Post Edited (One Love) : 7/22/2009 1:28:59 AM (GMT-5)

D: Well, this gets into your issue with Jeff. YOU and I are willing to say that God is TOTALLY involved in guiding the material cosmos, ala creatio continua and God's "subjective aims" for the creation…sustained by God’s powerful Word.

T: Yep.

D: …new being constantly coming from nothing

T: I wanna treat this separately. I’m all for God’s abiding presence sustaining the world in its becoming. But I don’t want to say this ‘becoming’ isn’t ‘continuous’, that what ‘is’ isn’t the result of what ‘was’. Saying “constantly comes from nothing” suggests that the cup on my desk isn’t the “same” cup of one minute ago. Deep waters. Continuity of ‘identity’ is the thing. I know Whitehead dealt with it, but it slips my mind.

D: Jeff sees that as an issue theodicy wise, and believes that God's created things have some form of self-subsistance apart from God's direct will. But you can see why now the problem's there, right?

T: I think I see Jeff’s issues, yeah. But it’s no issue for me. I don’t think there can be existence that is “absolutely” cut off from all God’s presence and sustaining activity. Can’t even imagine it. But I guess I can see the theodicy issue raised IF we suppose God is providentially active, making choices, at the sub-atomic level. I don’t think it sticks though. All one has to say is that God sustains creatures IN THEIR FREEDOM, he actually sustains Satan’s existence in the evil Satan does. God’s supporting and sustaining all the collapsing of quantum waves in the event that constitutes the abuse of a little child. God’s NOT separated from it. He’s close to it than the abuser. If I deny this, I suppose it would solve my theodicy issues, but only by eradicating theism and with it goodness and evil. The whole problem disappears.

In him all things hold together. It’s Scripture.

D: Saying that God's been doing providentially closed activity for over 13 billion years up to the time of Jesus' birth...that's saying a lot, isn't it?

T: Oh yeah.

D: I guess if we want to say that God knows the end from the beginning...then we have to AT LEAST say that God KNEW that he would secure an Incarnation (and created "Bride") for Himself.

T: Yep. That’s the end. The only glitch—not a big one either—is how we view ‘sin’ as playing a role. Is that role ‘essential’ to God’s having a bride? God can’t have a bride who hasn’t adulterated herself? In other words, does God achieve his ends “because of” or “by means of” sin OR does he achieve his ends “in spite of” sin. I say the latter. I gotta go with David Hart on this one. Sin is an absolute privation of goodness and existence. It’s a bump in the road, and obstacle to overcome. It can play no positive role in the exposition of divine and created beauty. That makes of it ‘something good’. Sin will forever abide by having lent its aid to the fulfillment of God’s purposes. That’s not privation.

Tom

T: I think I see Jeff’s issues, yeah. But it’s no issue for me. I don’t think there can be existence that is “absolutely” cut off from all God’s presence and sustaining activity.

J: Just for clarification, my theodicy issue has nothing to do with creatio continua, per se, or with uncertainty in physics (in physics, my problem is saying that a 3-D particle is NOWHERE--if we're not talking about 3-D particles, then we're talking about the causes and effects of spirits anyway, rather than materialistic physics). My issue remains even if creatio continua is true. It has to do, partially, with the seeming incompetence of God seeming implied by the fact that He can't seem to create a world where ALL humans get to participate in meaningful (volitional) becoming in the THIS-WORLDLY mode that we are familiar with--thereby undermining some of our more intuitive teleological inferences, like " ALL human eyes are for seeing". This seems so because it seems that there is a probability of 1 that many infants and fetuses will necessarily die from natural evils alone (never mind moral evils) before attaining to an age where they COULD become volitional in any meaningful sense--so far as we can define it, at least.

I'm not saying this is proveable. I'm just saying it SEEMS to be the case from an assessment of reality. And thus, we can't get around the notion of plausibility when evaluating the different kinds of explanations of God's benevolence. Because all of them have what seem to be EMPIRICAL incoherencies. But as I said, as far as I can tell, our very discussion with one another is only meaningful IF God is benevolent. So, to me, theodicy is not about WHETHER God is good (that seems unavoidable, epistemologically), but HOW is He good given what seems to be instances of "vain" dyings and sufferings. IOW, theodicy asks how does God teleologically work it all out such that none of those instances really ARE vain.

I think Paul argues that RELATIVE to the "fashion of this age," there really ARE deaths and suffering that are vain (Rom. 8). But if UR is true, they need not be ABSOLUTELY vain, so long as a coherent explanation can be articulated as to how they actually "contributed" to some END which is ultimately WORTH it. "Contributed" is the key word. For if those relatively vain sufferings contributed nothing that made them worth it to themselves, then they are ABSOLUTELY vain, and we seem to have an implication of God's incompetence, in that case. IOW, I think most people conceive of a benevolent order in such a way that suffering, per se, is not problematic to that order so long as it CONTRIBUTES (as a means to an end) to an ULTIMATELY worth-while state for themselves.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 7/22/2009 8:39:53 AM (GMT-5)

J: It has to do, partially, with the seeming incompetence of God seeming implied by the fact that He can't seem to create a world where ALL humans get to participate in meaningful (volitional) becoming in the THIS-WORLDLY mode that we are familiar with--thereby undermining some of our more intuitive teleological inferences, like "ALL human eyes are for seeing". This seems so because it seems that there is a probability of 1 that many infants and fetuses will necessarily die from natural evils alone (never mind moral evils) before attaining to an age where they COULD become volitional in any meaningful sense--so far as we can define it, at least.

T: I don’t particularly detect this incompetency and I don’t really make a hard line between ‘this’ world and the ‘next’. But I feel your pain. So how do you solve it? The world obviously was created by a competent God with the virtual inevitability that some infants would never use their eyes in THIS-WORLDLY contexts. What’s your answer? It can’t JUST be that God gets pleasure from volitional love.

J: As I said on the other thread, I, too, believe that infants and fetuses could have died pre-Fall. But those deaths would have been contingent on the misuse OF, or the failure TO use, human volition. Thus, those deaths would have been contingent on CREATURES, not the very DESIGN of the created order--the latter implies God DID it, to me. Again, there is a reason why you say the probability of even 1 infant or fetus dying inevitably from natural evil alone is less than 1. Because you see the same issue (you "feel my pain," IOW). You just don't see it as being AS problematic as other views.

J: So, to me, theodicy is not about WHETHER God is good (that seems unavoidable, epistemologically), but HOW is He good given what seems to be instances of "vain" dyings and sufferings.

T: Or (for some), how it’s the case that there really are no "vain" dyings and sufferings, i.e., sufferings that rob persons permanently of the use and enjoyment of any God-given ‘natural’ capacity. It all gets fulfilled (and not in an UTTERLY different OTHER-WORLDLY mode. The world to come is material world. Our eyes will REALLY do what they were designed to do. No loss of natural capacities.

J: But you still have to posit that those future eyes are somehow TELEOLOGICALLY related to that first pair that never got utilized in THIS WORLD. As long as you say that the premature destruction of even ONE pair of eyes in this world of natural evils is less than one, you're being coherent. But there's no aposteriori, empirical reasoning that will get you there. THat's just a deduction from your intuition given what you believe about earth history. All I'm saying is this: You're view will be laughed off the stage by people who don't hold our intuitions about the benevolence of God just like mine will. For those who DO have our intuitions about the benevolence of God, we already know there MUST be an explanation whether we can think of a completely plausible (analogical) one or not.

T: But I agree, you gotta work it out differently. How do you do it?

J: OK. I can see how people can do metaphorical wonders with Genesis 1-3 up to a point. But there always gets to be a point at which they seem to be abandoning the conventional use of language as a means to understanding its meaning. I'm not comfortable with that. If scripture truly is a literary singularity with respect to the mode with which it serves as medium to our knowledge and understanding, then we're really just saying, IMO, that all "scriptural" knowledge is a form of private revelation. And that is a bona-fide show-stopper to me. Because it seems to imply that we can't get HISTORY out of it either. Because how else do we get history out of it except by treating it as a CONVENTIONALLY understood text?

So that's number 1. Genesis SEEMS to be saying that certain natural evils ENTERED the world because of what Adam and Eve did. And not ONLY Genesis, but other verses seem to ALLUDE to those "histories" as if they're true. And number 2 is the pain about natural evil that you somewhat feel with me. And IF Genesis is really saying that some natural evils came about from the Fall, then maybe others came about from other post-Fall divine-interventions, creaturely choices, and side-effects, thereafter.

So how do I explain it? First of all, I note that there is NO naturalistic explanation of anything like HOW the universe, galaxies, solar systems, stars, of life got here. It's all speculation which involve very extreme improbabilities given what we THINK are the laws of physics. So it's not like I can't speculate with the best of them. So I observe that all paradigms that deal with earth and universe history are VERY theory laden--by which I mean, DATA and OBSERVATION-poor, and THEORY rich. That's why whole sub-paradigms can be overturned by ONE new finding.

So what must be true for Genesis to be read as a history? IMO, that means that the heavens AND the earth have to be about the same age. It also means that predatory relationships and natural evils that seem "vain" are post-Fall. How can this be?

Well, first of all, we don't know how old the universe is. All age-dating systems used for cosmological dating are untestable (how can you test whether the red-shift from star light is due to space-stretching? Indeed, what does it even MEAN to say that space stretches?). And there are known anomalies that can NOT be explained in terms of those dating methods. If you read up on new astronomical findings you will see that there are problems with all paradigms that supposedly prove how old things are and how they came to be. Kuhn has reminded us that when this state of affairs exists, science will almost SURELY result in a revolution that will alter our paradigms in completely unpredictable ways. This has happened over and over througout history.

As for the age of the earth, we have similar problems. Moreover, there are basically 3 approaches to explaining the form of the "face" of the earth. There are really smart geologists and geophysicists that hold to all three:

1) The earth is basically as it has always been, though polar wander, uplifting and subsidence and their related readjustments, etc. have caused mountain building, etc.

2) The ocean basins are relatively young and were formed, primarily, by continental drift.

3) The ocean basins are relatively young and were formed, primarily, by earth expansion.

All these views have HUGE problems. But if we are gonna take the route that the ocean basins are relatively young, the earth expansion view provides a possible way of getting around what seem to be geometric impossibilities entailed in continental drift. Also, the expanding earth view provides the possibility of explaining earth history consistently with a global Flood a LONG TIME AGO. Everyone agrees that paleogeographic maps indicate that the continents were covered with seas in the past. If the earth flooded, there would have been a over-all trend towards the continents being mostly underwater to being mostly uncovered of water. The fossil record shows just such a trend as well (the fossil record is very biased, however, and doesn't provide us with a significant amount of information as to all that existed at any given time).

There already are known causes that effect radioactive decay rates. One inference was recently reported to have been corroborated further. And if the earth expanded, there may have been other factors we aren't aware of. One need remember that there is NO explanation of cosmological history that doesn't include deviations from the laws of phyics. Big-Bangers even have to posit faster-than-light motion in the early portion of the Big-Bang. There's no evidence for that. It just NEEDS to be true to account for the universe THAT WAY. Thus, what is fair game to the atheists is fair game to theists. There are plenty of claims that are posited with no evidence simply because those claims render a paradigm coherent.

In short, we don't KNOW that the earth and the universe are different ages. And we don't KNOW that earth expansion is not the explanation of the ocean basins if, indeed, they are relatively young. And we don't KNOW how old the earth is. All we know is that the universe, including the earth, is OLD. But it could be a mere 40 million years old and be MIND-BOGGLINGLY old and still not be a problem for Genesis so long as the universe as a WHOLE is basically the same age. Humans have supposedly lived for 2-4 million years according to mainstream scientists (granted, they think beings that bury their dead and make musical instruments and boats are not humans, but ...). Who's to say that God's long-suffering is not much greater than that?

J: "Contributed" is the key word. For if those relatively vain sufferings contributed nothing that made them worth it to themselves, then they are ABSOLUTELY vain, and we seem to have an implication of God's incompetence, in that case.

T: But Paul says they’re worthless, more precisely, "not worth comparing to the glories to be revealed." To me that means they have no "abiding" value or worth. If they make abiding contributions, or if the contribute to abiding beauties then they WOULD be comparable to the glories to be revealed, for those glories would only be what they are BECAUSE of those vain sufferings. So those sufferings are ‘valuable’ to the glories. They’re PART OF the glories. What is Paul then even talking about?

J: Best I can tell, v. 18 is referring to the voluntary suffering WITH CHRIST of v. 17. Thus, v. 18 isn't referring directly to the "vain" sufferings.

J: IOW, I think most people conceive of a benevolent order in such a way that suffering, per se, is not problematic to that order so long as it CONTRIBUTES (as a means to an end) to an ULTIMATELY worth-while state for themselves.

T: Describe such a "contribution" for me. You seem to have suggested one--viz., so-called vain sufferings are "means to an end." Describe the end that these are means to. I'm having trouble imagining such ends.

J: Assume that Genesis reads pretty straightforward in meaning. God caused His two human creatures to suffer pain of child-birth, thorns and thistles, and sweaty work that was NOT the case theretofore. I explain that this way:

God had hoped that had any human sinned, they would have done so in such a way that there would have been OTHER NON-SINNING humans left to keep the creational project going in the pre-Fall mode. But since the very first two humans BOTH sinned, He either had to kill them on the spot, thereby rendering His project a failure which He was unable to redeem, OR He could let them live some finite length of time in some mal-adapted state which lowered the epistemic distance to fit the new state of affairs. Had God left Adam and Eve in their prior state even after sinning, it may have decreased God's revelation of Himself via the NATURE of creation. And this may be HOW sin entered the world. That mal-adaptive condition rendered inevitable the future sinning of future humans (assuming they lived long enough to sin). This is speculation, but seemingly, God thought it fitting that they suffer certain kinds of sufferings because of their sin. Thus, He preferred it for SOME reason, if the text reads as true history. Interestingly, these sufferings all relate to human purposes He had mentioned to them prior to the Fall.

If something like this is the case, then the existence of THOSE sufferings, and the risk of others that followed, CONTRIBUTE to God's ends insomuch as they provide the conditions which render the project SUSTAINABLE to God--sustainable, i.e., by satisfying those requirements that keep God's interest in creation ATTAINABLE (after all, God is a being who can become so distraught with a creational project that He can destroy it with a Flood--and the Flood is just another example of what God HAD TO DO to keep the project going in such a way as to render it consistent with the attainment of His end(s) for it, which involves an optimizing of DEGREE of satisfaction).

In that sense, even the possibility of sin (which is what it means to be morally free) provided the POSSIBILITY of God attaining the KIND of satisfaction He desired from our particular creational project. In that sense, such things CONTRIBUTE insomuch as they are necessary CONDITIONS of the attainment of the divine end for creation. But because DEGREE is at the heart of those ends, God truly did PREFER that there had been no sin. He truly did PREFER that all the natural evils that have come about because of the Fall had never occurred. It's the fact that God's TELOS entails DEGREE that allows us to say that God PREFERRED what has already failed to take place. And yet, He INTENDED what He PREFERRED and COMPETENTLY designed the world such that what He PREFERRED/INTENDED was POSSIBLE. God would have been incompetent for attempting to bring about an intended end He could not POSSIBLY attain.

Scripture seems to clearly say, IMO, that sin is INEVITABLE now. That means that God's competence must be explained in terms of some SOFA that involved different conditions than those under which we now live. And that's exactly the way scripture seems to try to explain it.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 7/22/2009 12:26:39 PM (GMT-5)

J: I think Paul argues that RELATIVE to the "fashion of this age," there really ARE deaths and suffering that are vain (Rom. 8). But if UR is true, they need not be ABSOLUTELY vain, so long as a coherent explanation can be articulated as to how they actually ‘contributed’ to some END which is ultimately WORTH it.

T: I can’t see that they contribute, or need to contribute.

J: Sorry, I missed this one. And it's important. Because to me, if God is OK with vain suffering and vain death, I see no reason to suppose that His specific kind of benevolence requires that UR be true. That would put me right back to the view that some die forever. You have said you're OK with annihilationism. So that would make sense. It's UR that compels me to say that nothing is ABSOLUTLEY vain. Per UR, ALL sentient beings will be happy they existed. Thus, they will be happy that they existed despite what conditions (and, consequently, what risked side effects) were necessary for God to attain His ends in this non-determinant, creational project.

IOW, if a risked side-effect of creation is instantiated, that side effect is, in an sense, a CONDITION of the possibility of the project insomuch as its non-conditionality would imply the non-existence of some correlative degree of freedom that WAS a condition of the project. See what I mean? In this way, we can say even those non-necessary, but risked, side effects are conditions of the project and "contribute" to its existence in THAT SENSE. Because the alternative is to deny the very freedom that made the risk inevitable.

Risk is a very important concept because of HOW it's related to the DEGREE of satisfaction from the creational project. I just say that God's competence is such that, though He may not have attained the HIGHEST DEGREE of satisfaction possible from creation, He attains a SUFFICIENT degree of satisfaction from the project to render it worth the sufferings. But if we say He necessarily attains the HIGHEST degree of satisfaction from the project, we are in danger of saying that sin is of no consequence to God, which seems non-sensical. The only way to get around it is to say that God didn't create FOR His satisfaction. But that creates analogical and textual problems, to my mind. Once we say creation exists FOR God AND that God is benevolent, I'm pretty locked in as to how to explain certain things. But as long as its doable, that's not a problem.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 7/22/2009 12:46:11 PM (GMT-5)

     What's important is that God IS benevolent. Either God didn't intend infants and fetuses to die prematurely from natural evils (in which case their demise was not inevitable at all), or He accepted their inevitable natural demise as a necessary evil in the kind of world He desired for the rest of us. If the latter is true, then it seems reasonable to believe that a benevolent God would have provided ANOTHER means to experience Him. But your view, my view, and this latter view all seem problematic empirically in different ways.

All mega-explanations are problematic, empirically. And that's OK. It's the tension we all live with. Those who think there is no tension (or what D calls paradoxes) in their mega-view of reality are knaive. And we can't worry about how silly we look to knaive folks. Cause we ain't going back to where they're at. I think this is why Greg is very tolerant of other views too. He sees the sheer difficulty of squaring God's benevolence with our empirical experience in a PLAUSIBLE way.

It's funny. When my kids went to college, they were told in orientation how important tolerance is because of the fact that ALL VIEWS HAVE PROBLEMS. But once they get in class, their professors are as dogmatic as any religious fanatics have ever been. What I say is this. All views DO have problems. But why would toleration be a value, then, unless we KNOW, despite those problems, that tolerance is in our own best interest? Not EVERY belief can be equally problematic. Some beliefs are intuitive or virtually intuitive and have more weight to us for that very reason.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 7/22/2009 5:14:20 PM (GMT-5)