:up:

This seems to me to be a straw man of theology. Not all theological theories include religion; and those that do don't necessarily fall prey to your critiques here. Mainstream religion tends to though (to be fair).

:up:

You are grossly miseducated.

https://www.openbible.info/topics/accepting_jesus_as_your_savior

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent

-- Acts 17:30

Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents

-- Luke 15:10

And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

-- Acts 2:38

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

-- 2 Peter 3:9

Etc.

I am not talking about religion per se: I am talking about theology. It may be the case that no religion has good reasons to believe in eternal punishment; however, I am interested in if there are any good reasons whatsoever.

Firstly, that doesn't matter: the OP is about if it would be just for God to eternally punish sinners.

Secondly, Christianity crucially advocates for repentance: one has to repent and give themselves to Jesus as their Lord and Savior to be saved. That is a core and central aspect of Christianity.

Interesting account: I am not familiar with Judaism.

In eternal pain? No. In their souls being annihilated? That may very well be just. I don't see non-existence as necessarily being a punishment. — BitconnectCarlos

The issue I see here is alluded to in your last sentence here: is it really punishment to just, e.g., kill off Hitler? I don't think so; and this would be unjust, then, for God to do so but just in the opposite kind of way than the idea of eternal punishment. It seems like, by my lights, a just God would have to punish people finitely and proportionately for their sins; then perhaps annihilate or reunite them.

I went on a similar journey a while ago and came to strikingly similar conclusions. In fact, I grew up contending with colloquial arguments for theism--especially from stereotypical Protestantism--as I found none of them convincing; I then explored some of the more prominent figures in the mainstream debates in theology (such as the new atheists, william lane craig, etc.) and found them likewise unconvincing; and then, eventually, I came across Ed Feser's "Aristotelian Proof" and it was bizarrely different than any other argument I had heard. I didn't find it convincing, but I started reading on Acquinas, Aristotle, Augustine, Plato, and the like on classical theism and found the argumentation for and metaphysics of God vastly different than mainstream theology. In short, I ended up convincing myself, somewhere along that journey, of the classic theism tradition.

Where I think this becomes particularly interesting is that questions like the problem of evil take on a different character. If God is not a being among beings but Being itself, then the moral structure of reality flows from the nature of God, who is goodness itself, rather than from some being telling us how we should live. What does this mean for the problem of suffering?

Yes, indeed it does: it becomes interesting (I would say) for all topics in theology. God is the ipsem ens subsistens, the actus purus, divinely simple, an intelligence, a will, the ultimate cause of everything's active existence, etc.; and it follows that:

1. God's willing a thing as real is identical to Him thinking of it as real.
2. God qua intelligence and qua pure actuality cannot think of a thing as real other than relative to its perfect form.
3. God, then, cannot will a thing into existence in a manner where it is not in correspondence with its good.
4. So God must be all good willed.

So why is there badness in the world then?

Because:

1. Creation always entails a hierarchy of value of goods.
2. When that creation is willed in a perfect manner (viz., the good of each thing is willed in accordance with its perfect form respectively) and given #1, this allows for the possibility of privations.
3. Those privations are not willed by God: they are the absence of good.

This is also why Acquinas rightly points out that the euthyphro dilemma is a false dilemma: God is perfectly good, He then must be perfect at what He is, and He then must be perfect at being an intelligence, and so He wills what is good exactly because He is perfectly good. His goodness is out of necessity---not by choice.

I completely agree that the Bible, especially the Old Testament, does not depict God accurately nor justice; but I am wondering what reasons one may have for accepting that God does justly, eternally punish unrepentant sinners. I simply don't see how that would make sense, since a sin could never have as the object of its act God and so would never have infinite demerit.

This was a wonderful summary: thank you!

However, how would you propose a sin carries infinite demerit? Do you agree that it doesn't?

Yes, sinning is to will against God--infinite goodness--but why would this entail infinite demerit for that sin?

Yeah, I just don't find that plausible. Just because God creates us, it does not follow that God can do whatever He wants with us (so we can't just be His private property).

You are correct that God is offended as a 3rd party in the interaction of sin (for a sin is to will against God's plan: against infinite goodness); however, this doesn't seem to make it true that God being offended in this way should be treated like the offended party (relative to their dignity). For example, if a judge orders you not to murder and you go murder anyways, then the judge is one of the parties offended; however, they are not offended in the same way as the victim. It seems plausible to me that the murder is evaluated in terms of the dignity of the victim in conjunction with the severity of the act itself; but this doesn't seem to extend to 3rd parties who are offended but not the victim. Disobeying the judge may carry with it more punishment, but it doesn't really make the crime itself any worse. In the case of killing an innocent rabbit vs. a human, it seems plausible that the object in the act does make a substantial impact of how immoral the act is.

To make Acquinas' argument hold, to me, we would have to posit someone making God the victim; and that is impossible since God is immutable.

None of this even attempted to answer the OP: what we are exploring here is whether or not it is just for an unrepentant sinner to be eternally punished for their finite sins.

Those emotions are just chemicals in the brain, why wouldn't they exist in such a machine. You're not engaging with the thought experiment. — Darkneos

Courage, e.g., is not an emotion and requires fear which is painful: the experience machine is about pleasures (as far as I understand).

Like I said before, even if it does include suffering, it being fake makes it less valuable than it being real.

The experience machine doesn't give people the higher goods: it just gives people this shallow sense of hedonic happiness. The goods worth pursuing require suffering to achieve and maintain: there's a big difference between hedonic and eudaimonic happiness. E.g., courage, temperance, etc. don't exist in this experience machine.

However, let's stipulate that the experience machine is just a 1:1 simulator of the real world (including suffering) like the matrix: why would we choose one over the other? Because the more real a thing is, the more valuable it is. E.g., ceteris paribus, an imaginary chair is not as good as a real chair (even if they have the same properties other than existence).

That's how it works in the US, and it has worked fine.

Your thinking presupposes that the a priori modes of cognition have to mirror the natural laws; and this is simply not true.

Who said that, e.g., mathematics is more than (transcendental) a priori?

Indeterminism is a short-hand for physical indeterminism, I would say; but I get your point.

The government would argue it's not going to be will-nilly. They are only going to do it when they have reasonable suspicion of overpayment.

:lol:

I don't think the article begs the question: I was noting your response did.

Here’s what the article says:

However, since Bob1 and Bob2 have all of the same goals, beliefs, etc., there is nothing different between them to which we can appeal to explain why Bob1 chose to go the bookshelf at time T2 and Bob2 chose to go the kitchen at time T2.  Their individual actions are explainable, but libertarianism cannot explain why one choice is made instead of another.

This has the same problem I already exposed: a libertarian is not per se committed to the idea that if Bob1 and Bob2 have the same exact beliefs, desires, etc. that they each could decide to will something different than each other—this is a straw man.

The libertarian could hold equally that two Bobs in identical universes would reason the same and decide the same while also holding that if merely the physical causality were the same in each world then the Bobs could reason differently.

It’s also worth mentioning that the article sets up a shaky distinction between beliefs and reasons that I don’t think a libertarian has to accept.

The core tenant of libertarianism is that leeway free will exists, which implies that there is free will in the sense that one could have done otherwise: they are not committed per se to the view that one can reason contrary to their beliefs nor that they cannot reason contrary to their beliefs.

This is the crux presupposition in your thought:

Now when we rewind, we're of course rewinding such that all those facts we took note of are all the same

I reject this. When you rewind the clock, you are rewinding the facts which does not itself necessitate that when you start the clock again those facts will re-emerge. You haven't provided any justification for why one should believe that and it just begs the question by presupposing that causal determinism is true.

E.g., if it is a fact that I went for a run today and you rewind the clock to right before I began my run; then ceteris paribus we don't know that I am going to go for a run today. If we believe causal determinism, the loosest sense of the term, is true, then we have reasons to believe I will necessarily go for that run.

The problem is that you are claiming to refute libertarianism by presupposing causal determinism in the first place; and you are doing this by implicitly stipulating that when the facts are rewound those facts are inevitably going to happen again: that's just saying "causal determinism is true" with convoluted steps.

EDIT:

So, you end up needing to prove causal determinism to prove that your OP's argument is true; which defeats the purpose of your argument in the OP in the first place.

So, why should one expect the same outcome if we rewind all the facts?

Moreover, with respect to my original critique, what if we only rewound the physical facts?

I abstain from conversations having free will as the topic, insofar as the very notion of “free will”, as far as I’m concerned, has already confused the issue.

How does it confused the issue?

…is only the case under very restricted conditions, re: pure practical reasoning, in which the subject himself is necessary and sufficient causality for all that which is governed by those principles, sometimes even to the utter subordination of natural instincts

Can’t we subordinate our natural instincts all the time? How is this “very restricted”? Most people don’t have, e.g., brain tumors.

How does the bold part even work. Why would new causality being generated be any advantage at all? Suppose one uses this kind of free will to cross a busy street. Generating new causality seems to be pure randomness, as opposed to actually looking and using the state of the cars as the primary cause of your decision as to when to cross.

That is beyond the scope of my critique: I am merely pointing out to @flannel jesus that it is not a valid rejoinder to libertarianism to stipulate one will will the same (and thusly the change in causality is from some other source if the causality is different at all the second or third time we rewind the clock).

They tend to believe in a soul or immaterial mind and that reality has top-down causality to some extent; which would not be random: e.g., things ordering themselves in correspondence with an idea is not random at all. The idea is that the higher-ontological things have some sway over what exists at the lower-ontological things.

I am not a libertarian, but the way I would think about it is that our brains facilitate our ability to reason and reason governs our actions; so the "top" does have influence over the "bottom" causally to some extent. The memory your brain formulates influences your decisions, which can impact how the brain organizes itself in the future. Our brains are not like mechanical domino-style robots.

In your example we don't, or if we do it is presupposed we will will the same anyways, whereas in mine we do but we could will differently.

My point is not that libertarianism is correct but, rather, that your OP is a straw man of their position: no libertarian worth any salt is going to disagree with the idea that if you will the same then you will will the same. They are going to note that if you rewound their motives and reasons and the physical aspects of their action, then they may have had different motives or reasons and thusly willed differently. For libertarians, willing is a source of causality and not merely a biproduct of physical causality.

Do you think the rational principles of logic and cognition would be the same in a reality that had different underlying natural laws?

The a priori modes by which one cognizes depends on, as the name suggests, how their cognition is pre-structured and not the natural laws which govern those pre-structures: they relate to each other, but aren’t the same.

If, in principle, reason were to manifest in a being which had a wholly different physical constitution, then it’s modes of cognition would be the same as it relates to reasoning even if the natural laws governing (and the natural organs or functions ontologically grounding) that reasoning is wholly different than our own.

Now, what are the kinds of being which have reason but do not have human brains? I don’t know, exactly because we’ve never met one.

Applied ethically, I think educating the people and arming them is the best solution against tyranny and injustice. I am not saying we get rid of the police or the justice system, but I wouldn't rely on it heavily like China does.

CC @flannel jesus

The physical causality could be the exact same and the intent pursued could be the exact same. Each option toward the given intent pursued is of itself, however, a more proximal possible intent toward the here distant intent one aims to actualize.

If the intent is the exact same, then only the means towards that end could be subject to change (in principle); so it would be impossible that one has the leeway freedom to intend differently in your example here (to Flannel’s point). Javra, what you are saying here is that one can intend something differently when they intend the same thing: it’s internally incoherent.

To be honest, I am not sure of the exact threshold; but I do lean towards the people over the government. I do believe, to relate to the OP, that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in, on, or with their private property as long as they, within that private property, create the privacy. So letting the government willy-nilly enter into people's bank accounts is a no-no: that gives them entirely too much power.

Not quite. I was saying that willing, under some forms of libertarianism, generates new causality that originates from the will and the willing may differ even if the physical causality differs (according to this view)(such as if there is a soul or something like that). So if some person performs action, A, with intent, M, and you rewind the physical causality; then:

1. A, which is comprised of intent with physical causality originating therefrom, is only rewound in terms of having the intent and the physical causality it introduced into reality; and

2. If M is from leeway freedom, then it does not originate from the physical causality you rewound; and

3. If #2, then that person could will A for another intent, N, or intent some other action, B, with some other intent.

:up:

CC: @Mww

It is also worth mentioning Kant's transcendental freedom, which does not fit cleanly between compatibilism and incompatibilism; and of which claims that our reasoning is governed by rational principles unrestrained by one's natural instincts.

This kind of view could be incorporated, to wit, into a version of compatibilism different than the OP's (but yet still naturalistic––although Kant wouldn't probably go for it); such that our brains are causally determined but, when functioned properly, facilitate our ability to be regulated in thought through reason's own principles instead of anything about the natural laws which govern the brain which facilitates it.

The key difference here would be that your OP accepts that there is some sort of connection between the causal underpinnings which facilitate reason and reason herself such that reason cannot think according to her own laws. Why should someone accept that?

EDIT:

E.g., when I determine that '1 + 1 = 2' it does not seem to be dependent on the underlying natural laws which facilitated my ability to determine it; but, rather, is governed by rational principles of logic and cognition which have nothing to do with those aforesaid natural laws. So long as my brain is healthy enough to facilitate it, my thinking powers will be able to reason in this way.

I think this is a conflation between physical and motive causality: I would recommend looking into Schopenhauer's "On the Fourfold Foundation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason". In short, a libertarian is not going to grant you that free will requires that one could have done otherwise if their will is the same when time is rewound but, rather, that one could have willed differently if the physical causality were rewound.

Generally my government policy is to starve it: I'd rather give the people too much control over themselves than the government too much control over the people.

I never claimed time doesn't exist.

This is a joke right?:

Time doesn't exist. Only space and objects exist.

That's the very first sentence of the OP.

Time is a concept.

Time may be real, a [self-reflective] concept, and exist a priori all at once. It is on your OP to demonstrate why it is only a [self-reflective] concept.

You cannot say time is real. It would be like saying water is real. Water is hot or cold, not real or unreal.

Water is definitely real: no one disputes that. To say it is not real, is to say that it does not exist in reality. You deny that water exists in reality???

Concepts are not real or unreal

Concepts exist: they are not real.

You either know a concept or you don't know it.

Whether the concept exists is a separate question than if I know about the concept.

They have been demonstrated, but not scientifically. I don't know why one would expect it to be proven scientifically when it is presupposed for science to work in the first place.

If you really don't believe we know what truth is, then you can't do science properly; because it depends on investigating the truth.

For my point there, any common sense use of the word will do. You cannot claim the time does not exist (or is not real) merely because people can fail to recognize it as such: that's a bad argument, and that is exactly what you are doing when you bring up indigenous people who fail to understand that they age.

Beyond that point of contention, I would say that what is real and what exist are different; because there are things which have being but are not a member of reality (e.g., the feeling of pain, the phenomenal color of orange, a thought, the a priori concept of quantity, etc.). As such, I denote what is a member of reality proper as real and what has being as what exists; and, therefore, everything that is real exists but not everything that exists is real.

Eh, scientism doesn't work nor logical positivism. E.g., you can't scientifically determine the nature of truth, logic, mathematics, knowledge, some a priori modes of cognition, etc.

There is nothing science can say of, e.g., the nature of a proposition.

Likewise, metaphysics which is not derived from science may still be informed by it; and the parts that are not are guided by that application of reason to evidence---not the imagination (if it is done properly).

The idea that one could fail to recognize that time is real does not negate nor suggest that it isn't real.

However, under the Kantian interpretation of time, yes, time is not real but exists. You seem to be conflating self-reflectively knowing time exists with it not existing. By concept of time, I am presuming you are exclusively referring to a concept derived through experience by self-reflective reason.

The process of aging is a temporal process--hence in time. One might say, now, that aging is a representation of causality which is atemporal; but the aging itself is certainly temporal.

That's because time still exists even though they haven't figured it out, Corvus.