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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   4635 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 28, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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  • This is the only one that's at all pressing, I think. Old earth creationism is also a view that you'll see around, as is theistic evolution. There's some intratextual reasons to think that you can't just add the years up anyway, which makes it a bit less problematic. And the word "day" is notoriously ambiguous, and that whole passage is weird. Currently, the part I'm most concerned about is the table of nations in Genesis 10, though I'm also not entirely sure what to do with the flood. I know William Lane Craig thinks that the whole first 11 chapters are a different genre, and shouldn't be interpreted literally; I'm not sure that I'm convinced.
  • Job is pretty clear that "the adversary" is subordinate to God. I don't know that I see enormous lines between there being angelic or demonic powers and there being pagan-style deities anyway, so I don't think this is much of a problem.
  • I don't think misunderstanding the bible in itself means that they would be damned. That said, I don't actually have a problem with people being damned for trivial things, so this isn't at all a pressing objection. See the following, as well.

People on the ground witnessing the miracles would have had such a huge leg up in their redemption.

Yes. And? It's all of grace anyway, a gift that we utterly don't deserve, so I don't really see the issue. See also: Romans 9.

What kind of justice is this? Infinite pain for a life with finite sin?

Ah, you misunderstand. Your sin is against the infinite majesty of God.

And if you take the classical view of what gets you damned (disbelief in the redemption), how can you really hold it against someone?

This isn't the reason that they're damned (or at least, certainly not all of it), they're damned for their sin in general.

Under any definition of the time when the Bible was being written, "day" did not mean "actually hundreds of millions of years". Anyone saying otherwise is coping. Genesis is literally supposed to be how the world came about, and people interpreted it this way and believed it for hundreds of years until the theory of evolution and uniformitarianism came about.

Is God supposed to be a loving God, as almost every Christian I see says it, or is he supposed to be literally the most wicked thing in existence, with Satan and every other false god paling in comparison both to the magnitude of cruelty he is capable of inflicting and the willingness to see it carried out? When you pick apples, you keep the good ones and toss the bad ones. You don't take the bad apples, smash them into bits, reconstitute them, and smash them again and keep repeating this same pattern. That doesn't make any sense. You know what would make it make sense? If humans came up with it to scare you into believing it.

Edit to add: The idea that you can handwave away the unfairness of that is kind of infuriating to me. You're telling me that a kid can be born in a nowhere town with no opportunity, grow up getting abused by his parents, reach ripe adulthood somewhere after 12, lose faith in God because nothing good is happening to him, and end up shooting himself, and he goes to Hell to be tormented forever. Not only was life unfair to him, but also the afterlife was even more unfair to him, somehow. There's no way to reconcile that fate with any of the rest of the New Testament claiming God to be extremely loving. That's pretty unequivocally horrible. God created every part of this situation -- a cruel world, the rules behind entry to Heaven and Hell, the ability to sin and feel pain. What majesty would do that?

Hell isn't unfair. We deserve it.

If anything, it's heaven that's unfair.

There's no way to reconcile that fate with any of the rest of the New Testament claiming God to be extremely loving.

Why not?

Jesus dude. This is crazy talk, even by my low expectations regarding religious thinkers. I'm here if you want to message or talk to someone.

Jesus dude. This is crazy talk, even by my low expectations regarding religious thinkers.

I think this is pretty mainstream, among some (large) segments of Christianity?

It follows pretty quickly that we deserve hell if you just take sin seriously. When all sin is in some respect against God's infinite majesty, that makes sin pretty bad, even if it's something that we might ordinarily think of as minor. (I could cite some passages of scripture, but I get that you might not care.)

This makes salvation more breathtaking.

I'm here if you want to message or talk to someone.

If this is due to concern that I'm unwell, I'm not. I like to think I'm pretty well adjusted, I have friends, etc.

Hell isn't unfair. We deserve it.

How does anyone who isn't born a pathological misanthrope come to believe this?

Well, I don't think I was born a pathological misanthrope, nor am one, so…

By becoming convinced that sin is bad, actually. That we are guilty when we sin not only for the harms we inflict on others, but for the transgression against God's law, against his infinite majesty.

To quote Isaiah, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

This is not the only such passage.

"Sin is bad" is clearly not sufficient. Somehow you've also become convinced that [there is God and] God is a utility monster such that offending him makes one deserving of infinite suffering.

From what I see even most religious people aren't truly making that leap. This is why I don't believe that you mean it, or that you're normal for believing it.

"we deserve hell" is a bog standard part of Christian doctrine. If we didn't deserve hell on our own merits, then we wouldn't really say we need a savior. Agree or disagree, this isn't really a fringe position that @Felagund is taking.

It seems very sensible for God to be a utility monster (assuming God exists, of course)? Like, I'd be kind of surprised if that were not the case.

I think this is pretty common among religious people? Or, at least, among those who have thought it through. Do you think the average religious person thinks hell is unjust?

Genesis is literally supposed to be how the world came about, and people interpreted it this way and believed it for hundreds of years until the theory of evolution and uniformitarianism came about.

Origen:

I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance and not literally" (The Fundamental Doctrines 4:1:16 [A.D. 225]).

Augustine:

"at least we know that [the Genesis creation day] is different from the ordinary day with which we are familiar" (Genesi Ad Litteram).

Edit:

Also St. Augustine:

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.[17]

With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.[18]

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