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One Love
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| Posted 5/2/2010 3:51 PM (GMT -6) |   | | | |
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Asher
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Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 477
| Posted 5/2/2010 3:52 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: "But to be motivated by suffering "to perceive the truth" and then resign "to the truth" is one thing. Yes. To be motivated by suffering to resign WITHOUT HAVING PERCEIVED THE TRUTH is another. It's all about perception of truth and yielding TO THE TRUTH, not yielding TO OUR PAIN and resigning TO ESCAPE PAIN."
I guess I'm still open either way on this, though I probably lean in one direction...
First, when we're talking about suffering and pain in hell, I'm not talking about hellfire and brimstone type pain and infliction of suffering...i.e. torture to get results...I don't believe hell is a torture chamber of any sorts...God is not inflicting pain...
Hell, at least in my view, is exactly designed to lead the person into PERCEIVING THE TRUTH...
So, four questions, Tom, do you think it 1) possible and 2) probable that a person under the psychological care and counseling of God will 3) not perceive the truth and 4) not yield to the truth?
If a person TOTALLY perceives the truth, I don't see how yielding is not embedded in that...the only way they would not be yielding to the truth is if they did not FULLY see it as truth...which means they are NOT totally perceiving the truth. Willfulness in the face of truth is a form of not perceiving the truth. So, is it possible that a person never perceive the truth...when all the normal things that may prevent that in this life are removed...can a person still be unable to perceive truth? What makes them unable?
Can a person fully perceive truth and NOT yield. What does the not yielding consist in? "I know what you are telling me is absolutely true...but I reject it. I don't want it to be true, so I reject it, even though I know it's true."
If God is the grounding center of their very being, then is there not something in them that IS drawn to truth? And the reason so many can resist now is that there are so many chess pieces they can sacrifice to save their king. If all evasions are stripped (after however long in hell it takes) and there is the truth right in front of them...WHAT IS MOTIVATING THEIR NOT YIELDING TO THE TRUTH? Are they acting without motivation of any kind? | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 5/2/2010 3:56 PM (GMT -6) | | Great questions, Asher.
I think Tom sees hell as a torture chamber ran by a coercive agent...rather than an intensive care psych ward with an infinitely compassionate therapist!!!!
Get rid of that old programmin', dawg!!!
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
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Total Posts : 477
| Posted 5/2/2010 4:00 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: "A person's hell (their suffering) IS their rejection of God. They're not separate things. The ONLY return to God possible is through a perceiving of and yielding to the truth. Suffering can certainly help effect that. Why not? But it can't create a terminus ad quem, a point beyond which persons who don't perceive the truth nevertheless say 'yes' to God and God welcomes them just because getting them out of their pain is more important that getting them into the truth."
Yes, no disagreement.
"a point beyond which persons who don't perceive the truth nevertheless say 'yes' to God and God welcomes them just because getting them out of their pain is more important that getting them into the truth."
No, God doesn't value pain diminution over truth apprehension. But can a person persistently not perceive the truth? What grounds their inability to "see" the truth?
If they "see" truth...what grounds their ability to not yield? | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 5/2/2010 4:01 PM (GMT -6) | | Asher: Hell, at least in my view, is exactly designed to lead the person into PERCEIVING THE TRUTH...
Tom: Right.
Asher: So, four questions, Tom, do you think it 1) possible and 2) probable that a person under the psychological care and counseling of God will 3) not perceive the truth and 4) not yield to the truth?
Tom: Like I've been saying, the truth (clarity) we're granted in hell HAS to be sufficient to make choosing God rational and possible AND ambiguous enough to make rejecting God rational and possible. I don't see how, if ALL ambiguity were removed a person could be free. We've always said, for years here, that this ambiguity is definitive of being free in the choice for good and evil.
Asher: If a person TOTALLY perceives the truth, I don't see how yielding is not embedded in that...
Tom: I agree. TOTAL, absolute disclosure would eradicate freedom with respect to evil. That's what glorification includes as I see it. So I don't think folks in hell get this overwhelming download of clarity. Sufficient, yes.
Asher: Willfulness in the face of truth is a form of not perceiving the truth.
Tom: It's also a form of perceiving the truth. Epistemic distance (and responsible choice) means enough light/truth to choose right but not so much that willfully and rationally disobeying becomes impossible.
Hope that helps.
Tom
KIXYTΘEMTA | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
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Total Posts : 477
| Posted 5/2/2010 4:17 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: Like I've been saying, the truth (clarity) we're granted in hell HAS to be sufficient to make choosing God rational and possible AND ambiguous enough to make rejecting God rational and possible. I don't see how, if ALL ambiguity were removed a person could be free. We've always said, for years here, that this ambiguity is definitive of being free in the choice for good and evil.
Asher: If a person TOTALLY perceives the truth, I don't see how yielding is not embedded in that...
Tom: I agree. TOTAL, absolute disclosure would eradicate freedom with respect to evil. That's what glorification includes as I see it. So I don't think folks in hell get this overwhelming download of clarity. Sufficient, yes.
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the truth HAS to be sufficient to make
1) choosing God
2) rejecting God
rational and possible
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Help me with the dynamics of how this works:
Does truth equally weight both choices? Is it 50/50?
Does truth favor THE TRUTH, but make rejection still rational and possible...so that when a person rejects God...we can see that happen and say "Yeah, I kind of understand their decision. It's not the only rational thing they could have done there, but it is definitely rational."
Is it like 99.9999>>>999% in favor of choosing God...but still leave a little sliver that is possible to reject God in...and also be rational?
And if a person takes up residence in that sliver...
With what do you appeal to them with?
No argument you have can appear MORE rational to what they are already holding on to.
No continued avowals and displays of love can appeal to them...there is no dissatisfaction to appeal to... | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
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Total Posts : 477
| Posted 5/2/2010 4:31 PM (GMT -6) | | Rationality is a pretty much all or nothing kind of thing .
No rational proposition is MORE RATIONAL than any other rational proposition. They are equally alike rational.
So, we have rational reasons:
to accept God
and rational reasons:
to reject God
Why would anybody in hell who has already chosen rejection of God EVER decide to change?
What motivates change of any kind? | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
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Total Posts : 477
| Posted 5/2/2010 4:36 PM (GMT -6) | | Is solidification into a willful, evil embracing, state...
...rational then? | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 5/2/2010 5:48 PM (GMT -6) | | Asher: No argument you have can appear MORE rational to what they are already holding on to. No continued avowals and displays of love can appeal to them...there is no dissatisfaction to appeal to...
Tom: From the point of view of an omniscient knower, love is the ONLY rational move. All else is irrational. But we're not omniscient.
Let me describe what I think I mean when I say rejecting God has to be rational. I don't mean that we necessarily reason, logically, through premise 1, 2, and 3 to conclude that rejecting God is in our best interest. No. I don't think that's how misrelation usually works. I think it's usually our seeking to satisfy our own natural desires and appetites (which are in themselves good), but in less than optimally informed ways. Our choices may not be MOST rational, but they're not IRRATIONAL. That some beliefs are more or less rational than others is, I take it, obviously the case. Again, this is just what it means to be a less than glorified human being. It IS the conditioned nature of our being, necessary to the sort of responsible development we have to go through.
The question is, can God disregard these conditions and provide so much light and information that we're essentially rendered psychologically incapable of rejecting God? That looks like checkmate to me. It looks like the eradication of the capacity to choose against God. If God can do that, why not start there from the get go? Why this charade of a probabtionary earthly existence with its ambiguity--and all the suffering that's resulted from it--if God can get what he wants without the ambiguity? The ambiguity is either metaphysically entailed upon creaturely becoming to qualify it for glorification or it's not. If it is, then it applies to hell. If it's not, then why go with it now? If it's a metaphysical requirement for divine-human relationality in THIS age but not in the eschaton (hell), then let's here an explanation of why that is.
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Do we invariably choose what is MOST rational? I don't think so. So at some point in the purging process that hell is, creatures have an optimal context in which to self-dispose responsibly in the most rational manner. I DO think God will appear most rational to them, which doesn't always happen in the here and now. But that's no guarantee that the right choice will be made. Look at Eve! Rejecting the Serpent's offer was MOST rational no doubt. No sinful tendencies, no fallen social structures, no TV ads, I mean, what d'ya want? Yet the exercise of reason was clouded (this is not fallenness; rather it's creaturliness) by her context. She found a way to rationalize eating fruit (hey, it's good to the eyes [it's aesthetic!], good for...etc.). What's OPTIMAL is contextually determined after all. What's optimal for human BECOMING may require a certain ambiguity that isn't optimal for fulfilled human being. Optimal, for glorification, permits the greatest possible exercise of creaturely capacities aligned with God and precludes any screw ups. We don't have that now. But we want to say folks in HELL have it? I guess hell is just heaven plus pain. Is that it?
I think we have to BECOME our way into that context. It can't be dumped on us, even in hell...as far as I can tell.
Tom
KIXYTΘEMTAPost Edited (Tom) : 5/2/2010 6:00:34 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
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Total Posts : 477
| Posted 5/2/2010 6:10 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: "I agree. TOTAL, absolute disclosure would eradicate freedom with respect to evil. That's what glorification includes as I see it. So I don't think folks in hell get this overwhelming download of clarity. Sufficient, yes."
"Freedom with respect to evil:"
is the ability to actualize evil part and parcel of what freedom is? Is ability to deviate from our logoi really freedom?
To persist in our "freedom" to maintain false selves. But, then, that statement is incorrect...who is to say that it's a false self being maintained if they are making a rational decision. What exactly about their state is it that I find so unappealing? And how can we say that they are rejecting the truth if what they are holding onto is rational. Is a lie, an untruth, rational?
I need more...much more...theoretical scaffolding before I am able to see the false as rational.
"I don't think folks in hell get this overwhelming download of clarity. Sufficient, yes."
Sufficient to do what? Move from one rational place of choice to a different rational place of choice. Sufficient only means they are given enough "light" so that they are ABLE to do it. They've got that now. So hell is no decisive change at all.
Heck, they may even evangelize us...sway us over to their side...maybe we're the one's holding onto the wrong side. I'm sure they can give just as many, or at least just as sufficient, rational reasons why we should join them.
Nope...I need more help to see this too.
Help me see the rationality of rejecting God, Tom!  | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 5/2/2010 6:27 PM (GMT -6) | | Asher,
I’d agree that freedom with respect to evil is the ability to deviate from our logos, to misrelate. And it’s only RESPONSIBLE behavior for which we’re held accountable IF it’s sufficiently rational.
Asher: Who is to say that it's a false self being maintained if they are making a rational decision.
Tom: God.
Asher: And how can we say that they are rejecting the truth if what they are holding onto is rational.
Tom: Because there are better reasons for not rejecting God. But the acceptance of these isn't so much a list of propositions and math equations. It's BY FAITH. It doesn't become something else in hell. It's still by faith. We're rational creatures, sure. So no rationality/reasons for belief makes faith impossible. Faith IS a rational move. But total removal of all epistemic distance makes faith as impossible. There is no other thing to believe BUT God. Belief in God becomes an attribute of mind given the overwhelming light we're given, not a choice we make by faith.
Asher: In an untruth rational?
Tom: We can BE rational, and have good reasons for believing what is in fact not true, yes. We have partial information that suggests one thing, then later discoveries shed light and we have reasons to adjust our view. How many different interpretation of quantum physics are there? Some sixteen by last count. Can all of them be true? No. Are they all rational? Yes. How so? Epistemic distance, that’s how so. Are those who agree with Einstein that time is relative rational? I think so, yes. Are those who reject Einstein's theory and go with, say, Lorentz's explanation rational? Yes, they are. Can both be true? No. One is false, and one is true, but believing in either is rational. How so? Epistemic distance. That's how so. 
Tom: I don't think folks in hell get this overwhelming download of clarity. Sufficient, yes.
Asher: Sufficient to do what? Move from one rational place of choice to a different rational place of choice. Sufficient only means they are given enough "light" so that they are ABLE to do it. They've got that now. So hell is no decisive change at all.
Tom: I don’t think hell is, for the wicked, just a continuation of this existence with no changes. It’s one thing to be playing against a chess master with all your pieces. It’s another to be stripped of them all, save your King.
Asher: Heck, they may even evangelize us...sway us over to their side...maybe we're the one's holding onto the wrong side.
Tom: How in the world…
Asher: Help me see the rationality of rejecting God, Tom.
Tom: Can you PROVE God exists beyond all shadow of rational doubt? No. There you are.
Tom
KIXYTΘEMTAPost Edited (Tom) : 5/2/2010 6:38:49 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Asher
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Total Posts : 477
| Posted 5/2/2010 6:37 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: "No. I don't think that's how misrelation usually works. I think it's usually our seeking to satisfy our own natural desires and appetites (which are in themselves good), but in less than optimally informed ways. Our choices may not be MOST rational, but they're not IRRATIONAL. That some beliefs are more or less rational than others is, I take it, obviously the case."
So...in essence...there may be some poor damned soul...that persistently...in seeking to satisfy his own GOOD natural desires and appetites...desires given by God in what it means to be a human...that because of his epistemic limitations...which are also natural...chooses (based on his good desires and epistemic limits) to reject God.
And he is free. That's what freedom looks like.
"That some beliefs are more or less rational than others is, I take it, obviously the case."
Yeah, I don't get that.
Given epistemic limitation, someone can choose what looks like to them a rational belief...but the belief is not in fact rational if given enough epistemic resources. And because any given human will ALWAYS be on the side of delimited epistemological grasp...humans can NEVER know, as such, what the truly rational is...even when and if their choice aligns with the truly rational...they can't really know that as such.
That can't be what rationality is all about. I've never been much for Kant.
I'm not saying that the rational is so very evident that we don't make mistakes...but the fact that humans are rational is for me part of what it means to say we are created in God's image. And if the Original Subject of that image is right there face to face as it were...with that person in their hell...can their rational faculties reject the Original Subject upon which their very rational capabilities are modeled? | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 5/2/2010 6:43 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: That some beliefs are more or less rational than others is, I take it, obviously the case.
Asher: Yeah, I don't get that.
Tom: We can BE rational, and have good reasons for believing what is in fact not true, yes. We have partial information that suggests one thing, then later discoveries shed light and we have reasons to adjust our view. How many different interpretation of quantum physics are there? Some sixteen by last count. Can all of them be true? No. Are they all rational? Yes. Are those who agree with Einstein's theories of relativity rational? Yes. Are those who reject Einstein's theory and go with, say, Lorentz's explanations rational? Yes, they are. Can both be true? No. One is false, and one is true. So one camp has a rationally justifiable belief in what is in fact false. Unless you want to claim the either Einstein or Loretz espoused utterly irrational theories.
Tom
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One Love
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| Posted 5/2/2010 6:55 PM (GMT -6) | | Ok...
1) Sorry if I offended you with my statement, Tom. That really wasn't intended. I'm sorry. Lord have mercy.
2) Thinking about epistemic distance. Maybe this is the question: In hell, is the truth revealed to them that God Himself is their immutable center and ground of existence...and that there is nothing they can do to stop God from loving them eternally and personally from the inside of their deepest selves? Moreover, is the truth revealed to them that our desires for significance, love, and beauty are only fully released in God?
How does the epistemic distance for the people in "hell" work with these truths? Is it such that hellbound people can genuinely believe that these revealed truths are NOT true...such that they will actively seek another option?
If hell is to be "potentially infinite", it has to be the case that a created being in "hell" can forever DOUBT these realities that God continually tries to articulate within their very souls...such that they can forever CHOOSE against these realities.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 5/2/2010 7:00:12 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 5/2/2010 7:04 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
D: 2) Thinking about epistemic distance. Maybe this is the question: In hell, is the truth revealed to them that God Himself is their ground of existence...and that there is nothing they can do to stop God from loving them eternally from the inside? Moreover, is the truth revealed to them that our desires for significance, love, and beauty are only fully released in God?
T: I have no idea. Do we need to know? I didn't really understand that God was the GROUND of my existence when I responded to the gospel, nor did I understand that God would never stop loving me. Nor did I grasp that all my desires for significance are only realized in God. I STILL DON'T FULLY BELIEVE THAT. Every time we misrelate (and we still do), we do so BECAUSE we don't believe that. So if WE can still disbelieve it, still fail to grasp it, why in the world think that hell amounts to a friggin guarantee that nobody will fail to believe it?
I'm just thinking about "King-only-having" state "where all our defensive and offensive pieces have been taken" that you've been talking about. Part of this state, in my mind, would involve a revelation of the truths above.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. | | Back to Top | | |
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