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... moral virtue. Summed up, for every evil there comes a greater good, and that good is moral and spiritual growth. In this process of growing perfect human persons, like a plant needs sun and water to grow, the human person needs motivation and challenges. God motivates and challenges by dropping us into an imperfect world. The belief that life is unfair, (and my parents made sure I knew that early on) motivates people to correct the injustices and adversities.
It is decided that by being submerged in imperfections, we will overcome. So evil is necessary then, says Hick, 'A world with no pain or suffering would also be one in which there could be no moral choices and hence no possibility of moral growth and development. If we lived in a 'perfect' happy world free of danger, suffering, need, irritation, betrayal, we could never develop courage, compassion, forgiveness, and patience and self sacrifice; all things vital to moral and spiritual growth. If you were never wronged or betrayed you would never learn to forgive.
If there was no need in the world, you would never learn sacrifice, or what it means to be unselfish and giving. If there was no danger in the world there would be no such thing as bravery, and Arnold Schwarzenegger would be out of a job. If every want or desire was met with instant gratification, you would never learn patience (or learn the value of a dollar, by god. In my day... ). If it was your way or the highway, you'd never learn to compromise, and if there were no obstacles, you'd never know how good it felt to rise above. So why then, the magnitude of these evils?
It can be said, arguably, that free will has no limits. A human being can be as evil or as good as he can ordain, and therefore the magnitude of moral evil is seemingly limitless. Not exactly comforting; but for God to step in the way of a person committing a moral evil would be to close the vital epistemic gap, which we decided was necessary for moral growth. Clearly moral evil is necessary in the growth of a perfect human person, as is natural evil. The belief that there is a limitless amount of evil in the world is imperative to motivate people to make this world of ours a better place, by devoting themselves to moral struggle. As a direct result they become better people, moving closer and closer to God's ultimate goal of growing into a perfect human person.
God has planted us in a world full of unpredictable contingencies and peril, in which unforeseen and undeserved calamities can happen to anyone; because only in such a world can mutual caring and love be grown. Although this seems to be a reality that offers little comfort to those who receive the brunt of evil in the name of the common good, it remains a small consolation that the guilty will be punished in hell, and the innocent are supposed to be compensated in heaven. This seems all well and good... but if the innocent people who got screwed over on earth are going to be compensated in heaven, then what about the innocent people who just got lucky?
Is there like a first class section of heaven for the people who had it really bad, where you get lots of leg room and free booze? The coach section of heaven for the people who just never got screwed over, where they serve soft drinks and peanuts in 'not for individual resale' packages? I guess we shall see. 'The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns life fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours The fact that this is the first sentence in a four and a half page essay kind of scared the crap out of me, which might explain why i skipped over it the first time. I thought to myself, 'DAMN I'm busted! I'm grounded for sure!' I started getting flash backs from my hellman early high school years... and thought maybe i was safer not reading it.
Edwards had a pretty good time with this didn't he? Give this man a soap box. The words 'fury' and 'wrath's eem pretty advent here... in fact, he says 'wrath' and 'fury' 43 times. Another quote: 'Consider this, you that are here present, that yet remain in an unregenerate state. That God will execute the fierceness of his anger, implies, that he will inflict wrath without pity: when God beholds the ineffable extremity of your case, and sees your torment so vastly disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor soul is crushed, and sinks down, as it were, into an infinite gloom; he will have no compassion upon you, he will not forbear the executions of his wrath... ' According to the 'Doctrine of Hell', some people are doomed to hell, with no possibility of escape, and according to Edwards, this is pretty fair.
God is going to damn you eternally, (and he even might like it a little bit), and when you beg for mercy and scream apologies, and realize the error of your ways... he's going to laugh at you and kick you in the knee cap. So act now, Edwards says, now is your chance, Christ has flung the doors of mercy wide open! 'renounce your youthful vanities and flock to Christ'... What a relief.
And here I thought I was doomed to wrath and fury to the 43 rd power. Still, the materialist is not yet satisfied; the Free Will Theodicy is incoherent, says the materialist. What happened to every evil serving a greater purpose? How can you condemn these people to do your bidding on earth, since according to the free will theodicy, there must be evil, and then condemn their souls to Hell eternally? No good can possibly come from eternal damnation, infinite suffering with no chances of redemption. The punishment for being a 'bad person's eem's disproportionate and impetuous.
Nonbelievers do not deserve damnation. It seems rather, like a set up. God needs moral evil to grow his perfect human persons, so it's not ridiculous to assume that he put it here. So how could he damn his pawns? It seems incoherent.
Similarly, the materialist doesn't like Heaven either. The Heaven in scripture is made out to be a 'happy world' of sorts, where all is good, and loving and peaceful. The materialists asks this; is there free will in heaven? The theist is kind of backed into a wall; let's look at both answers. If he says yes, there is certainly free will in heaven, it is heaven after all. Then there must be moral evil in heaven, because free will is limitless.
If he says no, there isn't free will in heaven, then there will be no moral growth in heaven, and moral growth in heaven is necessary, because the enormous majority of men and women will ultimately die before achieving 'perfect human person's tatu's. Eric Fromm said this, 'The tragedy in the life of most of us is that we die before we are fully born. ' I think it's the hope of everyone that the only things left unfinished when judgement day arrives, are the dishes and the laundry. But for most of us, it's more than we can hope for. This can only mean that there has to be a continuation of our lives on some other higher level of consciousness, after bodily death; if God's plan is to create perfect human persons is to manifest. Moral growth must also take place in heaven, because otherwise children will remain children. Or at least that's what I'm supposed to effectively argue.
But since this is my paper and it's 6 am and this heaven scenario of yours frustrates me to no end, it's my turn. The first question that you need to ask, is if there can exist, an infinite number of souls. When you ponder on the life that has preceded us, it seems like if this were feasible, heaven would be wall to wall souls, a metropolis of sorts. Consider for a moment, that it's not feasible. Consider that God's plan is not to create perfect human persons, in the sense of a single lifetime, a single body. God's ultimate goal is to create perfect human souls, over the course of many lifetimes.
Each life adding to the moral goodness, each life teaching different virtues. It seems unlikely that perfection could be achieved over the course of a single lifetime, especially when a 'lifetime' is so dependent and variable. So when you take this view, heaven doesn't seem so material. When you view humanity as a collection of souls, together to create a flow of consciousness, heaven takes shape, or lack thereof, rather.
When you realize the possibility of this scenario, that life is generated in forms and lifetimes to feed the good of humanity, that all of them together create a teleological system of working parts, servicing eachother, the idea of a child in heaven seems ridiculous. Human bodies are nothing more than vehicles for the soul, it seems to me. The age of a human body would have no bearing on the age of the soul, though some souls are older than others. Their ultimate objection of humanity is to evolve together, and move from one phase of consciousness to the next one; as our current phase of consciousness is certainly not the only phase.
The issue of free will in heaven seems immaterial, because free will to a soul seems arbitrary and meaningless, like a body to a soul is arbitrary and meaningless. And that's where I will take my stand. My task now, to assess the arguments for and against the existence of God. A restatement of the arguments would seem redundant at this point, as I've just spent 12 pages presenting them, and you should take credit for presenting me with the biggest challenge of my post secondary education. With that being said, it is my significant conclusion, that God exists in my world, although I agreed with Pascal when he said that the existence of God cannot be proven using logic. God is clearly above logic, He just IS.
I don't acknowledge that my belief in a God is going to 'save my soul' as Pascal's wager suggests, or anyone's for that matter. In fact it seems kind of silly that anyone should concern themselves with the beliefs of other people at all, when you realize that the issue is entirely personal. The idea that religious belief is a dangerous thing seems to be a pretty heavy accusation on Clifford's part, and especially nervy when he tries to steal your thoughts to top it off. The idea that God is vengeful or spiteful and would commit me to damnation for not following the ways of his specified religion, like Edwards suggests, seems ludicrous, as this is my favorite word.
If this was the case, then almost all of the free world, save for whatever religion happens to be the 'right' one would be damned for all eternity. Ludicrous. I have to succumb to the Cosmological and Teleological arguments, even though they don't prove anything. I won't join the masses that want to fight them to the death because it's a pointless battle. I can't even imagine why anyone would want to prove that the universe was a big accident, that we " re all doomed to be the meaningless specks that we sometimes presume, and that when the coin falls we won't exist to see that it's tails. It boggles my mind that people should dedicate their lives to proving that humanity means nothing, that we mean nothing.
I'm also not going to fight biology, and the laws of physics and the theory of evolution. I don't agree with the Christian view that God and evolution cannot peacefully coexist. I think they can, and they have to. They better get used to eachother, and learn to get along. Biology isn't going anywhere. This isn't grade school, we can't just separate them.
I continue to secretly marvel at the organization of the universe, and the sheer madness of it all. The way our world is in constant and perfect state of complexity, it baffles the hell out of me. The word 'coincidence' wasn't created to fill shoes this big, i think it's ridiculous to try and put a word the size of a tic-tac into a space the size of a whale. I can't believe that anyone truly believes it belongs there.
When I said I considered myself a recovering Catholic I meant it truly, because I think belief in God in a strictly biblical sense is pretentious, when one considers that almost none of it claims to be the word of God, and even if it were the word of God, so much of the original meaning was lost in the translation that it's not even accurate anymore. Mary for instance, wasn't even a virgin in the original story, but the Catholic religion makes a really big stink about what a miracle it was. Christianity tried to conquer the world, and I think it almost did. You can still see the high water mark where the wave finally broke, when you pick up any history book.
My assessment is this; if I have one, God exists; and the existence of God will never be proven, and that's the entire point.
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