On the one hand how we would treat a Christian who believes literally in the claim that God eternally punishes with torture and worships the figure and on the other how we would treat just as sincere a believer in a mundane tormenter. — fdrake

I think that would have to be based on their respective actions.

But you hold to humanism with your gut feeling, don't you?
Or do you feel an overwhelming certainty that humanism is the right doctrine, for which you are willing to live, die, and kill? — baker

I have reasons for privileging humanism over other belief systems. Are the presuppositions I hold informed by gut feelings? Are all people's belief systems in the end expressions of emotional states? I've often thought so.

I don't have certainty about anything. I'm probably willing to live and die by my beliefs, but kill? I leave killing to fanatics. But there might be a context where I could do it... :death:

It occurs to me — what should be obvious but I don’t think anyone’s mentioned it — that I’m in the habit of thinking of faith, much as I think of other sorts of belief, as something that’s not up to you. You believe or you don’t. I’m a doxastic involuntarist, as the cool kids say.

This has natural consequences:

(1) If it’s not a choice, then it is unfair of me to judge you for it.

(2) Understanding your own experience — even experience you may identify or have identified as religious or spiritual — differently is also not a choice you make, but something that more or less happens to you, through other experiences, or that you learn to do. And that leaves learning as the deep and tricky part, which feels right to me. (You may not quite be able to choose what you learn, but at least you can choose what you try to learn, so I’m provisionally distinguishing it.)

I agree; although I hold that people are significantly diverse; the idea that what they have most in common is that what they believe is not up to them is eminently plausible

What follows is that people should not be judged on account of their beliefs, but on account of their actions; which makes this OP seem wrongheaded, although I guess we should not judge @Banno for believing that those who believe in a God who allows eternal damnation, of the most simplistic kind as envisaged by the OP, should be reviled.

Early Christian church fathers didn't take the Bible literally. Fundamentalism came later. — frank

Why do you say that?

• What did early Christians (before 400) believe about hell and eternal punishment?

In that day true and full happiness shall be the lot of none but the good, while deserved and supreme misery shall be the portion of the wicked, and of them only. — The City of God by Augustine (354-430)

Wherefore in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned. — Summa Theologica by Aquinas (1225-1274)

Wherefore as the saints will rejoice in all goods, so will the damned grieve for all goods. — Summa Theologica by Aquinas (1225-1274)

Anyway, it's fairly clear that people have believed (and some do believe) neverending damnation.

To know a person's moral character, we look at that person's ACTIONS. — frank

:up: Yep (and what they say). Of course, blanket-dehumanizing is bad.

doxastic involuntarist — Srap Tasmaner

Right, for the most part anyway. Morals are performative, prescriptive, though. Decision-making is involved. If someone expresses assent to neverending damnation, then we may express repugnance.

Well, either way, I'm not seeing Christians being taken to the guillotine (even if they express assent to neverending damnation), and certainly wouldn't want to. Hmm...then again, there was that case...

Finnish Lawmaker Faces Trial for Hate Speech After Quoting the Bible About Homosexuality (Apr 30, 2021)

Decision-making is involved. If someone expresses assent to neverending damnation, then we may express repugnance. — jorndoe

Well, that’s what we’re here to talk about, isn’t it.

What are the options?
1. You believe in the Christian God and hell.
2. You believe in the Christian God but not hell.
3. You believe in neither.

Given those, we get a list of questions:
1. How does one come to be in one of those buckets?
2. How might they move from one bucket to another? (Several permutations available.)
3, What might someone in one bucket say about someone in another bucket?

Given the source material, we’re supposed to be focused exclusively on what those in bucket 3 have to say about those in bucket 1. I’m not crazy about that, but it’s the topic I’ve had trouble staying on, and I’ll try not to make it worse.

So is it okay, within the parameters of this discussion, to ask questions 1 and 2? Are we at all curious about how the people in bucket 1 got there? I’m betting almost everyone here is ready to say, that’s how they were raised, explanation complete. I was raised to be in bucket 1 but I’m not and I have no idea why. At what point did I become a morally acceptable human being? More to the point, what did I do to merit this improvement in my moral status?

Why do you say that? — jorndoe

"Origen did not believe in the eternal suffering of sinners in hell. For him, all souls, including the devil himself, will eventually achieve salvation, even if it takes innumerable ages to do so; for Origen believed that God’s love is so powerful as to soften even the hardest heart, and that the human intellect – being the image of God – will never freely choose oblivion over proximity to God, the font of Wisdom Himself.". -IEP

Aquinas isn't an early Church Father, jorndoe.

Anyway, it's fairly clear that people have believed (and some do believe) neverending damnation. — jorndoe

Depends on waht you interpret damnation to consist in. I have read that at least some of the early Christians believed that eternal damnation consists in the realization that one has chosen to forgo heaven, and that eternal suffering consists in the realization of just what one has refused.

I cordially invite the thread to up its game. — fdrake

It seems more than a little like special pleading to say that Christians have some incommensurable world-view which makes sense of these contradictions when, in everyday life, we know full well that we personally juggle a half dozen contradictory feelings and urges every day. Why would we assume the Christians have somehow got it all beautifully stitched together when we can't even make a consistent choice between the ease of driving to the shop and the harm of additional greenhouse emissions? — Isaac

There could be dissonance involved. — jorndoe

Also at @Srap Tasmaner.

So one response seems to be that it's (bad for some reason) to judge Christians for worshipping an entity they believe torments sinners forever after death assuming that the Christian doesn't really 'do anything about it'. The idea is like privately holding a prejudice vs acting on it, some peoples intuitions are that so long as someone keeps their prejudice quiet and doesn't discriminate it doesn't matter. Similarly, if someone kept their adoration for an entity which they also believed tortured people forever quiet, it wouldn't matter.

A challenge for that view is that it elides the distinction between worship/veneration/admiration and intellectual belief. If I hero worshipped Mengele, it says something highly negative about who I am - I might be confused on the specifics about who Mengele was ("an uncompromising great scientist"), I'd still be worshipping a cruel torturer. If I worshipped all that he did, I'm sure all of you would find me a monster. What would put that hero worship on the rap sheet of my character but wouldn't also apply to someone who really believed in some of the most unpalatable things God has done? Even if I privately wrestled with Mengele's... inherent tradeoff... between an uncompromising pursuit of science and the atrocities he committed, should I really be excused for my hero worship because of my own ambivalence of commitment?

I'm genuinely interested in how people see the dis-analogy between those cases, it's not intended as a 'checkmate theists' since I genuinely don't have a definite take on the matter.

The second flavour of response is that Christians who believe that sinners go to hell don't really believe that God tortures people forever in hell. Which could be true for a couple of reasons - they don't see it as torture, they privately wrestle with it, they don't see 'it' at all for whatever reason, or maybe that the 'really believing' something is quite a different beast from holding something to be true.

The privately wrestling one is asked about above - why should privately wrestling with discomfort over God's unpalatable acts and neglects make less of a mark on their character?

I think the other reasons are related to the discussion that Christians don't 'really' believe in Hell etc. Let's take the ones who 'really don't' believe Hell exists out of the equation - the kind of Christian that gets disgusted by the very idea of Hell, or otherwise rejects it. They're not particularly interesting to talk about in this context I think, since they don't believe God even sends people to hell or has done those things. Let's focus on the ones who believe in it in Hell and eternal torture in some regard + worship the entity that tortures - regardless of their attitude towards it.

@Isaac and @jorndoe seem to have made points in this quarter.

I find it quite plausible that they don't 'really worship' or 'really believe in' the God that tortures, but I'd struggle to spell out why. If you boil it down to the level I believe @Isaac has done, where no one has reliable access to their beliefs and culpability itself is a process of social branding, I think that makes the issue disappear as well as renders and assignment of culpability/blame arbitrary by that standard. To my mind that move can be made in too broad a sense which 'sweeps the rug from under the discussion', we have to be able to play the game of culpability to get the current discussion off of the ground. And if we can't in principle play the game, then it seems we can't do most of the moral flavour chit chat we tend to.

In this case, I'd be interested in what, if anything, distinguished the Christian's 'lack of access' to their own belief states regarding their object of worship to the arbitrary lack of access we have moving around the room. Maybe that's where cognitive dissonance comes in; perhaps the object of worship is not the same as the object of intellectual belief, even if both are held to be identical in some discursive context. If called to defend Christianity, the God of worship and the God who punishes are the same, in practice perhaps they are not.

There's also arguing from something close to the article's position, which I believe @Banno is doing. In which the object of the Christian's faith is the same as the object of worship as they share a common referring phrase, and all the beliefs and entailments hang together as a system of propositions. It is a strong argument if you grant that 'hanging together as a system of propositions and entailments' accurately describes faith, like faith is rational intellectual system, but the main points of productive disagreement with this track seem precisely to be rooted that everything 'holding together' in this way is a poor model of how faith, worship etc work in practice. I'd invite Banno to reconstruct the system of propositions and entailments that connect belief in God to worship of an entity which tortures without assuming that because they seem to be referred to in the same way, they are the same entity. That coreference appears to be in dispute.

Building on the section Can we admire the believers?

Fritz is a neo-nazi. Fritz admires Hitler. Fritz knows about Hitler's evil deeds, and would never presume to join in perpetrating those deeds.

The argument goes that we should judge Fritz only by his actions and not by his beliefs.

Amongst Fritz's actions is his expressed admiration of Hitler's evil deeds. He runs a regular podcast in which he sets Hitler's evil out in admiring detail, relishing the consequences.

What do you think of Fritz?

Folk are not responsible for their beliefs?

As if beliefs have no consequences? AS if folk could not choose between this or that belief?

Are you sure you want to propose that?

Not at all sure what you are asking for from me. You seem to be suggesting that christian dogma and christian belief must be consistent for the argument in the article to hold - well, yes. I'm not the one to ask to demonstrate that christianity is coherent.

Christianity is not coherent.

Christianity is not coherent. — Banno

Great! So how do you judge what the beliefs and practices which form part of an incoherent system say about someone?

In the same ways one judges any statement.

There is no significant ambiguity in saying god loves you unconditionaly.

There is no significant ambiguity in saying god will throw you into hell if you do not worship him.

There is an inconsistency in conjoining these proposals.



What are you trying to get to?

Amongst Fritz's actions is his expressed admiration of Hitler's evil deeds. He runs a regular podcast in which he sets Hitler's evil out in admiring detail, relishing the consequences.

What do you think of Fritz? — Banno

In this scenario did the Nazis produce a Martin Luther King Jr? A Dorothy Day? Did the Nazis educate chaplains to help hospitals with grieving relatives? Are the Nazis behind just about every functioning soup kitchen, charity medical assistance, and emergency housing available throughout the US? Did the Nazis make slavery illegal in the UK?

C'mon.

Special pleading, yet again.

Suppose Fritz runs a soup kitchen. Does that excuse his podcasts?

Nah. Christians aren't Nazis. Try again.

Bill loves Dracula. He goes on and on about it. How should we treat Bill?

According to his actions.

Suppose Fritz runs a soup kitchen. Does that excuse his podcasts? — Banno

Fritz is inciting violence. Do you see Christians in general as doing that?

Suppose Fritz runs a soup kitchen. Does that excuse his podcasts? — Banno

No. My point wasn't that Christian accomplishments excuse anything. It's that we have to evaluate their effects the world differently from Nazis.

No. — frank

Cheers. That's all that was needed.

Sure. So we agree that like Nazis, Christians must be judged by their actions. :up:

Sure. So we agree that like Nazis, Christians must be judged by their actions. :up: — frank

No, Nazis are judge by their beliefs. Granted, if there is no behavior manifesting their belief (speech or action), you wouldn't know what their belief is, but if they have told you, you take them seriously and scorn them as all Nazis should be. You don't simply smile and get back to letting your child marry them.

Actively expressing approval of and admiration for the bad acts of others is both a moral failing and an indication of suspect moral judgment. It isn't that Frtiz likes Hitler, it is that Fritz likes that Hitler is exterminating Jews and admires Hitler for doing so. Outside of agreeing with Hitler and Fritz, there is no way to see them as anything but morally repugnant and of bad judgment.

Giving Nazis a moral pass in an effort to save other morally repugnant people that you sympathize with seems a bad play. Beliefs (if others know them) are of necessity manifested - there is no innocent Nazi sympathizer. Even Fritz's admission to you that he admires Hitler is a bad act with nothing else. From that moment on, Fritz should be treated with caution and disdain.

P.S. The first paragraph is about beliefs, the third paragraph is about how speech is an act that has a moral status independent of the content of the speech.

What are you trying to get to? — Banno

I doubt more words will help at this point. I suspect you know approximately what I mean?

The argument goes that we should judge Fritz only by his actions and not by his beliefs. — Banno

I thought Heidegger's first name was Martin...

Judging people by their beliefs alone is dubious. You can't control what people believe, so you're pissing in the wind.

You can control a person's actions. That's a meaningful way to spend your time.

Judging people by their beliefs alone is dubious. Their actions tell you what they believe. — frank

A guy gives an example of obviously abhorrent dispositions and you don't want to judge. I can't fathom why. What value is advanced by refraining from acknowledging that the guy telling Hitler he is doing a great job exterminating the Jews is morally bad?

You're just making stuff up now.

No.