tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post7644366051892787412..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: Selective universalismRyanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-4233780554333746982008-04-29T16:36:00.000-04:002008-04-29T16:36:00.000-04:00Good points, Steve. To piggyback: if someone is g...Good points, Steve. To piggyback: if someone is going to keep consistent with the emotional argument for universalism, he also has to deal with the fact that our emotions change over time. <BR/><BR/>For instance, suppose Adam marries his high school sweetheart Becca when they are both 20. He does this instead of marrying Claire, who is also the same age. <BR/><BR/>At 30, Becca passes away in a car accident. At first, the grief is nearly unbearable for Adam. If you were to ask him: "Who would you rather see in heaven, Becca or Claire?" he would answer, "Becca!" <BR/><BR/>But days turn into weeks, and weeks into months, and months into years. When he may not have gone half an hour without thinking of Becca for the first month after her death, by the time he's 35 she comes to mind less often. And when he marries Claire at the age of 40, he remembers Becca in a different light, one filled more with "what might have beens" then the intense, emotional separation.<BR/><BR/>The years go by and Adam and Claire celebrate their fifith wedding aniversary. Now the 90 year old man's emotional connection to his first wife who died when he was 30 is no where near the same as it was back then. Instead, he has formed a much stronger current emotional attachment to Claire. If you asked him, "Who would you rather see in heaven, Becca or Claire?" he would answer: "Claire."<BR/><BR/>Of course we could also change the above so that after Adam and Becca marry, Becca commits an affair, hires someone to kill Adam (unsuccessfully), and burns their house down before dying in the car accident which happened during her getaway attempt. Adam's emotions are going to be completely different from what they would have been if it had been a more normal event.<BR/><BR/>In either way, the emotional argument has to handle the fact that our emotions change. They are not immutable, and therefore they cannot constitute an objective standard which can be used to determine who should or shouldn't go to heaven or hell.Peter Pikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11792036365040378473noreply@blogger.com