God, moral good and free will

[preferanonymous]

“In this scenario He does not provide us all with the means to avoid hell on all occasions, thereby ensuring that some people will suffer for eternity.”

This premise, it seems to me, is not credible. The fact that on every occasion I might sin, does not imply I will go to hell. On every occasion, and the Blessed Virgin is an example of this I think, it is possible not to sin. This, I think, is the fallacy in your argument.

“It supports my view that apprehension of the good is what is lacking that you talk about intentional sinning. If anyone knew the good, there would be no way they could intend to do otherwise, and intention to sin therefore can only result from ignorance.”

It does not follow from my view of intentional sinning that one lacks knowledge of the good. I admit the possibility that some people know the good and choose against it. Not everyone acts reasonably all the time.

 

[Bobber90]

“In this scenario He does not provide us all with the means to avoid hell on all occasions, thereby ensuring that some people will suffer for eternity.”

This premise, it seems to me, is not credible. The fact that on every occasion I might sin, does not imply I will go to hell. On every occasion, and the Blessed Virgin is an example of this I think, it is possible not to sin. This, I think, is the fallacy in your argument.

He does not provide us with sound knowledge of the good, yet He does provide us with the means to act on our faulty knowledge. As a consequence, some people will do wrong, and therefore go to hell. That is credible… no? Why, when the alternative was to be like Mary, are we different?

“It supports my view that apprehension of the good is what is lacking that you talk about intentional sinning. If anyone knew the good, there would be no way they could intend to do otherwise, and intention to sin therefore can only result from ignorance.”

It does not follow from my view of intentional sinning that one lacks knowledge of the good. I admit the possibility that some people know the good and choose against it. Not everyone acts reasonably all the time.

Not acting reasonably may well be another fault inherent in our creation, or it may be one that is possible to overcome, given appropriate direction. However, sufficient and appropriate direction has not been given. I do not think it is possible to deny that God could have given us all the understanding of the good that Mary had, and in so doing, ensured that no-one would choose to sin. Perhaps we do gain from sinning and learning, rather than already knowing, but it is hard to see how it is good that some people would suffer for eternity as a consequence of sinning and not learning, especially given that this would not happen if people has an adequate appreciation of the good of learning.

 

[Bobber90]

Here are some thoughts that ought to be tested:

How we commit wrong acts-

1. Lack of knowledge of the good. Failure to sense the good.
2. Failure to pay attention to the findings of moral intuition
   a) with ability to choose freely whether to pay attention, misguided by either 1 or 3.
   b) without the ability to choose freely whether to pay attention.
3. Failure of the objective value to compel behaviour

In these cases, it is not our fault that we fail to do good. Either we were not given an adequate sense of good, the values of good are faulty, or we were not directed to appreciate the good.

Intention to do wrong:

1. Motive arising as a consequence of someone’s accidental or deliberate failure to do you good.
   a) with consequence that you misperceive/undervalue the good
2. Motive arising from perceived self-interest
   a) failure to understand unity of self-interest and moral good
3. Motive arising from bad character
   a) we are responsible for choosing our character by choosing our habits of thought. We fail to perceive or value the good in the process of choosing.
   b) we are not responsible for our character.
4. Motive arising from influence of Satan.
   a) we can choose not to be influenced by Satan. Fail to perceive or value good.
   b) we cannot choose not to be influenced by Satan

We’re still not responsible…

 

[preferanonymous]

“He does not provide us with sound knowledge of the good, yet He does provide us with the means to act on our faulty knowledge. As a consequence, some people will do wrong, and therefore go to hell. That is credible… no? Why, when the alternative was to be like Mary, are we different?”

This is still not credible but perhaps in a different way. Even if we had no knowledge of the good, and still had the possibility to sin, we could, so to speak, all get lucky. This, I think, however, might be a problematic conclusion. Yet, I would dispute that we do not have knowledge of the good- a view which seems to be underlying your argument.

The Church, for example, I believe holds that man can know by natural reason certain truths about morality. I think I would agree with something like this. If this were the case, I think your argument might lose much of its force such that we could be quite responsible for not choosing it the good.

What is the good then? What if one said that doing the good was acting according to reason. If one’s intention is to choose that which one has reason to choose, something worthy of choice, the intention is good. If the intention is to choose that which one does not have reason to choose, something unworthy of choice, the intention is bad. Reason could then tell us which things were good or bad. Hence, we could have some responsibility. Those things which are worthy of choice would be, let us say, those things which when done means that one acts in communion with one’s ultimate end (when acting does not entail that one acts contrary to that end), God. Things like procreation, philosophy, and religious life might be examples of this and their might be many derivative goods from these three which would also be worthy of choice (adoption, teaching, public servant etc).

 

[Buck_Crosswhite]

Does anyone know of any counter-argument to this?

God could have given people free will and a morally perfect nature (such as Mary’s), so that they can choose to do good or bad but always choose the good. Seeing as God has not, He has set it up that some people will sin and presumably also go to hell. Having created this tendency to induce eternal suffering, God is not good.

God gave Adam and Eve a chance to make a perfect world and they blew it. Now we have to live with it.

 

[Bobber90]

I would dispute that we do not have knowledge of the good- a view which seems to be underlying your argument.

It does, exactly right. I think that we do not have sufficient knowledge of the good, because if we did, we would freely choose never to sin. If the causes of sinning are different from the list I started to make above, please make suggestions.

Proceeding with what you say:

‘The Church, for example, I believe holds that man can know by natural reason certain truths about morality.’

My view is that it is insufficient simply that we can know moral truth, as it implies that we can sometimes fail to know moral truth. For this failure, I think God is always ultimately accountable.

We can understand this in relation to point no. 2, inserting the term ‘moral reasoning’ instead of ‘moral intuition’. We sin by failing to reason properly about our situation or behaviour, with the consequence that we willfully do wrong. But if failing to reason properly is not a matter of choice (say it is due to our inconsolably feeble minds), it is God who takes responsibility for our wrong actions. If failing to reason properly is instead due to something like a ‘weakness of the will’ or laziness, then we failed to understand the good of persisting or our will failed, or indeed the value we reasoned our way to discovering failed to impel us. That is still not our fault.

 

[Bobber90]

God gave Adam and Eve a chance to make a perfect world and they blew it. Now we have to live with it.

If Adam was not a fool and if moral good is the highest and most glorious of things, subsuming all personal interests, what reasonable motive did Adam and Eve have for rebelling?

Short answer, I say Adam was a fool, and God must take responsibility for his character/intellect/moral perception. I think the same consistently applies to the angels who rebelled.

 

[davidv]

It does, exactly right. I think that we do not have sufficient knowledge of the good, because if we did, we would freely choose never to sin. If the causes of sinning are different from the list I started to make above, please make suggestions.

Proceeding with what you say:

‘The Church, for example, I believe holds that man can know by natural reason certain truths about morality.’

My view is that it is insufficient simply that we can know moral truth, as it implies that we can sometimes fail to know moral truth. For this failure, I think God is always ultimately accountable.

We can understand this in relation to point no. 2, inserting the term ‘moral reasoning’ instead of ‘moral intuition’. We sin by failing to reason properly about our situation or behaviour, with the consequence that we willfully do wrong. But if failing to reason properly is not a matter of choice (say it is due to our inconsolably feeble minds), it is God who takes responsibility for our wrong actions. If failing to reason properly is instead due to something like a ‘weakness of the will’ or laziness, then we failed to understand the good of persisting or our will failed, or indeed the value we reasoned our way to discovering failed to impel us. That is still not our fault.

Jesus told Paul:
2Cor.12:9:

but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Based on this, your claim of lack of sufficiency seems anti-biblical. How would you know you have sufficient knowledge? Why are the Commandments, both old and the Greatest, along with Church teaching, not sufficient?

 

[davidv]

If Adam was not a fool and if moral good is the highest and most glorious of things, subsuming all personal interests, what reasonable motive did Adam and Eve have for rebelling?

Short answer, I say Adam was a fool, and God must take responsibility for his character/intellect/moral perception. I think the same consistently applies to the angels who rebelled.

How was Adam’s supposed foolish any indication that he lacked knowledge of good?

 

[Bobber90]

Jesus told Paul:
Based on this, your claim of lack of sufficiency seems anti-biblical. How would you know you have sufficient knowledge? Why are the Commandments, both old and the Greatest, along with Church teaching, not sufficient?

They are not sufficient to ensure that we always do good, demonstrated by the fact that people who understand the Bible to be revealed still commit sins. I was hypothesising that committing sins would therefore result (in the context of free will) from human faults which are attributable to God, or to the failure of objective moral values to be compelling, in one way or another.

Grace is a very interesting thing though. What is the function/purpose of grace?

2Cor.12:9
but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Is the weakness boasted of an admission that we can know the good and yet fail to act according to it? Does it admit that we do not have will? Or does it say that we are weak because we cannot reach an understanding of the good (additionally, even)?

 

[Bobber90]

How was Adam’s supposed foolish any indication that he lacked knowledge of good?

I mean precisely that he must have been lacking in his appreciation of the good. He lacked the mental capacity or the perceptive faculty. Either that or he lacked will, in the sense of free will. He either didn’t have understanding, or he could not act upon it. There is no other way to explain his ‘choice’ to rebel…

 

[preferanonymous]

It does, exactly right. I think that we do not have sufficient knowledge of the good, because if we did, we would freely choose never to sin. If the causes of sinning are different from the list I started to make above, please make suggestions.

Proceeding with what you say:

‘The Church, for example, I believe holds that man can know by natural reason certain truths about morality.’

My view is that it is insufficient simply that we can know moral truth, as it implies that we can sometimes fail to know moral truth. For this failure, I think God is always ultimately accountable.

We can understand this in relation to point no. 2, inserting the term ‘moral reasoning’ instead of ‘moral intuition’. We sin by failing to reason properly about our situation or behaviour, with the consequence that we willfully do wrong. But if failing to reason properly is not a matter of choice (say it is due to our inconsolably feeble minds), it is God who takes responsibility for our wrong actions. If failing to reason properly is instead due to something like a ‘weakness of the will’ or laziness, then we failed to understand the good of persisting or our will failed, or indeed the value we reasoned our way to discovering failed to impel us. That is still not our fault.

I think you might consider the following:

If one was blind they would have no sin. If some is ignorant, but not willfully so, it seems one might not fault their intentions. Hence, if one does not know the truth, even if they can but have not been willfully ignorant of seeking it out (a sin I think it might be argued), they are not sinning. Since one is not doing anything wrong, there is no accountability- let alone for God.

 

[Texas_Roofer]

Bobber90 it would seem we should start at the begining :

Here are some thoughts that ought to be tested:

How we commit wrong acts-

1. Lack of knowledge of the good. Failure to sense the good.

This type of bad action is not sin as sin requires knowledge

1. Failure to pay attention to the findings of moral intuition
   a) with ability to choose freely whether to pay attention, misguided by either 1 or 3.
   b) without the ability to choose freely whether to pay attention…

This type of bad action is not sin as sin requires knowledge

1. Failure of the objective value to compel behaviour

In these cases, it is not our fault that we fail to do good. Either we were not given an adequate sense of good, the values of good are faulty, or we were not directed to appreciate the good…

I am not sure what you mean however it sounds like disordered thought, which means the person though something was good when it was actually bad. This is different from not knowing a moral issue is present

Intention to do wrong:

1. Motive arising as a consequence of someone’s accidental or deliberate failure to do you good.
   a) with consequence that you misperceive/undervalue the good.

These actions have to be divided into accidental (no sin) and delibrate which is done with either order or disordered thought.

1. Motive arising from perceived self-interest
   a) failure to understand unity of self-interest and moral good .

This type of bad action is not sin “failure to understand” means lack of knowledge

1. Motive arising from bad character
   a) we are responsible for choosing our character by choosing our habits of thought. We fail to perceive or value the good in the process of choosing.
   b) we are not responsible for our character…

?? when we chose, we should blame god for our choice?

1. Motive arising from influence of Satan.
   a) we can choose not to be influenced by Satan. Fail to perceive or value good.
   b) we cannot choose not to be influenced by Satan…

?? when we chose, we should blame god for our choice?

We’re still not responsible…

 

[Bobber90]

These actions have to be divided into accidental (no sin) and delibrate which is done with either order or disordered thought.

And my question is what are the causes of deliberate wrong action. You talk in terms of ordered or disordered thought, and I would say there was a cause of that lack of order in the case of sin. Now, are we responsible for the degree of order to our thoughts? If so, did we will that they were disordered? If so, why did we will that - was it caused by more disordered thoughts? There is an infinite regress.

Say that we did not will disordered thoughts, we have to ask what were their causes. Either the good way to order thoughts was not known (no sin results), or it was or could be known but weakness of the will allowed commitment to be knocked. Well, surely weakness of the will is our fault: we failed to pay attention to what we knew was good. What would be the causes of that failure? Disordered thoughts? What caused the disordered thoughts…

 

[davidv]

They are not sufficient to ensure that we always do good, demonstrated by the fact that people who understand the Bible to be revealed still commit sins. I was hypothesising that committing sins would therefore result (in the context of free will) from human faults which are attributable to God, or to the failure of objective moral values to be compelling, in one way or another.

To me, all this proves is that knowledge doesn’t prevent sin. How many murderers can legitmately claim they didn’t know murder was a criminal act?

Grace is a very interesting thing though. What is the function/purpose of grace?

From the Catechism:

1996 Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.46

There are more details here.

2Cor.12:9
but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Is the weakness boasted of an admission that we can know the good and yet fail to act according to it?

Yes

Does it admit that we do not have will?

No

Or does it say that we are weak because we cannot reach an understanding of the good (additionally, even)?

No.

 

[davidv]

I mean precisely that he must have been lacking in his appreciation of the good. He lacked the mental capacity or the perceptive faculty. Either that or he lacked will, in the sense of free will. He either didn’t have understanding, or he could not act upon it. There is no other way to explain his ‘choice’ to rebel…

Another way is to acknowledge that humans can, with full knowledge, freely choose to do things that can and will cause them harm.

 

[davidv]

And my question is what are the causes of deliberate wrong action.

I think all deliberate wrong actions can find their root cause in pride.

You talk in terms of ordered or disordered thought, and I would say there was a cause of that lack of order in the case of sin. Now, are we responsible for the degree of order to our thoughts? If so, did we will that they were disordered? If so, why did we will that - was it caused by more disordered thoughts? There is an infinite regress.

Say that we did not will disordered thoughts, we have to ask what were their causes. Either the good way to order thoughts was not known (no sin results), or it was or could be known but weakness of the will allowed commitment to be knocked. Well, surely weakness of the will is our fault: we failed to pay attention to what we knew was good. What would be the causes of that failure? Disordered thoughts? What caused the disordered thoughts…

It seems to me that you may be confusing thoughts with reasoning. Thoughts exist. Until we reason with them they are neither good, nor bad. It is when we begin reasoning that sin becomes a factor. It is in the reasoning that a person discounts the moral law and chooses a local good, like pleasure.

The normal human person is born with an intellect and a will. We are expected to develop both of them. The intellect, for knowledge and wisdom. The will, for holiness.

 

[Mudgely]

Does anyone know of any counter-argument to this?

God could have given people free will and a morally perfect nature (such as Mary’s), so that they can choose to do good or bad but always choose the good. Seeing as God has not, He has set it up that some people will sin and presumably also go to hell. Having created this tendency to induce eternal suffering, God is not good.

That is the tip of the iceberg. The logical argument is that an omniscient God cannot also be omnipotent, since the two obviously preclude each other. In the 18th Century, the solution to this apparent conundrum appeared to be Deism, which was the belief that free will was essentially impossible: A perfect God put the world in motion, with a known outcome. Therefore, every event leading to that outcome was preordained.

 

[Texas_Roofer]

And my question is what are the causes of deliberate wrong action. You talk in terms of ordered or disordered thought, and I would say there was a cause of that lack of order in the case of sin. Now, are we responsible for the degree of order to our thoughts? If so, did we will that they were disordered? If so, why did we will that - was it caused by more disordered thoughts? There is an infinite regress.

Say that we did not will disordered thoughts, we have to ask what were their causes. Either the good way to order thoughts was not known (no sin results), or it was or could be known but weakness of the will allowed commitment to be knocked. Well, surely weakness of the will is our fault: we failed to pay attention to what we knew was good. What would be the causes of that failure? Disordered thoughts? What caused the disordered thoughts…

We have to be careful here because you are teetering on the verge of several questions and issues.
If you are asking:

Why is our knowledge imperfect? Then the answer is we chose self determination over obedience. We eat of the tree of knowledge, and thus have the knowledge from that source. And even that knowledge is tainted by our self interest.

If you are asking for our motivation? It is concupiscence which is our self interest.

If you’re asking why we are held responsible for our action? That seems a bit odd as we do not allow are fellow man to be held without responsibility for his action (like theft, laziness, etc…).

You speak of this “infinite regress” and you ask for its cause, it seems to me the cause is likely to be this common thread of man picking his self interest over those of his fellow man or his god. An easy example is someone who overeats or over smokes, while acknowledging they know they over do the action. They know the action is bad for them. They want to stop the bad action, and yet they continue to perform the same action day after day why? I suggest it is the self interest of “feel good now” over do the right thing. When you ask why does evil exist it is simply because man produces evil and you ask why it is because it allows him the self control to produce the feel good now feeling.

Hope that helps

 

[roseo64]

whew!!! bobber 90 and texas roofer—
you guys are like taking a philosophy course–and logic…reminds me of college!!
well i briefly went through some of your thoughts in between all the semantics and the following are things that caught my attention…i hope it helps some way --though it may not be following your logic system.
what causes disordered thoughts???
the premise is if you believe that there is good and evil in the world–where obviously God is good and evil is the devil–plus all the variations between those two
poles—
then you will realize disordered thoughts, confusion come in various forms and degrees of evil. the devil is in competition with God–and when the devil sees a person trying to do the right thing and get closer to God–he/she will tempt us in various forms and degrees. most profound example of course is adam and eve who listened to the devil and believed him/her/it.
the rebel in moral issues is satan and wants us to rebel with him–taking us farther and farther away, from God.
bad --evil–etc. etc…–is “chosen” by a person when he is being confused–going farther and farther from our good–right side.
baptism with an infant is then a perfect being—BUT–the infant grows–and the influences of the world around us slowly but surely comes into his ‘world’.
choices begin and if the child has been instructed by parents -schools–the church he begins to receive the graces of God ,also.
the more we search and know about our souls–with “faith” and prayer our graces will and can increase----but at the same time the devil is lurking around trying the opposites. don’t forget even Jesus was tempted …
some describe hell as the absence of God’s love. various passages in the bible point out how God would rather see an evil man/woman live so that someday–some way–somehow he realizes he needs God–His graces and is sorry for his sins and tries to repair the damage. God wants everyone to be saved. now He leaves it in our court–will we or won’t we follow the path God showed us through Jesus, our Blessed Mother. the saints, and so on, or won’t we??
well i hope this helps—and may i also suggest finding a book of st. thomas aquinas, who was a theolgian and dr. of the church along with being a master in logic and theological questions.
i could be wrong bobber 90–but it seems you might be beating around the bush and possibly wondering, curious, doubting–what “faith” is all about?
if it is, please remember, it is different for each of us. it’s like someone can go on and on about what it’s like to open a present, or go on 100 mi. hike…but the “experience” is different for each one of us. well i hope this helps you.