{"id":6134,"date":"2012-12-04T12:01:39","date_gmt":"2012-12-04T17:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=6134"},"modified":"2012-12-04T12:01:39","modified_gmt":"2012-12-04T17:01:39","slug":"is-judgement-always-about-punishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/12\/is-judgement-always-about-punishment.html","title":{"rendered":"Is Judgement Always about Punishment?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Chris Hallquist has uploaded another chapter of his book for comment\/questions<\/a>. \u00a0I don\u2019t have anything very helpful to say, since I mostly agree with him and Dennett. \u00a0\u201cI feel strongly about this, and your questions make me sad\u201d is a really bad approach to an argument about truth claims. \u00a0I disagree with some of the stuff about the use of mockery , but that\u2019s more a content disagreement than a \u201cI think religious readers will misunderstand X as currently outlined.\u201d \u00a0(Plus\u00a0I\u2019ve written on this before<\/a>).<\/p>\n

But I did have another content argument that caught me back in Chapter 2<\/a>. \u00a0Hallquist wrote:<\/p>\n

The problem is not that Christians have offended me by telling me I\u2019m going to Hell. The problem is that the idea that I and countless other non-Christians (a category which includes a great many friends of mine) deserve to go to Hell for eternity is the height of moral insanity.<\/p>\n

This is why talk of \u201catheist fundamentalism\u201d is ridiculous. Atheists do not have any holy book we consider infallible. We have no traditional dogmas to defend. We certainly do not reject central discoveries of science for the sake of any holy book or dogma. We do not think anyone should be eternally damned merely for disagreeing with us, or declare anyone\u2019s private behavior to be an \u201cabomination\u201d just because a book written thousands of years ago says so.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There definitely are Christians and sects of Christians that seem pleased and vengeful<\/a> whenever they talk about Hell. \u00a0But I want to take a bit of an issue with Hallquist\u2019s second paragraph. \u00a0He\u2019s conflating two problems he has with religion: the appeal to an authority that\u2019s outside the scope of empiricism and the idea that people can be \u201ceternally damned merely for disagreeing with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Damned\u2019 isn\u2019t a category that exists in atheism. \u00a0But \u2018unfixably<\/a> broken<\/a>\u2018 might be. \u00a0And then it\u2019s not so much a consequence of thumbing your nose at a particular tradition, but about standing athwart Reality, yelling \u201cStop!\u201d \u00a0 \u00a0No matter what you believe subjectively, you live in the world that actually exists<\/a>. \u00a0So, even if you deny the existence of material things, you\u2019ll still stub your toe on the rock you kick.\u00a0\u00a0If you keep playing around with that bb gun you\u2019ll shoot your eye out. If you stay in that relationship, it\u2019s bad for you. If that cancer keeps growing, it\u2019ll kill you. \u00a0These aren\u2019t moral claims, they\u2019re causal ones. \u00a0And they\u2019re ones plenty of atheists might endorse.<\/p>\n

Hell\/sin\/separation from God doesn\u2019t need to be framed exclusively as retribution. \u00a0It can also be described as logical necessity. \u00a0When I say that if you step out of your window, you will fall, I\u2019m not saying that because gravity decided you deserved<\/em> to break your leg. \u00a0When you take actions that coarsen your moral sense<\/a>, you\u2019re wounded<\/a>. \u00a0It may not be your\u00a0fault<\/em>. \u00a0You may have been a tough situation (you might have been pushed out the window), but the consequences of natural law follow from the action.<\/p>\n

So, if you\u2019re an atheist who believes in objective moral laws, then you do believe that you\u2019re harmed by\u00a0transgressing\u00a0them. \u00a0You disagree with the Christian only in that you think the wounds you inflict on yourself fade out into non-existence, along with you at death. \u00a0But you don\u2019t disagree with making causal claims about the consequences of immoral acts.<\/p>\n

If you want exemptions, mercy, and grace, you need a Person, not a Law.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Hallquist has uploaded another chapter of his book for comment\/questions. \u00a0I don\u2019t have anything very helpful to say, since I mostly agree with him and Dennett. \u00a0\u201cI feel strongly about this, and your questions make me sad\u201d is a really bad approach to an argument about truth claims. \u00a0I disagree with some of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":6138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,27,179],"tags":[158,25],"class_list":["post-6134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-morality-in-practice","category-parsing-catholicism","category-possibly-heretical","tag-natural-law","tag-soteriology"],"yoast_head":"\nIs Judgement Always about Punishment?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Chris Hallquist has uploaded another chapter of his book for comment\/questions. 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