Presupposing Islam is true, an eternal hell is justified.

C1: Status and MoralityI. Pro drops one point and urges us to focus on his other allegedly more sturdy point; I will do so.II. Pro seems to misunderstand the purpose of my analogy; it was a point to illustrate a reductio ad absurdum - that is, a reduction to an absurdity by showing the absurd consequences that would follow if we accepted Pro's main contention here. The analogy brings out the the motivating intuition in favor of the retributivist model of punishment - that punishment can be doled out in gradients on a "scale of moral seriousness", as it were. Stealing candy would be on the low end of the scale and murdering 26 people would be on the high end of the scale. In the former case, paying back the value of the item stolen (and perhaps other minor actions) can be a proper punishment but in the other case only something such as life in prison would suffice. But if that is the case - and it surely has to be on the retributivist understanding of punishment - Pro's contention collapses this motivating intuition because Pro's contention makes it so that ALL sin merits the same punishment. But this clearly goes against the retributivist understanding of punishment which is what his argument is based on. It just seems absurd that my stealing candy and my murdering 26 people could amount to the same punishment - an eternity in hell. And, indeed, if Allah is Just as he is maintained to be, it doesn't seem that a perfectly Just Judge would issue such punishment(s) - and this all brought out by Pro making his own argument. Pro has undercut himself. So, if that is truly what Pro contends then that is good reason to reject the argument and amounts to a refutation.III. This doesn't seem to address my analogy either. Despite what Pro is saying his contention that he actually takes into account the nature and seriousness of the crime it doesn't seem that it does. As my analogy clearly shows both actions are not worth equal punishment, even if they done upon the same person and that has to do with the principle of retributivism that I elucidated on in the above paragraph. But if that is the case it is unclear how the "moral calculus" changes so drastically when you bring Allah into the picture. If, per my analogy, you replace the 100 units of moral status of a human being with the infinite units of moral status of Allah that still doesn't show how a person one person who does minor sin A against Allah merits infinite punishment just as a person who does major sin B against Allah. In fact, if what Pro says is true there would be no distinction between "minor" and "major" sins - which, again, counts against the very model of punishment Pro bases his argument on.C2: Consequences of SinI. Actually, my contention is very relevant here and Pro doesn't take it seriously enough because, if true, it directly undercuts support for his argument in support of C2. Pro caricatures my argument here; I never said that it "isn't our fault if we commit major sins* such as rape or murder" nor did I say or imply that we cannot avoid murdering or raping. What I did say is merely a truism; moral culpability diminishes the more the moral agent is impaired in the relevant ways (and I listed out some of the relevant ways in my opening round). This is obvious - it's the reason why we don't try children as adults in the court of law for various offenses. It's the reason why there are "age of consent" laws. But in this case (when conceiving hell) we are all in a child-like state of ignorance and having immature cognitive faculties.*Again, if Pro's points in C1 are correct there'd be no such distinction between major and minor sins here.C3: Free WillI. This is somewhat an extension of the previous point and somewhat of a new point but it is crucial. I think that Pro's contention here that "we can have sufficient knowledge of how truly horrifying the nature of hell is" is just out and out false. He quotes a relevant passage from the Qu'ran and, indeed, it does sound horrible; definitely not something I'd choose to subject myself to! I still contend that is a horribly insufficient characterization of hell. There is a difference here between experiential knowledge and knowledge-by-acquaintance. For instance, I have never had to watch a situation as described by Elie Wiesel but I can indeed recognize, somewhat, how soul shattering an experience that would be. [1] But that is only through empathy and paltry analogies to my own experiences and through reading his account of his experiences. I will never truly know what it is like to experience such an event, and as such it's hard for me to conceive of how truly horrifying, terrifying and despairing such an event would be. I've never been a participant (either victim or perpetrator) of such a horrendous evil. As Marilyn McCord Adams has pointed out "where suffering is concerned, conceivability follows the capacity to experience, in such a way that we cannot adequately conceive of what we cannot experience." [2] I have never had an experience of the nature of Wiesel's so I cannot adequately conceive of such a state of affairs. It be absurd (and insulting) to say that I could. Or, in a different situation, I could impress with all my might to a two year old how horrible it would be burned alive and that that is a "bad" state of affairs (per my earlier analogy) but they would not adequately conceive of such an event. This ties into my point because no one here on this earth has experienced an eternity of hell fire, and thus we cannot adequately conceive of such. We just know that it's "bad". Even if one has been burned before, it's hard to say how an eternity of burning would feel like.II. My points apply equally to both direct and indirect choices; in either case it doesn't seem moral to allow such a momentous choice to be left up to human beings. This would also raise the troubling point of why Allah would make such a momentous choice an "indirect choice" in the first place; surely if it was a direct choice and people could clearly see that such and such choice(s) would send them to hell then they wouldn't do it and more people would end up being saved. If Pro alludes to that's because it is a "test" that would surely impugn on the teachers character if they made such an easily failable test knowing that the students aren't up to the task.III. My question, which didn't get answered is, why the value of "free will" is place of the infinite disvalue of an eternity in hell. I agree that free will is valuable, but when placed next to hell? It seems a bit paltry. We clearly recognize instances wherein which another persons' choice should be overridden if they are doing something irreparably harmful to themselves in an irrational state of mind. Why can't that also be the case here? It also beggars belief to think that infinitely smart and powerful and good Allah couldn't find a way to set up a state of affairs in which people freely choose to enter in communion with him.Sources[1] "Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith for ever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never." -- Elie Wiesel [2] http://philpapers.org...