Still, I would say that the degree of culpability is far less than that of an adult who commits an analogous act with the same intention

I would argue that they would have the same culpability; for children are given less because we assume they don’t have such knowledge. If we assume that this child does completely understand what they are doing like an adult and have not been swayed by someone else (as children are quite maleable), then why would we not try them as an adult?

The 'grave matter' is the 'act', i.e. the 'objective' component. In our example: the killing of an innocent person. The degree of knowledge and consent is the 'subjective' component.

Yeah, that’s fine for conveyance purposes; but, again, the intention is inextricably linked with their knowledge; so the degree of knowledge to me is a part of the act. I am just splitting hairs here though: just ignore me (:

if one takes all aspects into account, can a human being get that degree of culpability that deservers some form of eternal torment as a just, adequate punishment?

It depends on if the act is indeed of infinite demerit, I would say. For if one knows what they are doing and does it overwhelmingly freely; then how would one not be held fully liable for it?

If murder is a sin that carries infinite demerit, the perpetrator knows this, the perpetrator knows that they should not murder, the perpetrator does it for the fun of it (and not of necessity or coercion or what no), then why would they not be held culpable to the highest order?

I agree with that, if that is what they are saying. I think one could argue that God has a propensity for graciousness; but grace doesn't override justice. God would still have to punish those who do wrong: grace goes above and beyond what is owed, justice is about what one is owed.

In the case of Christianity, God is the one that takes on the burden of sufficing justice through Christ; and this is how God is able to be gracious and just (as you probably know very well).

My point was that God is not the offended party like the victim: God cannot be a victim. So God may be offended, and it is right to point out every sin is an offense against God, but God is not the offended party of which we take into consideration its dignity to calculate the correct punishment.

With respect to the Trinity and the sacrifice, you would be right to say that God was the victim there: I just don't think God can be a man.

Okay, but what is the basis of this? Is it something like this?

I am not taking a principle of equality but, rather, proportionality. It is not that a, e.g., sin that happened for 10-minutes has to be punished with a punishment that lasts 10-minutes; however, the punish must be proportionate. I cannot put to death a person for stealing one turnip.

In the case of a punishment that has any sense of infinitude in it (e.g., infinite duration, repetition, etc.) it seems always disproportionate to the sin (like the turnip example) because the sin, being finite in every way imaginable (in practical affairs), does not remotely approach any infinitude.

E.g., a 10-minute sin of adultery cannot be proportionate to an eternally repetitive punishment of being cheated on. That violates proportionality: don’t you think?

Okay, but if you want to argue for a disproportion of punishment, then you must specify what is supposed to be infinite and finite. Is it duration? Is it that the punishment has infinite duration whereas the transgression did not have an infinite duration?

I am saying any combination of a sin that itself contains no form of infinitude with any punishment that contains at least one form of infinitude. This means that neither the offender nor offended parties are of infinite dignity and the durations were finite.

This could be, e.g., stealing a loaf of bread and eating it with a punishment of having your things stolen for an infinite amount of times; or stealing a loaf and eating it with a punishment of feeling pain for all eternity (with no break).

I missed this. To use an analogy, imagine that a pipe breaks and the water that was flowing through it is now flowing out onto the ground. This is an order being disturbed, and as long as the pipe remains broken, the water will continue flowing out onto the ground. It will flow out onto the ground for all eternity if the cause/pipe is never repaired. Put crudely, Aquinas is saying that we are able to break our own pipes in ways that we cannot repair, and that Hell flows out of this.

This is interesting; because one could make the argument that some disruptions (viz., sins) could cause an infinite causal chain of disturbances of the proper; and I would say if this were to happen, which is very unlikely, then it would have some sort of infinite demerit and may be punished (potentially) by eternal punishment.

It is also worth noting that it may be proportionate to punish a sin that did contain infinitude in a finite way: I am not sure. Sometimes we punish by way of absence of fellow reward; e.g., all these kids get a cookie but that one kid that misbehaved: the kid gets punished by way of others being rewarded. So it may be proportionate to punish those who have committed a sin of infinite demerit with the absence of eternal life in heaven. I'll have to think about it; however, what I am arguing is that a punishment that itself involves an infinitude cannot possibly be proportionate to a sin that contains no infinitude: whether that be in duration or dignity.

But wouldn't that be philosophy, the love of wisdom, and science?

Religion can go hand-and-hand with philosophy: specifically theology. It doesn't always, but it can. Religion is about worship through tradition; theology on the nature of God.

What I mean here is that you simply cannot get a logical, objective answer to what is morally right and wrong. It's not a question of retrospect or our ignorance. The question is inherently subjective, hence you cannot get an objective answer to

Ok, so you are taking a moral anti-realist position; but theology tends to presuppose moral realism.

I am now realizing in my rambling first post it probably would have been more helpful for me to note that all sin was generally taken as being primarily a sin against God. And I would agree with this, the idea of God as some sort of disengaged "third party" to sin does not make a lot of theological sense.

Yes, but is this sin against God, whereof God is not the thing directly offended nor the offender, warrant eternal punishment?

The question of whether eternal punishment is justified seems to me to be different from the question as to whether eternal punishment is theologically sound. The two need not go hand in hand, and indeed they usually don't go together, with the claim that God would be justified in punishing repetent sinners, but shows mercy instead, being a common one.

I don’t see how eternal punishment can be theologically sound if it is unjust: God is perfectly just, so God cannot eternal punish if it is unjust to do so.

Grace is an another essential aspect of most theological theories; but it does not override justice. Viz., grace does not partake in unjust things and justice must still be served.

Thank you, I will take a look.

It would be interesting to see someone try to flesh out this argument

I think this is a good point and, upon thinking about it more, I think it is per se possible that a sin could carry with it eternal punishment; but the kinds of sins we commit historically are not.

I am thinking of something like this:

1. A punishment which incorporates any form of infinitude must have as its corresponding offense one which has in that same form an infinitude. (principle of proportionality in justice)

2. No form of infinitude exists in any offense possibly made by creatures which have or currently exist in the universe.

3. Therefore, the punishment for any given offense possibly made by creatures which have or currently exist in the universe cannot contain any form of infinitude.

For all intents and purposes, I don’t think it matters if the infinitude is in terms of duration of the crime, repetition of the crime, the dignity of the offended party, etc. In the case of humans, which are the only example we have of a being capable of moral scrutiny, there has been nor are there any cases of an offense where (A) the offender was of infinite dignity, (B) the offense had—at least in part—infinite duration, or (C) the offense had—at least in part—infinite repetition.

If (to your point) Hitler were to be a creature which was eternally carrying out mass genocides, was torturing someone for eternity without any break, or a human (to your Vatican point) had infinite dignity and he tortured them; then it would be proportional to punish, by some means, with an eternal punishment.

To Vatican, I would say this is just their attempt at keeping up with the times; but humans do not have infinite dignity, nor is that possible.

The dignity of a thing is relative to its nature such that one closer to God is higher than one more remote; and God is has the highest dignity and is the only one with infinite dignity because He is perfectly good. Humans cannot be perfectly good, for their essence is never capable of being identical to their existence; and this is impossible because the only being capable of having the two identical is the kind of being which is subsistently existent (and human’s do not possess subsistent existence inherently from their essence).

That’s why Being itself is the only thing that can possibly be perfectly good.

This may true, but it isn't necessarily true; and I don't believe that religions were created with this in mind: they were seeking the truth the best way they could. Just because we can retrospectively determine that they got a ton of stuff wrong, given our understanding now, doesn't mean they were making stuff up to "get answers to questions they can't get a 'logical' one for". That's a very shallow interpretation of religion.

Perhaps I am misreading Acquinas, but it seems as though, even in your excerpt, he is arguing that sin is the disruption of God's order and, as such, incurs a debt of eternal punishment.

Your take is very interesting. I would say, despite it not pertaining to your take directly, I still don’t see how sin is ‘objectively infinitely bad’ (viz., infinitely bad).

To me, the ‘subjective’ vs. ‘objective’ factors in sin is false (albeit it useful for conveying your point); since an act is the volition of will, so it stems from this ‘subjectivity’ which you described and so two people are held unequally culpable for a sin are not committing the same sin. We like to say colloquially, e.g., that the schizophrenic and the normal person—or the child and the adult—who both directly intentionally killed an innocent person in the same manner have committed the same murder (objectively, as you put it); but they haven’t: the intentions, wherefrom the volition arises, is drastically different. In fact, the schizophrenic, in this case, has not committed (objectively) the act of murder assuming they are hallucinating to the point where in the hallucination they are committing valid self-defense or perhaps manslaughter.

In short, the problem with your objective vs. subjective distinction is that acts have embedded into their identity intentionality to which it corresponds—e.g., murder is the intentionally killing of an innocent person in the manner where the intentionality is towards killing THAT innocent person.

Now, I would say, in this light I have depicted, this distinction is erased and the question becomes: are some acts, of which are sins, simply not deserving of infinite punishment?

For example, if you believe that a child that shoots someone and kills them while insufficiently understanding what a gun is cannot be held morally culpable to the same level as an adult who does understand guns who does the same relevant things and that this child cannot be held accountable to the point of infinite punishment, then I submit to you that you believe the act of shooting someone with insufficient understanding of what a gun is does not carry with it, objectively, infinite punishment.

Jewish hell is no longer than 12 months and it exists only to purify you of your sin, not to punish. So I'd change your "mainstream Abrhamic religions" to be "Christianity."

I don’t think Judaism itself dictates a 12-month purgatory (e.g., there are plenty of jews that believe in eternal punishment); and Islam is also an Abrahamic religion.

:up:

This seems to me to be a straw man of theology. Not all theological theories include religion; and those that do don't necessarily fall prey to your critiques here. Mainstream religion tends to though (to be fair).

:up:

You are grossly miseducated.

https://www.openbible.info/topics/accepting_jesus_as_your_savior

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent

-- Acts 17:30

Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents

-- Luke 15:10

And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

-- Acts 2:38

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

-- 2 Peter 3:9

Etc.

I am not talking about religion per se: I am talking about theology. It may be the case that no religion has good reasons to believe in eternal punishment; however, I am interested in if there are any good reasons whatsoever.

Firstly, that doesn't matter: the OP is about if it would be just for God to eternally punish sinners.

Secondly, Christianity crucially advocates for repentance: one has to repent and give themselves to Jesus as their Lord and Savior to be saved. That is a core and central aspect of Christianity.

Interesting account: I am not familiar with Judaism.

In eternal pain? No. In their souls being annihilated? That may very well be just. I don't see non-existence as necessarily being a punishment. — BitconnectCarlos

The issue I see here is alluded to in your last sentence here: is it really punishment to just, e.g., kill off Hitler? I don't think so; and this would be unjust, then, for God to do so but just in the opposite kind of way than the idea of eternal punishment. It seems like, by my lights, a just God would have to punish people finitely and proportionately for their sins; then perhaps annihilate or reunite them.

I went on a similar journey a while ago and came to strikingly similar conclusions. In fact, I grew up contending with colloquial arguments for theism--especially from stereotypical Protestantism--as I found none of them convincing; I then explored some of the more prominent figures in the mainstream debates in theology (such as the new atheists, william lane craig, etc.) and found them likewise unconvincing; and then, eventually, I came across Ed Feser's "Aristotelian Proof" and it was bizarrely different than any other argument I had heard. I didn't find it convincing, but I started reading on Acquinas, Aristotle, Augustine, Plato, and the like on classical theism and found the argumentation for and metaphysics of God vastly different than mainstream theology. In short, I ended up convincing myself, somewhere along that journey, of the classic theism tradition.

Where I think this becomes particularly interesting is that questions like the problem of evil take on a different character. If God is not a being among beings but Being itself, then the moral structure of reality flows from the nature of God, who is goodness itself, rather than from some being telling us how we should live. What does this mean for the problem of suffering?

Yes, indeed it does: it becomes interesting (I would say) for all topics in theology. God is the ipsem ens subsistens, the actus purus, divinely simple, an intelligence, a will, the ultimate cause of everything's active existence, etc.; and it follows that:

1. God's willing a thing as real is identical to Him thinking of it as real.
2. God qua intelligence and qua pure actuality cannot think of a thing as real other than relative to its perfect form.
3. God, then, cannot will a thing into existence in a manner where it is not in correspondence with its good.
4. So God must be all good willed.

So why is there badness in the world then?

Because:

1. Creation always entails a hierarchy of value of goods.
2. When that creation is willed in a perfect manner (viz., the good of each thing is willed in accordance with its perfect form respectively) and given #1, this allows for the possibility of privations.
3. Those privations are not willed by God: they are the absence of good.

This is also why Acquinas rightly points out that the euthyphro dilemma is a false dilemma: God is perfectly good, He then must be perfect at what He is, and He then must be perfect at being an intelligence, and so He wills what is good exactly because He is perfectly good. His goodness is out of necessity---not by choice.

I completely agree that the Bible, especially the Old Testament, does not depict God accurately nor justice; but I am wondering what reasons one may have for accepting that God does justly, eternally punish unrepentant sinners. I simply don't see how that would make sense, since a sin could never have as the object of its act God and so would never have infinite demerit.

This was a wonderful summary: thank you!

However, how would you propose a sin carries infinite demerit? Do you agree that it doesn't?

Yes, sinning is to will against God--infinite goodness--but why would this entail infinite demerit for that sin?

Yeah, I just don't find that plausible. Just because God creates us, it does not follow that God can do whatever He wants with us (so we can't just be His private property).

You are correct that God is offended as a 3rd party in the interaction of sin (for a sin is to will against God's plan: against infinite goodness); however, this doesn't seem to make it true that God being offended in this way should be treated like the offended party (relative to their dignity). For example, if a judge orders you not to murder and you go murder anyways, then the judge is one of the parties offended; however, they are not offended in the same way as the victim. It seems plausible to me that the murder is evaluated in terms of the dignity of the victim in conjunction with the severity of the act itself; but this doesn't seem to extend to 3rd parties who are offended but not the victim. Disobeying the judge may carry with it more punishment, but it doesn't really make the crime itself any worse. In the case of killing an innocent rabbit vs. a human, it seems plausible that the object in the act does make a substantial impact of how immoral the act is.

To make Acquinas' argument hold, to me, we would have to posit someone making God the victim; and that is impossible since God is immutable.

None of this even attempted to answer the OP: what we are exploring here is whether or not it is just for an unrepentant sinner to be eternally punished for their finite sins.

Those emotions are just chemicals in the brain, why wouldn't they exist in such a machine. You're not engaging with the thought experiment. — Darkneos

Courage, e.g., is not an emotion and requires fear which is painful: the experience machine is about pleasures (as far as I understand).

Like I said before, even if it does include suffering, it being fake makes it less valuable than it being real.

The experience machine doesn't give people the higher goods: it just gives people this shallow sense of hedonic happiness. The goods worth pursuing require suffering to achieve and maintain: there's a big difference between hedonic and eudaimonic happiness. E.g., courage, temperance, etc. don't exist in this experience machine.

However, let's stipulate that the experience machine is just a 1:1 simulator of the real world (including suffering) like the matrix: why would we choose one over the other? Because the more real a thing is, the more valuable it is. E.g., ceteris paribus, an imaginary chair is not as good as a real chair (even if they have the same properties other than existence).

That's how it works in the US, and it has worked fine.

Your thinking presupposes that the a priori modes of cognition have to mirror the natural laws; and this is simply not true.

Who said that, e.g., mathematics is more than (transcendental) a priori?

Indeterminism is a short-hand for physical indeterminism, I would say; but I get your point.

The government would argue it's not going to be will-nilly. They are only going to do it when they have reasonable suspicion of overpayment.

:lol:

I don't think the article begs the question: I was noting your response did.

Here’s what the article says:

However, since Bob1 and Bob2 have all of the same goals, beliefs, etc., there is nothing different between them to which we can appeal to explain why Bob1 chose to go the bookshelf at time T2 and Bob2 chose to go the kitchen at time T2.  Their individual actions are explainable, but libertarianism cannot explain why one choice is made instead of another.

This has the same problem I already exposed: a libertarian is not per se committed to the idea that if Bob1 and Bob2 have the same exact beliefs, desires, etc. that they each could decide to will something different than each other—this is a straw man.

The libertarian could hold equally that two Bobs in identical universes would reason the same and decide the same while also holding that if merely the physical causality were the same in each world then the Bobs could reason differently.

It’s also worth mentioning that the article sets up a shaky distinction between beliefs and reasons that I don’t think a libertarian has to accept.

The core tenant of libertarianism is that leeway free will exists, which implies that there is free will in the sense that one could have done otherwise: they are not committed per se to the view that one can reason contrary to their beliefs nor that they cannot reason contrary to their beliefs.

This is the crux presupposition in your thought:

Now when we rewind, we're of course rewinding such that all those facts we took note of are all the same

I reject this. When you rewind the clock, you are rewinding the facts which does not itself necessitate that when you start the clock again those facts will re-emerge. You haven't provided any justification for why one should believe that and it just begs the question by presupposing that causal determinism is true.

E.g., if it is a fact that I went for a run today and you rewind the clock to right before I began my run; then ceteris paribus we don't know that I am going to go for a run today. If we believe causal determinism, the loosest sense of the term, is true, then we have reasons to believe I will necessarily go for that run.

The problem is that you are claiming to refute libertarianism by presupposing causal determinism in the first place; and you are doing this by implicitly stipulating that when the facts are rewound those facts are inevitably going to happen again: that's just saying "causal determinism is true" with convoluted steps.

EDIT:

So, you end up needing to prove causal determinism to prove that your OP's argument is true; which defeats the purpose of your argument in the OP in the first place.

So, why should one expect the same outcome if we rewind all the facts?

Moreover, with respect to my original critique, what if we only rewound the physical facts?

I abstain from conversations having free will as the topic, insofar as the very notion of “free will”, as far as I’m concerned, has already confused the issue.

How does it confused the issue?

…is only the case under very restricted conditions, re: pure practical reasoning, in which the subject himself is necessary and sufficient causality for all that which is governed by those principles, sometimes even to the utter subordination of natural instincts

Can’t we subordinate our natural instincts all the time? How is this “very restricted”? Most people don’t have, e.g., brain tumors.

How does the bold part even work. Why would new causality being generated be any advantage at all? Suppose one uses this kind of free will to cross a busy street. Generating new causality seems to be pure randomness, as opposed to actually looking and using the state of the cars as the primary cause of your decision as to when to cross.

That is beyond the scope of my critique: I am merely pointing out to @flannel jesus that it is not a valid rejoinder to libertarianism to stipulate one will will the same (and thusly the change in causality is from some other source if the causality is different at all the second or third time we rewind the clock).

They tend to believe in a soul or immaterial mind and that reality has top-down causality to some extent; which would not be random: e.g., things ordering themselves in correspondence with an idea is not random at all. The idea is that the higher-ontological things have some sway over what exists at the lower-ontological things.

I am not a libertarian, but the way I would think about it is that our brains facilitate our ability to reason and reason governs our actions; so the "top" does have influence over the "bottom" causally to some extent. The memory your brain formulates influences your decisions, which can impact how the brain organizes itself in the future. Our brains are not like mechanical domino-style robots.

In your example we don't, or if we do it is presupposed we will will the same anyways, whereas in mine we do but we could will differently.

My point is not that libertarianism is correct but, rather, that your OP is a straw man of their position: no libertarian worth any salt is going to disagree with the idea that if you will the same then you will will the same. They are going to note that if you rewound their motives and reasons and the physical aspects of their action, then they may have had different motives or reasons and thusly willed differently. For libertarians, willing is a source of causality and not merely a biproduct of physical causality.

Do you think the rational principles of logic and cognition would be the same in a reality that had different underlying natural laws?

The a priori modes by which one cognizes depends on, as the name suggests, how their cognition is pre-structured and not the natural laws which govern those pre-structures: they relate to each other, but aren’t the same.

If, in principle, reason were to manifest in a being which had a wholly different physical constitution, then it’s modes of cognition would be the same as it relates to reasoning even if the natural laws governing (and the natural organs or functions ontologically grounding) that reasoning is wholly different than our own.

Now, what are the kinds of being which have reason but do not have human brains? I don’t know, exactly because we’ve never met one.

Applied ethically, I think educating the people and arming them is the best solution against tyranny and injustice. I am not saying we get rid of the police or the justice system, but I wouldn't rely on it heavily like China does.

CC @flannel jesus

The physical causality could be the exact same and the intent pursued could be the exact same. Each option toward the given intent pursued is of itself, however, a more proximal possible intent toward the here distant intent one aims to actualize.

If the intent is the exact same, then only the means towards that end could be subject to change (in principle); so it would be impossible that one has the leeway freedom to intend differently in your example here (to Flannel’s point). Javra, what you are saying here is that one can intend something differently when they intend the same thing: it’s internally incoherent.

To be honest, I am not sure of the exact threshold; but I do lean towards the people over the government. I do believe, to relate to the OP, that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in, on, or with their private property as long as they, within that private property, create the privacy. So letting the government willy-nilly enter into people's bank accounts is a no-no: that gives them entirely too much power.