it seems incorrect to claim that God not providing opportunities for salvation is unjust. Rather, through their actions on Earth, those who end up in hell have chosen to reject communion with God and it doesn’t seem unjust for God to respect their free will by allowing them to remain in hell. — Marissa

Your argument seems to take the following form:
1. If God is all-loving, then it's right for God to respect the free will of sinners by allowing them to remain in hell.
2.God is all loving.
3. Therefore, it's right for God to respect the free will of sinners by allowing them to remain in hell.

I would like to take objection to your first premise, as I believe it is unsound. I think, as you lay out in your post, that this isn't an adequate-enough response to the initial argument. It is not love for God to let people perish miserably in hell when he has the power to save them. Even if he's respecting their free will, I think we'd still argue that a grander demonstration of love would be to save a person from eternal flames. Let's think of a real world example where this is the case: a mother and a son. The son has grown up to be accused of murder-- and is on trial for the death penalty -- but he has an alibi. Unfortunately, the alibi would make him look very bad in front of the entire world, so he doesn't want to share the alibi with the public. In one scenario, the mother respects the son's free will not to use the alibi, and lets him get put to death. In another scenario, the mother takes action and convinces her son to share the alibi with the world and ultimately save his life. When left to a vote between these two scenarios, it seems as is the mother that saves her son is more loving, no?

Looking forward to your thoughts.

This objection is interesting, and I am not fully convinced by any response. — robbiefrost

One possible response that I have found for your concern is that God maybe does enact this punishment immediately after death. For Him, an eternity in purgatory could feel like 2 seconds, He may not sense time in the same way we do. Also, purgatory is dependent on the severity of the live one lived. If someone was an extremely corrupted sinner, they will spend a long time in purgatory. If someone was as close to saintly as possible, they will only send a short stint in purgatory before being allowed to their well-deserved eternity in heaven.

To refine the argument, I think the case for purgatory takes the following form:
1.If an all-loving God can't send people to eternal hell, there must be some other way for God to relinquish people of Sin before sending them to heaven.
2. If there is some way for God to relinquish people of Sin before sending them to heaven, then God should require a prolonged bout in purgatory before a corrupted soul is allowed into heaven.
3. Therefore, God should require a prolonged bout in purgatory before a corrupted soul is allowed into heaven.

This argument seems to be sound. Thoughts?

Your argument seems to me to take the following form,

1. If free will succeeds as a defense of POE, then God must allow for free will must exist.
2. God doesn’t allow for free will.
3. Therefore, free will doesn’t succeed as a defense of POE.

I would like to take objection to your second premise. You say that if God allowed for free will, he wouldn’t make the stakes of going to heaven or going to hell so high. Eternal pain and eternal joy are too important, you say, that no one would choose to do otherwise. I think this is clearly not the case. A counterexample: smoking— most smokers understand, deep down to their cores, that smoking will kill them. That is high, eternal stakes for them. Yet they decide to keep smoking.

As you say, God allows us to choose to do good or do evil, and the consequences of doing either are clear. We know the stakes at the beginning of the game. If we truly had no choice over it, if it were truly an “offer we can’t refuse”, then more believers in God would act strictly in line with his teachings. But this, as we both know, is not the case.

I think a stronger second premise for this argument would be that of divine determinism. This argument would take this form:

1. If free will succeeds as a defense of POE, then God must allow for free will to exist.
2. God doesn’t allow for free will, because he decides what everyone does.
3. Therefore, free will doesn’t succeed as a defence of POE.

I think this argument is in line with yours, but it is a stronger statement. Yours says we can’t choose for ourselves because we know the stakes of going to heaven or hell. Mine says we can’t choose for ourselves, because our all-powerful God writes everything that happens in the world. If this is the case, free will can’t exist and therefore the problem of evil can’t be defended because God is directly responsible for the evils in the world.

Let me know what you think.

@Gnostic Christian Bishop

Your argument seems to take the following form:
1. If someone loves someone without that love being reciprocated, then the person is stalking their love, which doesn’t constitute love.
2. God loves everyone, without that love being reciprocated.
3. Therefore, God is stalking everyone who doesn’t love him back. (1,2, MP)

I would like to raise an objection to your first premise. First, there are many counterexamples of this not being the case. What about a mother who loves the child in her womb without having even met the child. Is that mother all of a sudden a stalker? Surely you wouldn’t think so.

Perhaps I’m being uncharitable in my break down of your argument. Maybe you mean a different kind of love, love for someone who isn’t in your family. Then that would be stalkerish according to your analysis of scripture. However, according to scripture we are “all His children.”

Let’s assume for a minute he’s not a family member, though. There are instances when someone loves somebody without that love being reciprocated that don’t constitute stalker behavior. What about the teenage fans of One Direction? Is their unrequited love for their favorite band stalkerish behavior simply because Harry Styles doesn’t know who they are, and therefore can’t love them back? This is not the case.

Happy to hear out your responses.

Your argument seems to take the following form:

1. If it’s unjust for someone to be punished for failing to understand good and evil, and Adam and Eve were punished for failing to understand good and evil, then God exercised poor judgement in the case of Adam and Eve.
2.It’s unjust for someone to be punished for failing to understand good and evil.
2.a. Nobody knows what morality is proper.
2.b.One must know what morality is proper in order for their punishment to be just.
3. Adam and Eve were punished for failing to understand good and evil.
4. Therefore, God exercised poor judgement in the case of Adam and Eve.

I would like to raise an objection to your second premise, and then also make an objection to your inference.

Your second premise claims that it’s unjust for someone to be punished for failing to understand good and evil. However, the moral of the story is that God is saying people need to have a moral compass. If one doesn’t have a moral compass, then they’ll more often opt for what’s wrong, since what’s wrong is usually more inconvenient. Second, there is no form of law seem to accept that ignorance equals innocence. As Jefferson said, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse in any country. If it were, the laws would lose their effect, because it can always be pretended.”

Finally, if you infer that it is unjust for someone to punish someone for not understanding what’s right or wrong, and you argue that nobody knows what’s right and wrong. Then aren’t you then unable to posit that God made poor judgement. Making such a statement implies that you there’s a right or wrong, but as you say earlier, nobody has but a preference of moral theory. How can someone accept your premises that God was wrong if 1. they don’t know what’s right or wrong, 2. God doesn’t know what’s right or wrong, and 3. You don’t know what’s right and wrong. Accepting your premises on such grounds would be impossible.

@TheMadFool,

If I understand you correctly, your argument takes the following form:

If nobody should want an all-powerful dictator, then nobody should want an all-powerful God.
Nobody should want an all-powerful dictator.
Therefore, nobody should want an all-powerful God. (1,2, MP)

My main objection to this argument would be with your first premise. I think @aletheist sort of alludes to this objection as well. What you want in a leader may not necessarily be the same qualities you want in a God. In sympathy to theists, let’s think of one of the main reasons one would want a God: in order to understand where the universe came from.

Is it true, then, that we should want a leader of our country to have created the country? Clearly not, since that would be unreasonable to expect of our leaders, unless we wanted the formations of new countries every generation. I think the underlying difference between a God and a leader is that, in theory, a God has been and always will be, whereas a dictator is only set to rule for (at most) their lifespan.

Thus, when making the inference that because we don’t want an all-powerful ruler, we should not want an all-powerful God: that difference reveals the key to this argument. A ruler on Earth’s power is restrained. “All-powerful” for a human being is different for an abstract Being. In theory, an “all-powerful” God should be able to do the impossible, like turning water into wine and parting seas. He has the ability to do this all of eternity. Whereas humans never would expect a leader to do that in their finite lifespan.

Happy to hear out your responses.