The problem of the least deserving person in Hell and the least deserving person in Heaven

Theists have a wide array of topics on which to disagree. Which god to worship, how to worship it, or -- even within a specific sect of a specific religion -- which acts are "sin" and what steps need to be taken to avoid a bad afterlife outcome. Ah, but that is one broadly shared idea -- that there is indeed such a thing as a "bad afterlife" outcome and a "good afterlife" outcome, a strict dichotomy with a dividing line (somewhere) between those who arrive here and those who arrive there.

The bad afterlife.

As with all other things, the details of this are murky and disputed. Some believe that there is an eternal Heaven or other such situation to which the good folks go, and an eternal Hell or other punishing thing for the rest. Some believe that those who go to Heaven will be literally given better versions of their physical bodies from life on Earth, and will live in a physical Earth-like city with houses and roads (paved in the proverbial gold), and perhaps some other kinds of buildings and amenities, holy tennis courts and sacred golf courses. And it will be an existence of eternal contentment, with no experience of fear or adversity or challenge of any kind (so in those eternal tennis matches, every player wins the match).

And some believe that Hell is equally a place where souls are given physical bodies, only these are for the purpose of receiving endless physical pain inflicted on them, burning fire constantly scorching skin and melting flesh, sharp rocks leaving no spot to lay one's body down, barbed whips wielded by rapacious demonic beings, and other torments imagined by figures ranging from Dante Alighieri to heavy metal music videographers. This condemnation to torture is depicted as endless in time, with punishment continuing long after any wrongdoing on Earth has been equaled.

Others cast Hell as a bodiless place, more a state of being, really, of eternal separation from the god of their religion; and still others contend that there's a Heaven but not actually a Hell, but that bad souls are simply obliterated for all time (immediately, or after some period of punishment), all the information in them lost forever. A few theologies dare to imagine a Purgatory, an in-between place where some souls suffer while awaiting admission to that eternal Heaven, or perhaps while awaiting a determination of where they'll forever go.

The inevitable cutting-off point.

But whatever the design imagined for the afterlife, there is one necessary constant in dichotomous (or even trichotomous) scenarios. Of the billions of people who have lived and died in all of existence, there must be one pair who represent the cutting-off point. There is one person who "gets in" to Heaven despite being the least deserving person of all who do so -- that is, despite being the least deserving person relative to all other people who get into Heaven. And likewise, there must be one person who is condemned to Hell -- whether this means eternal torment, separateness, obliteration, or something yet unimagined -- who is, of all the people slated for that fate the least deserving of it. The person whom, if just one single additional person of all the billions who've ever lived were to be admitted to Heaven, why, he would be the one.

And, given the continuum of behaviours and lives and lifestyles across the estimated 101 billion humans to have been born at some point in recorded history, the last person to "get in" to the good afterlife will be barely, perhaps imperceptibly distinguishable in the balance of good and bad deeds (or thoughts) from the last person locked out of it. Imagining a slightly more (or less) merciful god doesn't do away with this problem. If the next one or ten or thousand people are allowed in, that simply shifts the point of dichotomy down to a different pair of virtually indistinguishable people.

Where this cutting-off point lies is another a mystery. The faithful certainly can't agree on it. Some will assert that all who believe (and only those who believe) in the right faith, and perhaps even in the right sect within the faith, get the good ending -- and that even those who were simply unknowing as to this faith because they were too young or too remote ever to have learned of it, are deprived of the positive afterlife. For these believers, the destiny of the unevangelized, and the incompetently evangelized looms large, because those people are doomed no matter what they did in life. Other believers will insist that faith alone will not suffice, but that even the most faithful must carry out good deeds and avoid bad behavior to qualify. Contrapositively to the first proposition, some even believe that only those who are good people will receive the reward, even if they are of the "wrong" faith. Some sects, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, believe in an absolute numerical cutoff, with only 144,000 getting into Heaven (interestingly, a number representing only a fraction of the number of members of that group now living, meaning even the vast majority of believers will get edged out based on population limits.

Alternatives -- absolute outcomes or infinite options....

There are a few ideas which avoid the jarring absolute of a cutoff point. There are, for example, absolute ideas. Some believe that the good afterlife is a reward which literally nobody merits, making it plausible that literally everybody gets whatever the bad afterlife is. Conversely, some claim that their god's limitless mercy assures that "Hell is empty," and so literally everybody gets the good outcome. Some theologians have even concluded that the only people who actually exist are those who get the good outcome, and all the rest are simply illusions of people.

A number of theological models posit reincarnation, which would allow individuals to simply live life over and over again, until they merit the good afterlife (which is itself an escape from the cycle of reincarnation). At least one commentator has theorized that there is only one soul being reincarnated and we are all incarnations of it, so that we will each of us experience every life which has ever been lived until we ultimately lead the last life leading into the eternal reward. And, naturally, there are other propositions presented in Pantheism and Pandeism, wherein everything was part of our Creator all along anyway, and simply goes back to it (possibly to experience the consequences of their own Earthly actions through the memories of those who experienced those consequences).

And, naturally, whether one sees the dichotomous nature of typical afterlife beliefs as problematic may itself be a matter of perspective. There is a certain amount of black-and-white thinking which permits for a stark split, with trust that the god in question knows just where to make the cutoff, and all above are in fact worthy of eternal Heaven (even if some are just barely worthy) while all below are deserving of whatever Hell befalls them. But, though most every religious person believes that both they and those they care for will end up all together in an eternal Heaven, there must be some doleful tossing and turning in the dark of the night over where, exactly, the cutoff lies, and whether it is imaginable that they'll fall below it -- since perhaps even less than firmly belonging in Hell, nobody wants to be amongst those very last people who failed to make the cut.

The infinite problem of infinite afterlives

The single most damning indictment against a deity establishing or allowing a strict dichotomy of eternal reward or eternal punishment is the inability of such deity to ameliorate such condition once it has been imposed. But some theistic accounts propose just such a dichotomy, specifically outlining categories of finite conduct which lead to infinite punishment -- even for those who would not naturally be aware that such conduct is condemnable.

Theists typically seek to sidestep the issue by proposing that human beings, having free will, are given the ability to choose to be so evil that forgiveness is not deserved. But once the punishment exceeds the wrong, unforgivingness itself becomes purely vile evil. At that point the finite wrong has already been punished, and the once-wrongdoer is being punished for nothing. A being would therefore itself need to be an infinitely evil scourge on the face of existence to permit an infinite punishment for a finite wrong. Naturally, it is a compoundedly greater error to make a binary inquiry of this, addressing only the punishment of the most evil humans. In fact, some faiths suggest a deity so basely evil that it would impose an eternal punishment on somebody who simply never came to believe in the existence of the deity in question despite living an otherwise good, even flawless life (and, perhaps, even if this disbelief is a logical response to incompetent evangelism).

Islam (so far as I am given to understand) avoids this fatal error by providing that the 'sinner' retains the ability to repent and obtain forgiveness even after death, i.e. even while in Islamic hell. Which is a more sensible thing, after all, since the infinite impossibility of such a thing would require a most sadistic elimination of free will. Simply put, if our minds continue to exist after death at all then we retain the capability to change our minds. If we can not change our minds, if we can not repent our wrongs, then the minds being punished are not truly our minds; they are no more than constructs of a static version of our minds, created for the sole purpose of having torment imposed upon them (if we ever actually existed in the first place). Conversely, if our minds (and their defining free will) are able to continue, then we are able to change our minds, and all must be able to go from a hell to a heaven or from a heaven to a hell based upon their change of mind. In other words, it can not be the case that the consequence is both infinite, and unfixable for the duration of that infinite period, for that would eliminate the free will from which the situation is claimed to arise in the first place, eliminating any justification for punishment.

Ultimately, the simple mathematical impossibility of a finite mind being fully aware of an infinite consequence is what makes infinite consequences inherently evil as applied to finite actors. The human inability to truly understand infinites is exemplified by the fact that we are only able to discuss the infinite through the use of finite symbols and representations. But of the entire set of "condemned" souls, there must be one which is, of that set, the least deserving of condemnation -- so the question remains, why does the least deserving condemned person remain condemned? And why would this condemnation persist even when the condemned person least deserving of condemnation had been fully punished or had fully repented after, say, one hundred billion years of torment? Why not, when the least deserving saved person is saved for all time, even if they become no more worthy of it after salvation, or are even able to slip into thoughts meriting condemnation?

Pandeism and the consideration of animal life

Some Pandeists believe that there is an afterlife wherein all things return to oneness with our Creator, in which all of the thoughts and experiences of existence may be shared.* I was recently asked whether Pandeists believe that animals experience this proposed afterlife experience.

There does not seem to be a principled way to make a distinction. After all, man came from the animals-- at what point did 'ape' become 'man,' even? To a Universe-spanning deity, would there even be that much difference between ape and man? It would seem that every person, every animal, plant, even every stone and speck of dust, would be part of the sum total experience in the end. But most of those things, perhaps even most orders of animals, have no qualitative experience of existence at all. Neither do our own individual bodily cells or organs, even. Our brain cells, taken one or a few at a time, don't have cognizable thoughts or feelings.

It helps to remember why it would make sense for our minds to continue being sustained as independent entities within the mind of our Creator. Because such minds, in sharing the immeasurable aspects contained within the oneness of our Creator, could continue generating new contemplations and new experiences, essentially eternally. Might our Creator be interested in experiencing the contemplations of lower-order minds? To think what a cow thinks, or how a cow feels when it is butchered? Or a crocodile, when it feeds? Or what a cow thinks of experiencing existence as a crocodile? Well, possibly. Why not? But there must be a practical bottom, a level below which no fruitful and useful thought is generated.

Saint Augustine objected to pantheistic notions of our Creator being in all things on experiential grounds. If our Creator is in all things, he plead, then when a man beats a beast, our Creator must feel the blows. But in this more conventional notions of God-- is our Creator not aware of the experience of animal life? Does it not know, as well, their perceptions? Is that not simply a form of knowledge? Indeed, isn't the most profound form of knowledge that of experience? For this reason, Pandeism does speak, in a sense, to the treatment of animals. Would you butcher animals (or have them butchered, even distantly), if the price for it was that you would have to share in the experience of everything felt by every animal you've eaten? And, especially, to do so having the knowledge that, whatever suffering it may have endured and in which you would share, was on your account? (So what about plants?, you might ask. Well, having no nociceptive nervous structure (the kinds of nerves which feel pain), nor a brain to process feelings, I'd have no discomfort with sharing their null experience of existence.)

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*The afterlife proposition is not a Universal pandeistic belief. It is simply a logical extrapolation from a Universe which seems to some to be designed to bring us about in the first place.

Thoughts on Aurora

I am certain I speak for Pandeists everywhere in offering our heartbroken condolences for the victims of the Aurora shootings -- those injured by the gunman's bullets, those who escaped physical injury but experienced the trauma of being there during this horrid event, and those who lost loved ones this day.  The perspective of Pandeism may do little to salve such pain, but know that Pandeists believe that we are all simply fragments of our Creator, existing so that our Creator could share in the awesome variety of experiences attending existence as our Universe, though it could not have known before such Creation the depths of pain which life in such a Universe could experience.

But, in the end, Pandeists believe, all things return to one, and all lives share in oneness with our Creator, there for those whose lives brought joy and happiness to others to experience this joy and happiness just as it was received by others; and for those who bring anguish and suffering to other to equally experience this anguish and suffering as it was received by others.


Let us walk from this experience holding in our hearts the possibility that those who have suffered so undeservedly will experience an ultimate reward of sharing in lifetimes of positive experiences; and that, for the anguish and suffering brought into the world on this day, all men work together to create an overwhelming response of joyful and positive experience for all the world to share in.

And some additional observations....



Let us not join in the blame game instantly, if inevitably, sprung up over this sorrowful event. Rick Warren, who pastors one of the nation's leading mega-churches, tweeted on the shooting: "When students are taught they are no different from animals, they act like it." He fairly quickly deleted that tweet, once controversy sprouted. In the same vein, US Congressman Louis Gohmert commented that people have asked where God was on that day, and concluded that God didn't intervene to prevent these killings because secularists have banned God from high school graduation ceremonies and the like.

At the other end of the theological spectrum, Atheists have reacted with equally broad pronouncements, pointing to the Christian upbringing of the shooter (and that faith being shared by most of the victims) and contending that it is the violence of theistic scriptures which leads to such acts. Across the spectrum of politics as well blame has been aimed, against lax gun laws, movie and video game violence, lax policies allowing someone like this gunman to be admitted to a graduate program, and most everything else one can think of.

And the bottom line, the truth of the matter, is this. Some people are off-balance. It's not because of religion or politics or policies. It's simply the occasionally hampered workings of nature. If it were a product of religion or lack thereof, there'd be more of it, or it would correlate with the religiosity of nations. And sometimes, no matter what rigor is put into checking the mental health of people in whatever situation, whatever restrictions are put on access to weaponry, some tiny portion of people are born with an ingrained snapping point, whereupon they will find a way to wreak some degree of havoc. Such people are like a force of nature, like a tornado. And blaming religion or politics for people tipping past the fold is no sounder a thing to do than to point fingers of blame for the happening of the weather.