I guess some people are unable to deal with uncertainty, especially when it concerns important things (such as “I am not 100% sure whether doing A or doing B will make my soul burn forever in hell, but I have to make a decision now anyway”). The standard human way to deal with unpleasant information is to deny it. Catholic theologicians don’t have an option of denying hell, so the obvious solution is to deny uncertainty.
“There is a rule X, which is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good.” “But here is this non-central situation where following the rule blindly seems bad.” ”There is this ad-hoc rule Y, which covers the special situation, so the whole system is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good.” “But here is another situation where...” ”There is another ad-hoc rule Z, which covers the other situation...” “But there is also...” ”There is yet another ad-hoc rule...”
You can play this game forever, adding epicycles upon epicycles, but the answer is always going to be that the system is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good. It is also obvious how they are cheating to achieve that. Also, the starving orphan is probably not aware of all these theological rules and exceptions, so obviously the answer is designed to make the theologician feel happy about the unambiguity of the situation.
I don’t think you can actually talk people out of their emotional needs.
Now suppose someone comes to you and tells you that they will save one billion lives if you promise to do evil for the rest of your life to the best of your ability.
Suppose you decide that overall you will not be able to do enough evil to counteract saving one billion lives. Should you make the agreement and do evil for the rest of your life to the best of your ability?
If you do, your actions will have overall good effects. And if you do, you will be doing evil, or you will not be fulfilling your promise.
If you want to talk to people, you need to first understand what they are saying. And they saying that the question that is important to them is, “Is this action good or evil,” not “Are the results good or evil?” Those are two different questions, and there is nothing to prevent them from having different answers.
I guess some people are unable to deal with uncertainty, especially when it concerns important things (such as “I am not 100% sure whether doing A or doing B will make my soul burn forever in hell, but I have to make a decision now anyway”). The standard human way to deal with unpleasant information is to deny it. Catholic theologicians don’t have an option of denying hell, so the obvious solution is to deny uncertainty.
“There is a rule X, which is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good.”
“But here is this non-central situation where following the rule blindly seems bad.”
”There is this ad-hoc rule Y, which covers the special situation, so the whole system is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good.”
“But here is another situation where...”
”There is another ad-hoc rule Z, which covers the other situation...”
“But there is also...”
”There is yet another ad-hoc rule...”
You can play this game forever, adding epicycles upon epicycles, but the answer is always going to be that the system is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good. It is also obvious how they are cheating to achieve that. Also, the starving orphan is probably not aware of all these theological rules and exceptions, so obviously the answer is designed to make the theologician feel happy about the unambiguity of the situation.
I don’t think you can actually talk people out of their emotional needs.
Here is a perfectly good rule: don’t do evil.
Now suppose someone comes to you and tells you that they will save one billion lives if you promise to do evil for the rest of your life to the best of your ability.
Suppose you decide that overall you will not be able to do enough evil to counteract saving one billion lives. Should you make the agreement and do evil for the rest of your life to the best of your ability?
If you do, your actions will have overall good effects. And if you do, you will be doing evil, or you will not be fulfilling your promise.
If you want to talk to people, you need to first understand what they are saying. And they saying that the question that is important to them is, “Is this action good or evil,” not “Are the results good or evil?” Those are two different questions, and there is nothing to prevent them from having different answers.