How is there free will in heaven?

Is there free will in heaven (or rather the new heavens and new earth)? How can the people in heaven be free if you know they will always do the right thing for an eternity?

Here is an answer I like to this question, that involves a certain view of evil.

In traditional Christian theology, evil is an absence of good like cold is the absence of heat. Evil is not an independent thing, but exists only because good exists and sometimes there is not much good in a situation. So evil is a lack of empathy, a result of a person not processing things morally.

For practical example of this, suppose someone wants people to treat them well, but they are really rude to staff at restaurants and other places. If someone could make them feel the pain they cause others for no reason, then this person would change their behaviour because they wouldn't want to be treated in this way. So their bad behaviour is actually the result of them not being consistent with their own principles in terms of how they want to be treated. In general terms, this shows how evil is not being truthful about how one's actions affect others in ways one's own self would not like (assuming someone endorses the Golden Rule, that is).

So if evil is something like this, then in heaven God has solved evil by making us completely truthful, through Jesus taking our sins (1 Pe 2:24). Because we are completely truthful, we can never choose to be evil because we will always be aware of how we would like to be (ideally) treated.

We will be unable to do evil in the sense that you, the reader, are unable to find it desirable to rob banks or murder people - that is, you are free to do it, but you can't do it because you can't be tempted by it. It's an inability to find something a good (or 'truthful') idea rather than any sort of physical inability.

Can some beliefs be immoral to believe and what does that imply?

Are some beliefs immoral? Imagine someone who believes that certain people are sub-human. We would react to that person as having an immoral belief.

What about a dictator who believes that people who disagree with him are evildoers opposed to everything good, and that they are comparable to murderers who need to be put in prison?

So it seems that some beliefs can be immoral, and not just true/false.

If some beliefs are immoral, then this shows people have some control over what they believe. It indicates that people are not helplessly tossed here and there by their beliefs. Otherwise how can any belief be immoral? You can't criticise someone for something that they have no control over.

This does not show that people can choose to believe that the moon is made of green cheese, but I think it does show that there is something we can control about our beliefs.

Although it's possible that people can't choose to believe that the moon is made of green cheese because it goes against their self-interest completely. If someone decides that the moon is made of green cheese, then that person is choosing to let go of their sanity to some extent. It's a crazy belief. Maybe we can't choose to believe the moon is green cheese because of a strong desire not to get rid of our sanity?

It might be that we always have a desire for our beliefs to reflect reality and, although we can choose to a degree what we believe, we won't very willingly choose for our beliefs to be insane. So, because we want our beliefs to reflect reality, we won't exercise our power to believe the moon is cheese. But, in theory, we have quite a lot of power to affect what we believe, but this power is hidden, or protected, by our desire to be accurate in our beliefs.

Moral contributions from the Bible

Has the Bible made important contributions to the development of morality? Here are three areas:

1. The Bible has been positive influence regarding the idea that everyone is equal. From an evolutionary perspective, the idea that every person is equal in a really fundamental way seems a bit hard to find. But in the Bible we read:

Acts 10:34-5: "Then Peter replied, "I see very clearly that God shows no favoritism. In every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right."

Romans 2:11: "For God does not show favoritism."

Gal 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

The image of God is equally given to everyone (Gen 1:27).

2. Another area that the Bible has had a large positive impact on is the idea that doing unto others involves really caring about people who are hostile towards oneself and forgiving people who don't deserve forgiveness (although I note that not everyone would agree with these values). Normally when we think of 'doing unto others' we include in that the idea that we should be able to get revenge on people who wrong us, an instinct that comes easily. But Jesus says that really 'doing unto others' involves loving your enemies, praying for people who persecute you, and forgiving those who wrong you (Matt 5:44, Matt 6:15, Luke 10:27). Also, God has given us an example of forgiveness to follow (Matt 18:33) and that is that God tries to forgive everyone, using the only way possible (Matt 26:39), even though we have not earned God's forgiveness and weren't 'owed' Jesus' sacrifice. This is a surprising moral insight or argument from the Bible.

3. Another interesting moral concept from the Bible relates to a way of distributing social status in a community that accepts, loves, and honours every single person there. If people follow it carefully, it completely sidesteps certain unhappy problems with social status and people seeking social status. Jesus says that the greatest person in a community should be the greatest person because they serve everyone else. While the person who is least should be the person who is least because they are served by everyone else (Matt 20:26-8). It's an ingenious system for keeping pride in check and making sure every member of the community is honoured, that a lot of people wouldn't have thought of without the Bible.

Was the atonement obligatory?

In the book of Romans, 5:7-8, Paul says:

"Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners."

A problem with this paragraph is that if God hadn't 'made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf' (2 Co 5:21), then we would have kept our sin and consequently suffered separation from God when God could have done something about it. In this situation, it doesn't seem as though dying for us is especially praiseworthy, because it seems obligatory for God to step in and save us if He can do so.

But I'm not entirely sure that this analysis is correct.

Take a situation where someone is a very heavy drinker and has made the choice to drink themselves into unconsciousness as often as they can. A family member or friend would be right to feel concerned about the heavy drinker, but are they obligated to stage an intervention and forcibly commit the heavy drinker to some kind of rehabilitation?

On the one hand, if the heavy drinker knows what they are doing, then perhaps the family member or friend should accept the heavy drinker's choice and let them destroy their life. On the other hand, maybe feelings of concern make it right to commit the heavy drinker to rehabilitation. Is there an obligation to do the latter?

What if staging an intervention is very costly to the family member or friend? Suppose that the family member needs to give up his/her life savings to pay for the heavy drinker to be rehabilitated and as a consequence they must accept a much lower quality of life whenever they stop working. Is there an obligation on the family member/friend to arrange an intervention at great personal cost?

I believe that if someone is making a very self-destructive decision, then an intervention may be obligatory if it does not come at a great personal cost, depending on the situation. However, if an intervention comes at a great personal cost, and the person who is destroying their life knows what they are doing, then I doubt there is an obligation.

How does this relate to God and the quote in Romans, though?

It seems reasonable to imagine that before someone becomes a Christian they don't really care that much about the Christian God and don't wish to commit themselves to that God. It's also reasonable to think that before someone becomes a Christian the prospect of an eternity living without God is not a particularly frightening prospect, unless they follow another religion where this is that religion's idea of hell.

This implies that when God saves someone God has to change our desires so that we will not want to go through an eternity apart from, and not giving recognition to, God (Eph 2:1: "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,")

In this respect, God is like someone intervening in someone's life because they think someone is going down the wrong track, when that person doesn't want their help (at that time) and, if someone is OK with the prospect of not being with God forever, knows what they are doing.

The other point is that God had to pay an enormous personal cost in saving us. If God performs a miracle so that you receive $1,000,000,000, then that doesn't really cost God anything even if we really appreciate it. God is all-powerful after all. But Jesus' death for us on the cross is perhaps the only good thing God has done that cost God immensely (1 Co 6:20: "for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.") The cost that God paid was not simply being crucified, but included bearing all of humanity's sins, which may have involved pain and suffering that we cannot imagine. God did it because of the joy He would have in seeing us come to know Him for an eternity (Heb 12:2: "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.")

The conclusion is that if you combine 1) someone intervening in someone's life to help them when they know what they are doing and they do not want help, with 2) the intervention coming at a great personal cost, then there is not necessarily any moral obligation to help. This means that Paul is right when he praises God for saving us, assuming our situation fits with (1) and (2).

What does it mean for people to be equal?

What does it mean for people to be equal? There aren't any two people in the world who have equal abilities in every respect. Some people are more intelligent, some people are better looking, some people have more wealth, status or power, and so on and so on. So what does it mean for people to be equal?

Equality doesn't mean that I pretend I'm as fast a runner as Usain Bolt so that everyone is equal when it comes to short distance running ability (Usain Bolt is the fastest short distance runner in history). Equality doesn't mean that I and my friends create a socially acceptable delusion whereby, for the sake of equality, we all pretend that we're as fast as Usain Bolt.

So believing in equality has to include a sensible acknowledgment of differences in people's abilities and gifts.

So if equality doesn't involve pretending that people have equal abilities, then what does it mean?

I think equality refers to the way that you process someone being relatively better or worse at something than yourself. It refers to how you choose to act on the fact that people have different abilities.

I think the Bible gives a good explanation of this view here:

Gen 1:27 "And God made man in his image, in the image of God he made him: male and female he made them" (everyone is equally made in God's image).

Rom 2:11 "For one man is not different from another before God" (because everyone is equally made in God's image).

1 Co 4:7 "For who made you better than your brother? or what have you that has not been given to you? but if it has been given to you, what cause have you for pride, as if it had not been given to you?" (everything we have outside of our own choices is a gift from God).

The Bible makes it clear that every good thing we have that's outside of our own choices we received from God (we also receive grace and the rest of our choices are heavily influenced by what God gave us), James 1:17. And what abilities and gifts we received from God we received not because God liked any of us more than anyone else (as we're all equally made in His image), but purely because it fitted more with God's plan for us to receive what we received.

So if someone is better than someone else because of their choices, then maybe there's a reason for boasting there - unless someone's better choices are a result of God's grace, because then they were a gift from God (grace is a gift offered freely to all). But if someone is better than someone else because of what's outside their choices, then they shouldn't boast about it, because everything outside our choices was given to people without God liking anyone more than anyone else.

This means acknowledging differences in people's abilities as long as that difference isn't used to attack someone in some way. Because you can't attack people based on a gift that you received from someone (in this case God), when the gift wasn't intended to privilege you over them.

Envy

How does envy 'work'? Where does the emotion come from?

Proverbs 27:4: Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?

James 3:14-16: But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don't cover up the truth with boasting and lying. For jealousy and selfishness are not God's kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind.

1 Corinthians 13:4: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

Envy is a somewhat unusual emotion in that it has no 'good' aspect at all. For instance, when Aristotle was forming his 'doctrine of the mean', he tried to find a 'good' aspect to every emotion (as part of his system where virtue is between two opposite extremes). E.g. anger is good when it protects the vulnerable. Fear is good when it stops us from being complete idiots. Being trusting is good unless we are too trusting and someone takes advantage, and so on. But he could find no 'good' aspect to envy.

To find out what envy is about we need to look at what condition(s) needs to be fulfilled for anyone to experience envy. That is, what is something that needs to happen before you can experience envy?

There may be several answers, but one answer is not being content.

For example, can you think of any situation where someone is really content about XYZ and also feels a lot of envy about XYZ? For example, suppose that someone was really content about how much money they had and frankly did not care about having more money, because it doesn't matter to them at all - they have enough. Can that person feel envious towards someone for having more money than them, given their contentment about money?

Lack of contentment seems to be a basic condition for envy.

OK, so what do envious people do? They make life difficult for the person who they envy if they can.

Now, why is it that a lack of contentment would 'spill over' into basically having something against other people? How does A. Lack of contentment in any way cause B. Having something against other people?

The answer could be that acting enviously gives the envious person a practical benefit...

But it doesn't seem that envy is a 'strategy' to get what the other person has. For example, if you envy someone who has a lot more money than you, then you probably don't think you'll be able to get some of their money by making life hard for them.

In almost all cases of envy, someone's envy will not allow someone to get, practically speaking, what they are envious about. It will also not make society more equal because one envious person will not make society more equal on their own (however, if everyone was envious, then maybe society would be more equal, but it would be a rather unhappy, nasty sort of equality).

Actually, I can't figure out what selfish strategy envy is part of. Even if someone is a complete psycho, cares only about themselves, and has no good emotions at all, I simply don't know what selfish benefit they can get from envy, and I haven't even talked about how unhappy it makes the person that envies.

But I find it hard to believe that there isn't some kind of selfish benefit to envy, even one that is almost never realised. Otherwise envy is a very peculiar kind of selfish act - a selfish act that does not benefit the selfish person.

A second possibility is that envy is not a strategy but an automatic process. Envy could simply be a result of the brain accepting two or three facts: 1. I am not content about XYZ and 2. Someone has XYZ and probably 3. I will let myself feel envy. In this view, envy is like thinking that Pluto is no longer a planet after you hear the news, just an automatic reaction that can happen if you are not content and see people with what you desire.

Anyway, we can map the process of envy something like this:

I am not content about something => a selfish strategy or an automatic process => I feel envy and feel like I am 'against' the person who has whatever it is I'm not content about.

This may be one reason why the Bible teaches people to be content. In other words, the Bible doesn't teach us to be content to make us docile and passive, but because a lack of contentment causes people to experience envy and makes it harder for us to love other people.

Hebrews 13:5: Don't love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, "I will never fail you. I will never abandon you."

1 Timothy 6:6-8: Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can't take anything with us when we leave it. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.

For freedom Christ has set us free

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." - Gal 5:1.

One of the 'paradoxes' of Christian teaching is that loving and serving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and loving our neighbour as we love ourselves actually sets us free rather than 'enslaves' us.

So what's going on with that? Surely loving your neighbour as you love yourself is impossibly difficult.

I think a key element in explaining why it's not some kind of 'slavery' comes from the Christian view of human nature: that when God made us He made our minds like His mind in many ways (the image of God idea). One aspect of God's mind is that it is love (1 John 4:8). So our minds were designed to be just as loving as God's. Just like God fulfills His nature through love, so do we.

We don't feel our minds are really like this (in that you can be happy without being very loving), but that can be explained as a result of people being able to create their own happiness from contradicting this system, as one of the 'powers' of free will, so we can make our own happiness from other things.

The Christian 'system' gets legitimacy because when we act according to the above described view of human nature we are actually acting according to the original 'blueprints'. Because of the 'blueprint' idea God's desire for us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is not supposed to be this horrible duty we are obligated to fulfill, but, ideally, in some way 'freeing', despite its incredible cost (1 John 5:3).

Okay, this may sound nice in theory, but how does it address the arduous nature of 'love your neighbour as you love yourself'? Why should we beat ourselves up for not following an impossible standard? As the Bible says, it is, after all, impossible to follow even though it's a legitimate standard (1 John 1:8).

One point that Christianity makes is that God just wants us to accept what Jesus has done for us on the cross and doesn't want us to beat ourselves up for failing to keep an impossible, but legitimate, standard that He knows we can't meet (trying to meet it in order to please God would actually contradict the accepting Jesus part according to Gal 5:4). Because of what Jesus has done, we won't need to try hard to follow it one day, but it will, one day, come as naturally as drinking water. I think Phil 3:9 explains some of the mechanics of how this works: "[I have given up everything to] be found in [Christ], not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ."

Objective morality

Atheists and Christians often argue about what makes morality 'objective', and whether you need God for morality to be 'objective'. But what does 'objective' in 'objective morality' mean, exactly? And why is a world without God unable to express whatever it means?

Instead of answering this directly, I'd prefer to imagine a situation that makes morality pack the most 'punch' out of any situation I can imagine.

This is the situation: suppose that humans are made to be perfectly loving towards each other and relate to one another in an 'ideal' way. So it's impossible to really live out your nature without relating to others in an 'ideal' way. That way, even though doing evil can make people happy, no one can really be themselves - who they really are - without relating to others in an 'ideal' way.

This situation would seem to make morality pack quite a punch. So maybe morality is more' objective' if this situation is the case than if it's not. Also, clearly, it's easier to believe this if you're a religious person plus you believe that things have somehow 'gone off the rails' for humanity so that, somehow, no one lives out their true nature in a complete way (at least in this life).

Does going to heaven involve missing out on the richness and variety of human experience?

There's a common perception that going to heaven involves being 'lobotomized'. That it means being turned into a perpetually happy 'machine' where you are unable to express natural emotions like sadness, cynicism, and so on. Meanwhile you are constantly 'high' on love which enables the saints in heaven to care about people and God the way God wants, like a parody of 'positive thinking' gone wrong.

This view is based on a misunderstanding of how the saints in heaven will be different. The entire difference is summed up thus: whereas now we don't treat other people the way we would ideally like other people to treat us, the saints in heaven will. Whereas now we don't follow the Golden Rule perfectly, the saints in heaven will (Matt 7:12).

Jesus (who is God) felt sadness (John 11:33-36), anger (Mark 3:5), cynicism (when justified, Mark 12:14-15), extreme anxiety (Luke 22:42-44). Jesus felt a full spectrum. He felt every emotion that was compatible with treating others the way Jesus would have ideally liked to be treated.

Heaven won't change people so that they can't get sad, lonely, feel grief, pain, feel cynical (as long as it allows for giving people the benefit of the doubt), anger (when justified) and so on. It only means that we will follow the standard above, which goes along with loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. When someone adds something to this then they are in danger of adding something to heaven that heaven doesn't have - this is where the 'heaven involves a lobotomy' view comes from.

So if our idea of heaven involves missing out on the richness of human experience, then either a) following the Golden Rule perfectly means missing out on the richness of human experience, or b) something has been added to our understanding of heaven that heaven doesn't have.

Is morality relative?

Is morality relative? Many people have argued that it is. Consider how there have been cultures throughout history that have approved of horrible practices.

But there is an argument that moral differences between cultures are not that deep - even though they seem to be at first.

Imagine that you had to explain to someone how they could do the right thing in every circumstance. One classic answer would be that you should follow the 'Golden Rule'. As Jesus says in Matt 7:12: "Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets." This is a pretty good, short summary of how to be a good person.

One interesting aspect of the Golden Rule is that it's considered an important moral principle in so many (all?) cultures, in one form or another. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism, Islam, and of course Christianity (as well as numerous other religions and cultures) all endorsed the Golden Rule (source).

So if there's such widespread agreement on the Golden Rule between cultures, then it sounds like moral disagreements between cultures can't go that deep. They have to pay attention to something like the Golden Rule (whatever they call it).

You could also say that it's hard to imagine any culture rejecting this principle while continuing to talk in moral terms (although you might find the occasional evildoer who rejects it). Why? Because when you think about it, rejecting the Golden Rule seems like rejecting the concept of 'morality' altogether. Let's say you have someone who doesn't care at all about treating others the way they'd like to be treated. Have they come up with an alternative moral system? Or have they discarded morality? It feels like the latter.

If so, then the Golden Rule is really fundamental to any kind of morality, and therefore every culture shares a fundamental moral principle (even if it doesn't look like it on the surface). Perhaps cultural 'moral differences' are more like differences in application and not fundamental principles.

It should also be noted that this isn't a minor thing that cultures have in common - you can do quite a lot with the Golden Rule. The Bible points out that if we wrong someone we'd rather that they not take revenge on us, because revenge is painful (Lev 19:18). The Bible argues that 'Doing unto others' implies you can't hold grudges, which is taking the principle quite a long way.

So if it's like this then how can you get horrible cultural practices? There are two things to keep in mind here. First of all, people can have dangerous false beliefs and that might lead to evil cultural practices. For example, human sacrifice won't really appease the gods. Secondly, what we think is right can be influenced by our self-interest - surely self-interest can affect the views of groups and even cultures as well. For example, if slavery had a big economic benefit for a society then you would probably find people there rationalise it a lot more than if it had no benefit. Same thing with a patriarchy supporting a patriarchal culture.

Getting the greatest commandment from the second greatest

Luke 10:26-7: Jesus replied, "What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?" The man answered, "'You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.' And, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

Almost no one would have a problem with the idea that you should 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' (the Golden Rule). The Bible's way of putting it is that you should love your neighbour as yourself. So the second commandment is pretty agreeable to almost everyone (although no one does it perfectly).

For a lot of people it's the greatest commandment that seems hard to understand. Why should God deserve a lot more love and devotion than a human being? Whereas for humans it's 'love like you love yourself' for God it's 'love with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind'.

I'd like to mention an argument for the Bible's view based on 'virtue ethics' (a school of thought in moral philosophy).

In Christian theology there's something different about the way God makes choices compared to everyone else. In Christian theology God not only does the right thing all the time, He also cannot be tempted to do something wrong. This situation cannot be recreated (for some reason) in God's creations.

James 1:13: "When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone"

Titus 1:2 "in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began"

Imagine you lived in a town where there was a person who had this quality. You could always get perfect advice from this person about what to do (from a moral point-of-view).

So there's some sense in the idea of referring our decisions to someone who cannot be tempted to think in an evil way. Whereas the moral advice we give to each other can always be harmed by selfish motives, God's wouldn't (assuming this situation is the case). So making it a rule to always check your decisions with an 'un-temptable' God has a certain logic, assuming you can actually know what this God is saying.

This 'setup' would help you follow the second greatest commandment, because it would protect you from making a moral mistake (for e.g. selfish reasons). It would act as a 'fail-safe' protection for people who can be tempted to do wrong. Doing this successfully would be a great way to honour the second greatest commandment.

And referring your decisions to an 'un-temptable' God sounds a lot like worshipping God if you did it all the time.

Slavery in the Old Testament laws

Something we need to remember regarding the Old Testament laws is that they involved a compromise:

Matt 19:8: Jesus replied, "Moses permitted divorce only as a concession to your hard hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended."

It would not be surprising if a lot of laws in the Old Testament were similar (for example regarding its acceptance of polygamy versus Jesus' monogamy view). I want to look here at this possibility regarding slavery laws.

Slavery is wrong, but it would have been good for God to make laws related to slavery if a) slavery was going to happen whether God wanted it to or not, because we're talking about ancient Near East cultures, and b) this was the only way of making sure it happened in a relatively just way.

I think this is the thinking behind the Old Testament laws on slavery. So with that said, let's look at whether b) is correct. Is it believable that the Old Testament slavery laws tried to control the evils of slavery, by making them more just than they would otherwise have been?

I've put some helpful quotes here from a really good article on this from Glenn Miller's Christian-thinktank:

"The 'slavery' of the OT was essentially designed to serve the poor!":

Lev 25:35-43: "If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you. 36 Do not take interest of any kind from him, but fear your God, so that your countryman may continue to live among you. 37 You must not lend him money at interest or sell him food at a profit. 38 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God."

39 "If one of your countrymen becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, do not make him work as a slave. 40 He is to be treated as a hired worker or a temporary resident among you; he is to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. 41 Then he and his children are to be released, and he will go back to his own clan and to the property of his forefathers. 42 Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. 43 Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God."

"If a fellow Hebrew, a man or a woman, sells himself to you and serves you six years, in the seventh year you must let him go free." (Deut 15.12) Although this doesn't apply to foreign slaves.

"The Mosaic law contains numerous initiatives designed to preclude someone having to consider voluntary slavery as an option":

"Pentateuchal prescriptions are meant to mitigate the causes of and need for such bondservice. Resident aliens, orphans and widows are not to be abused, oppressed or deprived of justice. When money is lent to the poor, they are not to be charged interest." "There were not supposed to be any poor in Israel at all!"

"But God is a realist (Deut 15.11!); hence He made a wide range of provisions in the Law for the poor [one of which is slavery as a form of debt relief]"

So slavery in Old Testament law was meant to serve the poor, rather than serve the rich.

Some other key verses:

"Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD." (Lev 19:18). The word 'neighbour' should apply to Israelite and foreign slaves, so slaves should be loved if someone wants to honour every part of the Old Testament law.

"However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today." (Deut 15.4). By implication all slaves should have decent living standards.

"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property." (Ex 21:20-1, NIV). "If a man hits a manservant or maidservant in the eye and destroys it, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the eye. And if he knocks out the tooth of a manservant or maidservant, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the tooth". (Ex 21:26-27).

OK, so this doesn't sound too good in places. First of all, it allows the beating slaves as long as you don't injure them so badly they can't get up in two days, and as long as you don't permanently injure them in some way. But it's not as bad as it could be. Apparently 'he must be punished' means that the master is actually executed if the slave dies under the "life for life" clause. Moreover, the rule for being beaten is not that different from what applies to free Israelites:

Ex 21:18-9: "If men quarrel and one hits the other with a stone or with his fist and he does not die but is confined to bed, the one who struck the blow will not be held responsible if the other gets up and walks around outside with his staff; however, he must pay the injured man for the loss of his time and see that he is completely healed."

This is a lot more humane than other societies with slavery, which shows that God possibly acted to bring about a 'moderating' of slavery laws:

"An owner could kill his slave with impunity in Homeric Greece, ancient India, the Roman Republic, Han China, Islamic countries, Anglo-Saxon England, medieval Russia, and many parts of the American South before 1830…That was not the case in other societies. The Hebrews, the Athenians, and the Romans under the principate restricted the right of slave owners to kill their human chattel."

Secondly, isn't it bad that it says slaves are property? Glenn quotes: "Freedom in the ancient Near East was a relative, not an absolute state, as the ambiguity of the term for "slave" in all the region's languages illustrates. "Slave" could be used to refer to a subordinate in the social ladder. Thus the subjects of a king were called his "slaves," even though they were free citizens. The king himself, if a vassal, was the "slave" of his emperor; kings, emperors, and commoners alike were "slaves" of the gods. Even a social inferior, when addressing a social superior, referred to himself out of politeness as "your slave." There were, moreover, a plethora of servile conditions that were not regarded as slavery, such as son, daughter, wife, serf, or human pledge."

So saying that slaves are property wasn't such a huge thing in ancient Near East society as it would be now if someone said you were their property.

We can see God's ultimately honourable intent behind the Old Testament slavery laws elsewhere:

"The entire seventh year of the planting cycle was dedicated to the poor (and servants [slaves])!":

"For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, 11 but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove." (Ex 23.10) "Whatever the land yields during the sabbath year will be food for you -- for yourself, your manservant and maidservant, and the hired worker and temporary resident who live among you," (Lev 25.6)

"When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God" (Lev 19:10).

So I think one can establish, as I said at the beginning of this essay, that it was a good thing for God to make the Old Testament slavery laws as long as a) because of the hardness of people's hearts there was going to be slavery whether God wanted there to be or not, and b) this was the only way to control the evils of slavery so that it happened in a relatively just way. B) seems to be the case from the points made above.

Why are people selfish? Evolutionary psychology vs original sin

People are selfish. Why? Here are two accounts.

Evolutionary psychology: evolution made us act good, but we are not actually good

There's a big difference between someone acting good and someone being good. 'Acting' good is doing the right thing when there is some kind of selfish benefit to doing it. If people see me help someone out, then they will be more likely to respect me and I'll get a selfish benefit from it. Evolution can explain that very easily. 'Being' good on the other hand is being good even when there is no selfish benefit to you at all - and you know it. Being good is doing the right thing even when you know that gossip, tit for tat, getting something later, is not going to reward you for doing the right thing.

In evolutionary terms, creatures who are good and are not just 'acting' good are at a large disadvantage in passing on their genes. A person who donates money to a charity in front of everyone may get a selfish benefit from it because people will respect them. But a person who gives a lot of money to a charity without anyone knowing will probably hurt their selfish interests. Enough of those sorts of decisions will hurt your chances of reproduction. So evolution works against people 'being' good rather than 'acting' good.

This is why people are selfish in evolutionary psychology - evolution made us act good, but we are not actually good. In evolutionary terms, everything good we do is for the sake of appearances, higher social status, and later benefits (with the exception of kin selection).

Original sin: people have a 'good essence' in the image of God, but we are enslaved to 'selfish self-interest', which comes from being able to reason and think critically about how we could get ahead in life

In original sin, people have a basically good essence in that we are all made in God's image. Just like God is love, so humans were meant to care for each other and God in the way that God does. We have a moral sense that holds us accountable to the way the 'image of God' should act. But we are also pretty clever and we can tell that if we mess other people around then we can get ahead in life. This isn't the way we were meant to operate, but it's true that being selfish can get you ahead in life. So even though we have a good essence, with free will + being able to think of how we could pursue our interests without regard to others = you get original sin.

We have this devious ability to think because everyone has chosen to rely on themselves for knowledge of good and evil rather than God (although only Adam and Eve literally were in such a situation, we would have all made the same choice, so we are all 'in' Adam).

What God wants instead of this situation is for all our moral decisions to be made on the basis of 'faith in doing the right thing', which in practice, we cannot consistently do. In the Christian view, humanity has free will and thinks in terms of 'rational self-interest', which often leads to selfishness - humanity is not made selfish from evolution. Evolution is how humanity was created, but it never gives us a 'free pass' when we do the wrong thing, because it's not why we do the wrong thing. We do the wrong thing because, out of a devious understanding of self-interest, we ignore God's command to do unto others.

Do humans have no right to make a reply back to God?

Rom 9:20: "But, O man, who are you, to make answer against God? May the thing which is made say to him who made it, Why did you make me so?"

James 1:13: "When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone"

My belief on this is that we can't really answer back to God BUT this is ONLY because God cannot be tempted by evil. If there's a God who can be tempted by evil then I think we have the right to answer back to them. But if there is really a God who cannot be tempted then if we believe this with our whole heart I think it's appropriate to decide never to answer back. And also, this applies only as long as we genuinely know what this God is really saying/wanting. That part is very important. So provided those two conditions are fulfilled, then yes.

One of religion's most common mistakes

It's often said by atheists that one of the problems with religion is that it tries to reward people for doing good, when the fact that an act is good should be motivation enough. The Bible agrees with them:

Luke 17:7-10: "But which of you, having a servant who is ploughing or keeping sheep, will say to him, when he comes in from the field, Come now and be seated and have a meal, Will he not say, Get a meal for me, and make yourself ready and see to my needs till I have had my food and drink; and after that you may have yours? Does he give praise to the servant because he did what was ordered? In the same way, when you have done all the things which are given you to do, say, There is no profit in us, for we have only done what we were ordered to do."

If you know that you have a moral obligation to do something, then you should do it because it's right. Whether or not there's a reward is irrelevant to moral obligations. For example, we don't believe that someone who reaches the age of 50 without murdering someone deserves a reward, because obviously it's wrong to murder.

I think that God rewards people for doing the right thing not because it's an arrangement that religious people have with God, but merely because God is a generous person and generous people are generous. In no sense would God reward a religious person, I think, for doing the right thing in any other sense.

This is one of the mistakes that religious people often make: assuming that being loving and doing God's will deserves a reward as if it was not an obligation.

Do people do everything for selfish reasons?

Isn't it true that whenever we do something good we get something out of it? Like pleasure from the joy of helping someone? Does that mean that a good act like helping someone is just another form of selfishness?

The problem with this argument is that pleasure seems to be: "anything that makes an action worth doing to someone". That's how every possible action, good or bad, is a matter of pleasure and therefore (according to the argument) selfishness.

Another way of putting this is that every act requires motivation, and that always means pleasure from doing it.

But wait a second - is this right? Can it really be selfish just to have a motivation? If motivation = pleasure? Seems a bit broad.

I think it's so broad that the argument says nothing. The argument doesn't discover anything empirically but relies on the definitions of 'pleasure', 'act', and 'motivation' to argue.

I would say instead that pleasure in doing something is actually a result of the decision to do that thing (whatever it is). What makes any pleasure selfish or not selfish depends on whether that decision is bad or good/neutral. Once we decide that we want to do something, then we get pleasure from the thought of doing it. So if someone has decided to get pleasure from being really nice, then the pleasure from doing that is selfless, because they didn't *have* to get pleasure from that - they could have gotten pleasure from being selfish. So nice people have done something good for choosing to get pleasure from doing the right thing. That pleasure is not selfish, even though they feel good about helping people, since that pleasure is a reflection of a desire to help people, which is a good thing.

Why people are bad (it's not because of evolution); why original sin is so intractable

Humans are like someone standing with one foot in the sea and one foot on land. The foot in the sea is our physical body and brain, the foot on land is our 'mind' in the 'world of conscious awareness'.

A brain is distinct from a mind. Although the mind is based off the brain, the mind is not the brain. The mind arises out of the brain, and has many distinct properties (e.g. qualia) not possessed by the brain.

What do the brain and mind each contribute to making us who we are?

Brain/body:

Every act of intellectual reasoning
All knowledge (except knowledge given through the Spirit - 1 Cor 2:13-14)
Something to express free choices with

Mind:

Consciousness / Mind / Qualia
Love / A moral sense
Free will

So we don't work out the answer to any problem in the world of mind. Every act of intellectual reasoning comes from the brain.

This helps to explain why humans are bad (it's not because of evolution) and why original sin is impossible to overcome even though we have genuine free will.

Our intellectual reasoning and moral sense belong to different worlds. Our intellectual reasoning belongs to our brain in the universe, and is shared by such things as computers and calculators. Our moral sense belongs to the image of God, which is not the same thing as the brain, in whatever kind of thing/reality that involves.

Our moral sense gives us our highest moral ideals, and tells us that we should never do wrong. But our intellectual reasoning can't understand how a person could have reasons for doing the right thing in every circumstance.

The closest that intellectual reasoning can come to morality is 'You should do the right thing out of rational self-interest' - game theory. 'You do a good thing for me and I'll do a good thing for you' - tit-for-tat morality (the flip-side of tit-for-tat is 'Hurt me and you're going to suffer horribly').

This is a bad thing in circumstances where the self-interested thing is the wrong thing morally.

If you combine this reasoning with free will, then what you get is everyone choosing to sin because our reasoning leads us to make choices in a certain 'rational' (i.e. game theoretic) way.

You don't need to appeal to evolution to explain why humans are basically selfish - you can appeal to humans having a form of intellectual reasoning that tempts us with game theory, tit-for-tat, self-interested, etc. reasons for acting.

So original sin is essentially the curse that we'll work out good and evil for ourselves, instead of copying what God thinks.

The only way to circumvent original sin would be to act 100% on faith, to not even think about one's choices but just do the right thing all the time. That's the only way that someone could act on their moral sense in every possible situation. That's impossible for humans, like walking purely by faith.

That's why original sin is so devastating to morality: no one is going to act on their moral ideals all the time because there is no way that our intellectual reason can understand why we should ever do that. It's not because of evolution, but because God had to make us with a form of intellectual reasoning that makes selfishness make sense from a rational point-of-view.

I'm not saying that intellectual reasoning is bad, by the way. Like everything that God has made, it's good. We need intellectual reasoning to do stuff. But it has bad side-effects when it tempts us to do evil. And we couldn't have God's form of intellectual reasoning which doesn't have this side-effect.

Here's an overview of this:

Human sinfulness = free will + self-interest appealing to our rational faculty (think of game theory, tit-for-tat, reciprocal altruism, and the like...)

Original sin = free will + self-interest appealing to our rational faculty + God not protecting us from thinking in terms of rational self-interest.

God cannot be tempted by evil = free will + a moral sense + a second level added to the moral sense that is intellectual, not intuitive. This 'rational' moral sense is how God thinks intellectually, and always honours moral intuitions. Only God gets to have this.

Continued here.

Objective morality: God is love, mind is love, consciousness is love

It's often said that morality is only 'objective' if there's a God. But what is that supposed to mean? How is morality any more 'objective' if a God exists? I think the following situation would make morality objective in a very significant way, if it was true:

Imagine that just like being physical is part of our concept of 'a stone,' so loving and rejoicing in doing the right thing is part of what it means to be a 'mind' or 'conscious.' Love and goodness is to consciousness what being physical, or existing in the universe, is to a rock. Mind/consciousness is a kind of substance or thing that follows different rules to physical stuff. One of these aspects of mind, different to rocks, is loving and being good. So mind is love.

But humans have minds, so why aren't we completely loving? Because our mind is localised in (based off) a brain, and the brain isn't 'love.' Our mind pulls us in the direction of loving others unconditionally. But our brain isn't love, and so we have a source of thinking that isn't love. This ends up 'pulling' us into thinking thoughts that aren't loving. Our mind gives us the free will to follow either side. This means that humans have to fight our (non-mind) brain to love in accordance with mind, whereas mind by itself is so loving that it IS love (God is love). (Read more about this dualistic assumption here.)

The question is: why did God make us brain-Minds instead of 'Mind' by itself? Couldn't God have taken away the possibility of evil? The answer is that to be pure mind you basically have to be God, I think. So the above setup (which makes sin very likely) needs to be the case.

Why does God value faith 2: Moral faith versus religious faith

Part 1, part 3.

'Faith' has gotten a bad reputation in recent times because of its connection to religion. A lot of people do really bad things because they have some kind of faith that leads them to do evil. For some, faith is a bad thing not because it can sometimes cause people to do wrong, but because it's seen as irrational.

I think it's interesting that 'faith' is used so often regarding religion, but it's used less regarding morality. I think that the concept of 'faith' can have just as much connection to morality as to religion. I'll give you an example:

Take a case frequently occurring, where someone does something really awful to someone else. Would it be easier to seek justice or revenge, or to forgive the wrongdoer? It would be much harder to forgive. Way, way harder.

To forgive someone for a reasonably big slight goes against our natural instincts. It goes against the demand either for justice or revenge (which one it is depends on whether the wrong is really wrong).

When someone does forgive a serious wrong, then it would be fair to say that they are acting against their own human nature, which seeks recompense. So how does one find the ability to act against one's own human nature?

Unless it's beneficial to forgive others, then forgiveness can only happen through some kind of faith: either faith in God/Karma, or faith in the idea of forgiveness itself.

Let's say that the person doing the forgiving doesn't have a religious bone in their body. It seems that such a person would need to have faith in the idea of forgiveness, because otherwise it wouldn't be likely to happen.

Now, the point here is that such people are thought to be very nice. People wouldn't necessarily think they should do the same thing, but they would say 'That person is very nice' (I'm talking about wrongs against the forgiver, not wrongs against others/the community. It could depending on the situation be immoral not to take steps to protect others/the community).

So faith in good intentions (in this case forgiveness) is associated with kindness.

People being nice is a good thing... so this kind of 'faith' can be argued to be a good thing as well. You could call it 'faith in trying to have good intentions' or 'moral faith'.

Why does 'moral faith' involve faith? Well, it's not like you can rationally persuade people to be good, like Socrates tried to do. If you could, then no one who could reason would be bad. People are bad because being good is often non-rational. So 'moral faith' involves the irrational... it involves taking a 'blind leap', where a person chooses to have good intentions to a non-rational degree.

So actually, regardless of your position on religion, it seems that faith in some situations is definitely a good thing.

Continued here...

A sketch of a Christian theory of emotions

I think that it would be interesting to lay out a Christian 'analysis' or 'theory' of emotions, in the style of secular psychologists', but from a Christian point-of-view.

Here's Robert Plutchik's categorisation of emotions (a secular psychologist) to get an idea of what I mean:

Primary emotions (stronger to weaker versions):

Ecstasy / Joy / Serenity
Admiration / Trust / Acceptance
Terror / Fear / Apprehension
Amazement / Surprise / Distraction
Grief / Sadness / Pensiveness
Loathing / Disgust / Boredom
Rage / Anger / Annoyance
Vigilance / Anticipation / Interest

Second order of emotions (more complicated combinations of the first order):

Love = Ecstasy + Admiration
Submission = Admiration + Terror
Awe = Terror + Amazement
Disapproval = Amazement + Grief
Remorse = Grief + Loathing
Contempt = Loathing + Rage
Aggressiveness = Rage + Vigilance
Optimism = Vigilance + Ecstasy

The reasoning behind this secular categorisation is that, first of all, we have emotions due to evolution, and now we want to find out how our emotions fit together in a hierarchy. All emotions seem to have equal status and come from the same source indiscriminately, which is evolution. The best marker for identifying them would be through a) how intense they are, and, b) whether they are a result of any combinations or whether they are 'primary'.

Now take the Christian view. The Christian view must be different. We don't necessarily disagree that emotions come to humans through evolution (I don't), but the point of them is to reflect the emotions of God. Ergo, our emotions may have evolved, but they evolved to reflect what God's consciousness is like and what emotions He feels.

I'll get to why a 'God' would feel emotions later. Before that the Christian has the problem of morally bad emotions, like pride, envy, and so on. How do we explain the existence of morally bad emotions if God is perfect?

The answer from a Christian view must be of course that not all emotions are on the same level. Our good and morally neutral emotions come from God, but our morally bad emotions come from sin. That's how God doesn't have morally bad emotions, and yet we do even though our emotions are made in God's image.

So you would construct a Christian hierarchy maybe a bit like this:

Emotions that come from God (morally good or morally neutral):

Primary emotions:

Love

Second order of emotions (a more complicated expression of the first emotion, from 1 Cor 13):

Patience
Kindness
Contentedness
Humility
Desire to relate to others as equals
Desire to serve others and not oneself
Anger only when seriously provoked
Always forgiving
Delighting in love and truth
Urge to protect others
Trust
Hope
Perseverance
Sadness, grief at loss
Diligence when it matters
Carefulness when it matters
PLUS, all other morally neutral emotions (won't bother listing them)

Morally bad emotions that are not felt by God, but come through sin:

Unjustified impatience
Cruelty/desire to inflict pain
Envy
Boasting/arrogance
Pride
Rudeness
Selfishness
Short temper
Delighting in misfortunes/evil
Disliking the truth/lying
Paranoia
Being willing to give up on important things too quickly
Insensitivity to pain, loss, grief
Carelessness

This is basically just a morally bad flip-side of the first list.

Let me make clear that when I say 'morally bad emotion' I don't mean a negative emotion like sadness, I mean a morally bad emotion. It's perfectly possible to be really depressed about life and stuff in general and be morally perfect.

Basically the Christian view would be something like this:

God has only good or morally neutral emotions. The ideal state is for us to only feel the emotions that God feels.
But:
Humans sin.
Which means:
We have the ability to feel bad emotions.
Because:
Free will + emotion = the freedom to feel emotions that don't reflect God's nature, but which God allows us to feel to give us the freedom to reject Him and the love that He represents.

Another way of putting it is this:

Free will + emotion + doing the right thing = feeling only the good and morally neutral emotions that God has (e.g. love).
Free will + emotion + doing the wrong thing = feeling a morally bad emotion, which God did not originally intend minds to feel, like e.g. unjustified hatred of someone, or envy and pride.

So this would be a different hierarchy or system of categorisation than in the secular world. In the secular world no emotions are 'out-of-place' for a human to feel. It depends on the situation. For a Christian, morally bad emotions are not in our true nature, which is why a) God doesn't feel them, b) why they can only be felt if you choose to sin and, c) why they damage our psychological well-being, unlike loving emotions.

So why would God feel emotions at all? Aren't emotions physical things?

I think it must come from the trinity in some way - God for some reason exists as one being in a community of three persons, and our name for the relationship between them is 'love'. God then gave this love to us. This (somehow) must be the case in a way that we just can't understand with finite reason (more on this here.)

One way of looking at it is that when God made us in our image He gave us something (a mind) that is meant to be love in some way like God.

So just like being physical is part of our concept of 'a stone,' so loving and rejoicing in doing the right thing is part of what it means to be a 'mind' or 'conscious.' Love and goodness is to consciousness what being physical, or existing in the universe, is to a rock. Mind/consciousness is a kind of substance or thing that follows different rules to physical stuff. One of these aspects of mind, different to rocks, is loving and being good. So mind is love.

So why are we tempted to have morally bad emotions in the first place?

Because our mind is localised in a brain, and the brain isn't 'love.' Our mind pulls us in the direction of loving others unconditionally. But since we use our brain to think, and the brain isn't love, we are pulled into thinking thoughts that aren't loving. Our mind gives us the free will to follow either side. This means that humans have to fight our (non-mind) brain to love in accordance with mind, whereas mind by itself is so loving that it IS love (God is love).

The question is: why did God make us brain-Minds instead of 'Mind' by itself? Couldn't God have taken away the possibility of evil? The answer is that to be pure mind you basically have to be God, I think. So the above setup (which makes sin very likely) needs to be the case.