God, moral good and free will

[Bobber90]

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.

The logical problem of evil is pretty much soluble I think, but it is still to be explained how the real world we live in is the best possible one. I’m more interested in how free will and objective moral values would tie in to allow the logically consistent account to function properly. As it is, evil ultimately has to be permitted because free will is permitted (their exact relation is beyond my understanding at present), and it is humanity’s fault - Original Sin. However, I cannot see how people are really to blame for their actions before or after Original Sin, nor can I understand the kind of free will angels had. This is the problem that results from believing free will vindicates God over evil and that morally right actions are guided by apprehension of good values.

 

[Bobber90]

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

Is it logically possible that humans can have full knowledge of the good and bad of a situation, and freely choose to do wrong?

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

If pride is the cause of wrong, does it serve to make us ignore the good of a situation? Then I would argue pride has a cause, which is itself either willed or unwilled. If it is unwilled, then we are not responsible for it. Obviously it is difficult to talk about the influence of pride post-Fall, because humanity is said to be weaker or lesser or more subject to temptation, but there is still the significant question of whether pride was to blame for causing the Fall itself? How could Adam and Eve have been so misguided, unless they themselves were already weak?

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.

Presumably there is some degree of self-control over our reasoning ability and its development. That brings up the question of what directs the will to choose to shape the intellect, if it is the intellect which is responsible for all the good decisions?

 

[davidv]

Is it logically possible that humans can have full knowledge of the good and bad of a situation, and freely choose to do wrong?

Yes. Else there is no such thing as sin. “full knowledge” in this context does not mean all knowledge. It means sufficient knowledge to recognize right from wrong.

If pride is the cause of wrong, does it serve to make us ignore the good of a situation? Then I would argue pride has a cause, which is itself either willed or unwilled. If it is unwilled, then we are not responsible for it. Obviously it is difficult to talk about the influence of pride post-Fall, because humanity is said to be weaker or lesser or more subject to temptation, but there is still the significant question of whether pride was to blame for causing the Fall itself?

No, pride is not to be blamed. Adam and Eve are to blamed.

How could Adam and Eve have been so misguided, unless they themselves were already weak?

False dicotomy. They were not misguided. God guided them by instructing them on how to act in the garden. They had perfect guidance. How can it be weakness to choose that you know better than God (by eating from the forbidden tree)?

Presumably there is some degree of self-control over our reasoning ability and its development. That brings up the question of what directs the will to choose to shape the intellect, if it is the intellect which is responsible for all the good decisions?

The will is the chooser, so it is the last cause in the chain. The intellect informs the will.

 

[roseo64]

pride is not the only thing that has us choose good over evil. if we were not responsible for our will God wouldn’t have let adam and eve do wrong. their sin was that the devil tempted them to disobey God.
and remember that we as humans are not capable --oh my gosh we are weaker than God—to understand God–as He said in the old testament—“My thoughts are not your thoughts”…
our limited minds and no matter how much a person’s ego wants to think that they can understand God–we CANNOT…

 

[tonyrey]

1. Without free will we would be incapable of love
2. God has given us free will so that we are capable of love because love is more important than anything else
3. Free will implies the ability to love ourselves more than others
4. If we choose to love ourselves more than others we cannot exist in harmony with others and exist in isolation
5. Mary chose to love God more than herself
6. She was not compelled but did so of her own free will
7. If we didn’t have free will we would be incapable of choosing good or evil
8. Therefore a morally perfect nature cannot be attained without free will.

 

[Bobber90]

Originally Posted by Bobber90:
Is it logically possible that humans can have full knowledge of the good and bad of a situation, and freely choose to do wrong?

Yes. Else there is no such thing as sin. “full knowledge” in this context does not mean all knowledge. It means sufficient knowledge to recognize right from wrong.

This is the problem though. This demonstrates the very weakness which must have been inherent in all beings, including humans and angels. Sin can only be acting in full/sufficient knowledge and for some reason choosing moral wrong, yet any creature that can do wrong in knowledge of the fact has a rotten moral core. What else can help us if adequate knowledge of the good is not enough to make us behave well? It seems like an unnecessary defect to give us both the capacity for knowledge of the good/bad and the inherent impulse to contravene it. Could we not simply have this knowledge but without the impulse to ignore it? If Mary can do it, why couldn’t Adam and Eve, and why couldn’t the angels?

No, pride is not to be blamed. Adam and Eve are to blamed.

False dicotomy. They were not misguided. God guided them by instructing them on how to act in the garden. They had perfect guidance. How can it be weakness to choose that you know better than God (by eating from the forbidden tree)?

The will is the chooser, so it is the last cause in the chain. The intellect informs the will.

You say that Adam and Eve were not misguided, and that they received instruction on how to behave, so any mistakes made are entirely their fault. You also say that intellect informs the will, and that the will is the last cause of behaviour. We can clearly see that Adam and Eve are not responsible for their own selves: they are the first humans and bear no influences upon their characters or the balance of constitutive thoughts, desires or intellect other than what was put there by God. If you like, they are contingent beings and were not borne of themselves. If they had perfect guidance, it meant nothing because their natures were conditioned to fail. They could have been given morally neutral characters without pride/lust/self-love, plus perfect guidance, and then formed their intellect upon those factors. The kind of behaviour that would result would be freely chosen and desired good.

 

[Bobber90]

Say it was Adam and Mary at the start of humanity, or Mary and a man with a similar nature, would the Fall have occurred? Would Mary have taken the fruit and all it represented? If not, why not? Would she still have been tempted?

Isn’t free will guaranteed as much by the potential of the Fall (at any given moment), as by the reality of it having occurred already? If so, we could have been created in a better world.

 

[davidv]

Originally Posted by Bobber90:
Is it logically possible that humans can have full knowledge of the good and bad of a situation, and freely choose to do wrong?

This is the problem though. This demonstrates the very weakness which must have been inherent in all beings, including humans and angels. Sin can only be acting in full/sufficient knowledge and for some reason choosing moral wrong, yet any creature that can do wrong in knowledge of the fact has a rotten moral core. What else can help us if adequate knowledge of the good is not enough to make us behave well? It seems like an unnecessary defect to give us both the capacity for knowledge of the good/bad and the inherent impulse to contravene it. Could we not simply have this knowledge but without the impulse to ignore it? If Mary can do it, why couldn’t Adam and Eve, and why couldn’t the angels?

You say that Adam and Eve were not misguided, and that they received instruction on how to behave, so any mistakes made are entirely their fault. You also say that intellect informs the will, and that the will is the last cause of behaviour. We can clearly see that Adam and Eve are not responsible for their own selves: they are the first humans and bear no influences upon their characters or the balance of constitutive thoughts, desires or intellect other than what was put there by God. If you like, they are contingent beings and were not borne of themselves. If they had perfect guidance, it meant nothing because their natures were conditioned to fail. They could have been given morally neutral characters without pride/lust/self-love, plus perfect guidance, and then formed their intellect upon those factors. The kind of behaviour that would result would be freely chosen and desired good.

It is not all clearly seen that “Adam and Eve are not responsible for their own selves”.

What is lacking that would diminish their culpability? They had explicit, clear instruction to not eat of the tree. They were also given the consequences of their choosing to disobey. In contrast, it quite clear that they are personally responsible for the sin and the consequences it entailed.

I also do not see the relevance of contigency of being on their culpability.

 

[davidv]

Say it was Adam and Mary at the start of humanity, or Mary and a man with a similar nature, would the Fall have occurred? Would Mary have taken the fruit and all it represented? If not, why not? Would she still have been tempted?

Isn’t free will guaranteed as much by the potential of the Fall (at any given moment), as by the reality of it having occurred already? If so, we could have been created in a better world.

Eve’s and Mary’s nature were the same - human beings, free of orginal sin. So renaming Eve to Mary doesn’t change the result.

Any what if analysis is highly speculative and in this case not very productive in understanding the relationship implied by the thread title.

 

[Bobber90]

It is not all clearly seen that “Adam and Eve are not responsible for their own selves”.

What is lacking that would diminish their culpability? They had explicit, clear instruction to not eat of the tree. They were also given the consequences of their choosing to disobey. In contrast, it quite clear that they are personally responsible for the sin and the consequences it entailed.

I also do not see the relevance of contigency of being on their culpability.

Eve’s and Mary’s nature were the same - human beings, free of orginal sin. So renaming Eve to Mary doesn’t change the result.

Any what if analysis is highly speculative and in this case not very productive in understanding the relationship implied by the thread title.

The central argument is that an omnipotent God could have made things better than they are, in such a way as to retain human free will. We could have been given morally perfect natures, or characters which lacked the desire to contravene known moral good, and this would have meant we always freely choose the good. This is not the case, with the result that there is sin and evil in the world. Thinking about Mary is now shown to be an extra/irrelevant point.

Adam and Eve are not necessary beings, so they must be contingent beings. They did not create themselves and, by extension, they did not create their own personalities or dispositions or values or intellect or anything else that affects decision making. As they are contingent, I would also say that they cannot be responsible for the creation of anything new: they must simply rearrange what is already created.

If that is so, they cannot create from nothing the start of a causal process which decides the activity of their will: they are not originators of their own behaviour. They are given to do what their characters dictate, and their characters must include the impulse to override or undervalue moral feeling.

To be precise, how could a product of creation, a contingent being, create within itself the power (spontaneously, out of nowhere) to overrule the instruction of God not to eat the fruit, unless that impulse had been put there by God?

 

[davidv]

The central argument is that an omnipotent God could have made things better than they are, in such a way as to retain human free will. We could have been given morally perfect natures, or characters which lacked the desire to contravene known moral good, and this would have meant we always freely choose the good. This is not the case, with the result that there is sin and evil in the world. Thinking about Mary is now shown to be an extra/irrelevant point.

Adam and Eve are not necessary beings, so they must be contingent beings. They did not create themselves and, by extension, they did not create their own personalities or dispositions or values or intellect or anything else that affects decision making. As they are contingent, I would also say that they cannot be responsible for the creation of anything new: they must simply rearrange what is already created.

If that is so, they cannot create from nothing the start of a causal process which decides the activity of their will: they are not originators of their own behaviour. They are given to do what their characters dictate, and their characters must include the impulse to override or undervalue moral feeling.

To be precise, how could a product of creation, a contingent being, create within itself the power (spontaneously, out of nowhere) to overrule the instruction of God not to eat the fruit, unless that impulse had been put there by God?

Our free will is a gift from God. It is necessary for us to exhibit love. Without free will there can be no love (sacraficial self-donation) of the kind that God is the perfect example of.

Since God is perfect and human nature and persons are created in His image, the way things are, except for sin, is the best it could, else it wouldn’t have be created by the perfect creator.

Based on this, your “central argument” is no argument at all. It is wishful thinking.

What Mary actually did, no sin, is still immaterial. If she didn’t have the capacity to freely choose to do good always, she would not be human, and her feat of remaining sinless would be of no use to we humans.

The power to overrule God’s instruction was not created spontaneously from within, it is give to us by our creator.

God causes no one to sin, therefore your phrase “unless that impulse had been put there by God” is a false accusation against God.

We may be contrigent beings, but we are also free moral agents. We are, and will be, held accountable for our actions.

 

[Bobber90]

Our free will is a gift from God. It is necessary for us to exhibit love. Without free will there can be no love (sacraficial self-donation) of the kind that God is the perfect example of.

Since God is perfect and human nature and persons are created in His image, the way things are, except for sin, is the best it could, else it wouldn’t have be created by the perfect creator.

Based on this, your “central argument” is no argument at all. It is wishful thinking.

What Mary actually did, no sin, is still immaterial. If she didn’t have the capacity to freely choose to do good always, she would not be human, and her feat of remaining sinless would be of no use to we humans.

The power to overrule God’s instruction was not created spontaneously from within, it is give to us by our creator.

God causes no one to sin, therefore your phrase “unless that impulse had been put there by God” is a false accusation against God.

We may be contrigent beings, but we are also free moral agents. We are, and will be, held accountable for our actions.

The way things are, except for sin, is the best possible way. Well it is still possible to have perfection without sin, and the answer lies in the fact that God gave us the power to overrule His instruction, but He need not have given us motive. Without the power to overrule Him, we would be automatons; with the power but without the motive, we would live in bliss. With the power and motive sin is produced, hence evil is permitted by God’s choice and is not necessary.

Is rejection of God necessary in order to love Him? Does a baby learn to love by rejecting its mother, or by responding to her care? Clearly not, actual rejection is unnecessary. It would be enough to make love voluntary that there was the potential to reject God; no-one would ever actually need to do it. However, given that the rejection of God is so actively discouraged, the present set up does not confer validity on choosing to love God, because it is coercively reinforced and not merely voluntary. That is an obvious argument and doesn’t need to be looked into.

 

[davidv]

The way things are, except for sin, is the best possible way. Well it is still possible to have perfection without sin, and the answer lies in the fact that God gave us the power to overrule His instruction, but He need not have given us motive.

How does God give us motive. In my view, motives are self generated.

Without the power to overrule Him, we would be automatons; with the power but without the motive, we would live in bliss. With the power and motive sin is produced, hence evil is permitted by God’s choice and is not necessary.

Agreed.

Is rejection of God necessary in order to love Him?

No, but the ability of to do is necessary.

Does a baby learn to love by rejecting its mother, or by responding to her care? Clearly not, actual rejection is unnecessary. It would be enough to make love voluntary that there was the potential to reject God; no-one would ever actually need to do it. However, given that the rejection of God is so actively discouraged, the present set up does not confer validity on choosing to love God, because it is coercively reinforced and not merely voluntary. That is an obvious argument and doesn’t need to be looked into.

It is not an obvious argument and it is being looked into.

 

[Bobber90]

How does God give us motive. In my view, motives are self generated.

If motive is self-generated, do you mean to say that for Adam and Eve it was the consequence of a free will decision? If we gain motive to sin based on choice, that leaves the question of what motivated us to make the choice in the first place. Motive has to be present before a choice, and I think that motive comes from someone’s character/intellect/desires/physical urges/past experience. Given that there was nothing before Original Sin in terms of character/etc which did not come from what God alone put there (there was no Original sin, there was no human-caused corruption tainting them), God must be responsible for the provision of motive to sin. I don’t mean to say that the motive is legitimate, I mean motive in terms of force.

No, but the ability of to do is necessary.

Yes, I think so.

It is not an obvious argument and it is being looked into.

My mistake, I meant only the last bit was obvious - that an option is more voluntarily chosen if the alternatives are non-threatening, than if one would suffer tremendously for picking an alternative course of action. Say I am ill with bad flu, and my neighbour comes around offering to sort loads of chores out for me, I think “Hey, that’s nice!”. If I found out that for some unknown reason, they had been held at knife-point and told to do so, I would be less sure of their sincerity, and obviously freaked out.

However, if you agree that the potential to reject God is all that is necessary to make love voluntary, that argument just makes it more intuitive, surely?

 

[davidv]

If motive is self-generated, do you mean to say that for Adam and Eve it was the consequence of a free will decision?

No that is not what I mean. Motive is the a conclusion of our reason that leads to the justification of the choice of action. It comes before choice. It is also influenced, by a greater or lesser degree, on external factors, depending on how threatening they appear to be.

If we gain motive to sin based on choice, that leaves the question of what motivated us to make the choice in the first place. Motive has to be present before a choice, and I think that motive comes from someone’s character/intellect/desires/physical urges/past experience. Given that there was nothing before Original Sin in terms of character/etc which did not come from what God alone put there (there was no Original sin, there was no human-caused corruption tainting them), God must be responsible for the provision of motive to sin. I don’t mean to say that the motive is legitimate, I mean motive in terms of force.

Based on my comments above, I obviously agree that motive precedes choice. The question seems to be whether this motive is fixed and deterministic or, as I contend, is developed by us. What this motive becomes is dependent on our desires as well as external influences. What I read into the above is that God is personally responsible for Original Sin. Since God is All Good, this cannot be the correct conclusion.

Original sin does not have its origin in a prior corruption. It is the result of the misuse of a great good. Our free will is a great good, a logical necessity for the practice of the greatest virtue, Love.

It would appear then, that a disordered motive was not the factor in defining the sinfulness of the original sinful action. The clear problem was that they selected the wrong method for acheiving their motivation.

Yes, I think so.

My mistake, I meant only the last bit was obvious - that an option is more voluntarily chosen if the alternatives are non-threatening, than if one would suffer tremendously for picking an alternative course of action. Say I am ill with bad flu, and my neighbour comes around offering to sort loads of chores out for me, I think “Hey, that’s nice!”. If I found out that for some unknown reason, they had been held at knife-point and told to do so, I would be less sure of their sincerity, and obviously freaked out.

However, if you agree that the potential to reject God is all that is necessary to make love voluntary, that argument just makes it more intuitive, surely?

Its not clear to me what is more intuitive.

 

[JohnAlexander]

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.

Your argument does not make sense.

You are saying that God could have created everyone with the ability to choose evil but in such a way that no one chooses evil. The only way he can do that is to create everyone without the ability to choose evil.

Even if people choose sin God has made it so we can recover. It is only those who choose to not avail themselves of God’s forgiveness that suffer.

 

[Texas_Roofer]

Bobber90
At this point I do not know if you are sincere, it would seem you have argued every point to its end only to temporally abandon it then return back to the same issue later? So the question is: are you that confused, or are you playing a game? This threaded started with “God, moral good and free will” but asked the bad question about “morally perfect nature” which you describe as omniscient, yet omniscient is a different issue than a morally perfect nature. Then you go off on original sin which is moot if one wants to discuss the lack of a ““morally perfect nature” in Adam and Eve. Then there is the motive issues, the existence of good without evil, the ability to choose in a single option system, etc… In general at this point you seem back to the title which does not match much inside your posts. So maybe you now want to ask “Why did God give Adam & Eve freewill since god is omniscient and thus would know they would choose to disobey him?” Or would you like to venture down this road “Why did Adam & Eve go for knowledge, was it because they would be Omniscient and thus live as God or another reason?” (Is the omniscience of Adam a “morally perfect nature” to you? Did Adam live your assertion by trying to know all at the expense of obeying? Was Adam’s thought that with perfect knowledge he could avoid sin?)

Also I would like you to address addiction, which is one of the points you abandoned because the argument of “if we only knew it is bad we would not do it” seems counter to billions of addictions human display daily.

 

[Texas_Roofer]

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.

The logical problem of evil is pretty much soluble I think, but it is still to be explained how the real world we live in is the best possible one. I’m more interested in how free will and objective moral values would tie in to allow the logically consistent account to function properly. As it is, evil ultimately has to be permitted because free will is permitted (their exact relation is beyond my understanding at present), and it is humanity’s fault - Original Sin. However, I cannot see how people are really to blame for their actions before or after Original Sin, nor can I understand the kind of free will angels had. This is the problem that results from believing free will vindicates God over evil and that morally right actions are guided by apprehension of good values.

Bobber90

It is likely you did not understand the depth of Mudgley post. I would ask you to research it a bit. It implies the omniscient God permitted free will fully knowing in advance (omnipotence) that this decision would cost many souls. Those souls chose knowledge over obedience. Further all souls would be doomed to sin (concupiscence) and only those willing to acknowledge these sins and repent would be allowed to return to grace. It would seem to imply God is not in to human intelligence very much? This would set up a classic dichotomy a) pursue pure knowledge at the expense of all other issues, b) be obedient in all matters. Which master will you serve?

Hope that helps

 

[Bobber90]

Your argument does not make sense.

You are saying that God could have created everyone with the ability to choose evil but in such a way that no one chooses evil. The only way he can do that is to create everyone without the ability to choose evil.

Even if people choose sin God has made it so we can recover. It is only those who choose to not avail themselves of God’s forgiveness that suffer.

It’s a mistake to think that people have to reject God on at least one occasion in order to really have the potential to reject Him, and I think it is better that no-one goes to hell than that some sinners repent.

It can make sense like this:

Scenario A: God gives people the potential to do evil, and gives them a true/full understanding of good and evil. As a result, everyone can see that doing evil is wrong, and they choose not to do it. Consequence: no-one goes to hell, the world is perfect, all is bliss.

But this is not what happened. Instead it is something like this:

Scenario B: God gives people the potential to do evil as well as either the motive to act on it (arising perhaps from pride/desires of the flesh/selfishness…) or the lack of sufficient knowledge about good and bad, such that people actually do reject God.

What is being discussed at the moment is what is the cause of sin. We have briefly mentioned lack of knowledge or having too much pride as possible causes. Feel free to add your thoughts.

 

[Bobber90]

Bobber90
At this point I do not know if you are sincere, it would seem you have argued every point to its end only to temporally abandon it then return back to the same issue later? So the question is: are you that confused, or are you playing a game? This threaded started with “God, moral good and free will” but asked the bad question about “morally perfect nature” which you describe as omniscient, yet omniscient is a different issue than a morally perfect nature. Then you go off on original sin which is moot if one wants to discuss the lack of a ““morally perfect nature” in Adam and Eve. Then there is the motive issues, the existence of good without evil, the ability to choose in a single option system, etc… In general at this point you seem back to the title which does not match much inside your posts. So maybe you now want to ask “Why did God give Adam & Eve freewill since god is omniscient and thus would know they would choose to disobey him?” Or would you like to venture down this road “Why did Adam & Eve go for knowledge, was it because they would be Omniscient and thus live as God or another reason?” (Is the omniscience of Adam a “morally perfect nature” to you? Did Adam live your assertion by trying to know all at the expense of obeying? Was Adam’s thought that with perfect knowledge he could avoid sin?)

Also I would like you to address addiction, which is one of the points you abandoned because the argument of “if we only knew it is bad we would not do it” seems counter to billions of addictions human display daily.

I am indeed sincere. The title of the thread is “God, moral good and free will” and the debate is this, minus the bit about Mary which another poster has argued is not accurate:

’God could have given people free will and a morally perfect nature, 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.'

The central issue is the problem of evil, which of course concerns God, moral good and free will. It concerns whether God is demonstrated to be omniscient/omnipotent/benevolent in light of the question of the causes of sin and the possibility of having free will without the existence of sin. If we could have been given free will and somehow set up so as not to sin, the argument is that the world would have been better. If the world could have been better, then God fails to be omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent.

The question is possible to ask only if one thinks that the causes of sin lie outside free will, and that is to be debated. My view is that choices are made as a result of being able to choose (free will) and having reason to choose (motive), meaning that one can separate having free will from the necessity of sin. If one thinks that free will entails sin, that one could not truly love God unless others sin, then sin is the necessary price of free will. This dichotomy has become clearer to me now, only after lots of questions.

Your questions are all relevant, and I am wondering why you seem to be accusing me of venturing down those paths, when it is your post which is presently encouraging me! You raise an excellent point about Adam and Eve regarding the fruit of knowledge - why is knowledge of good and evil a bad thing?