Is hell a taboo?
Norm points out, as Ian MacDougall did in comments, that I said too much when I said I didn’t think we need empirical evidence to warrant thinking that telling children that people suffer torment in hell forever is harmful and bad. He points out that extrapolating from experience is itself a form of evidence – ‘The experience we have contains various forms of evidence.’ Well yes, and if that is included in what is meant by empirical evidence, then I do think we need it, but I was making the (usual? common?) distinction between subjective evidence about first person experience and intersubjective evidence about the world outside first person experience.
Part of my point was that for empirical questions about the real world, personal experience is not considered evidence (except by some theists). My claim was that for questions about what it is or is not cruel to do or say to people, personal experience can be considered evidence because experience is what it is about; that extrapolation from subjective reactions is reasonable there while it is not reasonable when discussing, say, ‘alternative’ medicine.
I’m not sure about this part:
[I]n principle we have to allow for the possibility that new evidence might show – though I don’t, myself, believe this is likely – that the beneficial effects on children of hell-talk outweigh the harmful ones. Could be, you know, that it toughens kids up and better prepares them to meet the harshness of the world. Unlikely, as I say; yet, although there are claims that don’t depend on empirical evidence – such as that it’s wrong to cause unnecessary suffering – I can’t see that a claim (of fact) about what harms people can do without the support of such evidence.
I balk at that – so now all I have to do is figure out why, and figure out if it’s irrational or if I have a reason. I balk in the sense that I think even if there were robust evidence that hell-talk made children braver than they would otherwise be – it’s still wicked and wrong. Why?
I know – I have it. It’s what NB said in comments. Well done Neil! It’s because hell itself is wicked, so a God that is responsible for it shouldn’t be worshipped. That’s why. Believing in hell and worshipping the God that sends people there puts an appalling principle right at the center of what one believes about the world. Being tougher or braver is no good if you’re someone who endorses sadistic power in that way – so evidence that belief in hell made people tougher or happier wouldn’t touch the basic flaw.
Yeah, there’s a moral deontological point to be made here: regardless of the utilitarian effects of hell-talk, it’s wrong in itself.
I’m neither 100% deontological nor 100% utilitarian, a mix of both rather, but I do balk at telling kids a wicked lie to toughen them up.
If the world is really all that tough in reality, then shouldn’t there be enough TRUTHS we could tell kids to toughen them up?
Ophelia,
It is beyond me why you go in for such utter nonsense – “in principle we have to allow for the possibility, that new evidence …”.
Didn’t we get into the 21st century by now or did philosophy for Norm & alike stop somewhere with ‘1960s concensus’?
It’s so daft to make out as if we – in principle, mind you – need to suspend judgment on the earth orbiting the sun or men evolving from apes.
Imagine teaching that to your children: pooh-pooh, don’t go too hard on idiots because ‘in principle’ & ‘new evidence’ & so on & so forth. Yes, maybe, if that is the choice maybe one would rather go for the hell-option to avoid having ’em as irreparable softies like their idiot parents that got stuck in the empirical trap (w/o empirical evidence plse note, only ‘in principle’).
But what’s worse, & where you also seem to concede implicitly, in what universe of moronicness can you go for emporocal evidence & go on to link that in one of the most simplistic ways to good & bad? Yeah-yeah, he takes distance with harms instead of wrong but that’s footwork to no avail – because there is no harm, on which to make any statistical empirical cliam, without a prior good defined (it is not because the value concensus will have become such that, mostly, we don’t make that link explicit that the link’s not there and any science worth mention will take care to make their hypothesis worded such that words like harm can be optional in it.
The end result of all these concessions is appalling: to tell X is NOK, because the teller-of-X believes in X, and X is many bad (in principle again).
You have been making a great case until now & I thoroughly enjoyed it – without feeling any urge to intervene – but now you lost me. The hell-stuff is criminal not because of social effects – or some average mental effect – but because the simple truth is that it’s immoral to go and scare kids for no other reason than tradition (at the very least you can go wait to scare them until they’re adults and able to scare you back).
Even if hell-telling would create super-kid able to lift the entire city of New York with one hand & spread the word of Love at the same time to the whole god-damned world; even then hell-telling is despicable. Something does not become – not even for a little bit sophisticated utilitarian – beneficial just because a bit of evidence emerges that benefits a bigger whole. Ironically, the reason it is this way is because there could come evidence that you did a great wrong for something that – on reflection – didn’t give the benefical effect once imagined or that one had ceased to see an effect like that to be beneficial at all.
But there is no evidence that will – or could – emerge on this issue. I am sure that we will never knowingly scare kids with bull-shit; even if it toughens the hell out of them we will prefer to send them watching the TV news and – failing effect of that – send them to Zimbabwe: they’ll come a-running back asking them to hear all these comforting stories of hell – which is, by the way, one of the reasons why hell is making a come-back.
“[evidence might show that] the beneficial effects on children of hell-talk outweigh the harmful ones”
Evidence might show that repeatedly poking Norm with a stick will turn him into a genius. Norm therefore cannot object to me repeatedly poking him with a stick.
Unless evidence also shows geniuses are likely to murder their children that is & we don’t prefer Norm to his children.
(this summarizes my far too long expose just above)
Of course, Norm is right in principle. That’s why we call these conclusions inductive. However, it’s always a harm to teach children a falsehood. I suppose you could tell an obstreporous child something that is not true so that they would not do something that would result in harm. But you should never teach, as a matter of known fact (known, despite the fact that new evidence might come up where we would have to revise our estimate of where it comes within the context of what is know), something that is known (with the same caveats) to be false. (Of course, since no one could possible know, in the requisite sense, that hell exists, perhaps the caveats don’t apply.)
And teaching children something false that is
Eric, not at all wanting to be annoying but, no – that’s not what I was saying. What I was saying is that Norm is wrong because of 2 principles (& a borderline moronic application of induction, as if Hume had the last word on it).
The rest of your argument against hell-speak I have no quarrel with. In fact I have enjoyed the ride, albeit silently, it’s the right type of thing to be very passionate about: not teaching kids the stupidities of their grandparents.
I have no idea what you were saying, JoB, because it’s too excited and long and typo-filled to make sense of.
Thank you, OB, I didn’t like to say it!
Any time, Eric!
Mind you, JoB made it easy by being so vehement himself – ‘vehement’ in the sense of ‘rude.’
I can make sense of one bit, and I can disagree with it, too.
“The hell-stuff is criminal not because of social effects – or some average mental effect – but because the simple truth is that it’s immoral to go and scare kids for no other reason than tradition”
Bollocks. Why is it immoral to scare children for no good reason? Because of the effect. If it had absolutely no effect, and everyone knew it had absolutely no effect, then it wouldn’t be immoral – it would just be meaningless. It’s not immoral to attempt to scare a lamp or a carrot, it’s immoral to scare sentient beings (except for good reasons, like warning of danger or risk). So your dichotomy is just silly. So there.
“It’s not immoral to attempt to scare a lamp or a carrot,”
Well, whatever about scaring the lamp. I would have doubts about scaring the poor carrot – it might just feel very immoral indeed if you pulled at its roots..
:-)! (smiley)
For what it’s worth, my point was not that effects don’t matter, but rather that “toughening up the kids for the cruel world out there” is not a good excuse for being a cruel parent.
Oh, I knew what you meant, Tea – it was JoB I was disputing.
For what it’s worth, my point was not that effects don’t matter, but rather that “toughening up the kids for the cruel world out there” is not a good excuse for being a cruel parent.
Parental cruelty is inexcusable — period. Not to mention the fact that such cruelty is apt to create pathological offspring. A loving parent is the child’s refuge against an indiffent and often cruel world. More importantly, it’s what enables a child to build the self-esteem and strength needed thrive in the face of such a world.
So apparently I’m not being irrational to think that even if there were evidence that belief in hell had some useful effects it would still be dead wrong.
We could of course change the question, and wonder if such evidence would make it acceptable for other people to tell the child that hell is eternal torture for the unsaved…
So apparently I’m not being irrational to think that even if there were evidence that belief in hell had some useful effects it would still be dead wrong.
Well, look at this this way. One could say the same for various forms of torture, such as flogging and the strappado.
I’m of the opinion that terrorizing a child to control behavior only differs from physical abuse as a matter of degree.
I’m not sure I understand the changed question. Are you now asking whether it’s ok to tell children that some people are going to suffer eternal torture, as long as we make sure these children know they’re not going to be among those people, so they have nothing to be afraid of?
Well then,
:-(
sAnsdieu & ‘no-God’speed
:-)
Tea, who, me? Noooooooo. I spit on that idea; I think it’s loathsome. I’m just wondering if that makes me irrational (given that putative evidence wouldn’t change my mind).
P.S. I changed the question just because Antonio’s answer was about parental duty, so I was saying we have to give different reasons when parents aren’t involved.
I should have been more clear. There seem to be two main issues here — the doctrinal idea of hell and the problem, of indoctrinating children in this idea.
As I understood the matter, the question is whether or not any imputed salutory effects of such indoctrination might outweigh the trauma that might be inflicted.
In that regard, some authority figure might do so with the best of intentions, while being oblivious to or heedless of the effect — as if it were some distasteful medicine that one feels must be good for the child. Of course, they may also believe it to be a legitimate way of controlling the child’s behavior.
My objections to all of that apply to any authority figure, parental or otherwise, regardless of how benevolent their motives are and whether or not the claimed beneficial effect is real.
Of course, whether it’s possible to be orthodox in such indoctrination and NOT traumatize a young child is another matter. And, of course, that’s the nub of the issue here.