¶1Let's move on to the next objection. Is it hell? Is hell the the the next objection? >> Yeah. So, I think hell was the the next biggest one.
¶2And of course much you go on. >> I was going to say is it similar in type to the moral intuitions, the e ethical intuitions like seems it seems related. >> It is very related. So like this is another thing was like I was starting to notice that a lot of my objections is like a meta point which like this is also something that led me to theism but um it's like a meta point. A lot of my objections weren't actually independent from one another.
¶3>> In other words, like if you solve if you you can't like take them into account like separately and think that their evidential force like compounds or multiplies like no actually there's like an underlying unity to the problems that uh makes them no longer like separate independent pieces of evidence against Catholicism which further significantly dense their force. So, like I was just thinking like, hm, I actually can't treat my intuition against let's say the church's teaching on homosexuality and the church's teaching on like transgenderism as just like independent intuitions, you know, like clearly uh if if I found out that I was wrong about the um the homosexuality intuition, then like I should very significantly start doubting the other intuition because like maybe there there would be some kind of systematic story to how I'm going mistaken. And they're both just like it's the same kind of evidence. They're both just like contrary intuitions. And so I was starting to notice it's like, oh man, my objections from hell, my objections to all the different ethical teachings like about lying and homosexuality and transgenderism and just like, you know, suicide and whatnot, they like all go back to just some of these like basic moral intuitions that kind of grade against Catholic teaching.
¶4And you I I think I was just like implicitly I didn't recognize it, but I was treating these as like independent super forceful pieces of evidence that were just like compounding one on top of another such that I had like you know dozens of problems for Catholicism. But no, it's one unified problem. The problem of divergent intuitions and so then you can you start to see that the the objections are actually probabilistically correlated. And so then uh you know if you can find some kind of unifying explanation for how I might be going astray with respect to these as I think Catholicism provides then you're just like oh man you know these and the intuitions have so much psychological force but you start to see that their evidential force is nowhere near as strong as the psychological force. >> Huh h so there's like a divergence between the evidential force of the intuitions and their and and their their psychological force.
¶5And I didn't really realize that they can't be treated as independent pieces of evidence um until much later on in the process. And it was that realization that that led me to be like, whoa, there actually aren't as many objections that I had to Catholicism that are independent. And it was a very similar realization with respect to theism and atheism, you know, like a lot of the objections to theism at bottom are like, "Oh, here's a bad thing. Oh, here's another bad thing. Oh, here's another sub-optimal thing." Or, "Here's another really bad thing." You know, like hiddenenness or uh religious diversity or like, you know, horrific human suffering and then animal suffering.
¶6And then like, oh, like, you know, there's like other kinds of suffering or there's like horrendous evil. There's like social evil, there's like natural evil, there's moral evil. But like that's one unified problem. The problem of bad suboptimal stuff. And I can't we can't be treating these as like independent pieces of evidence.
¶7Like if you if you conditionalize on or if you take into account let's say one instance of horrific evil like the Holocaust. Sure, theism may very well take an evidential dent from that particular piece of evidence. But then what the resulting theistic picture is going that that you're going to basically rule out all the views on which God doesn't have a justifying reason for allowing that sort of thing to occur. And the resulting theistic picture, even though it takes some dent from that horrific suffering, is now going to make it far less far less surprising that you'd get other instances of horrific evil, >> right? >> And other kinds of evil and other sorts of sub-optimality like, oh, maybe if God's allowing the Holocaust, maybe he also has some reason to allow people to temporarily not believe in him.
¶8Like so and you start to wonder you start to notice that like actually the even the objections to theism aren't probabistically independent and you're like oh man these don't have as much force as you think and then actually like the theistic arguments it's like no like solving fine-tuning won't help you explain Padre Pio >> it also won't help you explain psychophysical harmony it also won't help you explain moral knowledge and like you just see like whoa these are actually probabistically independent arguments for the that are like independently converging lines of evidence it's like whoa Oh. Um, so that's like a higher order realization that was like in the background that really affected my conversion. >> Uhhuh. But but on the topic the specific topic of hell. Well, yeah.
¶9I was I was curious what other considerations led you like apart from these sort of meta considerations of like these seem to be related, you know, intuition so to speak. Um, but was was there anything sort of specific that helped you with with help? >> Well, I mean I can articulate like we haven't really even laid out the problem. So like there's like proportionality concerns and then there's like heavenly grief concerns and there are a few other like much weaker concerns I think that we don't really need to get into that I had but like those are the two main ones. So proportionality is basically like the thought is doesn't hell seem like a disproportional punishment like what like an infinite eternal punishment for like finite crimes on earth.
¶10Doesn't that seem kind of disproportional? Doesn't it seem like an unjust punishment? And if God's perfectly just he's not going to meet out an unjust punishment. So um that was like the objection that I had there seems like hell is a disproportional punishment. Um and then the other objection that I had to hell.
¶11The other main one is like this problem of heavenly grief. So it seemed like you know in the afterlife I would be aware of the fate of the damned. Um and you know I would be like radically conformed to the image of Christ. So it seems like you know what's the fitting emotional reaction to people suffering? It's some kind of negatively veenced emotional response right?
¶12maybe some kind of grief or some kind of sadness. Um and if that's the case and if like you know basically I'm fully flourishing and all my faculties are fully manifest and flourishing in the afterlife in heaven say um then if I'm aware of the fate of the damned as it seemed I would be um I don't think God like just like uh zap our minds free from like oh like oh I had that one friend that at that one point and like he's not here with us so like I don't think God would physically just like like like remove knowledge from our brains or something like that in the afterlife so that we like somehow are unaware of the fate of the damned. That seemed really implausible. >> Um, >> so shouldn't I then be like grieving about the fate of the lost? Especially if it's like let's say like my own child or something like that, you know?
¶13Um, shouldn't that then like at least at the very least like tinge my heavenly joy? But then isn't heaven like doesn't that kind of visiate the heavenly uh blessedness or bliss or perfect happiness? Like I thought all tears will be wiped away there, but like no, it seems like we should we're actually going to be having grief. So, it's like a problem for the kind of blessedness or bliss that is supposed to be had in heaven. Um because like it seems like we'd have to be grieving.
¶14Um given that that's the fitting emotional response to the fate of the damned. Um >> so proportionality and heavenly grief. >> Proportionality and heavenly grief. Those are the two main ones. So I mean with respect to proportionality um the thing that helped me the most was this paper by um Brian Cutter on hell and proportionality and he just gave a bunch of different models at least many of which I have talked with people like father James Dominic Rooney who just wrote a book on hell for routidge I've like they a number of them at least seem to be consistent with what the magisterium teaches um on which actually even though um hell is everlasting and involves everlasting suffer uffering like the total amount of suffering is finite and so it's not actually like a disproportional punishment for crimes on earth.
¶15Um so you could have models on which like the suffering decreases proportionally over time. Um you could have models on which uh you know people reach a eventually after various like sensory pains that they experience the sensory pains diminish out of God's mercy and uh all that's left is like the pain of loss of the botific vision. um you know there were various other models like uh that we probably don't need to get into because it get a little bit tricky and complicated but like basically Brian Cutter's paper hell and proportionality was like a huge thing that helped me and also just like Alexander Puce he has this model of hell on which um like yes hell is going to involve everlasting suffering cuz that's that's dogmatic for Catholics of course um but suffering is compatible with living a life that is at least worth living like at at the very minimum it's like worth living. It's like good that there exist such beings and their lives are like good on the whole according to Alexander Puce's model of hell. Um, and so I was like, "Oh man, okay, maybe maybe if God ensures that people live lives that are at least on the at minimum worth living >> and uh like God God could very well be justified in um basically allowing people to, >> you know, definitively self-exclude themselves from the beatotific vision out of respect for their autonomy and then all like as a natural consequence of that they experience very significant suffering and whatnot which God kind of um you know repurposes for like retributive ends." Um, so I was like, okay, I I can I can see even though it seems implausible to me for various reasons, like I can see how this this could be a proportional punishment given what Brian Cutter says and given that like Alexander Pruce's model of hell.
¶16So I was like, okay, um, this is this is like significantly damaging my the force of my objections from hell. Um, or at least the proportionality objection. And like even since then like you know I I don't even think I'm I'm I'm open to you know like Ethan Muse had this interview that he did with um Pat Flynn on philosophy for the people. You maybe you can we can link it in the description or something like that. Um and like I'm I'm also open to models on which like we don't go in for the Brian Cutter stuff.
¶17Um but like no actually like um like grave sins like mortal sins the sorts of sins that damn you are indeed of infinite gravity because like you a mortal sin you have to have full knowledge of the grave wrongness of the action in question. You have to have deliberate consent. You know you deliberate about it and you fully consent to it and you're not there aren't like these freedom mitigating factors like coercion or being the under the undue influence of alcohol or you know various other like addictions and whatnot. Um, [snorts] and you know, it has to be a grave matter. So, it has to be a serious wrongdoing.
¶18Like ser, it's like fundamentally opposed to love of God. Uh, and if you meet all those three conditions, what is that? You stare clearheadedly at evil. You know it's evil. Not only evil, gravely evil.
¶19The sort of evil that is fundamentally opposed to love of God. And you deliberate about it. You know that it's gravely wrong. And you choose it nonetheless in wickedness. that evinces a kind of hatred of God that's a it's a completely contrary to God's law um and completely as I said fundamentally opposed to love of God.
¶20>> Yeah. >> So you definitively turn yourself away from God who is infinite goodness itself. And if if like you know at least I I wouldn't be surprised if a story like the following turned out to be true. Like maybe just like the the gravity of a crime scales somehow in proportion to like the worthiness or the honor due to the to the person offended. So, like, you know, I gave this example in the Matt Fatt interview that hopefully people have seen, but like, you know, you step on you intentionally go out of your way to like step on an ant.
¶21Like, okay, you shouldn't you shouldn't do that. Like, like love insects. Like, you know, we shouldn't be like dismembering insects or things like that. Like, stop, you know, don't don't go out of your way to like step on step on an ant. Um, well, it would be much worse to do that to a puppy.
¶22Go to go out of your way and like step on the neck of a puppy or like crush its skull. Like, you shouldn't do that. That's very bad. Um, now do that to like an infant or like a grandma. That's even worse, right?
¶23And now like imagine doing that to like God himself. Like I don't know. It it does seem to be the case like intuitively that like the gravity of the wrongs here scale somehow in proportion to like the dignity or the worth of the thing that you're doing it to, right? Cuz like um puppies have like uh more moral value than uh ants. Sorry ants, but puppies do.
¶24Uh and like humans, sorry puppies, but humans have more moral worth or dignity than puppies. Um, and you know, God is infinitely worthy. He is due or owed like infinite honor and whatnot, right? Um, and if that's the case, then like again, like I'm not even I'm not even to like again to mitigate the force of my objections to hell. All I need to like give is at least some story, some account of how this could work, which is like not hopelessly, overwhelmingly, extremely, ludicrously improbable.
¶25Like cuz I'm just trying to offer an accommodation here. Like I'm just saying like, okay, maybe this is true. philosophy is hard. Like ethics is hard. You put like a 100 ethicists in a room and you're going to get like 400 answers, right, to an ethical problem.
¶26So like at the very least, uh like something like this might be true. Uh and so long as it might be true, then I can't really take these again, I can't really treat these problems of hell as like fixed points that they're unalterable, definitive. >> Yeah. And and like again when I compare like when I compare what I'd have to say um as like a Catholic to embrace the problems uh sorry to like resolve these problems. It just didn't seem anywhere near as implausible as the things that I'd have to say as a non-atholic to explain the Catholic vindicatory evidence cuz again like X-rays before and after like people palpating his wounds.
¶27We've got pictures of Padrick. We have pictures of him with his stigmata. you know, like thousands of people would go to his masses. They'd be like 3 hours old. At his death, at his death, we have pictures like no scars or anything.
¶28It's like, okay. Um, you know, like we got pictures before and after like club foot, no club foot, you know, like the miracle of Kanda, like no leg, leg, you know. It's like, what am I to do? Like, it's I don't really have any comparably plausible story as like a non-theist to tell to try to mitigate the the force of that evidence. Certainly, as like a non-theist in my agnostic state, I was like, whoa.
¶29Okay. >> Yeah. And so, looking into Brian Cutter's paper and stuff for it like >> functioned as [snorts] offering a way to to understand really just in a way that's like possible like this is a possible reconciliation of the problem that that I'm experiencing. The reason why I'm bringing that up is because one of my objections to Catholicism was divine simplicity. And I just didn't like it it didn't make any sense to me.
¶30How can all the properties be identical to each other? Like and and then there's there's no parts in God. like what like what about the Trinity and how does that function and everything. And so I what sort of started me down the road like this was the first thing that got me open to Catholicism for real was listening to a lecture by Joshua Siguad on uh on his new model of divine simplicity, you know, trope theory and all this stuff. And um I still don't completely understand it, but it was the first time that I heard some explanation of this theory that didn't make like that was like somewhat reasonable.
¶31>> Yeah. >> It was like, okay, this is this could be possible. Maybe I'm just wrong about that, you know? And it sounds like that's sort of similar to how >> Yeah. >> reading Brian Cutter's paper and and thinking about >> it's like a proof of concept, you know?
¶32Brian, he doesn't even like any of these are true. Like he's saying like they're like what the magisterium says. So it's like oh man and like it the more of those you pile on just one on top of another. You're like there's this huge paniply of things that are like totally consistent with everything that the magisterium says. Uh and like each of which is like okay you know even if I have some difficulties it's like okay maybe you know like I could sort of see it you know and then when you pile them up you're like oh man okay this is very significantly denting the force of my objections.
¶33Um cuz like >> what's the probability that at least one of those stories may very well be true. It's not it's not that low. >> Um and even if it is pretty low again that's just nothing in comparison to what I'd have to say is in my agnostic shoes about all the miraculous evidence. Um, and like again we'd have we're having to take into I'm taking into account all these high order considerations that these aren't like again independent objections to Catholicism. There's like a deeper unified story as to how I might be going wrong with respect to my intuitions.
¶34And um this is like qualitatively categorically different kind of evidence from like the empirical evidence.