From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2001 8:56 AM
To: James Patrick Holding
Subject: RE: Christianity: arguments against; questions for


>> If we surveyed 100 theologians and asked them which
>> notion of heaven -- physical or purely spiritual -- 
>> they considered to be more "primitive", I'm confident
>> they'd say physical.
>
> This is an answer?

Do you dispute my assertion?

>> One reason might be that physicalist notions of afterlife
>> correlate more strongly with earlier stages of historical
>> development both across and within religions.
>
> Generalizing gibberish.

Are you asserting they correlate more with later stages,
or that there is no correlation at all?

>> Another reason might be that a physicalist heaven creates
>> all kinds of sticky questions: is it in spacetime, or
>> not?
>
> What makes this sticky if the answer is, "We don't know?"

What makes it sticky is that the answer is either yes or no,
and there are interesting implications either way.  To be
unwilling to think about the implications is to exhibit
the close-mindedness this exercise is designed to expose.

> all I see is immensely begged
> questions based on assumptions.

What questions? What assumptions? Can you be more specific?

> > > And just how much do you know about the Jewish/Persian
> > > conception of the resurrection body in the first place?
> > 
> > Not much, but I know that this conception was formed in
> > ignorance of how physical laws operate
> 
> If you don't know about the process, how do you know it
> violates physical laws?

I never said it did.  I said that any ancient conception
of a physical heaven would be marred by "ignorance of the
the most interesting implications of physicality". I'm thinking
here of things like conservation laws, relativity, and
quantum uncertainty.  I'm thinking of all the interesting
experiments that a physicist would want to try if he found
himself in a physical heaven.

> > And that would be it?  You would be unwilling to
> > speculate on the various possible answers to them
> 
> I can speculate until the end of time, and every moment
> would be wasted doing so.

What if the speculation leads to a contradiction buried in
your conception of heaven?  How can you be sure no such
contradiction exists?

For example, is my experience
in heaven supposed to be perfect happiness?  Well, I can't
be perfectly happy if have any remaining ignorance, and I
can't be perfectly happy if I have nothing more to learn.
So is  perfect happiness (for me) impossible, or does
being sent to heaven change my criteria for happiness?
In the latter case, isn't this closer to sedation than
happiness?

Another example: will I have imperfect memory of my life,
or will I remember my sins and feel shame?  Either way,
heaven seems a little less than perfect.

This is the sort of pondering that I'd expect from an
open-minded Christian.  Sneering dismissal of "speculation"
would be what I'd expect from a close-minded Christian.

Again, the nature of heaven and hell were of course of 
interest to the great Christian thinkers, but my impression 
is that they tended not to discuss deeply the psychological
or physical nature of our expected experience in heaven.
If my impression is mistaken, please cite at least one
such specific discussion.  (Note: "read these Christian 
authors" does not count as a citation.)

> I often think of these
> Heaven in terms of an alternate universe or dimension.

See, that's more "advanced" than the "primitive" notion of a
physical abode of the dead that exists in our spacetime
(e.g. inside the earth or above the clouds).

>> Compelling Evidence. The great Christian thinkers predate
>> the modern situation of global communication and a
>
> Such chauvanism! You think they didn't have a wide
> marketplace of ideas? You ARE poorly studied.

Before stooping to insults, you may want to confirm
your comprehension of what I wrote.  I didn't deny a "wide"
marketplace of ideas, I denied one "in which truth is 
converged on pretty much asymptotically
and monotonically".  Are you saying such convergence
characterizes the pre-Renaissance world?  Surely you
are "studied" enough to know that the modern idea of
progress in knowledge stems from the Renaissance, and
that the previous millenium was characterized by a
belief in the superiority (and almost non-improvability)
of the wisdom of the ancients and of the early church 
fathers.

If you're claiming that the great Christian thinkers
dealt with the issue of the comparitive present and
future success of the world's various religions in 
the marketplace of ideas, then by all means share your
references.

> you're missing out on a variety of
> thought systems that have since lost all adherents.

You mean like Mithraism and Zoroastrianism (mentioned in
my book) and the pre-Socratics (whose useful ideas lived
on in other thought systems discussed in my book)?

Part of this idea of convergence is that false or useless
ideas tend to vanish from the marketplace, and that
their absence in fact enhances (rather than diminishes) 
the validity of the marketplace's overall judgment.
 
> > Prophecy. The great Christian thinkers predate the notion
> > of professional historians operating under peer review.
> 
> As if it takes a great deal of thought to ask the simple
> question, "Is this true?"

Are you saying there is nothing different or special about
the modern system of peer review and scholarly consensus?
Do you see no difference between how the study of history
was conducted in the 20th and (e.g.) 15th centuries?

> > For other issues, the great Christian thinkers were
> > (as far as I know) not interested in exploring how
> 
> Then quite honestly, you know very little. Start reading the
> authors I have given you.

My sentence continued: "how Christianity might be falsified,
or what they would do if they had no hope of salvation."
I'm skeptical that you can produce any citations
of such discussions in the great Christian thinkers.

> > Such things are not "whipped out"
> > in texts of e-mails like canned gravy.

Oh?  You proceed to do precisely that: whip out a URL that
"distills [Anselm's] classic argument".

> > Right. In case it's not obvious, the point of the
> > question is to get you to explicitly say why it's not
> > unfair.
> 
> Your Anselm will tell you this; nevertheless I have
> distilled his classic argument:
> 
> http://www.tektonics.org/atonedefense.html

I'll treat this in a separate message, copied to
alt.atheism.moderated.

> > It's not my problem that the natural feelings of humans
> > are prima facie incompatible with a position that you
> > assert but that I deny.
> 
> Is natural always right? 

Of course not. But all thinks being equal, natural human
pity and shame are good guideposts in ethics, and a
rhetorical burden falls on those whose position seems
incompatible with them.

brian@holtz.org
Knowledge is dangerous.
http://humanknowledge.net