(November 30, 2020 at 12:26 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: The soul forge?  Could be, wouldn't be a great look for the divine or for this world...but it's no more or less absurd than any god notion.

"...not a great look..."

Do you mean God looks immoral for doing something like that?
The world looks immoral and we're all stuffed?
Or something else?

"...no more or less absurd than any god notion..."

Yeah - the truth is, we just don't know if God exists or not.  
If He exists, we don't really know what He's doing or why - not really.  
Maybe some insight here and there.
I guess we find out for sure when we die and can decide (or not haha) for ourselves if it's worth it or not.

In the soul forge scenario the divine isn't limited to gods, but..yeah..sure, we (in the grandest sense) don't seem to be doing great...if this is a soul forge - it's not a very good one. You can take that for it's normative content or for it's descriptive. IMO, ofc.

What prevents a person from knowing something in this life, and what relevance do a person's individual preferences have for a hypothetical next? These are the sorts of things about beliefs that always fascinate me. They're statements which we see often, they get dropped off-hand as though they're assumed to be shared. The soul forge scenario, for example - that sounds like something that can be known - and not like something that takes into account how much I love hotwings. It either is or it isn't a forge, and if it is, it's certainly not placing me in the next life based on who has the best sauce as I see it. That much can be known by definition.

Then we run into the normative trickiness of imposing the forging act on souls. If you don't have any interest in being forged, but the soul forge beats away at you with a hammer anyway - it seems as if the soul forge fails at consent....which seems like an important thing for soul improvement. The very notion that a soul can be improved implies that a soul can degrade, as well. How many souls have been ruined or otherwise harmed by this meatgrinding rock, if you had to hazard a guess?

On the descriptive end, if this is a soul forge, where is the product of it's work? Point to an improved soul or a bad soul yet to be improved. A general trend one way or the other in human soul? Point to a single soul, for that matter, to be forged by this as yet unidentified forging force. The assertion (or suggestion) that this life is a soul forge is not an assertion about some next life that can evade questions of observation in this one - it's an explicit claim on this life. Whatever is true of this life, would be true of the soul forge by default. If things don't work, the soul forge is malfunctioning. If we have no souls, then the soul forge is applying pressure to no end. Etc etc.

(December 1, 2020 at 7:29 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: In the soul forge scenario the divine isn't limited to gods, but..yeah..sure, we (in the grandest sense) don't seem to be doing great...if this is a soul forge - it's not a very good one.   You can take that for it's normative content or for it's descriptive.  IMO, ofc.

I Don't know.  I'm not sure what's going on and even if God explained it to me I doubt I'd be intelligent enough to understand the answer anyway.  

If this is all about experiential learning for the benefit of spiritual growth - I don't know where we are at in development as a planet.  I suspect we are somewhere near the beginning - with lots to go through and learn.

Quote:What prevents a person from knowing something in this life, and what relevance do a person's individual preferences have for a hypothetical next?  These are the sorts of things about beliefs that always fascinate me.  

I can play with the question and freestyle a guess?? 
What prevents a person from knowing something in this life?  
Hmmm My first thought would be 
a)  their senses / instruments?  If a thing is unobservable to them - they wouldn't "know" the thing.  
b)  their mind?  Intelligence - They may actually be observing a thing every day but be unable to connect the dots and see the outline.  (Not smart enough to spot the pattern and so wouldn't know about the thing).  Emotional - They may be hindered emotionally and so the subconscious mind (whatever that means haha) blocks the knowledge?  (Basically a self deception).  This wouldn't technically count - because the person does know on some level.
Summary:  One basic answer is - What you can observe.  Make sense of what you observe.
Relating to my faith, it's a thought that maybe the spirit world is all around us all the time.  I don't see it.  I don't think I've the sensory evolution to observe it fully nor would I have the intelligence to process it if I should observe it.  Save examples of when I think I've had a genuine experience from God (I think he came to me in a way I could understand).
what relevance do a person's individual preferences have for a hypothetical next?
I'll assume God exists and the purpose of this life and the next is continuing spiritual growth through learning (often experiential).
I don't know the answer to this either hahaha.  
My first thought is that God gives you 1)  What you need and 2)  What you want - in varying degrees.  
This could be a bit more hellish than your life on earth or a bit more heavenly.  
1)  What you need
Assuming God understands the entire blueprint of the soul/spirit including potential futures.  
God would understand how to get to all potentials and why soul is in current state etc etc.  
God would have an ideal and the resources & will to give it.  This God would call "What you need".
(You may have other ideas).  I assume you're given the option to take His way or select your own way. 
2)  What you want in varying degrees.
Of course - getting to what you truthfully "want" - 
2)  I assume a perfect appraisal is done of you which summarises your experience on earth 
  a1)  A review whereby you (re)experience/see all of your thoughts, actions, motives, feelings.  
         You also see and feel how you affected everyone else by experiencing their feelings on your behaviour.  
  a2)  You see/experience all the consequences of your actions - good or bad?
  a3)  Heaven citizenship shares their feelings on your own freewill decisions with you.  (They are hurt when you don't love.  They are elated when you love).
  a4)  Heaven citizenship shares their feelings on how you were treated.  (unloved - they are hurt.  loved - they are pleased)  
  
  b)  Then you're given opportunity to draw a conclusion for yourself.
  c)  Options are laid out coming with, warnings, appeals and advice.  You are asked if you wish to continue your path towards God, or, not?
You want to have a go at a (partial) answer?

note:  This answer is pure speculation.  I am not saying this is what happens.  It's only a guess of how things might work.

Do you think that there's no way to know...or no way for you personally to know... which, if any of these guesses is accurate, or more or less accurate, than another? More or less probable, plausible, desirable, moral?

If it's a black box I have to wonder what made you come up with these specific things, and if it's not a black box - then I see no reason why a person would have to die before answering any or all of those questions. The faithful obviously haven't - it's a proviso that only seems to turn up when they consider that their beliefs may be wrong..and I suspect it's more about shielding them from being proven wrong than it is about a dry appraisal of the possibility of knowledge.

I suspect that we have different commitments and criteria for knowledge - as you're yet to suggest something which would be unknowable in principle or in practice, in this life, as I see it.

For example, assuming that this life is a soul forge, and assuming that we're somewhere near the beginning - then it's an incredibly slow soul forge. I can know that. There have been human beings getting pounded for a quarter million to fifty thousand years..and we're still at the beginning. OFC the idea that we're at the beginning betrays a commitment to how you view humanity. What if, instead, we're at the end of the soul forge - or it ceased to improve us in any way some time ago? Can a soul forge cook finished products, and damage those products, as any other forge would? Are all objects equally forgeable, even? All of these questions about soul forges are derived from things I know about forges of any other kind, natural and artificial. If we run through them (and, mind you, these are rhetorical..you don't have to answer though obviously you can if you like) and it turns out that this soul forge business is an incoherent mess riddled with beliefs and assertions contrary to facts and grounded by no facts - then by my own commitments..in this case to knowledge, I would say that I know that the soul forge assertion is false, and demonstrably false, in this life. I consider gods with that same commitment, in direct contradiction to your assertion that we can't know in this life. Even at the meta level, it would seem that one or the other assertion is true, one or the other assertion is false.

God's justification? Christians don't need justification from god when it comes to punishment. If their imaginary buddy treats them like shit, they are trained to endure it with a smile on their face. As are Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims.

God, or the universe, is only beating them for their own good. It loves them, and just look at what they made it do to them.

(December 1, 2020 at 9:57 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: God, or the universe, is only beating them for their own good.  It loves them, and just look at what they made it do to them.

The submissive BDSM people are having fun in hell, just saying.

But ofc they couldn't be. Somehow, any person who might enjoy the bad thing will have to be soul switched. Otherwise it's a charade..and, not for nothing, but if we're going to be soul switched to whatever would be necessary for the soul forge to work irrespective of what we are it's all charade already anyhow.

Just soul switch us and skip the forging-for-show.

If, otoh, there will be no soul switching and the truly evil are immune to forging because they genuinely enjoy the failure state - it's not a forge at all. It's a first pass incinerator. A garbage sorting system. Well, stop making garbage and you won't have to throw it away, right?

Will try to reply later - in the meantime - what's a soul forge?  Is it the name of a religious argument?  that earth and the material universe is here to create souls?  refine souls?

I've never heard the term before.

Also "Black Box"?

Soul making theodicies have been used by religions, sure - but the soul forge simply refers to the belief that this life performs a function in the making (or improving) of souls. Whether that's conceptualized as literally getting a soul by being born here, ascending to heaven to be with jesus - or achieving enlightenment after many rebirths. The underlying premise - and this part is completely secular - is that the point of this life is to learn something or be improved in some way.

Nevermind the black box. I'll rephrase the question in the form of an observation. The faithful seem to know an awful lot about the unknowable. I suspect that this is because it's not unknowable or even conceived of as unknowable. That the impossibility of knowledge is more insurance and protection for our beliefs than a prior commitment to their contents.