From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 10:03 AM
To: alt.atheism.moderated
Cc: James Holding
Subject: Re: Best argument for justness of hell?

Robert Turkel (aka J.P. Holding, aka James Patrick Holding) has responded
to my last posting via an update to an essay on his "Tektonics" web site.
He writes:

     making the point that a person could no more be "99% sinless"
     that one could be "99% pregnant" -- lately it has been added that
     reckoned on time spent sinning, one can be sinless thusly [can I
     meet someone who is, then?], but where a timeless being is
     concerned, that's not really an issue.

Turkel is confused on his metaphysics if he thinks that a B-series
perspective of time (in which 'the present' is always relative and not
absolute) can make it impossible to enumerate the minutes in a person's
life and note that 99% of them qualify as sinless. Turkel simply hand-waves
when he declares this temporal accounting to be "not really an issue".

Turkel's request to meet someone who is 99% sinless is a red herring. He
should either argue that no human could possibly spend 99% of his life not
sinning, or explain how such a person would nevertheless be an "infinite
distance" on some moral dimension from 100% sinlessness.  Turkel cannot
bring himself to answer (or even cite) my argument:

     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. His 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.

Will Turkel now ignore this argument for a third straight time?

          Satan is perfectly evil. Even a single good act in a
          lifetime of evil makes one fall infinitely short of
          Satan's standard of perfect evil, and thus constitutes
          grounds for eternal reward.

     that might work out of Satan were actually the one who was the
     timeless Creator, but since he isn't, it doesn't,

Turkel again simply hand-waves in the direction of "timelessness" as a
substitute for an actual argument.

     and it also neglects the consideration that evil is not the
     opposite of good but rather a corruption of it. Evil has no
     independent existence of its own but is a parasite.

After invoking dimensionality with his talk of "infinite distance", Turkel
now retreats and speaks not of quantitative distance but rather of
qualitative difference. Doing so completely undermines his attempt at a
quantitative justification for eternal punishment, and makes his argument
collapse.  Turkel gives no answer for my point that

     Non-perfection is simply not the same thing as infinite
     imperfection. This is just a simple confusion of the two concepts
     of negation and infinity.

It is clear that Turkel lacks the ability (and perhaps also the stomach) to
defend an  irrevocable unending period of net punishment or inflicted
suffering for a repentant person.
--
brian@holtz.org
http://humanknowledge.net