Epistemic status: provisional in the sense that, I think somewhere in MSLN there is reason to not believe in eternal conscious torment, but these arguments in their exact form may need revision; and also that I can only provide natural theological arguments right now.
9 May 2021: small edit, and added a postscript.
27 May 2021: added a paragraph, rewrote postscript.
Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) is the doctrine that some people will go to hell, existing forever in a state of conscious torment. It is an offensive doctrine, but one which may yet be true. Ordinarily we look at the Bible as the source for this doctrine. In the future I may be able to consider what the Bible says, overall, but for now, I will consider natural theology: reasoning about God. Reason is used in interpreting the Bible, and many people find reason trustworthy in itself, perhaps more so than the Bible. Natural theology and the Bible talk about the same subject: God. So what does the natural theology of MSLN say about ECT?
Would God want to or need to send people to hell in MSLN?
One popular definition of hell is "separation from God".
God may be able to bear us for a long time, but what is unbearable at all can't be borne forever. Fundamentally, God is the way he is (he is the right way he should be from the beginning). We differ from God in some ways that he can't bear (we are "sinful"). So either we must change to fit God, or we must be separated from God. A separation into ECT? Or a separation that destroys us? (The latter view is called annihilationism; "Annihilation": to make nothing.) Presumably, no one can exist when completely separated from God.
MSLN argument: the metaphysical organism
The idea of the metaphysical organism is a hypothesis about the means by which otherwise separate consciousnesses connect. In it, a consciousness connects to another consciousness by being conscious of its exact consciousness. Further, whatever connects me to the outside world experiences exactly what I do. So that being would experience ECT as well as I would. If God is the being who connects all consciousnesses, he would have to experience the ECT of all those who made themselves enemies of him. Could God ever rest? He would experience the unbearability of their torment for all time. They might not have the ability to stop experiencing what they experienced, but he would. Arguably, unbearability can't be endured forever, not even by God, because God would experience the unbearability as unbearable. So then God would shut down their consciousnesses, and this would be like them being annihilated, rather than experiencing ECT.
MSLN argument: simantism
However, maybe it is possible to think that God could cut himself off from these consciousnesses, and they could somehow exist apart from him. They would "speak" experience to themselves, in place of God, the Speaker. They would have a very limited simantic vocabulary compared to God. Maybe they could only speak the barest proto-conscious sense of will, preference, and trust. If he left them to an existence so minimalist that they couldn't torment themselves, it wouldn't be ECT, and it would resemble annihilation.
If they had a less-minimalist existence, could they torment themselves? Maybe, but not against their will, and though they might be the causes of their torment, the experience of the torment itself would be against their will. So it would be a case of them relating to what was not-them (simantism), and their torment would have to be spoken to them by another being. I have written in this paragraph as though it is possible to speak simantic words without God, but then, the simantic word of the entirety of reality, which is implied by a person's experience in the moment, would be spoken to them, and who can do that other than God? So God would have contact with them and would suffer as they did.
MSLN argument: legitimism
From the point of view of legitimism, whatever exists, in some sense should be, and should be absolutely. Absolute ought comes from a truly worthy will, is a truly worthy opinion. An opinion is conscious and personal, is part of a person. If God's opinion founds all of reality, he is conscious of all that is. Any lack of awareness on his part is of what does not yet exist. And what kind of opinion is so valid that it can found reality? The answer given in legitimism is that God is willing to take on the burdens he lays on others, and is maximally receptive to reality. So then, God would know of and directly experience the ECT of any who suffer it.
Summary so far
These considerations show that God himself can't escape ECT if any of us remain in it. It is reasonable to guess that God would prefer to rest than to suffer, and it seems that in the very nature of unbearability, there is the inability to willingly endure it forever. So these make a case against ECT.
Does MSLN in some way support eternal conscious torment?
On the other hand, do these natural theologies lend any weight in favor of ECT? Perhaps legitimism does. Legitimism says that there is an absolute ought, which can be violated by personal beings. The violations are an offense against what should be. We know as humans that sometimes exacting a just penalty from someone heals an injustice. And this may be a foundational principle of reality. So, when people do what is unjust, they must pay the penalty so that legitimacy can be healed, unless the penalty is paid for them. So if their injustices are infinite, they deserve infinite punishment, and this could lead to ECT. ECT as a means to justice.
Finite beings don't have the power to cause infinite injustice in a positive sense. So we wouldn't merit ECT. But perhaps by us turning away from helping others, we are willing to shut the door on potentially infinite numbers of people, for all we know or care about, in order to enjoy our small pleasures. This could be considered in some sense an infinite injustice for which we might have to pay eternally.
Counterpoint (27 May 2021):
Do people who neglect the well-being of others have hearts that truly intended to cause an infinite amount of suffering? Human beings are incapable of truly understanding infinity. It's not even clear that such a thing could actually exist. (In a sense, infinity is inconceivable, and normally, we think that that which is inconceivable can't exist.) I think a God who abides by the simantic word of "reasonable proportion" would say "their hearts were not infinitely bad -- finitely bad is bad enough". No one has a disposition sufficient to will infinity. And those who failed to will good (by turning away from the cries of others) did so at a finite, and not infinite, volume. Whatever concept they had of others suffering, from whom they turned away, was not actually infinite.
The past is broken, made illegitimate by our acts. To fix it, someone could pay the penalty. But we can't pay for all our acts -- we would all die, have to be destroyed. But God doesn't want us to be destroyed. So he created reality with a more-finite partner, who shares his character. The Father (the metaphysical organism and Speaker), creates with a Son. This Son is legitimacy, as much as the Father is, because they decided on reality together as beings who were disposed to experience the burdens they lay on us. So he can take on the penalty. He dies existentially alone, facing annihilation. He does this willingly. Because he is legitimacy, he does not deserve to die, and so in himself is able to pay the penalty. And so legitimacy is healed. (The penalty is paid once -- if the Son died again, that would create a new injustice, for which there could be no further healing. Having paid the penalty, the Son does not need to remain dead/destroyed, and so he is brought back to life.) This healing of the past of legitimacy, healing of justice, makes it so that the underlying issue of justice is not an obstacle to us avoiding hell.
Though God does not need to punish us for justice's sake, God may still find a kind of punishment useful. We sometimes forget that he loves foolish people and people with a certain amount of psychopathic traits, people who might only repent if they feared death and punishment. There is a place for death, and for suffering hell, in the plan of salvation. But the suffering need not be eternal in order to provide an incentive for the salvation of those who require it. On the other hand, the idea of ECT, in some cultures and time periods, might have been one we liked to believe as a civilization, and were benefited by, even if the reality is that there is no such thing. The stronger image of hell doesn't seem to have been as unacceptably scary in the past, and may have saved some people that the softer image would not have.
A parent might say, "The consequences for hitting your brother are that you don't get to play video games for the rest of the night." They don't want you to do that kind of thing or be that kind of person, and want to give you a reason to see things their way. Hitting your brother is replaying the story of Cain and Abel -- you should be cast out of your house with a mark on you for the rest of your life. But the pain your brother felt, and the pall you cast on the trust and trustworthiness of the house, only merit you missing out on your greatest pleasure for a few hours. So God as the parent can ordain consequences for injustice without them directly paying for the deeper, truer injustice. And like a parent, he would ordain these, one would think, in order to preserve the good of his children in the long run, not for justice's sake.
The natural theologies of MSLN say that ECT is unlikely (God wouldn't want to experience unbearability) and that the parts of legitimism that lend themselves to ECT don't have to (given the death of the Son).
However, this is only part of MSLN. What remains is the interpretation of the Bible (the New Wine System).
What about the biblical component of MSLN?
I may turn toward study of the Bible itself, for myself, at some point, in evaluating MSLN. It seems like something I should do at some point. Until then, I will appeal to a few outside perspectives: the developer of the New Wine System, Philip Brown, favors annihilationism (giving arguments for that position in New Wine for the End Times) and this article and this article give me reason to believe that there are valid arguments for annihilationism, and that there is a debate -- it's not like annihilationism is a strange thing that no respectable Bible interpreter espouses. So for now I can leave the question of what the Bible says undecided, allowing for the possibility that the annihilationist part of the New Wine System is biblical, so that the Bible agrees with MSLN natural theology.
Postscript
Here's the strongest case I can make for ECT within MSLN terminology: God is legitimacy, and part of that is his justice. Now, you have to be careful how you think about this. If his justice is at all seen as separate from him, then we observe the following. Justice exists to punish violations of legitimacy (of God). So if justice itself perpetuates violations of legitimacy, then it loses its legitimacy. Perpetuating hell for all eternity violates legitimacy, since those in hell are illegitimate and God must be metaphysically connected to their existence. To whatever extent justice failed to bring about God's will (failed to serve legitimacy), it would no longer ought to be, and would not function. So for ECT to occur, it can't be that justice is separate from God, or a possession of God, over which he could have authority. Justice has to be an inherent element of God, one over which he does not have any sovereignty, because it is sovereignty (God) itself (himself).
As we can see, justice is something that conflicts with God getting what he wants. Perhaps God wants justice, but also wants everything to be in harmony with himself. How can he resolve this issue? Perhaps justice is so much more valuable to him than harmony that he really wants to suffer for all eternity so that justice can be served. (God suffers whenever we do.) God is so principled, and takes us so seriously as moral agents, that he is willing to sacrifice his peace of mind, for all eternity, just to hold us accountable. He is willing to violate himself by prolonging the existence of each person in hell beyond any point at which it might serve the purpose of giving him a world which is all good, just to get the greater good of justice. Maybe he can't sin against himself in this way by himself, but he contracts out the willing of this state of affairs to evil beings, as he did before with temptation. Temptation (and the willing-to-temptation) came into the world so that we could come into tune with legitimacy, but this willing-to-ECT came in order to prolong the existence of illegitimacy. But this is acceptable because in this case, the prolonging is because justice is being served, and justice outweighs the prolonging of sin and suffering.
Perhaps I could respond by saying that the nature of unbearability is such that for God to experience our unbearable suffering, over time the strength of the effect of the unbearability on God's will would be such as to reshape his values away from valuing justice. Or, the unbearability of God's experiencing of the existence of illegitimacy, could eventually corrode his willing of justice. This makes sense to me. However, isn't it possible that the lack of justice is unbearable to God? So then either way there would be unbearability. God would be trapped.
You could say that God could simply focus on the inherent attractiveness or life-givingness or the like of all the good in his experience, but for God to really experience what we do, God can't escape by shifting his awareness to what is positive. Could God take a break from tormenting the people in hell? (They sleep, perhaps?) But they would continue to have illegitimate hearts, dispositions that should not be. It is the awareness of "should not be" that is unbearable -- maybe Rawlette is right to some extent in saying that pain qualia are the qualia of "ought-not-to-be-ness". Whatever is truly bad about pain, as an experience, is that we can't accept it. Completely acceptable pain is not "eternal conscious torment", but is more like the sting of tolerable hot peppers (for those who like to eat such things), or sore muscles after reasonable exercise. What is unbearable is that which ought not to be, and sin (violations of legitimacy) ought not to be.
Clearly God can put up with some illegitimacy and unbearable suffering -- quite a lot. He must have some kind of patience for that. Is that patience sufficient to endure an eternity of illegitimacy and/or unbearable suffering? If it is finite, no. The prolonged unacceptability will eventually outweigh whatever finite patience that he has. But what if it is infinite? If God has infinite patience, then in his eyes sin and suffering is acceptable. He never needs to get rid of it, can tolerate it forever. At no time would he be unable to let it be part of his reality. But by definition, what should not be is unacceptable. If it can't be accepted, then at some time or other, God (legitimacy) has to do the opposite of accept it -- make it cease to exist. So legitimacy contains in it the necessity to bring about a state in which there is no illegitimacy.
So God would have to end the situation of unbearable lack of justice versus unbearable tolerance of sin and suffering. How could he go about doing this? He could annihilate the people who are illegitimate (adjust his concern for justice downward). Or he could come to find acceptable their sins. But then why keep them in hell? (I tend to think that sin is sin only if it violates the unchanging nature of God, but I won't argue for that here.) So either way, God does not permit or ordain ECT.
However, you could say that God can't change his own nature, or the nature of what is sinful. So he could be stuck with "sin is unchangeably unacceptable, and justice is unchangeably necessary, in such a way that ECT is necessary".
But we should remember that there is an anthropic principle to creation. According to the anthropic principle, we should expect to observe the universe to be a certain way because it permits life on earth to exist, allowing us to observe anything in the first place. So, we wouldn't have been created by God if he knew that there would be such a terrible and insoluble problem in his own future, if he were to go ahead and risk our existence. (God creates us with his own extensive but finite patience in mind, so that we can arrive at the final harmony before it runs out.)
I haven't quite absorbed all of these thoughts, but I think for now I am satisfied that this shows that ECT does not follow from MSLN.
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