features of the atmosphere, eg jet streams and hurricanes. Without straying from causal continuity one can aver that the path of a hurricane is influenced by the jet stream. Yet the entities are vague, with undefined borders, and weather forecasters speak of such things 'losing their identity' with appropriate vagueness and handwaving.

In contrast to Buddhist Reductionists who deny the ultimate existence of the persons, Buddhist Personalists claim that persons are ultimately real in some important sense.

https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1391&context=comparativephilosophy

I'm not sure if there is a difference between a hurricane reductionist and a hurricane personalist. It seems a matter of convenience of speaking.

The Christian habit of self-mutilation and amputation is abhorrent. "It wasn't me, it was my hand." they always say.

I remain unconvinced. — Banno

Me too.

Perhaps the trite nature of most of the replies here, which do not address the article, has misled you into thinking the article itself trite. That would be an error. — Banno

Perhaps, but I did read the article. I think "demonising" is a fairly accurate characterisation. Generally, in my examination of any religious tradition, i like to back to the founder's words rather than those of later functionaries of the bureaucracy.

But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. — Matthew6:18

This is about as condemnatory as Jesus gets, and even on the cross was forgiving. How one gets from the loving father of Jesus to the hateful antics of some 'followers' is by the same process that one gets from the Marx's
withering away of the state to Putin. An overwhelming infection with self-serving bullshit, and a passion for organising and control run riot.

I say a god who inflicts infinite torture for finite offences is not worthy of worship. What say you?

Ethical relativism be damned; if you defend such a villain, your moral judgement is questionable. — Banno

This I agree with. And there is no shortage through the millennia, but it is a continuous betrayal of Christianity as characterised by the words and deeds of Jesus.

is your point that good catholics, the pope included, do not actually believe the doctrine they espouse? — Banno

Only a philosopher could believe such nonsense. It is like the suggestion that the Germans ate babies or that martyrs will be rewarded with virgins - something said to encourage the troops.

This thread is unworthy of you. Demonising religion is as easy as demonising capitalism or communism, and almost as productive. Thank no one we are so fucking righteous and sensible!

It's a common to mistake argumentation for philosophy. Argumentation is indeed a game of let's pretend some premises and see what conclusions we come to.

He had reason to doubt he had hands, eyes, blood, senses (though using them all to write that he doubted them)? — Ciceronianus

He used a hypothetical doubt to construct a foundation for knowledge. And he wrote afterwards about his meditations. One can of course doubt the construction of his doubt. Let's pretend there is a devil deceiver???

If "If" is equivalent to "Let's pretend", then every argument can be recast as "let's pretend {premises}, then {conclusion}. The interesting question, then, is "is there more to philosophy than argument?" I certainly hope so!

I think you have to except the pope from this Christian belief, along with the crowd of his followers. This is a old story that may have passed you by.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/04/26/heartsick-boy-asks-pope-my-dad-heaven/553844002/

Allow me to recommend an alternative.

Personal Construct theory is a meta-theory of personality, in that it classifies people according to the structure and complexity of their understanding of personality. It has never become very popular because it is rather complex mathematically, and doesn't predefine types, but instead explores and analyses the significant dimensionality of folks' ideas about personality.

But it can analyse the MBTI theory itself, and notice that it is rigid, binary, four-dimensional and blinkered. As if one cannot think straight and feel something.

Behavior is not the answer to the psychologist’s question; it is the question. — George Kelly

Philosophy is like a snake pit; try not to fall in. If you have fallen in, don't expect much consensus about the best way out; even the snakes don't know.

We found that the mass melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet was a major cause of high sea levels during a period known as the Last Interglacial (129,000-116,000 years ago). The extreme ice loss caused more than three metres of average global sea level rise – and worryingly, it took less than 2˚C of ocean warming for it to occur..

https://theconversation.com/ancient-antarctic-ice-melt-caused-extreme-sea-level-rise-129-000-years-ago-and-it-could-happen-again-131495

The Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf is the floating terminus of the Thwaites Glacier, one of the fastest changing glaciers in Antarctica and contributing as much as 4\% of global sea level rise today. This floating ice shelf is stabilized offshore by a marine shoal and acts as a dam to slow the flow of ice off the continent into the ocean. If this floating ice shelf breaks apart, the Thwaites Glacier will accelerate and its contribution to sea level rise will increase by as much as 25\%. Over the last several years, satellite radar imagery shows many new fractures opening up. Similar to a growing crack in the windshield of a car, a slowly growing crack means the windshield is weak and a small bump to the car might cause the windshield to suddenly break apart into hundreds of panes of glass. We have mapped out weaker and stronger areas of the ice shelf and suggest a “zig-zag” pathway the fractures might take through the ice, ultimately leading to break up of the shelf in as little as 5 years, which result in more ice flowing off the continent.

https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm21/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/978762

Two near-record melt events occurred in the 2021 melt season for the Greenland Ice Sheet, in late July and in mid-August. During the second event, an unprecedented occurrence of rain at the National Science Foundation’s Summit Station took place, the first to be observed in the satellite era. Overall the melt season was unexceptional, owing to a modest start; however, the mid-August heat wave was both strikingly intense and late in the season by several weeks compared to similar events in the record.

http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/

Most of the sea level rise in recent years is attributed to expansion of seawater due to warming, and small glacier melt. But most of the potential sea level rise (up to 70meters) lie in the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. The news is not great.

Back when we were nomadic hunter gatherers, it was easy enough to up sticks and migrate to higher ground. But the logistics of London or NewYork or ... count the number of coastal low-lying Metropoli,... is a lot of sticks to up. Andthen there is all the arable land loss.

There are going to be some climate refugees - and we all hate refugees. There are going to be some food shortages.

This is one factor - sea level. Then there is the heat itself that will make some equatorial regions uninhabitable, the increase in energy in weather systems leading to more extreme events, the inability of vegetation to migrate fast enough to their new preferred climate zone. degradation of ecologies by failure to adapt soil loss to erosion, and there may be some social unrest.

There aren't that many ways to truly get cancelled on the internet and the community becoming a hostile and silencing force against you… — Qmeri

I think you have misidentified the culprit.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/dec/13/david-baddiel-social-media-anger-and-us-review-the-twisted-truth-about-twitter-and-tiktok

The programme is worth watching if you get the chance, and it indicates that hostility and silencing are a much more widespread problem. There has always been a strong social pressure to conform, but the internet has, partly by design and mainly by accident become an amplifier of negative emotion. The mob that is hanging you out to dry here is related to the mob that hung black people from the poplar trees only in the sense that it is a mob - hasty to judgement and overbearing, overheated, and intolerant.

There is a general problem, that cyberbullying can lead to suicide, that cyber hate campaigns can lead to physical violence, and these examples of 'free speech' hurt and kill. I think it behooves us all to moderate our language more towards what we would say if our faces were vulnerable to an immediate physical response.

But when you start doing the research the philosophy starts to break down and make less sense. For example, live stock isn’t a main contributor of emissions causing a negative effect on our Ozone layer. Research has shown that removing all livestock in the US will only reduce emissions by less than 1%. And since the 1950 US cattle production has reduced by 1/3. — TheQuestion

Do some more research, maybe. The main driver of deforestation in the Amazon is for livestock and feedstock. National statistics can be misleading; cattle production can decline while consumption increases. the environmental costs are thereby outsourced.

But the heart of the environmental argument is that the land usage of a vegan diet is about 10% of that of the high meat diet of the West. It's the simplest way we can have more people and more trees on the same size planet. Going vegan isn't a complete environmental saviour, but it's really easy to do gradually and informally - once a week or twice, or...

People hate vegans because they hate their identity being called into question. "Cowboy fragility", I think it's called. :wink:

1. Luck. Basically inexplicable events that make you wanna ask "whatever did I do to deserve this?" The events in question maybe either good (winning the lottery) or bad (being laid off). — Agent Smith

One doesn't always get what one deserves or deserve what one gets. Tant pis. It may or may not be the case that one has another life, or many others, in which the balance of deserts is restored, but in this life, (the one that begins with birth and ends with death) innocents are slaughtered and people get away with murder, occasionally. But this is a necessary feature of a moral world, that virtue is not rewarded and vice is not punished, otherwise the good life and the totally self-serving life would be the same, and even the devil would practice virtue. The justice system would like to make it so, but never entirely succeeds, and many religions try to do the same thing by inventing other realms, or other incarnations where the wrong'uns get their comeuppance and we saints are rewarded with endless virgins or cherubs according to taste.

If good and evil are fictions, then the truth has no value either.
This doesn't follow. Some fictions have value (i.e. higher-priority – more adaptive – utility than disutility), and which ones do belong to particular forms-of-life. — 180 Proof

Should my arguments follow?

Some fictions have fictional value? Is adaptive utility unreal? Well if you insist, I will concede that truth has real utility to social beings such as humans. "Humans deserve the truth" specifies the relation of the form of life to itself as a group. This is the foundation of justice and so on. Forgive me, I simply assumed, parochially, we were all human.

that does not matter. — James Riley

I know you don't, but that does not matter. — James Riley

It matters to me.

I don't believe you.

Just because I don't share your values doesn't mean I don't have any. — James Riley

I have no reason to believe you. and nothing more to say.

This is a reductio. If you post on a philosophy forum, you value truth. Indeed to participate in communication at all is to value truth. To value logic is to value truth preservation, and the reality of values is demonstrated daily on this site. There is a moral inequality between truth and falsehood that is a fact of life. If you think it is an arbitrary distinction that is a matter of preference, you are as wrong as if you think a broken clock is just as good as working clock. Language does not work unless there is this inequality between truth and falsehood.

I disagree. — James Riley

Wot me worry? If there are no values, there is no value to truth, and never mind the bollocks of object and subject.

Indeed it doesn't. Neither does it make it even truth-apt. The decision is not between true and false here, but between forms of life. The red pill and the blue pill are both part of the same cinematic fiction. If good and evil are fictions, then the truth has no value either.

Society is just. Therefore: --
One deserves one's privilege.
One is lucky to get by.
The poor are always undeserving.
OR ...
Deserts in practice are about morality, not justice. We are all sinners and deserve hell but are redeemed by Christ. Everyone deserves a little kindness from their fellow sinners, and sinners are redeemed by the kindness they show their fellows through Christ.

Nobody deserves anything. :mask:
— 180 Proof

:lol: :up: We're all a bunch of underseving lucky/unlucky bastards & bitches. — Agent Smith

This is a recipe for irresponsibility and social collapse, much favoured by philosophers, and promulgated by the rich.

I think willfully siding with a system that looks towards popularism rather than policies (which is at its heart what you are suggesting) is a wrong turn. — I like sushi

I'm not, but let's drop it.

I have always found it shocking that in the US ‘candidates’ can just use empty rhetoric without even the slightest attempt to show any plans or implementation of said plans. — I like sushi

You think UK politicians are short on empty rhetoric? Like 'get brexit done.'? Our prime minister's declared policy is to have his cake and eat it. Don't vote for lies and bullshit. Don't vote for dishonest greedy politicians, and if you do it once by mistake, change your vote next time.

You're only allowed to expose the war crimes of losers. :death:

I forgot the main man - Ivan Illich.

But it seems to me that with no carrot and no stick, no curriculum is possible. Unless it be the curriculum of what is happening at the moment. — tim wood

Yes. that's what I said that you quoted. But actually, in practice kids love to learn almost anything just for fun, so all a teacher needs to do is be flexible and interesting. But standardisation is out. And that's the position of those folks I quoted, give or take a bit. Oh and I forgot to mention the free school movement of my misspent youth, that I was a small part of. That link explains a bit about the general philosophy and mentions A.S. Neill too so might be useful as a citation.

Do they have to attend school (wherever it is, even if at home)? At some point the word "education" loses meaning. — tim wood

I've left some links and you can google the names if you are interested. One is always constrained by The law of the land, so I'm not sure what or who you are asking about.

In the UK, there is Education Otherwise, a network of home schoolers.

A.S. Neill is probably the classic case you want.

J. Krishnamurti was also involved with education and several of his schools are still active.

John Holt is the American I am somewhat familiar with.

And there's Paulp Friere to represent S.America.

I think the key move is to eliminate all coercion and manipulation. Since children are naturally creative and varied, a standardised curriculum becomes impossible.

Sometimes this process leads to embarrassing revelations like having a paper rejected because Newton had your idea first! — jgill

And even Newton admitted to standing on the shoulders of giants. It seems appropriate to mention Wittgenstein's private language argument, which is not quite an argument, more a demonstration, that language, and therefore conceptual thought, cannot be entirely private and personal but must form a relation to the shared language. Otherwise it could not make any sense, even to its originator.

I think the op's instincts are about correct, and that all ideas are part of a long human conversation, or series of conversations in which ideas develop from the friction of mutual understanding and misunderstanding in such a way that no one can ever claim sole ownership.

which in your case is that the justification is a "true" justification. — Michael

There. that wasn't so hard was it?

I am justified in believing that they are 18 and so that I am allowed to sell them alcohol. — Michael

Indeed. Nobody will blame you, just until you learn that they are not 18 and you are not allowed to sell them alcohol. You will claim to know that they are 18, and you will be wrong, but justified in thinking you are right. You are confusing what is a reasonable justification with what is a true justification. As soon as it is pointed out that the passport he showed you is issued by the government of Narnia, you are no longer justified in your belief. and you will become responsible. Indeed perhaps you are already at fault for not noticing such a feeble attempt at a fake id. This too is common sense.

If a calculator tells me that the answer to 123 × 123 = 15,129 then I am justified in believing that 123 × 123 = 15,129. — Michael

Except in the case where the calculator is broken, or has been tampered with or ... In such cases, your justification dissolves. I am saying that just as one can believe one knows X when in fact one does not (and cannot) because X is false, so one can believe one is justified by X in believing Z when one is not, because X is false. Particularly in the case where Z = "I know that X ".

Are you saying that the farmer's belief isn't justified? — Michael

Yes. It is justified by something that turns out to be false, so it it turns out not to be justified. this is how we proceed is it not? Then it turns out to be true anyway, but so what?Farmer Giles believes his cabbages will fail because the fairies have cursed them and that belief is justified on the grounds that he failed to put milk out for them last full moon. Turns out that the milk would have attracted hedgehogs who would have eaten the slugs that are the real villains of the story. Farmer Giles is right in predicting the failure of the cabbages, but this is not then evidence for the existence of fairies.

2. P is justified — TheMadFool

Justification is not an on off thing, one can have more or less of it. The storyteller has more justification than the farmer because the storyteller 'knows' that the cow shape is a cloth. Story-tellers always know better than their characters because they are the god of the story.

One can see that justification is also knowledge, and that one can be wrong when one thinks one knows something. So the farmer is mistaken in his implicit claim to know that a that a cow shape is a cow. Had he further justified this by touch or smell, he would not have made the knowledge claim about the cow in the field.

Gettier is mistaken in thinking he has found a failure in our understanding of knowledge. He has discovered fallibility.