Gehenna and Sheol
What I’ll bother with instead is a little musing about the subject of hell and the afterlife and heaven, and how bizarre it all is.
Hell, for instance. Imagine a child of 4 eats a cookie after her mother told her not to, and her parents sentence her to be constantly tortured for the rest of her life as punishment. That idea looks quite gentle and benign compared to the idea of hell that is in some sense orthodox (though in what sense is not altogether clear to me, but of that later). We live a few decades, and then after that, if we are ‘sinners,’ we are tortured forever. It’s sadistic enough, but along with that, it doesn’t even make sense. What’s the point? And besides what’s the point, what’s the reason? What’s the reason for the grotesque lack of proportion?
What’s god supposed to be accomplishing by this? Not teaching, not reformation, not improvement – because it’s eternal. So, what then? Nothing makes sense except sheer unadulterated revenge, but revenge that goes beyond the wildest fantasies of human sadism. And it’s an all-powerful being who is doing this, so it’s not as if it’s a fair fight.
So the truth is that people who believe in hell believe in a god that is truly bottomlessly disgusting and loathsome. A god that inflicts utterly futile pointless useless suffering on sentient thinking animals forever and ever and ever. I don’t see how they can stand it. I really don’t. I don’t see why they don’t just curdle with horror.
And then heaven, and the afterlife…They make a nonsense of for instance the fuss about Terry Schiavo. What sense did that ever make? She wasn’t having much of a life here – and when she died she would go to heaven and have a much better life – so why were the fundamentalists so outraged at the prospect of releasing her from her useless body?
And if the objection to abortion is that the embryo has an immortal soul from the moment of conception – then what’s the problem? It already has its soul, so it can just go to heaven and be happy there. The good place is not earth, it’s heaven, so why is it supposed to be such a disaster if a fetus goes to heaven instead of here?
Also, what does I Corinthians 5 mean? What does it mean to deliver someone to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved? If someone is delivered to Satan, the spirit isn’t saved, is it? Was there some interim arrangement in Paul’s day by which people went to Satan for an hour or two to have their flesh shredded so that after that their souls would be in tip-top shape? Was that later turned into Purgatory? Or what?
This stuff isn’t as well thought-out as it might be.
John Stuart Mill had the straight of it; the orthodox Christian concept of God is that of a being which is the ne plus ultra of wickedness.
And if the objection to abortion is that the embryo has an immortal soul from the moment of conception – then what’s the problem? It already has its soul, so it can just go to heaven and be happy there.
In fact, you’re doing it a favor–sparing it a life of sin and pain. In the womb it is perfectly innocent, more innocent than it will ever be after birth.
I shouldn’t waste my oxygen on this kind of discussion, but when you have a moment between excoriating your interpretation of what god is, I plead a point in mitigation. He provided an option open to everyone to get out of hell free. This is what christians refer to as ‘salvation’. In the case of non-christians such as Jews and remaining gentiles, there are options like ‘abstaining from sin’ which prove difficult to impossible in practice, which results in wierd human responses like ‘repentance’ and ‘forgiveness’.
All this presumes God’s existence of course. If you don’t believe in that there is no problem except the endless torture of millions of the living with stupid or horrific ideas.
And then it presumes that the afterlife is real. IMO the Sadducees may have been onto something in this respect.
And yes, there are all the other presumptions pointed out in the past by OB: the ones about what god is like, and the remarkable point-by-point correlation between whats in the bible and what we presume to know of him, as opposed to all other possible character traits he might have had.
So please, carry on.
Well, one trait He apparently has is that he always comes in handy when a zealot wants to stress his point.
Isn’t that something He might want to investigate a little further – he can maybe go for the secret-God model, it gets you to His salvation if you will succeed in bloody well leaving all of your fellow human beings completely & utterly alone on the Him-front.
(you are allowed to mutter indulgingly – “Ah, those false Gods!” whenever there are such people that have the indecency to blabber on about their faith.
I plead a point in mitigation. He provided an option open to everyone to get out of hell free. This is what christians refer to as ‘salvation’
I agree that the notion of hell is problematic. In fairness, I believe many if not most theologians are of the same opinion.
That said, according to Catholic doctrine, salvation has to do with the notion of Christ’s atonement for original sin and is offered only to the living.
If your trangressions land you in Hell, you’re stuck there for eternity.
I expect you know the shape and size of Dante’s Inferno’s?
I think the explicit distinction between “true” hell (Gehenna= Hinnom’s son’s valley) and Sheol (more or less equivalent to the Greek Hades) is interesting on many levels.
I suspect that the bulk of christianity haven’t contemplated (or perhaps just disregards (cognitive dissonance ?)the ramifications of the theology following the current selcetion of scripture. However, when looking at popular(sic) expressions of belief: obituaries, epitaphs, religious songs and poems, etc, the belief in a direct “ascension” to heaven (and the corresponding “descent” to hell) after death is widespread (In fact despite the very clear reference to what the scripture say -at least in the Scandinavian funeral sermonies I am aware of).
I think you allredy have discussed the (the long overdue nullification -it should should never have been “invented”) notion of Limbo, one can of course also ask the similar questions about a (allegedly good) god who apparently needs to “store the souls” in a rather ghastly Sheol/Hades until the “final sulution”?
I concede that the ” New Earth” obviously isn’t completely finished yet,(and I suppose that the same applies for the corresponding new heaven) but why this lousy soul-storing facility until the day of doom(TM)?
Another even more interesting (and potentially problematic) aspect of this distinction is the conventional (christian) reference to the “old pact and “new pact”, where the former refers to the normativity of a rather blood-dripping angry god of OT, contrasted to the allegedly more benign and meek “salvation gospel” of NT exemplified by Jesus.
However, as “the Celtic Chimp” pointed out over at Stephan Law’s: The “true hell” with it’s gnashing teeths and agony in the oven is introduced by Jesus. Consider this: The Janus-face of the mild and meek, of the alleged orator of the Sermon of the Mountain, is a person prescibing ETERNAL torture.
The necessary flip side of salvation is damnation. While I can to some extent accept the hell as descibed by Jesus a “reasonable solution” for the entity called the devil, I do however find it revoltingly inapropriate for fellow human beings.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Well, yes, they do, curdle with horror, especially if they are children.
And as to the ‘get out of hell free’ card: it’s not so easy. You have to believe all the strange stuff, including that you go straight to hell if you don’t believe it!
Many Christian theologians feign not believing in hell, but they must fill in the blanks somewhere. One even writes a paper on “The Beauty of Hell,” (Frank Burch Brown, “The Beauty of Hell: Anselm on God’s Eternal Design,” The Journal of Religion, 73, 3 (1993), 329-356) in which he argues that Anselm’s conception of God’s eternal design is that death should not have dominion forever, so that whatever hell is, it lasts only for a finite time. However, this must, and doesn’t, explain Jesus’ words in Mark 9.47-8, where he speaks of “hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.”
When talking about the Christian hell, we always have to bear in mind that it is so serious that God, in fact, had in a manner to die, in order to set things right. Which makes Christmas, by the way, a festival celebrating the fact that all deserve to suffer eternal, unbounded pain, but that there are a few ‘get out of hell free’ cards around, if you know what to look for.
The doctrine itself is horrible, the scheme diabolical, but there is no other reason for the incarnation.
Hell, in the Muslim conception of things, from what I can tell, is pure vengeance, nothing more. Correct me, someone, if I am wrong.
Cassanders, I fear you don’t pass this theologians’ test. You may be in time, He is not, nor are those who are saved by the meek version of Him. So, all of this talk of yours of storing is – not just blasphemous – but Aquinistacally, Augustinially … irrational.
Ophelia, all good points and it should be basic stuff for schools – these are questions that ‘saved’ me from the not quite eternal but still very long type of damnation that is organized faith – BUT it really isn’t fair: the catholic infants that is baptized has no issue, and the ban on abortion is not because it has a soul but because God has this unbreakable monopoly on taking life (a monopoly he uses swiftly authorizing a killing of heathens in his name). This type of charge is of no use against an advanced theologian but it’s true that the average believers would be running for all exits at once when they hear a theologian explain these things so the thing should be basic stuff in schools (theologians shouldn’t complain: we’re giving them a soap box and all!).
Fat WW, the size I know not but I guess it’s safe to assume the shape is very – very – very much Feng Shui.
@JoB
I have of course no problems with the notion that living beeings are “in time”. I share a commom property with all other organisms, namely:
An open thermodynamic system maintaining its reversed enthropy at the cost of the surroundings. Eventually my own ability to maintain the reversed entrophy will deteriorate due to inner constraints in ability (centriole degradation disabeling cell multiplication/repair) and/or lack of outer resources.
I think you’ll need to do better than invoking a standard theological legerdemain (just asserting that god is “not in time”) to convince me.
Could you please try to indicate why this godly attribute should have any significance for the moral subjects hypothetically subjected to jhwe’s whims?
(The latter sentense is btw a very condensed version of the essence of Job’s book and the revelation of John)
With such a relevant nick, you really should try to get a hand at the norwegian philosopher Zappfe’s take on Job’s book. I’ll see what I can dig up:-)
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Cassanders, you might mistake me for a believer, quod non. That being said: I believe what moral subjects find is of the most infinite insignificance for a believer in God (as Job found out, and could have avoided when he immediately went for the irrational leap, that was wanted from him as he should have been knowing in the first place).
I have read Kierkegaard and enjoyed it so my advise to Scandinavian religious philosophy is: quit while you’re ahead!
PS: by the way, God does not store – if He exists (which he doesn’t), He exists quite regardless of that time needed to be said to be able to store something.
JoB
hmmm,
to me a “moral subject” means a entity (Usually a person, albeit some animals have a form of “protomorality”) able to experience and reason on normative issues.
Could you elaborate a bit on why you appears to suggest that a “believer in God” somehow are “outside” the set of moral subjects? Isn’t the entire biblical eschatology the conclusion of god’s normativity?
And BTW
Zappfe’s pont is that Job is the rational character, and jhwh is the irrational(besides unfair and vain) “person” in the story of Job.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Cassanders,
I have not said (let’s be precise even if my style doesn’t invite it) that ‘a believer in God is outside of this set of moral subjects’. I said that for a true believer it is irrelevant what it is that moral subjects hold. They even have a reason for this: it’s irrelevant to God what moral subjects hold. That’s the point of Job, and if Zappfe’s point is as you say it is, it is true but in a profoundly unimpressive way.
So goes (not my reasoning): rational is a human construct, God isn’t: therefore God is neither rational nor irrational, claiming He is or should be is: extreme blasphemy. Sure (still not my reasoning but so goes): God was so good to give a guideline in the Holy Scripture but His goodness limits itself to reserving the right to judge as He pleases whenever a subject, like Job, is so vain to think: hmmm, that’s mighty unfair.
Many religions have gone through phases in which rationality and God could co-exist but this is the truely irrational approach (Kierkegaard’s reasoning now): there can only be one obedience – to be obedient to two things at the same time is not to be obedient unless they are 1 and the same. And a God reduced to this pure rationality of ours is not God – & that’s why Spinoza was the real heretic he was – because it is God without love (& from there you can take the wormhole to any Eastern religion or woolly-speak of your own choosing).
“I agree that the notion of hell is problematic. In fairness, I believe many if not most theologians are of the same opinion.”
Yes but (as you go on to say or at least imply) theology is one thing and religious doctrine is another. “Church teachings” (as they are called) don’t necessarily depend on theology – or coherence, or probability, or evidence, or reasons, or justice, or…
JoB
——————–Beginquote
…
So goes (not my reasoning): rational is a human construct, God isn’t: therefore God is neither rational nor irrational, claiming He is or should be is: extreme blasphemy.
…
——————————Endquote
hmmmm
Whoever reasoning here: if god is outside or beyond or whatever rationality, time etc,
Why the certainty that the previous claims or thoughts about god constitute blasphemy?
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
“Church teachings” (as they are called) don’t necessarily depend on theology”
If you want to understand how the Church operates with regard to doctrine, let me recommend “Papal Sin” by Gary Wills, “Roman Catholicism and Modern Science: A History” or “The Church That Can And Cannot Change: The Development Of Catholic Moral Teaching”.
The Church’s goal is to maintain its aura of infallibility with rank and file believers, while keeping the theological sophisticates from leaving the reservation. Hence for a problematic issue, like the nature of Hell or Original Sin, the Church maintains what I’d call two sets of books. Hard-core doctrine for the “theological sophisticates” and a mix of catachetical indictrination, unofficial tradition and legend (bordering on superstition), which, taken together constiture a kind of folk religion for the rank and file.
This folk religion includes the (now abjured) belief in Limbo and a sort of informal Biblical literalism that posits the notion of Adam, Eve, the Tree of Knowlege and the Fall and the like as real, historical events.
Official Church Doctrine may contend that these stories are allegorical or metaphorical, but this is pretty much soft-pedalled. In fact The Church is happy to look the other way as long as the faithful’s “Folk Religion” supports the Church’s magisterial franchise.
Thus, when a particular belief or pronouncement becomes increasingly difficult to defend, the Church retreats in one of the following ways:
a) It says the issue in question was never official anyhow, hence altering or discarding it does not compromise the Church’s “magisterial authority”. Limbo is a case in point.
b) The issue remains on the books (so to speak) but no one pays any attention to it. e.g., Contraception and divorce.
Most Catholics divorce remarry and continue to receive the sacraments without bothering to receive an annulment. High-profile cases, like that of Robert Kennedy Jr. have shown the annulment process itself to be corrupt.
c) It may even be quietly dropped or revised when no one is looking. Re: The Church’s acceptance of Copernicanism, the removal of Galileo’s works from the Index or John Paul II’s encyclical declaring slavery to be an intrinsic evil after the Church had tolerated the institution for over 1900 years.
Of course, if a clerical theologian strays off the reservation anyway, the Church can retaliate by silencing him or her in a number of ways, including, ultimately, excommunication — burning at the stake for the edification of the public no longer being an option.
Quite so. Which is, I think, one reason the ‘new’ atheists are the ‘new’ atheists – we consider it useful to point out those two sets of books.
Well said, Antonio Manetti, the invallibility lark really keeps everybody on their toes. The pope and his gang do make such fools of their flock.
The Roman Catholic Church in the long distant past tried to sell indulgences to raise money to rebuild St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
The more indulgenses you see, that one said, the less chance you had of going to hell.
“Roman Catholic theology stated that faith alone, whether fiduciary or dogmatic, cannot justify man; and that only such faith as is active in charity and good works (fides caritate formata) can justify man. These good works could be obtained by donating money to the church.” Wiki.
Indeed, well said, Antonio Manetti. I would like to add, however, that, while at the bureaucratic level of the Vatican the keeping of two sets of books may be as cynical as you portray it to be, at other levels, at the level at which people like Hans Kung and Karl Rahner do theology, there is, I believe, a genuine belief that the metaphorical/allegorical/mythical interpretations of Christian doctrine in other terms, to take only one example, in terms of the existentialism of Heidegger, is a serious and a genuinely credible intellectual pursuit.
I recall a series of books by the Roman Catholic HJ Richards, “The First Easter: What Really Happened?”, “The First Christmas: What Really Happened,” and “Death and After: What Will Really Happen?” (published in little Fontana paperbacks), which tried to explain some of this theology in simple words for lay people. John Spong, for example, has done this for a lot of Anglicans, and people like Lloyd Geering in New Zealand or Don Cupitt in England have done or are doing the same kind of thing (though Cupitt has made it plain that traditional theology is simply bankrupt and is no longer believeable). So there was some crossover, and some attempts to make ordinary religious belief a contemporarily credible project. I was involved in the project myself, and thought for a time that it was indeed a live option. I believe the project failed, but the attempt was made.
So, there are two sets of books, but an attempt has been made (and is still being made by some people) to show correlations between the outstanding balances. What the new atheists probably need to do is to show that this project cannot succeed. But I think what is really new about the new atheism is that we are now willing to say that this project has failed, that religious liberalism has not been able to deliver the goods, and is therefore a continuing danger to reasonable thinking. There are two sets of books, and we have to learn to live with the only set that makes any kind of real sense of the world.
Some of us can only afford a Little Gem dictionary and the internet you know… which of these is more hardcore is hard to say…
Some of us can only afford a Little Gem dictionary and the internet you know… which of these is more hardcore is hard to say…
oops..
I suppose there are people around who imagine that even a life in Hell is better than no life at all. John Wilkins has posted a copy of Philip Larkin’s “Aubade” over at http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/.
From my atheistic point of view I have no choice but to agree with what Larkin has said, and learn to live with it. But to call it “Aubade”! Is that what one calls PoMo whimsy?
Eliott
Don’t get the final remark, unless it’s about a jealous course facilitator returning at dawn, heh heh… this is abidingly interesting though, if a little simple for some…
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/high-windows/
[T]he invallibility lark really keeps everybody on their toes. The pope and his gang do make such fools of their flock.
Like any belief system, many of the adherents are simply willing to consign their critical faculties to the care of some higher authority. After all, it’s so easy to trade autonomy for obedience. Most people weren’t using it anyway.
The same often happens with conscience. Folks here are doubtless familiar with the infamous Milgram experiments, where most participants were quite willing to administer what they thought were lethal electric shocks, when directed to do so by someone posing as an authority figure.
Oh yes – I’ve always been fascinated by the Milgram experiment.
Goldenbridge was something of a Milgram experiment, though it was more of a Stanford Prison experiment. I sent the links to Marie-Therese’s articles on Goldenbridge to Philip Zimbardo; I figured he would find them interesting.
Nick, an aubade is normally a musical composition, often as a compliment to someone. It is the dawn equivalent of the serenade. While the subject of an aubade may well be lovers seperating at dawn, the mood is no more than mock-melancholic.
The nearest an aubade is going to get to death is John Donne’s
“When I died last, (And dear, I die as often as from thee I go . . .)”
This, from an era when orgasm was known as “The Little Death”, coming being equivocated with going.
In short, an aubade is about morning, not mourning.
The emotional tenor of Larkin’s Aubade is a certain pusillanimous relief that the poet has survived another night, which in no wise palliates the wretchedness of knowing that death is yet to come, and death is inevitable. I have never encountered a poem which expressed that more vividly. But how “vivid” can the subject of death be? Do I mean “Livid”?
Re: Aubade:
Someone I knew with ALS (a Catholic priest) once said: “If there’s no life after death, I’m really going to be pissed”.
Cassanders (if you’re still out here),
“(..) if god is outside or beyond or whatever rationality, time etc,
Why the certainty that the previous claims or thoughts about god constitute blasphemy?”
Let me summarize religious reasoning as I see it: if God exists – then anything goes if He wills it. It’s impossible to tell when God wills something so you’ll just have to fly by: whomever speaks on His behalf, at your own risk. Anything, anything fundamentally at odds with the reasoning above is blasphemy.
All of the rest is Antonio’s 2nd book & your request for human certainty is one of the weaknesses expanded on by all of those very many theologians.
Anyway, & come to think of it, I do not think afterlife is crucial to religion. It is rather more crucial to morality – see Kant’s treatment of it – because it is perfectly clear that doing the right thing does not guarantee getting reward for it i.e. something is needed to make up for the deficit if you agree that in principle some individual good needs to be there rewarding an individual’s good actions (even on average).
I therefore would venture to guess that hell and all this is quite recent as an addition to religions. As, at the start of all of it, there was no need for the workings of the conscience and all this fear of hell – allegiance to the faiths of the group was life/death meaning the modern moral problem doesn’t arise.
It seems to me that the notion of hell, see Dante, is rather more crucial to an individualistic modern era than to what is discussed here (no doubt that modern religion has modified and exploited the novel interest in hell in reprehensible ways but that does not mean that hell’s going to freeze over just because there is less organized religion around).
[A]t the level at which people like Hans Kung and Karl Rahner do theology, there is, I believe, a genuine belief that the metaphorical/allegorical/mythical interpretations of Christian doctrine in other terms, to take only one example, in terms of the existentialism of Heidegger, is a serious and a genuinely credible intellectual pursuit.
I agree with that and hasten to add that theology is way above my pay grade. At any rate, as you probably know, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), formerly the “Holy Office of the Inquisition”, fired a shot across Rahner’s bow and put Hans Kung under censure. The most recent sanction was directed at Fr. Haight, a noted Jesuit theologist now teaching at Union seminary for his work on Christology entitled “Jesus: Symbol of God”. As I understand it, Fr. Haight has been forbidden to teach or write on the subject.
I realize this issue is irrelevant to most folks who follow this blog, but to many believers, whether Catholic or not, the process is repugnant, especially because of the secrecy of its proceedings. Needless to say, the Magisterium does not consider itself to be a debating society or answerable to the Church at large.
Was that Milgram who did those experiments? Did Hannah Arendt do something like that too? Please excuse my ignorance.
Re: Milgram Experiments
There’s a good (if depressing) summary at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Antonio, I won’t gainsay that the machinations of the CDF are depressing. Indeed, I recall the “Instruction on the Ecclesiastical Vocation of the Theologian” (1980s?), where we were told, right up front, that even where argumentation shows the Magisterium to be wrong, the Magisterium is still right!
So, I don’t underestimate the Orwellian character of the Vatican authorities, and how generously they have used their power to silence theologians who have moved, even so short a distance as Rahner, from under the protective constraints of the Magisterium, an abstraction which, in practice, amounts to a department of the Vatican bureaucracy. And, of course, as the former head of the Inquisition (or CDF – a skunk cabbage by any other name would smell as foul), the present pope is well placed to guarantee that everyone thinks about things his way – or else! His ability to suppress creativity is profound, but then, of course, all religions must do it or die.
Yesterday I got caught up reading a book in the library and as a result nearly missed my dinner. It was a very absorbing book – by Countess Karolina Lanckoronskawho – has spent time in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp.
The book: Those Who Trespass Against Us is about one woman’s war against the Nazi’s.
I was really taken with these words, in the first para of page 239.
“Suffering ennobles”, it has been said. But that is mostly the case when suffering does not last interminably or sap the moral strength of the spirit, precisely during the formative years.
Rose, it was Milgram who did the Milgram experiment but it was Philip Zimbardo who did the Stanford Prison experiment (commonly abbreviated as the SPE). Hannah Arendt did no experiments but the Milgram experiment is often discussed in connection with some of what she says in Eichmann in Jerusalem and elsewhere. But to some extent the question was in the air anyway in the wake of WWII – though not to the extent that one might expect; there was a lot of ignoring and denying and moving on post-WWII. Milgram and Arendt both did a lot to put questions of obedience and conformity and groupthink under the spotlight.
I think it is worth mentioning that, in both cases, Milgram and Zimbardo, the experiments themselves were carried to extremes, and caused severe psychological harm to some of the participants. It raises as many moral questions about this kind of experimentation as it does about the possible responses of people to untrammelled authority. In fact, if memory serves me right, it was Zimbardo’s wife who raised precisely that moral question with her husband, who then brought the experiment to an end. (But that is only something from the dim and distant past.)
On the subject of hell, I am just reading (for another reason entirely) Augustine’s City of God, and here is what he says about the death imposed by man’s first sin:
The second death to which he refers is what hell is all about, when the soul is joined again to the body, and the person dies eternally, in other words, experiences the hideousness of dying for an eternity! Nice guy!
Yes, true, and such experiments are no longer possible. Yes it was Zimbardo’s (then future) wife who didn’t so much raise the issue as pitch a fit. She’s a psychologist herself, was just about to take up her first job, at Berkeley, and she was horrified by what was happening to Zimbardo’s subjects. Zimbardo was first horrified at her (unscientific etc etc) and then horrified at himself. Lots of irony there, as of course he points out.
Elliott
Thank you for that !
@Eric McDonald
Lots and lots of “nice” men around indeed!
-all struggeling to interprete their god’s ultimate will (if JoB allows me)for the afterlife.
I suspect Augustine have good competition from Thomas Aquinas who believed that the nice view (1.balcony tickets, I reckon) from heaven to hell was a part of the heavenly bliss.
Imagine that: the “ultimate joy of heaven” included watching eternal torment (-presumeably of fellow humans). Possibly interrupted by some strolling over to join in the great choir, watching lions and lambs, and whatever.
Then there are the muslim doctrines of hell, where the condemned’s skin is peeled of the body by burning flames. But that’s not punishment enough thinks the “all mercifull”, no sir-i-o. Fresh skin is then provided to be burnt off repeatedly into eternity.
Religious meaning of *mercy* has always struck me as utterly odd. I even though so in the short period of my young life when I was a sort of believer.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Thanks for the tutorial! Disturbing yet interesting.
@JoB,
Let me rephrase the question:
Why the (theological) certainty that *god* consider these purported transgressions blasphemy?
(I think this question have been addressed (if not answered) by Raymond Smullyan in the short “Is God a Taoist”?)
And if you are intereested in a small look at Zappfe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wessel_Zapffe#cite_ref-Zapffe1_0-0
http://folk.uio.no/geirthe/Zapffe.html
http://www.philosophynow.org/issue45/45tangenes.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prodigal_Son:_A_Dramatic_Renarration
Despite his pessimistic weldanschauung, Zappfe was a hillariously funny writer. It is a pity that e.g. “Rough joys” isn’t available in english.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Cassanders,
Because it’s in the book or because it eases their mind to say it’s in a book or because they take hard drugs – then go into a rap on the Holy Trinity that ends with “God thinks that …” in the hopefulness of being branded a heretic such as to start a new church in which they can f*** all the women & children & extort money from the rest …
I dunno .. it’s just not a valid thing to ask (as far as I know, according to them). You should read Kierkegaard: he is funny as well & has an interest for the type of questions you ask & is the ueberpessimist I guess.
In return I’ll do Zappfe, OK?
(My T-shirt reads: “In Mod we Trust” – care to make an appointment)
I want to thank Cassanders for introducing us – me anyway – to Peter Zappfe. Fascinating. A Norwegian Schopenhauer or Job.
For those interested in Job there is what I think is the definitive interpretation in a small quarterly, now defunct, The Human World, in No. 13, November 1973, entitled “A Masterpiece of Existential Blasphemy.” It is also by a Norwegian who taught philosophy in Canada, Herman Tønnessen. As the Eriksen article linked by Cassanders points out, “Tønnessen argued, against Zapffe’s view that life is meaningless, that life is not even meaningless.” I think I am coming to that conclusion myself.
Allow me to belatedly defend Milgram. According to my reading, stories of long-term psychological harm to subjects are urban legends. I admit the place I think I read it was Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown, but it had references.
But see this, wherein it is noted that neiter the existence of the experiment, nor its recent repetition, can do a fig to stop such things happening with real bad effects in the real world:
http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/fendrich/the-milgram-experiment
Oh, I don’t condemn Milgram. I do feel huge sympathy for his subjects, but I think the experiments were both brilliant and useful. I think the ethical rules are very unfortunate, in a way, yet I also can’t say that experiments like that should be allowed. But I think Milgram was a dang genius.
Hi All:
For a travesty on the common perception of the afterlife, I recommend the following by the curmudgeonly Mark Twain:
http://www.fullbooks.com/Captain-Stormfield-s-Visit-to-Heaven.html
Antonio