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Mephi2K
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713
| Posted 2/18/2002 12:30 PM (GMT -6) |   | Ok. This is LINKED to the other thread. I hinted where I was going with it, and some saw it. So I'll make it plain here. I wanted to place this HERE so that my poll could still go forward in the other thread. So, here we go.
God was perfectly content in his triunity. Between the members of the Trinity, there was love, sociality, peace, harmony. All that. Love and sociality unparalleled exist without a tinge of evil, suffering, or death. God decides that he wants to share his divine love with being OTHER than Godself. To be sure, God would value each of these potential little beings as worthy of his full love BY THEMSELVES, not necessarily as a collective. In other words, God loves (or would love) each one of them LIKE THEY WERE HIS CHILDREN. God takes a look at the possibilities. God shortly realizes that there is a 1 million to 1 chance that sin and evil will emerge (along with either CERTAIN annihilationism or eternal punishment for AT LEAST one being when they do emerge) But the odds are overwhelmingly in God's favor that sin WON'T emerge. God CLEARLY knows the possibility of at least one of his potential beloved children either going through MAD pain temporally unto death...or even ETERNAL suffering and punishment! Not only this but God knows that there is also a chance that MANY may face this fate. God is optimistic, however, and thinks that he can beat the odds. After all, look what he has to gain. More people to love and return love to. And look what the CREATURES have to gain. Existing in the divine love of the Creator! Big risk, but big gains, for God and for his "children"! God decides to enact the "risky" venture.
Let me make the links that I see...
Ms. Z = God
Affluent state of family = God's truine perichoretic love before Creation
Risky decision = To create the universe with free willed beings
Ms. Z's children = Potential free willed beings that will come from God creating
Winning = Free willed beings partaking in God's divine love
Losing = Free willed beings either being annihilated or suffering eternally
Given all the above...
How is this FUNDAMENTALLY different from the "Ms. Z" idea?
Remember the thesis I've been asserting:
When a risk is made on a fundamentally UNNECESSARY venture, the moral justifiability will not lie in the PROBABILITY OF ACCOMPLISHING ONE'S GOAL. The moral justifiability will be in what one deems an ACCEPTABLE LOSS.
Creation was a fundamentally unnecessary venture. God could have done without it and been quite happy. Moreover, if we will be honest, HAD SOME OF US HAD THE CHANCE TO CHOOSE EXISTENCE FOR OURSELVES, some of US may could have done without it as well. The moral justifiability thus lies in the ACCEPTABLE LOSS of this whole thing. And what was that? The potential loss of at least one being to either some form of annihilation or even eternal suffering. The question is do we deem this an ACCEPTABLE LOSS? You thought the momentary torture and death of a child was bad. What about the costs seen above? And at least in the Ms. Z example, it was ONLY limited to ONE child being the cost. In the God scenario, there are potentially MANY people going to endure this.
So, if the answer was "No, No, No" for the Ms. Z thing, HOW can the answers really be different when applied to THIS scenario?
I'm certain that someone will try to tie this with humans having kids. Let me deal with that. Though we humans do risk when we have kids and deem the risk "worth it", it is NEVER seen as INEVITABLE that our children will suffer some level of type of suffering. (One could argue that death is certain, but in the ultimate sphere, this wouldn't be true for theists like US, now would it?  ) This is where things are different. With the God model, it is seen as INEVITABLE that, once sin emerges, at least ONE person WILL (not might) endure either suffering then annihilation OR eternal suffering. This is a significant separation.
Now, I want us to be as consistent as possible here. As for me, the only option I see to get out of this would be to posit some type of universalism. I'm not a universalist, but this is the only way I see out of the dilemma.
If you can make a significant distinction between the Ms Z idea and this one, I'd really like to hear it.
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