DIALOGUE: Would Heaven Be Hellish?

In this episode, Trent sits down with Brandon, the atheistic host of Mindshift to discuss his seven objections to the doctrine of heaven.

 

Transcript:

Voiceover:

Welcome to The Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Trent Horn:

It seems like most people would want to go to heaven. That is not the case with my guest today, which will make for a really fruitful and interesting dialogue. So, welcome to The Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist Trent Horn. Joining me today is Brandon, the host of the YouTube channel MindShift. He is a non-religious YouTuber. I’m sure you would identify as an atheist, Brandon?

Brandon:

Yeah, for general purposes.

Trent Horn:

Sure. And recently, you put out a video. I thought it was really interesting. It would’ve been a great subject for doing a video reply to, but I thought it would be more interesting to have kind of a one-on-one dialogue of the points that you brought up rather than just a straight reply to it.

So the video you did is called The Problems With Paradise: 7 Reasons Why Heaven Fails. So, before we get into the video itself and talk about the issues that you raise with the doctrine of heaven, could you tell our audience a little bit more about yourself and your channel?

Brandon:

Sure. Yeah, and thanks for having me on instead of just making a reply video. I think it’s great to be able to speak about it whenever possible, so I appreciate that.

Yeah, my name’s Brandon. I started a YouTube channel just about five months ago now, and I’m really happy with what I’m trying to accomplish, at least, or the goal of it, which is just helping people who were in my spot. I was a believer for 30 years and was pretty involved, from missions to ministry to Bible school, et cetera. I feel like I have a pretty good, at least Protestant base, which will be interesting talking to you, Trent.

And yeah, I’m working my way through the Bible from a secular objective perspective with what we can know and just covering topics like this. Heaven, granted… I think it’s kind of funny this is the one we’re going to talk about. There’s a thousand things I’d love to eventually talk to you about.

Trent Horn:

Sure.

Brandon:

Heaven is one of those conversations where it’s funny because it’s what we would say not a salvation issue, even though it’s kind of what salvation leads to, like pre-trip, post-trip, that kind of stuff. I feel like there’s so much vagueness about heaven that, yeah, some of this is assumptions, and we’ll get into that. But yeah, my channel is simply trying to help people who have been stuck or are doubting or questioning, similar to what I thought was happening for myself, and the harm or at least the potential harm that I think can occur from that.

Trent Horn:

Well, the reason I wanted to talk with you about this topic, and it definitely will be fun to have you on for other topics to be able to discuss, is that it’s a very unique position. I’ve seen some people defend this, but there’s probably a fair number of atheists and non-religious people who would say, “Well, I would love if heaven existed. I would love if Christianity were true and everything that’s said about heaven is real. I just don’t think it’s false, but I really, really wish it were true.” So your position seems to be different than that.

Brandon:

Yes and no. Yes. I mean, I’m not going to backtrack on the video. I think that the certain perceived idea we have of heaven-

Trent Horn:

Sure.

Brandon:

… along with some of the perceived ideas we have about the excuses of our Earth and the setup and free will or lack thereof, the problems of suffering and divine hiddenness, these kinds of things, in hand with the Christian heaven create problems for wanting to worship that God, for wanting that experience to be true.

Can I picture some kind of heaven that is good? Of course I can. One of the points in the video that I know we’ll cover is maybe heaven just shouldn’t be infinite. Maybe there shouldn’t be a hell. I think that robs the joy of heaven. Maybe there shouldn’t be different tiers, levels, or rewards in heaven. So it’s not so much that a, heaven can’t exist or that that wouldn’t be beneficial or a better thing. It’s that the current setup, as far as I understand it, juxtapositioned to the current belief system of that God, is problematic.

Trent Horn:

Okay. Well, let’s get into it here. Once again, I’ll link to the original video if anybody wants to check it out, along with Brandon’s channel, The Problems With Paradise: 7 Reasons Why Heaven Fails.

What I wanted to do… And you had a nice setup for your video because we can just go through each of the reasons and talk about them. Before I do that, though, I’ll give a primer, at least from a Catholic perspective, of what we mean by heaven. And I think in a lot in our conversation what’s going to happen is… I agree with you. There are certain descriptions of heaven or ways that heaven is portrayed that I agree I wouldn’t want to be there for all eternity. So it really does depend on how you understand the concept.

Brandon:

Sure.

Trent Horn:

So what, at least from a Catholic perspective, the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way. It just says in paragraph 1024, “Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.” It goes on in paragraph 1027, “The mystery of blessed communion with God and all who are in Christ is beyond all understanding and description. Scripture speaks of it in images, life, light, peace, wedding feast, wine of the kingdom, the Father’s house, the heavenly Jerusalem, paradise.” And then quotes 1 Corinthians 2:9, “No eye has seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.”

So we have images of heaven that are given to us in scripture and tradition, but we always have to be careful about confusing the images for the reality. So that’s just a start, a baseline heaven, “ultimate end, supreme, definitive happiness.” You had seven problems with heaven. So let’s go through them. You can explain each one, then we can kind of discuss them. The first one, I guess I would call the problem of monotony or boredom. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that?

Brandon:

This is the weakest one, for sure, and really, what it’s going to lead to is we have two or three main arguments, and it was just expressing themselves in seven different ways.

Trent Horn:

Sure.

Brandon:

But the way I picture it is you’ve got a boat that’s sinking and there’s a hole and the water starts coming in and you put your finger in it, and if you put your finger in that one, the other one’s going to explode.

So it’s not that we can’t have a heaven that isn’t free of boredom, although I think it’s an interesting philosophical question. And this is what I point out in that first point. True infinity, true eternity is a concept that is so difficult for us to understand, as would be an all-powerful God. So I understand it’s, well, maybe He is infinitely good and interesting and has infinitely many things to teach us during that time.

I think it’s a little bit of a cop-out for the position that heaven is presented to us as. We do have these physical, manmade things, like streets of gold and houses and feasts that mean we are dwelling and we are eating, and there’s enough relation to our current human body that whether it is a new body or a new spirit, however you want to do it… Again, there’s so much confusion around these topics.

Assuming we’re anything like we are now, I think infinity poses a problem, and I think that problem gets broken down over the course of a few subjects. And I don’t know how much we want to tackle this first point, excuse me, but if there’s no suffering in heaven, the idea that we would be able to do anything and that it would be meaningful and that there wouldn’t be boredom and that there wouldn’t be this lack of meaning, which is the Christian perspective, we need the harm for the meaning, we need the bad to understand the good, et cetera, it seems counterintuitive to me.

Trent Horn:

That’s point… I wrote down here, “Point number four, pain is necessary for pleasure,” so maybe we’ll-

Brandon:

Okay. And they all work together.

Trent Horn:

Sure.

Brandon:

So, yeah.

Trent Horn:

Yeah, they all come together. But I think that this is a fair point that the idea of something never-ending, there is a fear of, “Oh, well, what if I run out of things to do? What if I am bored? Tedium, monotony.” I think that’s a common concern that people would have, and it prompts us to think more deeply about it.

One thing when I was thinking about this is that boredom and monotony, it may not be a property that arises from a circumstance as much as it arises from the disposition of an individual. So, for example, you could take two people and have them perform a task, a repetitive task over a set amount of time, and it could be the exact same task, but one person is bored out of his mind and the other one isn’t.

So I do think that that might play into it a little bit of whether something is boring, part of it is the circumstance, but I think a large part of it might be what our own disposition is. Does that make sense?

Brandon:

Yeah. And maybe you’re going somewhere else with it, but on that initial point, I would say, would the person who’s not initially bored become bored if given enough time, even if that is their predisposition to enjoy that thing more than the other person who becomes more easily bored, or even if they have the personality that doesn’t get bored as fast? Again, all of it seems to break down when you add forever, eternity.

Trent Horn:

Right. And I guess when we think about eternity, that term we have to be very careful with because God’s eternity, at least from a Catholic perspective, is different from eternal life that we would have in heaven.

So Catholics believe that God is timeless. So God’s eternity, as the philosopher Boethius put it, would be “the whole and complete and simultaneous possession of endless life.” So all of God’s life exists in one timeless moment, essentially.

But I do believe that in heaven, we will… I think we will have bodies, we’ll have the resurrection of the body. We will experience the passage of time. How that passes, that also factors into the boredom element here a little bit. I do not believe we will be timeless because we will undergo change. We will have experiences. To be timeless isn’t really proper to us as finite creatures.

But when it comes to our experiences, I figure you’re agreeing with it, yeah, a person can have a different disposition, but what if it’s endless? We’re never going to have all of the endlessness at once. It’d always be another day and another day. So the question is, will there be a suitable change? Will there be something that keeps us from becoming bored?

And I think that if you look at, well, if God is infinite and there is infinite goods that we can understand and enter into, that’d be one element to prevent things from becoming boring. I also think, and this is from… I was reading an article from my friend Randal Rauser, who is a Protestant theologian, and he talked about how there are things we do that are repetitive but never become boring. He gave the example that he always enjoys sipping a morning coffee out on his porch in the Canadian wilderness and just taking that in. And every day… He’s done it, like, 2000 times in a row.

Brandon:

Sure.

Trent Horn:

And because there’s familiarity there, it’s always something that he looks forward to. So I think that in heaven we’ll do a… Certainly, there’s a finite number of earthly things to do, but repetition may also be a possibility there that we won’t get bored of. We’ll always enjoy the sense of familiarity with those things. So that might be a few other thoughts.

Brandon:

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s the cool thing about heaven, right? I think anything is possible. I think these are problematic things to how God made us here, if indeed that is the case, because I understand the separation from the eternal God and the concept around that versus us in an infinite state of existence, or maybe if there’s a better term you want to put that as, but there’s still finite conditions on it, right?

If we do have a body in heaven and, say, we still have two arms, that’s still the spiritual earthly mix. That’s it. That means we’re going to be limited to things that two arms can do. It does put restriction. If there’s only so many people in heaven, which is something that would be believed to be accurate, there’s only going to be so many people you can meet, so many interactions you can have.

Again, over the vast span of… It seems to me a failure of imagination to really be able to say like, “Well, you know what? I’ve lived 70 years on Earth and I’ve enjoyed that cup of coffee every single morning.” 70 years is 0% of infinity. What’s 70 billion years? Are you still enjoying it? Does the sunrise still have the same spark? Did you have the hard night that led to that coffee playing that trick on your brain that actually creates the joy? There’s such, again, I think, a failure of truly envisioning what perfection forever would look like in terms of the finite capabilities of a body to find enjoyment or non-boredom or non-monotony.

Trent Horn:

Right. I do think, though, that the objection of failure of imagination does cut both ways, and I think that would be more for those-

Brandon:

Sure.

Trent Horn:

… who think that heaven would be boring. I agree with you, and this is something… Peter Kreeft has a book, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven, and he imagined experiences in heaven might begin with learning everything that can be done to learn about life on Earth and then having perfect communion with other people.

So I think what’s important here, when we talk about life in heaven, there are these particular instances, these moments we have on Earth, where we experience this wonderful kind of bliss. And an important element of that is that time is something we’re not as concerned about. We’ll be wrapped up in a conversation with another person, and we’re thinking, “Oh, it’s getting late. I got to go to bed. I have to retire.”

Heaven might be, what if you didn’t have to do that? That you have these moments of this kind of bliss, and they’re very, very brief in this life, that intimate conversation that you have late at night with someone or that sheer joy you share with your child in a particular activity. And I notice sometimes that when we have these particular moments, the flow of time is a little bit different. Because when you talk about things being endless, one second after one second, after one second, sometimes… It’s always interesting, right, that when you go through an experience, the way that you appreciate time in it, it can feel longer or shorter based on it.

Brandon:

Sure. Relative, yeah.

Trent Horn:

Yeah. So I think that those little instances of it… Could we have that in heaven? And I think so in an endless way. And I think you might say, “Yeah, but if it’s endless, then what?” So it’s like earthly things, communion with other people, which I agree will be finite, then after that would be entering into the mystery of God.

And I think that the only thing that would make heaven pleasurable and not hellish would be the fact that God is infinite. I know that Joe Schmid recently… He had a poll on his YouTube channel. He has Majesty of Reason. And he asked people if you would want to live forever in this universe. And I said, “Absolutely not.” Because what would happen is eventually, in 40 trillion years, it’s just me and a bunch of hydrogen atoms. That would be awful.

But if you think that there’s always… Just as there’s always a greater number on the number line, I don’t see anything preventing an all-powerful, all-knowing God from having another greater good for us to enter into.

Brandon:

And I don’t see anything preventing that either. I think where that would break down for me, and there’s two interesting points I think I’m trying to keep track of that you said, and I’ll lean on you for… I can talk as long as you want. So as much time as you want to give to a dedicated point or not, you feel free to move this conversation.

Trent Horn:

Sure.

Brandon:

But the first part of it, you mentioned the sweet moments we have on Earth and how they have to end and how maybe they could be extended, et cetera. I think it’s a good point, but I think what it points to is those moments become precious because they’re limited. I just had a hiking trip with my buds. I only get to do it once a year. We’ve all moved away from each other. We gather up, we take four days in the mountains. It’s the best time. I hate when it ends. It’s the worst thing, and I just crave it for the next year for many different reasons.

Trent Horn:

Right.

Brandon:

If I could just do that forever, where’s the craving? Where’s the sweetness? What’s the new conversation that needs to be caught up on? We’re not sharing our lives with each other. I think it is that restriction that makes those moments sweet and to say, “Oh, you’ll get to have those sweet moments unending or without interruption,” I think robs them of what makes them sweet, which is, again, kind of my problem with this perfect city.

If you want to say something on that, that’s fine. But your second point that I wanted to address as well with, “Okay, so we exhaust all the finite aspects of people and time and conversations and et cetera, now we get to enjoy the mystery of God, the infinity of this God.” I don’t want to open a whole new can of worms, and I don’t think we’ll go down this road, but for me, that’s where it’s, well, God’s character still isn’t changing, right? He’s still immutable. He’s still going to be the same God that was portrayed in both parts of the Bible. He’s still going to be the same God that we have interactions with or people that believe they have interactions with, et cetera.

And for me, not trying to be some anti-theist, that is not particularly appealing. The God that I understand Him to be through His actions and words in the Bible itself is not someone that I’d want to explore for infinity. That doesn’t… And we’re obviously going to disagree there-

Trent Horn:

Sure.

Brandon:

… but I think part of that… It’s not a cop-out answer from you because I understand your point. Getting to be with the creator of the universe forever, who is infinite and infinitely mysterious and all-powerful, that’s got to offer something to infinity, especially if He’s the one creating it. Yes, but only according to the nature that He is. And for me, understanding this nature as I do from His own words and actions, it does not seem to be something beneficial or that I’d want to explore forever. And I’m not trying to be purposely blasphemous or heretical, but-

Trent Horn:

No, I think that that’s fine. Do you think it is possible to define God as unlimited being itself, God is perfect, goodness itself, so God is the unlimited ground of being perfect goodness, beauty, unlimited in knowledge and power and goodness, as I said? Is it possible for that reality to exist?

Brandon:

I really don’t know. I think that all we can do is look at what we have, and I think that all of those descriptors are descriptors we typically try to give to a God because we’re trying to build a creature better and bigger than ourselves. But I don’t think that that maps onto the reality of, again, what, if we’re going to consider canon, whether it’s Protestant or Catholic, has to say about this particular creator.

If you were asking me, “Hey, if there was a God like that that definitely existed, could you imagine being in his presence forever?” Yes. I would love the option for an opt-out because I don’t know how that’s going to go, but I could say I’d want to maybe try that out more than I would say… Well, when it comes to Yahweh, in particular, with His character and immutability, the concept of an infinity with Him does not seem ideal, and it does not seem like it maps onto all those things that you just suggested.

Trent Horn:

So I think the difference here would be that if we can agree a maximally great being, however we want to describe it, that it is possible, then it may be the case of this objection, “Well, I don’t want to spend eternity with the God of the Bible,” then we’ll either come to see that our understanding of what the Bible teaches about God may have been incorrect or our understanding of the ramifications of the Bible, what we would reject of it, was incorrect in that. So I think that we should-

Brandon:

Yeah, but I think that you can do that, then, for any current God that you don’t believe in or that you don’t think is maximally good. I’m sure, given the chance, you wouldn’t be excited to go spend eternity with Allah, knowing what you know about Allah and his character. If I just said, “Well, yeah, but what if we’re wrong about Allah?” of course you’d have to reposition your statement, but as far as we do understand, and we were given this Bible to understand, to encourage and train in righteousness, et cetera… And we do have these things from God Himself, not like the contested books of certain canons. We have pretty stark claims of action and character that I think we do have to kind of take it at face value.

And some people don’t have problems with that. I understand that. And some people do. And this isn’t necessarily a conversation on God’s morality, but I think the two cop-outs that… I’m sorry, I really don’t mean that. I think the two excuses that come into play for this first point is, “Well, what if God’s different than how you think He is?” which, if He was, I’d probably still be a Christian. So, I mean, it’s hard for me to argue from that side. And two, “What if He creates an environment that is in a way that we can’t understand it to be now?” which is totally fair. That’s the fairest one. That’s why I said this is probably the weakest point.

Trent Horn:

Sure.

Brandon:

But He goes out of his way, supposedly, in this book to list certain aspects of heaven that we can know. And under those conditions, it seems like He either is going to have to change us, which is going to be a problem, and that’s another point, and so we’ll get to that, or just I really can’t make sense of it. And you’re right, it cuts both ways, failure of imagination. But from the information we do have, I think that’s the most honest position I can have.

Trent Horn:

We can transition to the second point based on one comment you made here, which will allow me to comment a little bit on something you said earlier about those moments that we have with other people that we don’t want to end. You said, “Yeah, I could even see heaven working for a finite amount of time as long as I can opt out,” which, to me, that’s a euphemism for being able to commit suicide.

Brandon:

No. In heaven, I think it would mean… Opting out of heaven, I think would be, again, it depends what perspective you’re taking, true annihilation, right? And I know you don’t believe in annihilationism, but that to me is the best outcome for eternity is just the absence of existence if we can’t know some of these things. If I had to place a bet on Yahweh’s heaven, Yahweh’s hell, or just true non-existence, the opt-out feature I’m talking about would be, “Okay, heaven is not working out in year 9 billion. Let’s go to the non-existence route.” If you want to call that suicide, you can. I think that that’s a little bit inflamed unnecessarily, but…

Trent Horn:

I guess I threw it out there. It’s no more inflammatory than cop-out, for example.

Brandon:

Sure. And I tried to take that back and say excuse-

Trent Horn:

Sure. But I think it’s important for us to say, then I think we should call it annihilation. Suicide is… And this does bring us to an important point here. When I talked about… All of us, when we reach death, especially when we have the presence of our loved… When we have these relationships with our loved ones, a spouse, a child. Especially when we have a loving relationship with that person, I don’t think we ever get to a point where we’re like, “Yeah, I’d like this just to be done now. I’ve kind had enough of you.”

I think there is that natural desire for especially these goods between persons to continue on, but it would seem here the only alternative to that would be self-annihilation, under your perspective, that we have these beautiful experiences, but you want to at least have the option to commit self-annihilation, to be reduced, to go out of existence.

So this ties into the second point a little bit because you mentioned that there in your original video, and that would be what we might call the slavery objection. And you said they all kind of tie together. Maybe you can expound on that, and then we can go a little bit more back and forth on that.

Brandon:

Sure, yeah. If we can’t leave or if we’re changed in a way so profoundly that we don’t want to leave, even though we’re given free will on Earth to the point where the whole idea is, “Well, yeah, you don’t have to be with God if you don’t want that. He’s got a place ready for you,” which I think is a really horrific answer to hell. I’m not saying you’ve made it. I’m saying it’s a pretty common apologetic on, “If you don’t want to be with God, God gives you that.” He doesn’t really give you that. It’s a gun to your head, infinite torture.

So my point is, if there’s no other choice besides trying to avoid as much punishment and pain for as long as possible or be in the presence of this God that I may not find beneficial or enlightening or someone I’d want to explore eternity with or given just even existing infinitely in time, if those are the only two options, that seems like I’m being robbed of a free will that supposedly I have or will need to have, and for all intents and purposes is tantamount to me to slavery. That’s the simple version. I think we can definitely pick at a few parts there.

Trent Horn:

That’s fine. Would you maybe take a little bit more of a crack at what you mean by slavery? So slavery would be the condition of not-

Brandon:

Being owned by someone else without autonomy to your own purposes, right? And so, if I did just want to stop existing… And we can frame that however negatively you’d like. You kind of set it up as, “Oh, you’d want to opt out of this beautiful presence.” My whole point is if it weren’t beautiful or if I found it to not be beautiful any longer, could I then leave on my own volition? And is the only other option for me wanting to leave going to hell? Because that’s not really a choice either.

Trent Horn:

Right.

Brandon:

It seems that however you want to frame it, at some point, we are limited to only a literal binary option of existence forever. And I think that that is a concept that… I understand why it originated. I understand that many cultures have come up with these parallels. But it seems awfully limiting from the creator of the universe to have only these two options.

Trent Horn:

So it seems like what you’re saying is in order to be free, if a person finds life not worth living, they should be free to annihilate themselves.

Brandon:

I think we have to be careful with what we’re talking about. I’m not necessarily advocating for suicide, although I would advocate for certain kinds of euthanasia or assisted suicide for certain conditions. I’m not just trying to say this willy-nilly, but this isn’t a 70-year stretch where you know it’s going to end anyways. The whole point is if you’re stuck in heaven and you know it will not end, I think that drastically changes the nature for needing a button that says, “I’m done.”

Trent Horn:

Right. But it’s still the same principle. The principle is that-

Brandon:

Okay.

Trent Horn:

… if you are in a condition where you feel life is not worth living because there is some kind of suffering ahead of you, a person should be free to annihilate themselves if they reach that conclusion.

Brandon:

I think in the setup that we’re talking about with an infinite heaven with only one other negative option, yes.

Trent Horn:

Okay.

Brandon:

I think that those are important byproducts of it, yeah. I think it would be conditional on the kind of heaven that we’re talking about, the other options presented, and the character of that God. And so, in this particular setup of Yahweh and the heaven and hell system, that is my point that if we don’t have another option, to some degree, I see that as slavery. Even being forced to feel pleasure does not necessarily mean it’s a good thing. We could make earthly examples of how horrendous that could become. I think that it is not being in control, not actually having the free will.

Trent Horn:

Okay. Do you think that some people in this life, when they reach the conclusion life is not worth living and they want to annihilate themselves, they are actually mistaken about that and so we should restrain them and not let them do that?

Brandon:

I think that this is a whole new can of worms. I love the conversation. I think it’s extremely philosophically interesting. And I do think there’s considerations there, sure, age being one of them. So if God wants to say, “You have to do 10 billion years before you get the opt-out button,” fine, for the sake of argument, in the same way that I would not want a 13-year-old to think that there’s no hope because their hormones are going absolutely nuts and they don’t understand what happens over the course of 70 years.

But I think it’s a false analogy. I think that there is a state we’re going to be in immediately in heaven, right? If there’s no tears, death, sorrow, or sin, how can I have bad information to make this bad choice, compared to the 13-year-old who doesn’t have life experience to make this bad choice? I don’t see them as nearly equal.

Trent Horn:

Well, I think, though, the reason that I’m putting this here is that I’m just testing out the principle. It seems like your concern is that heaven would eventually reach a point where it would be a life not worth living, and so, one should have the option of self-annihilation.

However, in this life we’d come up, there are many, many examples of people who falsely think life is not worth living. Now, I think that that’s true of all cases. I don’t believe in making divisions about who is okay to commit suicide and who isn’t. And, of course, that’s a separate issue.

But what you’re asking for here, your concern about in heaven is you’re saying, “I’m worried that I will be forced to live a life that is not worth living, and that would be a kind of slavery.” My counter to that is that just as people are mistaken in this life about whether life is not worth living… In fact, the majority of cases… I think you and I would agree, the majority of cases of people who seek suicide, you would probably say they are actually mistaken and ought to be given mental health treatment, other things-

Brandon:

Sure.

Trent Horn:

… that they’re mistaken about. They wouldn’t fall-

PART 1 OF 5 ENDS [00:31:04]

Trent Horn:

… Health treatment, other things they’re mistaken about that, they wouldn’t fall under your narrow set of criteria of yes life actually, the amount of life you have now or whatever it’ll be is not actually worth living.

Brandon:

Sure. And we can pick a really high number, we can say 99% if you want. But I think it’s because they are, like you said, dealing with maybe a mental condition. That won’t exist in heaven. We’ll have fully intact awareness of the perfection of the situation if it does indeed exist. My whole point is if heaven isn’t what it’s claimed to be, or just for the sake of actually enjoying heaven while we’re there for the first 20 trillion years, comparing that with a 70-year lifespan and someone who is sick, or doesn’t have all the information, or is being harmed, I don’t think it’s fair of me to say that if I were stuck in a completely abusive situation and there’s literally no way out or no way for me to conceive of it getting out, I understand what drives people to take those unfortunate, drastic measures. I haven’t had to be in that position myself, so it’s hard for me to judge it.

But I have to imagine with all faculties and zero suffering in heaven as claimed, I should be able to make an educated decision. Just the presence of that button being there says there is free will. You are not stuck here. To be stuck there, I think immediately robs us of one of the pleasures that would be required, which is some sort of free will or autonomy.

Trent Horn:

And I think my reply to that would be that just as we don’t enslave people or take away their freedom when we forcibly prevent them from committing suicide in this life, because they falsely believe life is not worth living, we are not slaves. We do not lack freedom. If it is the case that in heaven, life is always worth living, and so choosing self-annihilation would always be irrational. That free-

Brandon:

Well if you put that precursor on it that in heaven it’s always worth living forever, then you’ve immediately robbed the statement of the potentiality of it. I agree with you. If heaven is a place that you would never want to leave, then yes, we would never need a button to allow us to leave. My entire presupposition with this, and it wasn’t even just based on Yahweh’s heaven when I gave it in the first example. It was if there’s an affinity that I am subject to, which is so different than our earthly experience, knowing something is going to end is enough sometimes to tell someone, “Wait 10 years, see what changes.” When someone’s at year 8 billion, what are you going to tell them to wait for? What information don’t they have? What part of their brain is broken? I do understand the point to a degree, but I think that it’s just apples and oranges for what we’re trying to talk about here.

Trent Horn:

Right. I’m just getting back also, because this does go back a little bit to the monotony boredom objection or the experience of heaven being hellish. This also tracks to a little bit more of a morality question of, are we slaves if God doesn’t allow us the ability to self annihilate?

Brandon:

I do think, I’m so sorry, I don’t want to cut you off, but I remembered something you said and I think it’s pertinent to the point you have arrived at. I think we’ll just have to disagree on this particular point, because what you were trying to say is, “Okay, it’s not slavery when we force people to not commit suicide here.” And I don’t think it’s always the case, but I think sometimes it’s the case. 

I think when you have a terminally ill patient who pick whatever number makes you more satisfactory with this, 92 years old, and we know that they’re going to die in six months and that the quality of their life is going to be awful, and every single one of their friends and family members has died, and they’re alone in cold with their money being sucked dry from them that they’d otherwise love to give to charity, and they’re being told they can’t get off the merry-go-round. I think that is slavery. You’ve completely taken this person who has every reason and every capability to make this decision for themself and said, “You can’t because I’m morally uncomfortable with it.”

That to me is slavery here on earth. And I think that’s more akin to being stuck in an eternity than the example of the young person who has just not fully developed their prefrontal cortex.

Trent Horn:

How about a young person who ends up as a quadriplegic? I don’t want to-

Brandon:

Sure. I think there’s considerations. I don’t have all the answers for euthanasia in our current life. I think there would be some serious understandings to take on, what is the level of communication they can have? What are their desires in life? What kind of friends and family do they have? Are they quadriplegic in a first-world country or are they in a third-world country? I mean there are so many things to consider.

Trent Horn:

Sure. And we could easily get sidetracked to debate about euthanasia, and assisted suicide, and its merits here, because I think though you definitely have a dividing line where there would be cases where if you prevented someone from committing suicide, they’d say, “You’re enslaving me. You’re taking away my freedom.”

Brandon:

I do think so. Yeah.

Trent Horn:

You would say, “No, I’m not doing that because your decision to commit suicide is irrational.”

Brandon:

I wouldn’t say it’s irrational. I’d say that sometimes, we aren’t playing with the full deck. If someone does have a, again, you said you don’t want to get sidetracked, so I’ll try to be very brief. But there are considerations in this earth when it comes to age, not just because of age and how much time is left, but because of development again of the prefrontal cortex, or because of hormones, etc.

Trent Horn:

I think my term is fine. What you’re saying is that somebody could make a decision to commit suicide that is rational given their analysis of the factors or a decision that is irrational.

Brandon:

Agree.

Trent Horn:

Given the analysis. Right. And so we both agree that it’s not slavery, or taking away their freedom, or doing something wrong to prevent someone from committing suicide for an irrational reason. So if it were the case in heaven that it would always be irrational to reject that which is perfectly good, then I would say we’re not slaves. 

The whole point about slavery, it’s like yes, we’re human beings to own another human being, especially an adult and an adult. But let’s say a parent and their infant child, they have a lot more authority over that child, where if they were to treat me that way, that would be tantamount to slavery.

But for an example, if I said, whenever you make a decision, do you always try to do that which is good, or do you always try to do that which is reasonable? Would we say, “Well then you’re a slave to the good, you’re a slave to reason.” What’s wrong with that? 

Brandon:

I understand the utility of the word slavery having different, unfair connotations for sure. I don’t think being forced to stay somewhere forever is one of those unfair uses. I think it’s got to be the closest definition there is.

And if the excuse is, “Well, what if though it’s a place where you don’t want to leave?” Then let’s talk about that, which is definitely another point. But in so much as that I should be retaining some aspect of free will or real choice, the mere fact that it doesn’t present itself as an option leads me to believe that whatever the parent child dynamic is with God and us, after a certain amount of time or within a certain framework, would be again to me to slavery. We’re obviously going to disagree there.

Trent Horn:

Sure. And I would just say that not being able to do that which is irrational is not an infringement of freedom. That’s how I would put that. 

Brandon:

Sure.

Trent Horn:

Let’s do point number three, your third problem. That was related to free will, and as I said, dovetailing, all of that. You were concerned about heaven, free will, a dilemma that’s supposed there. Why don’t you tell us about that?

Brandon:

Sure. And I think we’re moving nicely through it in good succession to play off itself. Either, the way around all of my objections thus far have been, “But what if it’s not this way? What if God changes you or what if his presence causes something in you that changes your conception of it now from your earthly perspective?” Fine, totally understand that. That could absolutely be the case, and it would satiate some of those problems. It would introduce a new problem to me. This is my analogy of plugging that hole, and now here comes the other one. 

And the other one is the problem of then, what was the justification? I’ve heard you talk about this as the why not heaven now problem, but then what is the justification of the free will we were given on earth, where so much suffering has come in as a byproduct according to the apologetic stance? And that proving ground on this very short timeframe to determine your eternity or where you’re going for eternity. And that if we are robbed of that, once in heaven, why not cut out the horrific middleman? And so that’s the general point. And I’ve only heard you talk about this briefly, so I’m really excited to talk to you about it. It was you and Alex O’Connor had a conversation I think three or four years ago where it was kind of brought up as a side point. So I’m genuinely curious to hear your fuller thoughts on it.

Trent Horn:

Yes, why not heaven now? And this gets into some replies to the problem of evil that I actually don’t agree with, because… And this is similar. I think Alvin Plantinga has put this forward and William Lane Craig has adopted it, this idea that it’s not feasible for God to create a world where everyone freely chooses to do that which is good. I think, maybe it’s transworld depravity. There’s just some people, if God makes them, they’re always going to do what’s wrong. And I don’t think that’s the case. I think that God could create a world where everyone freely chooses to do good. So if God is able to do that, why doesn’t he do that? Why does he create a world like this? 

And my answer to that is that the most basic answer, it’s not a sufficient answer, but the most basic answer to the problem of evil is that God is justified in allowing evil if it’s to prevent greater evils or to secure greater goods.

So I think that a world that journeys from imperfect to perfect is better than one that is just created in a state of perfection. And I think it’s interesting here. I think this objection has a little bit of tension with the previous objection, the slavery objection. Because I think that if I were to say, “Well, imagine a God who creates you immediately in a state of perfection, of loving him, and adoring him, and never choosing otherwise,” that that would be considered the divine puppeteer, the Stepford… It’s better like the creepy Stepford Wives, that film based on the novel where the husbands all create their robotic perfect wives. That you might say, “Well, sounds like God just creating his own little slave army instead of letting people have the dignity of choosing that, choosing to become perfect and being involved in that.”

So do you see where I’m noticing there’s a tension here that if God just makes it all perfect, it’s like, “He’s just this slave master who made us all without a choice,” but then if he gives us a choice, it’s like, “Look at all these bad things that happened.” I feel like there’s a tension there.

Brandon:

Yeah. Except to me, it seems like he’s erring on both sides of the spectrum of harm. Let me try to explain it from my angle or how I’m perceiving what you’re saying.

So we have earth. My problem is suffering here on earth, the extent of suffering. I think some suffering would be necessary. I’m not going to be one of those people that say, “We shouldn’t have,” I understand why we need pain sensors to have utility in the world. I understand a many great deal of this, even missing someone to enjoy their company. Sure. It’s the extent of the suffering for one. And I think we have an unnecessary or an over extent of that suffering to justify the end goal.

And then when we do get to heaven according to you, then we are still moving straight into that, my problem with the slavery. So now we just have two problems. If it is indeed the fact that we can maintain our free will in heaven and thus it was necessary on Earth, it leads to my first few issues like, “Okay, well the boredom and the”… I’m not trying to have it both ways. I’m saying there’s issues with both apologetic versions of heaven. Either we do have free will, so let’s talk about the issues there. And sure there’s some of the weaker ones, or what I believe just on the basis of no tears, death, sorrow, or sin is we don’t have free will in heaven. We simply can’t. And if we don’t, then he might as well even if I would agree it’s bad going back to the slavery thing, skip this also bad part of unnecessary suffering. 

So that’s how I would justify the tension there. I’m not trying to have it both ways. I’m just saying one bad thing would still be better than two bad things. If we’re going to view heaven with absolute no free will as a bad thing, which I think it would be to agree with you. 

Trent Horn:

Well, I think we have to define what we mean by free will. That is a little bit of a tricky term. I mean lots of people define it in different ways. I’m partial to definitions of things could have been otherwise. Because there’s some people, even among atheists and some Christians, who have a compatibilist view of free will. Free will is just being able to do what you want. So if in heaven, you always want to praise God and you always want to do certain things, you will have free will. I’m not as big a fan of the compatibilist definitions, which like I said, some atheists hold and some Christians hold.

Brandon:

For a sake of the conversation, I’m not a big fan of them either. If you can’t want what you want, then how free are you?

Trent Horn:

Common ground, very good. So yeah, I would say that I think definitions of free will that have to deal with, “Things could have been different, I could have chosen different,” definitions related to that, “I am not determined by something outside of myself from what I choose to do.” I do think though that in heaven, the question is, will we have free will? 

I think my answer honestly would be yes, in a sense. We will have perfect rationality, so we’ll have freedom to choose among a variety of goods. So you can still have free will. I think a lot of people think of free will. It’s like, “Okay, I have two choices. I have good and evil. Which one am I going to pick?” Well, I think in a lot of cases it’s just choosing among goods like, “Well, do I want Raisin bran or do I want Cheerios? Do I want to become a firefighter or do I want to become a teacher?” 

So I think a lot of the choices we will make in heaven, we will have possibly an infinite number of choices, but there’ll be all different kinds of goods that we can choose. There won’t be a choice between good and evil, because evil won’t exist. And even if it did, we’d be rational enough we would never want to choose it. Now I think though, the concern, why not just get there right now?

Brandon:

Or why not create that on earth? If that is actually a version of free will, what you’re describing, where we could have done otherwise, we could have sinned, we could have chosen not to murder, to murder, etc., and avoid all of this suffering as a byproduct that we’re told is necessary. It does seem like a case of having your cake and eating it too.

And I also don’t think it has to jump straight to your other thing of, “Well if he just makes us in heaven, there’s no ability for perfection.” According to what you’re saying now with this kind of limited free will, where we still somehow always end up doing the right thing for everyone for all time, I think is just equally problematic on a different plane.

Trent Horn:

Well I think though… And it’s funny, I’ve mentioned this before. When we talk about a world, God makes a world, a lot of us just think of a three-dimensional snapshot of something. When we talk about a possible world, we should really think of a four-dimensional universe. Think about the block universe. We could get ourselves outside of time and see the whole block.

So there could be a block that is just always perfect. But in the block that goes from imperfect to perfect, you also have some goods that will exist in that world that are not in the perfect block.

Brandon:

I agree with that. 

Trent Horn:

Goods like compassion, courage, forgiveness. So that’s not the whole answer to the problem, because I also don’t want to get sidetracked in the problem of evil. We could be going on about that forever.

Brandon:

For sure.

Trent Horn:

But I do think the answer to the free will objection will go back to yes, God could create a world that is perfect, that is free from sin. But if he can bring about greater goods and ultimately conquer evil, then there’s a justification there for him to do that.

And I do think, yeah, you’ve got these unique goods in the imperfect to perfect scenario that are worth having, even if there’s suffering that’s involved, versus just the perfect scenario, because everyone can be justly compensated with infinite happiness.

Brandon:

So I disagree that… I think there’s an issue with compensation. I think that it to me, seems flawed and bad. Our first example of compensation in the Bible is really the story of Job. And I know it’s not the same thing, but it’s kind of representative of that, “Hey, there is a certain amount of allowed suffering, even unnecessarily, that is going to be okay in the end if you just hang with me here.” And that is going to fail in comparison of course to heaven, getting double kids, and double riches, and double-

Trent Horn:

He doesn’t get double kids.

Brandon:

I’m sorry, but his kids become more wealthy and they are more beautiful, and he does get a lot of double possessions.

Trent Horn:

I only mention that because it understands that the children have a different value than the possessions. So they can’t be replaced-

Brandon:

A little. The fact that the girls are more beautiful so he can get more… Again, we don’t need to get on a Job apologetic. I think that’s going to be its own thing. But I think that it shows that compensation is a flawed concept, and this seems to be a concept from the beginning of how God plans to reward, or just again, compensate us for suffering. And I don’t think an infinity that I’ve already said there’s certain problems I think are withstanding in that. And you keep coming back to framing it as, “Well, it will be perfect, and good, and you’ll want to be there.” And I understand why you’re saying that, but it’s taken away some of the ammo of maybe if it’s not those things, and I don’t have good reason to believe it’s those things or can be those things, that it’s not actually just compensation for the amount of suffering going on earth. 

And I know we don’t want to get sidetracked with the problem of evil, but this is honestly my biggest issue with heaven is the free will issue. And the reason that the free will issue for heaven is the biggest issue for me is because of the problem of suffering.

So it’s hard to get into this too much without hitting into some examples of compensation and how much suffering is enough suffering. So I’m not sure exactly where to take this with you except to say there is an amount of suffering on earth that seems to be clearly unnecessary to me, that we have to supposedly have or happened organically because of our free will, that just won’t happen in heaven for some reason. And if it just won’t happen in heaven for some reason-

Trent Horn:

Well, there won’t be suffering at all.

Brandon:

Exactly. So then I would say there’s no free will. If we have this thing that is suffering because we have free will, and then we go to heaven and there can’t be this thing, suffering, which is a byproduct of free will. It seems logical to me that then there wouldn’t also be free will. 

How can I really do whatever I want? And maybe bad definition of free will, so I’ll let you reframe it. How can I in heaven have the option to showcase it all that there is free will, if I can’t even cause the slightest stumbling block, or suffering, or tear, or cause a death, etc. in heaven, all the things that they’re not allowed in heaven. By definition, to have those things not allowed in heaven means that we can’t do certain things that otherwise we would be doing, could be doing, are doing now. I don’t understand how all of a sudden, we get to heaven, we can’t do things, but we maintain free will.

Trent Horn:

Well, I think this goes back to my, what I said earlier about suicide. It’s like telling somebody who wants to run down the street naked, “Hey, you can’t do that. I thought this was America.” You’re saying, “I’m not free.” Well, you’re not free. Freedom, it entails the ability to choose that which is good.

Brandon:

But they can choose to run down the street naked. They’re just going to suffer the consequence. 

Trent Horn:

Right. Well, you would say they’re not free to do that.

Brandon:

Well, there will be a consequence if they do, but they get the choice to weigh that consequence against that action and decide to do the action or not. And what it seems like you’re saying is we won’t get to even weigh that choice in heaven to have the opportunity to choose the action and deal with a consequence, because it simply doesn’t exist or can’t exist. 

I don’t see how it’s the same thing. If you’re saying there’s a new version of free will in heaven, and that it’s somehow different from the one we have on earth that creates these byproducts, then let’s talk about that. But if-

Trent Horn:

Yeah, it’s not a new version of free will. It’s just the fact that our intellectual abilities… Because whenever we make choices in this life, we’re always pursuing that which we think is good. Even when someone does what we would say is evil, there was some kind of good that they were pursuing in that, let’s say even pleasure for example. People don’t choose evil for its own sake. There’s always some kind of defaced or deformed good that they’re seeking after. 

But if in heaven, we are free from sin, we have glorified bodies so that we are never deceived again, so we will always desire the good, we’ll correctly apprehend it, and will ourselves to choose it. Then I mean, maybe you can logically conceive of doing evil, but there would just be no mechanism for doing that, because the only reason people choose evil in this life is because they either fail to understand the good, or they lack a willingness to seek after it. But if our wills and rationality are perfect, evil is not a possibility out of that.

Brandon:

Yeah, there’s a lot there. I don’t even know if I fully agree on why people do evil on Earth with the only two reasons as you just stated. I’d want to explore that. I think that’s a huge topic. So it’s hard for me to speak right back to that.

Trent Horn:

Sure, yeah.

Brandon:

But in terms of, it just seems like there’s just a little piece there missing for heaven. You say these things like, “Okay, when we have perfect rationality and a perfect understanding of the good, even with a will that could choose otherwise, we will always choose the good.” That third one just seems like a bit of a guess or a bit of a have to, to make the rest of it work out.

I mean, I don’t want to get into a conversation about the difference between angels and humans. But supposedly even around God’s perfect presence and glory, we have an angel that made a decision against good with some version of free will, even with way more knowledge than someone who just gets to heaven is going to have about God’s perfection and glory. He watched him design the earth. It depends how far you want to take the lore of the Satan. But I mean, do you understand what I’m saying? If we have one example so far where someone has chosen and can sin in heaven, that sin can exist in heaven.

Trent Horn:

And I would say that’s a little bit different. That deals with the creation of the angels, because they’re created beings. They’re not eternal like God is eternal, and so they were created-

Brandon:

But we’re created beings.

Trent Horn:

Right. But what I’m saying is that their creation and their ability to choose God or not choose God is different than what is called the beatific vision, us being in the immediate presence of God when we are in heaven, versus whatever choice they made and however their vision of God was mediated so that they were able to make that choice or not.

Brandon:

We may not have enough information about the difference between where we would be in heaven and where the angels were in heaven. But I think that there is a bit of a problematic stance, and it definitely wouldn’t be the crux of my argument. I would have to imagine that Lucifer, and if we believe Revelations, the third of heavenly hosts that went with him, which is also where we get a lot of concepts about heaven, had some experience to the grandeur of this being and had the same perfect presence that God would admit that we, as very broken fallen creatures once we get to heaven would also have, and then somehow choose never to sin. It just doesn’t seem to follow for me that no one would ever, ever, with all eternity, ever choose one time to not sin. That seems like something has been changed drastically. 

Trent Horn:

Then I would say what follows from that is that the angels, when they made this choice at their creation, did not have an immediate experience and encounter with God. It’s mediated in the same way our experience of God is mediated in our created sense. But let me ask you a question then about free will. Do you think that when a person has a choice, they should always choose good over evil?

Brandon:

When a person has a choice… I think there’s other variables, but sure. Yeah, I think that’s probably fair to say.

Trent Horn:

Okay. That’s very good to hear. So it seems that we would have-

Brandon:

Just waiting for the punchline.

Trent Horn:

No, there’s no punchline. I’m just trying to explore here the nature of free will and choices. Will we have free will in heaven? It seems like we do have a moral… If you think about morality, the most basic moral command a person could think of is do good, avoid evil. And that’s something we should-

Brandon:

Do no harm, sure.

Trent Horn:

Right, but do not even do no harm necessarily, because sometimes that’s a subset of it. Because sometimes doing good isn’t just avoiding harm, it’s also going out and benefiting others. Things like that. Always choose good over evil. We should always do that. 

And so if the good is a real thing, if God just is goodness itself, and we have that unmediated union with God, what is called the beatific vision, then I don’t see a problem with us ever wanting to choose something else, that we would be immediately in God’s presence in a way different from how we choose God here, or even how the angels chose for or against God at the beginning of their creation. And that God, like I said, he’s infinite in power, goodness, and knowledge. What would prevent an omnipotent, omniscient being who is pure goodness itself, from giving me the ability to always choose him in perpetuity?

Brandon:

Sure. Then he’s given you an ability that you otherwise didn’t have while still on earth. And so there is something new that’s happening in heaven, that is allowing you to no longer do the thing that we do here. So we’re back to the original point to me, which is why not heaven now then? And I understand why we went the way we went, but your answer to the first one of why not heaven now is, well, it’s better to be created and have a chance to perfect instead of just arriving at-

Trent Horn:

My answer is that there are goods that exist, that the alternative you’re suggesting would lack particular goods, so there’s an opportunity for greater goods in the imperfect to perfect scenario.

Brandon:

It would also… And this is the thing I think we haven’t covered. It would also lack particular harms.

Trent Horn:

Like heaven?

Brandon:

This version of, you’re saying, and maybe if you want to restate it, that’s fine, but you’re saying that in the other example here where we lose out on the ability to be perfected and have that spectrum towards the good, that we missed out on certain goods like compassion, because we never experienced what we needed to achieve compassion. But we also then would lose the chance for all those harms. What is better, to have a lot of harm and some new goods, or to have only goods?

Trent Horn:

To have only goods. Well, I think that there’s-

Brandon:

Okay, so I don’t have compassion anymore because I never experienced watching a child starve to death, but now there’s also no starving children. To me, I would be willing to give up some order of positive things or set goods for none of those harms to ever have existed. To create dying children just to figure out what empathy is seems totally unnecessary to me. Can we not be created…

And also by the way, I think we’re putting limitations on this all powerful God all of a sudden. Can’t we be created in a way where we can appreciate something like empathy without the extreme horror that there is or not? I would think a God could do that. And even if he’s bound by some, there’s organic cause and effect that we have to allow in a system, then I would be willing to lose those harms at the sake of knowing certain other goods.

Trent Horn:

So I would say this. As I said, this is getting a little bit into the problem of evil versus just whether heaven is a good thing or not, and it seems like the objection is, “Well yeah, this all would be really good. It is really good. It’s so good. We should just have it right now.” Which is going to be a different objection. But I think to tie it all together, I guess a question I would have that might help tie it all together is if God, by that term maximally great being that you would want to exist is unlimited in all of his attributes…

PART 2 OF 5 ENDS [01:02:04]

Trent Horn:

That you would want to exist is unlimited in all of his attributes. If God existed, how do you think he should treat us?

Brandon:

I don’t know because I don’t have that omniscience and that all power, but I think there’s got to be an obviously better… If I can imagine one in my weak human state, to some degree, any degree, even if I have no idea the specific precision structure of creating a soul that can do this, then I think already we have an issue. Again, you’re saying you don’t want to get into the problem of suffering, so I’m biting my tongue on many examples that I think would take us down a rabbit hole.

Trent Horn:

Right, I’m just trying to figure out that, if God existed, because you’re saying this is bad in the world, this is bad in the world, this is bad in the world, what should God have done or what is the typical way he should treat us to say, that is in accord with what a perfect being would do?

Brandon:

Well, I think you can answer this a lot of different ways. One, I’m fine saying I don’t know, but a God would know. I’m totally fine saying that. If you want me to guess at certain things, I would say forget compassion and empathy if it means just getting rid of sickness, illness, and death. I’m fine. I wouldn’t know the difference. I think that something better than what we have could be created, even if I can’t say with what specifications, by God that is truly all beneficial, all powerful.

Trent Horn:

I agree with you, the world could be better, but I don’t believe there is such a thing as the best of all possible worlds, if that makes sense.

Brandon:

Yeah, I don’t know that if we got a ton of different all powerful gods and they each made their version of the perfect world, if one is more perfect than the other perfects. Sure, there might not be an idealized version, but that shouldn’t lead to the black or white fallacy that the one we have now is suitable or is something that we would expect to see from a God that is these tri-omni qualities that we give him.

Trent Horn:

Right, I’m just saying the best of all possible worlds is the largest number. There is no such-

Brandon:

But there are better worlds, even if there’s not a best of all, right?

Trent Horn:

That’s right. But just because there are worlds that are better, it doesn’t follow God as obligated to create them. He creates a world that I would say is good, and the question is then, is this world so bad it’s not worth creating? That’s where heaven factors in though, because if you say, “Well, God creates, in this world, people…” And we’ll just put universalism out there, we’ll leave hell off the table for now. Honestly, that’s a subject we could have a different conversation on, which would be interesting, more heated, sorry for the pun, to talk about hell. To say, “Here’s a world, God makes it, and every person in it has infinite happiness.” Well, that sounds like a good world for God to create, but what’s interesting there is that you would still have infinite happiness no matter what suffering you encountered in this life because a finite negative and an infinite positive is still an infinite positive.

Brandon:

Yeah, I understand. I think I’m really trying to understand what you’re saying and it sounds like, and I’m not trying to misrepresent you, so please really correct me here, if there can’t be a best of all possible worlds, and yes there could always be a better world, at what point do we say that a God should have to upgrade past our current world? How do we know we’re not in one of the better worlds already? I guess maybe help me understand what your point is exactly in putting that forth.

Trent Horn:

Well, I’m just saying that if the concern is I don’t like that God… If it’s veering a little bit into the problem of evil, because I think we’re saying, “Yeah, heaven, if it’s good and perfect and we really like it, why doesn’t God make it right now?” Well, because if he allows it going from imperfect to perfect, there are these other goods that will exist, and so we have a wider variety of goods within the entire world experience. And to say, “No, I think it would be better if we exchange the wider variety of goods so that we can have less harm.” I think that ultimately is going to be a little bit of a value judgment here.

I mean, we do that all the time as human beings. When we create a society, we could allow people to take risks and have freedom and there’s a wider variety of goods, skydiving, bungee jumping, cave diving, but then there’s a wider variety of harms that will ensue from that. So you can always, even as human beings when we create, you can restrict things to have less harm, but then you’ll lose out on good. So part of that, when we’re debating should God have done this or that, it’s a little bit of a value judgment.

Brandon:

I agree. The key difference though being that I think we are working within a set framework. We know that bodies can get injured. We know that they can break bones and that certain injuries can be bad enough to lead to death. So I’m going to take all that into consideration when I come up with the concept of skydiving or bungee jumping, and then I can still give people, and I make sure that they’re trained and I make sure they sign waivers and that they are of an age where they can understand things, and then they can make a decision, or I can even make the decision for them to offer this in the first place. I get the analogy so far as that goes, but it’s still within this current framework of what God created. He created the bones that can break. He created the pain that can be sent.

He created the fact that, without consent of any form, some three year old can wake up conscious on this planet with crippling disease, die, receive no earthly compensation, never even understand the great gains for themselves of things like empathy. Maybe they’re just, what? A lesson for someone else? And they’re compensated by heaven. And I just disagree. I think that a all perfect, all powerful God, could, should and would have done better. I think that we are looking at a very natural world and trying to fit the horrors that we see here with the description of a God that I just cannot justify. And so you’re 100% right, it’s coming down to the problem of evil and suffering.

Trent Horn:

Yeah, so I want to-

Brandon:

It’s a big part of it.

Trent Horn:

But it segues a little, this is actually working out pretty decent, this segues a little bit into point four that you made in the video, because so far it seems like where the objection was going is that, I guess as the dialogue has been continuing between you and I, I think the concerns are: is heaven all it’s cracked up to be, and if it is all it’s cracked up to be, why don’t we have it now? That seems to be the main two things so far we seem to have been tussling with, right?

Brandon:

Yeah. I think those are our two main holes.

Trent Horn:

Yeah. We’re going down the road I think that it is all that it’s cracked up to be. Then we have more of a conversation about the problem of evil and about whether a world where people have infinite happiness for their entire existence, that it’s interesting that the complaint you made earlier about endless existence counting against heaven being worthwhile, that can actually work in favor of my position against evil. That if your existence were infinite and endless, the amount your finite suffering in that existence would be essentially zero. Right?

Brandon:

Could you repeat that?

Trent Horn:

If you have an existence of infinite happiness, and part of that existence is finite suffering, then that means the finite suffering, the amount of it in comparison is essentially zero.

Brandon:

Yeah, except that one is happening on a plane… I mean, we’re having to assume a lot of things, I think, to make that work. And I think that some of what we have been dialoguing about is that that statement is making a whole lot of claims that I haven’t necessarily agreed to thus far. But yeah, I think, and I said this at the beginning, I understand a set amount of suffering. My argument has never been there should be no suffering. So yeah, we’re in agreeance that some suffering on an earthly realm for a small amount of time compared to infinity, I hear exactly what you’re saying and why it cuts both ways.

Trent Horn:

You’re just saying it’s gratuitous right now.

Brandon:

I think it’s absolutely gratuitous, and I also don’t think that the current version of my understanding of heaven is compensation for it, but yes.

Trent Horn:

Okay. Let’s go to point four. This works out really well. So your fourth concern was that pain is kind of necessary, that the absence of pain in heaven would be a problem.

Brandon:

Yeah-

Trent Horn:

[inaudible 01:11:19] because, and it’s good you said you’re not absolutist about pain. You think that some of it can be helpful to life.

Brandon:

Yeah, yeah. And I would like to think that if I was an all loving, all perfect God I could figure out that balance. It’s not something that I would even say in an earthly realm I would be able to say, “This is exactly how it should be.” I just would hope that the God of the universe could figure it out, and from what I look at, it seems like it’s not. So the issue that I was making in point four, if I remember, was more along the lines of, going back, if heaven is this place of no tears, death, sorrow, or sin, and I might be confusing it with point six so keep me on track, but I don’t know if that was my entire point of point four. Was it just that there should be-

Trent Horn:

Well, you were talking about how in Revelation it says there’s no tears, no suffering, no pain, but you like things like running an ultra marathon, even if it hurts.

Brandon:

Sure. Okay. It was more about, I think maybe this one was the stagnation of heaven, which is fine. I think it’s slightly different. I think that for us, and this kind of ties back into point one with the monotony, the boredom, et cetera, and we covered it slightly with the example of getting to see my friends on the hiking trip. Well, if I’m always with them all the time, in constant presence, it can never end, it can go on as long as I want, I’m no longer in the absence of. I don’t have that ability to create miss, to create new memories that I then get to share with them. There is this thing that has been lost, and it could be as simple as, well, if you love basketball, you’ll play basketball in heaven, but no one can lose. Or if they can lose, they can’t feel bad about it. So then where’s the desire to win? And I know these seem like silly examples-

Trent Horn:

No, that’s fine. It’s important to think about these things. I think that that makes… It is always hard. We always have to balance with heaven, and I think it’s good you’re asking these tough questions because this is what Christianity offers people. I think it is their deepest longing and yearning for that which is good to never end. We naturally recoil at death. We only, this goes back to the suicide stuff we were talking about earlier, we only welcome death when it seems to be better than life, but when life is better than death, death is always something we recoil at. And so there’s this natural desire for things to continue on, but then you’re having a rightful concern like, oh, if it continues on what if it actually would be hellish?

And I agree that would be the case in a finite world, if we just had a magic potion that made us immortal. I’d always say no to that. I smiled at it with the basketball example because I imagine, I do martial arts and I’m not very good at it, I get defeated all the time, but I know people who have done it who just have bad attitudes and they’re just the absolute worst when they get defeated. And then there’s people with good attitudes who, when they get defeated they smile, they had a good time, they learned something. Actually, and this, we might conjoin point six and four here. I think that’s fine for us to do right now, because six was about fairness a little bit. I think maybe we should put them together because that deals with stagnation so we can keep these things together. I do believe that we will have growth in heaven. Why don’t you restate it a little bit so we’re on the same page, and put them together?

Brandon:

Yeah. Tying these two things together, point four and six, stagnation and/or the ability… It seems to me from my reading of the scriptures and also just like a concept of what certain things would have to mean, that there are levels of what I would consider to be unfair in heaven. So a few different examples to maybe set the stage for us, and I’m sure it seems funny to even say unfair in heaven, but is the Catholic mindset in agreement that there are actual physical rewards in heaven based off how one lives their life on earth?

Trent Horn:

There are rewards. The nature of the rewards are going to be different. But people’s experiences in heaven will be different based on how their soul was prepared on earth.

Brandon:

Sure. I guess the first and easiest point, the long of it is that, hey, I think that if we can never lose, how can we improve if we’re in a state of something that is less desirable? If we’re always in the perfect, doesn’t that mean that there is a standard of perfection that is upon us and we would have to go beneath that to raise up to that? That was kind of your argument for, we need a process where things aren’t perfect so we can achieve, and now you’re saying in heaven there will be growth we can achieve. And so I’m tying that into also levels of fairness. Let’s say you’re someone, you were raised in a Christian Catholic family, you’re great at ministry, you’ve gone out, you’ve denied yourself, you’ve taken up your cross, and you are going to be rewarded, whatever that looks like.

Great. Now you have someone else who is in a foreign country, out in the jungle, no chance to ever hear of God. Not living bad, just living according to their current culture. A missionary visits them the day before they die, and they receive the good news of Jesus Christ and they go to heaven, but they will not have any reward from their earthly life because they simply did not have a chance, none of which was left up to them. God chose when and where they were going to be born so he has put this standard upon them. So now these two people go to heaven. They get there at the same time and they have different experiences, one that ideally, to some degree, according to the whole point of the term reward has to be better than the other. That, to me, is so problematic for not only the reason of there’s something different, but also the fairness in the allowance of the individual life that we get on this earth that can lead us to getting to achieve the better thing in heaven.

Trent Horn:

Right. So to break this down, I believe there will be inequality in heaven, but it will not be unfair. So I think that there’s a difference between those things.

Brandon:

Separate but equal.

Trent Horn:

Well, no-

Brandon:

I mean, I’m asking. Is it just that it’s different, but it’s the same? Because if it’s truly… I’m sorry.

Trent Horn:

No, you’re fine. There will be inequality, but it will not be unfair on God’s part to allow the inequalities of how we are able to receive him. So in this life, we’ll have the opportunity to prepare our souls to have union with God. And those who order themselves more towards God and union with him in this life will have a greater capacity to dwell in the mystery of God and the next life and to have union with him. So I think that there’s nothing wrong with that, of certain people having attained greater spiritual goods than others. But, so when it comes to the rewards of what they’ll receive, some will have more and some will have less, but all will be still perfectly happy and infinitely happy even though some people have greater spiritual goods than others.

I was thinking about this yesterday, because I like infinity, the Kalām argument I play around with. When you talk about heaven, you do have to start thinking about infinity a lot. And I guess this sort of paradox arose for me, that let’s say you have holy Frank, and kind of holy Bob. Those are the two examples that you gave, someone who devoted themselves in this life to God, another who just got right in at the tail end, so to speak. And let’s say how their souls are prepared to enter into the mystery of God, on day one… We’ll call him holy Harry, kind of holy Kirk, Harry and Kirk. Harry, on day one, it’s like 1,000 units, and it is an analogy, it’s going to be very crude. He’ll have the ability to have…

Sorry, we’ll do kind of Kirk. One unit of dwelling with God. The next day it’s two, then three, then four, then five, then six, and he kind of proceeds down the number line infinitely 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Holy Harry, it’ll be like 1,000, 2000, 3000, 4,000, 5,000. So whenever Harry and Kirk are with each other, holy Harry will maybe help Kirk grow in spirituality because he’ll always be 1,000 times more able to receive God. But what’s interesting is that Kirk, given the unending nature of heaven, he will get to 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 6,000. He will always get to those points that Harry does, even though Harry will always have more spiritual goods than him. One of the paradoxes of the infinite, if you will.

Brandon:

Different infinities.

Trent Horn:

There are different infinities, that’s right. So I think that the mathematical study of infinity can maybe help us understand some of the ways how there will be differences in heaven, but there will still be the infinite happiness.

Brandon:

So if it’s just a matter of time, which is essentially what you’re saying that, yeah, they might start off on some unequal footing, but everyone, even though infinity we’re saying doesn’t have an end, it seems to me then that kind of Kirk will never reach our other guy, right? If God is truly infinite in his goodness and mystery and in the understanding there’s no stagnation there, he’ll never catch up. So somewhere along the line, our other guy has had it better.

Trent Horn:

Yes.

Brandon:

That seems very silly to me that that would be determined based off of when and where you’re born, as well as some other concepts. I could understand if it’s like, okay, I’m going to do a heart study on every person that’s alive… Even that breaks down. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even brought that up as a point. I think that I tie it back into the free will aspect of our time here on this earth, which I don’t believe is all that free by the way, which we haven’t really got into and we don’t need to. But the fact that God will choose who he’s going to set up to be able to be in better relation with him in heaven for a perpetual basis, that seems problematic to me. It seems unfair, which is the point.

Trent Horn:

It’s unequal, but it would only be unfair if we had a right to these pleasurable experiences and rewards. So if God, because heaven is a gracious gift of God, we can’t obligate God, we don’t have a right to these things. Any gift that we receive from him, that’s something that we are grateful for, that he does not… We don’t have a right to these things, so we’re not harmed if some people receive more than others.

Brandon:

I understand that. I also agree we’re not harmed because if everything’s perfect in heaven, we can’t be in the lack of something, right? If we’re not suffering, I can’t be jealous, if I’m kind of Kirk, of what holy Bob gets. But that brings me to the point of, what’s then the point of any reward system at all then? The way that God blesses people on earth, according to his word, is he’s trying to give them things that they otherwise wouldn’t have that other people around them don’t. We see this with blessings and curses all through the Bible.

A lot of New Testament gets into store up treasures in heaven, not here on earth, but a lot of the blessings, and if this God is the same to some extent, yeah, it seems that God has shown us who he is, that he is the kind of God that wants better things for people that have acted better, and that rewards, whether it’s crowns, mansions, or you’ve put it more poetically and spiritually, that it is a deeper understanding and tighter communion with God himself. But there are some very physical elements, and I’m not sure what point I brought this up, I’m so lost in all of my points and I thank you for keeping better track of them than me, but one of the points was about this physical manmade nature of heaven and how that seems like we’re wanting to extend God this grace of, no, it’s going to be spiritual rewards. He’ll keep everyone happy-

Trent Horn:

No, I do think there will be physical realities in heaven and some of the rewards may be physical in nature.

Brandon:

What would be the point of a physical reward to someone that can’t suffer or have jealousy or have clout? It seems to me, and this is part of, I see the Bible as something manmade, and telling someone who is suffering, “Don’t worry, you’ll have a big house in heaven. Don’t worry, you’ll be invited to the feast. Don’t worry, you’ll have crowns and others will not.” That, to me, sounds like a very manmade concept of what an afterlife could look like, and yet it’s what we’ll get.

Trent Horn:

I think the idea that a reward only makes me happy when I can see that others don’t share in it, that, to me, is the manmade concept. It’s kind of like a petty way of understanding how-

Brandon:

I agree it’s petty. The size of the house is a petty thing, right?

Trent Horn:

More that the idea that I get to have it and others don’t. That rather, going back to my martial arts example, you can have someone who studies martial arts who gets into it and is used to always winning at things, and they start doing it and they’re really bad at it and they’re just frustrated and angry that here’s these other people that are better than them and they’re jealous.

Or, when they encounter people that are worse than them, they lord their superiority over them. And that’s an evil way to look at inequality. Whereas when you are a really good person and you do a martial art or a sport or a hobby, the people who are better than you, you feel the good of admiration. You feel the good of, when they teach you, learning from them, you experience that good. And when you meet people that are inferior to you, you experience the good of teaching, of mentoring, of responsibility. And so I think that those inequalities are opportunities for goods for those who are properly disposed, which is why heaven will only be a place for people who are properly ordered to the good.

Brandon:

Except that God has to do something to make us properly ordered to the good. The example of whoever it is though… That’s-

Trent Horn:

That’s grace. That’s what God’s grace does to us and changes our hearts.

Brandon:

100%. And I’ll hop on board from a theological perspective. But then it makes the rewards so silly, because what you do on Earth can somehow impress God to the degree that you will be set up for infinity with something that is to be more desired, which is why it’s a reward, even if it doesn’t create jealousy or loss for someone else. It’s a blessing from God. It is him displaying grace to you for what you were able to do in your-

Trent Horn:

But you have the choice to cooperate with the grace God gives you in this life. When you are a child of God, you’re baptized, and you have the opportunity to display the supernatural virtue of charity, God gives you that grace to be able to do it. You can say yes or you can say no to it, even knowing saying yes might involve suffering, bearing a lot of burdens to love a difficult person, for example. You are able to do that and there is a good in that, and the reward comes from the fact that because God is our father, he loves us, he wants to reward us. He’s anthropomorphically proud of what we have done with the grace that he’s given us. And so he lovingly rewards us just the same as I would with my children when they choose to do what’s good when I ask them to.

Brandon:

I understand it to an extent. And I think it’s funny though to keep bringing it back down to earth to help it make sense.

Trent Horn:

It’s the only thing we have around to make analogies with.

Brandon:

I understand completely. It’s just that it is very representative of man’s nature, I think. It’s hard for me to envision a supreme being that is different than us, that is bigger and better than us, that is actually perfect, utilizing these same carrot and stick concepts that we’ve had to come up with to induce behavior, which is essentially what this is. I mean, God is saying, “When you do the things I like, here is something that I will give you that is better for you. And the things I don’t like, whether it’s just rejection of me, not having faith in me, whatever the stance of salvation is for any particular person, there will be bad things.” We have the carrot and the stick-

Trent Horn:

Yeah. I don’t think it’s entirely extrinsic though, that part of the reason when your child does something good, part of the reward is the moral growth, the discipline, the sense of self-satisfaction they receive. Part of the reward is intrinsic. So God being all powerful, how he orders the world and rewards us for choosing good and choosing to follow him, I think that a lot of that is going to be intrinsic. The reward is just what it will do to our souls and how it’ll make us feel to be more conformed to who God is. But I do also think that there’s going to be some extrinsic things we might receive in heaven, but I think it is ultimately, the rewards, we don’t want to think about them in kind of a mercenary sort of way, that we’re going to get all of this booty, so to speak. We have to always purge ourselves of an earthly mindset of what that will be like. The idea is that-

Brandon:

And yet they use those booty terms of streets of gold and large houses and things for a reason. So either God doesn’t care about these things and it’s all intrinsic growth, which would go back to point four, the stagnation. I really am not trying to be difficult. I simply do not understand reaching a place of pure perfection and then still needing to continue to grow. That says, to me, something is lacking. And I understand your martial arts analogy just fine, but-

Trent Horn:

Well I think the difference there is, when we get to heaven, the perfection we will have in the sense we will be perfectly free from sin, for example. So we will be perfected and sin will not have a hold over us. We will not be tempted to choose evil over good, but we can still grow in our ability to apprehend, understand the good, to fully enter into it. I think that’s where we’ll have the capacity to grow even in things of our knowledge. When you get to heaven, none of us will ever be omniscient. That’s a property that only belongs to God. But the goods of knowledge, for example, we will have the capacity to grow in. So we’ll be perfected in the sense of being free from sin, but we still have room to grow in knowledge and virtue and many of these other [inaudible 01:30:09].

Brandon:

And you think that intrinsic growth is infinite? You don’t think, there’s no arriving, there’s no actualizing.

Trent Horn:

There’s no, for example when it comes to knowledge, there’s an infinite amount of knowledge. There are the elements-

Brandon:

I don’t know that that’s true. I think there’s a finite… You don’t think that… I mean, I’m not saying it’s a small number. You don’t think, if God is omniscient, if he truly knows everything, that’s everything, you’re telling me that given enough time, no one else, if they continue to learn in heaven and truly have forever, can reach that same level of knowledge? This goes to the growth thing, point four. It’s hard for me to believe-

Trent Horn:

You won’t be able to… Only God can be infinite because of his timeless eternity and his pure actuality.

Brandon:

Well that property is a little bit different than intrinsically growing forever or attaining all knowledge.

Trent Horn:

Because the problem is, and this goes back to the Kalām argument for God, you cannot form an actual infinite successively. So if you add finite elements together, they will always be finite.

Brandon:

Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. I think that you’re moving straight on to something else, a different property, that I’m not saying. I’m saying, do you believe there will be a truly limitless ability of personal intrinsic growth for the individuals that go to heaven?

Trent Horn:

Yes. Well, I would say at least in some respects, and once again, I’m going to have to, I will be humble as to what exactly heaven entails and what will happen there. All I know is that if God is all good, if he truly is unlimited in existence, power, knowledge, and goodness, then I believe the burden of proof is on the objector who says, “A being who is unlimited in those attributes cannot make me perpetually happy.” I don’t see a reason to think that that is the case, someone who is unlimited in all those attributes is being unable to do that.

Brandon:

Sure. So for a hypothetical, I could agree with you. I think the whole point of me bringing this particular video up on my channel was that I don’t already agree with those things and so-

Trent Horn:

Sorry, but the intrinsic growth element, so I do think in some respects we will have growth that is endless and has no limit, and that is one reason heaven will be perfect in spite of its endlessness and we’ll be supremely happy. I think it’s also possible in other respects we will have a perfect understanding of the good, and so we will not experience boredom or monotony towards familiar goods as we do in this life.

Brandon:

Yeah, I understand. I think a lot of our conversation is going to kind of come back to the same two issues of, well, if all those things are true, then we’re just simply not the same. And if we’re not the same, if there’s not this-

PART 3 OF 5 ENDS [01:33:04]

Brandon:

Simply not the same. And if we’re not the same, if there’s not this continuity, which is one thing-

Trent Horn:

Oh that, that’s point five, a little bit on here.

Brandon:

Well perfect. Look at us go.

Trent Horn:

We’re doing great here because I agree with you, we will not be the same. Who we are now, we will be different in heaven, but we will still be the same person, which does gets into issues of personal identity. That was one of the other concerns about identity and memory. And that was another concern you had.

Brandon:

Yeah, and we can maybe go briefly on it if you’d like to because I think the point with the identity and the consistency of nature has to get back to the free will. It was a segment, a subsect of that if you will, but I think that it does raise some issues. So to put it broadly, I believe that for heaven to work in the way that it is purported to work, we will have to be so vastly different from who we are now that it doesn’t make sense as a reward system, it doesn’t make sense as a grace system. It doesn’t make sense for the, again, arguing for the why not heaven now argument, because it seems like he is just taking us and making us the way he always wanted us, and putting us in a position where we can act the way we should have always acted. And so it makes all of this unnecessary. And when part of the argument is well it was necessary because we needed to perfect so that when we got there we were X.

If we’re not X, when we get there, I think we have a problem. I think those arguments fall short. And so the continuity of whether it’s memory, or the same level of consciousness, or the same level of free will are all highly problematic to me. And the example I gave in the video, and I’ll give it now just as a jumping off point and then you can backtrack to other points if you want.

Trent Horn:

Sure.

Brandon:

Is I’ve de-converted in the last three or four years. I’ve been married 13 years, my wife is a believer. Our kids are being raised under her and we’re still working that out with a level of belief. And in this scenario, let’s just say I dropped dead and then eventually they die and let’s say my son took after me and so he’s a non-believer. My wife goes to heaven. We’re told that we have some familiarity, some recognition of people and if you don’t agree with that, we can take it off as a point, but I think the Bible’s clear that we will recognize each other in heaven. She’ll recognize her daughter and then one of two things will happen. She will be memory wiped of me and my son, or she will be changed in such a way that she is not only, not driven to suffering by the fact I’m burning in hell, or even in a better term, annihilated that I’m just not with her.

This won’t be a distress to her because she’ll be so physically changed, or she’ll hop on board with the Aquinas thing, or the Revelation 19 thing, which is that she will actually rejoice in my suffering because of the justice of God’s perfect wrath. And I think that both of those present their own issues, but that was the main take from the what is happening to her. Everything she went through, what does it matter then if she has to become someone so wholly new or she’s being robbed of who she was during this time on Earth.

Trent Horn:

All right, so first I’ll talk about personal identity a bit, then I’ll get into this particular objection. So I do believe that we are going to retain our personal identities. There’s actually a note about this a little bit in the catechism of the Catholic church, paragraph 1025. It says, “To live in heaven is to be with Christ. The elect live in Christ, but they retain, or rather find, their true identity, their own name.” When we talk about why not heaven now, I think another element is that one of the things that will make heaven beautiful is that the communion we will have, not just with God, but with other people. The other people will bring distinct spiritual gifts and talents to this heavenly society. I think it’d be awful if God created everything instantly and we were all just carbon copies of the ideal man or woman. But our experiences here on Earth give us things like our personalities, our senses of humor, things that are forged in experiences over time and there will be perfected elements of that in heaven.

My wife and I are very different. I’m an introverted, analytic, melancholic. She’s an extroverted, bubbly sanguine. And so the heavenly versions of the different facets of personalities will create this symphonic harmony. So I think that that’s helpful when it comes to our … so we will have that continuity, but it will be different. It will be even better going from just two dimensions to three dimensions or four dimensions. You think about art when you have a picture that’s just kind of fuzzy to ultra high resolution. It’s still the same thing, you just see it so much better. I just wanted a platform on identity and the differences there just to start. And then-

Brandon:

We don’t have to argue about that long at all, but I would be curious to hear your thoughts on one point back.

Trent Horn:

Sure.

Brandon:

Which is, you listed the binary option of carbon copies or we have this processing time on Earth to develop our personalities and then those get glorified in heaven to some extent. Would it not be capable of God to still create a perfect version of us in heaven with separate personalities, someone who loves-

Trent Horn:

Sure.

Brandon:

… music and someone who, not only loves music, but they like to compose and someone else likes to play. I don’t understand-

Trent Horn:

You’re right. I would say God could do that, but there is an added good in allowing creatures, the dignity of being their own causes for these types of things. And so that-

Brandon:

And we’ve talked about that argument back in I think point two, so I didn’t want to harp on it. But I was just curious because it seemed like an easy one for God to overcome.

Trent Horn:

Yeah, and I would say that yeah, God could create us in different ways, but I do think that there is an added dignity when we create it and it also allows it to be us to be able to say it’s something that is our own, so to speak. It’s something that we have created to make us who we are, which takes us a little bit away from the slavery objection, which was a while back. But let’s go to your other objection though. This would not be an objection against heaven per se, it’s an objection more to hell. It’s kind of a classic objection. How could someone be happy in heaven if their loved one is either perpetually suffering in hell or if their loved one had been annihilated. If it were the case that the damned do not suffer but they’re just annihilated? Is that the essence of your objection?

Brandon:

Yes. Although, I don’t think we’d have to talk about hell at all to achieve that. The fact of the matter, it is an objection to heaven because it is heaven where this person is housed that is no longer with someone they knew their entire life that was beneficial in their perfection throughout their-

Trent Horn:

It wouldn’t. The objection wouldn’t arise if universalism were true.

Brandon:

Well, no, everyone would be together, but you’re not of that mind anyways.

Trent Horn:

No I’m not.

Brandon:

So I’m saying-

Trent Horn:

So that’s why I’m saying the objection is more about the fact that some people will not be … it’s not the fact about heaven itself, it’s more about the fact that some people will not be there.

Brandon:

And how it affects the people in heaven, which is why-

Trent Horn:

And how it affects people there. Yeah.

Brandon:

… I think it’s an issue for heaven.

Trent Horn:

Right.

Brandon:

The fact that some people won’t be in heaven when you have a creator, that is the argument for hell. Yes, I have a problem with hell and there’s its own argument. But what I’m bringing up here has nothing to do with the unfairness of hell. It has to do with the unfairness of the person in heaven to experience the loss of someone and/or not care about that loss because they’re so radically changed.

Trent Horn:

So I guess to continue your objection, your claim seems to be that either a person will suffer in heaven because of a loved one who is not there, but there cannot be suffering in heaven, so that’s a contradiction. Or the person will not suffer, but the way they are not suffering is because they have a morally repugnant attitude. I think I’ve got the essence of your concern

Brandon:

Very close. I’m not trying to nitpick.

Trent Horn:

That’s fine.

Brandon:

I don’t think it’s because they have a morally repugnant attitude because I think that would be the same thing that they’re still suffering in heaven. I think it’s because the nature that God would have to give one in heaven not to be sad about that.

Trent Horn:

They wouldn’t even be the same person.

Brandon:

They wouldn’t be the same person. And then yes, I do think it’s morally repugnant what Aquinas’s take is and what many people’s take is when they read the Bible, and specifically I think it’s either Revelation 16 or Revelation 19, I can’t recall. Where you have the elders and the saints in heaven looking down in literally shouting with rejoice at the torment of the damned as the ashes come up forever and ever because they are in awe of God’s perfect justice. That’s how I’ve understood the main argument to be here. And so I don’t want to put that argument in your mouth, but that seems to be really the only two options I see, a fundamental change or a contradiction.

Trent Horn:

Okay. Now, I think when it comes to eternal hell, there is an understanding in Aquinas that it’s not so much rejoicing in the fact that the damned are suffering, there is a rejoicing that God’s justice is being carried out, but more so of a gratitude of having chosen God and not suffering the fate of those who’ve rejected him. But I think if we’re going to keep it to heaven, we might be able to bracket the issue of hell, maybe we could try annihilation.

Brandon:

Sure.

Trent Horn:

Because it still brings up the same problems that the person is not there and there’s a sadness. You loved this person in life, they will not be in heaven. What do you do? So I have a few thoughts on that. One, what’s funny is this also creates a little bit of tension with your previous slavery objection, that if it is possible for God to create heaven and we’re perfectly and supremely happy and your concern was well, to be perfectly and supremely happy, I wouldn’t be happy unless I had this little escape hatch button if I find it absolutely miserable and I want to get out of here, to self annihilate. But a problem of having a self annihilate button for someone in heaven to make it supremely happy is the effect that would have on all the other people in heaven who would miss that person.

Brandon:

Yep.

Trent Horn:

So it would take away from their happiness. So then it’s like what-

Brandon:

It kind of seems like heaven just is a place where you can’t always be happy all the time if it’s also a fair and just place. That is the basis of the video here is that I don’t think these things work together. And so I hear you saying, well, if we go back to this side, I am presenting more than one case for sure. It’s either that we have a system that does not work in heaven, where you cannot avoid suffering or sin if we are these free creatures, or we aren’t free creatures and we are more like slaves, in which case problem B. I’m not trying to make it all work together. I’m saying whatever your view of heaven is, here’s my problem with it because I don’t know what heaven’s going to be like, but there seems to be a non-consensus even amongst believers because of the vagueness of the scriptures.

Which is fine, we’ve had to make some guesses. And then some of me is going off the guesses. Some of me is trying to stick more to what the Bible purports on the issue. But I hear you. I don’t think it’s a contradiction though, I think it’s just two separate problems.

Trent Horn:

Right. So what I would say is that it would be a false dilemma to say either there’s going to be suffering in heaven from people who didn’t get there at the beginning or checked out later, or we’re essentially going to be slaves so that there is this happiness.

Brandon:

Okay then. And honestly, in no instance your tone, let’s get rid of the one neither of us believe, annihilation, and let’s use the hell example. And not to talk about the injustice of hell, but really because that’s-

Trent Horn:

That’s fine.

Brandon:

… what you believe anyways.

Trent Horn:

Yeah. What I would say is that in heaven, we will have our perfect understanding of God and goodness itself and we will love God to the utmost more than creatures. And remember, we talk about God, we’re not talking about just some person who’s got a lot of power, who wants us to do things. I believe that God and goodness are the same thing. Since God is infinite being, goodness being, and truth, they’re interchangeable these transcendentals. That to be good means to possess being an accorded one’s nature. God is the only reality that is unlimited being itself. So he is unlimited in knowledge, power, he just is goodness itself. Aquinas once said that, “Sin is when you love the creature more than the creator.” What’s interesting here, we see this actually, even in this life. You have people who love their children or their relatives in disordered ways. They become attached to them in a disordered way where they’re not really loving them, they’re trying to get a sense of gratification from them.

They have an affection for them, but it’s a disordered codependency. And I’m not trying to make light of the seriousness of your objection, what about if my loved one is in hell or not. But it is possible to have disordered attachments to other people, whether it’s your callous and cold and don’t connect to them, or you become overly codependent on them as a source of happiness that the balance, or true goodness is to understand, to love them for the good for their own sake. And so then that allows with other persons, loving them, and willing the good for them, and allowing them to make different choices that they have. So I think what will happen in heaven is that because we’ll be perfectly happy in heaven, if the suffering of those in hell does not grieve God because he’s perfectly good, and just, and loving, it won’t grieve us either. I think what often happens in this life, like if a child, I have kids, when they do something bad, we have a dual sense with it.

We have a sense of hurt of how could you have done that to yourself, a concern for them, an active sense, how could you have done that to yourself and a passive sense, how could you have done that to me, cause me worry, grief, stress, things like that. So I think that God will have the cognitively understanding that it is bad what has happened to those who have freely chosen to reject him, but it doesn’t cause him this passive concern because he’s free from the emotional swings we have from the passions that are in this life. That if we fully understand that this is good, when somebody … I guess a similar analogy I might make might be the healing that you get, the understanding that you get from if a loved one goes to jail for a crime, they did commit. And they did commit it and the punishment is just. In this life, there’s a sadness there and then eventually people come to a peace and understanding of justice being done.

As a Catholic, I think one way to help overcome this objection that might be sort of unique is that for those who are still attached to venial sin who have a disordered idea of the good, as a Catholic, I believe that for some people will undergo purgatory. And so they will be purged of disorder desires of faulty ways of looking at the world. And so the sadness they might have an understanding that some people will not be in heaven is something one will work through before entering into the joy, so to speak. And I think that we do this a lot in this life. Someone will experience a tragedy and we don’t say that happiness is impossible for them. It’s a healing process we walk them through. So I agree with you that it is a difficult objection, but I don’t think that it’s insurpassable one, if that makes sense.

Brandon:

Yeah, I hear everything you’re saying. I think I have a few issues with some of the analogies. Make it the most heinous crime you want, let’s say my absolute best friend who I’ve known since childhood ends up hurting a child and they get a just sentence. And they go to jail, and I miss them, and I deal with that loss. And I understand why it happened, and I understand that that separation from society and the attempted rehabilitation is a desired outcome for them. Even though it means I’m not with them anymore and that they’re probably going through a bad time. I’m not getting over that. I’m understanding the reality despite the current circumstance and I would still have moments where I do miss them and where I am sad at their situation, and where I could still feel empathy for them even if they are justly being punished. So I’m not going to try to make this about the case that hell is not just punishment and therefore it does not help alleviate that.

Trent Horn:

That’d be a separate topic.

Brandon:

Sure. But I do think that in so far as the analogy goes, that would be something to consider. But everything you’ve said here about, oh, people might be different, have incorrect hierarchies of value on a relationship. My wife will be the first to tell you she loves God more than me and the children at some different levels, probably depending on the day, and that’s all fine, and then outward towards friends and empathy for strangers, et cetera. But in what point of her drawing close to God and getting a better perfection of God, would she all of a sudden either just not remember me or not care at all about my suffering? Part of this too is, again it’s not to have a conversation on hell, but not everyone who goes to hell is this horrible person or someone who’s chosen … You might from your theological standpoint, say, “I’m choosing away from God. I really don’t believe in him.” I really just don’t. I’m not an anti theist. I’m not angry at God. I really don’t believe in him the same way you don’t believe in Allah. And my wife knows that.

She doesn’t think I’m a bad person. She doesn’t think I’ve turned my back on God, she doesn’t think I’m trying to be handed over to my sin, et cetera. She really knows I just don’t have the same level of convinced attitude that she does. So I think a lot of your analogies were saying, well, if it was like this, if they thought about it incorrectly like this, eventually they’d get over it like this. I think really taking my wife as the example, her knowing me and the reason why I am in hell, even if she believes I’m wrong, she can understand that that is something that is so sad that I would be there. She’s sad for me now, so when she gets to heaven and she’s no longer sad, it’s either again, back to the basis of it because God is changing something about her, even if it’s his presence that’s forcing her to somehow find … we don’t have to go full Aquinas, we don’t have to say joy finding, not suffering in my loss, which is what it would be counted.

Even God says he desires no one should perish. He has a desire for everyone to come to him and know him and be reunited with him. So I hear you saying from a cognitive perspective, God knows that this is what had to happen and it’s fine. But I also would think that the same God would be saddened by this thought and maybe he can house those emotions better than my wife and so it’s not really important. But I don’t see it working. I don’t see it working at all that someone is either not mind manipulated or somehow comes to be someone so different than they were that they can be fine with that. I think it is one of the bigger objections. And I understand how you’ve attempted to get to it, but I don’t think it measures up.

Trent Horn:

Well, I would say that the growth that we will undergo in heaven, and as I quoted the catechism before, paragraph 1025, they retain, or rather find, their true identity, their own name, that we will continue to grow, but we will be the same person though there will be radical differences in our ability to understand the good, to be able to value and love what ought to be loved and to not have disordered loves. Think about how the fact that what we loved and desired when we were two years old versus today, it’s radically different. We almost wouldn’t recognize each other, but we are still the same person. And I don’t believe it’s a cop out because I still see, even in my own kids and other people, there are still those little distinct personality traits that were even present when they were two years old.

Brandon:

Totally.

Trent Horn:

And you still see it when someone’s 32, or 52, but there’s also radical differences. And so I do believe the presence of the radical differences does not cut against the personal identity problem that we will still be the same person, but-

Brandon:

Where then is the chance for that growth that allows her to eventually … it seems to me it would have to happen instantaneously in heaven because there’s no suffering.

Trent Horn:

Well, that’s why I think that if somebody still has a disordered attachment to a good on Earth, or that they can’t love God without this particular finite good, they may need to be purified of that attachment. And so that’s-

Brandon:

Is it an incorrect attachment to love your husband and your children the way that God tells you to?

Trent Horn:

No, it’s-

Brandon:

Because some things on Earth are bad. This isn’t to defend my wife. I understand this is not personal. I’m saying philosophically [inaudible 01:56:02].

Trent Horn:

I’m going to hide under the table in case you end up in the doghouse here, but go ahead.

Brandon:

I philosophically don’t understand. We’ll take it outside the personal, any other couple period.

Trent Horn:

Sure.

Brandon:

They’re performing their husband and wifely duties, even according to the scripture or at least one of them is, they’re raising children with the example of God, the father, et cetera. It’s not an unhealthy attachment. And if these earthly relationships, even in their highest form, is an unhealthy attachment when compared to the relationship with God, then this just, once again, goes to my point earlier of God should have just skipped this earthly part because what is the benefit then? What are we learning if we have to change so drastically?

Trent Horn:

I think when we talk about will we still love one another, I think that’s absolutely true, but we have to understand what love is. That love is to will the good for another person. And so part of that involves a movement of the heart, the affectations we have, the joy of when we provide a good for the beloved, and the sorrow when we fail to do that or we hurt them or we see them suffering and we cannot help them. And so I think though a proper love for another person is to understand we will the good for them. And so for example, some people are estranged from relatives or friends, but we might understand that if they have freely chosen to sever that relationship, then part of love there might be to respect their autonomy, to respect the fact that they have chosen this, and then to look at God and see what God has done in their life versus my life and the goods that are present, whether it’s mercy, or justice, or the things like that.

I think though when we compare this, it’s always going to be difficult if we think of God as just an abstraction, or is just some guy with a long beard who commands things, versus that which is infinite goodness itself. And that we’ll understand that a person who goes to hell, in some way, they haven’t just rejected God, they’ve also rejected us who are perfectly united with him, that they would find God to be extremely unpleasant and they would, frankly, find us to be unpleasant given how much we’ve been transformed in God. So I think when we go back to hell and someone who is there, we’ll just have that properly ordered understanding so that we’re not aggrieved by it. Now, I know we could get into is this just.

Brandon:

Sure. No, I’ve bet my tongue on all of it. Don’t worry. It’s not the purpose of the conversation. I’m a hundred percent with you. But every correct understanding that you’re giving about like, oh, having healthy boundary and feeling like that is actually the best way to love this person. I agree, but I’m still going to be sad. I’m still going to suffer to maintain that healthy boundary. And even accepting that God is not just some big source of power, that there’s so much love and understanding and grace there in his presence, so much righteous justice that is flooding through my veins that I will have the proper understanding of how much my loved one deserves to be in hell.

Trent Horn:

But think about in this life, when you counsel someone whose wife dies or their children die, they are able to undergo a process of maybe they are sad initially, but they are able to undergo a process where that is lessened.

Brandon:

Yeah, lessened. They might have an acceptance, they might have better tools to deal with the, what would be a non-utility of emotion. But if you ask anyone, I have yet to meet a person who when they recount the death of a loved one, I don’t know anyone that would say, “Oh, but I am glad it happened. I didn’t want them here with me. I’m not still sad about it.” They’re suffering. And to say that there’s improvement on that suffering is true, but to say that it is non-existent, as it would have to be in heaven, is a false comparison, I think.

Trent Horn:

I think though, the two things that will make it different will be one, the fact that even in this life we are able to lessen the sadness of not being connected to other people. So if God is infinite in power, knowledge, and goodness, I don’t see his inability to completely ameliorate that. And then number two, I think we’d have to do a deep dive into what makes us sad about the deaths of others, or the separation from others. And I think what makes us sad is one, we are sad about what has been deprived for them. Depending where you’re at, that the good of who they were no longer exists, or there are benefits that are no longer there for them, the sadness of us, the certain goods that we had with this person, we will never have again.

And so I think that then if heaven exists, if we have heaven and hell, there are avenues for responding to all of that so that some of those people will be in heaven with us. But if they’re not in heaven with us, they’re still recognizing the good of autonomy, of justice, of their freedom to be able to reject God.

Brandon:

I think I understand.

Trent Horn:

Sorry. And the goods that they provided us of companionship, friendship, that there will be other goods like that in heaven. It’s going to be hard now, but I think that we’ll more clearly see God who is true goodness itself and have the proper ordering with other creatures. That’d be the alternate answer to the problem for me.

Brandon:

I understand it in so much as I can agree with it. But the last thing I’d say on it, and then if you want to say anything further and then we can move on to the last point, the thing that’s toughest for me … I understand, maybe we love this person selfishly because of what they do for us in our life and so it’s not a good reason. In heaven, we won’t have that selfish motive, and so we won’t miss them in the same way that we miss loved ones that are here. I understand, I think that’s some of what you’re saying. I think it cuts the other way even sharper though, to the degree that the least selfish reason I could be sad about someone’s death here on Earth is for what they will miss even here on Earth. If my six-year-old were to die tonight, I would be so sad, of course, because I love them and I would feel pain, but I would be sad that they don’t get to experience certain things that I know otherwise were set up for them to experience.

Trent Horn:

Right.

Brandon:

What more magnitude of that feeling could there be than being in the presence of the perfect Almighty and realizing that, like a child who does not get to experience the benefit with the harm, this person’s in hell suffering all harm, with zero chance for zero benefit of what to be the greatest benefit. If that doesn’t cause the most suffering, unless something changes that, which is my point, I see that as the healthiest reason to feel suffering even selfishly, in heaven, because of the magnitude of love and perfection around you. I just don’t think it can be both ways.

Trent Horn:

Right. And I think that what will happen in those cases is that if someone dies here on Earth and we are sad about the experiences they will no longer have, especially in the case of small children, there is nothing to prevent them from … Well, this gets into finer points of theology, but one can certainly hold the view, especially among small children before the age of reason. There’s nothing to prevent them from experiencing heaven along with other people. So it’s either, they don’t get the experiences on Earth, they will get experiences in heaven, or they will have had enough experiences in this life to-

PART 4 OF 5 ENDS [02:04:04]

Trent Horn:

They will have had enough experiences in this life to have been able to reject God. And so then they will have that freedom and autonomy and they won’t be slaves of God and they’ll have that ability to reject him, they’d get sent hell. So we’re going around a bit here. But I think we see here, it will ultimately come once again to a value judgment of understanding. Can we be perfectly at peace with those who are justly punished? And because I do believe that in some cases in this life, people have a disordered sense of compassion that they don’t like the idea of people being punished for anything. They think it’s just awful someone goes to jail or has to do this, and they have a disordered view of justice.

Brandon:

Yeah, I agree that that exists.

Trent Horn:

So anyhow. All right, we have the last one here. There might not be too much here for this, but you had a little bit of a wager issue or how much you’re giving up. That was your final thought was the seventh problem.

Brandon:

The first six are playing in the pretense of, okay, I’m wrong, this God exists, heaven’s real. The seventh one is more rounding out for the sake of other kinds of people that listen to my channel, that I believe first of all obviously that this God isn’t real and that this heaven does not exist. And so if that is correct, and so much of the objection I hear is, “Yeah, but heaven provides comfort. Yeah, but don’t you understand it’s better for people to not have to worry about death, anxiety, et cetera, even from a secular position, et cetera.” I vehemently disagree. I think that heaven robs us of the actual autonomy of the only naturalistic life that we know we will have, which is to be here now. Not everyone handles it this way. I’m not making a prescription that everyone who believes in heaven lives a meaningless life here.

But if you are theologically consistent to believe that everything should be done for tomorrow and not today, that every treasure should be stored up in heaven, not here on earth, that the only mission you have is to make sure you end up in the right spot and that other people do as well, if that’s not true, look at what you’re missing. And so yeah, I made a dumb joke about a reverse Pascal’s wager. Pascal’s wager is awful, so would this version of it. So I’m not really holding to that. My point is simply I’m under the persuasion heaven doesn’t exist and the belief in this heaven is actually causing harm and loss for the only life we do have, which you can’t agree with. So yeah, I don’t know how much we’ll have to talk about.

Trent Horn:

Where does belief in heaven cause harm right now?

Brandon:

We could talk on a really small level, we could talk on a really big level. I made a video Sunday about end time prophecy and specifically how people are looking at what’s going on in Israel, Palestine and Hamas, for signs of the end time. And this is something I had growing up and I know it’s more evangelical and Protestant than it is Catholic so maybe you cannot relate to this, but the idea that all this suffering is fine, what’s going on in the Middle East is fine because look, it’s the thing that had to happen before God gets to come back. It seems to me to be an inherently selfish view that the only thing that matters is getting to the place with no suffering.

Trent Horn:

I would agree that for someone to say this is just fine, even if I were to approach to the problem of evil, I wouldn’t say evil and suffering are just fine. I would say that there is a reason why these things would be tolerated versus this or that. But yes, to have a callous disregard that if you think that life is just about saying the sinners prayer and getting your seat in heaven reserved and getting there, I can see that. But I would say that comes from a disordered view of salvation rather than heaven itself.

Brandon:

Sure, but if salvation isn’t real, I understand you’re not going to be able to play in the same pen as me here, but say you’re wrong and that there is no compensation, there is no heaven to make these things better and people are living their life as if there is. I think it’s very fair and very obvious to see that that disorders people’s hierarchy. You’re saying in the heavenly sense, in the spiritual sense, we should be God first then everything else. If God’s not real and someone is still God first, can you not see how that could harm relationships, harm families, harm future planning, harm income, harm potential?

Trent Horn:

I can see that and so that’s why I think one way we can look at it, as I said earlier, I think that God and goodness are the same thing like goodness itself. So if I said you should live your life good first and everything else second. And so this is not just restricted to Catholics, but it’s popular among the Catholic tradition, of understanding how we ought to live is governed a lot by natural law. The idea that as creatures who have reason and can discern this is good, this is evil, this is neutral, that we can discern natural law is the rational creature’s participation in God’s eternal law. So God makes the universe, he says it ought to be a certain way, if you have the use of reason you can participate in that.

So it seems to me that if someone… Heaven is about supreme happiness, being with God, who is goodness itself, if we spend our lives pursuing that which is the good, using reason to be able to pursue it. And I think we also need revelation because sometimes because of sin. People can rationalize all kinds of bad stuff. Revelation can give us a kick in the pants to say, you might make a bunch of rationalizations about why having an affair might be good here, thou shall not commit adultery. I’m sorry. So I think though for someone who is committed to pursuing the good in this life, that is something they’ll never regret pursuing even if it is very difficult.

So the point of Pascal’s wager is, I agree with you, Pascal’s wager is bad if it is about avoiding hell. But if you look at the wager in this way, and this is the true way the wager is actually done as Pascal writes it. If you’re on the fence and you want Christianity to be true, 50/50 on the fence, you really could go either way, there’s no harm in just willing yourself to say, “Yeah, maybe it just is true.” And that even if it turns out not to be true, living a life of goodness, a lot of pew research polls and other things say that religious people do tend to be happier. I know there’s correlating factors there. You haven’t really lost out on anything. And that’s how I would look at it.

Brandon:

And I say this as a compliment to your belief consistency that I think you really cannot hop down in my world of understanding that if this isn’t true, you are still going back to well, okay, the God that I purport to know, even if he isn’t true, he is synonymous with goodness. I disagree. If that God were real, I don’t even think he would be synonymous with good.

Trent Horn:

The God of the Bible, you mean?

Brandon:

Correct. Which, other than your own personal understanding which is part of my problem with all religions yet alone Christianity, that we have a holy book, we have revelation, we have a God saying exactly who he is and exactly what he does and exactly what he wants, and still it’s yeah, but the way I understand him is X. But regardless, if indeed this God isn’t real and thus his claim that he’s synonymous with good isn’t correct, and maybe, just maybe, there are commands to be followed in the Bible that are harmful like loving your enemies or not preparing for tomorrow because you think the world’s about to end like what Jesus is telling people in the New Testament. And I think, very clearly, you can get some really bad advice from this Bible and from living in accordance to it. And that advice magnifies itself in harm, especially if it’s not true.

Trent Horn:

Sorry, what you said there about picking loving your enemies as a problematic command. That’s interesting because what if you made an objection to hell and I said, “Well, these people are God’s enemies. Who says yes to love them?”

Brandon:

Sure. We can get off on a tangent about it. I get it. And you can say, oh it’s manipulated or misused. I think in general, if you tell a woman who is battered by her husband that she doesn’t have the… And we might disagree theologically here, but it seems clear to me that the only exception for divorce Jesus gives after he corrects Moses is an affair. And she’s being mistreated in some fashion, and when she goes to get counseling from the church, and I’ve seen these examples and I don’t think these are one-offs, she’s told submit to your husband. Even Jesus says, love your enemies, yet alone, someone that is in servitude over.

Trent Horn:

And I would say here for example, in that case, the way to will the good for him because he has committed a crime to the way to truly love him is to make sure he is brought under the order of justice for the crime that he has committed, and to legally separate or in some cases divorce, the Catholic teaching is more divorce and remarriage. Divorce can be allowed even under circumstances for safety, things like that. So not to get on a tangent. Therefore to love an evil husband who batters his wife would be to make sure that he is put under the order of justice, to love him, to prevent him from committing more evils. It would be a supreme act of love to make sure that he is restrained, legally incarcerated, whatever it needs to be, that it’s loving to prevent people from committing more evils against you.

And so that’s why when look at hell, it’s like, oh well to love someone, placing them under justice what they freely choose is actually the supremely loving thing, not to get the hell gambit back in there. But I see what you’re saying is that, hey, if all of this is false, if you believe the belief system and it’s got these wackadoodle things in it that cause you harm and you’re saying, why do you do the wackadoodle stuff? Well, because I’m going to go to heaven. Well, what if heaven’s not there? You’ve just really cashed out your chips for all kinds of really bad stuff. It’s like when I watched a documentary on fundamentalist polygamous Mormons. It’s like, oh geez, oh goodness. But what I would say is that, that’s a reason why if one pursues a religious belief system, one should also…

That’s why Pope St. John Paul II had an encyclical called Fee Days at [inaudible 02:15:16] Faith and Reason. And the opening line talks about how faith and reason are like two wings that raise the human spirit. So if you believed there was a God… I could believe in a omni God, God made the world, if you look at a belief system, you’d want to see is it in accord with the dictates of reason, that we can use reason to understand morality even if we’re fuzzy on some of the boundaries there. And so if you had a religious belief system to say, hey… I think in general for me, when I was a convert 20 years ago, what attracted me to Catholicism was by reason. The views on abortion already made sense and the sexual ethics issues actually made sense just from reason. If you have something that is reasonable, it will ultimately bring you happiness anyways. So that’s one way I-

Brandon:

I think some parts of Christianity are reasonable. I think many parts are absolutely not reasonable and I think that part of what helps you see the non reasonable as more reasonable is your belief that this God does exist and if he does, he is wholly good. But I would say maybe for you to get my point more, picture the God you don’t believe in. Many people think Allah is all good, meaning peace, and that following his commands and his ethics are truly beneficial simply because he has all these same claims as Yahweh or many of them. Would you say that even if Allah doesn’t exist, it would be beneficial for people to live their life in accordance with the Koran?

Trent Horn:

Well, I guess beneficial, sometimes that’s like in comparison to what?

Brandon:

Do you think it could be disbeneficial to live your life in accordance with the Koran?

Trent Horn:

Oh, absolutely. If you’re choosing it over that which is true. So for example, I think-

Brandon:

But in the hypothetical here, for you it’s a hypothetical, this God isn’t true. For the first six points I had to get on board with, okay, let’s say this God exists, let’s say he is who he says he is and this heaven exists, et cetera. This seventh point is very simple. It is okay, but he doesn’t, and pretending he does can actually get in the way of… Here’s a simpler example. What would be the utility of taking care of the earth to make sure it’s going to be here for the next 5 million years if you really believe that we’re going to get a new heaven and a new earth and God can just snap his fingers and that his timeline is correct and he’s going to will what he wants anyways.

That is a fundamental, consistent philosophical belief one would have to have that God’s in control of what happens on this earth. Yes, maybe we’re here to be good stewards but not more than we are to share the gospel, et cetera. And so we put our time, money and resources into evangelizing and proselytizing instead of into fixing greenhouse gas or whatever. Even if you don’t agree with global warming, I’m saying there are clear cut things that we put hierarchies under because we’re choosing this hierarchy of God, and if he doesn’t exist, we have a disordered hierarchy of where our money, time, and energy should have been going and that will cause harm if that God is indeed not true.

Trent Horn:

And I would say that it is going to go back to whether we have a proper understanding of who God is. So I agree with you, there are going to be religions. I think you and I can agree that there are religious belief systems, some are more reasonable than others. So I think that you’re right, I think that is going to factor into it. But honestly, that’s not just religion, that’s all belief systems. Everybody’s got a belief system.

Brandon:

Oh yeah. I’m still saying we’d have to come up. I’m not saying the humanists have totally figured out morality and everything would be fine if we got rid of religion. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying there is a clear and present commonality of people that believe in heaven, that sacrifice other parts of their life because of that belief. And if that heaven isn’t true, it would be disbeneficial.

Trent Horn:

But I would say though, then there is a similar inverted argument here, that many people can choose to live in aberrant ways because they say, you know what? I’ve got 70 years, after this I’m dust, I don’t have existence anymore. So if I maximize my pleasure in this life and then die with maximal pleasure, I won. There are people who justify all horrible kinds of ways of living because they have that mindset, which of course would be-

Brandon:

So what I would encourage is for people to continue to seek out what is actually true and beneficial in a way that we can measure. And we’re not going to get into a morality argument with the last five minutes here. But it would include getting rid of all false things. I think it is false and harmful to say, I can and should do whatever I want with my 70 years, just like it is false and harmful to say because whatever I do doesn’t really matter because God will give me grace since I believe in his son, I will just put all my treasures in heaven and not live for today or help today.

Trent Horn:

I agree, those are both incorrect, but I think that a proper understanding of God, who he is, how he’s revealed himself through his son, I think that that’s one reason that I really like being Catholic is being given more authoritative teachings than just interpretations of the Bible itself. Not saying that Catholics have got it perfect. We’ve had to grow in social doctrine and understanding of applying these principles the past 2000 years. But I think I do firmly agree what you said here at the end, we should try to avoid what is false, we should also try to seek after what is true. There’s going to be a balancing act in how we do that. Because here’s what’s interesting here. Those are mutually exclusive. They’re exclusive goals. If you try to minimize false beliefs, you could just shut yourself off from believing anything.

But then you can miss out on a whole bunch of true stuff. And if you want to maximize true beliefs, false ones are going to sneak in there. So there’s going to be a balancing act when how we assess the evidence around us. So I do think that when we choose to believe something, you’re right, it ought not be for purely mercenary ends, whether it’s atheism to live my life how I’d like, or Christianity just to get the heavenly jackpot, we choose the belief system because this is true and because it’s true, it’s good and because it’s good, it’s beautiful. And if we grow in goodness in this life, we’re always moving towards an ultimate fulfillment of the good and the union with God that we have here. For Catholicism, it’s not just a moment that we’re saved, it’s always a process of growing in our union with God. I don’t mean to pontificate.

Brandon:

No. If any of it was true, I like the idea of Catholicism, one, because it also doesn’t constrict you to the Bible, which is part of the reason that I believe if that God were real, he still would be. We can get into all the moral issues in another conversation, but you and I were never going to be able to agree on this particular point. It is an impossible hypothetical for you, and I know you’ve entertained it. I’m not trying to say you didn’t. I’m just saying there’s no clear conclusion for us here. I think it’s really sad though, and not for you.

Trent Horn:

Well, I think the difference is how much people give up. I would say that depends on what particular religious belief system they adopt.

Brandon:

I think you’re going to get different levels of net benefits and net harms, of course based off not only which religion you follow or which God you believe in, but which version of that God and religion you believe in and follow, et cetera. You could be a prosperity gospel Christian and get it completely different than a good, self-sacrificing Catholic. So same God though, same text. I think what that allows you to be able to say is, oh, the people who are doing it wrong are either, I don’t know if you would say non-believers or they’re acting inappropriately in accordance with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, whatever that would be, it would simply be because they don’t have it quite right, where I’m saying there is no version of it being quite right because the God doesn’t exist.

#And under that we simply have to stop living for a day that is, one, unfalsifiable, but two under this idea that truly this particular God or God system or all the manly gods, wherever you want to draw your line of atheism, don’t exist. We get the autonomy back for today. We get the it matters what we do here. And that’s something that most religions can’t say. Most say the opposite. Even if they provide some good laws to follow in the meantime that could be somewhat beneficial, most of them say the only thing that matters is what you believe, what you got right and where you go when it all ends. And people will abuse that. You could do good with that, Trent. There are some of the most charitable people are believers and there are also some of the worst people are believers. And that goes the same for atheists. It’s a personal thing.

Trent Horn:

And I would say the fact that there’s a risk of abuse there, it’d be like if you were debating, let’s say you were too atheists and one is a virtue ethic, moral realist. He believes morality is real, we should practice virtue ethics, we should grow in virtue. We should choose to do what is good, we must do what is good even when it’s difficult. And you have another atheist who says, yeah, well I’m an amoralist. Morality is just a construct. People can waste their lives trying to pursue virtue, and he might even be able to come up with examples of miserable, weird vegetarians or weird pacifists or other examples like that.

But I don’t think at the end of the day that that would take away from the better arguments for we should strive after objective morality, even if there are difficulties in understanding it, and trying to pursue that which is virtuous. And I would say there’s something similar with religion that is at least somewhat reasonable, just the same as someone defending morality to an amoralist would say there are moral systems more reasonable than others and it’s better to at least give morality a chance. I would say the same thing about religion as well versus something that can get into nihilism a bit. But I do think ultimately the wagers, they’re interesting arguments. It’s more about looking at the evidence. Does the evidence stack up to whether it’s true or not?

Brandon:

It’s a complete side point. Yeah, I agree. This whole thing is, assuming we’ve reached a certain conclusion already, weighing the evidence and deciphering if God is real and even if it would still be good to believe in a God, all of that would of course come first. This was a particular, very topic centric thing of within the confines of heaven, if you don’t believe in this God, X.

Trent Horn:

Oh, that’s fine. But I think it’s good to sift through, but ultimately I do think that even if there are difficulties there… Well, I guess we’ll wrap it up here soon. It’s interesting. I do think that our hearts, we do have this natural inclination for unending joy. I don’t see how a maximally great being will be unable to satisfy that. Because it seems like if we all start to think about what should God do, it’s like, let’s say he created us, there’s no sin, but he gives us a 100 year time limit and we’re going to pop out of existence. I think we would be sad at that. We’d be like, “Can I get an extension, please? Can I get another extension?”

Brandon:

Maybe other people would want an extension, and maybe some people would want a different extension for different amounts of time. I hear you. I’m not saying I have a perfect system. And the entire point of this to me was, as additional, not required evidence, as additional evidence to me, that the Bible itself is not a valid source of truth and that this God does not exist. I see enough potholes in heaven to err on… Not even to err on this side because the evidence comes before this. Heaven is the afterthought. Pre-trip, post-trip, don’t care. It’s the afterthought of it. But it doesn’t do God any favors. It doesn’t help win me over to any other lines of argumentation or evidence.

Trent Horn:

And I would say for me that the comfort of knowing that evil is defeated, the innocents who have suffered, will be vindicated and compensated and will have infinite happiness, to be able to dwell with God forever and to always pursue unending heights of goodness with him and the communion of saints, that gives me great joy. It doesn’t give you that, at least yet, but I think it’s something for people to-

Brandon:

It could. That’s the thing. We don’t have to keep talking about it. I think it’s so interesting though. But if there was a God that wasn’t all powerful and he just came to our defense because evil was already here in the world-

Trent Horn:

Oh, was not all powerful.

Brandon:

Yeah, but he’s more powerful than us and he came to our defense and he’s helping eradicate evil. But it all falls apart for me where it’s like, God created-

Trent Horn:

To me that wouldn’t be God, that’d be Superman.

Brandon:

Well, I would root more for Superman than the person who created the evil he has to rescue us from at the cost of the individual, at the cost of allowing this level of gratuitous harm. I understand what you’re saying, but built into all the things that sound so lovely to you are all the things that sound so horrendous to me.

Trent Horn:

And for me, God could have, to avoid all of that had not created anything, I suppose.

Brandon:

I think that that’s a very valid option that is not necessarily part of this conversation and seems extreme. It’s like the antinatalist argument. But I think that if God can’t create a world that gives us freedom and limits harm, if he’s not all powerful enough to create that, then maybe he shouldn’t have created it. Yeah, I think that’s a fair statement.

Trent Horn:

And I think that once again, there’ll be different value judgments here, given especially to what heaven and infinite happiness within all of the calculus would provide. I think it was worthwhile. But is there anything else that you want to share about this or anything else? I’ll let you-

Brandon:

No, I think we went well over what we’re planning two and a half hours, and I loved every second of it.

Trent Horn:

I’m so sorry. I hope I didn’t keep you from anything. I thought`-

Brandon:

No. No, this was a treat. I’ve had the pleasure and the upper hand of watching you a lot longer than you’ve known I’ve existed. So it’s fun to be able to be part of the conversation. And I think I made that comment in the one video that I did make of a reaction of you that I know you saw was I think you’re one of the more fair apologists out there. Not to say all apologists are so ridden.

Trent Horn:

No. To be professional courtesy, I won’t say, but there’s some that make me cringe.

Brandon:

For sure. And on both sides. There’s atheist advocates that absolutely are in the wrong. But I do appreciate your consistency, your thoughtfulness, and your openness. So I very much enjoyed getting to talk.

Trent Horn:

And I have been watching a decent number of your episodes recently because I do appreciate your thoughtfulness. I do have a little bit of a rule when I engage people. If somebody is not a very thoughtful or gracious person, I’ll often maybe… This isn’t everyone. I’ve had debates with very gracious people, but for some people I’ll only do timed moderated debates because they’re so cantankerous and jerky. A dialogue just doesn’t work with somebody like that. But I had very high hopes and they were vindicated indeed from watching your videos, that we can have a conversation rather than something that would get out of hand. Awesome.

Brandon:

I appreciate that and I’m glad it went that way. Thank you very much.

Trent Horn:

Very good. All right, thank you guys for watching. Sorry this felt like it went on forever, but that’s apropos for the theme. Yeah, definitely check out Brandon’s channel Mind Shift. Maybe we’ll have another dialogue in the future about some other subjects you have. But I think that in the goal of, especially Christians and atheists interacting with these issues online, these kinds of dialogues I think are very important. I’m looking forward to hopefully scheduling a lot more then. So thank you, Brandon for being on the show today.

Brandon:

Awesome. Thanks so much, Trent.

Trent Horn:

All right. Thank you guys for watching and I hope you all have a very blessed day.

Trent Horn:

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PART 5 OF 5 ENDS [02:31:40]