Post Edited (Laika) : 6/22/2005 12:01:18 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Laika) : 6/22/2005 3:15:05 PM (GMT-5)

Conditional Necessity 

Here I don’t think you have grasped the concept yet. The kind of necessity I first gave was a kind of conditional necessity. This is why I believe I framed it as a conditional-IF this, then that. If you want to go to San Francisco from here, then you have to go through Orange County. If I choose to go to SF, then I also necessarily choose to go through OC. But this is silent as to whether I must go to SF, since it is a CONDITIONAL statement.

Your “only option” example seems then to be a false analogy since it is predicated on the fact that there is no conditional. It is not IF we must go this way, but it is already established that we MUST go this way and hence it is not a conditional and hence doesn’t map on to conditional necessity.

Goods in the Good

As to the contents of the good, that is exactly what we are discussing. I am identifying the plurality of goods with goodness itself and vice versa. It is only if one thinks, as you do that the Good is simple and singular that only choosing the Good rules out free will. But if the Good is complex and plural then we can meet the condition on LFW for alternative possibilities. Your ultimate problem is that you have a Neo-Platonic conception of Goodness. This is why free will always has to be a choice between good and evil options for you.

Impeccability requires the inability to do wrong because that is just what it is to be impeccable-to be beyond the possibility of moral failure. If something were fully and truly impeccable then it could not become peccable. If something was fully and truly fidelity then it could not become infidelity, something other than what it is. It does require some measure of inability to be unfaithful in order to be faithful, otherwise you wouldn’t be faithful.  The reason why you keep thinking of the “Ford” example is because you keep thinking of properties as absolutely simple objects-again more Neo-Platonism.

What you get or don’t get warm fuzzies over seems only biographical in nature and doesn’t look like an argument to me.

Acolyte:

Here I don’t think you have grasped the concept yet.  The kind of necessity I first gave was a kind of conditional necessity. This is why I believe I framed it as a conditional-IF this, then that. If you want to go to San Francisco from here, then you have to go through Orange County. If I choose to go to SF, then I also necessarily choose to go through OC. But this is silent as to whether I must go to SF, since it is a CONDITIONAL statement.

Laika:

The choice is whether to go to San Francisco or not.  The means necessary are part of the choice and not the choice itself.
Can you demonstrate a necessary choice that stands alone? 

Your faux "necessary choices" are merely the necessary means to accomplish a real choice.  They are not a choice themselves.  That's why people say things like "in order to go to San Francisco, I HAVE to go this way.  I'm only doing it to get to SF."
 
Acolyte:

Goods in the Good

As to the contents of the good, that is exactly what we are discussing. I am identifying the plurality of goods with goodness itself and vice versa. It is only if one thinks, as you do that the Good is simple and singular that only choosing the Good rules out free will. But if the Good is complex and plural then we can meet the condition on LFW for alternative possibilities.

Laika:

Kid has a bad heart and needs a new one to live.  God reaches in his set of good things and pulls out...... a brand new soccer ball.  What could be more good than a brand new soccer ball?

I just broke your "good" set AND preserved God's LFW by Him choosing a bad option from your "good" set.

Acolyte:

Impeccability requires the inability to do wrong because that is just what it is to be impeccable-to be beyond the possibility of moral failure.

Laika:

No, it just requires moral failure never happening.  Then it would have meaning, impeccable despite the potential for moral failure.

Acolyte:

If something was fully and truly fidelity then it could not become infidelity, something other than what it is. It does require some measure of inability to be unfaithful in order to be faithful, otherwise you wouldn’t be faithful. 

Laika:

Someone who was faithful their whole marriage would not be considered faithful due to the possiblity of being unfaithful?
Then faithful and fidelity are meaningless.  Just like commanding the dead dog to "Stay boy, stay......... good dog" is meaningless.

Acolyte:

The reason why you keep thinking of the “Ford” example is because you keep thinking of properties as absolutely simple objects-again more Neo-Platonism.

Laika: 

Calling it "Neo-Platonism" is a non-response.   Actually, the little I've read of "divine simplicity" is enough for me to reject it.. 

And the Ford example still stands, most think one 'option' is not a choice.  That's why they laugh at it.

Post Edited (Laika) : 6/23/2005 12:57:02 PM (GMT-5)

Yes, it's impossible for God to lie, due to a moral restraint, yet possible for Him to give rocks and kill people.  It's His LFW, His ability for moral restraint, that determines when He does and doesn't.  And being made in His image, we have the same LFW, the same moral restraint.  That's why we can be commanded to act as He does.

Post Edited (Laika) : 6/24/2005 1:18:07 PM (GMT-5)

Laika,

In conditional necessity the means are necessary to attaining the end but this necessity is not applicable to the antecedent. This is why you are confused in thinking that this is incompatible with LFW. You are conflating the necessity of the consequent with the hypothetical conditionality of the antecedent. I never said that the choice en toto was necessary. What I claimed was that not all TYPES or FORMS of necessity are incompatible with LFW. This is pretty much an agreed point among libertarians.

Your counter example fails to map on to my idea and here is why. Just so long as there are a multiplicity of goods to choose from, you can have LFW. God can pull out lots of things that are appropriate to healing the individual in question. And there is more than one way to do the good-there is no one good act. By good things in the Good I do not mean temporal created goods but eternal uncreated goods in the good. What is more, the fact that there is one good appropriate to a specific circumstance doesn’t eliminate the fact that there is a plurality of goods to choose from.

Your idea of moral impeccability is mistaken. First it would analogous to saying that someone is infallible because they just never make mistakes. But this conflates the idea of inerrancy with infallibility. An algebra text may not contain any errors but that only makes it inerrant and not infallible. The latter is the idea that error is impossible while the former only secures the conclusion that there is no error. God’s moral impeccability is not just that he hasn’t done evil so far or never ends up doing so but that he could not do so-it is impossible. You are confused as to the modality at work in the concept of impeccability.

As to faithfulness someone faithful their whole life while it was still possible to be unfaithful for them would still be considered faithful but not faithful to the fullest degree. You are thinking of it as an all or nothing deal and it isn’t-it is a matter of degree.

My comment identifying your view as Neo-platonic is a legitimate response. First, because it picks out the ideas that are motivating your ideas regarding freedom and goodness.  I do think you accept a form of the simplicity of simple essences. This is why you cannot fully integrate freedom and goodness. If goodness is simple and one thing and freedom requires plurality, then the two cannot be fully compatible-one of them has to be attenuated. But if goodness is intrinsically plural then goodness and freedom can be fully integrated with no problem.

Moreover, OVT often complain about the influence of Greek philosophy on traditional Christian doctrines. So it is quite relevant to bring to light the fact that OVT are no less indebted to Greek philosophical concepts and that they don’t escape their own criticisms. And what is worse, it shows that at the end of the day, they end up either compromising God’s goodness or human freedom just as the Calvinists do which implies that they are both making the same fundamental mistakes. They are both Origenists. This is why Sanders, Boyd, Hasker, et al have no coherent or plausible response on the inability of Jesus sinning or the inability of God to sin. They are just the other side of the coin from Calvinism.

The Ford example fails because it identifies the set of cares with one simple property-blackness. You would have to modified the case to map on to my idea of a unified yet plural goodness. Henry Ford would have to say, “you can have any color you like, just so long as it is a color.” The Ford example as you give it is a strawman.

I don’t need scriptural examples of God doing evil I just have to show that your view logically permits such a thing. Moreover, I don’t think that you have sufficient reason to believe that God will continue to be as he is, even assuming he has told the truth from the beginning. You are relying on inductive reasoning, reasoning from cases you have observed to cases that you have not. You cannot know what the cases you have not observed are going to be like because you have not observed them. You are assuming a uniformity of nature and that is the only way you can make the inference from observed cases to unobserved cases go through. But this is question begging because it is assuming exactly what is being asked for, namely a reason for thinking that God is uniform in his activities.

The fact that you speak of God as being morally restrained shows that you cannot put freedom and goodness together without limiting or attenuating one or the other. Moreover, if you say that God is morally restrained from doing evil then what happens to your original claim that God can sin?