Thank you for this interesting and well written piece, as always a treat. But allow me to come with some counter arguments, really against the whole idea of scrutinizing the dogmas of any religion. The narratives of all religions are painted with broad brushes indeed and they are supposed to be mysterious, i.e. not logical at all.
Religion and logic are not at all compatible. In medieval times a lot of philosophers wasted their time trying to make these ends meet. And logic is still not the way to convince religious people that they are wrong, because a fairy tale is a fairy tale and cannot be treated as natural science (or logic).
Why is religion so important to so many people? Because of the fear of death, perhaps? Many people really, really don’t want it to be true that life ends when our bodies stop functioning. (We cannot know for sure, it’s a matter of taste what stance to take regarding this question and everyone is entitled to his/her own best belief.)
2300 years ago a philosopher, Epicuros, launched the idea that the soul is living in and by the body and cannot survive when the body dies, which according to him implies that death is nothing to fear. There is no hell and the gods are not at all interested in either promoting or punishing the mortals. (Neither did they create the world, according to Epicuros. To dismiss them altogether would probably have been a too great crime at the time.)
Philosophy doesn’t need to work with the most obscure and fabricated problems. It can also do as Epicuros and start at a fresher angle.
The concept of hell is not credible to modern secular people. But the concept of death is of course horrible to our individual-based lifestyle. ”If there isn’t life beyond death, then there is no meaning at all with life” one of my friends said.
Suppose there is no meaning, what are you going to do about that, I answered. Life in itself is such a marvel, just enjoy. And create some meaning to it as you go along. May the Force be with you.
I'm definitely trying to create meaning here rather than trying to attack Christianity. (You may notice what I'm *really* doing in this article is post funny cartoons, have a few laughs, and eventually, once I've gotten around to it, attack philosophy.) Even if a Christian decides to accept this argument, they just reconceptualize hell as lying on an open set of spaces rather than at the bottom end of a closed set: "in hell" is a bad state, but maybe there are worse states to occupy. It does sound weird to conceptualize hell as anything other than the worst place, but plenty of Christians would probably *rather* that be the case, judging by all the Annihilationists and Universalists who argue that people never go there, or never go there forever, or even end up in heaven eventually.
I do think you write like someone who never really accepted religion, though. Seen from the outside, religion often looks emotional, but longstanding familiarity with believers tells me they believe, at least consciously, because it makes sense. My own decision to enter Christianity in my teens was driven completely by logic, to the point that my nonreligious parent once commented that "logic is your God." This rankled a bit, since I didn't worship logic, but they asked me what if I ever found that the concept of God was logically impossible, whether I would choose God or logic, and I admitted that I wouldn't believe in something that didn't make any sense. This was proven essentially true a decade later when my departure from Christianity was again driven by logic.
Really, logic has always been *more* friendly to religion than methods like empiricism; there's even a sense in which religion has always been about logic. God has always occupied the invisible realms beyond ordinary experience, revealed by ancient words rather than sensory investigation. "In the beginning there was the logos," and logos does not merely mean "word," but "reason:" http://www.bible-researcher.com/logos.html The name of God is so holy that Orthodox Jews don't write it (lest it should somehow be erased like a pagan idol). The idea of words carrying the force of logic and destiny is even how you end up in Hell acording to the Book of Revelations: Heaven has a guest list called The Book of Life, and Hell is the destination of all whose names aren't written there. Like everything else in Christianity, this is another thing that engenders a sense of religious reverence when it's written in words, or laughter when represented by a pixelated picture drawn in a freeware paint program.
My objections are not about your analysis of the logic of the concept of hell, but rather about you ill deserved attack on philophy in itself. One must choose the philosophers to start arguing with. There are many to choose from. Regarding hell I find Epicurus the soundest one.
I am not a religious person nowadays, you are right there. In my teens I was firmly into Christianity, totally of my free will, no influence from my parents. I put a lot of thinking and reading into it and really tried to BELIEVE like a good Christian. But I landied in that the Christian dogmas was just a bit too much for my logical mind. Even though I acknowledge JC as a great and wise person I do NOT believe that we are all sinners from our birth and that because he died on the cross all who believes in him will be saved to eternal life. It was a great relief to allow myself to drop this idea (at the age of 18 or so). There are many religions in this world and my looking for guidance went on. A couple of years (1969-1973, no one should be surprised) I was into marxism (and read everything by Lenin) but left that when I understood the depth of dogmatism within my ”comrades”. I went on to explore buddhism and taoism from which I have learned a lot of useful things. There are also modern religions that might be something, so I looked into the Baháʼí Faith and even the Wicca religion. There was a time when I thought that the world is just too boring without some supernatural elements. Not so any longer. The world is absolutely amazing just as it is.
But I’m certainly not opposed to other people having their own narratives to make life a bit more magical. I was there myself some years ago. Now I’m with Epicurus.
Good for you that you are able to choose philosophers like flavors of ice cream at the shop, I guess? I feel much the same as you do about Epicurus; when I discovered him years ago I definitely found him appealing, but whether I feel warmly towards him or not, he's basically just a dead blogger. Agree with him or abandon him, hey whatever, that's just personal preference, right?
When Georg Cantor discovered that there were different levels of infinity, he really did something; even if most people don't care, we now have an understanding that the real numbers are an entire order greater than the counting numbers. When Erwin Schroedinger invented the wave mechanics that ultimately (along with like twelve other guys) gave us quantum mechanics, he really did something; even if most people don't care, we now have an understanding of the nature of subatomic reality where the rules of position and movement we take for granted on a swingset or a space station don't apply. But what did Epicurus, Jesus, Marx, Lennin, Siddartha, or Gerald Gardner really do? Put them all in a room together and let them explain it to one another. (Oh I forgot Nietzsche. How could I forget Nietzsche? Put him there too, but for heaven's sake please leave me out)
Your argument that safety (via being in the worst place) is better than risk is flawed.
From the economics angle you are making the correct claim that it is reasonable to pay 100$ to avoid a 10% risk of losing 1000$. Where you go wrong is then saying that therefore the risk is as bad as the actual bad outcome. It becomes more clear when you consider the end states. Before insurance (or whatever you are spending 100$ on) the two states are having 1000$ (90%) or 0$ (10%). After spending 100$ to remove risk you get to 900$ (100% depending on the insurance). In this case it is obvious that safety is not better than risk; if it were you would be willing to pay up to 1000$, but instead you keep 900$ and call it a day. It isn't reasonable to just burn the 1000$ to do away with the risk of losing it.
The second issue is that you treat the worst thing happening to you as a point estimate instead of a recurring process when you discuss safety. If you lose a leg in an industrial accident it doesn't just suck for that instant, but you are losing all future value, or from another perspective, it causes you active problems every day for the rest of your life. Likewise with hell, the "safety" of it not getting worse, while possibly a mental relief, still comes with the eternal torment part. It isn't the possibility of things getting worse that is the torture, it is the actual torture. Actual torture with 100% probability is worse than potential torture with <100% probability, unless one is so neurotic that the fear of any possibility torture is less compelling than the torture itself. That is probably a non-zero percent of the population, but a vanishingly small one I suspect.
So, yea, one cannot claim that safety is categorically better than risk.
Oh, hey Hammer! I haven't seen you around for a while. How's the new job turning out?
To respond to your comment, let me clarify that I'm not arguing safety is so good that you'd rather suffer in safety than be happy but risk losing happiness. I'm arguing that, all else being equal, safety is always a good thing, and always better than risk, and it looks like you're granting this is the case when you point out that "the 'safety' of it not getting worse, while possibly a mental relief, still comes with the eternal torment part."
However small this mental relief may be, it is still a relief. My argument is that the worst place imaginable can have no such mitigating relief; otherwise, it isn't the worst place imaginable. Imagine two places that are otherwise equal except that one place has safety and the other does not; the former is better than the latter, and thus cannot be worst.
We could make a further argument about hope always being a good thing, and fear always being a bad thing: God does at least appear to have changed His mind on some occasions, so someone in hell could always have the hope of God changing His mind about where they are, while someone in heaven would always have the fear that God might change His mind about where they are. Thus Hell becomes a place of hope, and Heaven becomes a place of fear. This doesn't mean hell is better than heaven, but it means hell can't be the worst place imaginable, and that heaven can't be the best place imaginable, because the worst place imaginable has no hope, and the best place imaginable has no fear.
The job is good, thanks for asking! Keeps me super busy, but I hope to actually write something here in the next few weeks, other than responses to posts :)
How are you doing? Seems like it has been a while.
I think at a basic level if you are suffering eternal torment you are not safe. The experience of actual harm being safer than the potential for actual harm seems like a stretching, or perhaps circumscribing, of the word's meaning. I don't think anyone would use safe the way you are; what you are really claiming is that since Hell is the worst humans have the opportunity for hedonic adjustments such that they don't have to worry about one aspect anymore. They can relax because the worst has already happened.
Further, your argument hinges on people preferring actual harm to potential, yet unrealized, harm. Although not getting worse may be small consolation, in all cases people would prefer things be a bit better, with the possible exception of being almost certain the bad outcome is going to happen anyway such that the tiny sliver of hope becomes as a splinter in their clutching grasp. That's a very small exception it seems, as most people will choose to put off that conclusion instead of walking into it and rolling those dice.
Relatedly, many people find solace in notice "Well, it could be worse." That safe harbor is obviously removed once in Hell. "There but for the grace of God go I" loses its charm when you lose the grace of God :D
Plus, if Hell's only advantage is that things can't get worse, by definition (and construction in your argument) all places must be better. Possibly they are better on different margins (more risk of a worse situation but less actual red hot pokers up your urethra, for instance). If anywhere is worse than Hell, Hell offers no "safety" in the sense that one might do worse. At best (worst?) Hell would have to be tied for worst place, perhaps due to the possibility of switching between two different versions.
Additionally (stretching the synonyms for also here) "My argument is that the worst place imaginable can have no such mitigating relief; otherwise, it isn't the worst place imaginable. Imagine two places that are otherwise equal except that one place has safety and the other does not; the former is better than the latter, and thus cannot be worst." I see no reason to believe the worst place imaginable need not have mitigating relief. After all, being unable to imagine a worse place is ordinal, not cardinal, so while one could say "Yea, Hell would be a lot worse if you weren't sure the worst had already happened to you" and that might be true, it doesn't follow that you can imagine a place where that would not be the case. Hell would then be the worst place, because even though it has one mitigating factor it is impossible to remove that factor.
Unless some omnipotent and omniscient being came up with a place that is the worst possible while continuously convincing you that the worst is right around the corner. If he did, he would probably call it Hell, or like Philadelphia or something.
I would disagree that hope is always good and fear always bad. To whom, and for what, and all that.
> How are you doing? Seems like it has been a while.
Well my own new job is going wonderfully, and I'm trying to push the kids to develop more interests besides video games, but frankly I have trouble even thinking about any of that when you're disagreeing that hope is always good, particularly when the context is that you're saying that hope isn't good for a person in hell.
Before I answer that, I do want to pay some attention your discussion about how, if hell can't get worse, that means we can't imagine it getting worse. I get this in principle; it's like the argument that God can't create a three-sided square, because come on, what does a three-sided square even mean? So OK, maybe there's no point in my saying I can imagine something that's definitionally impossible.
But when you try to say that I can't imagine a place worse than hell, that's not true, because I can, easily. Just get rid of all those Bible verses about God repenting the flood, and not killing the Ninevites, so nobody thinks He might ever change His mind, and you've removed hope from hell. Then just stop telling people hell is the worst place, so there's always the danger of something worse happening, and you remove safety from hell. So that's not a problem for my argument.
However, I'm way more interested in your saying you don't even agree that hope is always good. Because if hope isn't always good, isn't the putative non-goodness of hope going to be for cases where a person needs it less? That's your argument about safety, basically: safety is either worthless or meaningless to a person in hell, right? I really don't agree, but even if I try to follow you and say, OK, Doctor Hammer tells me these abstractions aren't always a benefit - even if I say OK, the value of things like hope and safety depend on to whom and for what, then when does hope matter the most?
Well, if safety matters less the worse off you are, then isn't the obvious corrolary that hope matters *more* the worse off you are? People in hell haven't got much else, so they must really, really appreciate any ray of hope they can get, right?
The only exception I come up with is a complete masochist who enjoys hell and doesn't even want the hope that it will end. But a masochist like that is just another one of those things that breaks hell:
Jesus: "Depart from me, I do not know you."
Masochist (in the voice of Glenn Quagmire): "All right!"
It just doesn't work, man. The Biblical Hell isn't the worst place imaginable.
I think you and I are defining safety differently. Let me focus on the hope point for a second, then I will get back to that.
Hope isn't always good in all contexts, and neither is fear always bad. Fear that says "Don't stick your hand into that hole and try and pull out the cobra that just went into it" is doing you a favor. Hope that says "Just because you are 50 and haven't had your big break into teen pop super stardom doesn't mean it isn't right around the corner!" is not doing you a favor. Hope is pleasant and fear unpleasant, but they are not always good or bad for you. Their usefulness (or appropriateness) is contingent, even if how they feel is pleasant or unpleasant reliably. See also: opiates.
Re: safety- I cannot agree to a definition of safety that says "The worst thing possible happening to you, currently and for all future eternity implies maximum safety has been achieved." Safety is not the absence of risk; at the very least any functional definition must include an absence of bad things you want to avoid currently happening to you. As such, someone who is in hell being actively tortured in the worst way possible for ever is not safe.
Another way to look at that is that by your definition of safety, an industrial plant is less safe if it has zero reportable incidents for year compared to moments after a gas leak that kills everyone working there. After all, after everyone is dead no one else can be harmed, whereas all those people coming to work and going home intact were potentially moments away from getting hurt, even though no one did.
Now back to the imagining point, I think you are misunderstanding a bit. I am granting your definition of Hell being safe because it is the worst (by definition) and thus there is no future state where someone is worse off, so they are safe. However, by your own construction mind you, Hell is safe IFF it is also the worst possible place. Should any state be worse it ceases to be safe by your definition. If it ceases to be safe that means some place must be worse, which means Hell can't be the worst place. So... is Hell safe because it is the worst place, or not safe because it isn't the worst place?
I am fine with saying "Eh, Biblical Hell could be worse." I am not fine with saying "It can't be the worst because if it was the worst it would be safe and if it is safe then it is no longer the worst." I don't think that definition of safety is coherent or complete, and I don't think that it can be safe because it is the worst without actually being the worst even if I accept the definition.
> Hope isn't always good in all contexts, and neither is fear always bad.
Right, I know you think this, but it only matters if hope isn't any good in hell. Even if I grant that hope isn't always a good thing, it's pretty obvious that hope is better in a place like hell than most other contexts. Hell cannot be the worst place imaginable because a person in hell has safety and hope. For my argument to fail, both hope and safety need to have no mitigating impact on the badness of hell, but even if safety is worthless or meaningless in hell, hell is a place where hope definitely has value. You might have some possible traction with the issue of safety, but not regarding hope.
> I am not fine with saying "It can't be the worst because if it was the worst it would be safe and if it is safe then it is no longer the worst."
I'm showing a contradiction to draw a conclusion: The set of imaginable spaces including hell is either unordered or open, because a closed set does not have a "worse than" order operator that can apply without contradiction to all elements in the set. And if this were mathematics, we'd be done; it isn't even an interesting discussion. But this is philosophy, so unsurprisingly neither one of us thinks he's wrong, and we'll just sit around making no progress.
In any other context I'd be frustrated, but elsewhere in this comment section you can see Garden Mum trying to tell me philosophy is great and fine, in a similar vein to the way other people on other threads insist that philosophy is great and fine, and I'm just sitting here laughing.
I should note that I agree with you for the most part regarding philosophy: on whole it is trash, just a bunch of groping around trying to match theories to nonsense prior beliefs, and using tricks to try and impress people. Without being testable most of it boils down to word games or mental traps, because it people think that is how it works there is no way to get them out of it. That is largely true of the hard sciences as well, unfortunately, at least as practiced today. Philosophy is just a lot worse about it, but that doesn't mean there isn't some good work to do and that is done.
This topic is not in that set of "good work" I would argue :D It is kind of fun to think about, though.
So is hope good in a place where you are realistically going to suffer for eternity? It sounds in that case, to me a non-Christian, that the hope must be false; eternity means forever, so your lot isn't changing. I know the actual rules of damnation and Hell are not exactly agreed upon chapter to chapter, but if we are stipulating Hell is eternal then... what are you hoping for? Wouldn't resignation be just as good? Weren't you supposed to abandon all hope at the door, anyway? :)
At any rate, I think it needs to be shown that "it's pretty obvious that hope is better in a place like hell than most other contexts." Hope for what, and how does it improve things?
As to the nature of the set of places, what's the contender for the second worst place? After a set can contain elements where an order operator doesn't apply without contradiction over most elements but still work fine over some others. You see that all the time in economics, where preferences can be designed such that they are circular, but there are elements that are outside that. "We prefer milk to orange juice, and grape juice to milk, and orange juice to grape juice. We don't like to drink gasoline, though."
So if there are many places that are unordered/open, that's fine, Hell can be the worst just so long as Hell is really heavy on absolute badness. If Gehenna is really close on absolute badness, maybe there is a problem there, but if the set of places is "Philadelphia, Detroit, Portland, Hell" chances are good that Hell is getting the blue ribbon for worst place even if the rest are not nicely ordered across people's preferences.
Also, I can't help but notice you aren't engaging with the problem of your definition of safety :D I can't recall, is Sophism considered a subset of Philosophy?
Thank you for this interesting and well written piece, as always a treat. But allow me to come with some counter arguments, really against the whole idea of scrutinizing the dogmas of any religion. The narratives of all religions are painted with broad brushes indeed and they are supposed to be mysterious, i.e. not logical at all.
Religion and logic are not at all compatible. In medieval times a lot of philosophers wasted their time trying to make these ends meet. And logic is still not the way to convince religious people that they are wrong, because a fairy tale is a fairy tale and cannot be treated as natural science (or logic).
Why is religion so important to so many people? Because of the fear of death, perhaps? Many people really, really don’t want it to be true that life ends when our bodies stop functioning. (We cannot know for sure, it’s a matter of taste what stance to take regarding this question and everyone is entitled to his/her own best belief.)
2300 years ago a philosopher, Epicuros, launched the idea that the soul is living in and by the body and cannot survive when the body dies, which according to him implies that death is nothing to fear. There is no hell and the gods are not at all interested in either promoting or punishing the mortals. (Neither did they create the world, according to Epicuros. To dismiss them altogether would probably have been a too great crime at the time.)
Philosophy doesn’t need to work with the most obscure and fabricated problems. It can also do as Epicuros and start at a fresher angle.
The concept of hell is not credible to modern secular people. But the concept of death is of course horrible to our individual-based lifestyle. ”If there isn’t life beyond death, then there is no meaning at all with life” one of my friends said.
Suppose there is no meaning, what are you going to do about that, I answered. Life in itself is such a marvel, just enjoy. And create some meaning to it as you go along. May the Force be with you.
I'm definitely trying to create meaning here rather than trying to attack Christianity. (You may notice what I'm *really* doing in this article is post funny cartoons, have a few laughs, and eventually, once I've gotten around to it, attack philosophy.) Even if a Christian decides to accept this argument, they just reconceptualize hell as lying on an open set of spaces rather than at the bottom end of a closed set: "in hell" is a bad state, but maybe there are worse states to occupy. It does sound weird to conceptualize hell as anything other than the worst place, but plenty of Christians would probably *rather* that be the case, judging by all the Annihilationists and Universalists who argue that people never go there, or never go there forever, or even end up in heaven eventually.
I do think you write like someone who never really accepted religion, though. Seen from the outside, religion often looks emotional, but longstanding familiarity with believers tells me they believe, at least consciously, because it makes sense. My own decision to enter Christianity in my teens was driven completely by logic, to the point that my nonreligious parent once commented that "logic is your God." This rankled a bit, since I didn't worship logic, but they asked me what if I ever found that the concept of God was logically impossible, whether I would choose God or logic, and I admitted that I wouldn't believe in something that didn't make any sense. This was proven essentially true a decade later when my departure from Christianity was again driven by logic.
Really, logic has always been *more* friendly to religion than methods like empiricism; there's even a sense in which religion has always been about logic. God has always occupied the invisible realms beyond ordinary experience, revealed by ancient words rather than sensory investigation. "In the beginning there was the logos," and logos does not merely mean "word," but "reason:" http://www.bible-researcher.com/logos.html The name of God is so holy that Orthodox Jews don't write it (lest it should somehow be erased like a pagan idol). The idea of words carrying the force of logic and destiny is even how you end up in Hell acording to the Book of Revelations: Heaven has a guest list called The Book of Life, and Hell is the destination of all whose names aren't written there. Like everything else in Christianity, this is another thing that engenders a sense of religious reverence when it's written in words, or laughter when represented by a pixelated picture drawn in a freeware paint program.
My objections are not about your analysis of the logic of the concept of hell, but rather about you ill deserved attack on philophy in itself. One must choose the philosophers to start arguing with. There are many to choose from. Regarding hell I find Epicurus the soundest one.
I am not a religious person nowadays, you are right there. In my teens I was firmly into Christianity, totally of my free will, no influence from my parents. I put a lot of thinking and reading into it and really tried to BELIEVE like a good Christian. But I landied in that the Christian dogmas was just a bit too much for my logical mind. Even though I acknowledge JC as a great and wise person I do NOT believe that we are all sinners from our birth and that because he died on the cross all who believes in him will be saved to eternal life. It was a great relief to allow myself to drop this idea (at the age of 18 or so). There are many religions in this world and my looking for guidance went on. A couple of years (1969-1973, no one should be surprised) I was into marxism (and read everything by Lenin) but left that when I understood the depth of dogmatism within my ”comrades”. I went on to explore buddhism and taoism from which I have learned a lot of useful things. There are also modern religions that might be something, so I looked into the Baháʼí Faith and even the Wicca religion. There was a time when I thought that the world is just too boring without some supernatural elements. Not so any longer. The world is absolutely amazing just as it is.
But I’m certainly not opposed to other people having their own narratives to make life a bit more magical. I was there myself some years ago. Now I’m with Epicurus.
Good for you that you are able to choose philosophers like flavors of ice cream at the shop, I guess? I feel much the same as you do about Epicurus; when I discovered him years ago I definitely found him appealing, but whether I feel warmly towards him or not, he's basically just a dead blogger. Agree with him or abandon him, hey whatever, that's just personal preference, right?
When Georg Cantor discovered that there were different levels of infinity, he really did something; even if most people don't care, we now have an understanding that the real numbers are an entire order greater than the counting numbers. When Erwin Schroedinger invented the wave mechanics that ultimately (along with like twelve other guys) gave us quantum mechanics, he really did something; even if most people don't care, we now have an understanding of the nature of subatomic reality where the rules of position and movement we take for granted on a swingset or a space station don't apply. But what did Epicurus, Jesus, Marx, Lennin, Siddartha, or Gerald Gardner really do? Put them all in a room together and let them explain it to one another. (Oh I forgot Nietzsche. How could I forget Nietzsche? Put him there too, but for heaven's sake please leave me out)
Your argument that safety (via being in the worst place) is better than risk is flawed.
From the economics angle you are making the correct claim that it is reasonable to pay 100$ to avoid a 10% risk of losing 1000$. Where you go wrong is then saying that therefore the risk is as bad as the actual bad outcome. It becomes more clear when you consider the end states. Before insurance (or whatever you are spending 100$ on) the two states are having 1000$ (90%) or 0$ (10%). After spending 100$ to remove risk you get to 900$ (100% depending on the insurance). In this case it is obvious that safety is not better than risk; if it were you would be willing to pay up to 1000$, but instead you keep 900$ and call it a day. It isn't reasonable to just burn the 1000$ to do away with the risk of losing it.
The second issue is that you treat the worst thing happening to you as a point estimate instead of a recurring process when you discuss safety. If you lose a leg in an industrial accident it doesn't just suck for that instant, but you are losing all future value, or from another perspective, it causes you active problems every day for the rest of your life. Likewise with hell, the "safety" of it not getting worse, while possibly a mental relief, still comes with the eternal torment part. It isn't the possibility of things getting worse that is the torture, it is the actual torture. Actual torture with 100% probability is worse than potential torture with <100% probability, unless one is so neurotic that the fear of any possibility torture is less compelling than the torture itself. That is probably a non-zero percent of the population, but a vanishingly small one I suspect.
So, yea, one cannot claim that safety is categorically better than risk.
Oh, hey Hammer! I haven't seen you around for a while. How's the new job turning out?
To respond to your comment, let me clarify that I'm not arguing safety is so good that you'd rather suffer in safety than be happy but risk losing happiness. I'm arguing that, all else being equal, safety is always a good thing, and always better than risk, and it looks like you're granting this is the case when you point out that "the 'safety' of it not getting worse, while possibly a mental relief, still comes with the eternal torment part."
However small this mental relief may be, it is still a relief. My argument is that the worst place imaginable can have no such mitigating relief; otherwise, it isn't the worst place imaginable. Imagine two places that are otherwise equal except that one place has safety and the other does not; the former is better than the latter, and thus cannot be worst.
We could make a further argument about hope always being a good thing, and fear always being a bad thing: God does at least appear to have changed His mind on some occasions, so someone in hell could always have the hope of God changing His mind about where they are, while someone in heaven would always have the fear that God might change His mind about where they are. Thus Hell becomes a place of hope, and Heaven becomes a place of fear. This doesn't mean hell is better than heaven, but it means hell can't be the worst place imaginable, and that heaven can't be the best place imaginable, because the worst place imaginable has no hope, and the best place imaginable has no fear.
The job is good, thanks for asking! Keeps me super busy, but I hope to actually write something here in the next few weeks, other than responses to posts :)
How are you doing? Seems like it has been a while.
I think at a basic level if you are suffering eternal torment you are not safe. The experience of actual harm being safer than the potential for actual harm seems like a stretching, or perhaps circumscribing, of the word's meaning. I don't think anyone would use safe the way you are; what you are really claiming is that since Hell is the worst humans have the opportunity for hedonic adjustments such that they don't have to worry about one aspect anymore. They can relax because the worst has already happened.
Further, your argument hinges on people preferring actual harm to potential, yet unrealized, harm. Although not getting worse may be small consolation, in all cases people would prefer things be a bit better, with the possible exception of being almost certain the bad outcome is going to happen anyway such that the tiny sliver of hope becomes as a splinter in their clutching grasp. That's a very small exception it seems, as most people will choose to put off that conclusion instead of walking into it and rolling those dice.
Relatedly, many people find solace in notice "Well, it could be worse." That safe harbor is obviously removed once in Hell. "There but for the grace of God go I" loses its charm when you lose the grace of God :D
Plus, if Hell's only advantage is that things can't get worse, by definition (and construction in your argument) all places must be better. Possibly they are better on different margins (more risk of a worse situation but less actual red hot pokers up your urethra, for instance). If anywhere is worse than Hell, Hell offers no "safety" in the sense that one might do worse. At best (worst?) Hell would have to be tied for worst place, perhaps due to the possibility of switching between two different versions.
Additionally (stretching the synonyms for also here) "My argument is that the worst place imaginable can have no such mitigating relief; otherwise, it isn't the worst place imaginable. Imagine two places that are otherwise equal except that one place has safety and the other does not; the former is better than the latter, and thus cannot be worst." I see no reason to believe the worst place imaginable need not have mitigating relief. After all, being unable to imagine a worse place is ordinal, not cardinal, so while one could say "Yea, Hell would be a lot worse if you weren't sure the worst had already happened to you" and that might be true, it doesn't follow that you can imagine a place where that would not be the case. Hell would then be the worst place, because even though it has one mitigating factor it is impossible to remove that factor.
Unless some omnipotent and omniscient being came up with a place that is the worst possible while continuously convincing you that the worst is right around the corner. If he did, he would probably call it Hell, or like Philadelphia or something.
I would disagree that hope is always good and fear always bad. To whom, and for what, and all that.
> How are you doing? Seems like it has been a while.
Well my own new job is going wonderfully, and I'm trying to push the kids to develop more interests besides video games, but frankly I have trouble even thinking about any of that when you're disagreeing that hope is always good, particularly when the context is that you're saying that hope isn't good for a person in hell.
Before I answer that, I do want to pay some attention your discussion about how, if hell can't get worse, that means we can't imagine it getting worse. I get this in principle; it's like the argument that God can't create a three-sided square, because come on, what does a three-sided square even mean? So OK, maybe there's no point in my saying I can imagine something that's definitionally impossible.
But when you try to say that I can't imagine a place worse than hell, that's not true, because I can, easily. Just get rid of all those Bible verses about God repenting the flood, and not killing the Ninevites, so nobody thinks He might ever change His mind, and you've removed hope from hell. Then just stop telling people hell is the worst place, so there's always the danger of something worse happening, and you remove safety from hell. So that's not a problem for my argument.
However, I'm way more interested in your saying you don't even agree that hope is always good. Because if hope isn't always good, isn't the putative non-goodness of hope going to be for cases where a person needs it less? That's your argument about safety, basically: safety is either worthless or meaningless to a person in hell, right? I really don't agree, but even if I try to follow you and say, OK, Doctor Hammer tells me these abstractions aren't always a benefit - even if I say OK, the value of things like hope and safety depend on to whom and for what, then when does hope matter the most?
Well, if safety matters less the worse off you are, then isn't the obvious corrolary that hope matters *more* the worse off you are? People in hell haven't got much else, so they must really, really appreciate any ray of hope they can get, right?
The only exception I come up with is a complete masochist who enjoys hell and doesn't even want the hope that it will end. But a masochist like that is just another one of those things that breaks hell:
Jesus: "Depart from me, I do not know you."
Masochist (in the voice of Glenn Quagmire): "All right!"
It just doesn't work, man. The Biblical Hell isn't the worst place imaginable.
Glad you are enjoying the new job. Good luck with the kids; my five year old wants to be a "Ninja, a singer and a couch potato" when she grows up...
I think you and I are defining safety differently. Let me focus on the hope point for a second, then I will get back to that.
Hope isn't always good in all contexts, and neither is fear always bad. Fear that says "Don't stick your hand into that hole and try and pull out the cobra that just went into it" is doing you a favor. Hope that says "Just because you are 50 and haven't had your big break into teen pop super stardom doesn't mean it isn't right around the corner!" is not doing you a favor. Hope is pleasant and fear unpleasant, but they are not always good or bad for you. Their usefulness (or appropriateness) is contingent, even if how they feel is pleasant or unpleasant reliably. See also: opiates.
Re: safety- I cannot agree to a definition of safety that says "The worst thing possible happening to you, currently and for all future eternity implies maximum safety has been achieved." Safety is not the absence of risk; at the very least any functional definition must include an absence of bad things you want to avoid currently happening to you. As such, someone who is in hell being actively tortured in the worst way possible for ever is not safe.
Another way to look at that is that by your definition of safety, an industrial plant is less safe if it has zero reportable incidents for year compared to moments after a gas leak that kills everyone working there. After all, after everyone is dead no one else can be harmed, whereas all those people coming to work and going home intact were potentially moments away from getting hurt, even though no one did.
Now back to the imagining point, I think you are misunderstanding a bit. I am granting your definition of Hell being safe because it is the worst (by definition) and thus there is no future state where someone is worse off, so they are safe. However, by your own construction mind you, Hell is safe IFF it is also the worst possible place. Should any state be worse it ceases to be safe by your definition. If it ceases to be safe that means some place must be worse, which means Hell can't be the worst place. So... is Hell safe because it is the worst place, or not safe because it isn't the worst place?
I am fine with saying "Eh, Biblical Hell could be worse." I am not fine with saying "It can't be the worst because if it was the worst it would be safe and if it is safe then it is no longer the worst." I don't think that definition of safety is coherent or complete, and I don't think that it can be safe because it is the worst without actually being the worst even if I accept the definition.
> Hope isn't always good in all contexts, and neither is fear always bad.
Right, I know you think this, but it only matters if hope isn't any good in hell. Even if I grant that hope isn't always a good thing, it's pretty obvious that hope is better in a place like hell than most other contexts. Hell cannot be the worst place imaginable because a person in hell has safety and hope. For my argument to fail, both hope and safety need to have no mitigating impact on the badness of hell, but even if safety is worthless or meaningless in hell, hell is a place where hope definitely has value. You might have some possible traction with the issue of safety, but not regarding hope.
> I am not fine with saying "It can't be the worst because if it was the worst it would be safe and if it is safe then it is no longer the worst."
I'm showing a contradiction to draw a conclusion: The set of imaginable spaces including hell is either unordered or open, because a closed set does not have a "worse than" order operator that can apply without contradiction to all elements in the set. And if this were mathematics, we'd be done; it isn't even an interesting discussion. But this is philosophy, so unsurprisingly neither one of us thinks he's wrong, and we'll just sit around making no progress.
In any other context I'd be frustrated, but elsewhere in this comment section you can see Garden Mum trying to tell me philosophy is great and fine, in a similar vein to the way other people on other threads insist that philosophy is great and fine, and I'm just sitting here laughing.
I should note that I agree with you for the most part regarding philosophy: on whole it is trash, just a bunch of groping around trying to match theories to nonsense prior beliefs, and using tricks to try and impress people. Without being testable most of it boils down to word games or mental traps, because it people think that is how it works there is no way to get them out of it. That is largely true of the hard sciences as well, unfortunately, at least as practiced today. Philosophy is just a lot worse about it, but that doesn't mean there isn't some good work to do and that is done.
This topic is not in that set of "good work" I would argue :D It is kind of fun to think about, though.
So is hope good in a place where you are realistically going to suffer for eternity? It sounds in that case, to me a non-Christian, that the hope must be false; eternity means forever, so your lot isn't changing. I know the actual rules of damnation and Hell are not exactly agreed upon chapter to chapter, but if we are stipulating Hell is eternal then... what are you hoping for? Wouldn't resignation be just as good? Weren't you supposed to abandon all hope at the door, anyway? :)
At any rate, I think it needs to be shown that "it's pretty obvious that hope is better in a place like hell than most other contexts." Hope for what, and how does it improve things?
As to the nature of the set of places, what's the contender for the second worst place? After a set can contain elements where an order operator doesn't apply without contradiction over most elements but still work fine over some others. You see that all the time in economics, where preferences can be designed such that they are circular, but there are elements that are outside that. "We prefer milk to orange juice, and grape juice to milk, and orange juice to grape juice. We don't like to drink gasoline, though."
So if there are many places that are unordered/open, that's fine, Hell can be the worst just so long as Hell is really heavy on absolute badness. If Gehenna is really close on absolute badness, maybe there is a problem there, but if the set of places is "Philadelphia, Detroit, Portland, Hell" chances are good that Hell is getting the blue ribbon for worst place even if the rest are not nicely ordered across people's preferences.
Also, I can't help but notice you aren't engaging with the problem of your definition of safety :D I can't recall, is Sophism considered a subset of Philosophy?