Reciprocating Bill
Posts: 4265
Joined: Oct. 2006
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| Quote (heddle @ Aug. 14 2007,20:54) | | Sigh. No, I was more than careful, I thought, to point out that such is an example of hating something without much emotion involved, if any. |
Heddle,
It is startling to me that you persist in equivocating vis the definition of "hate" in your assertion that "atheists hate God." Startling, in part, because it sows confusion and reaps antipathy, when maintaining this equivocation seems to me entirely peripheral to the central intent of your statement, which is to convey a specific theological assertion within the framework of your understanding of Christianity.
As I identified in my original post, atheists from whom you have heard denials regarding "hatred of God" are asserting the absence of an ordinary psychological state. We can, if you wish, broaden the definition of this state to include both quite intense and other less intense states of aversion and antipathy, even unreflective aversion and antipathy in relatively trivial contexts. No doubt some atheists harbor such states (in some degree) directed to representations of God, and no doubt others do not. I would maintain that many who honestly deny harboring such psychological states of antipathy are in fact able to be, and most often are, correct about such assertions. ?Hence they stand as a refutation of the statement that "All atheists hate God" IF you are asserting this, and only this, psychological meaning of the word hatred, however broadened and rendered non-affective.
But you are not. The word "hatred," as you intend it, does not refer to such psychological/emotional states at all, neither intensely held states of hatred nor antipathies held in a mild, unreflective, non-affective, repressed, or colloquially expressed state (although such psychological states may incidentally accompany the state you intend to describe). The hatred to which you refer does not originate ?from individual choices, experiences, affects, or cognitions at all, whether intensely or reflexively or unconsciously held. As you have asserted, this state of "hatred of God" is inherent in the fallen human condition, and is absolute. All persons are born in this state of separation and "hatred." In the first instant following their births, prior to their first meaningful volitional acts, ALL human beings are in this state of separation and aversion to God, and "hate god," owing to the fall. As it is absolute, this state is non-contingent, in the sense that it obtains entirely independently of the specific psychological states of antipathy the individual may have consciously or unconsciously harbored, even those directed toward their representation of God. One is not fallen because one has thought, "I hate that bearded fucker." One is fallen because all human beings are born that way.
The independence of these meanings becomes clear here: Not only is it possible for those who "hate God" in the theological sense you intend to be free of ordinary psychological states of hatred described above, including those directed at God, I would say that it is possible for a Christian to hate God in the psychological sense for contingent reasons (perhaps a child has died) without being in the fallen state, and hence absent the state of hatred you attach to the T in TULIP.
Clearly, then, you are using the concatenation of letters "hatred of God" in a theological sense that connotes something entirely other than "hatred of God" in the psychological sense. They may co-occur, although they are in fact unrelated.
When you state to a non-Christian audience "Atheists hate God," you lay down the makings of a garden path error because you invite interpretation in the first, psychological, more ordinary sense. Hence the protests that you are flatly mistaken. But you mean it in the second sense, a sense that is not continuous at all with ordinary emotional hatred expressed to any degree. You are, in fact, making a statement (somewhat encoded) that unpacks into an elaborate theological description of man's relationship to God, one that includes the essentials of Christian belief, and does not necessarily include psychological hatred of God in the ordinary sense (e.g. surely you are not maintaining that all infants, having been born in a fallen state, harbor psychological states of hatred directed toward God.)
You would likely be greeted with rather less antipathy were you to disambiguate this distinction from the outset.
And an apt response from the position of persons who don?t share your frame of reference is not "You are wrong about my psychological states and that is really pissing me off," but rather, "It's all hooey to me." Which summarizes my feelings, by the way.
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Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.
"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."
- David Foster Wallace
"Here’s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."
- Barry Arrington
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