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Isn't that very much disputed within Christianity? In addition the kids he speaks of are almost certainly Hindu and/or Muslim. I am guessing almost none of them are baptized. And then even if the kids get in because they were too young to actively choose, will the parents who are also most likely Hindu and Muslim be reunited with them?
Catholics:
"Likewise, whosoever says that those children who depart out of this life without partaking of that sacrament shall be made alive in Christ, certainly contradicts the apostolic declaration, and condemns the universal Church, in which it is the practice to lose no time and run in haste to administer baptism to infant children, because it is believed, as an indubitable truth, that otherwise they cannot be made alive in Christ. Now he that is not made alive in Christ must necessarily remain under the condemnation, of which the apostle says, that "by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation." That infants are born under the guilt of this offense is believed by the whole Church."
"The Roman Catholic view is that baptism is necessary for salvation and that it frees the recipient from original sin. Roman Catholic tradition teaches that unbaptized infants, not being freed from original sin, go to Limbo (Latin: limbus infantium), which is an afterlife condition distinct from Hell. This is not, however, official church dogma."
The Orthodox:
"And forasmuch as infants are men, and as such need salvation; needing salvation, they need also Baptism. And those that are not regenerated, since they have not received the remission of hereditary sin, are, of necessity, subject to eternal punishment, and consequently cannot without Baptism be saved; so that even infants ought, of necessity, to be baptised."
or the Protestants:
"Since we must make judgments about God’s will from his Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature but by virtue of the gracious covenant in which they together with their parents are included, godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in infancy. "
The Baptists would back you up however:
"We do believe, that all little Children dying in their Infancy, before they are capable to choose either Good or Evil, whether born of Believing Parents, or Unbelieving Parents, shall be saved by the Grace of God, and Merit of Christ their Redeemer, and Work of the Holy Ghost, and so being made Members of the Invisible Church, shall enjoy Life everlasting; for our Lord Jesus saith, of such belongs the Kingdom of Heaven. Ergo, We conclude, that that opinion is false, which saith, That those little Infants dying before Baptism, are damned."
In other words aren't you assuming the best possible case for your argument here? What if you are right about God existing, but that those kids will never be reunited with their families, either because they will go to Limbo/Heaven as they were too young to choose Christ and their parents are Damned, through not being Christian? Would you still maintain that pain is worth it? Or that you are correct but that they will be reunited with their parents in Gehenna being as neither was saved, and suffer even more torment?
Your argument could be true for Christian baptized kids born to Christian parents and false for everyone else.
I'm just making a claim without arguing every single one of my positions from first principles. Of course if I'm wrong about my religion then I'm wrong about my religion, that goes without saying, and therefore my claim that kids go to heaven wouldn't be correct. If I were wrong I'd have to rethink essentially every belief I have.
Given the quality and good faith (or lack thereof) of the comment I was responding to, spending hours crafting a full dissertation on all of my beliefs would just be a waste of time.
edit: to answer your question, though, my own experience was that very great pain was very tolerable. This doesn't make it good or mean there are endless lessons to be learned from it, or even that any amount of pain is "worth it." SOME amount is useful to learn certain lessons though.
I think I should have been more careful with how I worded my original comment, given how people seem to be interpreting it.
So let's concede that your faith is not Catholic, Orthodox, or Lutheran-adjacent but a personal interpretation of faith that allows unbaptized Hindu children into heaven. You probably have a lot of theology to do, but put that aside.
The common Christian response to the problem of pain is a wonderful meme attached below. Suffering is God's chisel to sculpt us. (It is a great meme.)
Can you think of a type or manner of suffering that would falsify this hypothesis? That is to say, a Job-like situation of suffering so meaningless that it could not be didactic? And that if you found it to exist, your current paradigm would have to update? If you can't think of one, what does that rationally mean?
/images/17101081322472017.webp
My faith is LDS, i.e. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Eh, it's alright. I get off the train at step 5 or 6. My religion believes in a somewhat more limited God who did not invent righteousness out of thin air or have the capacity to redefine what Good and Bad are. You could say we don't believe in an omnipotent God, but there are different definitions of omnipotence, and some allow for "omnipotent" beings incapable of changing logic itself.
I'm not really sure what hypothesis you're referring to. Can I think of a level of suffering which would force me to update my own position? Sort of--it would be strong evidence against my position anyways, the same way the suffering which I observe is evidence for (but not proof of) my position.
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You should perhaps consider that you're entirely wrong. There is not one shred of evidence for your feelings and had you been born in ancient greece your credulous butt would have just believed in the greek pantheon instead. It is all made up dude.
Do you really have the audacity and arrogance necessary to believe you are one of the few million out of 117 billion humans to have ever lived to see the light of the ONE TRUE GOD/RELIGION? Do you know how wild that sounds to someone not in the thrall of your particular sect?
Since we're on the topic of peer pressure against small rules violations
The only difference between these two sentence pairs is the insertion of scorn. Would it be so bad to tone this down please? If you're modded you might feel vindicated for proving The Motte is too soft for ingroup criticism, well done, but if so this will be the reason. While your instinct now is probably to go hunting for examples of scornful language elsewhere on the Motte, you're delivering scorn here in distilled juice concentrate.
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You're the one parroting the mainstream position here. I suspect we'd both be pantheon believers, but we'd also both be different people entirely without access to the scientific method etc. There is no me if I had been born in ancient Greece.
Other than that though, thanks, you've really given me a lot to chew on. I had never considered before that I might be wrong.
Atheism is not mainstream. Most people are religious adherents, 85% according to the most recent surveys. I'm the counterculture rebel here, not you. You would have been cheering on the death of socrates on charges of atheism and corrupting the youth.
First you say my position must be wrong because it's so rare, then you say I'm in the mainstream and following along with the rest of the sheep. Which is it?
¿Por Qué No Los Dos? You are both are lucky enough to belong to the ONE TRUE RELIGION and also to the "mainstream" that believes in some kind of magical force we just can't quite ever prove. At least yours has magic underpants!
Hey, you seem to have made a bunch of decent posts before this whole drama, but posts like this are just not interesting, and also are against the rules. This is heat, not light. I think you are correct that it is bad to believe in magic and omnipotent beings who judge humans on morality because it's part of a powerful cultural force because it isn't true. But these are just insults, and they're insults that i'd downvote on the 'other site' for not being funny enough.
I was attempting to add a little levity to the conversation without being overtly offensive. I agree. I strayed from the path here, Tenaz hasn't been any better, clearly looking up all my posts and replying to them now. Not that it is a worthy excuse.
The religiosity and the respect it is given is getting out of hand here though. Time to burn some witches before they run the town. I just read a "hitler did nothing wrong" post a minute ago.
Here is a more entertaining rejoinder to a different comment. "Opening with a forwards from grandma style meme that wouldn't look out of place in a kevin sorbo movie is not a good start to this ramble to nowhere."
I have actually deprogrammed at this point exactly 1 Jehovah's Witness (female friend) 1 church of latter-day saints adherent (male friend), and one Baptist (my wife). So maybe it is screaming into the void. But I have had some limited success with it.
It made me chuckle anyhow.
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And you're lucky enough to simultaneously belong to the brave, clear-thinking counterculture, and to the one group immune to any and all Outside View criticisms because the group's beliefs are called a philosophy rather than a religion. You get that most philosophies are also mutually exclusive, right?
It isn't even a philosophy, it is just seeing the world for what it is, without magic or gods or any of that make believe stuff. A lack of belief in the supernatural isn't a philosophy, it is viewing reality.
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My point was, you could mostly be correct, especially about how your faith works for you and others who believe as you do, but wrong about the other parts you are basically generating yourself. For the moment let's say you have experienced miracles yourself and you are in God's grace and therefore your knowledge of how that part works is solid. Unless in one of those experiences God told you what He does about children and pagans then you are extrapolating what you know about how God is with you, with how God will be with others.
So when you say families will be reunited, is that because you know, (the same way you know the existence of God) or is it a less certain belief?
Miracles are evidence of God and somewhat weaker evidence for my understanding of God. The belief that families will be reunited stems from my understanding of God. So strictly speaking, [families being reunited] is contingent upon and thus less likely than [God existing], yes.
I'm not really sure where you're going with this, are you trying to argue that the miracles aren't good evidence that families will be reunited? I'll weakly agree with you there, the [families being reunited] belief requires a whole lot more knowledge of God than just what the miracles provided. Those miracles aren't the full extent of my religious knowledge and experience, they're just a few accessible examples.
Basically yes, which means when you say "families will be re-united" you don't have definitive knowledge of that (even accepting that your miracles are good knowledge of God existing). You should really say that you think the families will be re-united, which does leave your position much more open to critique. You're making a stronger argument for your position than you actually believe.
Stating beliefs without qualifiers is a typical method of communication often used on this very forum. For example:
This is a subjective opinion, certainly not one you have definitive knowledge is true, yet you stated it without qualifiers.
Sure, but I said should, which indicates it is a normative statement not a factual one. Whereas "will" is about an event.
If you said, children should be reunited with their families then we wouldn't be having this conversation because I would agree with you.
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