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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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The asshole genie thing is that God should know very well that rejecting religion and not worshipping God does not actually mean you wish to be away from all that is good in the world - you simply don't believe that the good things are all absolutely reliant on him.

Going "oh so you want to be cast into the outer darkness" is a cheap gotcha rather unbecoming of any deity that claims to be all-loving. "Oh you don't want broccoli? Well I guess I won't feed you at all."

Taking it further, this idea of the nature of Hell necessitates that God either isn't all-powerful so he physically cannot embrace those who rejected him, isn't all-knowing so he doesn't realize that people don't interpret their wishes as he would, or not all-benevolent so he doesn't give a fuck and would rather cast them into Hell out of spite for being wrong about his existence.

a prideful wish

I see it as more "a sensible wish based on the information I have".

The asshole genie thing is that God should know very well that rejecting religion and not worshipping God does not actually mean you wish to be away from all that is good in the world - you simply don't believe that the good things are all absolutely reliant on him.

Here, I think opinions among Christians diverge, but some options I have heard are (a) the choice is post-mortem, but without the spiritual development and accepted Grace from worshipping and believing in God in this life, the chances are that the Devil is going to persuade your wicked soul that hell is a better option, (b) the idea that everyone really believes in God, so to reject Christianity (or the closest thing you can do in your cultural context) is actually to knowingly reject the highest good, or (c) to think that salvation is available even for those in hell, except perhaps those explicitly said to be damned in the Bible, i.e. Satan and the fallen angels.

I think that some combination of the three is probably needed to fit with the Christian belief that their religion is not, in fact, just a very successful twist on a set of unusual religious practices that evolved among a particular tribe in the Levantine regions, and that the reason why Jesus was geographically so limited (covering just a tiny and somewhat peripheral region of the world) was that he was just a particularly successful example of the many mystics in that period, not some inexplicable mix of divine and human. As you might expect from my wording, I actually believe that it was such a lucky twist, and that Jesus was an unusually successful (and wise) mystic.

Another option, which I haven't heard from Christians (except perhaps some Catholics and Evangelicals - my memory of those particular conversations is hazy) but which makes sense to me from their perspective, is to take "God = the highest good" really seriously and Platonically, and to take very seriously what the New Testament says about worshipping being about what you do rather than what you say or think. This allows them to intepret e.g. John 3:16 as a sufficient rather than necessary condition for salvation. So, someone who pursues the highest good they can conceptualise and know in their particular circumstances is experiencing God's grace and accepting it, even if their historical circumstances etc. mean that they can't be Christians. I like that idea, insofar as I think (despite being a moderately gnostic atheist) that pursuing the highest good(s) one can conceptualise is the best route to a meaningful and happy life, and that the world could be a lot better if more people did it.