posted
Tom, Your arguments are based on the fallacious premise that religious belief systems (or any belief systems for that matter) form some sort of logically consistent whole. But they don't.
Religion deals with those aspects of existence which are ineffable, emotional, personal and subjective. Some may find those aspects of existence unimportant, inconsequential and silly, but most people do not. Even if you find those aspects of existence important, you may still find religion an unsatisfactory way of dealing with them. I have no objection to that. But if you think religion should be analyzed as through the lens of objective reasoning, then you completely miss the point of religion all together.
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I just sincerely doubt that they would agree that this is their belief.
How your sincerity germaine to the question of what other people believe?
Does sincerity now trump evidence when it comes to evaluating the accuracy of claims?
If you don't like "sincerely", leave it out. "Sincerely doubt" is a figure of speech that means little more than "doubt" alone.
What constitutes "evidence" when we are talking about whether something is an accurate summary of a persons beliefs?
That isn't something that can be measured objectively. I have indicated what evidence I would find convincing, "Repeating the statement including key words like "torment" and "mistake" and "small fraction", and asking if the person in questions finds that an accurate summary of their beliefs.
The evidence given here so far falls short of that standard, hence I continue to doubt.
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posted
Yes, yes, we all agree that mushy religions mean, like, whatever.
But it is official Baptist doctrine that people who fail to recognize Christ as the one and only God will be tormented in Hell forever. This is actually codified by the Southern Baptist Convention.
As to the nature of Hell, and whether it constitutes an eternity of literal torture or simply an "absence of God" or whatever, go ahead and do a Google search. I think you'll find plenty of people who believe the former -- again, especially evangelicals.
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quote:But if you think religion should be analyzed as through the lens of objective reasoning...
I would like to know what other sorts of lenses one might use that could still be fairly called "analysis."
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posted
As I said, I don't doubt that at least some Baptists believe all sorts of nasty things. I just have a hard time believing in Baptists, here in my nice, mushy bubble.
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quote:Tom, Your arguments are based on the fallacious premise that religious belief systems (or any belief systems for that matter) form some sort of logically consistent whole. But they don't.
I think you will find that no atheist believes anything of this sort. Of course religions are an incoherent mish-mash of wishful thinking and contradictions; duh.
However, humans, even theists, have a strong psychological need to be, and to be seen as, consistent. And so when the inconsistencies are pointed out, theists tend to get rather defensive, and generally have rather a hard time defining just what, if anything, they actually do believe. You'll note that neither you nor kmb have said much about what you actually do believe about the nature of the non-good afterlife; rather you've both spent a lot of time asserting what other people don't believe.
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posted
Let's be fair. We already know what both Rabbit and Kate believe, and we know they don't believe in a literal eternity of torment for a minor mistake made in this lifetime.
We also know that they are not representative of Christians in this regard.
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I just sincerely doubt that they would agree that this is their belief.
How your sincerity germaine to the question of what other people believe?
Does sincerity now trump evidence when it comes to evaluating the accuracy of claims?
If you don't like "sincerely", leave it out.
The same way you leave out "Unbelievers go to hell" from the statements of Christians?
Sorry, no. That's a recipe for making mistakes, for wrongly believing that people believe what I want them to believe, what I think they should believe. I'm going to have to take you at your word, not edit what you write to suit my fancy.
quote:"Sincerely doubt" is a figure of speech that means little more than "doubt" alone.
Not really. Sincerely means something. Something that has nothing to do with evidence. You are emphesizing how strongly you beleive your conclusion. But that's not evidence of its accuracy, and you know that. How seriously do you take global warming denialists who "sincerely" think scientists are all out to steal our SUVs?
quote:What constitutes "evidence" when we are talking about whether something is an accurate summary of a persons beliefs?
You look at what people do, and what they say. If they say, for instance, that they believe that unbelievers go to hell, then that's probably what they believe, or pretty close to it. Do you really think, for instance, that Fred Phelps is lying? Or doesn't understand his own beliefs?
Look up some stuff about the Left Behind series. Premise there is that everyone who doesn't accept Jesus goes into the lake of fire. And they are not unpopular books.
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posted
What I believe...and "believe" in this case is clearly without "evidence"...
I believe that we are part of something larger (God) and that does not end with the death of the body. How that manifests, how much we change, I don't know, but I believe it will be good. I believe that we can choose to be in relationship with God or not. I don't see why that choice would have to be set in stone at the moment of death. I believe that God wants to be in relationship with us and that if we also choose that, God it plenty smart enough not to be stymied by technicalities even if I am not as smart.
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posted
Lisa: You're right, I used the wrong analogy for your purposes.
I wouldn't flood the whole world except for a boat full of animals or kill everyone in a couple of towns except for some a drunk and his incestuous daughters.
79% of Americans believe that there will be a Judgment Day, where God will determine who will go to heaven, and who will go to hell.
You may disagree with me, you may disagree with the accuracy of this poll, or their methodology, but I wish you would admit that it isn't a strawman.
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posted
Mighty Cow, I do not disagree that most Christians believe in a Judgement Day, a heaven and a hell. My claim is that this is, at least for the overwhelming majority of Christians, not equivalent to believing God "condemns people to eternal torment for mistakes made in a small fraction of their existence." The latter is a strawman because it does not capture important nuances of the true belief.
Surely you can understand.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: My claim is that this is, at least for the overwhelming majority of Christians, not equivalent to believing God "condemns people to eternal torment for mistakes made in a small fraction of their existence." The latter is a strawman because it does not capture important nuances of the true belief.
May I ask which parts of that sentence are inaccurate?
Do they not believe God is the one doing the condemning?
Is the torment not eternal? Is it not torment?
Is it not in response to mistakes?
Is this life not a small fraction of our total existence?
I think all those things apply. And while they may not be as nuanced as some Christians desire them to be, that hardly makes it a strawman.
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quote:May I ask which parts of that sentence are inaccurate? ... I think all those things apply.
I think Rabbit has said, on the record, that it doesn't matter that those things all apply and constitute a single, logical whole, because we cannot expect religious people to be capable of logical thought.
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posted
Rabbit pretty clearly did not mean "we cannot expect religious people to be capable of logical thought."
....
Regardless of whether or not some Christians hold the beliefs about hell and torment being discussed here, it is a strawman in this discussion. That's because you are going after a version of the belief that is easiest to attack rather than the best, most reasonable, most difficult to refute version of Christianity possible in your mind and in the minds of the people you are discussing it with. Yes, some conservatives believe Obama is secretly a communist, but to use that position as a refutation of conservativism is using a strawman. Yes, some liberals ARE communists, but to use that position as a refutation of liberalism is also using a strawman. Even if most liberals were communists, it would still be a strawman if neither you nor the person you were discussing liberalism with believes communism to be the strongest, most accurate, or most reasonable version of liberalism. Proving that an erroneous version of a belief is erroneous does not prove much if both parties of the discussion already believe it to be an erroneous version going into the discussion, regardless of what percentage of the rest of the world believes that error.
If this discussion is over what percentage of Christians believe in a certain description of Hell, then that's open for debate. But if we're discussing whether or not that position is a strawman in this particular discussion with these particular people on Hatrack, I'd have to think it is a strawman. At least until someone joins this discussion who holds such a belief and thinks the way the atheists here are describing it is the most accurate way to understand it.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: [qb] My claim is that this is, at least for the overwhelming majority of Christians, not equivalent to believing God "condemns people to eternal torment for mistakes made in a small fraction of their existence." The latter is a strawman because it does not capture important nuances of the true belief.
May I ask which parts of that sentence are inaccurate?
Yes, but I can't answer for all or most Christians because the answers would be so varied. I will try to answer for myself.
quote:Do they not believe God is the one doing the condemning?
In my faith, the condemning is not done solely by God but by and in accordance with eternal laws which bind even God. God teaches us the laws but is no more responsible for them than your physics teacher is for the law of gravity. I know that answer isn't true for all Christians but many have some variant of that belief.
quote:Is the torment not eternal?
The difficult here is in the various possible meanings of the word eternal. In my faith (as in many others), different mistakes warrant different punishments. While we believe that God's judgement is eternal, the punishment in almost all cases does not last forever.
quote:Is it not torment?
Once again, it depends very much on what you mean by torment. The most common interpretation of "hell" I've heard from Christians is that "hell" is being banned from the presence of God. If you don't want to be in the presence of God, that's not torment.
quote:Is it not in response to mistakes?
The difficulty hear is between the difference between connotation and denotation. Mistake is misleading because is says nothing about the magnitude of the error. Its a mistake to run out of gas. Its a more serious mistake to run a red light and kill someone because you failed to properly maintain your breaks. But neither of those are even in the same category as deliberately running down a pedestrian with the intention of killing them. By strict definition, one might call them all mistakes, but that definition would not capture the most common connotation of mistake. Most commonly, when a persons says they made a mistake, they imply that they used poor judgement often because of a misconception or because they did not fully understand the consequences of their actions. Most Christians I know don't believe God will condemn people to hell for misunderstanding what he expected, only for conscious and informed rebellion against him.
quote:Is this life not a small fraction of our total existence?
No its not. This life is not small in its importance as part of our eternal existence. It may be short, but it is not insignificant or small.
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quote:May I ask which parts of that sentence are inaccurate? ... I think all those things apply.
I think Rabbit has said, on the record, that it doesn't matter that those things all apply and constitute a single, logical whole, because we cannot expect religious people to be capable of logical thought.
You aren't that stupid Tom, stop acting like you are.
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: Regardless of whether or not some Christians hold the beliefs about hell and torment being discussed here, it is a strawman in this discussion. That's because you are going after a version of the belief that is easiest to attack rather than the best, most reasonable, most difficult to refute version of Christianity possible in your mind and in the minds of the people you are discussing it with.
This isn't about refuting anything. Christianity includes all that ugly stuff, and plugging your ears, and saying that your little circle of Christians rejects it doesn't change that. A view held by a substantial percentage of Christians, if not a majority, is not a strawman view of Christianity. It's certainly not the totality of Christian thought, but it's not irrelevent either.
Christianity is not defined by what you personally want us to judge it by, by what you personally think it ought to be. It consists of everything that self-labeled Christians call Christianity.
quote:Yes, some conservatives believe Obama is secretly a communist, but to use that position as a refutation of conservativism is using a strawman.
No one is using beliefs about hell as a refutation of anything! They are just stating that those beleifs are common, if not a majority opinion, and the evidence put forth so far supports that conclusion.
No one has yet argued that Christianity is false because it includes repugnant beliefs. To do so would be an example of the fallacy of consequences. And while your mind leaps to logical fallacies like a duck to water, that isn't true of every person here.
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quote:That's because you are going after a version of the belief that is easiest to attack rather than the best, most reasonable, most difficult to refute version of Christianity possible in your mind and in the minds of the people you are discussing it with.
The most difficult version of Christianity to refute is Kate's version of Christianity, no question about it. However, her version of Christianity is distinguishable from my version of atheism only in that she calls her version "Christianity." Is it really a "strawman" to argue against some other version of Christianity, just because it's so hard to argue against hers?
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quote:Most Christians I know don't believe God will condemn people to hell for misunderstanding what he expected, only for conscious and informed rebellion against him.
Rabbit, are most of the Christians you know Mormons? I ask this because you are revealing a really staggering unfamiliarity with traditional Christian doctrine.
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posted
At this point I think Rabbit was unhappy with the phrasing of a particular reduction of Christian doctrine, along the lines of "God will send you to eternal torment for a small mistake", because she doesn't believe that many Christians would put it that way.
I doubt she'd object to more discrete assertions: A lot of Christians believe Hell exists, and is a rotten place to be. A lot of Christians believe that a lot of people are destined to end up in Hell. You don't have to be as bad as Hitler to end up in Hell, according to a lot of Christians.
In other words, it's mostly the characterization of what might get somebody sent to hell that is the issue. People who believe in it probably wouldn't agree that relatively insignificant mistakes get one sent there. They believe that the sort of sins that consign one to hell are dire mistakes. However, I don't know think such a belief can be justified without circular logic.
And it's the logical connection between the nature of God, human nature, the nature of hell, and who ends up there that was being questioned in the first place.
I think clarity might be out of reach.
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quote:Most Christians I know don't believe God will condemn people to hell for misunderstanding what he expected, only for conscious and informed rebellion against him.
Rabbit, are most of the Christians you know Mormons?
No.
quote:I ask this because you are revealing a really staggering unfamiliarity with traditional Christian doctrine.
At one point in my life that was true, I did have a staggering unfamiliarity with traditional Christian doctring. At that point in my life, I would have agreed with you about what most Christians believe.
Since that time, I have had the opportunity to have in depth religious discussions with people of a large number of Christian denominations. Without exception, I have found that what people actually believe is far more nuanced and far more similar to my own beliefs than I originally supposed. In addition to my own experience, I have read a large number of academic papers on religion which support that conclusion.
The challenge is that a superficial understanding of Christian beliefs is inadequate. For the most part, religious beliefs are truly ineffable -- they can not be adequately expressed in words.
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posted
"For the most part, religious beliefs are truly ineffable -- they can not be adequately expressed in words."
I don't know how your conversations with Christians and perusual of literature are relevant, then. It sounds like you're saying you have other means of knowing what they believe.
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quote:For the most part, religious beliefs are truly ineffable -- they can not be adequately expressed in words.
I'm going to call B.S. on this. I will, in fact, say that there is no such thing as a belief which cannot be adequately expressed in words.
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posted
"Adequate" I think would be a key word here. I might have said perfectly or completely or sufficiently. It doesn't mean that we can't come ever closer to understanding and conveying meaning - we keep chipping away at it. In fact, chipping away at it has been a major occupation for humanity for a very long time. It does mean that God is not limited by our ability to understand or express our understanding of God.
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quote:For the most part, religious beliefs are truly ineffable -- they can not be adequately expressed in words.
I'm going to call B.S. on this. I will, in fact, say that there is no such thing as a belief which cannot be adequately expressed in words.
In addition, if one cannot express their belief in words, how can one even hold that belief?
It would mean that a person doesn't even know what they claim to believe.
edit: It seems that in that case, the best a person can do is say, "Well, I don't know what I believe, but I have some ideas what I don't believe."
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quote:"Adequate" I think would be a key word here. I might have said perfectly or completely or sufficiently.
I think you'll find that every survey I've ever seen on the subject (and many conversations I personally have had) suggests that there are a significant number of Christians in this country about whom we might say that "people who make the mistake of not believing that Christ is God during their short, insignificant lifetime here on Earth are sentenced to an eternity of torment in Hell by God" is in fact an "adequate" description of that specific belief.
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quote:"Adequate" I think would be a key word here. I might have said perfectly or completely or sufficiently.
I think you'll find that every survey I've ever seen on the subject (and many conversations I personally have had) suggests that there are a significant number of Christians in this country about whom we might say that "people who make the mistake of not believing that Christ is God during their short, insignificant lifetime here on Earth are sentenced to an eternity of torment in Hell by God" is in fact an "adequate" description of that specific belief.
Then we shall have to agree to disagree until you can produce an individual who agrees that your wording actually adequately describes their beliefs.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Then we shall have to agree to disagree until you can produce an individual who agrees that your wording actually adequately describes their beliefs.
Only an individual? I imagine a trip to YouTube would produce that in under 5 minutes. And if no one has done it by the time I get home tonight, I'll do it myself.
Granted, Christianity is a title taken on by so many different sects I doubt there are many beliefs we couldn't find a Christian, somewhere, to claim as their own.
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quote:For the most part, religious beliefs are truly ineffable -- they can not be adequately expressed in words.
I'm going to call B.S. on this. I will, in fact, say that there is no such thing as a belief which cannot be adequately expressed in words.
In addition, if one cannot express their belief in words, how can one even hold that belief?
It would mean that a person doesn't even know what they claim to believe.
edit: It seems that in that case, the best a person can do is say, "Well, I don't know what I believe, but I have some ideas what I don't believe."
Oh good grief. Tons of things in life can not be adequately expressed in words, like the qualia of saltiness or the difference between feeling "joy" and feeling "pleasure". This isn't even a controversial idea.
I'm bowing out of this since its evident that you no actually interest in understanding.
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quote:Tons of things in life can not be adequately expressed in words, like the qualia of saltiness or the difference between feeling "joy" and feeling "pleasure".
We are not talking about "tons of things." We are talking about "beliefs."
I maintain that there is no such thing as a belief which cannot be adequately expressed in words.
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posted
How is it impossible to express in words whether or not one believes in hell, and whether or not one believes that a non-zero number of humans will reside there after death?
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quote:Then we shall have to agree to disagree until you can produce an individual who agrees that your wording actually adequately describes their beliefs.
I think a sample of one is a pretty poor representation, but if that's your bar I've already met it in this thread.
quote: Me: So, don't believe in Christ = eternity in hell? Or is there a third option? Him: Yes, eternity in hell. Eternal damnation.
Having been a member of a church that preached this sort of doctrine, I can assure you that there was no ambiguity or nuance behind what "eternity", "hell", and "damnation" meant.
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quote:Beliefnet.com conducted a poll during 2006-MAY which asked "Have you personally known people you think will probably go to Hell?" Results show the division in North America between those who believe that being relegate to Heaven or Hell is dependent on one's beliefs, or behavior. Results were:
35%: No, because I don't believe in Hell. 26%: Yes because they don't have the right beliefs. 23%: Yes because of their immoral actions. 17%: No.
During 2007-JAN, Beliefnet.com conducted a similar poll asking: "Can good people outside your faith tradition attain salvation as you understand it?" Five answers were provided. Results were:
58%: Yes, fully, if they are sincere in their attempts to know or worship a deity. 3%: Yes, but not fully. 1%: No, but they are not punished. 28%: No, and unfortunately, there are consequences. 9% I don't know.
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