Limits of infinity and Hell

[felixthecoach]

I have not posted here in a while, but I wanted to present a short discussion I had with a Christian the other day. Just for some background. She is a somewhat liberal calvinist (not sure how that works). She believes in evolution. She thinks God chooses who goes to hell and heaven before they are born but that they have the free will to choose which place they go.

Alright now that I got the philosophical contradictions out of the way... Here's how the conversation was going (i'm paraphrasing)



Christian: God loves everyone, but He still sends some people to hell.

Me: How is this a good thing? I mean, if he knows who is going to hell before he creates them, how do they have free will?

Christian: Well, he still lets us make a decision even though He knows it is a bad one.

Me: okay, well lets put that aside for a second and just focus on the Free Will perspective. You like math right? [she nods] Okay, lets look at some calculus. Look at this equation:

1/∞

"¦in calculus, we know that this is technically undefined, but that as our denominator approaches infinity, the number equals zero. Now lets put some rules that God has placed on us into our equation:
For 1, we say that is the number of years or lifetimes God is giving us to make a decision to follow him. For the infinity sign, note that it is the number of years God is rewarding or punishing us for making a decision. In other words, we can say that God is giving us so many years to make a decision per so many years of reward/punishment.

1(decision_years)/∞(reward/punishment_years) = approaches zero.

In other words, this equation shows exactly how much time God gives us to make a decision compared to how much time he rewards us for making a decision. You've been pointing out that he gives us an ENTIRE LIFETIME to make a decision to follow him, but according to the math that God created, we're actually getting essentially zero years to make that decision. What do you think about that?

Christian: [long silence in which I think she gets the point] Well, he's giving us a huge reward for doing nothing if we choose Him then"¦That just makes him better.

Me: [Mental Face-palm, change subject]


Anyway, I wanna know what some people think of this argument. I've tried it a few times and always seem to get a similar response. Also, I could probably improve the wording or make it more coherent. What do you guys think?

 

[Squawk]

Hmm, interesting argument to propose. I like it. In particular the rebuttal to her response (huge reward for a quick decision). Just go with "huge punishment for a quick decision".

 

[nemesiss]

i think you made a reasonable argument.
one life time, with little to no real information to make a good judgement on what to decide ... can only lead to poor decisions.
off course when it comes to fundies... explaining something like that often is useless.

the most interesting reply would be; "hmm, interesting. so just believing in it... would be sufficient to get into heaven, regardless of what else you do? well, then i guess i'm destined for hell. by the way, could you say hello to Hitler,jack the ripper,Maximilien Robespierre,Idi Amin Dada,Leopold II of Belgium,Vlad Ţepeş,Ivan IV of Russia,[insert "evil" christian],etc. to me..."

why these people?
http://listverse.com/2007/09/05/top-10-most-evil-men/

 

[pdka2004]

The other issue is that we have no way of knowing exactly what a good decision is. God in its infinite wisdom, has only left us one indecipherable tome which apparently can only be correctly interpreted by a self serving group of sexual miscreants.

It would not be beyond reason to assume that I could do a lifetime of charity work (or zero), saving countless lives - only to lose my spot in heaven to the psycho down the road because it turns out the voice in his head was real and God really did tell him to sacrifice his first born son and sell his daughters into sexual slavery.

I will not accept that I can be eternally punished for breaking arbitrary rules from an unknown entity that steadfastly refuses to tell us what they are

 

[Nogre]

Other than the fact that it relies on basic calculus that would make most fundamentalists' brains explode, it's a cool argument.

 

[obsidianavenger]

its not that he gives us virtually no time to make a decision but that it is a very small amount of time when compared to the amount of time we will have to live with the consequences. i would say thats true of most decisions we make on a daily basis. we have to live with the results for the rest of our lives... which are surely not infinite, but so much greater than the actual time it takes to decide something (seconds) that the ratio will also be sufficiently close to zero.

what i am confused about it this:

She thinks God chooses who goes to hell and heaven before they are born but that they have the free will to choose which place they go.

if god know what i will choose, indeed, creates me to choose one way or the other, is the choice really free? a common conception is that it "could have been otherwise". not so in this universe. furthermore, you are faced with the fact here that god creates millions of people he *knows* will spend eternity suffering. sounds pretty sadistic to me...

 

[kenandkids]

Remember that the lay person views "infinite" as a "really long time." I've had this conversation with so many people, and I can honestly say that they do not in the least comprehend it.

 

[felixthecoach]

I guess it's hard to believe differently if you've been covered in the propaganda from birth. Although, I escaped it myself.

 

[Durakken]

Contrarily I don't view this as a good argument because your friend answered properly considering her beliefs. While yes you are being punished infinitely you are also being rewarded infinitely.

It's more akin to this problem:

theists believe this
1 + b = 2 (b = 1 obviously)

What theists multipath people are looking at is this...
1+b+c = 2 (b or c must be 1)

Atheists are looking at this equation
1+b+c = d

See the atheist is saying we know there is reality. We know there are religions, but don't know if they are true or not. We also don't know whether there is life after death or not.

the best the atheist can do with their equation is d-c-b = 1, but that doesn't answer anything. Obviously whatever those variables are is what reality is.

 

[felixthecoach]

because your friend answered properly considering her beliefs.

I see what you mean, although, I think her counter is still weak. While she wants to say that this makes God even better for rewarding her and others like her, she is ignoring the point that God is punishing others at an equal frequency for "nothing" as she put it.

My point to her was that God is not giving people a fair chance because they have no time. Her point was a diversion in my opinion. However, you're right, her answer was probably the best spin you can place on the argument.

Just out of curiosity, do you have a devils advocate counter-argument for me? I'm interested in what you said about her beliefs.

 

[Durakken]

because your friend answered properly considering her beliefs.

I see what you mean, although, I think her counter is still weak. While she wants to say that this makes God even better for rewarding her and others like her, she is ignoring the point that God is punishing others at an equal frequency for "nothing" as she put it.

My point to her was that God is not giving people a fair chance because they have no time. Her point was a diversion in my opinion. However, you're right, her answer was probably the best spin you can place on the argument.

Just out of curiosity, do you have a devils advocate counter-argument for me? I'm interested in what you said about her beliefs.

You do nothing and you get rewarded
You do nothing and you get punished

So if we look at it from that point of view, whatever you do is so minute that god couldn't possibly base a decision on that because as you said it is equivalent to 0.
If this is the case then god is the only one to know who is best suited for heaven and only those who god thinks is best suited are can go to heaven.
Therefor god decides your fate, but you have free will...you are jsut made to be suited for heaven or heaven is suited for you.

That'd probably be the best argument someone could come up with to counter yours...The problem with this kind of post is that it's possible a theist will see it and use it and I don't like that >.>

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

I've already started discussions with NephilimFree on this subject -
Not that I really expect much of a change in thought from him. I simply hope that he makes a rational discussion out of Mathematics (you can rationalize science - you can't rationalize Mathematics, since everything is built upon concrete principles laid down before it with several offlaying principles).

More interested in the response than anything.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

A interesting reversal of the supposed debate between Euler and Diderot, where the former supposedly uses a mathematical "proof" of God's existence to win the debate.

Apart from Durakken's perfectly valid point, one has to point out that ....

If she believes that she has free will - even though God's already decided where she's going - how does she know that her belief in God means she's going to go to Heaven?

I realise that she's assuming that that is the way it works, but - actually - there's no guarantee that it does, if it's God's decision.

It's like a type of truth table involving two possibilities:

God says "Go to Heaven", she says "I believe in God" => True;
God says "Go to Hell", she says "I believe in God" => False;
God says "Go to Heaven", she says "I don't believe in God" => True;
God says "Go to Hell", she says "I don't believe in God" => False.

In other words - it's God's decision, regardless.

A different approach...

Let's say that she is confronted by a man who says, "If you're *nice* to me, I'll let be nice to you and let you live; if not, I'll kill you".

Problem: If he's decided to rape and kill her - regardless of her "free choice" - does it matter what she chooses?

Kindest regards,

James