Missionary Care for Creatives in Los Angeles; or for others

I wrote a post about cultural altruism hubs. That post, and this one, which is related, discuss a kind of organizational or "scenic" structure or structures that people could build. I don't feel like this is a thing I should pursue, so I'm not looking to try to build those structures myself. But I think the ideas are worth writing up. Maybe someone else will find them useful.

I often write to a secular audience, or to no audience / to myself. But in this case, I write more to a Christian audience.

Creative people are especially susceptible to spiritual attack. Culture war brings out Satan. Some cultural-spiritual warfare is fought by "foot soldiers" (through interpersonal contact). Others through "air support". Airplanes are sophisticated machines. Books, movies, etc. are machines made out of thoughts and images. Culture "flies in the air". So producing cultural artifacts puts new "airplanes" or "drones" in the sky. These artifacts fight each other and fight people on the ground. With good air support, ground troops can have an easier time. So (I think) with good cultural artifacts, interpersonal evangelism and discipleship can go better.

Los Angeles is a center of the movie and music industries, which manufacture cultural artifacts (that part of the "air war"). Those industries are not always kind to the people who try to work in them. Many people have dreams of success in them, but only a few can succeed. There are stories of exploitation in those industries. This can affect everyone who tries to "make it". The overall culture of these industries seems to largely be non-Christian. Christians trying to work in those industries may experience as much exploitation and as many broken dreams of success as non-Christians. They may also experience culture shock and spiritual attack (for instance, being invited to hedonistic parties (something that I would guess happens), or being acculturated to the dominant secular culture to the point of compromising their faith). They may also experience hostility, due to their beliefs.

Are Christian creatives in Los Angeles missionaries? Arguably yes. So they can be supported and cared for like any other kind of missionary. (I recommend reading Serving as Senders Today and The Reentry Team, both by Neal Pirolo, to understand what I have in mind by "support" and "care". Briefly, churches or other sending teams can provide moral support, prayer support, send and receive messages about what's going on in the field, maybe money or logistical support, and help in missionaries transitioning in and out of service.)

Creative missionaries could care for fellow creatives and engage in evangelism and discipleship like any other kind of missionary. But they also "translate the Bible into the native language" of their fellow creatives, by being creative themselves, and/or into the language of the US in general, or even of other parts of the world, where LA culture industries reach.

I feel like if I were a suspicious secular person (perhaps an ex-Christian), an incorporated missionary agency sending financially supported creative missionaries into LA would be disturbing and lead to bad press (if evangelical Christians think that there is an oppressive, militant "other" in the cultural world, so do secular people -- everyone is "David" seeing "Goliath" in each other). Creative people tend to have their own ideas and some might not want to work with a missionary agency themselves. (It's good for creative people to be independent-minded in order to see what other people don't see.) Financially supported missionaries might be harder to relate to by struggling actors, writers, musicians, directors, etc. that they may be trying to reach.

So I think maybe the best way to implement creative missions is to set up structures to care for and support the creative Christians who find themselves in Los Angeles, as though they have sent themselves already, but maybe without enough support.

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Implementation:

I don't know anything about what might already be going on in this area. I can imagine that something like this is already going on.

I think churches in Los Angeles are already doing some of this support and care work. What they might not have is the sense that their creatives are missionaries dealing with spiritual warfare, culture shock, etc., and not know as much as they could of how to be good "senders" and "carers". Perhaps what is needed is to equip those churches.

Also, creatives might not have the sense that they are missionaries on a mission field. They might benefit from additional teaching and encouragement in having a really Christian worldview and practice in their art and life.

Other ideas:
1. Establishing refuge places in Southern California so that people can (affordably) get out of LA to take a break from it.
2. Connecting churches that have creatives to creatives in LA. (Not every church is a good place for a creative person to be.)

Southern California (plus northern Baja California) could be seen as having two areas of strategic significance for cultural people: Tijuana which is a gateway to Latin America and/or to understanding the non-American, non-"developed" world; and the cultural artifact manufacturing center of Los Angeles. In between is San Diego, a quieter place (maybe the military in San Diego is of cultural strategic significance?).

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Caveats:

I have not spent a lot of time in LA. I was involved in a low-budget film production that got actors from LA and have seen the incentives for exploitation and selling yourself in filmmaking. I can sense a certain amount of felt unhappiness and spiritual darkness from Los Angeles filmmaking (Hollywood and I guess "aspiring Hollywood" or indie film productions). I don't have direct experience with the music industry in LA.

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Postscript:

What about film directors? I mentioned them above. They are employers, people in positions of power. But they are at the mercy of their funding sources. Directors have to cobble together funding and employees from various sources, and then work intensely during production, with long pre-production and post-production times. Once finished, they sell their product on the market and hope for critical and financial success, which is uncertain. A lot of money rides on what they do. If they lose too much money, maybe they can't work again. It sounds like a risky, stressful, "disestablished" line of work.

This sounds like perhaps a more intense (or not) version of what entrepreneurs in general go through.

A film director could do the wrong thing because they are under some kind of pressure. Perhaps it is true of any kind of entrepreneur. Or business executive. How much wrongdoing comes from powerful people who are (subjectively or objectively) in insecure positions? Perhaps it would be good to come up with care and support for them.

Maybe if a person doesn't have money, that's their hard limit, and only with additional funding would they be able to do the right thing. (Maybe there could be funding to help them do the right thing?) With better support (prayer, moral, logistic, communication) and the expectation that they can get care if they fail, they might have more courage to do the right thing in marginal cases where they may not really be risking their success, (where perhaps it is some kind of delusion of danger or sin that puts its thumb on the scale of their perception of risk), or even in self-sacrificial cases where they have to sacrifice their success (their business venture/film? / career?) to do the right thing.

(Funding to help do the right thing: a director could develop a relationship with a funding agency that would commit to providing at least a significant part of the director's funding for each of their films, conditional on them doing the right thing and not necessarily on them being commercially successful. In other words, provide grace, or slack, so that directors can fail commercially if they do the right thing on set or in their other operations.)

(Conservative talk radio, to me, sounds like the voice of people who are suspicious and hardworking -- maybe small business owners who could easily go out of business and who have to deal with other insecure people who might cut corners or make untrustworthy deals to survive. Can there be care and support for them?)

Likewise, people in the spiritually dark worlds of the elites. Do Washington, DC churches adequately care for politicians and staffers who fight a culture war of their own? Political theater is part of the "air war" that movies are also involved in. Political decisions and governmental implementations of them have cultural consequences.

(Silicon Valley sounds like a place with its darkness and its own, different culture. What about it?)

People with bad reputations (criminals, prison guards, and police, for instance) may need care and support. It requires discernment how to support someone who has directed their life toward wrongdoing.

Like with creative missionaries in LA, I don't know anything about what might already be going on with care / support for people in these areas.

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The church I grew up in had a sign over the door as you went out, that said "You are now entering the mission field". Probably everyone could see themselves as a missionary, and everyone experiences occupational hazards as they interface with the world. And so everyone could be sent and cared for -- by other people who also could be sent and cared for. Do churches send and care for their own pastors? (Maybe pastors should have some support from outside their own congregations.)

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Everything is powerful, culturally. Everything sends a message. The way you do business as a small business owner affects the overall culture, the sense of how things are and how people act. Similarly with the products a business owner releases on the market. Each one is a movie or book, conditioning people's minds. The caring professions are culturally powerful.

This raises the question: if everyone has cultural power, if each person can say something that has a significant effect on someone (at least on him- or herself), what should you say? Are you the missionary for God and the truth, or for an off-flavor of God and a somewhat misleading truth? You have to seek to know what is true, so that you can correct what is wrong.

This process of self-correction has to go on on a societal level. Society (people within it) must speak against what is believed by society (other people within it). What does it take to oppose a consensus or effective consensus? What if the consensus involves the caring structures that you can find? Who will care for you when you burn out? Will the price of getting care be that you have to stop pointing out what's wrong?

So as much as care and support sound like a good thing, for at least some people, those who would point out what is least popular, it may be good to develop independence from human support and care. A wise society concerned with protecting itself from its own blind spots might try to develop the strength behind that independence in people, and not only promote care and support for people. For a believer in God, deriving strength from God, rather than from people, is a way to be strong enough to say what's unpopular.

It's possible for Christian (church-based) culture to somewhat discourage the individual from seeing things from their own perspective, and instead tries to enmesh them in a social organism. An individual church, and many individual people, will fare better if they are simply in-some-sense-"properly" interrelated socially. But Christianity as a whole suffers if it becomes blind due to its success in orienting individuals toward the points of view of their nearby congregations, which all can potentially be misguided.

MSL's Relationship to Christianity

Reading New Wine for the End Times makes me think again about the Bible in more depth. This makes think I should write about MSL's relationship to Christianity.

One way for me to look at this question is to look at myself, as someone with some kind of relationship to both MSL and Christianity.

I was raised in a moderate church, probably "theologically conservative" but moderate in tone. I think I'm reacting to that, and assuming that, a lot of the time. I think the flaws of progressive and conservative Christianity are the flaws of "Los Angeles" while the flaws of moderate Christianity are those of "San Diego". In other words, moderate Christianity seems nicer than the other two and thus is more likely to have a serious but unexamined problem with it. MSL and New Wine Christianity call for excellence, while I think both being basically moderate in other respects. Hopefully that call for excellence makes up for the danger of complacency within moderate belief systems.

I had a significant, highly negative experience with a progressive Christian (this blog comes out of that experience, to some extent). I don't want to assume the worst of all of progressive Christianity because of what I went through, but I can't assume that all progressive Christians are different than the person that caused my negative experience.

Progressive Christianity has an epistemic openness and a willingness to question. I find this aspect of it trustworthy (assuming it is really willing to consider things that are or could be coded "conservative"). What I don't find trustworthy is its emphasis on ethical humanism to the exclusion of ethical theism. Perhaps it sounds good for God to serve humanity, and for humans to serve humanity. Then who serves God? Or are humans the highest end of both God and humans? It sounds like we are making ourselves the center of the universe.

A progressive Christian might look at that last paragraph and think "so you're basically on the side of the conservative Christians". I think conservative Christians (at their best) do try to put God at the center of the universe and not put humans there. But conservative Christianity isn't always good. I think there are (at least) two kinds of conservatives: the kind who like to say "no" to other people, and the kind who value things so much that they try to protect them from other people. "Liberals" (the generous and free) have straightforward human desires. They think (often) that all conservatism is of the "say no to other people" kind, and they feel entitled to their straightforward human desires and think of conservatives as people who are unfair and want power over other people, this power which is proven by their ability to say "no" to them and restrict their straightforward human desires. They (seemingly) do not think that any conservatism is of the "there is something valuable, perhaps delicate, which must be protected from harm". I don't like saying "no" to people, so in that sense, I am a liberal (or, maybe I should say, I am not an "invalidating conservative"). But I also think there are things that are valuable, to be protected from harm, which are not part of what most (or most liberal) people think are "canonical, established straightforward human desires". In that sense I am a "protective" or "sensitive" conservative.

If a man has "straightforward human desires" for a woman, and she says "no", is she invalidating him? Or is she protecting something? He might think that her "sensitivities" (maybe her religion which she calls on to justify her desire to not have sex until marriage?) is a scam when all she really wants is to say "no" to him, to humiliate him and have power over him by keeping him from his natural desires. She has to invalidate him in order to protect herself, but her goal is to protect something, a good or a value which he does not respect. I think it likely that at least some of the time women do try to humiliate men and have power over them. (They really are the "invalidating conservatives".) But often (most of the time?) they are protecting something from the man. (They are really "protective" or "sensitive" conservatives.)

I think that conservatives reading this post would think that they were protective or sensitive conservatives, and generally I would agree with them. The "will-to-invalidate" is also in conservatives, some of the same who are at other times protective or sensitive, others who are only invalidating, with no concern for protecting.

Some progressive Christians might assume that I'm really a front for invalidating conservatism. That's not my intention. But I am not sure that I've made a case in my writing so far which forcefully establishes my actual intention. (Maybe I have, maybe not.) However, I think a truth-seeking progressive Christian should consider the possibility that maybe there is something to protect which they don't already recognize as being worth protecting, which conservative Christians (in this case correctly) think is worth protecting. Maybe my writing is a scam, maybe it's not. If it's not, what then?

A conservative Christian may then think "so you're a conservative Christian, like us". I think that there's something to that. However, I don't believe the Bible is necessarily inerrant. I am not committed to the Bible primarily as my foundation for my faith in God. Nor am I committed to the church (the existing body of people who identify as Christians, or the culture of those people) in the same capacity. This is a radical difference ("radical" as "at the roots") from conservative Christianity as I understand it. Basically, I think that the idea of proving the existence of God through reason (MSL) is the kind of thing that would be undertaken by a rationalistic person, and if successful, would take weight off of the Bible and the church, if they were less reliable than it. So here we see MSL making me "epistemically progressive" or "epistemically liberal", which seemingly disqualifies me from being a conservative Christian (I think it's pretty fair to say it does disqualify me from being what we normally call a conservative Christian).

So far my blog has not had any pushback from conservative Christians, but that may well change. I do not have the mental resources to try to deal with huge texts like the Bible, or with history, or with reams of peoples' arguments one way or the other. (At least not now.) But I will discuss a little bit why I think the way I do about the Bible and the church, and at least if there are objections try to put them on my wiki [January 2024: replaced by this.] so that I (or someone else, perhaps) can address them someday. (My mental exhaustion may be another thing I have more in common with progressive Christians than conservative Christians.)

I can think of one major reason to doubt that everything in the Bible necessarily comes from God, which is that it (even its Jesus (Matthew 24:34)) expected the end of the world to come soon. But it didn't. Maybe we can dig in and say "well, there's a sense in which the world did end" or "the words that make us think Jesus expected it soon can be interpreted differently" or even "God changed his mind because maybe things were going better/worse than he expected". If I were committed to the Bible, I would choose one of those, or some other similar thing, to believe. But if uncommitted, I would think about how the early Christians thought one thing was going to happen, and it didn't, and say "well, there might be some sense in which the words that gave them that expectation are trustworthy, but it might also be the case that they were misguided by expectations that didn't come from God, and maybe the rest of the Bible is a mixture of good guidance and misguidance. Or maybe there are things that Jesus said that are accurately conveyed by the Gospels, but the end-times beliefs weren't among them".

However, I have found the Bible to be very helpful in my own life, trusting it as though it is true, at least as I understood it (i.e., reflecting what parts of it said, as it "plainly" or "naively" appeared to me). I think that the basic project of the Bible is the same as that of MSL, and that MSL is a continuation of it (though some conservative Christians might disagree). This increases my credence that the parts of the Bible that I don't trust might be trustworthy anyway. Sometimes perhaps that causes me to re-evaluate what I don't trust, so that I do trust it, but it does not make me trust everything in the Bible, and I am not certain everything in the Bible is true.

I believe in the Jesus of the spiritual world. The Bible is an introduction to this Jesus, but there is a world in which the spirits live. Occult people "dial up" the spirit of Saturn (the god? the planet? both in one being?) and there is a whole world of spirits, one of whom is Jesus. (The Bible as it lives in our imaginations and memory is the Bible in the imaginal world, which is an access point to the world of spirits.) In my experience, this spirit is to be trusted. But is this spirit 100% the same as the man described in the Bible? I don't know. Does this spirit lend enough credence to the many things in the Bible to validate them all? I wouldn't assume so.

One argument for founding a person's faith on the church is that Christianity has to have a lot to do with the Bible (even progressive Christians seem to care about what the Bible says in some sense). Where did the Bible come from? The individual texts came (it is believed) from the Holy Spirit through human writers. But the church are the ones who canonized the Bible (selected the texts to go in it). We assume that the church was guided by the Holy Spirit when they did that. And the church are the ones who preserved and transmitted the Bible through time. So without the church, there would be no Bible.

Does that mean that we are beholden to the church? What exactly goes into the word "church"? If you don't go to "church", are you a bad Christian, or simply not a Christian? I think the church "wants" (it's a culture more than a conscious individual) you to go to church. Is that what God wants? Is church-centricness a cousin to progressive humanism? (Putting the focus on people rather than God.) Well, if the church is divinely inspired (a presupposition for the Bible to be divinely inspired, we think) then maybe the church is a source of authority in itself and individual Christians must submit to it. But if MSL is valid, then it takes the epistemic burden off of the church. The Bible gains credence because it resembles MSL (a publicly verifiable source of credence) and because its Jesus in some way is the same as the Jesus of the spirit world (a non-publicly verifiable source of credence, unless we all get in conscious contact with that world). The church gains credence to the extent that it is aligned with MSL's God.

Because of my experiences with the spirit world, and the confirmation from MSL, I think I trust in Jesus enough for me to be considered a Christian. But that spirit, and MSL, are the only points on which I'm significantly committed, and the Bible, and the culture that flows from it, I'm not so committed to. Not everything that is socially (or perhaps even Biblically) "church" is in tune with MSL and the Jesus of the spirit world (i.e., instead it takes Satan's side rather than Jesus' side, in Satan's war against God and God's creatures.)

(My example doesn't have to be normative for all people interested in MSL. But I mention it because it's something concrete that I know about, and maybe it provides some guidance.)

So at this point, maybe it seems like I have struck blows for the side of "uncertainty" (a "progressive Christian" thing), so does that leave me really being progressive? I think that uncertainty could lead to a practical liberalism (where we don't know anything, so we default to our natural appetites for guidance), but it could also lead to a practical protective conservatism (where we don't know anything, so we consider the things to protect in every different likely scenario and try to figure out how best to manage the task of protecting things).

So far I've mostly talked from a Christian perspective. But I think that MSL does lend credence (or may; I haven't studied this myself) to non-Christian religions (a progressive Christian thing to say?). I don't think that any religion other than a basically Biblical Christianity (a New Wine Christianity) could be the most compatible with MSL, so the Bible would be most-recommended by it for the purposes of seeking God's preferences (a conservative Christian thing to say?). (But I suppose there might be some obscure religion somewhere that does better. In many ways that obscure religion that I hypothesize would have to be a form of Christianity, but perhaps using different terminology.)

We want to obey God, and so we search for his preferences, for wherever they might be: in reason, nature, and in holy books. We focus first on obeying God in the ways that we are most certain: what MSL recommends. Then, when we have time, we implement the less-certain obediences which are found only in the Bible (or perhaps other holy books). (This motion toward obedience is a typically conservative thing.)

The process of seeking ways to obey God, in the uncertain space of holy books, suggests an intellectual project: To seek what to obey (to come to prefer, act, and trust) from sources that may indicate what God wants -- uncertain obedience. Since we are not sure whether these ideas are from God or not, we consider the possibility that they are not from God, possibly even from Satan. Can we implement these "obediences" to what God may want in such a way that we minimize the damage caused in case they are from Satan, and maximize the good resulting, whether they are from Satan or from God?

(Given this project, why not look everywhere there are old values and revive or preserve them (to undo cultural Moloch), using the same metric of "how do we implement this to maximally serve God and minimally serve Satan?". Perhaps some old values are not compatible with God, but even with them, how much can be salvaged?)

The Unpardonable Sin; Satanic Miracles; Love and Trust de Re

I re-read New Wine for the End Times recently, which serves as a reminder of what kinds of New Wine teachings are in the Bible. The New Wine component of MSL can be illuminated by New Wine for the End Times.

One teaching is that of the "unpardonable sin", which is "blasphemy of the Holy Spirit". What does this mean, and should we expect that teaching to be true if all we believe is MSL and not the Bible?

Apparently, according to Philip Brown (author of New Wine for the End Times), it's when you see the miracles that attest to Jesus being the Messiah but you deny to yourself what you see. You say it's from Satan rather than from God. (This from Ch. 7 of the book. Ch. 8, which I read after drafting this, is also on the subject, but didn't change my views as expressed in here. (10th ed. of the book.)).

What Brown says seems like a reasonable inference from the Bible. But does the Bible make sense in this area?

Here's one Biblical passage, for reference (Matthew 12:18-32):

12:18 "Behold, my servant whom I have chosen; my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my Spirit on him. He will proclaim justice to the nations. 12:19 He will not strive, nor shout; neither will anyone hear his voice in the streets. 12:20 He won't break a bruised reed. He won't quench a smoking flax, until he leads justice to victory. 12:21 In his name, the nations will hope." 12:22 Then one possessed by a demon, blind and mute, was brought to him and he healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw. 12:23 All the multitudes were amazed, and said, "Can this be the son of David?" 12:24 But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, "This man does not cast out demons, except by Beelzebul, the prince of the demons."

12:25 Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. 12:26 If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? 12:27 If I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your children cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. 12:28 But if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you. 12:29 Or how can one enter into the house of the strong man, and plunder his goods, unless he first bind the strong man? Then he will plunder his house.

12:30 "He who is not with me is against me, and he who doesn't gather with me, scatters. 12:31 Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. 12:32 Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age, nor in that which is to come.

If I saw a miracle, why would I be sure it was from God, or the particular God that is Jesus? Jesus seems confident that Satan couldn't, or wouldn't, drive out demons. But that seems like something I would expect Satan to be able to do (he's the leader of demons) and would want to do (it could be useful in deceiving people). I would say, from an MSL perspective, that we should be cautious in assuming miracles are always done by good beings.

However, being confident that a miracle is from Satan also seems like a bad idea. Satan can use the belief in Satan to deceive people. I think the Jewish religious leaders described in the Gospels were not being rational if they were sure that Jesus' miracles were from Satan. So if they were confident he wasn't doing God's work, they were choosing to see reality a certain way, rather than what was there. That choice could have been made because they wanted to reject Jesus, a priori, and did not want to see the moral fact that he was a good person, doing God's work. (Seeing a moral fact can call for a change in heart.) An enmity against God, whoever he really is, taken far enough, leads a person to reject God permanently. This is a concern in MSL. (Being the enemy of anyone or anything is dangerous if God reminds you too much of them, or turns out to remind you too much of them, or in some other way by being an enemy of them, you become an enemy of God.)

Probably we should lean toward thinking God was behind a miracle if it did something that as far as we can tell favors God's interests. Maybe it makes sense to assume that such a miracle is from God unless we have a good reason to think otherwise. Did the Jewish religious leaders have a good reason to think otherwise? If not, then they should have ascribed Jesus' miracles to God, and trusted Jesus. However, it is reasonable to be cautious in trusting a miracle-worker and only tentatively ascribe miracles to God, watchful for signs that the miracle-worker actually isn't working for God.

If we take Jesus to be authoritative in everything he said (and believe that the Bible is so accurate in reporting what he said that its words are authoritative as a result), and assume that he literally meant what he said here about "a house divided against itself will not stand", then perhaps we conclude that Jesus knew something about the strange nature of demons, how they don't do strategic things like letting evil people cast them out for deceptive purposes. We might imagine demonic miracles happening (as in Midnight Mass, which I know through this video), but actually, they don't happen. All miracles advance the kingdom of God. Maybe they just happen in bad contexts, are deceptive experiential truths. All miracle-workers are from God -- somehow or other, even if they further horror and evil. Or maybe Midnight Mass is fictional to the point that there just aren't miracle-workers in real life who bear such bad fruit as the priest character's miracle-working. Bad miracle-workers in real life are all frauds who fake their miracles. No actual miracles are done by bad miracle-workers.

I don't know enough to say on this issue. Perhaps as a Christian I should bias myself against calling miracle-workers bad. Certainly if I have no reason to think that they are really working for Satan. But I think without assuming that Jesus is authoritative and literally meant what he said (maybe instead he meant "generally Satan doesn't drive out Satan and if you think he's doing that here, you have been ignoring my character and the quality/spirit of my teachings which indicate that this isn't what's going on here"), the "MSLian" should assume that Satan can drive out Satan, and possibly perform other miracles, although they (Satan) would prefer not to, generally, since they don't like benefiting humans. (I use "they" as both singular and plural since "Satan" could be a collective of demons that is coherently led by one of them.)

Aren't we surrounded by miracles? Some laugh at the simplicity of people who see the world that way, but perhaps the simple see reality closer to what it really is, unjaded. What about the miracle of an argument that comes to a valid conclusion and is true in all relevant contexts? Perhaps the one that proves the existence of God would be a miracle, a noetic rather than sensory miracle. People "see but do not see" both what is in the sensory world and in the noetic world.

Brown thinks that when we see God work in undeniable ways, we are forced to either follow God or reject God. (More specifically in Brown's words, follow Christ or reject Christ.) My thoughts: To know God (to really know God) is to love God, or at least to be strongly called to love God. To see God is to be called to love God. When Satan's deceptions are taken away (all the noetic padding we have to protect us from seeing God), we are stuck with God and our hearts, and if our hearts aren't well-trained, we have a higher likelihood of choosing to reject God rather than love God in that decisive moment.

So we have to be protected from God -- this makes some sense from an MSL perspective. Does this mean that I shouldn't try to prove the existence of God? MSL does not spell out everything about God. It is intentionally incomplete, pointing toward what goes beyond public reason (we can only come to fully know God through our own individual experience, following intellectual conscience rather than what can be argued and established publicly). It sort of does, but doesn't fully, preach Jesus. When it talks about God, does it talk about Jesus? I think in a sense (if Jesus is God) then it must (de re), but at the same time, in another sense, even if he is, it doesn't (de dicto), or doesn't narrow down its "Son" person to being the Jesus of the Bible. So the reader of MSL can turn away from believing in Jesus, as such. Also people who only believe in the Metaphysical Organism, or Speaker, may stop before trying to apply the arguments of legitimism. There is room for people to be irrational (assuming that belief in God is the correct conclusion to rational thinking). Irrationality is not ideal, but it's better than hardening. There is the irrationality that leads to hardening or just is hardening, and there is the irrationality that protects against hardening.

So I would say that in trying to convey the truth, we should be respectful, notably, not forceful (nor, by the way, be any other disrespects, like malicious, lazy, or merciless). A forceful conveyer of beliefs can push another person to build a wall of Satanic deception to protect that other person from God. I'm not sure it's likely or possible to force someone to meet God through words (maybe only miracles like Jesus' can force people to meet God?) but the defense mechanism of believing Satanic deceptions protects people from committing the unpardonable sin, and that defense mechanism, or the beliefs formed as a result of that mechanism, can themselves become part of the spiritual calculus that hardens inside them, creating an obstacle to them coming to love God fully.

From Jesus' example, it does seem like it's better to not be sure, rather than deciding to go all in on a theory that rejects the possibility that someone is from God or is good. There are different kinds of unsureness. "Skepticism" may be loaded against believing that someone is from God. Perhaps a "skeptic" has really already decided that someone is not from God, although on the surface they are openminded. There is an unsureness that effectively ignores that the possibilities might each be real, versus one that effectively assumes that each of them might be real. The latter is safer than the former, since it does not close itself to the possibility that the person in question is from God. (One skepticism/doubting/unsureness closes the discussion, but the other seeks to keep investigating.)

So openmindedness is a virtue that can save you from destruction in hell. Wicked people (those who have sold themselves out to opposing God) can be virulently, irrationally committed to their point of view. Some of them manipulate, intimidate, and deceive openminded people, seemingly because they are deeply sure that they are doing the right thing by doing so. Those that they pressure with non-truth-aligned psychological tactics are thus tempted to closedmindedness. We need to have a definition to what we believe in order to resist lies, but that in itself can set us up to not believing the truth. This is a two-step scam of Satan -- we don't believe the lies that are blatant, and hateful to us (step one of the attack), but we do believe the lie that is closer to the truth, which resists the blatant lie more strongly in the psychological/social battlegrounds than if we are really being rational / openminded (step two of the attack).

If this makes sense so far, it doesn't address the idea of "unpardonable". Why can't God forgive this sin of completely selling ourselves out to being his enemy? Maybe "unpardonable" is a shorthand to communicate with us, but the "longhand" is "if you do this sin, you will have destroyed your own ability to repent, so while God could technically forgive you, he will still have to destroy you"? This would make sense in MSL. The unpardonable sin (hardening) is a choice you make at a discrete moment in time. Maybe it is the last in a series of choices to not see what you see and you don't fully realize what you're doing to yourself, as you go down a progression. (I think the previous sentence goes against things I've said before, so I should try resolve this as I go through my old blog posts.) You do this thing, and there is no pardon for it -- you will not seek pardon for it.

(If you love the truth, you will desire in your heart to see what you see. If there is at least a little bit of this desire, God can work with it to restore you to whatever level of love of truth that you need to be saved. If you are concerned about being out of tune with reality, if at least you consciously think you are, or try to think you are, then you have at least a little bit of the love of truth in you. Perhaps if you don't care, then you don't have it in you.)

What about people who are like Judas? Judas felt remorse for what he did to Jesus. But (Brown argues), Judas committed the unpardonable sin, by so knowingly becoming Jesus' enemy. I'm not sure what I think on this subject. I don't think from an MSL point of view that Judas could have committed the unpardonable sin unless he wasn't really repentant, though very remorseful.

(Judas felt remorse, then killed himself. Did he really repent? Maybe so, maybe no. Remorsefulness and regret are one thing, and repentance is another. Judas did not seem to have hope in himself becoming acceptable, and that lack of hope can prevent repentance.)

I've been undecided in MSL on the role of justice. Is it a primitive of reality? Or is it something socially-constructed? If the former, then maybe we have to pay for our sins, unless there is some way they can be forgiven. For us to be saved, all of our sins must be forgivable -- but perhaps there is an exception for the unpardonable sin of selling yourself out completely to being God's enemy? The Biblical explanation for why it's unpardonable is that it involves crucifying Jesus again. One sacrifice covers all sins, and that's the last sacrifice, so there's no more sacrifice if you break your covenant with God, where he says your sins are forgiven if you trust his Son.

I'm not sure what I would assume in MSL, given justice as a primitive. I have written before about how the "Son" of Legitimacy might have to die for everyone's sins (very much like some theories of the Christian Atonement). I've written before that it would make sense to only have the "Son" die once (see Legitimism Without Atonement). One innocent death balances out all sins, but a second innocent death makes the world unjust again. If the "Son" only dies once, does his death cover the sin of rejecting God intentionally? I think so. If somehow that sin weren't covered by the first death, another death could be arranged. But, a person who completely and irrevocably rejects God is not going to be saved even if they are forgiven. They will have to be destroyed in hell. They might be punished for their sins (the hellish part of being destroyed) as a deterrent to people rejecting God, although those sins would be forgiven (the deeds themselves would not be traumatic/irritating/offending/angering to God because of the restoration of justice by the "Son"'s death, but the action of punishing would still be performed for the greater good) (See Is Eternal Conscious Torment Compatible with MSLN?).

Practically speaking, what's the important thing here, that God does or doesn't forgive, or that we do or do not reject him? Sometimes God is much more powerful than we are. He decides what the world looks like, whom we meet, what ideas we encounter, what our brains are like, etc. (There are other actors influencing that as well, but God is the greatest determiner of things.) However, we are the rulers of our own hearts. We can choose to reject God or follow God, and in this we are the ones who have power over God, forcing him to live with the consequences of our decisions.

Whether rejecting God completely and irrevocably (closing our minds to what we really see so that we can no longer be anti-tempted, knowingly calling good things evil so that we don't have to trust God, or whatever else might effectively accomplish that rejection) is pardonable or not by God, is almost a red herring. What is clear, and of greatest practical consequence, is that our effective rejection of God condemns us to destruction.

--

On re-reading, I see that there is a thread in the above that I didn't follow. I said "If I saw a miracle, why would I be sure it was from God, or the particular God that is Jesus?" In Jesus' day, it appears that the spiritual world was seen to be a binary or spectrum with Satan on one side and God on the other. This is more or less the worldview of MSL. MSL gives us (I hope) a fairly high prior belief that God exists and would work in the world, when we encounter apparent spiritual power. But what if you don't believe in the Biblical or MSL worldviews? When you encounter a miracle or a sign from God, you might justifiably not be sure which God, or spiritual being, it's from. Maybe it was Odin, the spirit of Saturn, one of the Dreaming Beings, the God of Islam -- these being spiritual beings that people trust, or have trusted, not to mention all the possible blatantly evil beings. There is an uncountable number of potential ideas about what spiritual power is, if you have no prior belief to ground you.

So in the past, I think I've written something like if your evidence for any one idea of the spiritual world is so low that you could just make up another one with equal rational support, you are not bound to do what that first idea requires of you, since there could easily be an "equal and opposite" idea of what you should do in response to the spiritual world that requires you to do the opposite of what the first one does. Is this how you should approach an apparent miracle, as potentially being explained by anything, and so no practical or fiducial response is required?

Infinities (and thus potential infinities) can be bounded. Of the natural numbers (the whole numbers counting up from 1 (1, 2, 3, ...)), there are an infinite number of odd numbers, and an infinite number of even numbers, but all natural numbers fit in one of those two categories. So the infinities are bounded. Of all the potential gods and spirits we might hypothesize, there are those who are for humans, against humans, or neutral (or we might say that there is a divide that divides the neutral into basically being for humans or being against humans).

And there are only three (or two) kinds of humans, no matter how many humans are born. So we are on the same side as the spiritual beings who are for humans, or against humans, if we are for humans, or against humans. So whatever you think about God's existence, when you see spirits who are working for humans, are you on their side? Do you allow the possibility that a miracle is being done by that spiritual nation or army? Or do you decide that you know that it is not being done by them?

(This is too simple, though. A spirit could be on the side of a certain group of people and not on the side of another. Some humans would prefer a god who favors their group and not another group. But, if we don't know anything else, to see a spirit help one person, I think we should assume that they probably are in favor of all persons, since one person is substantially like all others. Perhaps if you saw someone eating a particular salad, you might think they liked salad in general, with or without some exceptions. This idea could be overturned soon enough, but I think it's a good starting assumption. With spirits doing pro-human miracles, we should be cautiously trusting.)

We have a bias in Western culture against belief in and trust in the supernatural. We are avid consumers of ideas that come through culture, scams though they often are, and even settle on ones that we accept, believe in, and fight for. Why not do the same with supernatural voices? In fact, isn't it the case that many ideas in culture come from "flashes of inspiration"? Isn't it the case that artists feel like something other than them is working through them when they create? A natural reading of this phenomenon is that these accepted modes of being influenced are the tools of spirit beings. So, if we have our favorite bands, philosophers, and intellectual institutions and cultures, why not have our favorite spirits that we listen to? That they are our favorites does not mean they are 100% trustworthy, but we know with ideas, art, and cultures that it is better to trust something than to not trust at all. We trust and even obey our favorite ideas, art, and culture.

If you see a person who is listening to a spirit, does that spirit seem to be for or against humans? You might want to "judge a tree by its fruit". Now, as the Bible points out, people like Abraham and Sarah, and everyone else from Hebrews 11, had hard lives. Could it be the case that the spirit that told Abraham to leave his homeland was a scammer that just wanted him to suffer and make a fool of himself, all in the name of "blessing all the families of the world"? From a Biblical, or MSL, perspective, Abraham was a hero for being that kind of fool. He loved and wanted to participate in what was worth pursuing. But maybe it would have been better for him to not have listened.

Abraham and Sarah were strangers among people who did not share their vision. They probably lived with the indifference of the people around them, grating against them, quenching and starving them. Although I don't think Genesis records this, it's also possible (and likely for people in their situation) that their neighbors were hostile to them. (The experience of the prophets and the early church shows how the descendants of Abraham can experience hostility.) So, if a spirit tells you to do something that is pro-human, isn't that a pro-human spirit? It might not be, it might be some kind of scam to torture good-hearted fools. But who's doing the torture? Isn't it the people (and spirits) who are hostile or indifferent to the pro-human project? Maybe they're the problem, not the spirit that calls a person to the hard life of making things better. It would make a lot of sense for pro-human spirits to call people to fight on their side, but be unable to protect them from all the harm from the fight (if the spirits are not literally omnipotent).

Abraham was able to successfully carry out his small part in obeying the Abrahamic promise. Nothing was keeping him from doing that. Maybe if we live in a dystopia (like in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where individual agency seems to be inevitably crushed by the evil status quo), then someone who hears a spirit calling them to bless the whole world should not listen -- the wisest course of action is to do the little thing that actually can work. I think a lot of people live for some reason as though in an Orwellian nightmare, in this area of their lives, and would not listen to the apparent voice of God. But I think the world we actually live in is not that strictly bounded, and we are still able to plausibly carry out the simple task of abiding by a culture and passing it on to some biological or non-biological descendants (Abraham's task). So for us, as for Abraham, it is rational to pursue the Abrahamic vision, if a voice calls to us furthering it. This doesn't mean our lives will be easy if we listen and follow it, or that we will succeed, but just that it isn't crazy to try.

Why would anti-human spirits call pro-human humans to be more pro-human? It seems like a dangerous gambit. What if the pro-human humans start a religion that is pro-human? It's possible anti-human spirits can scam people with pro-human leadings, but I think our default assumption is that pro-human leadings come from pro-human spirits.

How do we know what is pro-human, or anti-human? There are some things that are clear: dealing with the problems we all recognize, like material poverty. There may be other things that are not so obvious to all of us. Religions (and other antagonists in cultural / axiological disputes) claim to tell us which of the controversial values are actually pro-human, and some of them may be right, and it is worth investigating and potentially trusting what they say. Religions are bundles of values, goals, etc. and some bundle untruths with truths (controversies imply that someone is saying something wrong). But the truth in them probably comes from pro-human spirits, and some of the truth of them is not up for dispute, at least by us (that which aligns with consensus reality). There are certain things that humans can generally know are pro-human (as humans, we have a privileged access to knowing what is pro-human).

If you are really vehement in your rejection of the possibility that pro-human spirits are behind something (especially something that is prima facie good), then you may be closing yourself to the voice of God.

--

Am I in any danger of committing the unpardonable sin? I don't know. This passage in Hebrews relates:

6:4 For concerning those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, 6:5 and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, 6:6 and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance; seeing they crucify the Son of God for themselves again, and put him to open shame.

Maybe I am not, because I haven't tasted "the powers of the age to come" -- or have I? Maybe I have without realizing that was it.

If I reject Christianity, but then repent, does that mean it wasn't the kind of "falling away" that is talked about in this passage? Or is it the case that if I think I repent, I'm not really repenting (in this case "repent" doesn't refer to "a change of my heart" but to something else)?

If I "fall away", does that mean that in doing so I crucify Christ again for myself, or does it mean that in order to do so, I must crucify Christ again for myself? I think that Jesus' blood covers all sins, no matter what. The thing that makes the unpardonable sin unpardonable is that for me to commit it, I have to get in the state of never being willing to ask pardon, of rejecting the forgiveness that comes from Jesus' blood. Jesus doesn't have to be crucified again, in the sense of "dying to cover sins", but he can be crucified again, for someone, when they "despise him to the point of wanting him to die". (Then, despising him so much, they see no value in what he did, and reject his forgiveness.) Am I 100% sure that I interpret things correctly when I believe all this, though?

Should I commit to Christianity out of fear, even though my noetic eyes tell me it might not be true? In that case, I would not be "seeing what I see". Not "seeing what you see" is a risk factor for hardening.

My practical concern is that I find MSL more convincing than the Bible, and yet I have believed in the Bible and had experiences that honestly seem to me to be connected to Jesus specifically, although I am currently not certain if that Jesus was literally the one mentioned in the Bible, or was rather something spoken to me by God because I grew up Christian. I have believed more firmly that they were connected to a being who literally satisfies the Gospels' description of Jesus, but now I am not sure. If I became an MSLian, I might accept the Bible as a guide to preferring, acting, and trusting (including the form of trust that is intellectual belief), out of a sense of generosity toward God, seeking ways to obey him. (The Bible is a likely source of information from God given MSL, because of its resemblance to MSL.) But then, would I have committed the unpardonable sin, by converting away from Christianity to MSL? There is some chance that the Bible is true, in a way that I must accept it in a sort of "conservative" way where I root my belief in its words, rather than rooting them in something outside the Bible. So there would be some chance I had committed the unpardonable sin.

Christians often choose to believe in the Bible more than they can rationally support. (Maybe that's the overwhelming status quo.) When they do so, they choose to obey what the Bible says God wants them to prefer, act, and trust. I don't see how I would be different than them in that. But they would call themselves Christians, and I might not. I think in a sense I would be a Christian, and in a sense I wouldn't be, and that might be enough to have committed the unpardonable sin.

(Taking the name of Jesus is necessary in order to not "fall away"?)

An MSLian believes in the "Son", the person of Legitimacy who bears the burden of finite life, and MSL leads us to think that the Son has particular attributes beyond what MSL specifies (since a person requires more than a few sentences to adequately be described). Could this Son be the Jesus of the Bible? Certainly. So an MSLian who loves and trusts the Son may be loving and trusting Jesus -- only if Jesus actually exists, though. They love and trust Jesus de re, and even de dicto. They can say (de dicto) they love and trust the Son, whoever and whatever he really is, which refers to Jesus -- if Jesus really exists. (By existing, he would fit the description of the Son.)

In that case, the Christian may choose to know less about Jesus (or acknowledge their lack of knowledge) as they identify more as an MSLian, while still being as committed as ever to the person of Jesus.

Would a Muslim object to trying to love and trust the Jesus that actually exists? (I'm not sure, but I'm guessing at least one might not -- the Muslim thinks Jesus is merely a prophet, the Christian that he is God, but the Jesus that actually exists, the way he turns out to be, who can reject?) In that case, if Jesus is God (and has the other important attributes from the Gospels) such a Muslim would have begun to be a Christian, without leaving Islam.

An atheist seeking (and trusting) the truth (the pattern of belief that is trustworthy, including what it points to) could seek and trust whatever the truth will turn out to be, and thus would begin to be a Christian, while still being an atheist.

This is a beautiful thought, and might resolve the issue -- as long as we seek the truth, and seek God as he will turn out to be, we will be okay.

There might be a simpler resolution to my dilemma, which is to say that if something other than me causes me to no longer believe as firmly in the Bible as I once did or sometimes do, then it is not I who fall away. When I see what hadn't been shown to me before (the defeater that lowers my credence in the Bible), or I see what I already should have acknowledged (a gap in my knowledge), then I see what I see, and it is something other than me that determines my reduced level of credence.

--

In MSL, Legitimacy must value what is valuable, and try to keep it existing forever. We are valuable. It is only by our power (by our free will) that we fail to exist forever. Legitimacy (God) must forgive us if there is a way. But we can "sin an unpardonable sin" by cutting off our own ability to repent and be open to God's forgiveness.

I believe I should believe in the Bible (to the extent that I should) through MSL. I also believe that I should believe in at least part of it (I don't know 100% which parts) through the connection that Jesus (the literal God or the imaginal/noetic being) has with spiritual warfare (those on Jesus' side can be trusted, and those against Jesus cannot be). If MSL says something clearly, it is true, and I adjust my interpretation of the Bible to be in harmony with it, especially where the Bible is perhaps lacking in fleshed-out detail, as I think is the case with the unpardonable sin. I think the interpretation that the unpardonable sin inherently involves the sinner cutting off their willingness to repent, and involves their permanent effective rejection of God's forgiveness through Jesus' sacrifice, is not incompatible with the Bible. That would be MSL's way of reading things, and MSL I find intellectually trustworthy. So then the question is, is MSL true?

--

On this important topic, I think it's worth it to "keep score". Why is it that someone contemplating leaving Christianity (not relying on the Bible primarily, not identifying as a Christian) for MSL would not be at risk of committing the unpardonable sin? Can I give a more organized list of reasons?

1. MSL says that God, by his nature as Legitimacy, has to validate that which is valid, and thus preserve everything that is good forever. The only thing that can get in the way of that is a person's free will. We generally do not make final decisions to reject God. Each of us can make that final decision to reject God at some point. But we would know we had done so, and be unable to (that is, unwilling to) undo that decision, forever. So if we are concerned about maybe having committed the unpardonable sin, we can try repenting. If we are still able to intend to change (and a "mere" conscious belief that we intend counts as something) then we have not committed the unpardonable sin. If Jesus is God (and MSL is valid), then all of the above applies.

2. If anyone loves and trusts the truth or God or God's Son (i.e., MSL's Son) as it/he/he really is, then they have not fallen away from whatever reality is behind our beliefs in the truth/God/God's Son. If Jesus exists, he is the truth/God/God's Son, and our beliefs in the truth/God/God's Son ultimately connect to him. If he does not exist, there is no problem.

(What about the name of Jesus? Christianity claims that Jesus is God and the truth. So if we are theists (those who seek to love and trust the God who actually is, actually turns out to be) or aletheists (those who seek to trust trustworthy beliefs (and ultimately, that which those beliefs point to)) then we take the name of Jesus ("God" and "the truth"), if he exists.)

3. Jesus' blood covers all sins. The unpardonable sin is already pardoned. We can reject that forgiveness, but that rejection is only final if we stop wanting to repent, permanently. So if we leave Christianity, for the sake of truth, we can be brought back to Christianity by better understanding. If we leave it out of enmity with God, if that enmity is not complete and final, then we can be brought back.

--

I think those three reasons make sense. Do I 100% know that they are valid? I guess I could have at least a little bit of doubt. (Similar to how I have my reasons to not believe in eternal conscious torment based on MSL, but I can't say for 100% certain that MSL is correct and thus excludes all possible reasons to believe in eternal conscious torment that are out there.)

I have to face the possibility that I could be condemned due to my rejection of Jesus (by diminishing my allegiance to Christianity, or something like that). What do I do with that thought? Suppose I am condemned due to my rejection of Christianity. God's goodness is not diminished. (I imagine some Calvinists may have gone down similar mental paths.) I don't see why I should not work for what is good, for God, even if I don't get to experience the benefits of goodness myself (or only a lifetime's worth, instead of an eternity's worth). Why should I not love and trust God? I can generously love God, even if I have lost my salvation.

It is ethically called-for to preserve your eternal life -- it's what God would want. But if it's too late to do that, there is still a lot of work to do to help others.

--

26 September 2023:

I found a fragment of a blog post that is relevant to this topic:

I think one of the strongest Biblical objections to my writing is the end of Revelation (ch. 21 - 22), where very explicitly it says (21:4) "Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more. The first things have passed away."

22:19 is a very strong statement: "If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, may God take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book." Is it the case that if I say that I have reason to think that God would mourn the lost, and that we would mourn in order to be in tune with God, that I have "taken away from the words of the book of this prophecy"? It's possible that Revelation is a vision, and thus we should not take it literally. It doesn't take away from the words of a book of poetry to read its symbolism as symbolism. Revelation is an image of a particular kind of life story: going through the cross and then living in peace and rest (like Frodo across the sea?), no longer struggling, having "overcome" like in 1 John. There can be a moment in life like the end of Revelation. And then we decide whether to return to earth to continue God's work, or remain in heavenly retirement.

One reason to think that, if Revelation is inerrant, it must have been symbolic, would be to look at 22:10-11:

22:10 He said to me, "Don't seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand. 22:11 He who acts unjustly, let him act unjustly still. He who is filthy, let him be filthy still. He who is righteous, let him do righteousness still. He who is holy, let him be holy still."

If the time was literally at hand (i.e., the end of the world was coming in a matter of weeks or months), then this advice might make some sense. But if we take this advice literally, over centuries (the distance from the writing of Revelation to now) then we would cause, occasion, allow, etc. massive amounts of spiritual harm. Or if this is not advice, but rather a kind of blessing/curse (a powerful word that makes things so), then the fact that the unjust, over the centuries, sometimes have stopped acting unjustly, and those who were filthy, sometimes no longer are, counts against it being something God literally enacted.

I think that Revelation is either not inerrant (may contain errors), or not to be taken literally in every respect. I do think that it may be an important source of truths from God. In cases where common sense sufficiently strongly rules out it being literally (or inerrantly) true, we should go with common sense. But, as with the idea that the Millennium lasts 1,000 years, if there is no obvious problem, it's wise to consider the possibility that the text is literally true.

If Revelation has errors, should we take them as truth because Revelation threatens us with not having eternal life for "taking away from the words of the prophecy"? They aren't true, no matter how much we heed the threat. Are the errors in a prophecy really prophecy? They might be false prophecy. The prophecy worth heeding and protecting is whatever is true. So then, there is no danger in "taking away from" (failing to heed?) the errors in Revelation, if they exist, and we only need observe the true parts. Would God want us to heed the words of false prophecy?

Should texts have the ability to intimidate us into believing them? Any text that is more than a certain percent trustworthy will seem compelling to us. Then, if it says "If you take away a single word from this, you lose out on eternal life", do we have to accept that and everything else in the text? Even if the text was produced by the Library of Babel and contains some questionable content (literally "questionable", things we would ordinary reject but which we can plausibly accept given the right amount of glory given them).

The possibility of mischief through this kind of channel (some spiritual beings moving someone to write a text which then gains a kind of perennial power over people, enshrining error) seems real to me.

(It could be the case that "taking away from the words of the prophecy" is really about "not corrupting the manuscripts that transmit Revelation".)

--

Keeping score: It sounds like there's a curse on people who change the words of Revelation. If this means that you can't deny the truth of anything in Revelation, then maybe I'm in trouble. But Revelation is a vision which you're supposed to take at least somewhat non-literally. Revelation is written as though the world is supposed to end very soon, but it didn't. That's a pretty major error, if it's supposed to be overall literal. Clearly there are elements of it that are not literally true. If there is error somewhere in Revelation, are we really cursed for not believing it? Revelation can have error from a literal perspective, and if it does, it doesn't make sense for us to believe that error. Or, if Revelation has no errors, but its seeming error comes from a misinterpretation, then if it's questionable how to interpret something, whether literally or not, and how to interpret it non-literally, are we also cursed, for getting things wrong? That doesn't make sense. God doesn't want people to lose their salvation.

Overall, given what else I've written in this post on the unpardonable sin, Revelation's curse on those who alter it only makes sense if it's a case of someone irrevocably rejecting God.

Should We Believe Voices, as Though They are From God?

It's not uncommon for people to hear voices in their head. Are these the voices of the unconscious self or evolved neural patterns (materialist atheist explanation)? Are these the voices of demons, angels, and/or God? Are these the voices of other spirits (perhaps Severus Snape?)?

Given all those options, it might seem like, who can know where these voices come from?

(I could add in any other kind of communicative signal, like the things that people say that don't make sense in context of the conversation but which speak to your life, or the animals that behave strangely around you and whose natures communicate symbolically about realities inside you.)

Are these from a trustworthy source, or an untrustworthy source? Could we come to the conclusion that a voice is from God (either spoken directly by him or by a faithful messenger)?

Then, if they are from a trustworthy source, can we trust the voice enough to obey it?

--

If we can figure out the nature of the world, we can rule out some possibilities. If we can somehow know that materialism is correct, it commits us to the "unconscious self / evolved neural patterns" view. If we can somehow know that God doesn't exist, it rules out the possibility that he is speaking.

Also, if we rule out the possibility of non-personal beings being agents (I think this is a logical conclusion of the belief that everything is consciousness) and if we can know when it is that we do things (I think this makes sense -- if I do something I didn't intend, it wasn't I who did it), then all things are caused by conscious personal beings: humans, animals, angels, demons, other spirits, or God, and it wasn't somehow secretly I who produced the voice in my head that I didn't manufacture and didn't feel like me.

I believe in (trust, find trustworthy to believe in) the world of the previous paragraph and not the one before that. So I rule out the possibility of it being somehow "me" or some "unconscious self", and this leaves open the possibility of it being an angel or God (or a demon or some other spirit).

--

What is "intuition"? Intuition is something that enables us to know when people are scamming us. It enables us to sense what people are thinking and feeling. A trained intuition can be used for many different tasks, depending on how it was trained. But intuition is just a feeling that something is so, something is to be done, etc. Sometimes we can figure out rationalizations for our intuitions, and sometimes we can't. Much of knowledge is intuitive at its foundation (for instance, the way reason works). We have to rely on intuition. But intuition is opaque as to its sources and inner workings. It's a black box. A spirit could easily work through it.

Where do ideas come from? Many creative and intellectual people report ideas coming to them -- something else was working through them when the idea came. So probably ideas can come from spirits (unless we can prove materialism or some equivalent) and according to the philosophy I believe, certainly do.

The world is full of people who trust intuition or the ideas that come from intuition. But evil spirits could be poisoning our collective thinking through those two sources. Yet, good spirits could be guiding and enlightening us. Once an evil spirit uses these channels to deceive us, perhaps we will need the good spirits to use the same channels to help balance things out.

We have some way of sorting out intuition and/or ideas, into "trustworthy, less trustworthy, somewhat untrustworthy, evil" or similar categories.

So a voice in your head that says something: does it say something trustworthy or not? Often, you can sort something like this out, since often you can sort out which intuitions or ideas are trustworthy or untrustworthy.

--

Now, can we know that a particular voice is from God? Any voice that is trustworthy might be from God. A doubter can say "you don't know if it's from God" and if they mean "but it really might be, you have a point", then they are on the side of reason. (Unless they can prove that God doesn't exist, a difficult task.) But if a doubter wants to close off the possibility that it could be from God, then they are not on the side of reason. They close off that possibility as a knee-jerk reaction, or perhaps because they want to control your thinking.

If God exists, and loves us, why wouldn't he want to talk to us? But then, why doesn't he speak in a very clear way to us? If you're really skeptical, you can always doubt that it's God talking to you. Sure, it's a superpowerful being, like an alien or angel. Sure, it knows a lot. But is it really God? Couldn't it be some kind of scam? Maybe a very good angel who passes himself off as God, but secretly has a dark side? You may never get to certainty even with a God you talk to face to face.

I do think it's possible to prove that God exists (in the sense that the task is one worth attempting), and the particular God that I see a way to prove is one who is bound by his own holiness to allow the world to be worse than he would ordinarily intend. This could mean that he is prevented from talking to us as clearly as he would otherwise want to. It's also possible sometimes that his distance is better for us. We can't "feed" on him the way we do on people, whose words and gestures are solid to us, flesh and blood. So we can have a (perhaps our only) non-vampiric relationship, with him.

Given these constraints, I think we could still expect God to want to communicate to us sometimes, in a more specific way than just "do what is right, which you know to do from logic, experience, and whatever bodies of trustworthy wisdom you might have available" (like the Bible). If he wants to, he probably does sometimes, and when he does, he would do so in a way that at least we would trust what he said, even if we couldn't know 100% that it was him.

In the Bible, Abraham trusts in two notable ways. His overall life story is one of coming to trust God when God says "go to a foreign country" (a demanding thing for Abraham to do) "and I will make you a great nation to bless all the families of the earth". Abraham is being asked to do something that is personally demanding and which is grandiose in its ambitions to make the world a better place. This faith of Abraham is constructive, positive (if crazy) and I feel basically okay with recommending it to people in general. If what the voice calls you to is something like the Abrahamic promise, (assuming that you understand things well enough to know or reasonably guess that what you're doing will "bless all the families of the earth"), even if it was from some other source than God, you would be attempting to do God's work, and if God does say things like this to someone sometimes, that person should be prepared to listen, otherwise great good will not result.

Abraham's other faith is a sort of paradoxical / recursive occasion where God commands him to kill his son Isaac (through whom the promise of his great nation is to come). I call this paradoxical and recursive because it's how in order to pursue something trustworthy, you need to let go of it, not affirm it. The process of blessing the world is outward facing, laminar, positive; but it must purify itself and it's counter-intuitive when it does so.

I don't know all the effects on Abraham of being tested to the point of being willing to give up his son and risk stopping the very promise that he invested his life in. But one might have been for him to value God more than the promise, and God's provision of well-being more than physical life. Isaac's life could be guaranteed by the fact that he had a functioning body, what atheists could count on. Or it could be guaranteed by God -- somehow -- what atheists would not count on. (Incidentally, on a meta-textual level, the Bible is a text that can be trusted in, wants you to trust in it, but includes a difficult passage (or a few more), difficult even by its own account (the Bible is against child sacrifice). Follow the Bible, but don't grip to it too hard, if you want to obey God.) (Maybe all this is a message for those given to "wretched evangelicalism".)

Now, if taken as a myth, this story is easily digested. If you are going down the path of the promise, God will identify some part of the promise in your life, through which it will come, and push you to the point where you have to decide whether to sacrifice it. It won't be your literal child or anything on that level of disturbingness. If you are willing to sacrifice it, he will give it back to you just like he gave Isaac back to Abraham. The Bible can be read as a collection of existing life patterns (stories, perhaps continually playing out somewhere in the imaginal world) that instantiate themselves in our lives sometimes, used by God to shape us and communicate with us.

But we do not always take it as myth, but rather imagine, what if it really was God, really commanding us to sacrifice our literal children? In that case, I can't recommend obeying such a voice. I think you should assume that it is not from God, because whatever justification could be come up with for God doing that with Abraham (Hebrews 11:17-19 says that Abraham expected God to resurrect Isaac, (my thought:) so confidently that it wouldn't count as murder or God tempting him to murder), nowadays it would go down so poorly, make religion look so bad, that it's not worth it and God wouldn't command it.

When you hear a voice, consider the possibility it's coming from Satan. Some voices are worth obeying even if they prove someday to have been from Satan, especially if we implement what the voices call for in an anti-Satanic way. Other voices are not.

These are some easy answers as to which things to think are from the voice of God, for practical purposes of obedience or investing in promises. (Leaving your home country to bless the world -- generally worth it. Sacrificing your child -- don't do it.) In between, I guess we are left with needing to train our individual intuitive and rational grasping of the nature of God, so that when we hear voices, we can tell which ones are from God. However, there will probably always be times when we are uncertain. (Maybe technically we are always uncertain. But we can be more certain than uncertain, sometimes, while other times we are more uncertain than certain.)

--

If what a voice says is trustworthy and could be from God, why not obey it like it is and see where it takes you? You wouldn't want to not obey God if he was trying to get you to do something. It's possible that you're wrong that it's trustworthy, or from God, but sometimes, you should trust your judgment and obey.

Consensus Reality and Psychological Warfare

This is an essay.

Atheists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and other people in a society (for instance, Western society) disagree about many things. But some things, they all (or seemingly all) agree on. There is a span of life between birth and "physical death" (the last breath in the bodies we currently have) which all of them acknowledge. In that span, there is the need for food, shelter, clothing, transportation and so on. Food, shelter, clothing, and transportation exist and we have to deal with them -- even enlightened people have to get on the bus if they want to ride it. In Western society, there are schools to go to and for most, jobs to work. There are bureaucracies to deal with. This is all real. This (and similar things) make up consensus reality.

(I thought about putting "science" in that list, but there are "science-deniers" who would not deny the existence of the above. Science is widely favored, but it's not quite literally consensus reality. Maybe we could say that it is near-consensus reality?)

The rest of reality is controversial. Is there such a thing as material substance (or something effectively like that) as atheists often believe? Idealists dispute that. Each of the Gods (or sets of Gods) of the theistic religions is different. Christianity insists on Jesus (God and human in one) as the only way to God, the Father, while Islam insists that you can't associate anyone with God -- perhaps this is a controversy. Hinduism says everything is one thing, while Buddhism sort of says it's all nothing -- perhaps another controversy. Many of us seem to like morality and think it should have binding force on us -- so it would be weird if we thought it didn't exist -- but Nietzscheans officially don't like morality, and moral anti-realists think that it doesn't exist. Academic philosophy has people arguing on different sides of different questions.

It is convenient for us to center our thinking on consensus reality. We can argue about all of those controversial things all day and not persuade each other (that's what it means for them to be controversial). So we think that the solid, real, good truth is consensus reality.

How likely is it that consensus reality exhausts all of what's real and what matters? At first glance, it sounds like that's not very likely. Why should it be the case that all of the things we agree on are real, and none of the things we don't agree on are real? It's probably a good sign if we all agree on something, but I wouldn't trust that completely. Maybe we could all agree on some moral value that was actually invalid, just because that's what made society run smoothly.

Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism all posit the existence of spirits other than humans. Spirits might be able to affect the minds of people. (Have you ever seen a spirit come over someone, or experienced that yourself?) Spirits might not be all on the same side. Humans disagree and form blocs that want to defeat each other. It doesn't seem unlikely that spirits would do the same.

How would spirits fight? Partly by psychological warfare, trying to convince us of different random things. If they can win us over, we will do their bidding. Or our trust might be the prize in itself. The profusion of non-consensus reality beliefs is something that would make sense if there are different blocs of spirits trying to control our minds with the beliefs that they favor. The difficulty of us being certain about "spiritual" (ethical, metaphysical, religious, etc.) things being in part the result of the damage done by warring beings on the noetic equipment of our minds.

Sometimes I have told non-Christians that I believe in God because of meaning. I can remember two different people who heard that having a knee-jerk "that doesn't work" kind of reaction. They did not say "huh, that's interesting" -- a more philosophical response. They did not seem open to hearing my argument. The people (those two and four others) I can remember talking to about my theories of or interest in proving the existence of God did not react in a philosophical way, nor did they seem eager to explore to see if I was right. One of them even implied that proving the existence of God was impossible (but he would say things he didn't really believe in order to put ideas in my head, I later realized.)

This, in itself, is interesting. Why were they so reactive against the idea of the proof of the existence of God, or a particular way to prove it? Why weren't they interested in learning more? Why isn't this like any other topic where one might think about what is?

I can say that the effect of their reactions to me has got me really questioning my own beliefs sometimes. Sometimes I believe and move forward, other times I don't. After a few of these strange reactions, it breaks down my (sometimes fragile) natural sense of what's true. I can use my intellectual discipline to believe what I do, but my brain is always traumatized by the strange reactions -- I don't want to say they are literally "gaslighting" since I don't want to (always) impute manipulative intent, but what's going on is very much like gaslighting. That trauma makes me "not really believe", doubt my intellectual vision.

Why do the other people traumatize me? They have been through the same thing as me, perhaps, traumatized by other people. So they refuse to listen to me, not trusting me. They believe what they do in a fragile way, and now that they don't know what to believe, they rigidly shut out competitors to what they already believe.

It could also be that we want to believe things -- that beliefs about religion, God, and the lack of religious truth or the non-existence of God, are precious things. They are so foundational that we build our lives around them, and to change your foundations threatens self-destruction. We keep ourselves alive through our inner beliefs.

It may be as frightening to be offered a way to believe in something that you dearly wish to be true, as to be offered a disproof of it.

I probably made the mistake of talking to people who were as old or older than me. Older people lose the ability to really think and question, and instead operate as machines, stable and strong, which just do whatever they were programmed to do while growing up. People can resist this tendency, and it's not universal, but I can feel it in me now. To really question whether God exists requires research -- too much for most mature adults. Immature people have a chance at coming to know what is true. You have to have that immature spirit of adventure in you in order to keep your mind oriented toward knowing what is, rather than becoming aggressively or sadly dogmatic.

Perhaps I misunderstand maturity, and many mature people misunderstand it. It is virtuous to become more mature, not inevitable. It may (seemingly) be inevitable for the young to struggle against the many voices that try to control their minds, and their own inner instability, to try to reach a kind of promised land of being functional in society, stable and secure in mind, patient and emotionally self-regulating. But if this is the "inevitable maturity", the virtuous process of maturity requires that people who (more or less) attain "inevitable maturity" push on to the next stage, which requires them to recover the adventure needed to be in touch with reality.

Where do spirits come in? Spirits can engineer and disseminate new ideas. Time after time, intellectuals, artists, inventors, and so on receive brilliant ideas in "flashes of inspiration". They don't know where they come from. Well, if they don't know where it comes from, it's probably not from them. Where else can it come from? If we insist on materialism, it must come from the "unconscious self". But I don't see why we should insist on materialism -- at best it's one of multiple live options for how the world could work. In any of the others (I'm thinking of dualism and idealism), where spirits are possible, the most natural explanation is that spirits implant these brilliant ideas in these creative people.

I see spirits at play in some of the strange reactions I have to things. I feel like I'm, for better or worse, sick with the same mental sickness as "everyone else" (Western non-Christians). I hear God's voice and see his purpose in my life. But then, sometimes, I read someone saying "humans are really good at seeing patterns in things, humans make meaning". And then that's all I can see in my purported "hearing God's voice".

Why does this seem instantaneously and devastatingly true? Rationally speaking, it's no more weighty than pointing out that sometimes people (seemingly) falsify their own memories. The faculty of memory is not perfect. But I don't think "Oh no! None of my memories are valid!" So the faculty of "finding patterns" is imperfect. But sometimes it shows us things that really are there. Why am I so quick to distrust one faculty and not another? (Actually, now that I write that out, I don't see why I should distrust my instincts of pattern finding, bearing in mind that they are imperfect.)

People say "humans make meaning" in a certain way that implies something. And I fall for it. Why do I fall for it? Is it because I "know", deep down, that it's true? Or is it that I'm under the power of the same spirit as them? Why do they fall for it? I think neither they nor I are being rational. If we were we would see that pattern finding ("meaning making") is something that is basically reliable but with exceptions. Maybe pattern finding when we want something to be true or when the stakes are personal is less reliable? But it could be valid. If you really want someone to be romantically interested in you, it's possible to accurately perceive that they are. But when the implying and the subtext are ruling, I can't even consider that. So there's something fishy going on.

If people are being irrational, or in other words if they are making decisions based on subtext, psychological powers that live in the darkness of intuition, then that world of intuition is a black box. Spirits could take natural intuitions and feed them to produce "reasoning" that the spirits like. Or they could implant entirely new ones.

Does this sound paranoid or crazy? Why does belief in spirits or spirit conspiracies sound paranoid or crazy? Is it weird to think spirits might exist? Not under dualism or idealism. If they do exist, is it weird to think they would behave in concerted ways -- conspiracies? No, because that's how humans sometimes act. It's possible for thoughts of concerted intelligent action to mislead us or make us behave or feel badly. But reality exists regardless of whether we manage to safely believe the truths that correspond to it. Can we approach spiritual warfare in a philosophical way, rather than with heuristics that reject possibilities a priori due to a stigma (nor with spirits possessing us in the very contemplation of those spirits' conspiracies)?

--

Whether through natural psychological mechanisms (traumatization and trying to maintain a coherent worldview) or direct spiritual manipulation, the psychological environment for coming to believe the truth about ultimate reality is not ideal. So we have to pay extra attention to what goes on, have more focus, keep our heads together, and have more courage, so that we can come to know the ultimate truth.

How Bad Can Satan Negotiate Reality to Be?; Tastes vs. Values

14 July 2023: added a note at the end.

I already wrote one post about how can we trust God given MSLN theodicy.

Epistemic status: I don't know much about economics / labor relations in general, or the areas of those particularly related to this post.

I was thinking today [when I drafted this] that if God negotiates with Satan, what if that means that Satan manages to make it so that there's no Millennium? I would assume that God would institute a time after this life for us, because he wants us to be saved, and very few of us are ready in this life. But would God get to have what he wanted? Or would Satan have a strong-enough hand in negotiations to cripple God's ability to act on his love?

In the negotiation process, God has the ultimate power. He can choose not to go ahead with creation. Let's say God and Satan are negotiating over the terms of a "temptation contract". This is needed before we are created. God can simply wait for a favorable contract. But, God really wants to create us, and needs Satan to volitionally empower temptation. It is better to create us than to not create us, so God has an incentive to allow Satan to have power.

What does Satan get out of the contract? Mainly, the satisfaction of doing evil [other rewards mentioned later in this post]. What does God get out of it? Temptation, which helps us become holy. God can run a cost-benefit analysis and see exactly how much benefit he can expect to get from temptation. If the cost from Satan exceeds the temptation, he simply will not ratify the temptation contract.

Temptation allows people to enter God's rest (/ heaven), by causing them to choose more deeply to reject sin and choose God instead. It would be counterproductive to institute temptation in a way that costs people's ability to enter God's rest through repentance. This puts a ceiling on how bad the world can turn out to be. But, I think if, say, 1,000 people fully repent in their hearts in this life and thus do not need the Millennium to be saved, and everyone else is lost, that's still a net positive. That's not very reassuring.

I imagine God thinking of strategies to elicit good terms from Satan. One thing to note is that "Satan" is really a class of evil beings. So God can choose between competing offers coming from evil beings.

I guess it's possible that there's only one evil being, but if there was, that being would have a strong hand in negotiating, and would probably make a world worse than this one currently is. It seems very unlikely to me that evil is an idea that would only occur to one being, and also, that God would put himself in a position where he only had one evil being rely on to will temptation.

So, if there are competing evil beings, there's a kind of "race to the bottom" to produce better and better evil-affected worlds. In human labor relations, people have some low price (in a globalized world, perhaps very low for some workers) below which they will not offer their labor. They need to be paid enough to buy food, for instance. This sets an effective floor on wages. So, would there be a floor to how good the world could be, given the personal needs of evil beings? In other words, while for Jesus, his bread was doing God's will, and for us, our bread can be literal food, for demons, bread is something like... sadistic enjoyment? the exercise of the will to power? feelings of superiority? a sense of security (derived from job security, perhaps)? the satisfaction of spoiling things for God? ... probably something like that. Some of these listed are not necessarily evil, but let's say all demons hold out for at least some evil inflicted on the world. There's some minimal amount of this that the most "scab-like" of demons would demand, and this sets the basic price (of evil) for temptation.

What if that brings us back around to "only 1,000 people are saved"? What if that's the wage floor? I think we have a kind of anthropic principle going here. Since we exist, generally speaking, our set-up (the way the world works) is favorable to all of us being saved in the end. God wouldn't create us if that weren't possible.

Does that mean that Satan's intrusions in our timeline (i.e. the Lisbon earthquake, fawns burning in the forest as in William Rowe's paper, the Holocaust, the depravity of human nature) have zero ability to lead us to hell? That doesn't seem likely. For instance, the problem of evil has led some people into atheism and lack of trust of God. But maybe in the Millennium (or even partly by posts like this very one, which support theodicies) it's relatively easy to convince atheists that God exists and there's a point to seemingly gratuitous evil. So it's not as fatal to people coming to God as it might seem. But I think that at least some atheists get stuck on their distrust of God, which was first taught to them by their reaction to the problem of evil, and if they stay stuck, they might harden and be lost.

I think it's possible for God to say "While Satan's intrusions (/ negotiated features of the world) might contribute to people going to hell, I can't predict a priori whether that will happen in each person's case before exposing them to those intrusions, and therefore it's in the realm of risk, rather than 'unforced error' if I go ahead with this creation." An "unforced error" being allowing Satan to negotiate for a world in which it simply isn't possible for more than some small number of people to be saved. In other words, it is obviously a bad idea for God to create us if he knows for sure that any of us will definitely be lost if he creates, and that would be the case if there was no Millennium.

How do we know that God doesn't want us to be lost? One intuition comes from the image of "father". God is a person who brings persons into the world. God loves. God is legitimate, and his legitimacy makes him God. As part of that legitimacy, he values all that is valuable, and whatever good there is in us, he values. To love is to value a personal being as a personal being, which is what that being is. So God loves the persons he brings into the world.

Loving beings do not want any of the people they love to be destroyed. God will feel grief over their loss, if they are lost. In the end, that grief will not be unbearable because in the end, there can be no unbearability. But it will still be grief. But the emotional cost is not primarily what means that God does not want us to be lost. Rather, it is his love for us. He loves each of us, and so does not want any of us to be lost. Better that we never exist than that we be lost. People who do not yet exist are only faint ideas, and if they are foregone, there isn't much lost. God will create as many people as he can, but not regret the ones he can't make -- there isn't an infinity of potential people, only the amount that God can make. But people who do come to exist are real, and there are real stakes for their well-being.

--

Let's assume that evil beings come from some kind of process that God can repeat. He can destroy the old evil beings (at some pain to him, if there's some good to them) and "roll up" some more evil beings. The most scab-like of these evil beings could give us a world that is actually very nice. The only evil other than temptation (and where we go given that temptation) being something like the occasional head cold. Why don't we live in this world? Couldn't God have held out until we got that lowest-bidder demon?

One possible reason why not is because to truly will temptation in every circumstance where it can be called for (which is what is needed in the temptation contract) is an act of profound evil, and that the fact that the world that we live in is not far worse than it is, is due to the "race to the bottom". It may be the case that there is an absolute floor to how evil a being can be and still will all temptation, and such a being would not sell their evil will for less than a certain evil reward.

But, couldn't it be the case that evil is its own reward? If that were so, then couldn't there be a lowest-bidder demon who would sell their work as a tempter as cheap as just willing temptation? Perhaps an evil demon would hate that good comes out of temptation, and require extra evil to go through with the contract as compensation. It's like if there was a volunteer position that was its own reward to the class of people who were suited to working on it. This volunteer position was their only way of advancing their tastes/values in the world. But it had a side effect that went against their tastes/values. None of them could be motivated to take the volunteer position unless there was some compensation for the side effect. The compensation would be to cause more of an advance in their tastes/values.

Does that illustration make sense? I guess if I were in the demons' position, I could see myself taking such a volunteer position and making the same demands.

The demon is being rational and calculating to some extent by demanding extra evil as compensation for the good that results from temptation, but not being fully rational, or else they would demand enough evil to almost cancel out the good done. But for some reason, demons seem to be selling their labor for less than it is worth, by not getting the full compensation for their efforts.

This is (basically?) the same as when human employees sell their labor for less than what it is worth, which is common and kind of odd when you look at it in an alien light. Why do humans do that? Probably because they are not fully rational. Businesses can find workers who are not fully rational, but who are partially rational and thus demand some wages. Humans have various psychological factors that compete with "seek your own well-being as effectively as possible", and one that demons might have is their lust to do evil. Demons are lustful, and could be impatient and pragmatic, wanting to just get some kind of evil done rather than pushing for some kind of pure and thoroughgoing evil that might fully instantiate their values or tastes. It only takes one relatively petty-minded demon to sign a temptation contract that leaves a lot of good in the world, but maybe the lust for evil in demons runs strong enough that there is a floor to how good the world can be, given their ability to negotiate for compensation.

--

I notice myself using "tastes" and "values" as semi-interchangeable above. I think that they can work similarly in that they can both motivate people to set up an axiology (an ordering of what is best) but that to have tastes has a significantly different tonality than to have values. "Taste" speaks of enjoyment, consumption, preference satisfaction, being pleased, and in some cases, of lust, while "value" speaks of idealism, self-giving, and (I would say) love.

Perhaps, in a Buberian way (like his "evil is not whole-souled" or "you can't worship God by using the same kind of worship you give an idol and just swap out your idol for God"), to will evil is a matter of tastes and not value. When the intensity of your valuing increases (perhaps), the greater your self-giving and idealism and (true) loving. But when the intensity of your "tasting" increases, the greater your impatience and thus pragmatism, and your hunger, and your lust. So a truly "great" (intense) evil willing is one that is done lustfully, and thus impatiently and pragmatically, costing the evil-willer the ability to inflict a truly rational-scale intense evil.

Now, demons may be crippled by their own lusts, but humans who have been deceived by demons can misguidedly pursue through value what is actually worthless or dangerous and thus bring great evil into the world, in effect. In terms of raw intent and desire, it's hard to beat a demon for evilness, although perhaps there are some people who seem to be possessed by demons but are actually on their side and match them both for the vehemence and impatience of their evil. But in terms of consequences, humans are better instruments of greatness, and the effects of greatness can be both good and bad.

(Notice that demons crippled by their own lusts still manage to demand things like wild animal suffering, earthquakes that kill thousands of people, and the presence of psychological evil (demonic possession / mental illness / personality disorders / urges toward killing and raping, etc.), on a scale that makes life gratuitously miserable for many beings, sometimes horrifying and offending people so that they reject God. Perhaps demons still have us beat as far as causing evil. But perhaps there are evil outcomes that only can be attained if we "semi-wittingly" or unwittingly help them come about.)

Our preferences, deep in who we are and not just as they express themselves through what we are, have a tonality to them. We are not "bloodless" in who we are, and there we either love, value, have tastes for, or lust (or prefer in some other way I haven't thought of).

--

I like what I've written so far, but it doesn't satisfy me. I still feel like somehow God could roll a minimally-evil demon to fulfill the temptation contract. He is patient and reality-aimed, and simply needs time before he can get a demon like that.

However, one thought occurs to me that might explain why God might have to choose a demon without waiting for the ideal demon. The "size" of God may be finite, in that he may have finite memory. In order to remember his own past, which (we could assert) is necessary for him to be who he is (it's part of the story of legitimacy, the exact content of which can change over time as legitimacy becomes more specified), he has to use memory, and so he has a finite amount of time to get to the end of time.

--

14 July 2023:

It occurs to me that a demon could negotiate for a situation where many or most people were lost. For instance, if there were going to be a million people in the world, the demon could negotiate for a reality where 1,000 of them were saved, but only if everyone else (999,000) were lost. So the idea is that the demon could force 999,000 people to be created, only to be lost, using the 1,000 as hostages of a sort.

Is there some reason to think this could not be the case? I think there is. According to MSL, God is Legitimacy. This means that he values what is valuable (what is legitimate), and must keep it going forever if possible. So unless the 999,000 people all themselves rejected him, he would have to save them no matter what. (They would have to be the ones to reject him -- he couldn't reject himself for them and somehow impute it to them.)

So God would be unable to offer the demon the concession of damning some apart from their decisions whether to become holy, in order to save others.

What if the demon negotiates a shorter, or even shorter, Millennium? Up to a certain point, the length of the Millennium helps people have time to be saved.

If you give a person a week to do an assignment, that may be too short. Maybe you should give them a semester. That sounds better. How about a year? Or five years? Perhaps there are two dynamics: people who work slow always benefit from more time, but people who are avoiding the work may find even more distractions over time, find their motivation waning even more. So if you give people 5 years to do a homework assignment, all the people who benefit from having lots of time get done in 1 year, but those who are avoiding the assignment actually take it less seriously in the initial period where they have momentum, and so are less likely to finish with a 5 year assignment period than with something shorter.

So maybe 1,000 years (or if we take that as being non-literal, something else perhaps basically similar in length) is the optimal length for the Millennium, to help both slow workers and procrastinators. All slow workers can finish in that time, perhaps. We might say that God can't offer the demons anything other than that length of a Millennium, because God has to give us the optimal amount of time to make our decision (too long would lose too many of the procrastinators, too short would lose too many of the slow workers). That's his "wage ceiling".

But then, why isn't his wage ceiling a bit lower so that it excludes gratuitous suffering?

(later:)

God wants to maximize the number of people in heaven and minimize those who are lost. A person in heaven is an infinite good (everlastingly alive) while a person who is lost is an infinite loss (the loss of a person forever). But not infinite in the sense that one person saved could somehow be equal to millions lost (nor that the calculation would be indeterminate). It is very important to God to make it so that everyone who is created goes to heaven, if it is under God's power to do so.

However, as evil as intense suffering is in itself, if it does not affect eternity, it is something God can accept if there is some kind of benefit to doing so. A benefit might be that God can more readily get demons to draft and sign temptation contracts if they get to cause us intense, and even seemingly gratuitous, suffering. The sooner they sign, the more memory God has to create people.

If God is deontologically constrained so that if it is under his power to keep us from being lost, he must act, does that mean that he will at some point make up for any lack of anti-temptation in our lives, caused by people failing to anti-tempt us? If so, does evangelicalism make sense?

It might make sense if we ourselves are tempted to not care. We might say "temptations must come, but woe to those through whom they come" -- what kind of person would tempt someone else to sin? But we might also say "anti-temptations will come, but woe to those who do not anti-tempt", as in, if you aren't inclined to anti-tempt, your heart is not like God's heart, and that's a dangerous situation to remain in.

It is also possible that the sooner people are anti-tempted, the less suffering there is in the world, and the fewer regrets people have. And also, God is in a state of suffering when we are out of tune with him, and if we love him, we will want to reduce that suffering -- suffering is felt in the now in a demanding way, even if God knows that it is temporary.

On the other hand, maybe there is still room for tragic outcomes despite God's pure will to save. If God's memory is finite, then there is only so much time for people to come to holiness. People can only process so much psychological input in a given amount of time. If we don't use our time well, there is some chance that though God is willing to anti-tempt us to make up for lacks earlier in life, there might not be enough time for us to respond. (So it makes sense to be concerned about things like hedonism keeping us from growing spiritually in secular time.)

Now, God can build in some slack by allocating more time for the Millennium and creating fewer people (so that he can anti-tempt us to make up for our lack of anti-tempting), and he would. But he allocates the slack based on his estimate of what decisions we will make in the future (the future from his perspective creating the world). If we exceed those estimates, then there might not be enough slack.

It is possible that God and the demon make their temptation contract such that God has to keep the world order the same once creation begins. God believes that we are going to only be "so bad". Perhaps, before he has seen us, God doesn't understand how bad we could turn out to be. (Think of God trying to undo creation with the Flood.) He has some idea, having seen demons, but since he is a good being, his imagination doesn't naturally "go there". (To imagine something that has never been imagined before is to make something real and new in the imaginal world, so to imagine evil for the first time is to create evil. God can't do that, but he does perceive the evil that has been created in the imaginal world by others, and this is his source for understanding evil.) Further, God doesn't know what can't be known (what hasn't happened yet), so he doesn't know exactly what we will decide to do. God bets that our moral nature will conform to his expectations (from the Bible, it sounds like Satan bets that we will be worse than God's expectations), and when we prove God wrong, maybe it's too late for him to put the slack into the plan for the Millennium to compensate for that.

The existence of gratuitous suffering (or other gratuitous evil) is something that only makes sense if God is not against evil (which doesn't make any sense in MSL) or he has some kind of constraint on his power. Here are two constraints: God can't tempt, and God can't imagine evil for himself, only can imagine it once his eyes have been opened by seeing it embodied by beings that were capable of innovating in that area. These two constraints come from his holiness, that he is sinless.

(God is also constrained by having to want what he wants, a consequentialist constraint, while the non-tempting one is a deontological one, and the inability to imagine evil one could be seen as a virtue-ethical one or a kind of "physical constraint". Another "physical constraint" being God's limited memory, and also his inability to relate to what does not exist (future things).)

(later:)

Can the demon make a contract with God that makes heaven worse than God intended? (So much worse that we would not look forward to it?)

Temptation is only needed up to the end of the Millennium. Theoretically, after that, God could break whatever contract he had with the demon. I'm not sure that that would be a legitimate thing for God to do, so what about the case that it is not?

Evil has to end someday. If not, God calls evil good, by never rejecting it, which is illegitimate. Heaven is the time in which evil does not exist anymore. So whatever damage a demon could do through the contract, it could not cause heaven to have any evil in it. (God would be unable to make that concession.) This includes the qualia of unbearability, which are evil. Perhaps the demon could make heaven less pleasurable? Once we are spiritually mature enough to be in heaven, we probably won't care that much about a little foregone pleasure. But could the demon negotiate for all pleasure to be gone?

I think demons are more motivated by raw sadism (inflicting the qualia of unbearability) than by quieting heaven's pleasurablity. Perhaps heaven's pleasure can be protected by more pain in this life (God can negotiate for us to have more pain in this life so that we can experience his desired level of pleasure for us in heaven forever.)

I guess it's possible that there are demons who are relatively more anti-pleasure than they are pro-pain (I would suppose that all demons are pro-pain), and thus who would drain heaven of its pleasure (or add 100% bearable suffering) for all eternity. Assuming that heaven's pleasure(/lack of excess bearable pain) is important to God (and it might be if for no other reason than to motivate and comfort us), he might prefer to work with demons who would allow us to make this life worse, and the Millennium worse, in hedonic terms (though not in terms of whether those lives are effective in leading us to salvation), but keep the last, everlasting life, up to a certain hedonic standard.