02 Feb 2015

Ravi Zacharias Fields a Tough Question About Atheists and Hell

Religious 13 Comments

This is a very intense question, and he relaxes everyone with two jokes at first. This guy is as smooth and gentle as Barry White.

13 Responses to “Ravi Zacharias Fields a Tough Question About Atheists and Hell”

  1. LK says:

    How laughable.

    First, G. E. Moore’s ethical naturalism and the logical positivist emotivist theory ethics have been abandoned by virtually all modern analytic philosophers.

    The fact that we an innate sense of right and wrong is explained by Darwinian evolution. Environment makes human morality different in different places and times. We can have a secular objective morality, however, by reason, rationality and critical thinking, e.g, as in consequentiality ethics. No god is necessary.

    Innate moral feeling and the existence of a human conscience do not provide any evidence for god nor for any “natural” divine law. We can have an objective morality without religion. And the alternative divine command theory is the most hideous moral theory imaginable. The problem with divine command theory is this: is something good (1) solely because god orders it, or (2) because it is good by some other objective criteria?

    If (1), then god can forbid rape today, but order every man on earth to do it tomorrow. There are no moral absolutes in the conventional sense. If (2), then divine command theory collapses: there must be standards of right and wrong independent of god and that even god must respect, and that cannot be changed by god. That also destroys the ludicrous notion that he could be literally “omnipotent.”

    Theistic natural rights ethics are just as flawed. Nobody can show that there is any divine natural rights or natural law without first providing a good argument for the existence of god, and none of the same tired, bankrupt arguments he offers provide any good evidence for a classical Judeo-Christian god at all.

    If god was eternal and uncreated, then it is perfectly logical possible for our universe to be embedded in an eternal uncreated cosmological structure (e.g., a multiverse).

    The argument from design, even if sound, would prove only that there was some creative agent, but there is no necessary reason why the agent need be divine and certainly not the Judeo-Christian god.

    The ontological argument is completely unsound.

    I’ve already dealt with the moral argument above.

    The “historical” argument for Christianity is laughable. Take the resurrection: this is precisely the point where the gospels become hopelessly contradictory, discrepant, inconsistent and increasing filled with legendary embellishment as you move from the earliest gospel Mark to the latest gospel John.

    The earliest Christian writings of Paul do not even say anyone found an empty tomb or that anybody saw a walking, talking corpse. For Paul, Jesus’s “appearances” are just visions, which can explained as dreams, hallucinations, ecstatic delusions.

    • Z says:

      “The fact that we an innate sense of right and wrong is explained by Darwinian evolution. ”

      It is very difficult to actually demonstrate this. Most people have been instructed in moral terminology and have learned to associate certain emotions in certain situations with moral terms since they were toddlers. To try to tease apart what is an innate sense and what are merely word associations is very difficult. I personally don’t think there is any ‘innate sense of right or wrong.’ Morality is only a social construct.

      “The problem with divine command theory is this: is something good (1) solely because god orders it, or (2) because it is good by some other objective criteria? ”

      This is a good question, but there are two points regarding this:

      1. Does it matter that something is good solely because God orders it? If God has the power (not saying he exists or he does) to make actions moral or immoral, are they thus not now moral or immoral? It’s like if a tree’s leaves are green, and you question ‘why’ the trees leaves are green. Are the leaves ‘greenness’ now called into question because you see no convincing purpose to their being green? No, they are still green, whether there is a purpose to it or not.

      2. Secular humanism is not free from this criticism of being arbitrary. Your contention is that if God made morality, it is arbitrary because there is no purpose behind it, it’s just what he created. And if secular morality is true, what is the purpose behind that? There is no purpose behind it either, it’s just whatever the universe or the human mind has intrinsically built into it. This criticism is not something that distinguishes secular from religious morality.

  2. LK says:

    “consequentiality” ethics should be *consequentialist* ethics.

    • Major.Freedom says:

      Consequentiaist ethics collapses upon subjection to “reason, rationality and critical thinking.”

      Any ethic must tell us what we ought to do in the here and now. Consequentialism on the other hand demands that we suspend judgment of what we can and cannot do in the present, until after the effects of any action takes place in the future, however far into the future such effects are to be spread out. This is a praxeological impossibility. We cannot act in the present without having an idea of who owns what and whether or not it is right or wrong for me to simp!y force your body this way and that, and then dismiss your claims that I am acting unethically because I am waiting, as a consequentialist, to see in 15 years whether my actions in the present had a desirable outcome.

      Consequentialism, far from being the result of “reason, rationality, and critical thinking”, is a direct repudiation of them.

      Promoting it is also a self-contradiction, because it order to even be in a position to promote it, using whatever material means at your disposal, you are presupposing that you ought to be able to do what you do with those means, which of course entails an ethic. That ethic is that you are in the present the exclusive rights holder of your person and the material means with which you promote your contradictory ethic. Even if you disagreed with this, and pretended in your mind that it is in principle possible for you to believe you ought not use your body and those material means to promote consequentialism, as a means to disproving the alleged presupposed ethical norms in being identified by me as present, you would still be presupposing an ethic. And finally, even if you pretended to believe that it is possible in principle to suspend your judgment about whether what you do now in the present to be ethical or unethical, until after the effects are observed, and you claim THAT is the only proper means to grounding any ethic, then you would STILL be contradicting yourself because in that case, you would be asserting yet another ethical norm for present activity, namely, the present ethic that the only valid means to establishing whether or not one’s present activity is ethical, is by present expectations of future effects. That is still a presupposition of present, in the now ethics. And even if you here tried to then claim that consequentialism as an ethical method is itself verified or established or made true based on consequentialist considerationsz, then you would be engaging in circular reasoning where consequentialism’s validity depends on proving it using consequentialist methods. You would be in the same boat as the creationists who claim God’s morality is true because it is confirmed by God.

      • Major.Freedom says:

        And you mischaracterize “naturalist ethics”…again.

        Naturalist ethics does not hold that they are psychologically self-evident the way pears and trees are. There is no assumption of any divine being. There is no assumption that people will in fact act in accordance with them.

        All naturalist ethics contains is a list of lights and ought nots that are logically consistent with the nature of mankind. This is not to say that one has to know the full nature of man first. Only that man has a nature, and that whatever that nature is, there is only one grand ethical scheme the premises of which do not contradict that nature.

        You take any ethical statement whatever, and it will either contradict the nature of mankind, or be consistent with it. Take “Thou shalt murder others”. This is not consistent with mankind’s nature because mankind’s nature presupposes life, and murder is the negation of life. No, this is not a fallacy (e.g. appeal to nature) because I do not define what is good to be what is natural. I make no moral judgments at all, I make only descriptive judgments of what is and what is not consistent with mankind’s nature. I let you decide whether the good is to act in accordance with mankind’s nature and whether the bad is to act contrary to it. I do not need to approve of it simply because you advance a morality that goes against my nature but you claim is consequentially moral, or socially moral.

      • LK says:

        “Consequentialism on the other hand demands that we suspend judgment of what we can and cannot do in the present, until after the effects of any action takes place in the future”

        It says no such thing. But no doubt you feel no shame in uttering endless falsehoods.

        It says we must act now in terms of what seems to be best for the future, on the basis of inductive argument and relevant past empirical evidence and circumstances. The fact that we might in some cases be wrong does not refute this general principle as the best and most rational way to think about morality.

        • Major.Freedom says:

          “It says we must act now in terms of what seems to be best for the future, on the basis of inductive argument and relevant past empirical evidence and circumstances.”

          This does not disprove my point. The only way to know the future directly is by experiencing it, which requires us to suspend claims of knowledge of right ethical behavior in the present, until that future is experienced, whereby we will allegedly know if what we did prior was ethical or not.

          Any claims to knowing what is ethical and unethical in the present must in the nature of the case be at most guesses, subject to the problem of induction.

          And you again contradict yourself. For now you are approving of claiming induction based knowledge of “objective probability scores”, of specific micro phenomena effects and outcomes, which is what individual ethical theorizing must be. To tell me what I ought to do now versus what I ought not do, is constraining prediction to my individual behavior and the outcomes of my indivisual behavior, which you previously claimed you cannot predict inductively. You previously said you can only at best use induction to predict broad, society wide trends and patterns of aggregate variables. Now you’re saying induction is valid for basing present ethics on predictions of the individual’s ethical choices and outcomes.

          “The fact that we might in some cases be wrong does not refute this general principle as the best and most rational way to think about morality.”

          Oh then the fact that a priostic reasoning may sometimes result in error does not refute the general principle of a prioistic ethics as the best and most rational way to think about morality.

          You can’t avoid contradictions in your approach to ethics and economics in general. That is why I know my ethical approach is at least superior to yours.

      • Tel says:

        Consequentialism on the other hand demands that we suspend judgment of what we can and cannot do in the present, until after the effects of any action takes place in the future, however far into the future such effects are to be spread out.

        Capitalism is a bit like that. You start a business in the here and now, and sometime in the future you get to find out whether that was a good idea or not. I like LK’s entrepreneurial approach to morality, it’s got a whole “play dice with God” feel about it.

        The logical next step would be some sort of futures market in rape and beheading. Sadly, there’s probably one of those already in operation. I better just shut up for a while.

        • Major.Freedom says:

          Not really, because a pro-capitalist only needs to be vigilent about homesteader property rights. Let the chips fall where the individual places them for himself.

  3. Harold says:

    MF: “contains is a list of lights and ought nots that are logically consistent with the nature of mankind.” “I let you decide whether the good is to act in accordance with mankind’s nature and whether the bad is to act contrary to it.” [should that be rights?]
    How do you have “ought nots” if you make no judgement about what is good or bad to be done?

    Take “thou shall kill one to save 5” Is that in accordance with mankind’s nature, which you say pre-supposes life? Saving 5 results in more life than not killing the one.

    If mankind’s nature pre-supposes life, then killing anything is against mankind’s nature. One must only eat that which does not kill the food source – fruit and suchlike. Or does mankind’s nature only pre-suppose human life? What is a human? Is it determined by genetics, functionality or some other criteria? Perhaps that which is capable of action? Most mammals are probably capable of action. Do cows have rights? Do children?

  4. Chance Nation says:

    Ravi is a good speaker, but he’ll key in on a poorly worded question in many cases such as “there is evidence that god does not exist”. I think it was the other video where that was discussed. Even though I don’t believe in god, I would never say that there is no possibility that god doesn’t exist, because then I would be claiming an ultimate truth, and that is the realm of the theists to make those claims. In Christianity for example, I just can’t get past the inconsistencies. If god is the embodiment of love and compassion, how could eternal suffering in hell for any of his/her children ever be consistent with that? I wouldn’t condemn my worst enemies to eternal suffering if I had that capability let alone one of my own children. How can I square the fact that my humble self could show more compassion towards fellow human beings than that of a being of total love and compassion? That’s just one of many dozen huge consistencies that I find with Christianity, if someone can square that for me or point me to a Ravi video that addresses it, I’m all ears..

    • J-Sand says:

      Hi Chance Nation,

      Here are a few thoughts. They probably will not completely satisfy your question, but I believe they may challenge your conclusions on the “inconsistencies of God’s love.”

      Love implies a choice. In order to have the possibility of a loving relationship with another person, each party must have within their means the ability to either stay or leave. To force someone to stay is not a love relationship. Love inherently respects the other person’s choice.

      Rejection is made possible by love. Separation is made possible by love. The same choice that enables a possibility of love simultaneously allows for evil, hatred, and all things contrary to love.

      I believe the substance of hell is this: a rejection of God, and thereby a separation from God. I believe the substance of heaven is to be in God’s presence. You could argue that God sends people where they ultimately want to be. Would heaven actually be heaven for someone who does not love God? What about for someone who doesn’t like the idea of obeying what God says? An eternity of that doesn’t sound like heaven.

      Are you sure that Christianity is inconsistent on God’s love? Why else would God send his own son to die a terrible death to make a way to be with God again, where one was not available? Why would that same individual (Jesus) command things like “Love your enemies?” Are you sure you are not underestimating how hopeless (dead) we (humanity) are without God’s intervention via the cross?

      All this being said, I believe that God is a perfect judge. Thankfully, I am not the one making decisions on who goes where after death.

  5. Nabinrai says:

    What do you call a society whose morality is against another society morality at a same time? For example, What do you call a society following child sacrifice and the society who is against that morality at same time ? Do you call it less evolve and more evolve ?

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