"How shall a fierce, haughty, intensely clannish and territorial race regulate its public business?" (p. 496)
A very good question. If we were talking about human beings, then I would say that not all individuals or societies are territorial etc, that any society that does have such characteristics can move away from them and that individuals who are like that can spend some time questioning and modifying their own attitudes. However, Poul Anderson is writing about Ythrians, intelligent, flying carnivores. He builds their psychology, sociology and theology up from their biology. They are genetically fierce, haughty etc. Adherents of the Old Faith practice animal sacrifices. Those of the New Faith aim not to unite with God but to die fighting against Him - because He is the Hunter. If there is any deity that judges everyone, then he is going to have to take into account the very different codes built into creatures as diverse as Ythrians and human beings. This is true even among human beings. I have a very good friend who feels intense guilt only about a single "sin of omission" - something that he did not do. Everything else he feels fully justified about! God might say something different, of course... But that is His prerogative, as someone said.
If a hereafter were not a final judgment but an opportunity to learn and move on, then it would be of some use. There is no hereafter in the New Faith...
18 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Our final, personal moment of judgement will be at our deaths, when we will have to make an irrevocable, eternal choice for or against God.
Learning will still be possible for the spirits in Purgatory and Heaven, as Anderson suggests in OPERATION CHAOS.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Some organisms have become conscious. Consciousness is a property of organisms with central nervous systems. Therefore, the subject of consciousness is the organism, not some detachable, immaterial, immortal entity.
However, If I am wrong and such entities exist, why should a choice made at the moment of detachment be irrevocable? If an eternity lies ahead, why will it not be possible to continue learning and choosing?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I do not believe in your materialism. Again, I refer you to the moderate dualism expounded by Mortimer Adler in THE DIFFERENCE OF MAN AND THE DIFFERENCE IT MAKES.
Because, at the moment of death it is the Catholic belief we will know with absolute clarity what we want, to either love or hate God. And that this will be an eternal choice.
Ad astra! Sea
Sean,
Doesn't make sense. People came to death at every age, from newly-born to centenarians, and in every state of preparedness or lack of it. How will dying bestow absolute clarity about what we want? And how are we morally accountable for what we find that we want? If a particular want is in my psyche, unknown even to me until death, then my creator (assuming that I have one) is responsible for putting that want in me. Where else did it come from? Wants are not chosen but determine choices.
How will a choice be eternal? What is to stop us, if we still have mental faculties, rethinking, changing our minds, making different choices etc? I know that part of the answer to this might be that that will mean that we have been in Purgatory, not in Hell. But that is not how Purgatory and Hell were presented decades ago. Catholic teaching is not the same in all times and places.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Infants who die naturally or murdered via abortion will not face the judgement all those of sound mind will face.
I don't understand your comment about Purgatory or Hell. I've been repeating nothing that is not standard Catholic teaching, that is not found either in Dante's DIVINE COMEDY or the CCC. I do know catechizing has not always been as accurate and orthodox as it should have been.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
My comment about Purgatory was based on CS Lewis' THE GREAT DIVORCE where souls can choose to come out of Hell and, if they do so, then it will only have been Purgatory. I said that that was a possible view but I agree that it is not Catholic doctrine.
You have not answered most of my questions.
Paul.
Sean,
I am checking out Adler. The mind-brain problem is either insoluble or at least nowhere near to being solved yet. Adler argued that humanity is qualitatively unique. I agree. But I think that qualitative changes can arise from quantitative changes, for example, organismic sensitivity quantitatively increasing until it qualitatively changes into conscious sensation. Adler argued, I understand, that a brain alone could not generate thought and therefore needed to interact with an immaterial intellect which I think raises more problems than it solves. Engels wrote "The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man." Scientifically and in accordance with Occam's Razor, explanations should remain as naturalistic as possible but should not be reductionist. Consciousness is not "nothing but" neural interactions but is somehow caused by them. That this process is mysterious I fully agree.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Because, at death, we will know what we want, for all eternity, due to our minds being clarified or illuminated. That is how we will know what we will want for all eternity as regards our fates.
We are accountable for all our acts, bad or good. And God will ratify the eternal choices we make.
That clarifies matters, you were thinking of Lewis' THE GREAT DIVORCE. I was thinking more in terms of reading a treatise discussing Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell based on the Scriptures, Fathers, and ex-cathedra definitions of the Church.
THE GREAT DIVORCE was fun to read, but not what I would go to for exact and precise teaching on what Christianity believes.
It's good you checked out Mortimer Adler. But I've read only two of his many books. And I believe his arguments makes more sense than the philosophy you favor.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But, by that account, we have not chosen our wants. Wants are not chosen but determine choices. We could have been created with different wants.
Many organismic changes preceded and presumably produced first consciousness, then intelligence. We should understand new qualities as emerging from empirically discernible processes, not as involving interaction with something undetectable and therefore unverifiable. Far from explaining anything, that would require further and more complicated explanations. (Occam's Razor.)
However, what we encounter here is not a philosophical argument but a religious doctrine which in turn is a reformulation of an earlier Greek philosophical theory, the immortal, immaterial, originally reincarnating, soul. The earliest version of that idea was the psyche leaving the body temporarily in sleep and permanently at death. We now regard dreams as byproducts of brain activities, not as experiences of psyches wandering in another realm.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Then we cannot agree on matters like free will or "wants."
No, what orthodox Christianity did was use Greek philosophy to clarify and deepen understanding of what was implied and revealed by divine revelation.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Do you think that we choose our wants?
The Bible refers only to the resurrection of bodies. That was supposed to be imminent. Paul's converts started asking him why it hadn't happened yet.
There is a contradiction between immediate judgement after death and an eventual judgement after a resurrection.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, I can choose to want to drink Coke Zero one day or choose to want eating a couple of slices of pizza the next day.
This will not do, this constant insisting only on what St. Paul thought. The Gospel of Mark was written before the Apostle Paul started writing. I think James Crossley, one of your favorite writers, dates Mark to the late AD 40's. This is how Christ warned His disciples in Mark 13.32: "But of that day or hour [of His return] no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only." And Matthew 24.36 says: "But of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but the Father only."
I do not agree there was a contradiction. St. Paul was letting his eager longing get the better of patience.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We do not choose to want. Our choices are based on what we find that we want. If I do not want Coke, then I do not choose it.
Jesus is quoted as saying that the apocalypse would happen while some of his hearers were still alive. Of course other kinds of statements got into the NT as well. Peter at Pentecost launched a new Jewish sect which Paul later relaunched as a Gentile religion, closer to Christianity as we know it.
There is no contradiction between being judged immediately after death and having to wait until after an eventual Resurrection?
Paul.
Sean,
Coincidentally, I was with James Crossley's wife and another friend about when you posted the above comment.
I am still unhappy with this style of conversation, communication or should I say confrontation. We are still just flatly contradicting each other on every point every time and it is perfectly clear by now that this will continue indefinitely. What is the point? Especially since the subject-matter that we are dealing with requires far greater subtlety and sensitivity. I have had conversations with a Jesuit priest and a Presbyterian minister that have not been anything like this.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I don't understand why you don't believe we can choose what we want when it seems so obvious that is what happens. I don't have to like pizza--but if I do then I can choose to ear it.
Peter and Paul did not found independent sects, they preached a Faith with its origins in Christ and based on His Resurrection from the dead. And St. Paul explicitly said he was careful to consult Peter and the other "pillars" in Jerusalem, to make sure he taught in conformity with what they taught. And it was Peter himself who began the process of baptizing non-Jewish converts to Christianity.
The entirety of what the NT says is what needs to be taken into account. Not just this bit or that.
Our Particular Judgement is at death, the General Judgement at the end of time. No contradiction because our eternal fates will not be changed at the latter event.
But this "style" of conversation is inevitable when it touches on what the Catholic Church believes to be matters of divine revelation. It's nothing personal, a matter of logical consistency. Moreover Christ exhorted His disciples to let their yeses be yeses and noes to be noes. Iow, we are to avoid needless ambiguities.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course we choose what we want! That's what I've been saying. But we cannot decide or choose in advance what our wants are going to be. We could have been created with different wants. Someone who is an alcoholic could have been created not wanting alcohol. You seem to be completely missing the point here.
Paul.
Sean,
Then the General Judgement is not a judgement.
This style of conversation is not inevitable. I do not have it with other convinced Christians.
Paul.
OK. I have reread this thread to look for a possible source of misunderstanding and might have found it. If I say, "We cannot choose our wants," I do not mean by this that, if we want a Coke, then we are incapable of choosing to buy one. I mean that we have not and cannot have chosen to want Coke. Our desires/wants precede any choices that we make and determine those choices. Someone who wants beer chooses to buy beer. Someone who dislikes beer chooses to satisfy his thirst with some other drink.
I find that I am either heterosexual or homosexual. I have not chosen to be either of these things. Because I am heterosexual, I choose a female sexual partner, not a male sexual partner, but I have not chosen to be heterosexual.
An omnipotent creator of all things other than himself has created every aspect of every creature, including all their wants, desires, fears, dispositions, inclinations, motivations etc. He is responsible if one of his creatures has an overwhelming urge to commit evil acts.
I do not think that this questioning of the theological "free will" doctrine should need such elaborate elucidation, especially since we have been through it more than once before.
We directly experience freedom (= absence of constraint) because we are conscious that, when we choose A from a menu of A, B and C, nothing is preventing us from choosing B or C instead of A. But something inside us makes the choice, either a preference for A or, if we are undecided, maybe a random brain process, the mental equivalent of tossing a coin. If we prefer A, then we have not chosen to prefer A. If there is a random brain process, then, by definition, a random process is not one that we control.
Freedom of choice, meaning absence of constraint, exists but "free will" in an absolute philosophical/theological sense does not.
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