From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 11:45 PM
To: James Patrick Holding
Subject: RE: Christianity: arguments against; questions for


I asked:

If, when my first 100 trillion years of torment are over, you happen
to remember that a basically good person is just beginning his torture
essentially because he used his God-given gift of reason, will you
think "right on! you and Hitler are getting what you deserved!"?

(Before we continue, I'm curious as to whether you would dare admit
that, for whatever reason, you would indeed say that Hitler and I were
getting what we deserved.  A simple "yes" will do -- are you up to it?
:-)

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

I don't see the issue of the justness of hell substantively addressed
in your essay.  You outline the beginning of an argument:

  1. God is infinitely good. 
  2. All sin and evil are therefore, morally, an infinite 
     distance from God. 
  3. Any who commit sin/evil, therefore, are an infinite 
     distance from God's standard of goodness. There is 
     an infinite gulf between God and the sinner. 
  4. Our finiteness means that we are unable, ourselves, 
     to pay for/atone for our sins, for we cannot cover by
     any means that infinite distance with finite human works.

I was expecting you to then state that only infinite punishment is
appropriate for this infinite distance, and proceed to give
justifications for these statements. But instead, the rest of the
article is not about the justness of the infinite price, but rather
about the doctrine that Jesus' self-sacrifice paid this price.

This leaves an argument that hardly needs rebutting. You make the
startling claim that 99.999% sinlessness is somehow an "infinite
distance" on some moral dimension from 100%
sinlessness. Unfortunately, you give no justification for this curious
claim that on the spectrum of sinfulness, one endpoint is somehow
"infinitely" far from every other possible point.  While it is
obviously true that any amount of sin is qualitatively different from
the complete absence of sin, it is by no means obvious (and in fact
quite counter-intuitive) that any amount of sin is in effect an
infinite amount, and that all amounts of sin are thus equivalent.
Your argument thus provides no rebuttal to the prima facie absurdity
that a single white lie in an otherwise sinless life could warrant an
eternity of torment.

If there is a better argument for the justness of hell, please refer
me to it. I can find one on neither your web site nor that of Glenn
Miller (who I note does not subscribe to the conventional Christian
notion of hell).

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