 |
Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Questions about Christianity > (No Subject)
| Forum Quick Jump
|
| 
AlyoshaKaramazov
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 49
| Posted 6/5/2003 9:20 PM (GMT -6) |   | An atheist friend and former prof of mine and I were talking the other day. He posed an interesting objection to theism.
Since incompatibilist free will only requires the ability to choose among alternate possibilities, a good God would have only created good possibilities to choose from. Human beings would still get significant free will and there would be no evil. There is evil, therefore, there is no God (at least as traditionally defined).
I have a response that I made to him, but I'd like to throw it out to the CV board and see how you guys respond.
Give me a shout out.
PS: Yo Doc, I checked out Trinity and Process the other day, and I couldn't help but notice your picture on the back. What's with the pompadour, my man?!?! This confirms my theory that you and the guitarist for Journey are the same person. Maybe I'll start a new thread: "Open theology and power ballads." Hmmm...
"Take the place of my heart, till I become a stranger to my life."
--Jars of Clay | | Back to Top | | |
 |
Modes of Thought
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817
| Posted 6/6/2003 4:30 AM (GMT -6) | | I will definitely come back to this...but if you want SK on it, check out The Concept of Anxiety and then The Sickness Unto Death.
"I don't feel a real urgent burden to get all the details of my ethics worked out until I've got the profundity of my love worked out in a Christ-like way." --doc
| | Back to Top | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 6/6/2003 5:08 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
AlyoshaKaramazov
An atheist friend and former prof of mine and I were talking the other day. He posed an interesting objection to theism.
Since incompatibilist free will only requires the ability to choose among alternate possibilities, a good God would have only created good possibilities to choose from. Human beings would still get significant free will and there would be no evil. There is evil, therefore, there is no God (at least as traditionally defined).
I have a response that I made to him, but I'd like to throw it out to the CV board and see how you guys respond.
Give me a shout out.
Boiling this way, way, way down...
Heres whats left:
God created mankind.
Relevant with respect to mankind we were then left with only two possibilities: either (1) worship God, or (2) worship something else--whether ourselves, creation of angels.
That became fact. And with that disolves any sense of what your friend suggested: that God ... only create good possibilities to choose from. For THAT to happen mankind would have to BOTH "exist" with respect to being able to worship, AND "not exist" with respect to not being available as an object of worship.
I think that nails it.
Edited by - PotOnWheel on 06/06/2003 10:11:40 AM | | Back to Top | | |
|
Modes of Thought
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817
| Posted 6/6/2003 5:30 AM (GMT -6) | | Okay, God did in fact create creatures with self-determination that exercise free will in choices that are not morally relevant. They are called cows.
;)
Sorry. But the point is there. God didn't simply want morally neutral creatures for entertainment. God was intending to create creatures that bear God's own image with the purpose of sharing in the loving nature of God. This changes everything.
As far as possibilities go, self-reflecting (as opposed to cows) creatures experience some degree of anxiety when faced with a choice. The anxiety is over the self-awareness of being "able to." (This is in The Concept of Anxiety.) This can be small, like the minor anxiety (usually felt as stress) of going to a fast food place with simply too many options. Or it can be VERY big like the anxiety of which school to go to for your undergrad degree, or whether or not to accept a marraige proposal.
Why does this matter? Because that anxiety is real even when the choices are not necessarily morally important. We need a criterion by which to make the choices.
Back to the stages. That criterion can be the self, and the self's immediate desires. In this respect life is lived and choices are made as though basically everything was in the realm of the decisions we make at McDonalds. I want it my way, and now. (Esthetic stage) The criterion could be the good of the whole (ethical), or the criterion may be obedience to God (religious which later gets intensified in religiousness B and C). Even for the "religious" person, many choices can and "should" be made in both the esthetic and ethical spheres, using the appropriate criteria (give to each what is due...) but where there is a conflict with the religious, God must always remain Absolute. In fact, the Absolute never is "out of the picture" we are always to live in the world but not of it, we are always simultaneously to relate absolutely to the absolute and relatively to the relative.
We cannot seperate the idea of being a human being from its divine intention. We are made in the image of God with the purpose of worshipping God. For this reason, the proposal that God could have provided only possibilities that are morally nuetral is not adequate. We are saying then, that God could have created human beings that are not human beings. It is actually a contradiction. If your friend does not grant that human beings are morally relevant creatures, then that can be addressed quite easily. Simply drive your car into his. Moral issues will abound. Then, how you sort those out will bring up the issue of various criteria...
In the end, we would still experience anxiety, so long as we are faced with genuine possibilities, so this is at least an "evil" of sorts. So the proposal would fail immediately unless we become so UNself-aware that we make free choices with out the anxiety that goes along with it. In that case, we would not be free but actually just random.
I am thinking out loud here. This is my first time putting things together like this, so don't take this as though I am confident of its correctness. I am just working out what I am learning in conversation with the question being asked. May not be what you wanted....
"I don't feel a real urgent burden to get all the details of my ethics worked out until I've got the profundity of my love worked out in a Christ-like way." --doc
| | Back to Top | | |
|
Modes of Thought
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817
| Posted 6/6/2003 5:33 AM (GMT -6) | | I think I basically just repeated POW with more air in between...
"I don't feel a real urgent burden to get all the details of my ethics worked out until I've got the profundity of my love worked out in a Christ-like way." --doc
| | Back to Top | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 6/6/2003 12:58 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
ModesofThought
I think I basically just repeated POW with more air in between...
Now THAT's a switch, isn't it?
 | | Back to Top | | |
|
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 6/7/2003 6:09 AM (GMT -6) | | For some reason this seems so very simple to me. So I must be wrong!
Your friend seems to assume that God COULD have created only good possibilities to choose from and chose not to. But why believe that? If finite beings may only choose from among possible goods, can the choice to love ever be one of those choices? I don’t see how. The possibility of evil is the “metaphysical” price tag of the possibility of love. It’s that simple. What your friend assumes an omnibenevolent God WOULD do (creating only good possibilities) is in fact impossible. We might agree that God would do it if he could, but there’s every reason to believe he can’t. So his argument fails. It’s not God that doesn’t exist. What doesn’t exist is the possible world of libertarianly free creatures who face only good possibilities.
Tom
| | Back to Top | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 6/7/2003 6:23 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
For some reason this seems so very simple to me. So I must be wrong!
Your friend seems to assume that God COULD have created only good possibilities to choose from and chose not to. But why believe that? If finite beings may only choose from among possible goods, can the choice to love ever be one of those choices? I don’t see how. The possibility of evil is the “metaphysical” price tag of the possibility of love. It’s that simple. What your friend assumes an omnibenevolent God WOULD do (creating only good possibilities) is in fact impossible. We might agree that God would do it if he could, but there’s every reason to believe he can’t. So his argument fails. It’s not God that doesn’t exist. What doesn’t exist is the possible world of libertarianly free creatures who face only good possibilities.
Tom
I'd like to put one "rider" on top of what Tom said. Its simply this. That at the beginning of evil in the world (Mankind brought evil into the material-creation; before that it was only a suggestion/tempting by the devil, who is not material.) that evil was simple. One sin, and one thing. But then evil spread, and compounded, etc. So that is the only "rider": that "possibility of evil" (as Tom says) was simple at first, and then became more complex.
(How do you feel about that, Tom?)
PoW | | Back to Top | | |
|
ReasonableDoubt
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 6/10/2003 7:07 AM (GMT -6) | | These seem to be way too pat answers. TGB says: ''If finite beings may only choose from among possible goods, can the choice to love ever be one of those choices? I don’t see how. The possibility of evil is the “metaphysical” price tag of the possibility of love. It’s that simple. What your friend assumes an omnibenevolent God WOULD do (creating only good possibilities) is in fact impossible. "
Why is it possible to love only if there is the possibility to hate? It's very easy to conceive of a world in which Hitler was never born, for example. Had he not been born, untold millions most likely would not have died by torture and suffering inflicted by him and his regime. Much less evil would have resulted had Hitler not been actualized by God. Now can you tell me how much more love resulted as a result of his life? Is this supposed to be a cost- benefit thing - where evil choices are worth it as long as loving choices outweigh them?
I don't think the argument is that there would be completely NO evil if God had actualized only that possible world in which good choices could be made. It is possible that he could have actualized a possible world that is better than the one we are in right now - most certainly. What if he had chosen to actualize a world full of Mother teresa's? Did she not have a free will to decide to follow GOd? Apparently she did. So if everyone exercised their free will like she did, then there would be drastically less evil in the world. Why could God not have chosen to actualize a world where only those people similar to Mother Teresa would exist? Heck, we don't even have to go that far. How about most of us writing on the boards? None of us are perfect, but I imagine most of us are pretty good and have never killed anyone or caused gratuitous suffering. Obviously it is possible to have every choice but yet choose only to do "pretty good"- that is, to not be the cause of suffering.
Why couldn't that be the case with everyone? No, GOd chose to actualize a world in which there are Hitlers. I don't think that God HAD to do so in order to have love there. | | Back to Top | | |
|
ReasonableDoubt
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 6/10/2003 8:01 AM (GMT -6) | | To continue - I hear you saying "I need to have the physical capability to rape, murder and commit mayhem in order for my freedom to be meaningful."
That's akin to saying, "I need to have the physical capability to fly, to leap tall buildings in a single bound, etc., or else my freedom is not meaningful."
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
--Søren Kierkegaard | | Back to Top | | |
|
DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 6/10/2003 11:42 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Why is it possible to love only if there is the possibility to hate? It's very easy to conceive of a world in which Hitler was never born, for example. Had he not been born, untold millions most likely would not have died by torture and suffering inflicted by him and his regime. Much less evil would have resulted had Hitler not been actualized by God.
Yes, and would God have permitted Hitler to have been born and develop if his ability to sway others could not have been used for Good rather than Evil?
quote:
Now can you tell me how much more love resulted as a result of his life? Is this supposed to be a cost- benefit thing - where evil choices are worth it as long as loving choices outweigh them?
Its not cost-benefit oriented, because while the potentiality for good and evil may coexist for a period, eventually they get actualized in one way or the other. So a better metaphor would be risk. Your stock can go up or it can go down. You can worship God or worship others than God.
quote:
I don't think the argument is that there would be completely NO evil if God had actualized only that possible world in which good choices could be made. It is possible that he could have actualized a possible world that is better than the one we are in right now - most certainly.
Doesn't this presuppose that the not-so-great world we live in is the way it is because of God's actualization? The point is that the screw-ups that have characterized our histories are due to our own fallen actualizations, going against Gods will.
quote:
What if he had chosen to actualize a world full of Mother teresa's? Did she not have a free will to decide to follow GOd? Apparently she did. So if everyone exercised their free will like she did, then there would be drastically less evil in the world.
yes, but the notion of free-will is that God cannot actualize everyone choosing to use their say-so in the right way(and believe me Mother Teresa did fail in some important respects).
quote:
Why could God not have chosen to actualize a world where only those people similar to Mother Teresa would exist? Heck, we don't even have to go that far. How about most of us writing on the boards? None of us are perfect, but I imagine most of us are pretty good and have never killed anyone or caused gratuitous suffering. Obviously it is possible to have every choice but yet choose only to do "pretty good"- that is, to not be the cause of suffering.
Um, there is an alternative reality where Greg Boyd is a highly successful cult-leader like David Koresh and I am one of the rising lieutenants in the Bush Administration(I used to live in TX from ages 3-9 and there are a lot of things that indicate to me I would be one of his faithful if my father had not taken the much less paying job teaching at Bethel College in MN). Besides, I made some pretty clear choices to become who I am, so the fact it turned out "pretty good"(mas o menos) doesn't mean I was predestined to be that way.
A world with mother-teresa zygotes only would be full of mother teresas and sex-changed hitlers.
dlw
Prayer from Kenya
From the Cowardice that dare not face new truth,
From the Laziness that is contented with half-truth,
From the Arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Lord Deliver Me.
Edited by - DLW on 06/10/2003 4:52:29 PM | | Back to Top | | |
|
ReasonableDoubt
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 6/10/2003 11:48 AM (GMT -6) | | | DLW- Im coming at this from the "middle knowledge" possible worlds - whereby GOd chooses to actualize one of many possible worlds. In other words, molinism - so God does actually know in that scenario that Hitler would do evil b/4 his creation. | | Back to Top | | |
|
DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 6/10/2003 11:54 AM (GMT -6) | | So does the criterion that God use to select the world he actualize preexist or coexist with God for all of eternity or is God responsible for it?
How about the set of possible worlds? Why would a world of MTs belong to this set and not be chosen?
By the weak axiom of revealed preference this must be the best of all possible worlds from God's perspective.
dlw
Prayer from Kenya
From the Cowardice that dare not face new truth,
From the Laziness that is contented with half-truth,
From the Arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Lord Deliver Me.
Edited by - DLW on 06/10/2003 4:56:19 PM | | Back to Top | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 6/11/2003 4:56 AM (GMT -6) | | | This sounds like a lot of boys looking at a messy room, discussingthe best way to pick things up, but not actually getting started to clean upthe mess. | | Back to Top | | |
|
DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 6/11/2003 8:02 AM (GMT -6) | | much of Theology is like that, dealing with concrete aspects of the reality of evil and what can and cannot be done about them in the here and now tends to make Theology far to immanent.
dlw
Prayer from Kenya
From the Cowardice that dare not face new truth,
From the Laziness that is contented with half-truth,
From the Arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Lord Deliver Me.
Edited by - DLW on 06/11/2003 1:02:56 PM | | Back to Top | | |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 11:19 AM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads
|
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP3
dotNetBB © 2000-2026 |
|
|