The software's name takes itself from dialogue in Hamlet: Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
The thought experiment was formulated by Richard Dawkins, and the first simulation written by him; various other implementations of the program have been written by others.
I don't know who it was first pointed out that, given enough time, a monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter could produce all the works of Shakespeare.
The operative phrase is, of course, given enough time. Let us limit the
task facing our monkey somewhat. Suppose that he has to produce, not
the complete works of Shakespeare but just the short sentence 'Methinks
it is like a weasel',
and we shall make it relatively easy by giving him a typewriter with a
restricted keyboard, one with just the 26 (capital) letters, and a space
bar. How long will he take to write this one little sentence?
The scenario is staged to produce a string of gibberish
letters, assuming that the selection of each letter in a sequence of 28
characters will be random. The number of possible combinations in this
random sequence is 2728, or about 1040, so the probability
that the monkey will produce a given sequence is extremely low. Any
particular sequence of 28 characters could be selected as a "target"
phrase, all equally as improbable as Dawkins's chosen target, "METHINKS
IT IS LIKE A WEASEL".
A computer program could be written to carry out the actions of Dawkins's hypothetical
monkey, continuously generating combinations of 26 letters and spaces
at high speed. Even at the rate of millions of combinations per second,
it is unlikely, even given the entire lifetime of the universe to run, that the program would ever produce the phrase "METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL".
Dawkins intends this example to illustrate a common misunderstanding of evolutionary change, i.e. that DNA sequences or organic compounds such as proteins are the result of atoms randomly combining to form more complex structures. In these types of computations, any sequence of amino acids in a protein will be extraordinarily improbable (this is known as Hoyle's fallacy). Rather, evolution proceeds by hill climbing, as in adaptive landscapes.
Dawkins then goes on to show that a process of cumulative selection can take far fewer steps to reach any given target. In Dawkins's words:
We again use our computer monkey,
but with a crucial difference in its program. It again begins by
choosing a random sequence of 28 letters, just as before ... it
duplicates it repeatedly, but with a certain chance of random error – 'mutation' – in the copying. The computer examines the mutant nonsense phrases, the 'progeny' of the original phrase, and chooses the one which, however slightly, most resembles the target phrase, METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL.
By repeating the procedure, a randomly generated sequence of 28 letters and spaces will be gradually changed each generation. The sequences progress through each generation:
Generation 01: WDLTMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P
Generation 02: WDLTMNLT DTJBSWIRZREZLMQCO P
Generation 10: MDLDMNLS ITJISWHRZREZ MECS P
Generation 20: MELDINLS IT ISWPRKE Z WECSEL
Generation 30: METHINGS IT ISWLIKE B WECSEL
Generation 40: METHINKS IT IS LIKE I WEASEL
Generation 43: METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
Dawkins continues:
The exact time taken by the
computer to reach the target doesn't matter. If you want to know, it
completed the whole exercise for me, the first time, while I was out to
lunch. It took about half an hour. (Computer enthusiasts may think this
unduly slow. The reason is that the program was written in BASIC, a sort of computer baby-talk. When I rewrote it in Pascal,
it took 11 seconds.) Computers are a bit faster at this kind of thing
than monkeys, but the difference really isn't significant. What matters
is the difference between the time taken by cumulative selection,
and the time which the same computer, working flat out at the same
rate, would take to reach the target phrase if it were forced to use the
other procedure of single-step selection: about a million
million million million million years. This is more than a million
million million times as long as the universe has so far existed.
Implications for biology
The program aims to demonstrate that the preservation of small changes in an evolving string of characters (or genes)
can produce meaningful combinations in a relatively short time as long
as there is some mechanism to select cumulative changes, whether it is a
person identifying which traits are desirable (in the case of
artificial selection) or a criterion of survival ("fitness") imposed by
the environment (in the case of natural selection). Reproducing systems
tend to preserve traits across generations, because the offspring
inherit a copy of the parent's traits. It is the differences between
offspring, the variations in copying, which become the basis for
selection, allowing phrases closer to the target to survive, and the
remaining variants to "die."
Dawkins discusses the issue of the mechanism of selection with respect to his "biomorphs" program:
The human eye has an active role to
play in the story. It is the selecting agent. It surveys the litter of
progeny and chooses one for breeding. ...Our model, in other words, is
strictly a model of artificial selection, not natural selection. The
criterion for 'success' is not the direct criterion of survival, as it
is in true natural selection. In true natural selection, if a body has
what it takes to survive, its genes automatically survive because they
are inside it. So the genes that survive tend to be, automatically,
those genes that confer on bodies the qualities that assist them to
survive.
Regarding the example's applicability to biological evolution, he is careful to point out that it has its limitations:
Although the monkey/Shakespeare
model is useful for explaining the distinction between single-step
selection and cumulative selection, it is misleading in important ways.
One of these is that, in each generation of selective 'breeding', the
mutant 'progeny' phrases were judged according to the criterion of
resemblance to a distant ideal target, the phrase METHINKS IT IS
LIKE A WEASEL. Life isn't like that. Evolution has no long-term goal.
There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a
criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd
notion that our species is the final goal of evolution. In real life,
the criterion for selection is always short-term, either simple survival
or, more generally, reproductive success.
A
full run of a weasel program, with 100 offspring per generation, and a
5% mutation chance per character copied. Only the "fittest" string of
each generation is shown. Note that, in generation 8, the 25th
character, which had been correct (A), becomes incorrect (I).
The program does not "lock" correct characters, rather it measures at
each iteration the closeness of the complete string to the 'target'
phrase.
More complex models
In The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins goes on to provide a graphical model of gene selection involving entities he calls biomorphs. These are two-dimensional sets of line segments
which bear relationships to each other, drawn under the control of
"genes" that determine the appearance of the biomorph. By selecting
entities from sequential generations of biomorphs, an experimenter can
guide the evolution of the figures toward given shapes, such as
"airplane" or "octopus" biomorphs.
As a simulation, the biomorphs are not much closer to the actual
genetic behavior of biological organisms. Like the Weasel program, their
development is shaped by an external factor, in this case the decisions
of the experimenter who chooses which of many possible shapes will go
forward into the following generation. They do however serve to
illustrate the concept of "genetic space," where each possible gene is
treated as a dimension,
and the actual genomes of living organisms make up a tiny fraction of
all possible gene combinations, most of which will not produce a viable
organism. As Dawkins puts it, "however many ways there may be of being
alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead".
In Climbing Mount Improbable, Dawkins responded to the
limitations of the Weasel program by describing programs, written by
other parties, that modeled the evolution of the spider web.
He suggested that these programs were more realistic models of the
evolutionary process, since they had no predetermined goal other than
coming up with a web that caught more flies through a "trial and error"
process. Spiderwebs were seen as good topics for evolutionary modeling
because they were simple examples of biosystems that were easily
visualized; the modeling programs successfully generated a range of
spider webs similar to those found in nature.
Although Dawkins did not provide the source code for his program, a "Weasel" style algorithm could run as follows.
Start with a random string of 28 characters.
Make 100 copies of the string (reproduce).
For each character in each of the 100 copies, with a probability of 5%, replace (mutate) the character with a new random character.
Compare each new string with the target string "METHINKS IT IS LIKE A
WEASEL", and give each a score (the number of letters in the string
that are correct and in the correct position).
If any of the new strings has a perfect score (28), halt. Otherwise, take the highest scoring string, and go to step 2.
For these purposes, a "character" is any uppercase letter, or a
space. The number of copies per generation, and the chance of mutation
per letter are not specified in Dawkins's book; 100 copies and a 5%
mutation rate are examples. Correct letters are not "locked". Each
correct letter may become incorrect in subsequent generations. The terms
of the program and the existence of the target phrase do however mean
that such 'negative mutations' will quickly be 'corrected'.
The watchmaker analogy or watchmaker argument is a teleological argument which states, by way of an analogy, that a design implies a designer. The analogy has played a prominent role in natural theology and the "argument from design," where it was used to support arguments for the existence of God and for the intelligent design of the universe, in both Christianity and Deism.
Sir Isaac Newton, among other leaders in the scientific revolution, including René Descartes,
upheld "that the physical laws he had uncovered revealed the mechanical
perfection of the workings of the universe to be akin to a watch,
wherein the watchmaker is God."
The 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection put forward an explanation for complexity and adaptation, which reflects scientific consensus on the origins of biological diversity. In the eyes of some, this provided a counter-argument to the watchmaker analogy: for example, the evolutionary biologistRichard Dawkins referred to the analogy in his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker giving his explanation of evolution. Others, however, consider the watchmaker analogy to be compatible with evolutionary creation, opining that the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. In the 19th century, deists, who championed the watchmaker analogy, held that Darwin's theory fit with "the principle of uniformitarianism—the idea that all processes in the world occur now as they have in the past" and that deistic evolution "provided an explanatory framework for understanding species variation in a mechanical universe."
The scientific revolution
"nurtured a growing awareness" that "there were universal laws of
nature at work that ordered the movement of the world and its parts." James K. A. Smith and Amos Yong
write that in "astronomy, the Copernican revolution regarding the
heliocentrism of the solar system, Johannes Kepler's (1571–1630) three
laws of planetary motion, and Isaac Newton's (1642–1727) law of
universal gravitation—laws of gravitation and of motion, and notions of
absolute space and time—all combined to establish the regularities of
heavenly and earthly bodies." With such a backdrop, "deists suggested
the watchmaker analogy: just as watches are set in motion by
watchmakers, after which they operate according to their pre-established
mechanisms, so also was the world begun by the God as creator, after
which it and all its parts have operated according to their
pre-established natural laws. With these laws perfectly in place, events
have unfolded according to the prescribed plan." For Sir Isaac Newton, "the regular motion of the planets made it reasonable to believe in the continued existence of God."
Newton also upheld the idea that "like a watchmaker, God was forced to
intervene in the universe and tinker with the mechanism from time to
time to ensure that it continued operating in good working order." Like
Newton, René Descartes
viewed "the cosmos as a great time machine operating according to fixed
laws, a watch created and wound up by the great watchmaker."
William Paley
Watches and timepieces have been used as examples of complicated technology in philosophical discussions. For example, Cicero, Voltaire and René Descartes all used timepieces in arguments regarding purpose. The watchmaker analogy, as described here, was used by Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle in 1686, but was most famously formulated by Paley.
In crossing a heath, suppose I
pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be
there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the
contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy
to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch
upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be
in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given,
that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. ...
There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an
artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we
find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and
designed its use. ... Every indication of contrivance, every
manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works
of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater
or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.
— William Paley, Natural Theology (1802)
Paley went on to argue that the complex structures of living things
and the remarkable adaptations of plants and animals required an
intelligent designer. He believed the natural world was the creation of
God and showed the nature of the creator. According to Paley, God had
carefully designed "even the most humble and insignificant organisms"
and all of their minute features (such as the wings and antennae of earwigs). He believed, therefore, that God must care even more for humanity.
Paley recognised that there is great suffering in nature and
nature appears to be indifferent to pain. His way of reconciling that
with his belief in a benevolent God was to assume that life had more pleasure than pain.
As a side note, a charge of wholesale plagiarism from this book was brought against Paley in The Athenaeum
for 1848, but the famous illustration of the watch was not peculiar to
Nieuwentyt and had been used by many others before either Paley or
Nieuwentyt.
Joseph Butler
William Paley taught the works of Joseph Butler
and appears to have built on Butler's 1736 design arguments of
inferring a designer from evidence of design. Butler noted:
"As the manifold Appearances of Design and of final Causes, in the
Constitution of the World, prove it to be the Work of an intelligent
Mind ... The appearances of Design and of final Causes in the constitution of nature as really prove this acting agent to be an intelligent Designer... ten thousand Instances of Design, cannot but prove a Designer.".
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau also mentioned the watchmaker theory. He wrote the following in his 1762 book, Emile:
I am like a man who sees the works of a watch for the first time; he is
never weary of admiring the mechanism, though he does not know the use
of the instrument and has never seen its face. I do not know what this
is for, says he, but I see that each part of it is fitted to the rest, I
admire the workman in the details of his work, and I am quite certain
that all these wheels only work together in this fashion for some common
end which I cannot perceive. Let us compare the special ends, the
means, the ordered relations of every kind, then let us listen to the
inner voice of feeling; what healthy mind can reject its evidence?
Unless the eyes are blinded by prejudices, can they fail to see that the
visible order of the universe proclaims a supreme intelligence? What
sophisms must be brought together before we fail to understand the
harmony of existence and the wonderful co-operation of every part for
the maintenance of the rest?
Criticism
David Hume
Before Paley published his book, David Hume
(1711-1776) had already put forward a number of philosophical
criticisms of the watch analogy, and to some extent anticipated the
concept of natural selection. His criticisms can be separated into three major distinctions.
His first objection is that we have no experience of
world-making. Hume highlighted the fact that everything we claim to know
the cause of, we have derived the inductions from previous experiences
of similar objects being created or seen the object itself being created
ourselves. For example, with a watch, we know it has to be created by a
watch-maker because we can observe it being made and compare it to the
making of other similar watches or objects to deduce they have alike
causes in their creation. However, he argues that we have no experience
of the universe's creation or any other universe's creations to compare
our own universe to and never will; therefore, it would be illogical to
infer that our universe has been created by an intelligent designer in
the same way that a watch has.
The second criticism that Hume offers is about the form of the
argument as an analogy in itself. An analogical argument claims that
because object X (a watch) is like object Y (the universe) in one
respect, both are therefore probably alike in another, hidden, respect
(their cause, having to be created by an intelligent designer). He
points out that for an argument from analogy to be successful, the two
things that are being compared have to have an adequate number of
similarities that are relevant to the respect that are analogised. For
example, a kitten and a lion may be very similar in many respects, but
just because a lion makes a "roar", it would not be correct to infer a
kitten also "roars": the similarities between the two objects being not
enough and the degree of relevance to what sound they make being not
relevant enough. Hume then argues that the universe and a watch also do
not have enough relevant or close similarities to infer that they were
both created the same way. For example, the universe is made of organic
natural material, but the watch is made of artificial mechanic
materials. He claims that in the same respect, the universe could be
argued to be more analogous to something more organic such as a
vegetable (which we can observe for ourselves does not need a 'designer'
or a 'watchmaker' to be created). Although he admits the analogy of a
universe to a vegetable to seem ridiculous, he says that it is just as
ridiculous to analogize the universe with a watch.
The third criticism that Hume offers is that even if the argument
did give evidence for a designer; it still gives no evidence for the
traditional 'omnipotent', 'benevolent' (all-powerful and all-loving) God
of traditional Christian theism. One of the main assumptions of Paley's
argument is that 'like effects have like causes'; or that machines
(like the watch) and the universe have similar features of design and so
both also have the same cause of their existence: they must both have
an intelligent designer. However, Hume points out that what Paley does
not comprehend is to what extent 'like causes' extend: how similar the
creation of a universe is to the creation of a watch. Instead, Paley
moves straight to the conclusion that this designer of the universe is
the 'God' he believes in of traditional Christianity. Hume, however
takes the idea of 'like causes' and points out some potential
absurdities in how far the 'likeness' of these causes could extend to if
the argument were taken further as to explain this. One example that he
uses is how a machine or a watch is usually designed by a whole team of
people rather than just one person. Surely, if we are analogizing the
two in this way, it would point to there being a group of gods who
created the universe, not just a single being. Another example he uses
is that complex machines are usually the result of many years of trial
and error with every new machine being an improved version of the last.
Also by analogy of the two, would that not hint that the universe could
also have been just one of many of God's 'trials' and that there are
much better universes out there? However, if that were taken to be true,
surely the 'creator' of it all would not be 'all loving' and 'all
powerful' if they had to carry out the process of 'trial and error' when
creating the universe?
Hume also points out there is still a possibility that the
universe could have been created by random chance but still show
evidence of design as the universe is eternal and would have an infinite
amount of time to be able to form a universe so complex and ordered as
our own. He called that the 'Epicurean hypothesis'. It argued that when
the universe was first created, the universe was random and chaotic, but
if the universe is eternal, over an unlimited period of time, natural
forces could have naturally 'evolved' by random particles coming
together over time into the incredibly ordered system we can observe
today without the need of an intelligent designer as an explanation.
The last objection that he makes draws on the widely discussed problem of evil.
He argues that all the daily unnecessary suffering that goes on
everywhere within the world is yet another factor that pulls away from
the idea that God is an 'omnipotent' 'benevolent' being.
When Darwin completed his studies of theology at Christ's College, Cambridge in 1831, he read Paley's Natural Theology and believed that the work gave rational proof of the existence of God. That was because living beings showed complexity and were exquisitely fitted to their places in a happy world.
Subsequently, on the voyage of the Beagle, Darwin found that nature was not so beneficent, and the distribution of species did not support ideas of divine creation. In 1838, shortly after his return, Darwin conceived his theory that natural selection,
rather than divine design, was the best explanation for gradual change
in populations over many generations. He published the theory in On the Origin of Species in 1859, and in later editions, he noted responses that he had received:
It can hardly be supposed that a
false theory would explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does the
theory of natural selection, the several large classes of facts above
specified. It has recently been objected that this is an unsafe method
of arguing; but it is a method used in judging of the common events of
life, and has often been used by the greatest natural philosophers ...
I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the
religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how
transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery
ever made by man, namely, the law of the attraction of gravity, was also
attacked by Leibnitz, "as subversive of natural, and inferentially of
revealed, religion." A celebrated author and divine has written to me
that "he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a
conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms
capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe
that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by
the action of His laws."
— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)
Darwin reviewed the implications of this finding in his autobiography:
Although I did not think much about
the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my
life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been
driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which
formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural
selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for
instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by
an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be
no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action
of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.
Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.
— Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882. With the original omissions restored.
The idea that nature was governed by laws was already common, and in 1833, William Whewell as a proponent of the natural theology
that Paley had inspired had written that "with regard to the material
world, we can at least go so far as this—we can perceive that events are
brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted
in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws." Darwin, who spoke of the "fixed laws" concurred with Whewell, writing in his second edition of On The Origin of Species:
There is grandeur in this view of
life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the
Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has
gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and
are being, evolved.
— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1860)
By the time that Darwin published his theory, theologians of liberal Christianity
were already supporting such ideas, and by the late 19th century, their
modernist approach was predominant in theology. In science, evolution theory incorporating Darwin's natural selection became completely accepted.
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
argues that the watch analogy conflates the complexity that arises from
living organisms that are able to reproduce themselves (and may become
more complex over time) with the complexity of inanimate objects, unable
to pass on any reproductive changes (such as the multitude of parts
manufactured in a watch). The comparison breaks down because of this
important distinction.
In a BBC Horizon episode, also entitled The Blind Watchmaker,
Dawkins described Paley's argument as being "as mistaken as it is
elegant". In both contexts, he saw Paley as having made an incorrect
proposal as to a certain problem's solution, but Dawkins did not
disrespect him. In his essay The Big Bang, Steven Pinker
discusses Dawkins's coverage of Paley's argument, adding: "Biologists
today do not disagree with Paley's laying out of the problem. They
disagree only with his solution."
In his book The God Delusion,
Dawkins argues that life was the result of complex biological
processes. He makes the argument that the comparison to the lucky
construction of a watch is fallacious because proponents of evolution do
not consider evolution "lucky". Rather than luck, the evolution of
human life is the result of billions of years of natural selection. He
concludes that evolution is a fair contestant to replace God in the role
of watchmaker.
In addition, he argues that the watchmaker's creation of the
watch implies that the watchmaker must be more complex than the watch.
Design is top-down, someone or something more complex designs something
less complex.
To follow the line upwards demands that the watch was designed by a
(necessarily more complex) watchmaker, the watchmaker must have been
created by a more complex being than himself. So the question becomes
who designed the designer?
Dawkins argues that (a) this line continues ad infinitum, and (b) it
does not explain anything.
Evolution, on the other hand, takes a bottom-up approach; it
explains how more complexity can arise gradually by building on or
combining lesser complexity.
In response to such claims, Nathan Schneider writes, "Paley died decades before The Origin of Species
was published, and ever since his views have been so repeatedly set in
opposition to Darwin's that Richard Dawkins titled one of his books on
evolution The Blind Watchmaker. A closer look at Paley's own
thinking reveals, however, a God who works through the laws of nature,
not beyond them like the modern ID theorists' designer. Paley had no
objection to species changing over time. It's only in today's highly
polarized culture-war climate that we don't bother to notice that one of
the forefathers of intelligent design theory might have been perfectly
comfortable with evolution."
Richerson and Boyd
Biologist Peter Richerson and anthropologist Robert Boyd
offer an oblique criticism by arguing that watches were not "hopeful
monsters created by single inventors," but were created by watchmakers
building up their skills in a cumulative fashion over time, each
contributing to a watch-making tradition from which any individual
watchmaker draws their designs.
Contemporary usage
In the early 20th century, the modernist theology of higher criticism was contested in the United States by Biblical literalists, who campaigned successfully against the teaching of evolution and began calling themselves creationists in the 1920s. When teaching of evolution was reintroduced into public schools in the 1960s, they adopted what they called creation science that had a central concept of design in similar terms to Paley's argument. That idea was then relabeled intelligent design,
which presents the same analogy as an argument against evolution by
natural selection without explicitly stating that the "intelligent
designer" was God. The argument from the complexity of biological
organisms was now presented as the irreducible complexity argument, the most notable proponent of which was Michael Behe, and, leveraging off the verbiage of information theory, the specified complexity argument, the most notable proponent of which was William Dembski.
The watchmaker analogy was referenced in the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. Throughout the trial, Paley was mentioned several times. The defense's expert witness John Haught noted that both Intelligent Design and the watchmaker analogy are "reformulations" of the same theological argument.
On day 21 of the trial, Mr. Harvey walked Dr. Minnich through a
modernized version of Paley's argument, substituting a cell phone for
the watch.
In his ruling, the judge stated that the use of the argument from design
by intelligent design proponents "is merely a restatement of the
Reverend William Paley's argument applied at the cell level,"
adding "Minnich, Behe, and Paley reach the same conclusion, that
complex organisms must have been designed using the same reasoning,
except that Professors Behe and Minnich refuse to identify the designer,
whereas Paley inferred from the presence of design that it was God."
The judge ruled that such an inductive argument is not accepted as
science because it is unfalsifiable.
"God of the gaps" is a theological perspective in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God's existence. The "gaps" usage was made by Christian theologians not to discredit theism but rather to point out the fallacy of relying on teleological arguments for God's existence.
Some use the phrase as a criticism of theology, to mean that the
existence of a creator is almost always proposed for anything not
currently explained by science.
Origins of the term
From the 1880s, Friedrick Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part Two, "On Priests", said "... into every gap they put their delusion, their stopgap, which they called God."
The concept, although not the exact wording, goes back to Henry Drummond, a 19th-century evangelist lecturer, from his Lowell Lectures on The Ascent of Man. He chastises those Christians
who point to the things that science can not yet explain—"gaps which
they will fill up with God"—and urges them to embrace all nature as
God's, as the work of "an immanent
God, which is the God of Evolution, is infinitely grander than the
occasional wonder-worker, who is the God of an old theology."
In 1933, Ernest Barnes, the Bishop of Birmingham, used the phrase in a discussion of general relativity's implication of a Big Bang:
Must we then postulate Divine
intervention? Are we to bring in God to create the first current of
Laplace's nebula or to let off the cosmic firework of Lemaître's
imagination? I confess an unwillingness to bring God in this way upon
the scene. The circumstances with thus seem to demand his presence are
too remote and too obscure to afford me any true satisfaction. Men have
thought to find God at the special creation of their own species, or
active when mind or life first appeared on earth. They have made him God
of the gaps in human knowledge. To me the God of the trigger is as
little satisfying as the God of the gaps. It is because throughout the
physical Universe I find thought and plan and power that behind it I see
God as the creator.
During World War II the German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed the concept in similar terms in letters he wrote while in a Nazi prison. Bonhoeffer wrote, for example
how wrong it is to use God as a
stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the
frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and
that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them,
and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we
know, not in what we don't know.
There is no 'God of the gaps' to
take over at those strategic places where science fails; and the reason
is that gaps of this sort have the unpreventable habit of shrinking.
and
Either God is in the whole of Nature, with no gaps, or He's not there at all.
Coulson was a mathematics professor at Oxford University as well as a Methodist church leader, often appearing in the religious programs of British Broadcasting Corporation. His book got national attention, was reissued as a paperback, and was reprinted several times, most recently in 1971.
It is claimed that the actual phrase 'God of the gaps' was invented by Coulson.
The term was then used in a 1971 book and a 1978 article, by Richard Bube. He articulated the concept in greater detail in Man come of Age: Bonhoeffer’s Response to the God-of-the-Gaps
(1978). Bube attributed modern crises in religious faith in part to the
inexorable shrinking of the God-of-the-gaps as scientific knowledge
progressed. As humans progressively increased their understanding of
nature, the previous "realm" of God seemed to many persons and religions
to be getting smaller and smaller by comparison. Bube maintained that Darwin's Origin of Species
was the "death knell" of the God-of-the-gaps. Bube also maintained that
the God-of-the-gaps was not the same as the God of the Bible (that is,
he was not making an argument
against God per se, but rather asserting there was a fundamental
problem with the perception of God as existing in the gaps of
present-day knowledge).
General usage
The term "God of the gaps" is sometimes used in describing the incremental retreat of religious explanations of physical phenomena in the face of increasingly comprehensive scientific explanations for those phenomena. Dorothy Dinnerstein includes psychological explanations for a person believing in a deity, particularly a male deity.
R. Laird Harris writes of the physical science aspect of this:
The expression, "God of the Gaps," contains a real truth.
It is erroneous if it is taken to mean that God is not immanent in
natural law but is only to be observed in mysteries unexplained by law.
No significant Christian group has believed this view. It is true,
however, if it be taken to emphasize that God is not only immanent in
natural law but also is active in the numerous phenomena associated with
the supernatural and the spiritual. There are gaps in a
physical-chemical explanation of this world, and there always will be.
Because science has learned many marvelous secrets of nature, it cannot
be concluded that it can explain all phenomena. Meaning, soul, spirits,
and life are subjects incapable of physical-chemical explanation or
formation.
Usage in referring to a type of argument
The term God-of-the-gaps fallacy can refer to a position that assumes an act of God as the explanation for an unknown phenomenon, which is a variant of an argument from ignorance fallacy. Such an argument is sometimes reduced to the following form:
There is a gap in understanding of some aspect of the natural world.
Therefore the cause must be supernatural.
One example of such an argument, which uses God as an explanation of
one of the current gaps in biological science, is as follows:
"Because current science can't figure out exactly how life started, it
must be God who caused life to start." Critics of intelligent design creationism, for example, have accused proponents of using this basic type of argument.
It is important to note that while "God-of-the-gaps" refers to an
argument from ignorance regarding natural phenomena (e.g., That volcano
is erupting because the god of the earth is angry"), intelligent design
arguments (e.g., A mousetrap is irreducibly complex and did not evolve
by natural selection causes) are not necessary identical to the
"God-of-the-gaps" fallacy. Irreducible complexity is an argument from
knowledge, not ignorance.
God-of-the-gaps arguments have been discouraged by some
theologians who assert that such arguments tend to relegate God to the
leftovers of science: as scientific knowledge increases, the dominion of
God decreases.
Criticism
The
term was invented as a criticism of people who perceive that God only
acts in the gaps, and who restrict God's activity to such "gaps".
It has also been argued that the God-of-the-gaps view is predicated on
the assumption that any event which can be explained by science
automatically excludes God; that if God did not do something via direct
action, that he had no role in it at all.
The "God of the gaps" argument, as traditionally advanced by
scholarly Christians, was intended as a criticism against weak or
tenuous faith, not as a statement against theism or belief in God.
According to John Habgood in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology,
the phrase is generally derogatory, and is inherently a direct
criticism of a tendency to postulate acts of God to explain phenomena
for which science has yet to give a satisfactory account. Habgood also states:
It is theologically more satisfactory to look for
evidence of God's actions within natural processes rather than apart
from them, in much the same way that the meaning of a book transcends,
but is not independent of, the paper and ink of which it is comprised.
Both many theologians and scientists believe that it is a logical
fallacy to base belief in God on gaps in scientific knowledge. In this
vein, Richard Dawkins, an atheist, dedicates a chapter of his book The God Delusion to criticism of the God-of-the-gaps fallacy. Other scientists holding religious beliefs, such as Francis Collins, reject a God-of-the-gaps while embracing the idea of a God who fine tuned the universe precisely so human life could exist.
The problem of Hell is an ethical problem in religion in which the existence of Hell for the punishment of souls is regarded as inconsistent with the notion of a just, moral, and omnibenevolentGod. It derives from four key propositions: that Hell exists; that it is for the punishment of people whose lives on Earth are judged to have sinned against God; that some people go there; and there is no escape.
Issues
There
are several major issues to the problem of Hell. The first is its
definition, as there are several words in the original languages of the
Bible that are translated into the word "hell" in English. A second
issue is whether the existence of Hell is compatible with justice. A
third is whether Hell is compatible with God's mercy, especially as
articulated in Christianity. An issue particular to Christianity is
whether Hell is actually populated forever or they perish, or if God
will ultimately restore all immortal souls (universal reconciliation) in the World to Come.
In some aspects, the problem of Hell is similar to the problem of evil, assuming the suffering of Hell is caused by free will
and something God could have prevented. The discussion regarding the
problem of evil may thus also be of interest for the problem of Hell.
The problem of Hell can be viewed as the worst and most intractable
instance of the problem of evil.
Criticisms of the doctrines of Hell
Criticisms
of the doctrines of Hell can focus on the intensity or eternity of its
torments, and arguments surrounding all these issues can invoke appeals
to the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence of God.
If one believes in the idea of eternal Hell, unending suffering,
or the idea that some souls will perish (whether destroyed by God or
otherwise), author Thomas Talbott
says that one has to either let go of the idea that God wishes to save
all beings, or accept the idea that God wants to save all, but will not
"successfully accomplish his will and satisfy his own desire in this
matter."
Judaism
Almost no forms of Judaism share the traditional majority Christian belief in the immortality of the soul, therefore Sheol (Hades in the Septuagint, "the grave" in many instances in the King James Bible) is simply the destination for all the dead, and no "problem of Sheol" exists. Gehenna, found in the Mishnah, is the Lake of fire or destination of the living sinners and raised wicked at Judgment Day, and the place of either destruction, in the Mishnah or, in some rabbinical texts, eternal torment, which would potentially create a "problem of Gehenna."
Jewish religious thinking has traditionally held, even among different schools ranging from Jewish Orthodox teachings to Reform Jewish thinking to Conservative Jewish thinking and more, that "The righteous of all peoples have a place in the World-To-Come", in the words of the Talmud, with humanity as a whole being "saved". Thus, rabbinical scholars have broadly held the inclusive view that the vast majority of people in existence, both Jewish and gentile, will be reconciled with God in the afterlife given the power of his grace and the fundamental goodness of humanity.
Christianity
In Christianity, Hell has traditionally been regarded as a place of punishment for wrongdoing or sin
in the mortal life, as a manifestation of divine justice. Nonetheless,
the extreme severity and/or infinite duration of the punishment might be
seen as incompatible with justice. However, Hell is not seen as strictly a matter of retributive justice even by the more traditionalist churches. For example, the Eastern Orthodox see it as a condition brought about by, and the natural consequence of, free rejection of God's love.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that Hell is a place of punishment brought about by a person's self-exclusion from communion with God. The Catholic Church believes that hell is the free and continual rejection of God's forgiveness of sins. The church believes that this rejection is by committing and refusing to repent of a mortal sin. The church believes that those who die only in original sin are not predestined to hell, since God is not bound by baptism.
The church believes that hell is eternal because the sinner refuses to
turn away from his mortal sin to God's forgiveness of sins. The church believes that hell is its own chief punishment.
In some ancient Eastern Christian traditions, Hell and Heaven are distinguished not spatially, but by the relation of a person to God's love.
I also maintain that those who are
punished in Gehenna, are scourged by the scourge of love. Nay, what is
so bitter and vehement as the torment of love?...It would be improper
for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of
God...it torments sinners...Thus I say that this is the torment of
Gehenna: bitter regret.
In terms of the Bible itself, issues of salvation and access to heaven or to hell are mentioned frequently. Examples include John 3:16
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting
life." which tends to show the wicked perish and the saints have
everlasting life or John 3:36 (NIV),
"Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the
Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on them", and 2 Thessalonians 1:8–9 (NIV),
"Those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord
Jesus, they will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out
from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might."
The minority Christian doctrine that sinners perish and are destroyed rather than punished eternally such as is found in John 3:16 "That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.", is referred to as Christian mortalism; annihilation for those not awarded immortal life, conditional immortality for those who are.
This Christian view is found in very early Christianity, resurfaced in
the Reformation, and since 1800 has found increasing support among
Protestant theologians.
Justice
Some
opponents of the traditional doctrine of Hell claim that the punishment
is disproportionate to any crimes that could be committed. Because human
beings have a finite lifespan, they can commit only a finite number of
sins, yet Hell is an infinite punishment. In this vein, Jorge Luis Borges suggests in his essay La duración del Infierno
that no transgression can warrant an infinite punishment on the grounds
that there is no such thing as an "infinite transgression". Philosopher
Immanuel Kant argued in 1793 in Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason
that since morality lies ultimately in a person's disposition, and as
disposition is concerned with the adoption of universal principles, or
as he called them: "maxims", every human being is guilty of, in one
sense, an infinite amount of violations of the law, and so consequently
an infinite punishment is not unjustified.
Divine mercy
Another
issue is the problem of harmonizing the existence of Hell with God's
infinite mercy or omnibenevolence which is found in scripture.
Some modern critics of the doctrine of Hell (such as Marilyn McCord Adams)
claim that, even if Hell is seen as a choice rather than as punishment,
it would be unreasonable for God to give such flawed and ignorant
creatures as ourselves the responsibility of our eternal destinies. Jonathan Kvanvig, in The Problem of Hell (1993), agrees that God would not allow one to be eternally damned by a decision made under the wrong circumstances.
One should not always honor the choices of human beings, even when they
are full adults, if, for instance, the choice is made while depressed
or careless. On Kvanvig's view, God will abandon no person until they
have made a settled, final decision, under favorable circumstances, to
reject God, but God will respect a choice made under the right
circumstances. Once a person finally and competently chooses to reject
God, out of respect for the person's autonomy, God allows them to be
annihilated.
Islam
In Islam, Jahannam is the final destiny of evildoers and is regarded as necessary for God's
divine justice. God's punishments are by definition considered to be
justified, since God holds absolute sovereignty. Furthermore, with
regard to predestination, one of six articles of faith in Islam, the question of how creatures be punished for their deeds arises.
The inhabitants of Hell
The inhabitants of afterlife places are not dogmatically determined in Islam, thus it is up to individual and critical interpretation of the Qur'an as to who enters Hell. A common concern is the fate of non-Muslims and if they will be punished for not belonging to the right religion. An often-recited quranic verse implies that righteous non-Muslims will be saved on Judgement Day:
Indeed, those who believed and those who were Jews or
Christians or Sabeans—those who believed in Allah and the Last Day and
did righteousness—will have their reward with their Lord, and no fear
will there be concerning them, nor will they grieve. 2:62
However some scholars hold this verse may be set aside as only applying before the arrival of Muhammad.
Some non-pluralist scholars like Ibn Arabi
state that every human will receive a proper message and will not be
doomed for ignorance, while others claim non-Muslims are judged by their
own moral standards, because of God's all-embracing mercy.
Another criteria to determine the justice of Hell's punishment
derives from its duration, on which Islamic scholars disagree. Some
scholars state that Hell is eternal, others hold that Hell exists to
purify rather than inflict pain, and others state that Hell itself will cease to exist.
With the increasing urgency of pluralism, modern writers such as Edip Yüksel and Mouhanad Khorchide
hold Hell to be finite rather than eternal: Yüksel argues that
evildoers will be punished in Hell for an appropriate period then cease
to exist, so that their suffering (which is described in the Quran and is balanced with descriptions of heaven) will be only a just amount. Other universalist-leaning scholars include Tariq Ramadan, Sayyid Qutb and possibly Ibn Qayyim who some argue, like his teacher Ibn Taymiyya, was not a universalist.
Concerning predestination
The degree of free will differs in Islamic thought. Based on Sunni traditions, God wrote everything that will happen on a tablet before creating the world, therefore human free will
is not beyond God's influence. This results in the problem: how
punishment is justified since God made humans the way they will sin. In
this tradition, in Ashari
thought, God created good and evil deeds, which humans decide
upon—humans have their own possibility to choose, but God retains
sovereignty of all possibilities. This still leaves the question of why
God set out those people's lives (or the negative choice of deeds) which
result in Hell, and why God created the possibility to become evil. In
Islamic thought, evil is considered to be movement away from good, and
God created this possibility so that humans are able to recognize good. (In contrast, angels
are unable to move away from good, therefore angels generally rank
lower than humans as they have reached heaven because they lack the
ability to perceive the world as humans do.)
Proposed answers
Annihilationism
As with other Jewish writings of the Second Temple period, the New Testament text distinguishes two words, both translated "Hell" in older English Bibles: Hades, "the grave", and Gehenna where God "can destroy both body and soul". A minority of Christians read this to mean that neither Hades nor Gehenna are eternal but refer to the ultimate destruction of the wicked in the Lake of Fire
in a consuming fire, but which because of the Greek words used in
translating from the Hebrew text has become confused with Greek myths
and ideas. From the sixth century BC onward, the Greeks developed pagan
ideas for the dead, and of reincarnation and even transmigration of
souls. Christians picked up these pagan beliefs inferred by the Greek of
immortality of the soul, or spirit being of a mortal individual, which
survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, which is
at odds and in contrast to the scriptural teaching that the dead go to
the grave and know nothing and then at the end, an eternal oblivion of
the wicked and an eternal life for the saints. Scripture makes clear
that the dead are awaiting resurrection at the last judgment, when
Christ comes and also when each person will receive his reward or are
part of those lost with the wicked.
The Greek words used for those Bibles written in Greek, came
loaded with ideas not in line with the original Hebrew, but since at the
time, Greek was used as basically English is used today to communicate
between people across the world, it was translated into these Greek
words, and giving an incorrect understanding of the penalty of sin. In
the Hebrew text when people died they went to Sheol,
the grave and the wicked ultimately went to Gehenna which is the
consuming by fire. So when the grave or the eternal oblivion of the
wicked was translated into Greek, the word Hades was sometimes used,
which is a Greek term for the realm of the dead. Nevertheless, the
meaning depending on context was the grave, death, or the end of the
wicked in which they are ultimately destroyed or perish. So we see where
the grave or death or eventual destruction of the wicked, was
translated using Greek words that since they had no exact ones to use,
became a mix of mistranslation, pagan influence, and Greek myth
associated with the word, but its original meaning was simple death or
the destruction of the wicked at the end.
Christian mortalism
is the doctrine that all men and women, including Christians, must die,
and do not continue and are not conscious after death. Therefore, annihilationism includes the doctrine that "the wicked" are also destroyed rather than tormentedforever in traditional "Hell" or the lake of fire. Christian mortalism and annihilationism are directly related to the doctrine of conditional immortality, the idea that a human soul is not immortal unless it is given eternal life at the Second Coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead. Such a belief is based on the many texts which state that the wicked perish:
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting
life." John 3:16 (KJV).
"For the day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen: as thou hast
done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own
head. For as ye have drunk upon my holy mountain, so shall all the
heathen drink continually, yea, they shall drink, and they shall swallow
down, and they shall be as though they had not been." Obadiah 1:15–16 (KJV).
Annihilationism asserts that God will eventually destroy or annihilate the wicked when they are consumed in the Lake of Fire at the end, leaving only the righteous to live on in immortality.
Conditional immortality
asserts that souls are naturally mortal, and those who reject Christ
are separated from the sustaining power of God, thus dying off on their
own.
This is seen in the texts making clear the alternatives at the end are to perish or to have eternal, everlasting life:
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23 (KJV)
And that the consequence for sin at the day of judgment when God will
judge both the living and the dead when He appears is death, not
burning forever. God's gift is eternal life, very different from the
penalty of sin:
"The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations,
and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished." 2 Peter 2:9. (KJV).
"As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world." Matthew 13:40 (KJV).
"So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come
forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them
into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."
Matthew 13:49–50 (KJV).
The mortality of the soul has been held throughout the history of both Judaism and Christianity, with many biblical scholars looking at the issue through the Hebrew text, have denied the teaching of innate immortality. Rejection of the immortality of the soul, and advocacy of Christian mortalism, was a feature of Protestantism since the early days of the Reformation with Martin Luther himself rejecting the traditional idea, though his view did not carry into orthodox Lutheranism. One of the most notable English opponents of the immortality of the soul was Thomas Hobbes who describes the idea as a Greek "contagion" in Christian doctrine. Modern proponents of conditional immortality include as denominations the Seventh-day Adventists, Bible Students, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christadelphians, and some other ProtestantChristians.
Free will
Some
apologists argue that Hell exists because of free will, and that Hell
is a choice rather than an imposed punishment. Jonathan L. Kvanvig
writes:
[C.S.] Lewis
believes that the doors of hell are locked from the inside rather than
from the outside. Thus, according to Lewis, if escape from hell never
happens, it is not because God is not willing that it should happen.
Instead, residence in hell is eternal because that is just what persons
in hell have chosen for themselves.
We may rest assured that no one
will suffer in hell who could by any means have been won to Christ in
this life. God leaves no stone unturned to rescue all who would respond
to the convicting and wooing of the Holy Spirit.
An example from popular culture can be found in the graphic novel series The Sandman. In it, souls go to Hell because they believe that they deserve to, rather than being condemned to it by God or Satan.
Universal reconciliation
Universal reconciliation is the doctrine or belief of some Christians that all will receive salvation
because of the love and mercy of God. Universal reconciliation does not
commit one to the position that one can be saved apart from Christ. It
only commits one to the position that all will eventually be saved
through Christ. Neither does universal reconciliation commit one to the
position that there is no Hell or damnation—Hell can well be the
consuming fire through which Christ refines those who turn from him.
Universal reconciliation only claims that one day Death and Hades
themselves will be destroyed and all immortal souls will be reconciled
to Him.
It was traditionally claimed by some western scholars such as the Universalist historian George T. Knight (1911) and Pierre Batiffol (English translation 1914) that a form of universal salvation could be found among some theologians in early Christianity. Origen interpreted the New Testament's reference (Acts 3:21) to a "restoration of all things", (Greek: apocatastasis of all things), as meaning that sinners might be restored to God and released from Hell, returning the universe to a state identical to its pure beginnings. This theory of apocatastasis could be easily interpreted to imply that even devils would be saved, as was the case during the later Origenist controversies. Greek orthodox scholars do not count Gregory of Nyssa (AD 331–395) as a believer in Universal Salvation.
In the 17th century, a belief in Christian universalism appeared in England and traveled over to what has become the present-day US Christian Universalists such as Hosea Ballou
argued that Jesus taught Universalist principles including universal
reconciliation and the divine origin and destiny of all souls. Ballou
also argued that some Universalist principles were taught or
foreshadowed in the Old Testament. Critics of universalism maintain that the Bible does not teach universal salvation, while proponents insist that it does.
Recent examples of advocates for the position are Kallistos Ware, a Greek Orthodox bishop and retired University of Oxfordtheologian who states that many of the 'Fathers of Church' postulated the idea of salvation for all, and Saint Silouan of Mt. Athos,
who argued that the compassion and love of those in heaven and on earth
will extend to eliminating suffering even in hell. In terms of Biblical
citations, Father David A. Fisher, Pastor of St. Anthony of Padua
Maronite Church and professor of philosophy at Ohio Central State University, has argued that total reconciliation seems to arise from the First Epistle to the Corinthians such as 1 Corinthians 15:22, "As all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ", and 1 Corinthians 15:28, "God will be all in all." Verses that seem to contradict the tradition of complete damnation and come up in arguments also include Lamentations 3:31–33
(NIV), "For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings
grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love", and 1 Timothy 4:10 (NIV), "We have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe."
Theodicy
With
regards to the problem of hell, as one that can be traced to the more
fundamental theological dilemma of God and the existence of good and
evil, theodicy
offers its own answers. The main issue holds that if God is all good,
powerful, and perfect, then how can he allow evil and, by extension,
hell to exist? For some thinkers, the existence of evil and hell could
mean that God is not perfectly good and powerful or that there is no God
at all.
Theodicy tries to address this dilemma by reconciling an all-knowing,
all-powerful, and omnibenevelont God with the existence of evil and
suffering, outlining the possibility that God and evil can coexist.
There are several thoughts or theodicies such as biblical theodicy, the
theodicy attributed to Gottfried Leibniz,
Plotinian, Irenean, and Augustinian, among others. These differ in
their respective arguments but, overall, these theodicies - as opposed
to a defense that demonstrates the existence of God and evil or hell -
seek to demonstrate a framework where God's existence is plausible. It
is, therefore, a logical instead of evidential answer to the problem. A
theodicy explains God's reason for allowing evil, that there is a
greater good that justifies such permission.
Empty Hell theory
Some Catholic theologians such as Karl Rahner, Gisbert Greshake, and Cardinal Hans Urs von Balthasar
have at length discussed the possibility that any man may be led by a
final grace to freely willed repentance if necessary at least at some
point in the process of dying. This possible process is described thus
by the late Munich dogmatic Prof. Michael Schmaus:
"If in terms of theology death is a meeting of a man with God in so far
as God calls man and he answers obedience, readiness and love, it would
be surprising if in the moment of dying the chances of taking position
never were given, even contrary to the outward look. [...] One cannot
apply to experience as counter-argument, because [...] what happens then
in the interior and behind the physiological processes is only known by
someone who experiences dying itself, and this unto its very end. We
may assume that in the dissolving process of the earthly union of body
and soul and with the progressing breakaway from earthly entanglements, a
special awakeness accrues to man [...] in which he can say yea or nay
to God."
Balthasar was careful to describe his opinion that Hell might be
empty as merely a hope, but even this claim was rejected by most
conservative Catholics, including Cardinal Avery Dulles. The Syllabus says in no. 17 that we may not (even) hope for the salvation of all non-Catholics; this seems to mean conversely that there is at least one non-Catholic in all history who will not be saved. Matthew 7:21–23 seems to say that "many" will be reproved, which may imply hell (not some lesser purgatory).
On the other hand, error no. 17 in question only speaks of those "in
the true Church of Christ," which need not imply the visible Church. Roman Catholicism allows for the possibility that non-Catholics can be saved, and rejected the view known as Feeneyism, which held that only people in visible communion with the Catholic Church could be saved.
