Problems with Heaven, by Michael Martin

[bannock]

One of the analogies that Mr. Martin gives to show how unfair or unjust the reward of Heaven is is not very convincing. His analogy is this, "A father who bestowed unmerited gifts on some of his children and not on others would be considered unjust and arbitrary.� While I agree with his statement the way it is written, the difference between that example and Heaven is that the "unmerited gift" from God is not just given to "some", it is available to all. If the father in his example gave all the children unmerited gifts but some decided that they didn't want to receive it and the father respected their wishes, would that still be considered "unjust" or "arbitrary"?

The other thing that catches my eye is the interpretation of "children" we tend to use with analogies between a father and his children (and this is just a pure assumption on my part). I always see the "child" as being around 3 or 4 yrs old and having a typical full-grown adult as the "father". Of course the child is "innocent" and "learning" and therefore it is "just" and "fair" to show leniency whenever they do things that are against the fathers wishes. Now what if the "child" was a full-grown, responsible-for-their-actions adult in their fifties and they blatantly decided to constantly go against thier father’s wishes? Typically in the real world, the two do not have a close relationship and become separated because of the "child's" actions. This separation is a pretty harsh punishment even by worldly standards. How many times in the movies have they portrayed a guy showing regret and weeping openly at the death of his father with whom he did not have a close relationship and the torment that has caused them? Do we blame the father for this? Or does the blame fall on the child that says, "Leave me alone, I'm doing it my way."

I'm not trying to debunk his whole argument; I'm just saying that this particular argument appears pretty weak.

[-DM-]

[Thank you for your feedback regarding Problems with Heaven (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/michael_martin/heaven.html) by Michael Martin (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/michael_martin/index.shtml). E-mail notification has been sent to the author. Although there are no guarantees, you might want to check back from time to time for a further response following this post. -DM-]

[Wanchick]

You may wish to consult my critique of Dr. Martin's arguments against Heaven.

My essay is entitled, "Trouble in Paradise: Michael Martin on Heaven" and can be found here at the Secular Web at:

www.infidels.org/library/modern/tom_wanchick/heavenly_probs.shtml

[Edited only to fix broken URL. -DM-]

[bannock]

Tom,

Thanks for the reply with the Christian viewpoint but sadly it has raised even more questions in my mind. For example you say:

"In order for Christians to undercut Martin's argument, they can hold that, possibly, those who never come across the Gospel are people who, if provided the Gospel message, would eschew it anyway. God then may not find it important for such persons to hear the Gospel. Thus, it would be their disposition towards rejecting God that ultimately brings about their own ignorance of God and His message of saving faith. In essence, the inclination towards wickedness and ungodliness ultimately drives their separation from Him. It would not be shocking, then, if they finally attain permanentseparation from God, or Hell."

To me that says that my God, the being that I believe created and creates every person and everything about every person, created those people solely to go to Hell.

In another part you say that "Martin also writes that, "if Craig is correct, everyone has had an experience of the Holy Spirit. One has to assume, then, that people in certain geographical regions are more irrational than people in other regions" and he finds this implausible. Now in a sense the assertion that non-Christians are irrational in rejecting the Holy Spirit is misleading. For rejecting God and Heaven is not irrational for someone who in fact doesn't prefer God or Heaven. And I have noted repeatedly that the disposition of most human persons is in fact in conflict with the type of attitude that prefers God. But still this does not answer the other question as to why Christian belief has the sort of geographical spread that it does. Well, in reply to that issue, I again allude to God's providence. What if in coming to the optimal number of saved and damned humans, God had to providentially order the world such that the patterns of belief we find resulted? In effect, it appears to me that Dr. Martin might have the order of explanation reversed: he seems to presume that a person's rejection or acceptance of Christian faith will depend largely on where he or she lives or is raised. But what if the tables are turned? Maybe God places people in specific places based upon what their reaction to Him would be. This in fact is the biblical view (Acts 17:24-27)."

What is the "optimal number of saved and damned humans"? I've never heard of this teaching growing up in a Baptist church. Is this like the Jehovah’s Witnesses belief that only "144,000" people will go to heaven? Wouldn't the "optimal" number of the "damned" be zero?

The other part of this section that stood out to me was, "Why would God need to group us together?" He's GOD. If he wanted "x" number of people saved he could just as easily do it all over the world as he could having everyone grouped together. And following your logic, He again is creating beings with the sole purpose of suffering eternal damnation (the ones that are placed outside of the "saved" geographical area).

Finally, the part that bothered me the most in your writings is the passage that "one must have the "eyes to see" God and His work before one will have any real chance to find evidence for God". It bothers me because it comes across as a very cult-like thing to say. I'm sure that there are many cults that issue this same preface and there are many followers of those cults that do truly believe that they see "evidence" of their beliefs.

Please don't feel that I am attacking you personally or that I am setting you up just to argue with you. I'm simply a man that has been a part of the Baptist church and it's beliefs for 35 years and for some reason I'm really starting to struggle with the New Testament. I was actually glad to see that the person who answered my original statement was defending the faith, but I still felt those questions and doubts that I've stated above while reading it.

bannock

[Michael Martin]

The author ("bannock") questions the analogy that I use by maintaining that the father (God) makes the gift available to every one and some people reject God's offer. But an important point of my argument is that this gift of Jesus' salvation through trust in Jesus as the Messiah is NOT available to everyone. For example, it is not available to small infants, severely mentally retarded persons, or to non-Christians who have never heard of Jesus. I would suggest that the author reread my paper.

Micahel Martin

[Wanchick]

Bannock,

Thanks for reading my essay. I appreciate the comments and questions.

Let me say some things about your recent post.

It is true that God creates some people knowing they will go to Hell. But this does not imply that He creates them *for that reason*. Rather, I would submit that possibly such people exist as necessary parts of God's plan to reach the optimal number of saved persons.

As an example, take a mother and child. God knows that the mother is an ardent atheist and would never opt for Christianity. But the child will someday grow up to be a Christian. Should God avoid creating the mother, just so that she won't go to Hell? I don't think so. For in doing so, the child would not be born and so would miss his chance at Heaven. But I don't see why the child should miss out simply because his mother is too hard-hearted to accept Christ. I think this shows possibly why God would allow people to exist although He knows they will reject Him. They may be important participants in God's redemptive purposes.

Secondly, you ask what I mean by the "optimal number of persons saved." An example will again suffice. Seven people are in a car collision. The car will explode momentarily. You have two choices: call 911 or try to pull each one out of the wreck. The first choice will allow 4 to live; the second will let only 3 live. The better choice is of course calling 911, since it allows the most to live (4) and the least to die (3).

The "optimal number of saved persons" here is 4. I think something similar might hold in God and salvation. God cannot just force everyone into Heaven, since entering Heaven is partially up to the human. Men must freely choose to follow Christ. Thus, God may only be able to save a limited number of persons (depending on how they freely choose), all the while allowing some to enter Hell. The optimal number would the most that He can save without allowing too many to be damned.

As for the geography or "grouping" question, I just hold that in coming to this optimal number of saved persons, this may have been where God had to put us. For instance, if God knew that we would come to salvation through Billy Graham, He may design things such that you and I are both at the Billy Graham rally on Tuesday. But in order for us both to be there, we must be in that region. You see my point. It is not that people in certain countries are more inclined towards Christianity. It is possibly, rather that God places those inclined towards Christ in similar areas so that they can be reached most economically.

Lastly, I hold that one must have the "eyes to see" Christ in the sense that he must be open to His message and person. If someone hates Christianity or theism, they won't be able to see Christianity's truth. But this holds in most areas of knowledge. As I note in my paper, many people hold ridiculous beliefs simply because, they are biased against the truth. Thus, a drug addict won't admit his addiction despite the fact that his life is a shambles. Our biases and presuppositions often cloud our knowledge. I don't see that knowledge of God is excluded from this.

Thanks again,
Tom Wanchick

[RUmike]

Wanchick wrote:

Wanchick wrote:
Thus, God may only be able to save a limited number of persons (depending on how they freely choose), all the while allowing some to enter Hell. The optimal number would the most that He can save without allowing too many to be damned.

In this scenario, only 4 of the 7 people can be saved because the "you" is a finite human being with limited capabilities. However, your god is supposedly infinitely wise. Are you admitting that the best an infinitely wise god can do is convince a rather small portion of the human population of his existence? Because afterall, billions of honest, decent, truth-seeking people have died, and continue to die, utterly ignorant of the gospel of salvation or absolutely unconvinced of its truth. Only 4 of the people in the car could be saved because that is the best the person can do, but that is actually more than half of the people. Currently just under one third of the world is "Christian", and many not likely worthy of salvation according to their very own creed. Can God not do any better than that?

I understand your point that some people may be close-minded to the possibility of the existence of a god, but are you admitting that your infinitely wise god cannot devise any personal revelation or communication to the individuals to make any difference in their belief? To me, this is more of an insult to your god's intelligence than a testament to its supremacy.

[Wanchick]

In this scenario, only 4 of the 7 people can be saved because the "you" is a finite human being with limited capabilities. However, your god is supposedly infinitely wise. Are you admitting that the best an infinitely wise god can do is convince a rather small portion of the human population of his existence?

No, I think God could make all believe that He exists if He wished to. But that is irrelevant. For my point is merely that God cannot make people freely worship or love Him. It is logically impossible to force someone to freely do something. Thus, God will have to leave it up to us whether we follow Him or not. And my point is that, since this is case, it may be that the actual world with its balance of Christians and non-Christians is the optimal result God could obtain without destroying human free will.

I understand your point that some people may be close-minded to the possibility of the existence of a god, but are you admitting that your infinitely wise god cannot devise any personal revelation or communication to the individuals to make any difference in their belief? To me, this is more of an insult to your god's intelligence than a testament to its supremacy

Again, I think God could make everyone believe He exists. But He cannot force everyone to freely bow to Him. That requires a choice on the human's part and thus is outside of God's control.

Thanks for your questions. I hope I helped clarify things.

--Tom Wanchick

[RUmike]

Thanks for you reply. However, I didn't say (or mean, perhaps), "Can't god make people believe in him?" I said, "Can't god convince people to believe in him?", that is, with the proper evidence? I think there is a large difference.

If he is all powerful and intelligent, can't he devise a scheme to present the proper evidence for each individual as is necessary for each person's reason to believe that God exists? This wouldn't be forcing belief on anyone. He wouldn't be changing the way their mind reasons, but instead he would just present sufficient evidence to them. Whatever evidence presented by necessity would be true, and thus I see nothing wrong with that evidence being presented in order to convice each person.

If I tell my friend I got an A on my last physics exam, and he doesn't believe me, I could easily offer more proof than just my word and actually show him the graded exam. But this wouldn't be forcing him to believe anything, it would just be providing the sufficient evidence so that any reasonable and sane person would believe it. Why can't God do the same?

[Wanchick]

Thanks for your further inquiries.

Your question of whether God could provide the sort of evidence sufficient to make the vast majority of humans believe He exists is tricky. In fact, I'm inclined to answer with a 'no'. That is because, much of what we believe depends on our prior dispositions, our taste, and so forth. Was there abundant and clear evidence that O.J. Simpson was guilty such that any rational person should see this? Yes. But that didn't stop many in the black community from believing O.J. was innocent. Why? Well, because, they were so prejudiced in his favor that they were unable to make proper judgements.

In the same way, Christianity says that men are bent away from God due to sin. I think this implies that many men would simply reject good evidence for God's existence simply because they have an aversion to theism. (Remember the story in Exodus where God shows Himself blatantly to the Hebrews and yet they still turn to their idols).

At any rate, even if God could produce near universal theistic belief, I doubt it would be of much significance. That's because, mere belief that God exists is almost worthless unless it is conjoined to a commitment to follow God. And since men are sinful, many, even if they believe God exists, would probably not freely follow Him. This is important when it comes to the question of God's having the ability to save the "optimal number" of people. For instance, maybe if God created a certain group of 7 people, only 4 would become Christians. But, let's assume further that God had to make all 7 (rather than just the 4) in order for those 4 to exist and to follow Him (e.g., Joe can exist only if his mother Janice exists and gives birth to him). In that case, the optimal number of saved is 4 persons; 3 will be damned. And, given the constraints of human freedom, this is perhaps the best God can do.

Does this make sense to you? You may wish to look at my Secular Web paper entitled "Trouble in Paradise?: Michael Martin on Heaven" which talks about some of these issues.

--Tom Wanchick

[Neanderthal]

I hope I helped clarify things.I believe you that you "hope" you have clarified things, but you certainly have not done so for me. In fact, you have strengthened my tendency to disbelieve because your ad hoc "clarifications" are unconvincing in the face of the objections that have been raised by others here in this topic, as well as by Michael Martin's article. There is far too much of this kind of thing in your responses:


I would submit that possibly
I think this shows possibly
I think something similar might hold
God may only
I just hold that
This may have been
He may design things such that
It is possibly
I hold that
It may be that
I'm inclined to answer withIt isn't enough to come up with a how-it-might-possibly-be "explanation" based on what you are "inclined to answer with" or what you think "possibly is"; you need to show why your "explanations" should be taken over other possible explanations if you truly intend to be taken seriously.

BZ

[pachomius2000]

What exactly is the problem? which people who can't accept eternal punishment and think that God should also have that same problem they have.

I want to see that problem from the standpoint of personality psychology of human beings in modern civilized and humanistic society.

Since the advocates and apologists of God has made of God a person and endowed Him with human behavioral instances like justice, mercy, love, anger, patience, sense of proportion, magnaminity, etc., then I think they should go all the way to make of God a person Who is not mean and petty, which mean-ness and petty-ness is even more mean and more petty, thereby more unworthy of the person of God for His being infinitely in everything as regards quality and quantity.

In the present state of human personality psychology the value has emerged that cruel and unusual punishments should not be imposed for whatever crimes a human person has committed; because mankind has reached the conclusion that it is more worthy of human nature not to be mean and petty; so that in regard to criminals death is no longer considered acceptable in civilized society; and cruel, unusual punishments are condemned for being again unworthy of civilized society, of human beings as possessed of the right personality psychology.

No matter how the advocates and apologists of God try to explain things so that God comes out smelling like a rose, notwithstanding His punishment of some people with eternal hell, He still just the same in terms of the present state of human personality psychology and the values of civilized society, He will always come out as mean and petty, and not worthy to be in the midst of fellow persons like human beings.

The solution for the advocates and apologists of God is to revise their doctrin of hell so that it is not eternal, whatever else it is; or to come out and declare that God is mean and petty, and not portray Him as a person, with all the behavioral instances of human persons: goodness, love, justice, mercy, patience, sense of proportion, magnanimity, etc.

In the latter case, the people who do get to hell deservedly in God's perspectives of deserts, as propounded by His self-acclaimed advocates and apologists, can rightly call God mean and petty for eternity in their eternal hell: not of course to the constenation of God, but to the consternation of His self-proclaimed advocates and apologists.

Pachomius2000

[pachomius2000]

Whereas man has grown more and more in nobility, God is still the same God when it comes to punishment of an eternal kind.

But that is not really the problem with God, but with His self-appointed spokesmen who are obsessed with in effect a cosmological sadism.


At the beginning when man was a child in his thinking faculties and in his affections, he was like a wild animal of the jungle; so he pictured God like himself, wild and irrational and heartless.

Then man developed what I call noble sentiments like kindness, fairness, justice, charity, self-sacrifice, service, modesty, courtesy, good manners. His God also developed these traits.

Much later man became a philosopher, His God also became a God which is the product of philosophical speculations on the infinite.

Now, take notice of this development or growth of God: side by side with the growth in nobility of man and the corresponding development of his concept of God, there is also the retardation or more properly the stagnation in the concept of God by people who also suffer from retardation or stagnation in their development of a personality that can be called possessed of nobility.

So for these latter people who are retardates or 'stagnates' in their growth, resulting in their being behind and stuck in ignobility, like obsession with capital punishment -- those government people in Texas, for example, exemplified by Bush and his clique, now governing the U.S.A., to the disaster of the rest of the American people -- their God is a God who is obsessed also with the analogous eternal hell.

They can continue with their God of eternal hell, of course, on the guarantee of the First Amendment. But for the rest of mankind, we would rather if theistic have a God Who has grown up like us, in nobility.

So for theists the concept of an eternal hell is not worthy of God, not the God Who has grown and advanced in His personality psychology, as man has also grown and advanced in his ideas of what behavioral traits are worthy of man in man's own picture of human nobility.

What to do with people whose God is a God of eternal punishment, eternal hell? Flee them like the plague; because they are mean and petty and their God is also mean and petty like themselves. They make a God to their own image, one of mean-ness and petty-ness. They will burn, destroy, and slaughter, fellowmen, like the retardates and stagnates they are, a failure of personality development, trapped still in their jungle of ignobility.

Pachomius2000

[pachomius2000]

Our good friend, bannock, is the author of this thread. But he seems to have gone away. I think he should come back and round up this thread. To engage in a message board and to author a thread and then to disappear totally, without so much as a by your leave, I think is most unworthy of Christian courtesy.

Now, bannock -- and his colleagues, if you are still frequenting your thread now and then, please react to my two contributions here so far.

If you don't think you have anything to add or to respond to in this thread which you have started, then at least you should have the diplomacy to tell us all here, contributors and viewers something to this effect:

"Well, you all seem to have produced some objections which I can't answer to your satisfaction; but I want you all to know that what I have is the conviction of my heart and mind that I am right and I do possess the truth that will bring me to heaven.

"So I will just admit that there are questions on my faith which I am myself not able to explain to my natural reason satisfactorily. But then that is the merit of faith. What is faith if it can be explained and understood by human reason?

"As you dwell on the level of human reason alone, I dwell in a different domain, that of as I said, faith, even qualifying it as blind faith: blind insofar as I can't make heads or tails of in terms of my human reason.

"Such is the sacrifice and the testimony my God requires of us believers. As one of your masters says: Faith is the unquestionable and unchallengeable privilege of the believer in his faith, and it is quaranteed by the First Amendment.-- Susma Rio Sep (postgraduate Catholic)".

Now, bannock -- and company, allow me to give you another observation for you to think about and be grateful to your God for having not only called you but chosen you to be His predestined ones.

In religion we are dealing as in all human conscious activities, with what I call scriptism. Scriptism is exemplified in the formal dinner. Eating is eating, but formal dining is more than eating. So in religion we are in a special kind of scriptism which the believers adhere to as in formal dining.

First, believers in a religion hold to a set of theoretical statements, then they map out a set of behavioral guidelines, all of course in pursuit of an objective they also themselves in their script put up before themselves to attain.

What is that Shakespeare says about all the world is a stage and all the men and women are mere players thereof? I have mentioned this insight of Shakespeare elsewhere in this message board. And I think it is very relevant also here.

That is why there are so many kinds of religions, even contradictory ones. But remember the script is essentially the same, namely, and here is my own definition of religion or call it faith:

Religion is a form of human behavior founded upon a belief in an unknown power resulting in affections and in actions intended by the believer to influence the power to react favorably to the believer.

The script there is the belief and then all the consequent and subsequent emotional and behavioral enactments as on a stage.

Pachomiuss2000