Monthly Archives: June 2017

Humankind’s Original Sin & Emergence of the Human Soul in Evolution

This post is in a series building a conceptual model of Satan and his warfare with God to bring all human individuals to annihilation. It follows Why Does Satan Want Us to Go to Hell?

How might this type of animal which Satan wants to bring to hell have arisen in the evolutionary process? Suppose a species of the genus homo had evolved far enough to do the type of thinking and feeling we now call moral thinking about the rightness and wrongness of particular acts. They are homo sapiens but innocent homo sapiens because they never think of themselves as good or bad people. They are aware of moral rules for what they ought not do and what they ought to do. Innocent homo sapiens are not conscious of a potential for being what they ought to be. They have moral concepts of ought-to-to but lack a concept of moral ought-to-be. Put another way: They have the concepts of right and wrong acts but do not have the concept of moral character formation.

For instance, they might have rules expressing moral inhibitions against killing, lying and stealing. Of course, they may not always follow these rules. But they lack the moral concept of the role of being someone who follows these rules. To say that the concept of this role is a moral concept is to say that it is thought everyone has an obligation to play this role.

A message comes from God to a breeding pair of innocent humans. The message takes the form of the imperative: Become the kind of beings who have as their highest priority obeying these moral rules regardless of any inclination to do otherwise. Put another way: The new moral thought is the thought of a command that all plans for satisfying their inclinations, all maxims for how to get things done, need to be restricted to plans that do not violate these general moral rules. Having as one’s highest principle or maxim choosing to satisfy inclinations in conformity with what is morally right simply because it is right to do so is having a good will. A good will is a moral good because it is something to be chosen and it ought to be chosen. This thought of this moral good is a great gift because it brings with it the thought of having a purpose for life. The purpose of life is to become a morally good person.

For those familiar with Kant’s moral theory, it will be apparent that I am adapting Kant’s Categorical Imperative as the thought which makes animals capable of having general moral rules into human beings. But I am not interpreting Kant’s moral theory. If there is anything worthwhile in what I present and it comes from Kant, give Kant credit for it. Do not blame Kant for foolishness in what I write.

However, I am proposing that having the thought of a good will as a good is what gave a human soul to beings in the evolutionary process. A good will is having the character of always choosing to satisfy inclinations for non-moral goods restricted by moral rules. Non-moral goods are the satisfactions of the numerous inclinations humans can have. Since I am not here trying to present a secular account,I will interpret moral rules as God’s commands and thus interpret a good will as always obeying God what commands.

So we have this couple with knowledge of right and wrong plus the additional thought of making themselves into people who always do what is right because they is the way they ought to be. They have the new and overriding good or goal of always choosing what is right when they choose lesser goods. Now comes a temptation. This is a new temptation different from temptations to violate a moral rule. They have always had temptations to violate the moral rules. The new temptation is to set aside the imperative to have a good will as a good for the sake of a lesser good. Put another way: The temptation is to set aside a policy of always doing what God commands simply because God commands it. This is exactly the temptation to which Satan or Lucifer succumbed as we saw What is Satan’s Sin?. They succumbed to this temptation by attempting to justify some violation of a moral rule – some violation of a command of God. So the man and the woman have the policy or maxim of reserving to themselves the right of setting aside a moral law of God- if they so choose. Adopting this maxim is their original sin. Their original sin is not the choice of the act they try to rationalize. The original sin – the sin which is original in the pursuit of moral character- is choice of the policy of on occasion placing inclination satisfaction over obedience to the will or God which we are here identifying with the moral law.

In the next post in this series on Satan and original sin, I speculate on how this original sin is inherited.

Readers my be interested in my book on sexual morality. The central thesis of my book can be interpreted as a temptation from Satan to believe that in principle any pursuit of sexual satisfaction is morally permissible.

My book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. See Book Web Page for information about the book. The publisher’s listed price is $26.99. Printed copies can be purchased here by credit card for $3.99, plus $3.71 for shipping and handling.





To purchase the printed book by check, send check of $3.99 plus $3.71 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.
Columbus, Ohio 43214
Include your shipping address.

Why Does Satan Want Us to Go to Hell?

This post follows a post What is Satan’s Sin? proposing that there is a Satan with the capability to convey messages to human beings contrary to messages that God would convey to humans. Here we consider what kind of messages Satan would convey to human beings and for what end.

I will refer to Satan with the neutered masculine pronoun “He.” Consider the following line of thought.

Satan has chosen, on occasion, to convey to humans what he wants rather than what God wills.
By choosing to convey what he wills rather than what God wills, Satan has chosen not to be as he ought to be. Satan ought to be a reliable messenger of God’s will.
By choosing not to be as he ought to be, Satan has chosen not to be.

(This crucial identification of not-being with not-being-as-it-ought-to-be has been defended in Moral Harm and non-Being .)

I am afraid that the line of thought I am developing requires at some stage I confront the fundamental question of philosophy: What is Being? I am afraid of this confrontation because I doubt that I can say anything worthwhile that has not already been said. Plato et al. have left the question -die Seinfrage- open.
What Satan has chosen can be defined as Satan’s goal or good.
Satan’s good can be considered as negative and positive but the negative is ultimately more accurate. Negatively considered Satan’s good is simply not-being
Positively considered Satan’s good is some way of being but which is not-being as it ought to be.

For instance, Satan conveys to humans the false message that the end justifies the means. Now being a bearer of that false message is not the way Satan ought to be. Nonetheless Satan is actually something as bearer of that false message. However, at the end of the ages when all that is exists as it ought to be Satan’s accumulation of states of what he ought not have been vanish. Satan is nothing – truly dead.

This total death is hell.

Satan wills his’ good for human beings. Satan’s good, as we have just noted, is that human beings receive and act on messages contrary to what God would tell human beings such as “The end justifies the means.” So Satan wills that humans not be as they ought to be and at the end of the ages be truly dead. Satan’s good for human beings is truly evil for human beings. So when we regard love as willing the good of a being we can regard willing evil for another as hatred for that other being. Thus Satan truly hates human beings just as he hates himself by willing his total death or hell..

We have now answered why Satan hates us and wills that we go to hell. The next post in this series on Satan confronts the issue of how Satan enters into a contest with God to bring all humans into hell with himself.

Readers my be interested in my book on sexual morality. It could be said that I confront the false message of Satan, sent through our culture, that there is no objectively right way to exercise our sexuality; rather in sexual matters the end justifies the means.

My book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. See Book Web Page for information about the book. The publisher’s listed price is $26.99. Printed copies can be purchased here by credit card for $3.99, plus $3.71 for shipping and handling.





To purchase the printed book by check, send check of $3.99 plus $3.71 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.
Columbus, Ohio 43214
Include your shipping address.

What Is Satan’s Sin?

This post continues building a conceptual model of a demonic being who struggles to bring eternal punishment to human beings. It continues reflections from There is a Satan in Opposition to Good. This post answers: What evil did Satan choose?

An assumption is that God created beings to convey His will to the material universe which he intended to create. These messengers of God’s will can properly be called angels. As part of this assumption we can postulate that these messengers are organized into an hierarchical society according to the type of messages to be conveyed. Whimsically let us suppose the highest one – the archangel- is called Lucifer or the bearer of light to humans who are to be created. For angels i.e., divine messengers, to be as they ought to be is choose as their policy, as their maxim, to convey what God wills. For an angel to not be as it ought to be is to choose as its maxim to ,on occasion,convey its own will rather than God’s will to whoever, or whatever, is to receive the message. In effect, a “bad” angel assumes a right to place its will between God and creatures. Thus, the sin of a bad angel is pride

Let us postulate that Lucifer chooses to be a bad angel who chooses as his operating policy to on occasion convey its messages for human beings rather than what God would convey to human beings. God has no place for a messenger such as Lucifer nor any other messengers who chose as Lucifer. Yet God cannot destroy these beings since as was argued in God Cannot Destroy Satan God cannot destroy beings who have been created with a way they ought to be. Yet they will be separated from God. Where God is, all is as it ought to be; that’s heaven. This condition of separation from God is Hell.

God allows Lucifer to go to Hell. To replace Lucifer as His bearer of messages to humans, God creates the second archangel Michael. Michael chooses the maxim he ought to choose, namely, always to convey to humans the message that God wants humans to receive.

However, because of its indestructibility even in hell, Lucifer, or Satan, still has the function of conveying messages to humans. What messages does Satan want to convey to humans and for what purpose? They won’t be the messages that Michael will convey since Michael has chosen as his maxim to convey a message to humans if and only if God wills it to be conveyed. Thus there is a warfare between Michael and Lucifer in the form of putting conflicting messages into human culture. The next post in this series on Satan answers this question about what type of messages Satan sends us. That post is titled ” Why Does Satan Want us to Hell?

Readers my be interested in my book on sexual morality provoked by although in that book I do not consider sexual sins as provoked by anthing beyond sexual desire..

My book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. See Book Web Page for information about the book. The publisher’s listed price is $26.99. Printed copies can be purchased here by credit card for $3.99, plus $3.71 for shipping and handling.





To purchase the printed book by check, send check of $3.99 plus $3.71 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.
Columbus, Ohio 43214
Include your shipping address.

Moral Harm as the Natural Harm Which Ought to Be

In this post I modify the notion of moral harm in a post Moral Harm and Non-Being and in my book on sexual morality.* In those places the notion of moral harm was presented as too intellectual and individualistic. I presented moral harm as the mere status of an individual who had chosen contrary to the moral law and the damage done to him was the status of diminishing his being -what he is- by now being less than he ought to be. I am modifying it in in light of my post justifying the rationality of retribution. With use of the notion of retribution, the notion of moral harm is being expanded to include the natural harms which OUGHT TO BE brought about by violation of moral laws.

Let the term “bad moral consequences of an act” mean the natural bad things that ought to happen to human beings because of the choice of an act contrary to morality..

Consider some examples of moral thinking and thoughts of moral consequences. A person who knows that he has lied to make a good deal certainly does not think that he ought to be better off because of his lying. This is so even if he has lied to bring about better natural conditions for all concerned. He hopes that he will get the good things without getting the harmful things which ought to be for having lied.

But let me go beyond individuals to communities. Communities can suffer moral harm by virtue of having their decision making authority, however it may operate, choose what is contrary to moral law. U.S. citizens before the War Between the States were well aware of the injustice and cruelty of the enslavement of people of African origin. The devastation of that horrible war was regarded by many as some of the harm that ought to have been brought about by the slavery system. Because the notion of retribution by itself does not specify how much harm ought to occur, who should suffer it or who should inflict it we are still thinking that harms ought to be brought about for slavery and its residual violations of moral law in the racism remaining after slavery. To put it simply: A part the White Guilt felt by so many over slavery and its residual racism is a manifestation of its moral harm – the lingering expectation that some bad things still OUGHT to be inflicted upon us.

Consider more examples for citizens of the U.S.. Part of the reasons we cringe when learning of our country’s unjust proxy wars during the cold war and the torture, targeted killings and reckless collateral damage in the war on terror is that we must admit that some bad things ought to happen to us because of how we as a nation have violated moral laws.

Relevant to these reflections is a suggestion about reporting on the achievements of those who have been the first member of certain groups who suffered some type of unjust discrimination to make such achievements. These are reported as “The first black who…” “The first woman who…” Such reporting calls to mind the thought of injustice for which harm ought to happen along with the thought of the individual’s achievements. The thought of harms which ought to happen are not pleasant thoughts. These unpleasant thoughts about bad things which ought to happen can diminish the pleasure of the thought of thinking about the splendid achievements of the individuals. The splendor of the achievement gets forgotten as the report as taken as more “political” reporting.

*Introduction of the retributive principle is developing the notion of moral harm which I used in my book. In my book I did not clearly enough link moral harm with natural harms
My book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. See Book Web Page for information about the book. The publisher’s listed price is $26.99. Printed copies can be purchased here by credit card for $3.99, plus $3.71 for shipping and handling.





To purchase the printed book by check, send check of $3.99 plus $3.71 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.
Columbus, Ohio 43214
Include your shipping address.

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