Lucifer vs. Social Revolutionary Jesus

[afleitch]

Lucifer. Everlasting punishment is inhuman punisment and disproportionate to any crime. Allegorically Lucifer made us know what is to be human and to recognice judicial tyranny.

[afleitch]

Why are so many of you comfortable with the concept of condemning a soul to an eternity of suffering because the decisions it makes in a fleeting physical existence, do not meet the ideals of a god that has endless and infinite consciousness? How callous.

No 'crime' or 'sin' or any other masochism is worthy of the infinite punishment of an infinite consciousness if that is what our soul is. None. Given that 8 seconds or 80 years or 8 million years as fractions of infinity are effectively of the same value (i.e, they are nothing), it is an eternal condemnation of a consciousness that has had no time in which to think, develop or grow with respect to itself, including reaching the 'right conclusions' as to what is good and what is just. God has has an eternity. It’s a punishment of the un-godlike for not possessing the capabilities of a god.

[afleitch]

Here are some of my thoughts on the issue: Human existence is a dichotomy between flesh (material existence) and spirit (intellectual existence). Those who invest the entirety of their existence into the flesh will pass away when the flesh passes away, while those who transcend the flesh and live in the spirit will continue to live on in the spirit when the flesh dies, except that they will no longer by constrained by the limits of this universe. I don't think that that's irrational or unjust.

I won't get into your position, save the fact that I've discussed my argument on here many times for the metaphysical always being ground in the physical, but earlier you said;

'In my ideal theology, the punishment for those who live in the flesh is to also perish with the flesh. However, if one accepts the indestructibility of the soul, then the abode of Satan and the other fallen angels is a more fitting eternal dwelling place for the unrighteous than Heaven is.'

The problem with separating good from bad, heaven and hell, is that you are making the assumption that any system of justice is based on a series of absolutes. Which is not a human/e method of justice. The absolutes of heaven and hell may place the righteous apart from the unrighteous, but it places the unrighteous with each other; it places the person who never spared a thought for the poor and the needy with the person who not only did the same but say, obliterated thousands of people through genocide. No human system of justice would ever do that. It would not be justice at all. This is why Christianity has had to mitigate these moral absolutes, as in the passage you initially quoted, since the beginning (placing the whole dichotomy of faith v deeds or both with regards to salvation aside) because it is uncomfortable and also unsellable.

I'm going to lift something I said in a post about this last year;

An 'afterlife', places an enormous degree of importance on your actions (or perhaps, irrespective of your actions) in one life, whether you die in an incubator a few days old or just after your 100th birthday. As I’ve outlined before, as a fraction of infinite time it is so miniscule as to be of both no value and of equal value to the largest expanse of time you can envision (which still falls short of infinity). The living have technically no time at all. And yet their destiny is judged on that.

Even if you embrace a universalist position, allowing the consciousness an infinity of time in which to reflect and make peace therefore ensuring no one is placed in ‘hell’, given that no one knows what the standards of the arbiter (or god) are, it could well be that not one person who has ever lived has actually met those aims. Therefore there is no heaven, nor a hell, nor any place of finite rest or if there is, not a single person is there. As eternity has no end, then it may well be the case that we are spiritually chasing a destination that can never be reached.

The afterlife is is not a balanced concept as it is preoccupied with the transition of the soul or consciousness from the living to the not living. It pays little attention to the consciousness prior to it being embodied into a living being. From the not living to the living if you will. Given that the circumstances of your birth are beyond your control, the conditions under which you are born have a very significant impact on your life and the choices you make and can make, it is disjointed to place weight on the decisions that you make in life informing the circumstances after your death, but not place weight on ‘decisions’ affecting the circumstances of your life coming into being.

If I had to subscribe to any form of metaphysics with respect to a persons 'essence', then it would be logical, when dealing with the concept of a soul and knowing of birth and death and projecting onto the life in between the concept of a 'soul' inhabiting the body in life, to deduce that souls inhabiting bodies is something that souls seem to do.Therefore it seems logical (not that metaphysics can ever be logical) that souls need bodies and perhaps by extension that bodies need souls. Therefore if I was spiritually inclined then reincarnation, or if I was a little more masochistic, metempsychosis would seem to be more plausible.

[afleitch]

But the person who neglects the poor and the person who commits genocide are ultimately guilty of the same crime: living according to the flesh.

If you believe that they are in anyway comparable, then I question your ethical integrity.

However, if one moves the originator of our universe outside of it, then one can sidestep that conundrum - the originator doesn't exist within our universe, and so is not bound by the chain of cause and effect that everything within our universe is.

At least you are admitting that it 'sidesteps' the conundrum. You are essentially allowing anything anyone can envision to be placed outside of any rules so that you can continue to place value on it. The imagination of an idea is an act grounded in the physical. God is nothing more than 'idea.' Metaphysics must be rooted in physics. Abstract philosophical comments don’t necessarily have an objective reality to them but the human minds that construct and de-constuct them do. Our perception of the world is rooted in the physical. Even abstract concepts like ‘love’ are rooted in objects; physical things to show love to. Concepts such as ‘justice’ are bound to physical concepts like action, punishment and so on. Inferring a ‘mind’ of god is rooted in our understanding of sentient thought which is bounded to the physical.

All metaphysical claims are ultimately physical and all physical things have an effect on reality. That which has an effect on reality can be investigated in reality. Things that do not have an effect on reality, or things for which no sufficient investigative evidence has been provided to support having any effect on reality, cannot be said to exist in a meaningful way. All philosophical and religious claims are claims not just about reality, but about the human perception of that reality. They are subject to the same scrutiny as physical claims.

Placing the concept 'in a different room' because it's inconvenient doesn't undo that.

Of course, that gives us a picture of a god that seems distant and unknowable, but one thing at least must be true: that god must have the capacity to create (a capacity which I associate with the human capacity to think). Now the existence of the soul does not necessarily follow from all of this, but if one accepts that the human mind is a kind of reflection of God's mind, then it is not unreasonable to believe that the human mind (some kernel of it) will return into some eternal non-physical realm the moment that it's released from physical bondage.

To take this point a little further (and it's interesting that you link what we can do with what god can do; I happen think we make the inference, not god) If our understanding, our volition, is in part guided by our physical form through its experiences and perception, by removing what is physical through death but retaining the consciousness or the 'soul', could that perhaps not inhibit our ‘understanding’ of the values of what is good and what bad, what is just and what is unjust?

If understanding, through some post-physical death 'reckoning' is actually furthered by being removed from our physical form (Christian theology suggests we will face the 'truth' when we die) then why be born at all? Wouldn’t having physical life be a hindrance if not a punishment, especially if you were being judged under it's influence? Why place it in physical bondage?

Why indeed judge it on the basis of what it does when in physical bondage? I talked about the implications of this before:

Why worry about a state of death which we will have no awareness of?  Why fear moving into a state of non-existence when non-existence is from when we came. We show no concern (some eastern philosophies aside) for the long, unfathomable time that we did not exist prior to being born. We show little concern for the fact that we have no conscious memory of our first few years despite being very much alive. We did not know or feel that non-existence. It did not satisfy us or trouble us. Why be concerned that when we return to it, that suddenly we will be endowed with the very attributes of consciousness; experience, fear, apprehension that are in fact annihilated upon death? ‘While we exist death is not present and when death is present we no longer exist.’

If in the period before our birth we were. And in the period of life we are but have no ability nor no right to know anything about the period in which we were (because we do not and cannot recall it), then what we do when we are alive does not matter to what we were. Nor can what we do in life lead on from what what we did when we were because we have been left with no frame of reference. So when we are dead  then what we ‘do’ when we are dead, or perhaps what is done to us, can not matter to whom we were when we are alive. Nor can what happens to us, lead on from on from what we did when we were alive. Therefore our life cannot have bearing on the nature of our state of death.

So it makes little sense to suggest that whatever happens to us upon death can ever be linked to what we did when we were alive for the same reason what we do when we are alive can never be linked to what we did when we are dead, with ‘death’ being both the foreward and afterward to our lives.

However if it really must matter; if what we do when alive and when physical must matter for some great metaphysical reason and must therefore affect our status when dead meaning that we constantly have to think about what we are doing when we are alive, then it must do so for both states of death. For both states of non-existence. If only life can affect death and death exists for us before life then life must also precede that death.

If both states of death are something one should be concerned about and life has any bearing on it, then the Christian god is a charlatan who will condition the living mind to only worry about one state of death, accept that death as finite therefore rejecting life as cyclical. He is therefore nothing more than a harvester of souls to which he has no entitlement.

Don't trust a god who tries to claim your soul for his own

[afleitch]

I don't believe in hell.  I believe God did condemn us to death but then gave laws to live by to be Godly.  He tried all kinds of things to make it work...commandments, code of law, kings...nothing worked.  God relented and sent Christ to take care of it once and for ALL.  God saved us with the gift of grace.  It washed away every sin.  I believe every human is judged for their actions but their place is still in heaven whether we deserve it or not by our standards.

So god tried hard to save the world by giving commandments, to the Israelites, a code of law, again to the Israelites, kings…again to the Israelites and ‘nothing worked’ so he sent himself…again to the Israelites? He could have tried another tribe. Perhaps they would be more receptive. I know you are perhaps not conditioned to thinking other than this, but perhaps that’s a clue that you might just be worshiping a tribal ‘totem’ god, not a universal god.

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I didn’t ask that; I was talking about the opposite. I asked why if ‘good’ is separated from ‘bad’ upon death, why bad things should be placed with other bad things or obliterated with other bad things; why is not caring for the poor (as outlined by Jesus in the original passage quoted) be in anyway comparable to genocide, even if they are both ‘bad things?’ Human systems of justice make that distinction. Christianity cannot agree on what system of justice god uses and how he applies it, if indeed he uses any. Heaven might be one way, or another, and be universal or exclusive and hell might be literal or allegorical or not real or allegorical. God might allow the faithless in, or only those who have faith, or only the elect. Deeds and works might matter, or they might not matter or they matter exclusively or they matter only if you have faith. And so on. As such concepts such as heaven, hell, being saved, being righteous etc don’t mean anything because people play fast and loose with them.

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Sin by it’s definition is an action against god; a sin need have no grounding in whether that action is right or wrong. If things are ‘good’ because god says that they are good, or because they line up with his will, then morals are arbitrary and subjective. Because good is what god says it is, then it robs ‘good’ from its definition. ‘Good’ is simply what something powerful mandates. If god mandates it, then ‘good’ means nothing. Saying ‘god is good’ is simply saying he is god. It says nothing meaningful about his actions because god would be ‘good’ no matter what he does. Not only does it rob good of its goodness, it also robs god of its glory. Why should there be praise for god if he would be equally praised even if he did the complete opposite? If what is arbitrary replaces what is just or reasonable, then all justice is, if anything, is what is pleasing to god.

So if things are good for another reason, if goodness needs to have value, then it cannot come from god.  Saying that morality is actually grounded in god’s nature and expressed in his commands and we run off and ‘betray that’ by sinning doesn’t avoid this problem. Whatever it was god’s nature to prefer would still be right by definition and still diminish the significance of moral terms. So saying god is good would just be saying that god accords to his own nature which isn’t really an accomplishment.

So what the Christian god is asking us to do, is accord to his nature because what is ‘against’ him, regardless of its ethical value (if anything) is ‘sin’. He is asking the mortal human over which he has domain to accord to the nature of a god and punishing those who fall short. That’s like a human chastising a dog for doing something that displeases the human, even though a dog can never accord to the nature of a human. He’s effectively saying ‘I’ve had eternity and I made the rules, you’ve had 80 years in a human body and you haven’t accorded to what I wanted, you’re going to punished or obliterated for eternity.’ That is capricious.

[afleitch]

Andrew, I'll agree that your conception of what the Christian God is is a horrendous god.  However, while quite a few who call themselves Christian have a view not unlike what you present, it is not the view I have.

I know it’s not and you’ve been pretty good at outlining where you stand. Even though I don’t believe in the Christian god, I’ve taken some time over the years outlining how you can ‘square the circle’ (such as adoptionism for example) and even though I don’t believe in an afterlife, I’ve explained plausible metaphysical ‘theories’ that take into account a non-linear and open ended view of the phases of life and death. I’m not just pissing into a tent. I cannot completely dismiss the idea of a ‘god-like’ anything but at the same time I am still confounded by people who are happy to buy into a pre-imposed, whether familial or cultural ‘conclusion’ and then graft on to it or off from it, tenets that suit them personally. What is said and what isn’t said about salvation and the afterlife and everything in between is so up in the air it is virtually meaningless.

If I can be uncharacteristically impudent for a moment, the Christian concepts of death and the afterlife and right and wrong are so incredibly western, mundane and ‘Hallmark’ card’ boring but each time it’s ever raised anywhere in public discourse anyone who wants to talk outside of that structure has to wade through the same thing time and time again.

For example, why do people conflate a ‘creator’ with an ‘owner?’ Should you think that a creator of everything has by default ownership, or would need to have ownership over what it makes? Why would the concept of ownership even exist if the creator has no competitor for that resource? Why is there talk of the ‘soul’ as if it’s something for another entity to even have a say over? This isn’t libertarian metabullsh-t (which as an ideology I tend to balk at anyway), but a logical extension of the understanding that owning another human being is now understood to be morally reprehensible. What right would a creator have to judge it’s creation when what it makes accords to criteria that it laid down when it made them or allowed them to be formed? At what point in life is any person completely endowed with the faculties to make morally correct or incorrect choices? Whom is the standard on which you can measure whether other people meet or fail to meet culpability? What if a person never reaches that level?

These are things that interest me. It’s just unfortunate that they are always posed or only elicit a response within these sorts of threads.

[afleitch]

afleitch is one of those people who would like Hell better. There's a lot of those.

What does that even mean?

[afleitch]

afleitch is one of those people who would like Hell better. There's a lot of those.

What does that even mean?

Knowing you, you're always going on about how terrible Christianity and its God is, and Heaven is spending eternity with Him. Since Hell is, in this context, eternity without Him, it would be preferable to you.

You don't know me.

[afleitch]

afleitch is one of those people who would like Hell better. There's a lot of those.

What does that even mean?

Knowing you, you're always going on about how terrible Christianity and its God is, and Heaven is spending eternity with Him. Since Hell is, in this context, eternity without Him, it would be preferable to you.

You don't know me.

But we know what your beliefs are.  Quite clearly.  But really I think you feel wronged by God and you're working through the process of grief in reverse since this is an expulsion rather than a loss...and right now you're working through anger while wading into denial.

Once complete you will have officially rejected God. 

So in my outline of beliefs above, you would be one of the few who will die the second death after judgment and cease to exist.

Wronged by god? Grief? No. I just stopped believing in god five years ago and I only believed in god because I was essentially taught to. Enough of this psychobabble.

[afleitch]

No. Your attempt at lightheartedly trolling me has made me smile though.

[afleitch]

You said that I feel wronged by god, that I’m grieving, that I’m angry, in denial that I’ll ‘cease to exist’ for it, that I’m a ‘giant angry mountain troll’, flog god with an angry stick, that I’m smug and I’m in ‘dat anger phase’. I don’t think I’m the one who’s acting all pissed off Just because I’m engaging with a belief system you present (and I don’t think I’ve ever had the chance to talk about these things with you in particular, which is why I found it interesting) and offering a counter to or questions to it, doesn’t mean I’m doing anything other than talking about it. If you want to take it personally, then I can’t stop you.

FWIW, off forum I’ve worked with LGBT Christian youths who have had to leave their church (and sometimes their families) but don’t want to leave their faith. I don’t do anything other than support their belief system and give them contacts with welcoming and affirming churches. Discussions over life, death and what happens after, especially if they’ve been told they are hellbound, tends to give them a new perspective on their faith. This is what I meant when I say to people; you don’t know me.

[afleitch]

Andrew, I agree with snowguy that you do have an anger, but it's not with God as he thinks, but with the beliefs that some people have with God.  I understand and sympathize with that anger, but when you have expressed that anger here, you often do so in a way that can come across as an anger with God rather than those people.

Given that I think that man creates god in whatever image he pleases then I suppose you are half right, but I don't believe there is a god, so it is impossible to be angry at nothing more than a concept.