Is Gandhi in hell? It’s a question that should puncture religious chauvinism and unsettle fundamentalists of every stripe. But there’s a question that should be asked in turn: Is Tony Soprano really in heaven?
A couple of rhetorical questions posed by Ross Douthat, who does us all the favor of reminding us how certain ideas that would otherwise be too ugly and despicable to be shared among polite society become perfectly respectable under the rubric of religion. (Via Steve Mirsky on the twitters.) In this case, the idea is: certain people are just bad, and the appropriate response is to subject them to torment for all time, without hope of reprieve. Now that’s the kind of morality I want my society to be based on.
The quote is extremely telling. Note that the first question is never actually answered — is Gandhi in hell? And there’s a good reason it’s never answered, because the answer would probably be “yes.” Hell is an imaginary place invented by people who think that eternal torture for people they disapprove of would be a good idea. And it’s the rare religion that says “we approve of all good people, whether or not they share our religious beliefs.” Much more commonly, Hell is brought up to scare people away from deviating from a particular religious path. Here’s the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost. Jesus solemnly proclaims that he “will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire”, and that he will pronounce the condemnation: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!”
Do you think that, at the end of his life, Gandhi decided to believe in Jesus and converted?
The second question is equally telling, because even Douthat can’t bring himself to use a non-fictional person as an example of someone who deserves Hell. He’s trying to make the point that “we are defined by the decisions we make,” and if there is no way to make bad decisions then making good decisions is devalued. Which is a fine point to make, and many atheists would be happy to agree. The difference is that we don’t think that people who make bad decisions deserve to be tortured for all of eternity.
This enthusiastic stumping for the reality of Hell betrays not only a shriveled sense of human decency and a repulsive interest in pain inflicted on others, but a deplorable lack of imagination. People have a hard time taking eternity seriously. I don’t know of any theological descriptions of Hell that involve some version of parole hearings at regular intervals. The usual assumption is that it’s an eternal sentence. For all the pious musings about the centrality of human choice, few of Hell’s advocates allow for some version of that choice to persist after death. Seventy years or so on Earth, with unclear instructions and bad advice; infinity years in Hell for making the wrong decisions.
Hell isn’t an essential ingredient in humanity’s freedom of agency; it’s a horrible of invention by despicable people who can’t rise above their own petty bloody-mindedness. The thought of condemning millions of people to an eternity of torment makes Ross Douthat feel good about himself and gives him a chance to indulge in some saucy contrarianism. I tend to take issue with religion on the grounds that it’s factually wrong, not morally reprehensible; but if you want evidence for the latter, here you go.
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actually….I think Dr. Carrolls point was that atheism is “better” than anglosaxon christianity.
That is very probably true.
But….humans aren’t there yet.
So the more recently evolved versions of religion that have higher memetic fitness than anglosaxon christianity; inclusion, universalism, resistance to proselytization, are going to be more successful in the short run.
If the existence of the supernatural becomes demonstrably and empirically false, humans will become mostly atheists.
I think religion will continue evolving as humanity approaches the Real, babystep by baby step.
Who can say what the end of the journey will be?
Shams,
“If the existence of the supernatural becomes demonstrably and empirically false”
It’s impossible to disprove supernatural explanations. They can be changed, modified and tinkered with ad nausea — and because they can and have been varied throughout history without ever becoming “demonstrably and empirically false” (e.g., replace Zeus with the Sun god, or whatever, and then claim it to be a “better” explanation), there is in the end no way to finally disprove them.
Good scientific theories, on the other hand, theories that are hard to vary without losing their explanatory power, can, have been and regularly are disproved in whole or in part (e.g., Einstein’s theories supplanting Newton’s).
That’s why scientific theories, and not supernatural ones, are better (and continually better) explanations for the way the world works.
“It’s impossible to disprove supernatural explanations. ”
but that is what secular humanism claims….all will be explained by science in time.
😉
Shams,
Your comment was totally unresponsive to the argument made in my post.
It doesn’t matter at all if you can identify someone you label as a secular humanist who says that supernatural explanations can be disproved, or as you put it, become “demonstrably and empirically false.” They simply can’t.
As I said, it’s impossible to disprove supernatural explanations because they can be changed, modified and tinkered with ad nausea — and since they actual have been varied throughout history without ever becoming “demonstrably and empirically false” (e.g., replace Zeus with the Sun god, or whatever, and then claim it to be a “better” explanation), there is in the end no way to finally disprove them.
I then contrasted that with good scientific explanations which are hard to vary without losing their explanatory power, and which can, have been and regularly are disproved in whole or in part (e.g., Einstein’s theories supplanting Newton’s).
And, this is why scientific explanations are better explanations, regardless of what some “secular humanist” somewhere may say.
Supernatural explanations may fade away as people become less and less enamored with their failure to provide any meaningful insights into a constantly and more quickly evolving world — but because of their nature, they are impossible to “disprove”.
lool, okfine Mike.
I see your point, that scientific explanation addresses a moving target.
But what happens when everything is explained?
When there are almost no more questions, and the last question is does quantum uncertainty exist or what was the origin of the multiverse (s) ?
What happens when we run out of questions?
Or are you a godelian, and you believe the question set is inexhaustible?
Shams,
“what happens when everything is explained?”
That will never happen. Each new and better explanation only gives rise to different and better questions.
I don’t know if I would agree that this view is “Godelian” — it really doesn’t address the question whether or not minds can be explained in purely mechanist terms — but I do think (given what we know so far) that the laws of nature put no upper bound on the capacity for humans to generate new and better explanations, and in that sense, yes “the question set is inexhaustible.”
Godelian incompleteness I meant.
So as questions get answered and generate more questions, religion evolves, and religious concepts like god and hell evolve.
But we will never reach the point where everything is explained….because its like bisecting a line segment, you are always only halfway there.
😉
I disagree.
In a finite visible universe, with a finite number of qubits in it, there is a limit to the number of distinct yes/no questions that can be asked about it.
Even if you consider answers, there is still a limit:
If every answer is a theory, i.e. an algorithm for generating a model of the world; and if we always want our theories to be simpler than the finite, visible universe they are modeling, (otherwise why bother with the theory?), then there is also a finite number of possible finite theories.
In a sense you have asked the wrong question, Shams, although it is a very, very, good question. Unfortunately, it does not apply in our kind of universe.
In our kind of universe, there is a different question that needs to be asked:
In an accelerating, expanding universe like ours, will we run out of energy, before we answer all the interesting questions, and what will happen then?
If we run out of energy before we answer all the interesting questions, then we will freeze to death, never knowing all the answers.
If we answer all the interesting questions before we run out of energy, then we will die knowing everything that can be known. But we may die of boredom before we die of lack of energy.
Faced with these two choices, I choose the fulfillment of the second option, rather than the frustration of the first.
I will choose death, when I am satisfied that I know all I wish to know.
Eternity is not my goal. Knowledge of Nature is.
I have no existence or purpose apart from Nature.
Where she leads, I will follow.
Where she stops, there I too will stop.
Of course if Nature kills me before I reach my goal of total knowledge of her,
then I die frustrated, yet content to return my essence to Nature.
For I was never really apart from her, and her Tao is necessarily mine.
lool
ima muslimah AND a tegmarkian.
i WILL know those other universes, even if only in theory and imagination.
im shaped by both genome and phenome to be a mystic.
consider embodied cognition theory in strong AI.
mebbe the silicon hordes will need just not forms, but faiths.
😉
Shams,
No problem. As long as you remember where reality ends and imagination begins.
The problem is when people start really believing their fantasies.
I doubt it seriously.
If a robot is not really mortal, why would it worry about 90% of religion?
Only a Darwinian being needs to die, because it is in the interest of genes to put all the effort into making more copies, rather than keeping individuals alive forever.
But robots can have interchangeable parts.
They can be indefinitely repaired.
But we may need to give our AI’s intense values, if they are to be friendly AIs.
If they need a religion, they can worship us as their creators.
That might help to keep them tame.
Also too, there is nothing stopping you from combining mysticism with naturalism.
There is are several venerable traditions of nature mysticism.
Many rationalists play with it.
It’s one way to reconcile the rational with the spiritual, without compromising intellectual rigor.
What might make sense is what I think 7th Day Adventists believe… something along the lines of, that those who continually do bad are simply destroyed and cease to exist, rather than burning in Hell forever.
That makes a lot more sense, it seems perhaps. A loving God would simply destroy or cease the exist of those will not stop making others miserable or are causing suffering to others.
When reading these generally anti-Christian screeds in on-line magazines, one cannot help but note the sharply aggressive tone of criticism when it comes to Christianity but quite accommodating language (for the most part) where Islam is concerned. Even when people are relatively anonymous on the Internet, it seems they consciously pull their punches when it comes to Islam for fear of being hunted down and having their throats slit or something. The hypocrisy here is absolutely stunning, especially when coupled with the self-serving notion that they, or anyone else, are somehow being courageous criticizing Christianity.
A superb example of this can be found in Hollywood where they routinely slam Christians and Christianity. Recent case in point: “The DaVinci Code.” Can anyone even begin to imagine these same “courageous,” truth-seeking producers in Hollywood making a movie called, say, “The Mohamed Code,” similarly critical of Islam? Are you freakin” kidding me? These people know damn well that such a movie, if ever made, would bring on worldwide riots, not to mention having them and their families hunted down and likely killed by fanatical Muslims, but I repeat myself. But Christians don’t do this, so they’re fair game. So much for courageous atheists and secular humanists! Keep up the good work, Sean!!!!!
Namaste shams,
You wrote “lol@Matthew
I’m a girl. Shams can be either a boys name or a girls name in arabic.
It means “the sun”.”
Righto, I usually assume that everyone here is a woman…every so often, I change things up and go “he” 😉
So you’re a sun of Allah? 🙂 If I may ask, what faith are you? The closest I can come up with (asides from my wife calling me a heathen) is Discordian, one who is creating their own religion (I can’t take the ‘easy way’ and go for something already created).
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