Episode 148: Hell and Abductive Reasoning: An Interview with Atheist Ed Atkinson

And though there's a hell outside, you see. Everlasting torment and violence. You were fairly adamant, you were fairly adamant. You're listening to the Rethinking Hell podcast, where evangelical Christians discuss what the Bible To continue the discussion and find more resources on this You can visit us online at the end

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Rethinking Hell podcast. Today I'm really excited to have a conversation with a friend of mine that I started to get to know back in two thousand fourteen sorry, two thousand sixteen

at the third annual Rethinking Hell Conference in London. Um, one of the breakout submissions, one of the breakout proposals that was sent to us back when we were planning that conference was a um turned out i to be a sort of tag team um dually presented paper by a pair, one of whom is I uh I'm assuming still is, but at the very least was at that time a Christian named Josh Perik.

Um, but then also uh by an atheist or at the very least an agnostic, we'll let him explain that for us when we start to talk to him. His name is Ed Atkinson, and they presented a really um interesting breakout presentation that unfortunately we were never able to. make public. And so I'm really excited to talk to Ed today in this interview and explore some of the topics that he and Josh presented in their paper.

um and and maybe some of the thoughts that he's had since then. And uh maybe we'll talk a little bit about what the future terrain of the hell debate as insofar as it is related to apologetics. might look like. So with that sort of um uh uh impromptu introduction out of the way, Ed Atkinson, thank you so much for joining me. It's great to talk to you again.

Oh, brilliant. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me on. Sure. Let's begin by uh, you know, most of our listeners probably will not be familiar with you. And um if I'm not mistaken, you at one point counted yourself a Christian, even if it was in the distant. talk a little about a little bit about um your faith background before your deconversion. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, sure. Um, I grew up in a fully atheist household. Uh that's quite normal for Britain.

And I was converted uh through my sister, you could say, who became a Christian when she was mid teens and I few years later became a Christian when I was sixteen. I jumped in and really wanted to know God. That was the whole thing. And to be kind of part of the team bringing healing to the world.

And that wa that was such a motivation for me and it kept me going in the church for quite a while but in the end doubts did catch up with me. I I'm the If you could imagine in the church there's um the person who kinda fall falls down when the Toronto Basin comes and and uh uh has all sorts of crazy testimonies. And then there's the solid treasurer who uh is always there. I was the latter one. Uh and I I just didn't feel I experienced God and I I had an analytical

bent and didn't think that prayers was seen to be making much difference. So th those were the key doubts and they caught up with me and I jumped in a in a i in a moment almost. My dad had recently died so I guess that was the prompt. Uh to say, okay, I'm just gonna step back and look at it rationally. And that was my journey that's ended up in an interest in uh apologetics as an atheist. Yeah, yeah.

Well, before we talk more about your interest in apologetics, um, back when you were still a on fire Christian as far as you're concerned, and before you really in earnest began your deconversion, Um what uh y what sort of experiences did you have thinking and talking about the doctrine of hell? I'm assuming that back when you were a Christian you accepted the doctrine of eternal torment, is that right? We try not to think about it, is is the is the sort of s short answer.

We're very much evangelical. I was in the charismatic uh stream so theology wasn't particularly a high priority. So hell was something horrible. Something you were really franked about for your children if you were a parent or your friends. uh if the actual nature of it, whether it was um eternal or not didn't really impinge on me very much, in the same way that um Calvinism versus Armenianism I knew was an issue but didn't didn't have a view on it.

Did the cot did the doctrine of hell um play a role in your deconversion? You mentioned that y there were some doubts that you began to formulate and that ultimately, you know, sort of uh sped up your deconversion and stuff. W was the doctrine of hell among those doubts? Not massively. Uh I think the suffering issue more generally was uh uh important to me. I don't remember massive Uh massive agony over the doctrine of hell. Okay.

Now you are um somebody that for a number of years I have known is is is interested in the world of apologetics, engaged in the world of apologetics. Um, you know, we have mutual friends on both sides of the Christian atheism debate. Josh Parik on the Christian side, for example, Edward White on the Uh sorry, Andrew White, sorry about that. Um w how is it that you have gotten to be so interested in the world of apologetics and what keeps you in that world? Um if

I'm I'm assuming that you don't find yourself increasingly um convinced of Christianity or something like that, and yet here you are continuing to engage in this world of apologetics. Why is that? What what has you interested in it? It's really hard to tell because uh I'm aware that uh us humans we tell each other stories to make ourselves heroes of and why we're doing what we're doing. Whereas the real reason

is something a lot more base. So uh we do this podcast that you've been on called Doubts Aloud. And uh there's Andrew White who you mentioned and um Francis, Janush, um, all from London, and She says I just do it because it's a hobby. I enjoy the discussion and uh I I I like it. And she's very engaged in discussion groups and things like that. Um along with me. So she might be the one who's being honest. Uh um I could give you my hero story, but I'm not sure it's really worth very much.

Oh I'd be interested what what do you uh tell me about it. What what do you mean? Uh that What we believe matters. What we believe impacts on how we uh operate in the world morally. So all of us want to do the right thing, or the vast majority of us. But some people think the right thing is to send money to print Bibles for Nepal or something. And others think uh building schools in Nepal and health centres is more important.

that is a very real material difference. And so what you believe really does make a difference in your moral interaction in the world. Yeah. So having that discussion is important.

Yeah, yeah. So I think I understand. So what what you're saying is there's a decent um chance that your interest in the world of apologetics really boils down to a little more than a hobby, but you do have what is what you at least consciously uh what consciously is motivating you, which is that you're hoping to have a positive impact by changing, you know, by influencing way influencing the way other people think and perhaps being influenced yourself.

in the hope that um the more people, including yourself, grow in their worldviews, they'll be able to make better, more meaningful impacts on the world, that kind of thing. Is that what you mean by your horiz hour uh hero story? Yes, exactly. And I really like the way you put it, with it's uh where it's all up for grabs. I could be the one who's wrong and I'm gonna learn through engaging in this way.

Sure. Well but of course we all think we're probably not wrong. And that Well that's right, of course. Yeah. Um Okay, well one last question in this sort of introductory portion of our discussion. How is it that you became familiar with us at Rethinking Hell? Um Uh you know, uh I I mentioned in introducing you that you and Josh spoke at our third conference. Is that really how things got started? Tell us about that.

I was aware of Andrew and uh he he was a friend of mine and he was your guest. I don't know how you reached out to him. Uh but I listened to it and was really impressed by well, I knew him already and I was really impressed by yourself and Where you were going. Um, I'm a big fan of the unbelievable show and you've been on that several times.

So I think it was just natural for me to when I heard you were coming to London to say, Oh, I want to be involved with that and I'm the sort of person who is has a lot more fun if I'm a if I'm contributing as well as as a recipient. Yeah. Very cool. It it's funny, I I I'm having sort of vague recollections of of how this came about. I think if I'm not mistaken You had originally pitched it to us as a breakout session, you would present by yourself, but we pushed back and said

We'd love to have you there, but because this is a conference for you know, for Christians, we really think that there should be a Christian alongside you. Um, d was that something that bugged you or were you happy to get Josh on board so that you guys could present in in tandem?

Oh well a bit of both, I guess. I mean I I completely understood, so it was no problem and Josh was very gracious and he contributed to the paper um a lot as well as um kind of checking what I was saying was in line. Yeah. Well, you guys did great. I enjoyed it and it's uh a bit of a bummer that we were never able to get that published, but hopefully we can meaningly uh meaningfully cover a lot of that ground in our conversation today. So let's turn that uh turn to that now.

In your presentation, you began by proposing a method for answering apologetics-related questions, including the question of hell. Uh a method that you call uh w ha when I say you call, it's not like you guys term coined the phrase, but y y you were presenting this method called abductive reasoning. So talk to us about what abductive reasoning is.

um and and how it can apply to um answering apologetics related qu questions. Yeah, great. Well abductive reasoning is just uh giving enough uh an a a fancy name to s to common sense, really. Anything that's got even the slightest bit of uh complexity and nuance to it, humans are gonna go with abductive reasoning. Uh the the classic example would be a murder investigation or even a trial. the uh uh y you're not gonna by pure deductive reasoning have some premises

go through the logic and it will end up with the conclusion e uh Mr X is the culprit. It's gonna be you've got some evidence, you got some ideas, you see how it all fits together. And this is what we just naturally do. If I if I come home at uh to an empty house And I sense the kettle's hot Um, I think well the the best explanation for that is that my wife's uh home already or has recently been home or that that kind of thing. It wouldn't be that aliens have turned the electricity on.

Um Having a theory or a hypothesis is the terminology, the j the jargon, uh and having uh either one or other competing hypotheses, so uh Joe Bloggs is the culprit, Joe Boggs is innocent would be two hypotheses. You have a whole set of observations like um fingerprints on a w murder weapon.

And then you see how there's a good fit or not a good fit between each hypothesis and the uh various observations. And you do it sort of one by one and you come up uh with a cumulative sense of where it's all going. So it's it's a it's not clear, pure, clean uh l philosophical logic but it's what we have to do in almost any other Even life and death like a

murder trial um situation. And this is also sometimes called inference to the best explanation or something like that, is that right? Yes, that's right. The this word fit I use, what how good the fit is between the hypothesis and the um uh observation. Sometimes it's be it's you use the idea of how good it is at explaining it. So

How goo how well does the um idea that Joe Bloggs is the culprit explain the fact that there is his fingerprint on the knife? And of course the answer's really well. Um the Other way of looking at it is to use likelihood. Or probabilities. It's the same thing really. Uh and that's where um Bayesian probability comes in. But I think we can kind of park that and just we're just talking about common sense really and there's a structure of it of

having uh hypotheses and looking at the fit to the uh observations. Yeah. There's one thing in particular that I really think is important that needs picking up. Sure. And that is What becomes really, really strong evidence isn't a brilliant fit between the theory, the hypothesis and the observation. Yeah. What really does it is a a terrible fit between a theory and a competing theory and the observation. because um take for example uh y you've got two

um I uh uh uh well say an alibi and a murder trial. So the fact that someone doesn't have an alibi Uh could be explained by either. It's a much better fit to the culprit being is the chap being genuinely guilty. But an innocent person can not have an alibi for some reason, you know, he just might have been at home watching Tully on his home that night and s what can he do? Right. So it's i it's not brilliant for the

uh person claiming innocence. But it's not really diffic it's not damning evidence. But having a murder your fingerprints on the murder weapon when it was bought in a shop a hundred miles away uh the day before, is really you g you're troubling in trouble to get out of that. And that really strong evidence because it's so unlikely if you were innocent. No.

But that phrase so unlikely really is critical here in that, like you said, we're not dealing with propositional logic here, you know, we're not dealing with um premises that lead to a surefire conclusion. We're talking about Given that you've got multiple competing explanations for a set of observations, which of those competing explanations are most likely and which ones are least likely to be uh to account? for um

For those things. So this is a this is a way of of c maybe you could say categorizing competing explanations by the likelihood that they explain the observed data, something like that. Yes, that's right. A and you're looking at that end where something's extremely unlikely as the that's the key spot you're looking at. Right. A and uh kind of like um what shall I say, kind of plot alert, Eternal Contest of Torment is A terrible fit. to a loving, gracious

Even just God. Well, so expand on that then. Um, you know, in in Christianity we have this concept that we think is taught by Scripture that. Um the God of all creation is um uh on omnibenevolent. He is you know, he loves a all of his creatures um maximally. Uh and that at the same time he is a god of maximal justice and he everything that he does is perfectly just.

But at the same time, at least since about 1600 years ago, most Christians have believed that that God is going to torment those that are not saved through faith in Christ. Maybe we could put an asterisk there because of inclusivism and stuff like that. But anyway, this maximally allegedly maximally loving and maximally just. God is going to inflict putit punitive torment of some form, physical, psycho psychological, both, whatever, for all

eternity, so a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion years from now and it'll only just be getting started. Um and you know, I think there's obviously an intuitive um reaction to that that that for many people s uh makes them think that that there's something wrong there. There's there's something incongruous there. Um, but flesh that out for us in terms of the subductive reasoning in you know, when we talk about competing explanations,

and their either greater or lesser likelihood to of accounting for the observed data. We're dealing here with the the observed data of um uh this what we allege to be the character of God versus what is alleged to be the fate of the impenitent in hell. How does that inform the subductive reasoning and and what are going to be the less likely or greater likely explanations for that data? Great. Uh so with uh ductive reasoning you start with the hypotheses.

And Josh and I argued for these to be the two uh competing ones. Whether they're not uh whether they're completely uh mutually exclusive and that though the only two options possible, uh it doesn't really matter so much. We just compare these two. So uh uh hypothesis one is the Christian God exists. So that allows for very uh a sort of woolliness over what the doctrine of hell is. Um, it could be either. Uh as a hypothesis before you look at anything.

The alternative hypothesis would be Christianity is the result of human imagination and thinking. So now we look at the this observation that uh uh the followers of Christianity uh believe in eternal conscious torment. And you say that is really a terrible fit with uh the Christian God. Because the Christian God is said to be loving to all and just. Those are the key characteristics that are of interest here. And

uses characteristics'cause they guide us as to what God would do. When you describe God, that's what you mean. You're you're talking about the kind of thing God is like to do. So God is just and loving.

shows that what he what he does would be is a just nature and loving nature. So the loving one is easy to say. I mean if you just think of love and nothing else You would never possibly have the idea that he would end up torturing what Christianity says is the majority, th the broad way to destruction.

Uh no way would you think that uh uh a God a loving God who's loving to all, you know, God so loved the world, not just his people, um So that's just gone, that whole idea that a loving God could possibly so we just everything's gotta work with justice only. There's somehow there's some overarching justice issue that makes uh the that trumps the love. Um Um what w I've got a few ideas of w how you might go for this. Um You could say God's justice um

Would not allow for infinite uh and intense punishments for finite crimes. So I can't see that you know, if it that it just seems to be a deep injustice that that you you suffer eternally for um for a uh a very finite set of sins. Um so that doesn't that's not looking good. Uh the Torah itself has this principle of an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. And even that, before Jesus limited further, limits what would be a just punishment for a a hundred years maximum of of sin.

Um but then Jesus, you know, w wanted to be even more merciful than that in his teaching in uh Sermon of the Mount. And It seems to me it's not it isn't justice but it's vindictiveness to torture people uh for rejecting you. If if the sin is the sin of rejecting God, then that doesn't seem Mae'n rhaid i'n gwybod, mae'n rhaid i'n gwybod, mae'n rhaid i'n ei wneud. Mae'n rhaid i'n ei wneud, mae'n rhaid i'n ei wneud, mae'n rhaid i'n ei wneud, mae'n rhaid i'n ei wneud, mae'n rhaid i'n ei wneud.

So if we look at justice it just really doesn't seem to do it for you. So y you haven't got any explanation that's that's worth having to go for uh for saying that that there's a re anything like a an exponentary power of why God does this to you. It's not his love, not his justice. Um So it it really is in the most damning corner of this subductive analysis.

Okay, so let me see if I can summarise not that this is gonna be any better of a way of putting it than you did, but just Um, there is a uh infinite uh an infinite disproportion even between the um finite guilt accrued by a finite lifetime of sin and the infinite punishment of being tortured to use your language or tormented to use, I think, more common Christian language, uh, for eternity. There's a disproportion there.

And that disproportion is um means that the Christian God, who is allegedly maximally just, Um Uh i it it seems so incongruous with that notion of God being maximally just that given the two competing hypotheses. either the Christian God exists or the Christian God is the creation of human imagination, you think that disproportion, that incongruity between that disproportion and the maximally loving God suggests that the latter of those two hypotheses is the likelier one. Is that

Kind of in a nutshell. No, it's okay. It's it's it th there are circles of Christianity I think where they do use the word torture pretty freely, but it's not, I think, the more apologetics oriented you know that the more uh apologetic savvy world of Christianity seems to use the word torment more than torture, but you of course do still have fundamentalists in certain pockets that still use the word torture, and you know, that's neither here nor there. Um

One question I do have though, I I w I wanna I wanna talk about some of the common objections to your um analysis there that believers in eternal torment will sometimes offer. But before I get into those, something occurred to me. You said that Um one of the problems that you offered besides just the disproportionality, allegedly, is that um it seems vindictive that God would punish people for the sin of rejecting him.

I'm sure that at least to some extent you're aware that most Christians would say that the sin or sins for which people are punished in hell aren't primarily the sin of rejecting God, but the sins that we all know that we're guilty of in our conscience just from day to day life.

um l you know, lying to people unjustly, uh falsely accusing people. Um uh you know there's a variety of things we could come up with. And um and my question for you is If the punishment of hell is for those sins, the sins we all know that we're guilty of, even atheists experience um conscience, you know, t uh pains of conscience

for doing certain things wrong and they know that they shouldn't have done them. Usu most atheists I think. Um, if if those are the kinds of things for which people are punished in hell and not the sin of rejecting God, Does that affect your vindictiveness part of this argument at all? I mean it would still leave the disproportionality issue, but the vindictiveness one? Uh yes, it would it would cope with the vindictiveness for sure. Um the

The presentation of Adam and Eve and the origin of sin was of Adam rejecting God. He he didn't follow or Eve and then Adam didn't follow the command. Um it wasn't a sin of like uh Cain with Cain and Abel. Um but I agree with you absolutely. Really we have to just think through everything twice.

Once with the idea of sin as um a sin against God and uh and the again the idea of the sin against each other. And God's wrath and justice, which comes in for all kinds of hell, um i if if it's to make sense to me, it's really got to be uh about His wrath at the damage we've done to our fellow humans. It can't be he's annoyed with us. That that is not holy wrath to me.

Understood. Um that's something that we could explore in a whole episode in and of itself. Um Yeah. But let me turn to sort of the the the common objections that Defenders of Eternal Torment will offer to the line of reasoning that you've offered with regards to the

disproportionality, allegedly, between eternal torment. I'm using allegedly, by the way, just because I'm trying to be uh a little objective here, w uh I I am on the record and and maintain that eternal torment isn't disproportionate. Um but Uh but that's not why I'm saying allegedly, just to be clear. Um so one of the objections th uh that you and Josh anticipate in your paper.

um a and address in your paper is the objection from quote skeptical theism. Before you um respond to the objection to your reasoning from skeptical theism, what is skeptical theism for our listeners that aren't familiar? Yes, i it's uh the whole idea that um say when a child goes uh to the doctor and has an injection, the child experiences uh uh unexplained, deeply troubling pain. But actually from the wiser, bigger view, we can see that there is an ultimate good that comes from it.

So it's the idea that that it's sort of beyond our ken is often how it's put, to understand why uh are suffering, uh others are suffering. I let me interject for just a moment. Um in case listeners aren't aware, I want I think what

I think beyond your Ken is is sort of Scottish in origin, isn't it? Doesn't can mean like your knowledge, that kind of thing? I think so, yes, that's right. It's but basically uh these days people say, Oh, that's above my pay grade. Yeah, but here we're talking more about knowledge than responsibility, right? Yes, okay. But but anyway, I'm I'm I'm starting to derail us. Go ahead, continue. Yeah. So and there's two sides to it. There is the side that

God is just so mysterious and beyond us, like the last couple of chapters or near the end of Job. That kind of god God's just so uh above us and beyond us that that we are just incapable of understanding. Then there's a more modest version, which I think is to me is more reasonable, and that is that God has plans and He knows the future and it's all going to work out. And if we had the big picture and we could see in the future we would completely get it why we are suffering. So, um

So that's how it it works. So scepticism i isn't a is a response to suffering. Right. And in my view it's the best theistic response to suffering. Um but uh it does have some problems. Um Okay, well let me let me unpack this a little bit and then give you a chance to respond. Um i it seems to me that there's two aspects, uh two ways in which skeptical theism might be employed with regards to The problem of suffering one is suffering. Prior to

um the onset of hell. And that's a whole nother episode, not on not a part of this show that we could have. But here we're talking about how it might apply to the concept of suffering in hell. And this is where it seems like a much bigger chal uh a much bigger challenge to skeptical theism, because skeptical theism could say of suffering in this life that

uh you know, people who suffer in this life will ultimately uh uh receive justice in the next or something like that. There I could see ways in which that might be employed. But in the case of hell I think what skeptical skeptical theism would have to say is There are i i if we just had the knowledge and the perspective that God has. rather than our very limited knowledge and perspective that we have in the here and now, we could make sense of how people could unremitting unremittingly suffer

in hell forever without there being any chance of them um being redeemed. Um, without any chance of that suffering ever ending. Um That's you know, y uh th you just it's just about knowledge and perspective. If we just knew what no God knows we'd be able to we'd be up that would make sense to us. Um I have my own objection to that answer. But before I do, what is what is your response to that kind of skeptical theistic

Um, response to the problem of hell that gosh, if we just knew everything God does and just had his perspective, we'd be able to make sense of it. How do you respond to that? Well I I sort of hinted before where I was going in that in that I split sceptical theism into two. One is uh th that God has his plans and is all gonna work out brilliantly in the end. But we just don't can't see it. That is completely knocked away by the problem with eternal conscious torment. Because

That is the final end. It's not leading to anything else. It's not C S. Lewis's um pain is the megaphone that wakes up a uh uh a something world. um self satisfied world or something like that. If that's not that sort of thing doesn't work. It is the end. So God can't be working towards some other end that we cannot see. the end of suffering in hell eternally is has to be the good in itself that we don't understand. So we have to really just give up any understanding of what good could be.

Because uh we just don't understand it. If we think that you know, w uh all our intuitions say that it it's just an awful horribleness of eternally suffering in hell for a lifetime of either hurting others or rejecting God. Um so undermines our ability to have any understanding of God at all or of goodness at all or or or of holiness at all or justice or anything. We just have to say we'd know nothing and just give up on

even trying to understand anything. Like so w what what what purpose or what is the point of calling God loving and good and just and so forth if those words can mean just whatever God does? Is that kind of what you're saying?

Yes, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, just sort of structural meaning. Yeah. And also if um You know, if we see something that we see is looks looks wrong in the world, our intuition is to jump on it and do do good, s stop stop the evil as we understand it and and work for healing and love and goodness. But we've got no basis to do that because it could be that God's got, you know, from God's point of view, that's all good and lovely. Yeah.

Interesting. Okay. Well, um, this is something we could unpack more if we um wanted to, but let me turn now to some other answers, uh attempts at answers to the um abductive reasoning that you and Josh employ. Um What about the attempt?

that some traditionalists make to rationally justify eternal torment by arguing that any sin against an infinitely holy God merits infinite punishment like eternal torment. What do you make of that argument? Well that's gonna rely on it being sin against God. It it not a not sin against others. And we sort of already covered that, haven't we, that God eternally splattering you for What are you rejecting of him? just um

You know, we're back to this it being perverse and retributive and vindictive and nothing like goodness. Well, I don't know. I mean m if if we if we uh plug into the equation as it were that human beings are created in the Imago Dei, the the image of God.

Um, if if we if if murdering somebody, for example, um is not only a violation against that person, but also the one in whose image that person was made, then it seems like the concept of who whom is being sinned against, um, i gets a little fuzzy and and that Oh a and and I'll also add, it seems to me that even if we take um the the a God out of the equation, when we sin against other people, the duration of the punishment very often doesn't fit the duration of the crime.

Right. It might take somebody, let's say, a few months to plan and execute a bank heist. Um but their prison sentence is going to be years and years, not just a few months. Um so th so I'm not sure that I buy that the duration of the punishment's gotta fit the duration of the crime. Um so I well yeah, how how do you respond? Well I think you've moved the goalpost,'cause before you were talking about it's because God is infinite uh a and that that the infinite

um punishment is deserved. But now you're talking about uh a a crime against a person.

That's fair. Well so so putting aside my second thing I said there, going back to the first, when we when we sin against God's creatures, uh especially God's creatures who bear his image, who who are like God in important ways and that have an um an innate relationship of one sort or another, whether it's merely the relationship of creation to the infinite God, then is it conceivable that sins against human beings are simultaneously sins against

God. Would would that would that merit infinite punishment and and torment forever? Well yeah. If the aspect which is against God, whether it's via a human or direct to him is is still against God and he is big enough to um gonna take it on the chin. Uh um and uh it it would be vindictive if he chose to respond to it by eternally

P punishing. Hmm. Okay, well, I I I will say I'm I'm not inclined to accept that um that God in some sense ought to just take it on the chin, even if the sin even to whatever extent the sin is against him rather than against man, um, it it seems to me that uh we're not dealing with merely a merciful God or a loving God, but we're also dealing with a just God. And if a sin, you know, if if doing some if disobeying God in some important way um is uh

uh is wrong in some objective, you know, morally objective sense, then simply taking it on the chin calls into question in my eyes the justice of God. But it probably doesn't you and that's okay. But let me Yeah, that's right, I think I prefer to sort of- walk back

Walk back gently. Because you know, this isn't anything Josh and I are saying in the paper. This is very much me my personal view of justice and and God's justice and everything and uh i it's a a completely separate issue that comes up in apologetics that's that's not really uh you know, relevant to this particular discussion. uh God being angry and wrathful and seeking justice for the sake of the vic human victim But him as a victim i is a nonsense. It's i that's my view, but it might might be

might be, you know, incorrect. Okay. Well, I'll tell you the reason why I don't buy this argument, incidentally, is because um I don't think speaking of God as infinitely holy really makes any sense. It'd be like talking about a circle being infinitely circular. Yeah.

that's not sensible. It's it's that a circle is perfectly round and the same I think is true of God. There's there is no unholiness or injustice in God and it's not about him being infinite. And that seems to make the uh the calculus f um seems to break up the calculus in my mind. But I'll add that it seems to me that the moral culpability of the offending party um is also overlooked in this analysis. You know, if if a um

If a fully grown adult strikes the president of the United States, that adult is going to get some such and such punishment. But if you have a less morally culpable agent like a five-year-old strike the president, that's not going to merit the same punishment because that person is um less morally accountable, less morally responsible, less culpable, whatever. Um and in the case of the relationship between man and God, we're dealing with an infinite

um degree of uh uh uh increased moral knowledge and moral responsibility. Um and as such that seems to call into question the calculus as well. So I'm just not and and lastly, as we'll talk about when we turn the tables on us conditionalists, um, it seems to me that annihilation would qualify as an infinite punishment if in fact sinning against an infinite holy gol holy god merited one.

So I don't think that that argument really gets traditionalists off the hook. But what about their other very popular attempt to to rationally justify an eternal hell by arguing that as the damned are sinning or as they're suffering in hell, the putative consequences of their sins, they are simultaneously continuing to sin which which m adds to the the pool of punishment they're owed

And when it finally comes to round where they're experiencing that punishment, they're still sinning and so thereby accruing more punishment and on and on it goes ad infinitum into eternity. So they they are they are tormented forever because they ongoingly sin forever. How do you respond to an argument like that? Uh I find it quite hard to'cause of I just sort of smile and chuckle. Um Yeah. What what you're saying is y the you're stuck in an internal loop that you can't get out of.

Uh which i uh surely I mean If I see a rabbit that's been half run over and it's in agony Uh I I you know, I've done this and I've I've picked it up and wrung its neck because I see that it's it's got no way out of it of its agony. Um and I don't see why God can't step in and help with that uh situation with with the uh person stuck in this eternal loop of uh of sinning and suffering. Hm.

It just doesn't make sense to me. It it feels like Monty Python. Uh I I love Monty Python. That's a good good reference. Um yeah, I I I I I I I I will say that I think it makes a little bit of intuitive sense to me just because I uh of the view of human nature that I have. But I will say that um Firstly, I think there's a biblical problem with this argument, which is that scripture never

um, in any way, shape or form suggests that the punishment in hell is for sins committed while in hell. It's all about sins allegedly performed in this life. Um so I think there's a biblical problem there and then I also think that there's a a problem in that it doesn't prove enough because I think Annihilation could bear uh could handle that situation as well. So we'll table that until we uh until we get there.

What about um and and here I think I'm starting to touch upon some things that maybe you didn't cover in your paper, but that I did cover in a presentation I gave to Reeth uh to uh Reasonable Faith Belfast a while ago.

Um, I quoted William Lane Craig as an example of believers in eternal torment who quote unquote air condition hell. So William Lane Craig says, for example, The anguish of hell is separation from God, from all that is good and beautiful and lovely, to be left with one's own crabbed and selfish heart to be. forever. So I call this air conditioning hell because there's no real fire there, there's no physical pain being inflicted from without. There's not even

emotional or psychological pain being inflicted from without. It's all from within. It's it's um being exc uh excluded from everything that's good and all that you're left with is your own crabbed and selfish heart. Does that um resolve this problem in your mind at all. Uh w what do you think of that response?

Well, I mean I'm sure you'll back me up, but to me that sounds just so completely unbiblical. It just it doesn't fit to the the language that Jesus uses describing hell. Um there's a lovely uh in contribution here from uh an ex Muslim friend of ours called Hassan Ridwan. and he really struggled as an a as a as a Muslim with the Islamic hell. Um it's much more graphically described in the Quran than the Bible uh does with the Christian hell.

So it's more like Dante's Hell, it's really grim. Um And he's used to Islamic apologists. saying, well, of course it's all uh just a a metaphor, you know, it's not really that gruesome and awful. I i i i it's um just a metaphor for the you know, the kind of thing maybe William Lane Craig's talking about. A metaphor is to describe a reality. And it's to point towards the nature of that reality.

So you wouldn't have a metaphor of all this agony and hanging off hooks and all the other awfulness of Islamic hell. if it wasn't pointed to something that was really, really horrible. It wouldn't be just to be as I put it, sort of to be parked in a in a room of of atheists for for eternity. Um And and so to me it doesn't make sense again. Well what I'd like to say briefly is going back to my setup with the a bit like a a jury in a court case.

In the end you're not looking for these deductive gotcha points. You're just accumulating evidence. And every time something says, Oh, that doesn't fit, that just feels wrong it's just clocking up a bit. So Uh what we're talking about is is e each time you think something that just doesn't work, that's just not right. That is all part of the evidence, the lack of fit between the theory and the observations. I see. Okay, were you about to say something?

No, that's right. Yep. One last uh thought that occurred to me while we've been talking is is what um some theologians call issuant. views of hell. Um there are it's called issuant because it is supposed to issue forth. The suffering of hell is supposed to issue forth from the love of God in in in in a sense like the following. God uh shows his unremitting love to all humankind on the day of judgment and thereafter. And for those who are um who have accepted Christ and love

uh the presence of God. That is a blissful experience for all eternity, but for those who hate God for those who um think that he's w wicked or unloving or or um didn't give enough chances or whatever the case may be, too too tyrannical, maybe he God shouldn't have the views of sexuality that he does or whatever.

for those kinds of people, they are experiencing the same thing in the sense that they are experience they are r responding emotionally and psychosomatically to the issue the the love of God that he is unremittingly showing. But that is experienced not as bliss, but as torment. Um, and so they're just forever in the unremitting, uh, you know, unmitigated presence of God.

But because they're not united to him in a love relationship, that unmitigated presence of God is uh a torturous experience for all eternity. Do you think that that Has any um d does you know, goes any d distance in in answering this challenge? Well I'm I I'm I'm thinking my feet here. It's not not one that that uh Josh uh uh has has sort of told me about or I've come across. Um

How does that fit with the atonement? It it it it didn't seem like a a good fit that uh heaven is you get to heaven not by Kind of trusting on the saving work of of Christ, but just by having a a disposition that when you get there you think, Oh yeah, I'll go with this.

Oh oh I don't like this. Well no no no they I think that they would say that the disposition results from conversion. It's not um it it's not what merits. You know, th so so these according to this view, Christians are still saved by their by the atoning work of Christ, and they are saved through the faith that these people place in the Christ that they have become convinced has die has died for them. Um, and so they're not meriting heaven. It's Christ who merited heaven for them.

But the reason why they are experiencing heaven as heaven, the unmitigated presence of God as bliss forever, is because their conversion resulted in their changed heart, their changed disposition. They are no longer enemies of God, rebels, they no longer hate God, they now love Him as a result of their conversion through faith in Christ.

Whereas the unsaved still have this innate hatred toward God, this rebelliousness and um so forth. Uh and and so they experience the uh the the reason they experience the unmitigated presence of God is because they still are in opposition to Him in their hearts. So how would it work for some tribe's person who've never heard of the gospel and they die and What happens next?

Well, the um Christian doctrine would say that humankind, uh no matter where you are on the world, no matter how little to no exposure you have to the gospel of Christianity, you are still born um with a disposition that is aw turned away from God rather than toward him. And you also are born with an innate conscience and so you have a uh an experience that you uh uh a knowledge that you are guilty of sins.

even if we don't all agree on what those sins are or how severe they are. And so you put those things together and this this the person who would offer this issuant view of hell would say, You are rightly condemned to hell because of your sins. And the reason why that is hell, the reason why it is experienced as torment is because um your disposition remains in opposition to God. And so the unmitigated presence of God is experienced as

uh torment rather than as bliss. Hmm. Yeah, it's not it's not came through to me. Um Well that that's it it does seem to be overlapping with the the metaphor thing.

Uh so I don't like it on that point of view and I think we're getting into the realms of where you sit on the Calvinism uh as to you know, i i if if you are minded to follow God but don't hear the gospel, um I think an Arminian would would have a different view than a Calvinist as to what would happen after after you die and you you kind of realise how things really are and what you've missed.

Well to be fair, I think that a lot of our minions w could say the same thing as we Calvinists would, which is that there's no such thing as a person oriented toward God who has never heard the gospel. Right, okay. Well So I for me I've wanted God. I didn't want to lose my faith. I still pray to God occasionally, you know, help me find you if you're there, that sort of thing. So I don't f fe experience myself as a

resistant unbeliever. But uh the what's called the Sh Shannonberg I think it's called called the unresistant non believer. Um But anyway that's that's somewhat ri uh uh not not in the conversation. Yeah. So I I really haven't got a whole lot more to say. I'm um I don't want to.

Carry on flying by my seat of my pants on this issuant thing'cause it's not not something I really know much uh any more about than you just told me. I understand. I I'm willing to fly by the seat of my pants a little bit and and to play the dev devil's advocate and say that it seems to me that Um the knowledge That God's unmitigated love, loving presence is being experienced as torment would mean that for God to be comfortable with them experiencing that.

would mean that he's not really showing them his unmitigated love. Right? Um i i if we w imagine I mean this is gonna be a terrible analogy, but um let's say that what it meant to a father to um uh to love his child was to repeatedly punch him in the face. This is absurd, I know. But let's say that that's what the ex what that meant for this father to express love.

And somebody walked upon, you know, came up upon this father repeatedly punching his son in the face and said, Don't you love your child? And he said, Yeah, of course I do. I'm showing him my love to the fullest. Well, the very fact that his actions as loving as he might think they are, is being experienced as excruciating pain by the poor child would would mean we w would cause us to call into question whether in fact the father does actually love his

child. In other words, it's not merely about the act. It's also about the God's knowledge of how that act is being received by or experienced by the ones who are recipients of that act. And so you can call it loving. You could say that's just their emotional response to God's unmitigated love, but he knows.

that that's how they are receiving that action. So it seems like it's not really solving anything. It seems like you still got a problem with consistency with God's love and justice there. I don't know, what do you think? Yeah, that's right. That that kinda feeds with this metaphor thing as well, that that um you know, it it it is a a a a a a torment that that God is

Subjecting you to knowing me. Right. Which which is just what you just said. Right. And and said a lot m pithier than than I did. Um Well you help me. Well good I'll just repeat what you said. nasty emails saying, You helped that nasty atheist on the show. No, I'm kidding. Um, okay, well well that's good. And and I'll just add one more thing before we move on to conditional immortality, which is that some of these strategies that we've been discussing seem to me to be a little bit ad hoc.

Um, I don't see a lot of people say a thousand years ago offering some of these answers, especially like shortly prior to Anselm, the first person to say that a sin against an infinitely holy God merits an infinite punishment. Prior to that point you don't see these strategies. You don't see them air conditioning hell. Um a and and so I could if I were in your shoes, I would probably say, sure, some of these proposals seem to

hold up a little bit better under this line of reasoning that we're exploring, but they're so late to the game that they appear to be ad hoc. Why haven't Christians for nearly two thousand years thought of it in these terms? Um, but of course that's gonna feed naturally into our discussion here in this next portion. So let me just turn to that now.

Uh w I uh let me just preface this question by saying you uh y you have issues even with conditionalism, conditional immortality or annihilationism, and we're gonna discuss those, but before we do Um going back to this original uh line of abductive reasoning that you and Josh did that, you know, given the competed h competing hypotheses, Christianity is the Christian God exists or the Christian God is a is the invention of human imagination.

Does a a and and because the incongruity of eternal torment with the allegedly maximally loving and just nature of God The conclusion that you guys came to was that it's likelier, given those observations, that the Chr the Christian God is the object of or is is a figment of Christians imagining, hum humans r uh human imagining. Um what I wanna ask you before we dive into the challenges that you have for conditionalism.

What I want to ask you is, does conditional immortality and annihilationism fare better um under the scrutiny of that line of reasoning than eternal torment does and and and why and to what extent? Well the answer's yes, absolutely. Um I think you if if we go back to the m our two hypotheses

uh with Christianity is the result of human imagination and thinking. Um that's the hypothesis that uh fits better with um the idea of y people like your listeners and yourself uh talk about it all the time, the the way that the Greek influence on Christianity caused uh this idea of an eternal soul that can't be destroyed and so therefore destroyed doesn't mean destroyed but means something else in the New Testament. All all that sort of stuff. You you you keep

correctly, harping on about how it's the result of human imagination and thinking that that's getting up to these dec doctrines that contribute to Christianity. So just in this one kind of we're just drawing a ring around one thing which is doctrines of hell. It this doctrine of hell does point strongly to the non Christian hypothesis and it really does a uh uh the fit with

you know, the the the Christian God being real in in his love and justice, it's such a very poor fit. So that's that side. Now the Uh doctrine of annihilationism. Can I use that word for that? Um a a much better fit because of um it it just makes makes more sense. There's the the result of human imagination thinking, maybe, you know, you i it's just not not a s uh it you know, still a reasonable fit. That's that's no problem. But

The thing which I keep saying is the key issue when it comes to strong evidence is the terrible fit. And it's not so much of a terrible fit at all. Um and we could we can flesh it out now. Uh when you say flesh it out, you mean how conditionalism is a less terrible fit? Is that what you mean? Or or something. Okay. Well yeah, so why is a conditionalism or annihilationism a less terrible fit? I mean, in the case of eternal torment, it was it was fundamentally or primarily about

the disproportion, the the the seeming disproportion between l suffering forever and a finite guilt because of a finite lifetime and so forth. Um So with that in mind, how then is conditionalism or annihilationism a less terrible fit? That's the question I'd love to see you flesh out. Yeah. Yeah. Well uh if I sort of start from a black piece of paper and I imagine a God who has offered his love to humanity, some have embraced it and some haven't.

Uh then you have the question of what to do with the people who ha have rejected God's love. um and haven't come to forgiveness of the things they've done to other people and uh earlier rejection of God and all the rest of it. So to do in the afterlife would be just to let the person die. Uh so what I would call a kind of naturalist or an even an atheist death that that um you know what I'm expecting to happen to me is that when I die that's that's completely the end. Nothing at all.

Now the annihilation isn't isn't quite that, but it's it's much, much closer than eternal conscious torment. Uh you uh and also it does make a bit of sense that um Uh Francis, my friend on my podcast, uh said something I thought was really helpful. She says that if you imagine a uh a gunman who commits some terrible crimes and kills lots of children say, a and then before the police can arrest them, they kill themselves. You feel that justice hasn't quite been done.

You feel it'd be much better for the person to have been arrested, put in prison, uh, come to trial, faced faced what they've come up to, and even in a state with the death penalty um would then be um put to death by the state, that that would be a a better outcome from the point of view of justice than allowing them to kill themselves before anything else happened.

Does that make sense? It does and and it's interesting to me because there are some defenders of eternal torment who think, gosh, if if the death penalty um sorry, if if if if in hell the wicked are killed Um But people already but you know people already die, including, you know, if if people would feel like justice wasn't done if a mass murderer killed himself before being caught by police, then why would they think justice is done if they are captured, tried, and then killed?

And you've I think um rightly identified the intuition we have that no, we think there is a difference there. Even though the end result is the same, namely death. Nevertheless, the one is injustice and the other is justice, and and so I think that's uh an interesting response to that traditionalist objection, even though you didn't mean it for to be such.

Yeah, yeah. So uh uh and then the the tr what I believe to be your rough doctrine is that at the resurrection even the the damned will be resurrected and we will face judgment and um And the consequences of our actions and we will suffer Painful Punishment on the way out

And then then it'll be the final end. I I would just s slightly reframe that. I would say they experience pain as the punishment is being inflicted. But I don't think like so the analogy I I often use is and it's not even really an analogy, it's simply what this what it is that we're talking about, namely capital punishment. You know, the the electric chair and the firing squad inflict different degrees and durations of pain on the way out.

But the punishment isn't the pain inflicted, it's the lifelessness that results. And so so likewise I think yes, I think that the damned uh the the lost will rise, will be judged and will be sentenced to death, and the means by which their death is inflicted might involve some level of pain, but that pain isn't their punishment, it's the lifelessness that results.

Yeah. But Jesus' teaching surely indicates that it's p extremely unpleasant. I certainly think so, yes. I'm not trying to argue that there's not pain involved, I'm just saying the pain isn't the punishment. Yeah. Well I think it's both really. Yeah. I mean Jesus doesn't talk about punishment being resurrected and facing what you've done and then being judged. Um well he does talk about it as being raised and then uh burned to death.

Yeah. What I'm trying to get at is that the aspect of of having to face judgment and squirm as it were. i is not the punishment. The punishment is the uh uh the the lake of fire or the or the outer darkness or whatever it is, uh uh on your way out as you as you are finally Um the second death.

Uh I'm not I'm not entirely sure, but but let's table that. I I don't wanna get too far into the weeds here. Um So but but anyway, uh so so you've you've explained why it is or at least some of the reasons why you see that fate that we conditionalists propose as being less a less terrible fit uh with the um thesis the Christian god exists than eternal torment does.

Um, before I turn though to some of the problems that you think are still faced by Christian conditionalists like me, um one of the challenges that people like me get from my uh from our eternal torment believing brothers and sisters in Christ is that This this fate that we're proposing awaits the lost in hell, being painfully killed and never living again, just isn't fearful enough to spur many atheists to embrace Christ.

Um, the way that uh an apologist I'm sure you're familiar with, Greg Kokel, the way he has put it is that this fate, this proposed fate, takes the wind out of the sails of the gospel in the sense that you tell an atheist, Look, if you don't repent and turn in saving faith to Christ, then you're going to be destroyed in hell.

is is not going to as urgently um motivate them to embrace Christ as if we say to that same atheist, if you don't turn, if you don't repent and turn in saving faith to Christ, you're going to live forever in torment in hell. Um so w what do you think of this? D do you find yourself less m any less motivated to turn to cro to Christ by this prospect of annihilation than by the prospect of eternal torment? Well um I mean in theory but uh

I mean uh you're not frightened of Islamic hell, are you? No I'm not. But you jolly well should be. I mean it's a lot worse than Christians now. Yeah, that's right. But that doesn't motivate you towards think oh, I better check out uh Isl Islam now actually,'cause if it's even worse then you know, I need to be really careful. Uh uh that's sort of my view now. Um I think a key thing is that I wasn't brought up a Christian.

So it was o only ever an idea that I took on. It's not sort of in my in my blood like it would be if uh i if I was brought up in a hell believing household and a hell in a hell believing church. Gotcha. Um um and it's not really apologetic. So I I feel that's power preaching. It's sort of Jonathan Edwards stuff rather than actual

Uh real apologists. No, it's not. And and and this isn't really I I guess I'm asking this question more for our benefit at Rethinking Hell than f than about apologetics more broadly, because um If if I mean you're the example you're an example of the kind of person whom uh w who we are not going to motivate to turn to Christ as well as the believer in eternal torment if People like Greg Kokel are right. And I think you've nailed the h you've hit the nail on the head. It's only a motivation.

if they think there's any reason to fear it in the first place. And that's kind of the whole point of being an a an atheist is you don't think that there's any um likelihood of eternal torment being true, let alone many other aspects of Christianity. So why would it why would you find that any more of an urgent motivator to turn to Christ? than uh than the prospect of annihilation. Either of them being part of a Christian worldview are f you find to be unlikely anyway.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean if we're going for this more emotional side of things, y you've got people like um Christopher Hitchens.

Having a wonderful time laying into the a traditional doctrine of health. Right. And that's and that's the other point that I very often make here is that Even if it's true that an atheist is going to be more motivated to turn to Christ by eternal torment, simultaneously it's very likely they're going to think Christianity is a load of baloney because of the doctrine of eternal torment.

Right. Um it's not just Oh yeah, absolutely it's not just Hitchens, it's it's um uh it it's it's other f uh famous horsemen of new atheism as well. Um who's the philosopher uh is it Uh Denn it's the philosopher. Yeah, there you go. Sam Harris, that was the one I had in mind.

Oh okay, yeah. I didn't think he was a philosoph he is a philosopher, yes, he is. I could be wrong. I th I think he w he is. But yeah, all of them and many other atheists d heck, even Charles Darwin um has talked about uh how Uh absurd the doctrine of eternal torment seems to make Christianity, albeit in slightly different words.

So it's like, yeah, even if you want to grant that it's going to spur them a little bit better, it's at the exact same time turning them away from Christ because they think that it makes Christianity to look foolish. Um So yeah, I I this but but but let me ask you this though.

putting aside the relative fearfulness of um eternal torment and hell versus being annihilated, does the is does the prospect of being raised from the dead um judged and revealed to be um a shameful sinner in uh uh uh in front of all humankind. and then violently killed and then remembered forever as a shameful sinner. Is that something that

just has absolutely you you you find appealing, for example? Is that does that seem like an appealing prospect to you? Or or is it something that, even if it's not as fearful as eternal torment, still sounds like a not a not a fun thing to happen?

Yeah, the latter. Even eternal life is a bit uh it's a bit scary.'Cause you can't get out of it. Yeah y if you're you know, if I I wouldn't want to be in church forever. What makes you even as a Christian singing my songs. Just out of curiosity, what makes you conceive of the prospect of eternal life in Christianity as just an everlasting church service?

Well, I I it's not described very well in the New Testament. Um but where you do get bits of it, it that's that's sort of the closest thing on earth you you can imagine. Where do you get bits of it? Revelation of the thrones and the the um uh uh the charts and things that the the twenty four elders say and that sort of thing. So uh I just make sure I understand. So the most highly symbolic and difficult to interpret.

book in the entire Bible that records ostensibly a highly symbolic dream or vision that an apostle has. It's not a vision of the future, it's a vision of symbols symbolizing the future. Um that is the place where you get this picture of eternal life as sort of an everlasting church service. Is that right? Well you've got almost nothing in the

i in the whole scripture to say what it is. Uh well you've got so you've got almost nothing to work on. Well you've got Isaiah um writing about how when all when all of this happens um you'll be able to a person will be able to enjoy the fruit of his labor.

You know,'cause he he explains for example in Isaiah he says that or or like take the e author of Ecclesiastes. The author of Ecclesiastes says that one of the things that's so effed up if I can use that nasty letter is in this world, is that we will sp you know, a man will spend a lifetime building uh an estate, as it were, and then his child after he's gone will squander it all away.

And and and the person who actually built it up doesn't get to enjoy it indefinitely. And Isaiah, if I remember correctly, in like Isaiah sixty five is saying, um, that's going to come to an end. There's gonna come a day where you get to enjoy the fruit of your labor for forever. Um that doesn't sound uh i if if eternal life is just an everlasting church service, where's the labor and let alone the fruit of the labor that you get to enjoy?

Yeah. So I guess I yeah, well I don't know. I mean uh Ezekiel's got some visions of heaven. Uh Z Isaiah's got got one where um Yeah, but see this is this is what I'm going back to Yeah. There's a lot of Christians and non Christians alike. who have this misconception that when seers in scripture, like Isaiah, Ezekiel and John and numerous others, when they see the future, what they are seeing is the future.

But that's not the way these things work. W you know, the the future they're seeing is represented by means of symbols. Um, so I'm sure you're familiar, for example, with uh Joseph when he's in prison. Um, he interprets the dreams of the Pharaoh's cupbearer and baker. And the baker has this dream of three baskets on his head and birds are coming and eating the f the bread out of the baskets.

Well you know what that vision Um ostensibly, like if the Bible is true, and obviously we disagree on that question, but let's say for the sake of argument it is. That vision is telling the future, but literally nothing that the cup that the baker sees in his dream is in fact the future. Nothing. What it is is a symbol these symbols of baskets and birds eating bread out of it that symbolize the fact that he's uh going to be um killed in three days by Pharaoh.

So this is what I'm saying. Um it seems i correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like what you're saying is that and this wouldn't at all be unique to you. This is this is common. to many Christians and non-Christians. But it sounds like this vision of eternal life that you've had that you find to be um not particularly appealing, to say the least. is based on purely symbols that represent future eternal life or something like that, rather than anything clear-cut.

Yeah, what I think my key point is I don't know what it would be. and committing to something you don't know and something you then can't ever get out of for eternity is scary. That I think that's what I'm saying. So I I'm Giving my impression of what it sounds like uh to give colour to that point. I understand. Rather than it to that is the point. The point is Uh uh just living forever and not having a w a way out sounds

And and and for listeners' sake I'll just point out the what should be the obvious, which is that you're not alone at all, alone in that intuition. There are many people on both sides of the Christian atheism debate. that find the prospect of eternal life um scary. I'll just say and and I'd be interested uh um I'll I'll send you in fact I think I already did send you a link to the unlisted YouTube video

of my conference presentation from a couple of months ago. I'd love to hear what you think in private about that and and maybe talk about more in a subsequent episode sometime because I think Um that any claim that eternal life is either scary or would be boring is based on a woefully inadequate view of what eternal life really will be.

Um but that's a whole nother conversation. My point though is this. When I Um all my life, when I have uh and this is both before and since becoming a Christian, when I think of dying and then ceasing to exist. That prospect is absolutely terrifying to me. Now I understand and don't and I don't expect at all that you will find it as absolutely terrifying as I do, but many people have, including noteworthy atheists like uh Philip Larkin, the poet the po poet from last century.

who in his poem Al Bad writes about his great fear of ceasing to exist upon death. Um this is common. People have converted to Christianity because of their fear of not existing anymore. It just seems to me that um that we as humans do have to one degree or another an instinctive recoiling away out of fear

at the prospect of ceasing to exist anymore. And I guess the question I'm asking you is, a and and I'll accept your word for, you know, whatever your answer ends up being, but is there really no degree at all to which the prospect of not existing anymore um you find to be unfavourable, un un you know, displeasurable? Oh yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. I think um I mean how we deal with our death, some psychologists say is is an enormously

influential thing on us. Um there's this thing called terror management theory. Have you heard of that one? I haven't, no, but but I think I have some ideas going on in my head. Go ahead though, explain. Yep. So b basically uh our world view is almost constructed around uh having to accommodate the fact that we're gonna die. And um So I've as an atheist, I've put a lot of emotional investment into thinking it through and coming to terms with the fact that when I die that's it.

And um as a Christian you is much easier you you know believe that you're going to um have an afterlife and it'll be a good one. Now the intuition the the insight of the terror management people is that we are so we get so upset when our world view is challenged. Uh and that's why atheist Christian debates can be so r fractious. Um is because It really triggers us.

Because our worldview is our defence against the terror of death. That that challenge of our worldview puts us it faces makes us face our death that much more. Which which is why the whole which is why it's so difficult to swap from one to the other and um why w we get s so upset when when our when challenged on our our beliefs.

Yeah. That's that's a really great insight and that makes a lot of sense to me. Um Well well in the interest of moving this forward, so So y if if I've correctly understood you so far, you're saying that there is at least some degree to which conditionalism or annihilationism, um holds up better, not perfectly, but holds up better than eternal torment when uh uh when we're considering the the hypothesis that the Christian God exists.

And we've also discussed that um the prospect of dying and ceasing to exist is not without is not completely without fear, right? It there there's a at least some degree to which it's it's still uh uh a terrifying prospect. Um yeah, I think it's it's important. I mean uh the naturalist will say it's endowed to us by evolution. Right, right,'cause every creature it seems its instinct is to survive.

Um so even if it's even if you want to chalk it up to mere instinct, it's still nevertheless an experienced instinct, right? It's it there's there's actually some emotion going on. That makes sense. Oh yeah, yeah. But nevertheless

It's not as if conditionalism or annihilationism solves all the problems. And you think that there are still problems faced by Christian conditionalists, despite that it's an improvement upon the doctrine of eternal torment. And so for example You talk a little bit in your paper with Josh about um problems related to justice and divine punishment that you think conditionalism or annihilationism doesn't fully solve. Can you unpack that for us a bit?

Yeah, we we have sort of touched on it a bit. Um So uh uh maybe a good way of starting to talk about this is imagine some uh massive genocide or something like that or or um Anne Frank and the and the Nazis or uh

uh uh a a uh a victim of child abuse and the perpetrator of child abuse. So y you've got a a victim who's a massive victim and you've got a perpetrator who's a massive perpetrator and they both die and um who Wh where's th the feeling is that the point of the afterlife is to right the wrongs of this life? But the Christian doctrine is that, you know, the the the Nazi prison camp commandant could uh uh in the decades later

come to faith, face what they've done and um receive forgiveness. And the um the Jewish victim, uh, would obviously be dead and being a Jew would have rejected Christ and uh so it it could just as well be that the victim is the one who ends in hell and the perpetrator is the one who ends in heaven. So the whole idea of the afterlife as the place where the wrongs of the world are righted doesn't seem to be present. And that applies to any version of hell, uh, unless it's universalism.

Okay, so this is what you in your paper call the problem of people who suffer gratuitous evils. And um and I sense I I I feel the the sting of this challenge. I get it. Um but And this isn't going what I'm about to offer, and and uh I'm interested in your take on this, what I what I'm about to offer isn't um I I'm not at all proposing it's going to solve the problem in every hypothetical and real circumstance. But I do think that it's conceivable

that the the what this if I'm right, what I'm about to offer touches upon something that might be sort of the uh a small part of a larger answer to this problem. Um imagine that you've got Two people who are both unbelievers, and one of them violently, you know, tortures, rapes, and kills the other.

And then they're resurrected on the last day. It doesn't strike me as intuitive at all that the only way for justice to be done is if one of is if the victim gets an everlasting afterlife and the other does not. So if if for example, um, they are raised and they are judged and they're both sentenced to death because they've both committed sins, they're both guilty of sins.

But the w but the criminal in this case is revealed to all humankind to be a vile, sick and disgusting uh you know, um, subhuman, pitiful, nasty, you know, whatever. And is and that person is violently and painfully killed and for all eternity the only lasting legacy that that person has is of being this pitiful, pathetic

subhuman that um uh you know, uh ev everything that I said earlier. But the other person Um, they are also ultimately killed for their sins, but they will forever be remembered um fondly in the hearts of everybody that knew that person that that is going to go into this everlasting afterlife.

Um and uh, you know, th they leave behind a legacy of um glory, uh or at least to some degree, uh fondness at the very least, and their death is inflicted by much less torturous means than the first person, That's an example to me where it seems like the f ultimate fate of both could be the same.

And yet there isn't unresolved justice. Now again, just to be reiterate, I'm not suggesting that that answers every imaginable or real situation we could come up with, but do you think there's even the slightest degree to which that Um there might be something intuitive there in this in in what I've just offered. Well, yes, there is, but I've got a lot of pushback for it.

For a start the w we are I think we have the intuition that the denial of everlasting life is a vastly bigger deal than how you're remembered. Uh and also a vastly bigger deal than how painful it is on the way out. So I think that's my main problem with it, that that the uh i it's not a A y you talk about as as if it's a given that it's either heaven or hell and there's n there's no other option. That it's very binary. And that isn't a feature of life, that is a feature of Christian doctrine.

Well, it's not a given that has to be one or the other. Well, okay, th let me uh I wanna let you keep pushing back. Um but before I do, let me flesh that out just a little bit more because Uh the only I agree with you that the way that many Christians conceive of that binary um is as you characterize it. But I think that's a mistaken way of conceiving of it. I think that um th firstly Um The biblical binary is not between heaven and hell. It's between life and non life.

And the other thing is that even amongst believers in eternal torment, there's a concept of degrees of reward in the afterlife. And so it is it does seem to be conceivable that two people who equally iq uh receive the the um half of the binary that is life rather than non life. That is a binary, but nevertheless, their experience of their side of the binary they're given, namely everlasting life.

can differ a great deal, their experience of it, um, based on the um their degree of righteousness and goodness in life. Um so it's both a binary and not a binary. And I don't see why if Uh yeah, so anyway, that that was what I wanted to push back on. But but go ahead and continue. What what do you make of that? Uh it's still um There's a big binary aspect to it of life and non life that you you can't escape. Um and the non life There is as you described, um

You know, the uh Luke I think talks about the uh the beating that's gr uh a gr uh uh a a hearty beating or a light beating, I forget the few stripes versus many stripes. Yeah. Oh that was it. Yes, that's right. Um and Uh so that there is a sort of on th this enormous binary with a little bit of Tweak on each end of the scale. That's how it seems. Uh you could have a a whole spectrum.

as well if you wanted to. It doesn't have to be such in such binary nature. Well how can you And I think that that would cause it to be universalism, really. How I I'm curious, how how can you conceive of a um spectrum to use the word that you used, um w when we're dealing with the question of whether a person is alive. There's no there's no being half alive. Uh well I'm talking about the um the whole option of it either one end of the scale or the other of heaven or hell.

Everlasting life or everlasting oblivion. It's Uh i if you go for universalism, you could have um one end of the scale being kind of the the enormous bliss and perfection of of heaven immediately i in its full degree. And the other end of the scale would be the kind of maximum level of punishment prior to eventual Entrance to heaven.

So that would be a nice lot s smooth scale of of that you could you could put humanity along. Well, but I thought that everlasting oblivion um causes any degree of torment experienced on the way out to be to fade into non significance. So you've just you if I understood you correctly, you just proposed a spectrum where at the negative end of that spectrum you've got a great deal of torment.

before their eventual evanescence, before their eventual annihilation. But uh no, no, uh universalism. Okay, uh so so some degree of torment before they enter into their everlasting bliss.

Yes, that's right. Okay, but what would you make l here's here's a um analogy. It's gonna be imperfect. But let's say that you had a Um you had a justice system that um said, We're you know, you you're guilty of such and such crime, you're gonna go to prison And after you've um uh when you r uh renounce what you did, we're gonna let you out. And they say, Well, I'm not gonna renounce what I did. I'm just gonna starve myself until I die.

And so the justice system says, sorry, we're not gonna let you do that. We're going to strap you down. We're not gonna let you use any instruments to kill yourself. We're gonna strap you down, we're going to inject into your bloodstream the nutrients that you need to be able to survive indefinitely. Um and so years and years go by and this criminal doesn't recant, doesn't renounce what he did.

But he's also not allowed he can't kill himself. He's strapped down and he's just being i uh intravenously fed the nutrients he needs to survive.

Um, and only after decades and decades and decades and decades and decades of this does he finally say, Okay, I give up and he lets go. Would you find those decades and decades and decades of um uh of inflicted, you know, a forced life despite the d agony that it inflicts on the person and despite his desire to end it all, would you find that to be particularly um an attractive act on the part of the justice system?

No, but we're talking about something else. Because because with well with universalism and maybe this is just a matter of us not being familiar with the same strands of universalism. I'm gonna let you fully respond, I promise, but just because it seems to me that maybe the point of my analogy wasn't clear, I wanna unpack it a little bit. Very few uh universalists

think that the universal entrance into bliss occurs on the day of judgment. Um, you look at many Christian universalists and they think that hell will be real and people will go there and will suffer. But eventually everybody will repent and come to Christ. But the only way that's possible is if they are rendered immortal.

so that they cannot die despite how badly they might want to die. And so they're able to survive potentially eons before they finally cave in and repent. So it does seem to me to be analogous, but maybe you still don't see that to be the case? Yeah, I guess there's a possibility there. I th the key thing of un uh universalism is that sort of love wins and um that God is so much bigger than us that He can uh engineer things such that we do respond to him. In uh and the we and we all come through.

Um pro social side to us. if God's in the game of reconciling all things to himself, then he is has the power to do that. Well he certainly has the power to make people immortal.

Um, whether or not he has the power to unilaterally change a person's mind is a whole nother question, and that's really what I'm getting at with this, is that um uh at least non Calvinists could say, in response to you, Why you know, y you you you alluded uh earlier or you implied earlier that you don't think that the justice system would be doing something laudable.

w keeping somebody alive against their will for decades until they finally repent. So then why would you feel comfortable with God making somebody immortal, um, even if they may not, for eons and eons and eons, um, willfully, willingly Repent. I guess because God and if this is eternal, then almost however long they hold out, the eternal side will be Massively longer. So if this person who has been strapped down, um uh not permitted to kill himself

in prison, intravenously fed for decades. Um, let's say this is taking place in a world in which we've technologically solved the problem of death and are able to s technologically keep everybody alive indefinitely. So, yes, the justice system has subjected this criminal to decades and decades and decades of r him not being able to kill himself, whether by starvation or exposure or by vi violence.

Um yes, they've subjected him to decades and decades of that, but because at the end when he finally comes out he's gonna that he'll be able to be provided with the technology to keep him alive indefinitely, would that make you feel like what they had done to this person in prison was just? Well it would be loving. I mean i if you were the parent of the person

Uh you wouldn't want them to die if i uh uh if they had the prospect of eternal life with you and everything. And uh so you'd be rooting for the government to keep them alive and Until they're Come to their senses. Yeah, so that may be a case where our intuitions differ, which makes doesn't mean I'm right and you're wrong or the other way around. It's just that to me

Forcing somebody against his or her will to suffer excruciatingly for decades just because you're hoping that at some point in the in the indefinite future they'll repent does not strike me as a particularly loving act. But But that's neither here nor there. I Yeah. I I want to keep the conversation going. Um one of the one of the objections that you bring up in your paper is that by your reckoning, annihilation is still an infinite punishment.

And I actually s I actually share that sentiment. Um, if if the punishment is death, meaning not being alive, and if that's forever, that's still an infinite punishment, and so it would seem like it would still fall prey to this disproportionality argument. But at the same time Um r it seems as if countless atheists um intuit that the death penalty isn't disproportionate.

um in the way that eternal torment is. So for example, Rationality Rules is a um YouTuber, an atheist YouTuber, and he recently picked apart William Lane Craig because William Lane Craig used the death penalty as an analogy for um eternal hell. And rationality rule says, isn't it obvious that that's a bad analogy because in the analogy their punishment is finite rather than infinite.

Now, you and I, I think, rightly recognize that rationality rules is wrong there, that it is still an infinite punishment. It's just a punishment of privation rather than ongoing experience. But But nevertheless, how do you account if if you think there's still a disproportionality issue, as you explain in your paper, um how do you account for the fact that so many atheists like rationality rules?

Do think that the death penalty is proportionate, or at least um isn't disproportionate like eternal torment is. Well I guess w we all have our doctrinal uh mess ups just like everyone else. Um but um Well, I think... There's an intuition on both sides. that we could see and it and it's a a difficult one to be clear cut on. But uh one is uh as you rightly say, i it's eternal, but it's an eternal deprivation.

It's so uh it's being denied something which would be eternal. Um and there's an eternity ahead where you're not present. Uh whereas um It's much more clear cut when it's an eternal torment. Yeah, I I think you I I think there's something at the very least to be developed there, explored further, because um it seems to me that for most not all, but most atheists who object

to eternal torment on the grounds of disproportionate uh uh it's being disproportionate. They say that the problem they have is that infinite punishment is in is disproportion to in in disproportion to a finite guilt. But I think what they mean is that infinitely experienced punishment or infinitely conscious you know, being infinitely consciously punished is incongruous with.

uh a finite lifetime of sin. I don't think they intuit the same thing about an infinite punishment that is in the form of privation like the death penalty. Um Yeah, yeah. And I think we're as atheists we're invested in the fact that Death being the end, isn't that disastrous? So that will that will co c you know, pollute our people. Yeah, I get it. No, that's good. Okay. Well listen, I want to give you a chance now to unpack what I think is the most interesting

a and arguably for me most challenging um problem that you see in a um conditionalist form of Christianity, which is what you call the problem of doctrinal error. Um flesh that out for us and then I'll offer some preliminary thoughts to see what you think of them. Yes, um You have said uh that there's about one thousand five hundred years of the dominance of the eternal conscious torment view and Uh it's it's just astounding that such that This doctrine that puts God in such an awful light

and is so off putting, could have uh lasted for such a long time. Well could have arisen in the first place. So we got a verse like John sixteen thirteen um but he when the Spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all truth. So that it's highly surprising under my induct uh um abductive reasoning that a a a good loving God would have generated this outcome. Um and something which I was quite struck by when I when it occurred to me, is that uh a key idea in Christianity is how God guided the

development of scripture, of the New Testament um in particular. So Uh and we know how that happened much better than we do on the Old Testament. So we we uh f from looking at the history we could see that the um the way that certain books were discussed, are they in the canon or not? And the church decided together, um, following the Holy Spirit Th what would be in the final canon of the New Testament?

Now, that was going on from roughly ish, say, A. D. two hundred to AD four hundred, let's say. And that is just about the same kind of time that this uh losing of what we now see and agree is the New Testament view of hell. o of annihilationism, um and it becoming the dominant view to be eternal conscious torment. So the same Christians at the same time were coming up with the the canon and being guided by the Holy Spirit on that, but also completely getting it wrong on the doctrine of hell.

So the problem then, it sounds like what you're saying is how what sense does it make that God would permit um The church very early on in church history to largely embrace such an erroneous view about himself. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. So Yes, that's right. And and you know I mean, you're a a wonderful example of a Christian who takes doctrine really seriously, you agonise over it, you You y you've probably you've prayed and asked God to help you come to the right um

uh view of doctrine in the various things that you've wrestled over of Calvinism and the view of hell and all the rest of it. And um and yet Uh despite all that, the theologians doing the same kind of thing as as what you do in the third, fourth century um have come up with completely the wrong answer. That's true. So let me um offer a first stab at um what I personally think to be a sufficient, albeit not perfect, answer to this problem, which is um it seems to me that

Uh okay, let me back up. I I in other areas in other areas of of um thought Um the the process of inquiry and of dis and and of experimentation and of dialogue and of working together with other knowledgeable people to um better understand the world. Um this process is is I think intuitively laudable, um commendable to worthwhile.

to us. So for example, um when it comes to um better understanding um the natural world all of the hypothesizing and and and experimentation and discovery that we do and and even sort of arguing but in a good way with other scientists, that seems to be a a worthwhile project. Um the the the the enjoyable part of it, the valuable part of that process is not only in coming up with a better answer, but it's also in the process itself, it seems to me.

Um and that's equally true in the area of mathematics. Uh I've got a Facebook friend who is a math professor and he said that um explore you know, continuing to um uh uh explore areas of mathematics um for all eternity, although that might sound like eternal torment to some people, is something that really um excites him, uh continuing to uncover more and more mathematical realities and so forth. Um Exploring the cosmos.

Um i i it seems to have a lot of value in being able to better understand the the nature and content of the universe. And on and on it goes. um philosophy. Philosophers will tell you that there they they can't conceive of there ever being an end to the meaningful questions that there are to be explored with philosophy. And I think that they would tell you that it's not merely coming up with the answers

that um is valuable. It's the process of philosophizing. Now I say all of that because if there's at least a degree to which we can we we share that intuition, then my question is why should theology be substantially different?

Um, why is it that God might not value his church uh going through this process, that times agonizing process, of hypothesizing and of experimentation and of um dialogue and and argument arguments with other believers who disagree And have and coming closer and closer on balance over time, not necessarily just from one moment to the next, but given a sufficiently long amount of time

over time coming closer and closer, better and better, uh developing a better and better understanding of the nature of God and what he's revealed.

Um that process. um, very well could be valuable and and um uh uh worth appreciating, it seems to me. And if that's the case, then the th then the idea that for long spans of time God might have have permitted or tolerated his people um you know, largely misunderstanding something as uh crucial as this.

nevertheless could still be valuable in the same way that years and years of agonizing and and arguing over the difference between heliocentrism versus um geocentrcentrism is a worthwhile process to take place. So ha so feel free now to rip that theory apart. Wha wh why would you say that doesn't seem to solve it for you? Well, one thing is that you talked about things getting closer and closer, but that's not the case at all. It was perfectly fine i i for the first few the first century or so.

And that's what put it all off the rails and then it was parked for fifteen hundred years and then some eventually some Victorian scholars particularly got to grips with it and we've got to where we are now. Um So it doesn't seem like this sort of uh steady path of of of scholastic study and improvement and built building it brick by brick. It was fine, then it got completely trashed and then it got left unnoticed in its trash state and then eventually things got back together again.

Okay, but that's so that's one thing. Well let's touch on that let's focus on that for a moment before you offer another thing. Um that's why I said w that's why I talked about not from moment to moment being im you know having it improved, but given a sufficiently long period of time. um, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of being wrong after an initial h couple hundred years of having it right.

still doesn't seem to me to be all that problematic in i I mean, look but over two thousand years ago there were people who um knew that the earth was was spheroid. Um and then for a very long period of time the bulk of the scientific world thought that the earth was flat.

um and then it was rediscovered, you know, th its sphere nature spherical nature was rediscovered later. And it doesn't seem to me I mean, it sounds like what you're saying is if God um was sort of sort of overseeing this process, then he would not tolerate

um any divergences from the truth, um, no matter how short those divergences might be. But I don't see why that should be the case. If if God takes val if God sees value in his people um thinking through what his word says and trying to best understand it, working together, making mistakes along the way. Um, even if those mistakes have hundreds of years l of lasting um purchase, that doesn't seem to me

To be incongruous with the idea that God values that kind of ongoing process of of understanding what he's revealed. So where do you think I'm going wrong? Well, uh I mean i either it matters or it doesn't matter if you believe the right stuff. Well, I think that's a good thing.

So just the kind of joy of solving a crossword puzzle it seems to be an extremely minor uh benefit compared to the enormous harm of people seeing God in this awful light Century after century after century, right across the Christian spectrum. W i in the earth one thousand were there large portions of the population that did see eternal torment as as uh making God out to be a have a terrible character.

Well, it would have affected th their their outlook, their feel of God, their uh their worship of as being, you know, deeply scared and you know, those sort of Dante style um paintings were very popular, certainly in English churches. I don't know about um other places, but certainly English churches are famous. They're these big uh behind the altar this with cr Christ on top and the and the people being thrown into hell. kind of down one side and the rest of it was deeply

scary. Um and that affects your relationship with God, surely. Do you think that there might have been periods of time in church history where the doctrine of eternal torment, um Is responsible for the salvation of many people? Um yes, again, we're back to the sort of Jonathan Edwards kind of thing, aren't we? that um in a culture where everyone basically was a uh a believer in God but and but some were pretty laissez faire about it all and then you had the Salafari preacher

And you had these times of uh revival, um like the kind of eighteenth century and that sort of thing, and then times of more complacency. Um, I guess the you know, a scary view of hell would be part of the preaching that got got them on their knees. So it sounds like But that's based on but if if that's all based on a deception or you or a delusion uh that God is completely aware of. I I it it just the whole thing feels pr sick to me, Rick and I'm surprised it wouldn't to Anyone else?

I guess I just don't find um I I guess I'm not seeing the I'm not feeling the challenge in the way that you are. Um So maybe you can say what the other thing what the other thought you had was when I presented this idea of the church uh of God valuing the church working through this and at times letting them get it wrong. Well I think I've said it. I mean the I mean, does it matter to you what's in the New Testament, th th in the canons?

Well how come that matters so much uh uh um and you're so confident that God's got it right when at the same time the people were getting it so wrong with the the doctrine of Oh hell, how do you how What what leg have you got to stand on to be so confident that they were hearing the Holy Spirit on one thing and missing it on the other?

Well, I think that's a good question, but I don't determine the likelihood that um that I correctly understand something based on the history of disagreement. Um, you know, the for a very long time Um people got it wrong that the earth is th they they they thought that the earth is flat or that the earth is the center of the universe or whatever.

Um, it's been a relatively small amount of time that many of those mistakes have now been corrected and we now understand what we think to be what we think is the right one. Does the fact that humankind for so very long got that wrong Does that make me any less confident that in my belief that the Earth is spheroid or that the um or that the solar system isn't at the center of the universe or whatever? No, of course not.

But I think the canon is now it can't be corrected. You can't say, Go back and do some study and uh work out that really the Didache whatever how you pronounce it, Didache should be in the New Testament. I'm not aware of any Christians who uh any any uh anybody but lay Christians anyway, who would say, um that in principle it's impossible that we that we have um that we've mistaken what we understand to be the canon. I think that what we would say is the evidence is that the canon is right.

And I think that that's the answer to your question, at least from my perspective, is why am I confident that we got the canon right uh even though for so long the church got hell wrong? Because I think that there are very, very

um plausible explanations for why the church might have gotten hell wrong for so long. We've already talked about the Greek influence, for example, that can account for that, and meanwhile their view is so r wrong compared to the evidence of scripture And you compare that to the issue of the canon, and I think that many of us Christians have the conviction that yeah, the evidence is that the canon is right.

But not the whole church has the same canon. There's a little tiny corners of it that still have one. Well sure, but we Protestants think that the evidence is that the Catholic canon is uh wrong.

It's not see, it's not that we think um I no well I'm not is there a difference in the New Testament canon between the Catholics? Well they which is what I'm which is what I'm talking about. I I thought they have some apocrypha stuff which Well then which which which uh professing Christian denomination or whatever has a New Testament that's any different from that of our as Protestants?

Um I was thinking of some Ethiopians, Ethiopian church. What books do they think are part of the New Testament that the Catholic Church doesn't and that Protestants don't? Uh I can't remember. Well it's it's just it's just something I'm I'm kind of aware of. So I'd I'd have to look it up and get back to you. Um but that I'm I'm

I'm 99% sure, from what I've been told, that the New Testament canon isn't universal throughout Christendom. I assumed from my... time as a Christian that the Catholic and Protestant Um New Testament was pretty well the same. Uh th they have the Apocrypha and the um and and they do

um have the pseudopigripha, but I don't think they call that part of the New Testament. I dunno I'm not sure. But I mean even l let's for the sake of argument say that yes, there are some branches of Christendom and that have a uh more expansive New Testament than we Protestants recognize. My question is still so what? Um the the the question any of us uh the the way that any of us evaluates whether or not our position to be the is the right uh is the right one should be the evidence.

And we Protestants, I think, would say that there isn't good evidence that the Dida K, for example, should have b ever been included in the canon and that it ever was. You look at the uh first few centuries of the church, for example, when this stuff was being worked out, and yes, that there were churches that saw the Didacay as being valuable, but it was, as far as historians can tell, never part of the canon, never part of recognized Holy Spirit inspired scripture.

Uh well it th the whole idea of Holy Spirit inspired scripture being kind of gospels and things like that, you know, being included, that took took time for it to sort of bed down. Um So that they...

My thinking is that they were on a par for a while, uh, in some parts of the church and it was only with a lot of thought and prayer and care and confr uh councils and things that it was all finally Agreed and and uh So it sounds like you're saying the very process that I'm saying God sees value in is the process that ultimately culminated in what we call the canon now. Yes. Great. You've just proven my point, haven't you? No, I don't think so because um what I'm saying is that uh

the that was a sort of necessary step to get to the canon. Uh well that's the step God how God did it, I suppose is is how we s we would say. Um but uh They... What I'm saying is that the faith you put in that should also be put in the uh development of hell doctrines and all the other things and yet Uh the face is well surrounded in one uh according to you, one um aspect which is the canon are not well founded

when it comes to the other which is uh how doctrines of hell work. Right. And I'm I'm saying that's the the reason I don't have that faith in that traditional view is because it doesn't line up with the evidence. But I think that the conclusions uh that led to the canon that we have now are grounded in good evidence. But either way, what I'm suggesting is that God values the process of his people trying to work these things out.

Um it sounds like and you can correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like you're saying that if God didn't um ensure that all of his people um, agreed on what the truth is on all matters of truth from the very beginning or at the very least from very early on. And unless a a and and um and there couldn't possibly be any periods of time during which some people got it wrong having formerly gotten it right or whatever.

Um, i if if that's all not the case, then there's it makes Christianity unlikely, but I'm not seeing the link between those things. I'm not seeing why we should expect an unbroken, ever increasingly accurate um Christianity ba from his people, um, I don't see why that's necessary to th to think that there's um reason to believe that it's true.

Yeah, I get what you're saying. Uh I think um A big problem I have is is the way you sort of jumped to me anyway into what feels like black and white thinking that either it's all got to be completely perfect and never change.

um or it's uh is entirely up up to humans to get it right and it's all change all over the place. Um so I'd say that in an area of of a key aspect of doctrine, which I feel this one is, in that it it puts God in such terrible light, um that there's no reason why could God couldn't have ensured that the thinking got there pretty quickly. Or the well the error never crept in in the first place.

It seems bizarre to me that God should allow that to happen for all the harm it does. And if you say, well, it doesn't do any harm, it's good that all these people were scared into hell. then I just wonder what the whole point is of having doctrine in the first place. Yeah, I understand. I guess I'm just thinking that um it's not solely about the doctrine. It's also about the the way we come to the doctrine.

And it seems to me to be feasible, um, and not at all unreasonable that God values both of those things, both the conclusions that we come to when they're right and the process by which we come to even wrong conclusions. You know, if if if um If if God just landed in our laps, the the church that is, landed in our laps, um uh uh a full um and Unarguable.

First of all, first of all, I can't even conceive of what it would be like to communicate so clearly that nobody could get it wrong. Um you give a perfectly written DVD player manual to enough people and some of them are gonna misunderstand it. But putting that aside, the point I'm getting at is that uh i uh unless i i if if god just planted a full uh comprehensive and impossible to misunderstand uh um body of

uh literature in our laps that immediately told us everything in every imaginable way that we would want to know about God and his plans. Um there would be something miss Christians, the church would be missing out. on the value of the process of coming to those conclusions, of figuring those things out based on what he has revealed, both in scripture and in nature. And we would be missing out on the opportunity to learn as brothers and sisters in Christ.

how to disagree with each other lovingly and and work through these issues together when we don't agree ultimately on them. Um Yeah. Well this is back to the black and white thing. I I've got a uh an analogy maybe that might uh help see where I'm coming from at least. Um and that is uh W we have learnt over the last hundred years or two, two hundred years maybe, the importance of sanitation, hand washing, um, not defecating in water courses, all sorts of things, basic things about health.

And before we knew that, countless Countless uh millions of children particularly died. of fairly simple diseases that um th that were s very easy to avoid if we just had the good knowledge. uh of hand washing and good sanitation. And the the good in humans having the puzzle and the challenge of working out why

uh um people were dying of communicative uh diseases like that and coming up to the solution. I mean that was great and there must be a a a a good feeling of the of the few people involved who made those breakthroughs and then started sort of spreading the word as to of as to what um the causes were. But the The suffering of all those generations and generations of children who were dying uh was is just

completely swamps any of the the benefit of those people working it out. And so You know couldn't God have let people know earlier on the importance of sanitation and um hand washing and all the rest of it. And uh y you know, that that I I'm not trying to make a a point here. I'm just using it as an analogy. I get it.

And and I guess that really does highlight the differences between our respective intuitions then, because um to me, um, I am not at all convinced that God should somehow um feel obligated to reveal that um in order you know early on and prevent the n the process that would o normally under be gone uh be undergone to discover these things.

Um I I I don't sense I don't intuit that he is obligated to reveal that um from the beginning or early on. In fact, you couldn't even say at any point in human history, because at any point prior to that you're still gonna have this problem. So basically you're saying From the very beginning, God should have um prevented these evils from happening, and now you're just back to the problem of evil.

Um And by evil here I'm talking about natural. This is my this is my uh analogy. You you're saying you y you feel in the area of um Sanitation that God isn't under any obligation to reveal his truth to us. the the you know, the truth to us. It and okay, you you say that. I d this isn't the just apologetics discussion we're having. We're having it about the doctrine of hell.

Uh, and in the doctrine of hell God is obligated to reveal it to us that'cause w w we're there was no way we're gonna find out any other way. So we're all completely in God's hands as to his rev revelation and God has chosen to make the revelation sufficiently ambiguous for the people to have got it wrong.

Well well so that's it. I I don't agree that these scriptures are sufficiently ambiguous. I don't think it's the fault of scripture in any degree that um that the doctrine of eternal torment arose. But but I get your larger point. Your larger point here is that the

um the error that, in my view, God permitted his church, or actually in my view I would say God foreordained that his church would fall into this error. I am after all a Calvinist. But putting that aside, th the the the error that God uh permitted his church to fall into um that he tolerated uh for so long was an error that had disastrous circumstances.

um, anywhere from driving people away from Christ altogether to just inhibiting people's ability to fully enjoy Christ and God because they always have this picture of him being um a tyrant who tortures people forever in hell. Um I get that. But what I'm saying I mean the the the whole conversation we've had for the last uh two hours now. Yeah. Uh has been how it does matter. Sure. That that That uh so maybe we were just having a bit of fun and

Passing the time of day. No, no, no. I'm just saying uh to me this really seems, if I'm not mistaken, to boil down to just the the the problem of of evil. Why does God let anything bad happen to anybody? Because um t because that's what your analogy leads to. At any point in the history of humanity.

Um th the humans knew then more about sanitation and other things than they did prior to that point. And so gosh, God should have fully revealed the truth about sanitation from the very beginning in order to prevent humans uh suffering. But that's that's just the problem of evil.

And it seems to me like that's all we're talking about here. Why why would God permit the evil that is done by the church um falling into the error of eternal torment for some period of time? And I'm saying That's no different from the problem of why he permits evil of any sort. Well I guess still we need to go through what you feel is the solution to the problem of evil. Well not give another conversation. Yeah, it would be.

Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd coming up with their stuff. I'm sure they're like you and Andrew, my friend, when he was looking into all this. really treating it seriously, seeking God's help, really wanting to know the truth and to get it right. And yet despite that So the God left them alone. It's almost like a hiddenness of God issue, which is another big i um apologetics uh area.

Well, you're right, we are kinda going around in circles, but hopefully this gives listeners um a a decent impression of Where conditional immortality and annihilationism seem to help. the problem of the seeming disproportion of eternal torment with a finite lifetime of guilt. Uh but also where conditional immortality and annihilationism are still vulnerable. Um that's I think um

something worth leaving our listeners with. Now as we turn to wrapping up Um I wanna ask you two sort of two two questions, uh, for you to give a bit of parting message uh p parting messages to listeners after they turn off this recording that's been two hours or longer. Um

Uh beginning with uh I I'd like to have your message to Christians in general on all sides of this debate. What what would you as an atheist on the outside looking in, what would you like to see Christians in general do moving forward um in order to contribute to a fruitful dialogue with people like you and thereby meaningfully advance the conversation. Because as you've already noted, this is very often a fractious um uh conversation that very often leads to more heat than light.

And um just in Christians in general, how would you like to see us um have a conversation with people like you, atheists and agnostics and skeptics of all sorts, um, in a in a way that generates more light rather than the kind of heat it so often does? Yeah. So this is the general one rather than on tell doctrines. Yes. Um Well, I think I say t to atheists as well that that if you're entering into a conversation

You have to say to yourself, I could be wrong before you get stuck in. Once you get so stuck into the conversation it's even harder'cause of you all your juices are sort of roused up. But If it's gonna be a meaningful conversation you have to have in mind that you're gonna learn something, that you've got at least something you've got wrong.

Otherwise it's a it's a waste of time for for for you and you're hoping that the person on the other side i has the same attitude that they could be wrong and then suddenly the there's something alive about the conversation. It's not just uh kinda i uh batting the kind of apologetics batting the s the the normal arguments and it all goes down a predictable path. But uh there is a a chance of s a meaningful conversation.

Um actually if anyone happens to be anywhere near London, we do have uh when COVID's over it'll be proper face to face again uh discussion group. The uh unbelievable discussion group?

Yes, that's right. In um so if you're ever in town, we'd love to see you. Um so there's uh A me it it's a meetup thing, so I guess if people Google meetup and unbelievable uh uh discussion group, then you'll find us and you'll see some online stuff but it's does it really comes into its own when it's people meeting and somehow Once you you're interacting human to human rather than argument to argument, you you m uh g get a a a deeper level. It's lovely. Not just human to human, but face to face.

Yes. Yeah. Well good. And and yes, um the next time I am in London I hope to uh to jump into that. And as you know, my hope is that one day in the not too distant future my family will be um relatively close to London for an ongoing basis. Oh yes, and even closer to me. I'm I'm on your the Oxford side of London. Well so my my current dream is actually Cambridge, not Oxford, but

But the reality is I don't really know where I'm gonna go. So who knows where it'll be, but I yeah I definitely hope to be a part of that unbelievable group. Yeah. Um yeah Oh well I ca uh Cambridge was the place I studied at and Oxford's the place I studied. Oh interesting. There you go. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah. Um Oh y punting in Cambridge is just brun wonderful. Much better than the Oxford version. What is punting?

It's uh the traditional boat where you uh stand at the back and you have uh something a bit like a pole vault pole. And you drop it down into the onto the riverbed and push yourself along. And it's wonderful'cause it's got the jeopardy that it could get stuck in the mud and throw you in. Interesting. Yeah, I'll have to check that out. And you all get yeah, yeah. It's it's very popular, it's like great fans. Well um Let me have you narrow your um

uh your advice here a little bit. Um what would you like to see Christian conditionalists like me and and those of us at Rethinking Hell, what would you l like to see us do to help the conversation move forward if if we think that conditionalism does resolve some of the issues um that prevent a lot of atheists from embracing Christianity. How can we still how can we go even further? What would you like to see us do? What sort of work?

Well well succeed, I guess, in your I mean I'm all for truth and it's uh it's uh it is a backwater, isn't it, for atheists to taunt Christianity about its awful doctrine of hell when actually that's the wrong doctrine in the first place. So it would just help everybody if if you convinced your fellow believers that uh that what you convinced me of But we'd of course still have the kind of work to do that we've discussed and I guess that would be maybe

what you'd like the next steps you'd like to see us take is is how would we address the problem of gratuitous evils and how would we address the problem of doctrinal error and so forth. W I'm assuming you'd like to see us spend some more time on those kinds of issues. Well, I mean, th yeah, this issue we've talked about with doctrinal uh diversity in Christianity.

you know, that's something's been raked over. This is just a n a new aspect of it that probably hasn't been talked about so much because of people weren't aware of the um you know, there wasn't a a diversity of opinions. Um and then the issue of suffering uh again that's something that's been talked and talked about. So Um I'm not sure what progress there is to be made. Okay. All right. Um Yeah. Well I've really The thing is that that arguments don't

Yeah, arguments don't convince people. Um But th I think there's something even more than that that it's just so There could be this terror management theory aspect or something that makes it really difficult for people to change their minds. So arguments can be so strong and yet people Karen, regardless. Well it just goes to sh I'm tempted to jump into US politics, but I've got an appointment. Yeah, no kidding. Um

Yeah, very good. Okay, well um I have really enjoyed the discussion. I I always enjoy our chats, Ed, and um I wanna give listeners, uh, the information they need to be able to find you online and the show that you mentioned that I came on and Anything you know, you've already mentioned the unbelievable meetup. Where else would you like listeners to go online to find you and and and any shows that you're a part of?

Just the uh the podcast really, uh that we called uh doubts aloud, uh spelt as um sh as in Shout Out Loud. Um and you know, that's the title of the podcast. We can be found In any normal podcast EA. uh description or in the blog post for this podcast episode so that people can check it out. Um again, Ed, I've really enjoyed the conversation. I'm looking forward to getting to talk to you more in the future. Thanks for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. I r I really appreciated being on the Rethinking Hell is available in iTunes by simply searching for Rethinking Hell in the iTunes Store, and we greatly appreciate your comments and reviews there. Please also like our Facebook page at facebook.com slash rethinking hell. Follow us on Twitter at twitter dot com slash rethinking hell and subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube dot com slash rethinking hell.

And as always, you can find the blog podcast forum and more at www.rethinkinghell.com. Thanks for joining us, and we hope you'll stay tuned for the next episode of the Rethinking Hell Podcast. Until then This podcast is provided by Rethinking Hell, a non-denominational, non-affiliated project produced by a group of evangelical Christians.

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