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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   29321 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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On the salvation question- why in the world would a loving God grant salvation to someone if their spouse or national leader was a believer, but condemn an unmarried person in an atheist country to eternal damnation?

As I understand it, the standard Christian position is that nobody deserves salvation, but God sometimes grants it. So the Christian answer is that there is no reason. Whether that is satisfying is another debate, but it's an important aspect to understand if one is going to understand them charitably: from a Christian perspective, God is not morally obliged to save anyone. In fact, from a Divine Command Theory perspective, the very notion of moral obligations for God is a category mistake, like a moral obligation for the number 11. God behaves morally not because he is obliged to e.g. keep his promises, but because that is what a supremely benevolent being does. In contrast, from a Christian perspective, a supremely benevolent being does not necessarily save anyone from the consequences of their nature which he created.

Any version of an all benevolent and all powerful God where He won't grant salvation to someone if they're an atheist in a secular country ruled be an atheist, but will if they're an atheist in a secular country ruled by a Christian, feels exceedingly unlikely to be true to me.

Sure, I'm not trying to argue that Christianity is plausible. If anything, I suppose my most point is that Christianity is far weirder than people (including many Christians) think. This can make it harder to argue against in a fair-minded way, but it doesn't help with its plausibility.

from a Christian perspective, God is not morally obliged to save anyone. In fact, from a Divine Command Theory perspective, the very notion of moral obligations for God is a category mistake, like a moral obligation for the number 11.

I'll grant that this fairly sums up Divine Command Theory and once again want to reiterate my disagreement with it. Morality does exist separate from God, and he cannot simply redefine it at a whim. He's not a simple force of nature forced into making only one choice at every possible juncture; he has agency and always chooses to be good.

He is bound by his promises more than we are.

I think that what you are describing is what the vast majority of Christians actually believe. It's not so good for Christian intellectuals trying to use morality in various ways to support their claim that God exists (because you're not an ethical deviant or impotent, are you?!).

Let me know if I've gotten this wrong, but here's my understanding of what you're trying to say:

  1. Christian intellectuals say morality can't exist without God
  2. They also say that morality does exist, therefore God does exist
  3. So claiming that morality exists apart from God bodes poorly for their position

I do have a couple disagreements with this.

  1. "Morality" refers both to abstract morality and to morality-in-practice i.e. the belief that the universe is fundamentally moral and good things happen to good people. These should not be conflated. God did not define Good, but the fact that we can look around and see a fundamentally Good universe is still evidence of God.
  2. This is similar to a cat coupling, because there's an implication that you're talking about all Christian intellectuals. They do not all rely on DCT for proofs of God's existence, and most of those who do still do not solely rely on DCT.

"Morality" refers both to abstract morality and to morality-in-practice i.e. the belief that the universe is fundamentally moral and good things happen to good people. These should not be conflated. God did not define Good, but the fact that we can look around and see a fundamentally Good universe is still evidence of God.

Right, but then the inference is hypothetico-deductive ("If God exists, then good things to good people; good things happen to good people; which is some evidence that God exists") which is different from a deductive argument ("If morality exists, God exists; morality exists; therefore, God exists"). These are very different arguments both in logic and content.

Of course, different Christian intellectuals have different arguments.

Sure, it's not a Proof.

Sorry, to clarify, I hope that I have throughout distinguished Christian intellectuals and DCT fans, e.g.

"from a Christian perspective, God is not morally obliged to save anyone. In fact, from a Divine Command Theory perspective, the very notion of moral obligations for God is a category mistake, like a moral obligation for the number 11."

The idea that grace is a gift of God, not an obligation of God, is more or less unanimous among Christians, AFAIK. The DCT is not.

But a supremely benevolent being would give all his creations at least of a chance of accepting grace. This is a chink in the armor of the theodicy, because Christians' omnipotent benevolent God did not lift a finger to give 100s AD Malaysians even a shot at accepting grace — they could not have heard Christ's ministry. Nor, indeed, does God give us moderns the benefit he was willing to extend to 20s AD Near Easterners, who saw tangible miracles to guide them to God's kingdom.

Catholics, orthodox, and Pentecostals at least all regularly claim tangible miracles. You might believe these miracles not to have happened or have mundane explanations, but many of them haven’t been disproven and are much better documented than the gospel accounts.

I absolutely agree, but the natural Christian response is that 100s AD Malaysians did not deserve a shot at accepting grace, nor do moderns deserve to see tangible miracles. The key thing about grace is that it is not what anyone fairly deserves. God is going beyond what people deserve and giving a gift.

(There are other responses, like saying that there are other ways to salvation than through Christ, but they struggle with the standard Christian interpretation of e.g. John 3:16.)

But a supremely benevolent being would give all his creations at least of a chance of accepting grace.

The Christian followup to this point is: how do you know? Then you might say, "How do you know that God isn't just playing a cruel joke on you, so that heaven is just a great big spider in front of a dark glass?" And then, arguments for God's existence aside, their answer is "Faith." And then you can say, "That is not a reliable way of knowing things."

So the theodical debates end with the epistemic debates, AFAIK, which is why I find epistemology more interesting than things like the Problem of Evil, even though the point you raise is actually the original one that made me doubt Christianity as a child. (The best explanation of God's restricted grace is not his inscrutable will of gifting, but that Jesus was a Jewish prophet living near the Red Sea who didn't have access to mass communication to reach the whole nations.)

This is a chink in the armor of the theodicy

Or in the armor of Divine Command Theory, or in the armor of your understanding of salvation.

Did something about this discussion make you like Merry from LOTR less? That's a steep handle downgrade.

Or in the armor of Divine Command Theory, or in the armor of your understanding of salvation.

Let me quote C.S. Lewis:

"When Christianity says that God loves man it means that God LOVES man: not that He has some 'disinterested'; because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect', is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes. It is certainly a burden of glory, not only beyond our deserts but also, except in rare moments of grace, beyond our desiring"

I think it's reasonable to expect that this God, who I heard of in sermons throughout my childhood, would put in slightly more effort to save the uncontacted heathens than "none at all". If someone offers me a version of Christianity that doesn't talk about God in terms of this extreme love, then I will address that religion and their theodicies in another way.

I think it's reasonable to expect that this God, who I heard of in sermons throughout my childhood, would put in slightly more effort to save the uncontacted heathens than "none at all".

Isn't there an entire strain of christian analysis of history that chalks the rising of the roman state and later the expansion of the european powers as this?

I think it's reasonable to expect that this God, who I heard of in sermons throughout my childhood, would put in slightly more effort to save the uncontacted heathens than "none at all".

Isn't there an entire strain of christian analysis of history that chalks the rising of the roman state and later the expansion of the european powers as this?

Yes, but there were definitely people left behind in the last chopper out of 'Nam, so to speak. Christians posit an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent deity; thus, even small edge case exceptions are highly damaging to this claim. Why did God not do 100 AD Malaysians the favor he did for Saul on the road to Damascus? Or even just send a missionary or two?

That's a steep handle downgrade.

Haha, honestly I'm working on opsec. That handle has been around for too long--I'll probably switch to an entirely new account soon.

I think it's reasonable to expect that this God, which I also heard in sermons throughout my childhood, to put in slightly more effort to save the uncontacted heathens than "none at all"

The LDS belief is that there is a plan laid out for them too, through which they have full access to all the blessings of Christ's atonement and the salvation offered thereby. I certainly think that any church which doesn't posit such a plan is flat-out wrong. This is why I say, your observation could easily be a chink in the armor of DCT or your understanding of salvation, rather than in theodicy.

Certainly churches who believe that such people will go to hell must have a much harder time grappling with theodicy.

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