A Fair and Just Eternity?
Is there any crime for which eternal suffering is a just punishment?
The Christian God seems to think so, but do you? Take a moment, think of the things for which we incarcerate people, the worst offenders, habitual child molesters, serial killers, war crimes such as genocide, the worst of the worst. Even for these, the most we can effectively sentence them to is the remainder of their lives, maybe 70 or 80 years at most. Remember also that we are talking about the concept of just punishment for a crime, not about whether people need to be kept incarcerated for the public’s safety which is a different topic all together.
Now compare that time with eternity, start off small, do you really think punishing them for 250 years is just? What about putting them in jail when Christ was born and not letting them out of their cell, not even once, until this year, some 2000 years later. Would you really consider that a fair or just punishment? Now open the flood gates, what about 10,000 years which coincided with the last glacial periods when the entire world population was roughly 5 million, keep in mind that current population of NYC alone is 8.3 million!
When does it stop, when have you punished a person enough? What about 500,000 or maybe 10 million years..really..is that a “just” punishment…I can’t even begin to imagine living that long, let alone being continually in pain and torture. Even after 40,000,000 years in a constant state of unrelenting unforgiving pain and agony, we haven’t even made it back to the age of the dinosaurs yet!
Yet, the Christian God sees, not just 40 million years, but an eternity, a never-ending expanse of time, where you will be the object of unremitting torture and agony, as a “just” punishment for not believing in His Son Jesus and accepting Him as your saviour and Lord.
Some people feel that free will, the ability to choose our own destiny comes into play here, in other words, that while God did not create evil, He also could not prevent us from choosing it without interfering with our ability to exercise autonomy and free choice.
Let me ask you a question, do you believe that there are things of a heavenly nature, concepts, idea and possibilities that you know nothing about or maybe even possibilities that exist in other cultures here on earth?If you answered yes, then let me ask a second question. Do you believe not knowing about those things in any way negates your free will?Assuming that you don’t think your free will has vanished just because you are unaware of all the possible choices, then why couldn’t God have created a universe where all beings had free will, the ability to choose, and yet kept from our minds or consciousness the concept of evil?
Keep in mind, that since the Christian God is omnipotent and the creator and author of all things, He was under no obligation to create the universe in any particular manner…He created it how He desired it, and in this case, with the concept of evil and an eternity of unremitting torment and anguish for those who choose not to love and follow Him.
Sovereign Grace and Pastoral Authority
Seems that the internecine battle between the pastoral authority of SGM and the righteous indignation of former (and current) members of the flock is about to come to a head. It’s been building for some time, and with C.J Mahaney stepping down for a period of repentence and self-reflection, the online battle between those in pastoral authority and those who feel that these pastors have and are continuing to abuse that authority is heating up, especially in the world of blogs.
On the side of those in leadership you can read the following explanations of the issue at hand:
SGM – Board of Directors Comment
Gospel Coalition – Leave of Absence
Reconciliation with Larry Tomczak
MacDonald and Mahaney Discuss Humility (video)
On the side of those who feel that this entire issue is being mishandled and that leadership is abusing it’s authority, you can read here:
The Wartburg Watch – Trendy Calvinista steps down
Various SGM Related Articles and Comments
Personal Journeys from former SGM flock members
The Wartburg Watch – Shades of John Piper
The Wartburg Watch – Review of C.J.’s book on Humility
The Wartburg Watch – C.J., SGM and Cognitive Dissonance
A Christian’s Commentary on SGM
Beings with Freewill or Player Pianos?
Most Christian have probably had one or more discussions around the idea of free will. Usually they are connected with a discussion of God and whether or not He is ultimately responsible for what humans do and the existence of evil in the world.
I’d like to propose that free will, the ability of a human being to make an independent choice, not only doesn’t exists, but that what we perceive as free will is nothing more than an illusion. That we, as humans, are quite literally just playing notes off a script, like an old-time player piano, and that the illusion of free will is no more than our unique ability to watch ourselves playing those notes.
Most people would agree that the world around us is driven by cause and effect, that we can look at any event from a car crash to a leaf falling from a tree and, with a little work, can follow back a chain of events from the one we observed going backwards in time. We’ve all heard something similar to ”a butterfly flaps it’s wings in China and it rains in New York”, while we doubt that those two things are necessarily connected, the point it tries to make is accurate, each event has a cause and each cause is just an earlier cause’s event.
Now consider the human brain, a wonder to be sure, having anywhere from 85-120 billion neurons and 1000 trillion synaptic connections. Each of those synaptic connections responding to chemical and electrical stimuli from other nearby neurons. The question to ask ourselves is whether that stimulation is the result of a thought or an idea, or is it the other way around, do thoughts and ideas result from the stimulation of the neurons and the signals that they generate?
Based on the observation that we identify people as dead by the absence of electrical activity in the brain, it would seem that our thoughts are the result of those electrical impulses and not the cause. If they were the cause, then even a person with no electrical activity in the brain might start-up again a minute, a day or a year later when a thought “occurred” and started that electrical engine going again.
If that is the case, then it is apparent that we have no control over our thoughts, for in order to exert control or influence over the electrical activity, we’d have to manufacture thoughts in the absence of an electrical stimulus. This simply doesn’t appear to be how things work. Actually, if you could have a thought without an electrical signal, then you’d have effectively decoupled thoughts from the neural network in our brains entirely.
One final note, when this idea is proposed it seems to be fairly common for people to latch on to quantum fluctuation as some type of explanation, trying to make the case that our environment is not deterministic, but rather that it is or at least can be completely random. Unfortunately, all that does is make matters worse. If the impulses in our brain are truly random, then it still gives us no more control than we had before, but what it does do, it to turn organized thoughts into a jumble of unrelated sensory experiences, completely disconnected from each other.
Burden of Proof – Where does it belong?
In a discussion on the existence of the Christian God. Does the burden of proof belong to the person who asserts that God does exist or should it be the responsibility of the person who either denies or is unconvinced of the existence of God to provide proof?
Points to consider:
1. Usually one who makes an assertion must assume the responsibility of defending it. If this responsibility or burden of proof is shifted to a critic, the fallacy of appealing to ignorance is committed. - Michalos, Alex. 1969. Principles of Logic. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. p 370
2. An appeal to ignorance is an argument for or against a proposition on the basis of a lack of evidence against or for it. If there is positive evidence for the conclusion, then of course we have other reasons for accepting it, but a lack of evidence by itself is no evidence.
3. Some examples that do not commit the appeal to ignorance fallacy from http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html
Sometimes it is reasonable to argue from a lack of evidence for a proposition to the falsity of that proposition, when there is a presumption that the proposition is false. For instance, in American criminal law there is a presumption of innocence, which means that the burden of proof is on the prosecution, and if the prosecution fails to provide evidence of guilt then the jury must conclude that the defendant is innocent.
Similarly, the burden of proof is usually on a person making a new or improbable claim, and the presumption may be that such a claim is false. For instance, suppose that someone claims that the president was taken by flying saucer to another planet, but when challenged can supply no evidence of this unusual trip. It would not be an Appeal to Ignorance for you to reason that, since there is no evidence that the president visited another planet, therefore he probably didn’t do so.
Similarly, when extensive investigation has been undertaken, it is often reasonable to infer that something is false based upon a lack of positive evidence for it. For instance, if a drug has been subjected to lengthy testing for harmful effects and none has been discovered, it is then reasonable to conclude that it is safe.
