Dr_Sagan - You're right about it being a binary, but not entirely. There is no "sort of kind of" conditional at work. It's an absolute yes or no, and I'll explain the reasoning for it, but I'll start with a caveat. First I'm not trying to evangelize or anything, just trying to explain how the reasoning goes, for better or worse. Plus, since this kind of thing makes some people foam at the mouth, I'll cover it with spoiler tags, so no innocent eyes will be harmed in the process. Remember, ya ain't gotta read it, but I promise no one will be harmed if they do so.
First, the reasoning goes, God is all perfect and purely good, because if he weren't, he couldn't be God.
Mankind, by his very nature is not. No person can be all good, since everybody, at least once in his life, had had at least one bad thought.
An all purely good God cannot associate with something less than purely good, as doing so would mean God is no longer purely good. Think of it like this: imagine a swimming pool of absolutely pure water in it. There's nothing in it but H2O . Now assume that a single carbon atom fell into it. Even though it would imperceptible to the human eye, it would no longer be pure.
Therefore, it's irrelevent if someone is just flawed. A "just flawed" person would be no different than a truly evil person.
So they basic premise of the show doesn't hold water. That doesn't mean it's no good, it just means its fundamental plot point is flawed. But how many shows don't suffer from the same problems?
The issue of deciding between teleological and deontological ethic is also an interesting subject of discussion (the issue that the OP raised), but I won't bore people with it unless they just insist I do.
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I wonder if the real Dr. Sagan made it to the Good Place.
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