What you've said before is that no matter how obvious it appears that eternal torment isn't a reasonable consequence for finite sins to have, we aren't justified in thinking it's true (and therefore, e.g., that a good and powerful god would arrange for the world not to have billions of people suffering eternal torment for their finite sins) because we don't know everything about sin and justice and so on.
But apparently this hard-line skepticism (and it really is pretty hard-line; without the Christian traditions about hell, do you think anyone would take you seriously if you said: all things considered, it's probably best for the world if most of its people suffer eternal torment?) only applies when a person's conclusion is that hell is monstrous; the fact that so many people (including, by the way, some eminent evangelical Christians) draw that conclusion isn't, for you, evidence that hell really *is* monstrous, but the fact that many other people decide that hell isn't monstrous *is* reason to think that they've somehow "discovered" that yes, what's best for the world is that I and billions of others should be tortured for eternity.
Perhaps, instead of saying that the monstrousness of eternal torment is (1) obvious and (2) a straightforward deduction from just about every system of ethics I find at all credible, I should claim to have had an "inner witness" telling me that eternal torment is monstrous. But I rather doubt that it would help :-).
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-05-30 01:56 pm (UTC)But apparently this hard-line skepticism (and it really is pretty hard-line; without the Christian traditions about hell, do you think anyone would take you seriously if you said: all things considered, it's probably best for the world if most of its people suffer eternal torment?) only applies when a person's conclusion is that hell is monstrous; the fact that so many people (including, by the way, some eminent evangelical Christians) draw that conclusion isn't, for you, evidence that hell really *is* monstrous, but the fact that many other people decide that hell isn't monstrous *is* reason to think that they've somehow "discovered" that yes, what's best for the world is that I and billions of others should be tortured for eternity.
Perhaps, instead of saying that the monstrousness of eternal torment is (1) obvious and (2) a straightforward deduction from just about every system of ethics I find at all credible, I should claim to have had an "inner witness" telling me that eternal torment is monstrous. But I rather doubt that it would help :-).