John C Wright has posted a particularly fine example of the kind of usefulness that (we) recent converts potentially have in Christian apologetics - for me this was a very clarifying piece of writing and thinking.
http://www.scifiwright.com/2012/12/the-theodicy-of-hell/
there are many telling points made in the course of this thesis; here are a few excerpts:
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Cruel logic says that there are only three general possibilities of
what happens after death: oblivion, reincarnation, and resurrection.
Or, to put the matter the other way, the three options are endless
nonbeing, which means the obliteration of human nature; the endlessly
continuation of human nature and its flaws; or the endless perfection of
human nature.
If those in truth are the only possibilities, then even God Almighty
could not design a universe with something other than one of those three
results, any more than He can make a four-sided triangle.
If oblivion is our fate, there is neither hope nor justice in this
world, for every suicide bomber, or successful criminal, or bloodthirsty
tyrant, who died comfortably in bed mocks even the idea of a just
retribution.
Justice is not even possible, for if the victim of murder cannot be
made to live again, then the injustice of murder is as infinite as the
span of nonexistence into which the murderer plunges his victim. The
murderer himself, when he dies, whether on the scaffold or comfortably
in bed, is placed in the same dreamless oblivion as his victim, as all
heroes, no matter how heroic, as all villains, no matter how wretched,
as selfless saints and sadistic madmen, all, all, all come to nothing in
the end.
In this worldview, all human fears and ambitions and hopes and wars
and commotions come to nothing and mean nothing. Life is hopeless, and
the best one can hope for is a certain small amount of personal comfort
and selfish pleasure, a love affair or a family or money or fame, and
then everything is swallowed by the dragon of nothingness.
(...)
Buddhism sounds like one of those forgiving teachers who keep letting
you re-take and re-take the test until you get all the answers right.
To the best of my admittedly limited understanding, that is not what
Buddhism says.
I am assuming here that the possibility that mankind will find
perfection after a sufficiently large number of reincarnations, and know
the difference between good and evil and choose the good, to be too
small a possibility to contemplate. No one familiar with the natural
selfishness of human nature, the indifference, the lack of charity, the
hate, infinite human capacity for self-adoration and self-deception,
will be so sanguine as to think a few billion kalpas of extra lives will
allow us all to learn to live as saints.
Again, this is not my field, so anyone more well studied in the
teachings of this ancient and profound theology is welcome to correct
me—but Buddhism speaks of the annihilation or absorption of human nature
back into the original godhead. Nirvana is not paradise, but an
undisturbed state indistinguishable from oblivion. The word means ‘no
wind blowing’ that is, the unruffled.
(...)
I am not speaking of men guilty of enormities, of Hitler and Stalin
and Mao and men whose hearts were even more vicious than this, but who
lacked the power to command genocides and mass murders. I am speaking of
ordinary men, all men, men not worse than myself and many a good deal
better.
I can tolerate my corrupt and horrid human nature because I am among men like myself, because I am benumbed by self-esteem and do not condemn my own flaws with half the fervor I use to condemn others, and because my mind is dark, and I cannot see clearly, with perfect, pristine, stark and inescapable clarity, all the harm I have done in my life, or the good I have failed to do.
What I see in the world around me suggests that other men are a great deal more tolerant of their own sins and failings, not less. Perhaps it is merely my experience as a bar tender, or a newspaperman covering the crime beat, or my work in a law office, but the men I see go to greater lengths than I do, not less, and some go to elephantine lengths, to hide from themselves from the burning and pitiless light of the conscience.
It is popular these days, with philosophies like moral relativism and Freudian nonsense, for men to destroy their capacity to condemn themselves by destroying their faculty of judgment and reasoning, or by pretending it has no authority.
I am not worthy of life in paradise, not I as I am constituted now, weak as I am and subject to temptations, passions, folly, moments of weakness, and my pathetically small supply of love and zeal and joy.
This is not because my life is particularly wretched, indeed, compared to nine tenths of the human race across nine tenths of human history, my life is a fairytale of bliss and triumph, free of guilt and death and pain, or relatively so. I have never been in a war nor spent a night in jail. I have an abundant richness of blessings beyond my ability to count.
And yet I say I am not fit for paradise.
Not on my own merits. Not burdened with a corrupt human nature.
Now, perhaps you feel you are worthy. There are only two possibilities: you are a fool or you are a saint.
I can tolerate my corrupt and horrid human nature because I am among men like myself, because I am benumbed by self-esteem and do not condemn my own flaws with half the fervor I use to condemn others, and because my mind is dark, and I cannot see clearly, with perfect, pristine, stark and inescapable clarity, all the harm I have done in my life, or the good I have failed to do.
What I see in the world around me suggests that other men are a great deal more tolerant of their own sins and failings, not less. Perhaps it is merely my experience as a bar tender, or a newspaperman covering the crime beat, or my work in a law office, but the men I see go to greater lengths than I do, not less, and some go to elephantine lengths, to hide from themselves from the burning and pitiless light of the conscience.
It is popular these days, with philosophies like moral relativism and Freudian nonsense, for men to destroy their capacity to condemn themselves by destroying their faculty of judgment and reasoning, or by pretending it has no authority.
I am not worthy of life in paradise, not I as I am constituted now, weak as I am and subject to temptations, passions, folly, moments of weakness, and my pathetically small supply of love and zeal and joy.
This is not because my life is particularly wretched, indeed, compared to nine tenths of the human race across nine tenths of human history, my life is a fairytale of bliss and triumph, free of guilt and death and pain, or relatively so. I have never been in a war nor spent a night in jail. I have an abundant richness of blessings beyond my ability to count.
And yet I say I am not fit for paradise.
Not on my own merits. Not burdened with a corrupt human nature.
Now, perhaps you feel you are worthy. There are only two possibilities: you are a fool or you are a saint.
http://www.scifiwright.com/2012/12/the-theodicy-of-hell/
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