[net.religion] Punishing Non-belief

pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) (07/28/84)

This is a response to Daryel Akerlind's note of July 6.  I saved it
because it is one of the few sceptical inquiries posted to this group
that I have found stimulating, rather than frustrating or offensive.
As I mentioned in a letter to Daryel at that time, I (at least) save
all such articles as a stimulus to my own thinking.  The trouble is that
the best articles require the most time in thought to give them a
deserving response.  That is time--I regret--that I don't always have.
Well now I have *some* time, so here is my contribution--for what it's
worth.  I quote all of Daryel's original article because it has been so
long since it was posted.

>Many religious believers that I have encountered believe that failure to
>believe in their religion is a sin and deserves punishment.  Christians seem
>most prone to this sort of belief, so I will carry out this discussion in 
>the context of Christian belief; but please keep in mind that much the same 
>arguments could be directed at other religions.

I can only speak from my own Christian beliefs, I'm not sure that what
I say can be considered orthodox, they are just my own thoughts which
I feel have scriptural support.

The Christian view of Man is that he is fallen.  Separation from God
is his natural state.  So part of the "punishment" is not really 
punishment, it is the final result of that natural separation.  Jesus
indicates that there are varying degrees of "punishment" in Hell as
well as varying degrees of "reward" in Heaven.  The whole of Scripture
indicates that God offers Justice in the next life in measure with
what is done here.  But I honestly don't know all the details, only
God can know them.  It's hard to talk about punishment for non-belief in
the general sense.  I think God considers each individual case and he
knows all the relevant data.  

On the other hand, just as ignorance of the law is no protection against
it, one cannot stop his ears to the Gospel in the hopes he will be able
to tell God "But I didn't know...".  What it probably comes down to is
that each of us knows how honest with ourselves we are being in handling
the question of wether or not Christianity might be true and, if so, will
we accept its implications for our lives.  Only you and God have that
kind of ultimate knowledge.

Does this mean that evangelical Christians are off base in their preaching
of the Gospel because they don't have ultimate knowledge as to wether their
hearers are redeemed?  I don't think so.  A relationship with anyone needs
to be examined periodically to determine its health.  Voicing the Gospel
helps all of us to at least think about it once in a while and consider
its solution when we might not have come to think of it on our own.  Also
it is disgustingly narrow to treat the Gospel as if its only implications
were for the next life.  This life is equally important.  Those who are only
concerned with "getting people saved" because they think heaven is all
that matters sell the Gospel short.

>How can one justify a non-believer being punished on the basis of not
>accepting the truth of God and Jesus Christ and so forth?  It seems
>indefensible to me.  Let us consider why one should believe, and why lack
>of belief should merit punishment.  Also, to avoid having to talk about an
>abstract he/she non-believer, let me use myself as an example of a
>non-believer.
>
>(1) Some would say that the truth of Christianity can be deduced from the
>evidence around one.  
>
>First, I would object that the evidence I know of does not warrant the 
>conclusion that Christianity is true.  It is possible that some people have 
>enough evidence to warrant that conclusion, but I do not.

I think I would dissagree with this point anyway.  I don't think the
evidence in Nature is at all conclusive as to the truth of Christianity.
I don't see it as contradictory to it, however.  The Bible does seem
to indicate that such evidence should, at least, lead one to a monotheistic
worship of a benevolent Creator. (see Romans 1:16-32).  The Bible teaches
that in Eden communication between God and Man was plain.  After the Fall
that relationship gradually disintegrated.  I say this only to point
out that monotheism was the precident for Humankind.  Polytheism and atheism
are deviations from that, a result of the breakdown in the direct
communication between God and Man, Man's inherent rebelliousness (we all
like to be our own god in some sense) and probably also due to the
influence of Satan in the world, who also likes to get people to serve his
desires.

>But now let the first objection be dropped; let us assume that the truth of
>Christianity can be deduced from the evidence around us.  Now, I tell you 
>plainly that I cannot imagine a valid argument from the evidence to the 
>conclusion of Christianity's truth, nor am I able to perceive the validity of 
>the arguments to that conclusion that have been presented to me by the 
>Christians I have known.  Clearly, I lack the intellect to understand the 
>arguments.  Am I not to be pitied this lack of intellect rather than be 
>punished for it?  

I think we all lack the intellect to understand fully any religion
that would be a true context for a relationship with an infinite God.
The problem isn't with the lack of anyone's intellect (I think you're
being too humble here).  Where the intellect is concerned the truth
of any religious belief is provisional--and there is nothing wrong
with that.  It is necessarily so.  Many of our beliefs are provisional.
Everyone has a different acceptance level for being satisfied intellectually
with their religious beliefs and those that accept it at a lower level
are not to be belittled for doing so.  Any universal religion (such
are ones that punish for unbelief) cannot be based on man's ability
to grasp divine concepts fully.  Otherwise, we must find fault with
God for excluding those whose intellectual abilities fall below the
line.  So the acceptance of a religion as being true, though not
without its intellectual qualities, must be rooted in something in
Man that is deeper and more basic than his intellect.  I think that
with Christianity it is rooted in his very nature and (fallen) condition.
It comes from the realization that salvation is a basic necessity and
just how that salvation is best accomplished.

>
>(2) What remains is the exhortation to believe, to have faith in Christianity.
>
>But I tell you simply that I do not believe.  This is not a decision I have 
>made; I haven't chosen not to believe.  It is just a fact that when I
>look at myself I find that I do not believe.  (It is like the fact that I find
>jackal cubs cute, but I do not find fully-grown jackals cute.  I didn't choose
>not to find fully-grown jackals cute.  I simply don't find them cute.)
>Am I to be punished for something I didn't choose?
>

Maybe I'm reading you wrong here, but it seems to me that you are overlooking
the fact that we do choose (perhaps not always consciously) what we will
and won't believe.  The very fact that we do or don't believe something
presumes that that something has been presented to us and we have chosen
to accept it or reject it.  Your response to the jackals is not analogous
to belief.  It is simply a response you have to an observation.  If something
is to be believed as true then it is not a matter of personal taste.  Maybe
some think neither the cubs or the adults to be cute.  Does that change
the look of the cubs?

The acceptance of religious belief has to do with wether or not we
believe something is true, not wether or not we think it's cute.  You
do beleive that jackals are real, though you may only have seen pictures
of them (that's all you would need to see to tell wether or not you
thought they were cute).  

In looking at your situation, you have been presented with Christianity.
The presentation may have been flawed, you may not have been able to
understand it, or the presenters may have been lacking in their ability
to communicate it.  The point is that you have rejected what you have
been presented with to the point where you do not think the argument
compels you to accept Christianity as true.  More along these lines below.

>Possibly, at this point, some Christians are saying that I should TRY
>Christianity, that by not trying Christianity I am turning my back on god
>and thereby deserving punishment.  But Christianity is only one of many 
>religions.  I am surrounded by paths, each with claims that it is the true 
>way and that I should follow it until I discover it's truth.

There is not time in your life for you to really try all the religions.
If there is one that is true among the many that are ultimately false, do
we hold it against God for letting Man develop a plethora of other religious
beliefs as an alternative?  To vanquish all the wrong choices would be
to remove the possibility of disbelief.  You have to narrow your own choices.
I don't think that the great number of existing religions is good
justification for not trying any one in particular.

>
>Imagine me in the desert, dying of thirst.  Before me is a sign saying
>"This is the way to water"; but all around me there are other signs saying 
>the same thing.  Each sign points in a different direction.  Is it any wonder 
>that I climb one sand dune; then, when I see no water, I take a new direction
>and climb another; then another; until, finally, I am just confused?  Maybe, 
>if I had just followed the first sign for another mile, I would have found 
>water.  But then maybe it was the second sign I should have followed.  Or 
>maybe I should ignore the signs, and follow my own hunches.  Maybe there just 
>isn't any water in that desert.  
>
>Who would condemn me for turning my back on the third sign, which was, let us
>say, the one that did lead to water?  Who would say: "You had your choice.
>You turned your back on the true way.  You brought your agony on yourself.
>You are to blame, and you deserve what you suffered."?
>
>The situation is analogous to that with regard to religion.  There are signs 
>pointing in all sorts of directions.  How can I be (justifiably) condemned
>for failing to cling to Christianity for that extra mile, when all I had seen
>so far was desert?

I have already qualified the "condemning" part above, so I am not taking
your idea of it as being accurate here.  I just want to respond now to the
problem of selecting the "right" religion among many.

Suppose you could examine the character and qualifications of those
who posted each of the signs.  In a comparison you might find that,
if there is any water at all, there is a certain one who ought to know
better than the rest.  So to follow his path would make your faith in
doing so based on a rational decision.  You may still follow the path
not being positively sure that there is water, but you at least start
out with better reason for making that provisional choice.  So compare
Jesus with Mohammad or Budda, etc. and decide which of them is the most
likely to know what they are talking about.  Some of the sign posters
you may have no data on.  I believe you must reject their signs.  If
there is a God who is really concerned about us finding water, he would
have sent a qualified person to post the sign.  If the true God is
one who doesn't care even that much then we might as well give up and
die anyway.

Besides that, I find your analogy far too simple to apply very well.
Some religions seem to branch off of others.  You might need to follow one
path for a while then decide between two others.  Also, some of the
religions are different in their idea of Man's need and the solution.
Some would have you deny that you are thirsty, others would have you
embrace that fact that you are as being wonderful, still others may
say you need something besides water to quench your thirst (a drug
to make you forget it, perhaps).  You must again narrow your choices
by rejecting those that ignore the real problems or offer false solutions.

For example, I have to accept a belief in the supernatural because, in
following C.S. Lewis' arguments against Naturalism in his book "Miracles",
I find no way to trust my rationality within a purely naturalistic framwork.
So, having heard that argument I am already on theistic ground.  (Of couse
I never had any real adversion to theism in the first place.)  I cannot
accept the idea that Nature is all there is.  We cannot get past Descartes'
principle "dubito ergo sum" without a provisional acceptance of the
supernatural.  Indeed, Descartes himself couldn't.  (Yet even this is
not the logical deduction he thought it to be.  The premise already
contains the conclusion.)  Those who want to understand the details of
this postion should read "Miracles", although Lewis' "The Problem of Pain"
has more bearing on this particular discussion.

Another problem that stems from the provisional nature of religious
belief is that those who insist on always standing outside a belief
and looking in will not have the motivation to search thouroughly enough
in order to satisfy the problems they encounter with it.  You have to
travel along the path at least a little way in order to even begin to
get the impression that it goes nowhere.  Of course, you may also get
the opposite impresion as you go (which is that only thing I claim to
have as a Christian--I didn't become one because I answered all
challenges to it beforehand).

>
>So, it seems indefensible to me that I (and other non-believers) should be
>punished on the basis of not believing.  Saying that I have brought my 
>suffering upon myself by straying from the true path seems equally unjust,
>for I never chose to follow a false path, I was always trying to find the
>truth.  So, if there are any of you out there who do feel that a
>non-believer deserves to be punished for their lack of belief, how do you
>justify that?

If by non-belief you meant that you had no knowledge of what the belief
or "path" entails then I would agree with your first statement.  But that
does not seem to be what you are claiming for yourself.  You have heard
something about Christianity and you do reject that something as being
insufficient proof to merit your acceptance.  You may even have concluded
that there is no point in persuing the matter further.  So although you
claim not to have chosen a path you knew to be false (seems silly that
anyone would) you have chosen not to follow certain paths.  And the fact
that you say you were always trying to find the truth implies that you
*are* on some path.

Some of the problem with searching for God is that it doesn't stop
when you find him.  Going back to your analogy, when the man finds
the well he finds and perceives the total of what he was looking for.
By sticking with this analogy too far you could find yourself trying
to find and comprhend the whole of an infinite God before you believe
in him at all.

>
>As a final note, let me point out that a non-believer does suffer for their
>lack of belief.  For a Christian, everything in life has its place; God is in
>control; every hardship, every tragedy, is in His plan, is but a step towards
>eventual total happiness.  But for the non-believer there is the fear that 
>all is meaningless, empty, and the spectre of death hangs over themself and 
>all they love.  Think back to the signs in the desert.  The non-believer is
>dying in the sand.  Sure, if they had followed that third sign far enough, 
>they would have found the sweet water.  But should they be left dying in the 
>sand because of their mistake?  Is that just?  Should they suffer like that 
>while someone else, of no greater virtue, but who just happened to follow the 
>right sign, drinks and bathes in the oasis?  Is it just?


I think the following quote from Lewis' "The Problem of Pain" is
appropriate here:
	The problem is not simply that of a God that consigns
	some of his creatures to final ruin.  That would be the
	problem if we were Mahometans.  Christianity, true, as
	always, to the complexity of the real, presents us with
	something knottier and more ambiguous--a God so full of
	mercy that He becomes man and dies by torture to avert
	that final ruin from His creatures, and who yet, where
	that heroic remedy fails, seems unwilling, or even unable,
	to arrest the ruin by an act of mere power.  I said glibly
	a moment ago that I would pay "any price" to remove this
	*doctrine*.  I lied.  I could not pay one-thousandth part
	of the price that God has already paid to remove the *fact*.
	And here is the real problem: so much mercy, yet still there
	is Hell.

In trying to fit Christianity into your analogy you have forgotten
all that the Christian God has supposedly done to "bring your horse
to water".  The well you seek may not be so far off after all.

As always, I don't pretend to have solved the problem non-believers
face here, but I hope I have at least clarified it somewhat.  Sometimes
that needs to be done first.

Regards,
-- 

Paul Dubuc 		{cbosgd,ihnp4}!cbscc!pmd

  The true light that enlightens every one was coming
  into the world...		(John 1:9)

slag@charm.UUCP (Peter Rosenthal) (08/10/84)

888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888


	For some of us, belief in anything is a feeling, a sense,
a conviction and an emotion.  We do not choose to believe, we
merely believe.  That is why we can not consciously look
at the evidence of christianities truth around us and
choose to believe it.  We believe what we believe just
because that is what we are.  You can say that you chose
to believe, but you didn't.  You either believe because
thats how you feel, or you are lying to yourself about
how you really feel.  Belief in mystical matters can't
be supported the way mathematical proofs can.  

gtaylor@cornell.UUCP (Greg Taylor) (08/10/84)

You mean that belief is something you don't choose (As in, "I just realized
at some point that I was a Sacramentalist. Since my family was Baptist, it was
a real problem....") This is beginning to sound like the nature/nurture
stuff in net.motss.

Could you unpack that idea a little bit maybe?? I keep thinking that I'm
misreading this a bit.

________________________________________________________________________________
If you ask me, I may tell you   gtaylor@cornell
it's been this way for years	Gregory Taylor			 
I play my red guitar....	Theorynet (Theoryknot)		  
________________________________________________________________________________

cher@ihuxi.UUCP (Mike Musing) (08/10/84)

> 	For some of us, belief in anything is a feeling, a sense,
> a conviction and an emotion.  We do not choose to believe, we
> merely believe.  That is why we can not consciously look
> at the evidence of christianities truth around us and
> choose to believe it. 

This sounds like a sample of mystical con artistry. 
For every emotion, conviction, feeling, etc. there is a reason.
It is clearly within the domain of psychology. The above is 
equivalent to saying "you feel this way because you feel this".

>                        We believe what we believe just
> because that is what we are.  You can say that you chose
> to believe, but you didn't.  

You are what you are because that's what you were brought up as,
not "because that's what you are". 

>                              You either believe because
> thats how you feel, or you are lying to yourself about
> how you really feel.  

"because thats how you feel"? Why do you feel this way? 
The above implies that no further self-analysis is possible.

To summarize: you believe because you feel, and you feel because you
believe, and you believe because of what you are, and you are this because
you believe what you feel, and that all is pure truth and God's word.

                   Ufff, I think I got carried away.
                                       

ab3@pucc-h (Rich Kulawiec) (08/21/84)

	Methinks perhaps Paul should put down his bible long enough
to pick up a dictionary.  :-)
-- 
---Rsk

UUCP: { decvax, icalqa, ihnp4, inuxc, sequent, uiucdcs  } !pur-ee!rsk
      { decwrl, hplabs, icase, psuvax1, siemens, ucbvax } !purdue!rsk

Sometimes I feel like I'm fading away,
Looking at me, I got nothin' to say.
Don't make me angry with the things games that you play,
Either light up or leave me alone.

dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (08/23/84)

	Methinks perhaps Paul should put down his bible long enough
	to pick up a dictionary.  :-)
	---Rsk

I would like to request that references to "Paul" be qualified
a bit more, so that it is clear whether you mean Paul Dubuc or
myself (we're not the same person).  We do have very similar
names, and we seem to read an almost identical set of newsgroups.

-- 
Paul DuBois		{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois

Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage forever: for they
are the rejoicing of my heart.
					Psalm 119:111

rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (08/25/84)

> 	Methinks perhaps Paul should put down his bible long enough
> 	to pick up a dictionary.  :-)
> 	---Rsk
> 
> I would like to request that references to "Paul" be qualified
> a bit more, so that it is clear whether you mean Paul Dubuc or
> myself (we're not the same person).  
>      Paul DuBois

The confusion gets worse than that.  With all this recent talk about
"if Paul's sex life had been ...", I hope Messrs. Dubuc and Dubois
aren't thinking that we're slanderizing them (or peeking in their
windows :-)
-- 
"Come with me now to that secret place where
 the eyes of man have never set foot."		Rich Rosen    pyuxn!rlr