The Problem of Hell

The Problem of Hell
Will G

Summary. This is intended to be a shorter article explaining my views on hell, offering a coherent solution to many of its problems. Basically, I argue that hell is based on a choice, the choice to accept or reject Jesus. But this choice must follow an important principle: it has to be made knowing the consequences. And no atheist finds it plausible that a person could knowingly choose to go to hell. My solution is to redefine heaven and hell so that heaven involves joining part of ourselves to God in order to do perfect good over an eternity, and hell involves either just exclusion from God or a finite amount of pain (finite despite it lasting forever.) I also argue that people's choice to go to such a heaven or hell defines whether or not they are a Christian in this life.

A good view of how this theology fits in with a greater picture is provided here.

Edited 12/17/07
12/19/07

Introduction

The problem of hell is regarded by those skeptical of Christianity as a very significant difficulty in Christian views on salvation. Rather than go on about the difficulties in Christian views on salvation, I will simply state a revised philosophical perspective on the issue that I think is conceptually clarifying and makes a great deal of sense.

Why Hell is a Choice

Christian views on salvation have always maintained that hell is a result of judgement. That is true. However since everyone allegedly has the ability to accept Jesus Christ and from then on face no judgement whatsoever, it is not just about judgement. It is about judgement, but there is something more to it than that. It is a specific judgement, relating not just to someone's sins, but to someone's refusal to do anything about those sins. In other words, it is not just about sin, it is also about accepting Jesus Christ. It is also about choice.

Two Key Principles of Choice

Since we are about to discuss choice, it is important to discuss two principles of choice that are involved in the choice to go to hell. The first principle is the principle that if you choose something, you are responsible for that choice. This principle supports the idea that people can be condemned for rejecting Jesus Christ. The second principle is that for a choice to be a real choice, it has to be made knowing the consequences. This is the area which atheists object makes the idea of choice regarding hell nonsensical.

The first principle of choice is that if you genuinely choose something, then the results of that choice cannot, really, be laid on someone else. If I choose to shoot myself, then who has the blame? Unless I was forced into it, I do, because I chose to do it. Similarly, if I go and join the army, and I get sent into a combat zone because there is a war on, then whose fault is it that I am in danger? It is mine, because I knew when I joined the army that I could be sent into danger. So if I go to hell, then whose fault is it, if I freely and fully chose to go there? Granted, hell is terrible. But the principle of choice has overriding power. Even though hell is really, really bad, if I freely choose to go there, it is all my fault, not God's. Hence if hell cannot be freely chosen, then hell can never be justified. But if hell can be freely chosen, then hell can be completely justified. That is how powerful the principle of choice is; properly employed it can justify hell. So if people freely choose to reject Jesus, then they deserve to be punished and to go to hell. If that choice is freely and fully made, then, logically, there is no problem with hell.

Now it is important to note the second principle that needs to be followed for a choice to be genuinely made. This principle needs to be followed for the above principle to work, and is the principle atheists say has been violated in the choice to go to hell (and that, hence, hell is unjustified). This principle is, that if I freely choose to do something, then it can only be genuinely be called a choice if I know what the consequences of my choice are. For example, suppose I give a tropical islander who has never seen a gun before a firearm. Suppose they then point it at another islander and pull the trigger, killing them. Did that person freely choose to shoot his fellow islander? Obviously not, because he did not know if he pulled the trigger, the person would die. So, the doctrine of hell makes no sense if people who go to hell do not choose to go there, and they can only freely choose to go there if they choose to go to hell knowing the consequences. So our doctrine of hell must show how people who go to hell freely choose to go there knowing the consequences of their choice.

Because atheists don't believe they reject Jesus because they want to go to hell, rather, they choose to reject Jesus because they see no evidence of Christianity, no atheist would agree that the concept of choice makes sense when applied to hell. To be sure, the concept of choice COULD theoretically justify hell, but it doesn't, as non-Christians would say, because non-Christians don't knowingly choose to go to hell.

How Hell Can Be a Choice

So does the Christian view of hell make sense given the atheist's objection? Christians have always maintained that when a person goes to hell, it is of their own free choice. But why would anyone choose to go to hell, really? Would a perfectly sane and healthy man, suffering no depression at all, leave his loving wife and kids and choose to jump off a cliff for no reason? It doesn't make sense. And, sad to say, many an atheist would say that the standard doctrine of hell makes about as much sense as that. Atheists may dislike God, or hate God, but why on earth would they choose to go to hell if they will get tortured there forever?

My modification to this position is to modify what heaven and hell actually are, from a Christian perspective, so that it is possible for some people to knowingly choose to go to hell.

On hell, it is true that hell will consist of suffering, but that suffering has been considerably over-emphasised. It is not necessary for an idea of an eternity of pain for that pain to be infinite. Let's say one day I break my leg. Let's say that every second I suffer 10 units of pain, hence over a minute I suffer 600 units of pain. That is why I do not wish to break my leg. But let's say time was stopped the moment my leg was broken. If so, then I would suffer 10 units of pain forever. That kind of thing is what hell could be. Or perhaps, as some argue (see here) it consists of no suffering at all, just the pain and shame from exclusion from God. This means if heaven involved a sufficient cost, some people could freely choose to go to hell.

And I argue that heaven also involves a large cost, one big enough to make an eternity of limbo a reasonable option for some people. While our souls and bodies will remain separate, our spirit will become one with God's Holy Spirit, as part of the perfection process where we will do good over an eternity. This means that we partly become part of God, and lose some of our 'self'. Of course, one may object this is not such a large cost. But what this choice is, what it really involves, is something we cannot really imagine. This may involve a considerable loss of self, to become partly part of God and/or lose a significant amount of autonomy and individuality. I find it difficult to conceptualise this, but I think that the extent to which we lose autonomy and individuality is the extent to which we would have to in order to have a lot of people choose willingly to go to hell/limbo. So some people will freely choose to go to hell.

Why do I think you have to join with God to go to heaven? In another area of my theology I have outlined (see here) I believe the only way to be completely morally perfect, or perfect in any respect, is to be God, because only God can, by definition, by perfect. Everything that is perfect is God, everything that is not God is not perfect, although it may be incredibly good. Total perfection is something only God can have. To be sure, God can create things outside of himself that are very good, extremely good, but not 100% perfect. So when God creates beings outside of himself, in order to create and love something apart from himself, the creatures he creates are extremely good, but not completely perfect. This is why the Fall occurred, because any being outside of God cannot do perfect good over an eternity, only God has that power. This explains why God did not create everyone perfect, and how everyone will be perfect in heaven. The way God will make everyone perfect in heaven is by joining our spirits with His Holy Spirit, so we will be able to do only perfect good over an eternity, using God's Holy Spirit to do so (I feel this is a good position to adopt because it also explains why there must be moral evil in the universe.) God has to do this otherwise we get eternally cut off from him due to our (necessary) imperfection.

How this Choice Can Show the World we See

Alright, so some people can freely choose to go to heaven, and some people can freely choose to go to hell. But that doesn't explain the world we see. It still doesn't defeat the problem that atheists don't knowingly choose to go to hell. Because even if it is a choice that can be rationally made in favour of hell, atheists and those who reject Christianity don't get to make it in this life, because no atheists and non-Christians know about the Christian hell in this life.

But as I argue, God is omniscient, and since he knows everything, he doesn't have to offer us this choice in this life. Instead, God knows which among us will choose to go to heaven, and who will choose to go to hell, if faced with that choice. So God doesn't have to offer us this choice right now in order to determine who will reject Jesus Christ. He knows who will reject Jesus already. So God is free to work as though atheists have already made a knowing choice to go to hell, even though they haven't. Because presumably God knows what they would choose if they were offered such a choice. And I believe we all get to face such a choice in the afterlife, but it won't contradict what God knew we would choose.

But that still doesn't explain why every Christian is a person who will choose to go to heaven and why every rejecting non-Christian will choose to go to hell if faced with the choice. After all, there are many kinds of Christians, and many kinds of non-Christians.

But I argue this objection is actually putting the cart before the horse, or rather, looking at a puddle and then remarking how lucky it is that the puddle is shaped around the hole (as Douglas Adams said in another context). God has omniscient knowledge, so he knows who would choose to go to hell or heaven if given a knowledgeable choice in the afterlife. Even though everyone who goes to hell currently lacks knowledge that hell exists, God knows what they would choose if they did make that choice freely, and thus ensures that they go to a place that honours that choice if they did make it (as they someday will.) And based on this knowledge, God makes people Christian or does not make someone Christian. So it is not surprising that all people God has made Christians go to heaven, and all those who would rather not make the choice for heaven go to hell: God has selected us, we haven't selected to accept or reject Christianity ourselves.

Of course, one objection following from this, is that there are many non-Christians who think they would actually make the choice to join with God, but don't presently have a Christian belief. But I would say this is a deep, internal choice, that we can only really fully make when faced with it in the afterlife, being shown the complete consequences of joining with God with His help. And it may not relate obviously to what we consciously think we would choose. We may think that we would choose to go to join with God, but we don't really know, for it is only with God's help that we can consciously and fully choose such a thing. I can't really explain what it would be like to consciously make such a choice, neither can any human. What would it be like to have one's spirit completely joined with and made subservient to God's Spirit, possessing some individuality but not all of that which you had before? I don't know, but I can guess it involves a cost to some people more than others.

Finally I will touch on one last objection, which is that it seems somewhat incongruous that there are clumps of Christians and atheists in the world, and the children of Christians tend to be Christian, but not the children of atheists. Another mechanism I think needs to be brought in to explain the distribution of Christians and non-Christians. That is that God actually allocates souls into this world, and that in some way souls must 'pre-exist', with God knowing their choices. So, hence, the makeup of Christians/non-Christians is the way it is to in some way to serve his mysterious will. On this point, I personally would like to think those who die before the age of accountability go to heaven, because they would have made the choice to go to heaven if they had gotten older, and those who never hear of Christianity do have some chance of being saved.

Conclusion

To summarize: hell can theoretically be justified if it can be explained how everyone who goes to hell chooses to go there fully knowing the consequences of their choice. But since no sane person would choose to do this, atheists argue, hell makes no sense. However, as I reply, some people could choose to freely go to hell if heaven involves a cost to one's self, and hell involves no pain or finite pain over an eternity. But why would people's choices in this matter be divided along Christian/rejected Christianity lines? Because God has made only those people Christian who would make the choice to become part of Him, and has caused those who reject Christianity to reject Christianity who would not make this choice to join with him in the afterlife. And God knows that we all would make that choice in a certain way because he is omniscient and can foretell what we would choose if we made that choice in the afterlife (which we do get to make in the afterlife, probably, but it's redundant.)

The discussion is continued here.

Will G
First written: 2/10/07

Michael Martin's disproof of God

Summary: Atheologians who are keen to disprove the idea of God often formulate disproofs of God based on analysing some of God's supposed attributes and demonstrating that they are inconsistent with each other or with themselves. In this essay I analyse one attempted disproof along these lines by philosopher Michael Martin. The problem with such disproofs, I argue, is that they set up definitions of God and then use those definitions to argue that God doesn't exist. But God is only the greatest possible being, and that is certainly coherent. So philosophers may be making up definitions that the greatest possible being cannot have, and thus essentially making up impossible characteristics that they use to disprove a being that could never have them, while ignoring the coherency of the greatest possible being, and what attributes THAT being has. That said, in the second section I put forward a hypothesis on why Michael Martin's definition of omniscience fails in disproving the greatest possible being. Finally I end on a more general note on all such arguments from an email discussion I had with someone where I mentioned this subject.

A philosopher called Michael Martin wrote an interesting attempted disproof of God's existence a while ago, available here, which I'd like to take a look at. Martin's argument, to rephrase it in my own words, is that the idea of omniscience (the way God can know everything) necessarily must include all kinds of knowledge. So, obviously, it would include propositional knowledge, like 'America is a country' but he argues also it must also include all other kinds of knowledge, such as experiential knowledge like how to swim. This wouldn't just be knowing how to swim as an intellectual idea, that you move your arms and legs in a certain way in the water, but to actually have knowledgeable experience of swimming. In the same way Michael Martin uses the example of experiencing, envy, lust, and other emotions that a God of complete love or goodness couldn't experience. If experiencing envy gives you a kind of knowledge of envy, and if God can't experience envy, then God can't really know everything and hence the idea of omniscience doesn't make sense. (Martin puts the argument a little differently, applying it only to the 'common person's' ideal of God, but since I think Martin's argument only has any force as long as it's applied to an orthodox Christian ideal of God, I am stating it against that. I am not sure of how that distinction is meant to work.)

I want to concentrate on this argument not just as a specific objection to God's existence, but as illustrative of a general type of argument I haven't yet addressed on this website. This will be done utilising two arguments that work against Michael Martin, and which also support each other. First of all, omniscience need not include all experiential knowledge to be omniscience, e.g. of swimming or lust, and secondly in some circumstances we intuitively reject the idea that omniscience does need to include all such kinds of experiential knowledge.

Martin's argument, I think, is ultimately based on the idea of contradictions existing in the attributes we give to God. God's non-physicality, his existence as a spirit, contradicts the idea that he can experience swimming, since a spirit cannot swim. In the same way, God's perfection contradicts with the idea God can experience envy, since envy is a morally bad emotion. As with lust, because God can't have sex, he cannot, it seems, experience lust. So Martin is showing that no matter what, God cannot really experience things that we can experience, through such contradictions. And through these contradictions we can see that God can't experience things humans can, he can't have, as Michael says all kinds of 'procedural knowledge'.

To make my first argument, before getting on Michael Martin's objection to God specifically, (I will get on to that in a second) I would like to point out how dangerous it is to argue that because two attributes of God are contradictory, then God doesn't exist. This point applies to all God-contradiction arguments generally. If someone points out a contradiction in two supposed attributes of God, then we should defend the idea of God as much as possible, but if two supposed attributes really are contradictory then it does not mean that God doesn't exist, but that we misidentified and mis-analysed the attributes he does have. The idea of 'the greatest possible being', which is a philosophical definition of God, certainly makes sense. So it may be that God can't really be omnipotent and omniscient in the way some people understand it, but that just means he has the next best thing, whatever that may be. And if that means God can't make two and two equal five, then he has the next best thing, which is to do anything logically possible (so, everything apart from making two and two equal five.) So, the greatest possible being can't make two and two equal five, but he can do everything else. And if tomorrow we discovered that God can't for example, make more than a certain number of planets in a second, then that will mean that the greatest possible being can't make two and two equal five, and can't make more than a certain number of planets. So we would define omnipotence differently, to cope with our new understanding, just as we would define omnipotence differently if we understood something new about omniscience that contradicted our understanding of omnipotence. But that doesn't mean the greatest possible being can't exist, only that he actually has fewer abilities that we originally thought. Philosophers need to be careful lest they fall into definitional confusions, and mistake those definitional confusions for real discoveries about God, or the non-existence of God.

The question from this in my mind is whether a clear, well-thought out, comprehensive analysis of the greatest possible being would show the greatest possible being can't have the attributes of the kind of God described in the Bible, because it turns out the Biblical God really can't have attributes we think he should have. So, the real question is, not whether two attributes of God are contradictory, since ultimately that can't disprove the greatest possible being, it is whether on closer philosophical analysis, the greatest possible being is not only limited in making two and two equal five, but in, for example, how much love he can give his creatures at any one time. If he was limited in such a way, that would undermine Christianity.

I think specifically in regards to Michael Martin, that he is putting the cart before the horse in this aspect. Martin is arguing that a personal God must necessarily have experiential knowledge, but that he can't have experiential knowledge of how to swim, for example, so he can't have as much knowledge as humans, and hence can't be all-knowing. But, remember, omniscience is only the best omniscience any being can have. Michael is putting the cart before the horse. Our idea of omniscience shouldn't define how how we think of the greatest possible being, rather the idea of the greatest possible being should define how we think of omniscience. It may be that the best kind of omniscience God can have, and that is actually possible, is one in which a supreme being doesn't have all kinds of experiential knowledge, just like the best kind of omnipotence doesn't include the ability to make two and two equal five. To be sure, I'll grant to Michael Martin that God doesn't know some things that we know, like lust or envy. But then again, you'd think that the problem would be that omniscience is nonsensical, NOT that God can't experience lust or envy. In other words, I see how it undermines Christianity that God can't be omniscience, I don't see how it damages Christianity to say that God can't experience lust. But I think Martin's argument only applies on the weaker level.

That said, I would like to make a second argument that Michael Martin's objection isn't that strong, supporting my one above - based on the idea that we can make analogies with Michael Martin's argument where it doesn't seem fair that he should have to know some things to be omniscient. And I would argue that this is because the concept of omniscience, properly understood, automatically excludes experiences God can't have by definition. And this can be shown in examples where we feel such knowledge can be excluded from God without undermining his omniscience.

In some sense, I can know propositionally how to eat, and I can know how to eat because I have experienced eating firsthand. In the same way I can know propositionally that a person called Will G exists (myself), and I can know propositionally that I am Will G. But the propositional knowledge that 'I', and only I am Will G, is a kind of propositional knowledge that no one else can have. God can't know 'I am Will G' as a statement about himself, nor can you, nor can anyone else who reads this. Only I can. But does this mean that God isn't omniscience in a propositional sense? Of course not. That would be very unfair on God; to say he can't know all facts just because He can't know He is Will G. Actually no atheist philosopher I know of has said such a thing, because it is so ridiculous to demand that of God. This is because, by definition, God can't know 'I am Will G', so it's unfair to suppose that he should know it in order to qualify for omniscience. But, as I will argue, experiential knowledge like how to swim can be contradictory in much the same way.

Is it possible to have experiential knowledge of how to be Will G? For example, I have swum before, so I know how to swim, as an experience that I've had. But could you argue that I also have experience of being Will G, as I am Will G? Is being yourself something you can have experience of? In other words, can I know 'how' to be Will G as a kind of procedural knowledge? I would say there is no good reason to think just like swimming, or playing tennis, that you can't experience and get experiential knowledge of being yourself. But if this is true, then Michael Martin's argument can be reduced to absurdity. Demanding that God must have all kinds of experiential knowledge, including the experiential knowledge of how to be Will G, is like saying that because God hasn't experienced being George W. Bush, he can't know everything. That sounds like some kind of joke on atheistic arguments. But it's really just the experiential version of the propositional argument that since God can't know propositionally 'I am Will G' or 'I am George Bush', then he doesn't have the right amount of knowledge to be qualified as omniscient.

The thing is, I'm not saying that experiential knowledge of how to swim is not knowledge, just as knowing how to lust is not knowledge. Just as I'm not saying that propositional knowledge that 'I am Will G' is not a kind of knowledge. But it doesn't matter to our idea of God or our definition of omniscience if God doesn't know some things. Just as we intuitively know that for some reason, it doesn't matter to God's omniscience that he can't have all propositional knowledge, like 'I am Will G', so it doesn't matter to God's omniscience that he can't have all experiential knowledge, like how to be Will G. There is something absurd about the example that since God can't know I am Will G, he can't know everything. And this absurdity that makes us reject that argument should make us reject Michael Martin's. The difference I think that makes it more absurd to say this than what Michael Martin was saying, is that many people can know how to swim, but not many people can know how to be Will G or George Bush, just one, and it is in fact logically impossible for all those other people to know.

So, it seems that if it's unfair in a propositional sense to declare that if God can't know 'I am Will G', or else he gets kicked out of the omniscience club, then it must be unfair in the experiential sense to demand God experience lust, swimming, or building a house with his hands or he gets kicked out of the experiential knowledge club. God can't know 'I am Will G' by definition, he can't experience being Will G by definition, he can't experience lust or swimming by definition. And if we say God is omniscient even though he can't know he is Will G, because God can't know that by definition, then it also must be unfair to demand God experience lust, blind hatred, swimming, and building a house if he cannot by definition.

The key point is what you can't know by definition. And what you can't know by definition is automatically excluded from the concept of omniscience as it can apply to you.

So, if an atheist does not wish to make the point that, because God can't experience being Will G, therefore he can't experience everything and is hence not omniscient, he cannot make the same point with regard to other experiential knowledge, like how to build a house, how to feel lust or how to swim. So whatever we may have thought at first, God gets off the philosophical hook in some way. And so it really doesn't undermine His existence at all to say He can't experience lust, envy, or how to swim.

1/26/07

Post Note

This is part of an email discussion I had with someone where I summarised some relevant points relating to this issue.

XXZ wrote,

Hey!

Have you seen this argument I found on a website of a philosopher?

[Link]


I wrote in reply

I had a very quick look at the article, just skimming it. It's interesting, because I think in a way it's similar to Michael Martin's disproof of God that I wrote about. No one that I know of has been convinced by Michael Martin's disproof of God, I personally cannot imagine anyone being convinced by it, because to me at least, it has so little force. Yet for me, actually figuring out why I probably thought this took a long time.

Ultimately I think a lot of atheistic arguments that attempt to disprove God are based on definitional confusions. For example, God is conceived of as being omnipotent, which means he can do anything, and omniscient, which means he knows everything. But he can't know how to lust, so he isn't omnipotent or omniscient. But the problem here is that omnipotence has been defined wrongly, as has omniscience. The argument arises because someone has made a *plausible* definition, that means God should know how to lust, but this plausible definition is just that: plausible, it is not the truth.

So in relation to this philosopher's argument I think he is using plausible definitions of spatial unlocatedness, space, spatial points etc. that have served him and philosophy well. But I think he is making definitions that are just plausible and do not encompass the whole truth of the concepts he is using. And thus he is getting caught in a definitional confusion, because he's using those 'only plausible' definitions to argue God doesn't exist, just like those who make up attributes of God and argue that since those attributes are contradictory, God can't exist.

Exactly how are his definitions just plausible and not the truth, you might ask? Well, first of all, philosophers have a really bad track record at defining things properly (we still don't agree on what 'mind' is, what 'person' is, what 'good' and 'evil' are, etc). Secondly, I think that his argument is only as strong as the plausibility not only of the definitions he is using, but of the precise delineation of those definitions, which I find implausible for any philosophical definition, and not only philosophical but just about any definition of anything generally except something really simple like, 'what is a tent.' And thirdly I don't find his argument at all persuasive I have the strong suspicion that his definitions do not encompass the whole truth of the concepts he is using.

I think these points should make us very cautious about making strong conclusions regarding ANY arguments that primarily rely on definitions about stuff. Whether it's an atheological argument for the nonexistence of God, or whether it's some elaborate theological argument regarding God's nature or something like that.