Right Reason

I’ve been prompted by a recurring experience to write a very boring post about a basic distinction. Here it is: Definitions are not exactly the same thing as descriptions.

At first glance that sounds pretty simple, and brief reflection shows that it’s obviously correct. Why am I pointing out such a trivial thing? Here’s why: I hold to a view of eternal punishment called annihilationism. That’s the view that instead of being tormented forever, those who do not find favour with God will die finally and forever. They will, in simple terms, permanently cease to exist one day. I have a friend who holds to a more traditional view of hell, in which eternal punishment consists of eternal torment. This friend – and this person is not alone, there are many sincere (but mistaken) people who make this same error – has claimed several times that not only do I hold a different view of hell, but I actually do not believe in hell at all. When I explain that in fact I do believe in hell, but I do not believe that it consists of eternal torment, here is (my paraphrase of) the reply I got:

“Well, I define hell as something involving eternal torment, therefore you’re radically re-defining hell, which is the same as denying its existence altogether, because you might say that hell exists, but that word carries a different definition when you’re using it than when I’m using it.”

What has happened here is that people who think this are confusing descriptions with definitions. Perhaps a few hypothetical examples of this exact same tactic in other situations will make if clear why this is a confused way to reason:

Jim: There’s a mustang convertible in that closed garage over there.

Bob: No, actually there’s a Volkswagen Beetle in that closed garage over there.

Jim: Oh, so you don’t believe there’ s a car in that garage, huh?

Bob: Of course I do. I just think the car is a Volkswagen Beetle and not a Mustang Convertible.

Jim: Oh Bob, don’t be so slippery. I define a car as a Mustang convertible! Therefore you’re radically re-defining the car, which is the same as denying its existence altogether, because you might say that a car exists in the garage, but the word “car” carries a different definition when you’re using it than when I’m using it.

Is Jim correct? Of course not! Jim is mistaking his description of the car (a Mustang convertible) for the very definition of a car. In a way, he’s screening out any possibility of debate over what type of car might be in the garage, because he will assume that “car” in and of itself just means what he thinks the car is like. Here’s another example of two people from different periods of history who just entered a time warp and ended up together:

Herb: I think the President of the USA is John Adams

Fossy: No, I think the President of the USA is Teddy Roosevelt

Herb: Oh? So you think there’s no President of the USA?

Fossy: What? I just said there was a President of the USA, namely Teddy Roosevelt!

Herb: But Fossy, I define the President of the USA as a John Adams! Therefore you’re radically re-defining the President of the USA, which is the same as denying its existence altogether, because you might say that a President of the USA exists, but that term carries a different definition when you’re using it than when I’m using it.

Is Herb right? Of course not! Both of these absurd arguments – about cars and Presidents – have one mistake in common. They are confusing specific possible manifestations of a thing with what that thing is by definition. The car in the garage might be a number of things – a Dodge, a Ford, a Toyota etc. But it is not defined in terms of any one of those particular things. It is defined much more basically than that, otherwise there could literally not even be a disagreement about what type of car is in the garage, unless at least one of the participants is hopelessly ignorant and has never heard of a car at all. Likewise, the President of the USA could be any number of people. But it is not any one person by definition, otherwise there could not be a succession of presidents, since the next person to come into office would be a different person and hence not the actual president!

In short, the people who make the glaringly obvious errors in the above hypothetical scenarios do so because they confuse a particular description of what something might be like with the very definition of that thing. The exact same error occurs when somebody says that an annihilationist doesn’t believe in hell. “Hell” here just means the afterlife – the postmortem fate – of those who ultimately do not find favour with God. There is, and has been for some time now, a debate raging over the nature of hell. A book featuring several views on what hell is like was called Four Views on Hell. One of those views was that hell will consist of eternal torment for those people (actually two of the views both expressed slightly different versions of that view). But just imagine how absurd it would have been if the book began by saying “Hell means a place of eternal torment. Now here are four view on hell, some of which deny eternal torment.” Eternal torment is, as in the arguments about cars and presidents, a candidate among views of what hell is like. To say that hell just means “eternal torment” is to brush away all possibility of debate about “hell” by saying “The word hell means eternal torment. The word hell is in the Bible. Therefore eternal torment is in the Bible. Game over.”

This lesson in linguistic basics 101 was brought to you by your friendly neighbourhood annihilationist.

Glenn Peoples

I just had the misfortune to stumble across www.jesus-is.savior.com

With a web address like that, how could I object, right? Think again. THIS is the first page on that site I visited.

To spare you the mental scarring of actually visiting the site, here’s a hint of what that page is about:

I had forgotten about this kind of thing on the web and in so called “Gospel tracts.” The sheer confidence with which such statements are made boggles the mind and moves the bowel simultaneously.

In June of this year, my article, “Has Robert Peterson Defeated Annihilationism?” appeared in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. They gave it the title “Fallacies in the Annihilationism Debate.” In that same issue, Dr Peterson was given the opportunity to reply to my article. However, I have only just obtained a copy of that reply, so I had not gotten around to commenting on it until today.

You can see Dr Peterson’s reply and my thoughts on it here. Basically, I don’t think his reply really fends off the criticisms I made. I’m biased, of course.

I will say two things, however. The first minor point is that at one point I said that Edward Fudge did not cite Edward White when discussing the death of Christ. As Peterson pointed out, and I concede, in an earlier edition of the book in question (The Fire that Consumes), Fudge had cited Edward White, although this citation was removed in the later edition. It made no difference to my overall complaint (since my claim was that Fudge’s theology, along with White’s, was being misrepresented, a claim I still make), but errors should be admitted, and this was an error on my part.

The second thing to say is that at one point I called Dr Peterson’s claim “disingenuous” because he (wrongly) accuses Edward Fudge of using an argument from silence, while in the same work he uses exactly the kind of argument that Fudge was using. I have to apologise for that. Dr Peterson has explained that he was simply mistaken about what an argument from silence was. Fair enough, my apologies.

As for whether or not Dr Peterson successfully refutes my criticisms of his case, I don’t think so, but the readers will have to decide for themselves.

Glenn Peoples

I’ve put up a draft version of my latest article: “Hasker at the Bridge of Death.”

Professor Hasker has been kind enough to look over the paper for me, but in the meantime I welcome feedback and criticism from one and all.

Here’s a basic rundown of the paper: William Hasker thinks that physicalism has a major problem accounting for an acceptable doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. He thinks that emergentism has no such problem, since in emergentism the soul can survive the death of the body and then later be (re)incarnated in a new body. I have little to say about the former claim (in this paper, at least), but I raise doubts over the latter claim.

I say that a mind that is emergent upon a body surviving the death of that body does not appear to be any more coherent than Hasker thinks the idea of a resurrected physical person is. Moreover, the analogies he draws on to persuade the reader that it might not be so absurd after all to think of a mind as self sustaining after the death of the body (examples of black holes and magnetic fields) involve important mistakes on Hasker’s part regarding the facts involved in each analogy.

I argue that when not drawing on problematic analogies, Hasker switches between two different dualisms: emergentism prior to the death of the body, and traditional dualism after the death of the body. He turns to the possibility that God steps in, filling the role once filled by the body, enabling the mind to live on (presumably in heaven) with the body that it used to be emergent upon. Emergentism is thus denied by his claims. Were he to consistently apply all the predicates of the emergent mind to the mind that allegedly survives the death of the body, all sorts of problems would arise, not the least of which being that he would have to conceive of the mind traveling through space to get to a place in space until the resurrection, and secondly it is far from clear that we can make sense of a mind that is emergent on one thing becoming emergent on another, even if that thing is God.

Emergentism might be true. But when an emergentist with views on “soul survival” like Hasker’s claims that physicalists have a logical mess on their hands, sayings about pots, kettles, stones and glass houses come to mind.

According to the Mirriam-Webster Online dictionary, this is what it means to be pathological:

pathological

Main Entry:
path·o·log·i·cal

Pronunciation:
\?pa-th?-?lä-ji-k?l\
Variant(s):
also path·o·log·ic Listen to the pronunciation of pathologic \-jik\
Function:
adjective

1: of or relating to pathology
2: altered or caused by disease; also : indicative of disease
3: being such to a degree that is extreme, excessive, or markedly abnormal <a pathological liar> <pathological fear>

Now, it’s old news that infidels.org is not a place to find reliable information on philosophy of religion. But every once in a while I accidentally stumble across one of their pages in a web search, and I receive a reminder so concentrated that it makes my eyes bleed.

They have a page here on the work of Alvin Plantinga. Under the first heading, in their summary of his “Naturalism vs Evolution: A Religion/Science Conflict?” they begin with an overall claim: “In this chapter, Alvin Plantinga argues that naturalism entails that our beliefs cannot affect our behavior, but natural selection only selects for beneficial behaviors.”

This in spite of the fact that they reproduce that same chapter at their website, in which Plantinga clearly says that beliefs do affect our behaviour – even in naturalism. Anyone at all who is familiar with the argument in that chapter – an argument Plantinga is famous for (the “Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism”) will recall this. To deny this is like saying “in Locke’s famous work on human understanding, he argues that innate ideas exist….” Read the actual essay by Plantinga that the Infidels are summarising here (as provided on their site), it’s a good piece.

Plantinga’s argument is that beliefs are causal for behaviour, but that given naturalism and evolution, this causal relationship undermines the reliability of those beliefs. There, I summarised it in one sentence!

What’s tragic here is that the appearance of a summary gives the impression that someone from Infidels has actually read the essay, and still thinks that this is what Plantinga said!

Whether intentional or not, it fits the dictionary definition (definition #3) of pathological misrepresentation.

It’s fairly self explanatory – check it out here. Which belief system most closely matches you?

Here are my results, number 1 = the strongest correlation.

1. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (100%)
2. Eastern Orthodox (93%)
3. Roman Catholic (93%)
4. Seventh Day Adventist (85%)
5. Orthodox Quaker (79%)
6. Hinduism (75%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (70%)
8. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (59%)
9. Jehovah’s Witness (59%)
10. Orthodox Judaism (52%)
11. Jainism (48%)
12. Bahá’í Faith (46%)
13. Islam (43%)
14. Sikhism (42%)
15. Mahayana Buddhism (41%)
16. Liberal Quakers (41%)
17. Theravada Buddhism (40%)
18. Unitarian Universalism (38%)
19. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (34%)
20. Neo-Pagan (32%)
21. Scientology (29%)
22. Reform Judaism (26%)
23. New Thought (24%)
24. New Age (23%)
25. Nontheist (18%)
26. Secular Humanism (17%)
27. Taoism (15%)

I’m sure this has been around for a while, but I’ve only just discovered David Chalmers’ philosophical humour site here.

It has some gems, two of my favourite being:

From the Philosophical Lexicon: alvinize, v. To stimulate protracted discussion by making a bizarre claim. “His contention that natural evil is due to Satanic agency alvinized his listeners.”

If you’re a Plantinga reader, you get it. If not, too bad.)

And secondly, the page on Nietzsche’s guide to tech support here is fantastic. The advice, “What you’ve done in your function, fool, is the coding equivalent of failing to empty your colostomy bag” seems to flow rather naturally from the late nihilist.

There’s a new article up in the theology section, Athanasius, Atonement and Annihilation. I argue that the teaching of Athanasius on the fall, death, and the atonement that he presents in his great work On The Incarnation of the Word provides good arguments for annihilationism, whether those arguments were intentional or not.