I am baffled, please explain

[Peter_Plato]

Yes, the shop owner does know what is going to happen. That is a stipulation of the hypothetical. And no, he does nor know what the ultimate affects will be. Neither do we. I just want you to answer the simple question.

Does he bear any responsibility.

Nobody wants to answer this. Not in this format or any other similar format. Not just in this thread, but many others as well. We all know why. Because we all know what the answer is.

Weeeeeeell that WAS my point Bradski The only reason he bears moral responsibility and that we as agents who share his limitations think that he does is BECAUSE – based upon those limitations – his only moral option is to not sell the gun. The problem is that the circumstances as far as the shopowner is concerned are not the same for God. God has access to information that the shop owner has no access to. Ergo, what is “right” as far as the shop owner is concerned may not be right as far as God as. Neither you, nor I, nor the shop owner have that kind of privileged access to the full complement of God’s knowledge, which means what is “right” for us may or may not be what is the best option as far as God is concerned.

Getting back to my Rufus and Brutus story, the right thing for Rufus to do with access only to knowledge about Brutus’ bank robbery would not necessarily be the right thing to do when he gains access to a fuller account of the longer range consequences of Brutus’ actions.

You seem to keep forgetting that moral judgements have circumstances as one dimension which is integral to making an adequate judgement. As moral agents we can only do what we can given what we know – the key is to want to do the best possible thing in all situations given our position and knowledge of the circumstances. We cannot, however, make judgements about what omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence would do. That is best left to the 3Omni-Being. Our role is not the same as God’s role, no matter how much you suppose it to be.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . You all operate under the misconception that to have free will it is necessary to choose between something “good” and something “evil”. Not so. It is sufficient if one is free to choose between two good options.

If you understand this, fine. If you don’t that is fine too.

The misconception lies in the understanding of what “all” believe.
It is my view that a prisoner has far more demands on his free will than at-large members of secular society.
Mankind tends to avoid such situations and for good reason. We pray that we not be led into temptation.
We are not to judge ourselves or others and have faith in God. Our weakness is our strength because we are compelled to seek Him, the only Way to salvation.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Yes, the shop owner does know what is going to happen. That is a stipulation of the hypothetical. And no, he does nor know what the ultimate affects will be. Neither do we. I just want you to answer the simple question.

Does he bear any responsibility.

Nobody wants to answer this. Not in this format or any other similar format. Not just in this thread, but many others as well. We all know why. Because we all know what the answer is.

In case you missed the point of my last post, the jist of it is that, yes, we all do know what the answer is FOR THE SHOP OWNER given what he knows, but that does not entail that a different answer may not be better for someone who has access to a greater wealth of knowledge. In fact, as the Brutus/Rufus example shows, there may even be a different answer for the shop owner if he had access to some other key and relevant information that he at present is not aware of.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

The flaw here is that Mary was born into a sinful world. She knew what sin was even though she did not commit any sin, and she knew what sin brought into the world. If everyone had been created that way, from the beginning of time, they would be programmed.

Come on, Lily, why don’t you think before you jump - to conclusions? Was the “loser couple” (Adam and Eve) preprogrammed to fail? If not, then why do you think that the “winner couple” (Steve and Susie) would be preprogrammed to succeed?

 

[tonyrey]

The feeble attempt of the apologists that God has also access to the full ramifications of the act of Brutus, and MAYBE there are mitigating circumstances somewhere down the line (in a few hundred years?) is simply called “argumentum ad ignoratiam” - which is a basic logical fallacy. But since it seems to allow to “get out of jail free”, it is frequently employed by those who run out of arguments. Because God forbid that they would be intellectually honest and declare “oops, I was wrong”. What was that parable about the “eye of the needle”??

The real argumentum ad ignoratiam is the dishonest failure to admit how free will originated. There are no mitigating circumstances for that whatsoever given that moral values are presupposed in the use of the term “intellectual honesty”. Self-contradiction is the paramount feature of scepticism with its reduction of reasoning and responsibility to mindless processes. GIGO!

 

[tonyrey]

Please read on.

Spot-on PumpkinCookie. I think a better spelling would be: “naugahyde” religion… if there would be such a thing. google.com/#q=naugahyde But let me come clean, I do not believe in anything so-called “supernatural” or “transcendent”. Nature is beautiful and complex enough for me. By the way, the phrase: “It’s all Greek to me” indicates that I cannot understand any of the professed religions.

I do not consider asking tough questions should be considered “attacks”. If and when I will see well-reasoned and rational explanations, I will be very happy and satisfied.

Your demand for rational explanations is undermined by your reduction of everything to “Nature” which has produced no evidence of hindsight, insight or foresight. If the statement “It is easier to get orange juice by squeezing a rock than to get an honest answer for such questions” is not an attack I don’t know what is, given that it imputes wilful deception to those who disagree with you… :ehh:

 

[PRmerger]

The example of the Virgin Mary shows that it is possible to create humans, who DO NOT PREFER to do something sinful - and yet still retain full free will.

Of course.

But she was certainly ABLE to choose to sin. She just didn’t wish to.

Similarly, Adam and Eve were ABLE to not sin. They just didn’t wish to.

Perhaps this analogy will be helpful:

Picture a woman living in a cabin in the woods on a hill. From her elevated position she can see the origin of a river. A town is dumping sewage into the river. Downstream there is a family living near the river. From their position they cannot see that a town is dumping sewage into the river, so they drink from that river.

However, the woman, from her vantage point, can see that the river is polluted–and **while she certainly has the free will to drink from the river–has no desire to do so. **

That, I think, is a wonderful way to portray the fact that there is no contradiction between having free will and never sinning.

Now, let’s say there’s also a couple who are also given this elevated position. They see the origin of the river. They know it’s polluted…but they don’t care. They are free NOT to drink from the river, but they don’t want to walk elsewhere for their potables, so they drink from the polluted river.

See how they have free will NOT to engage in the grossness, but choose to anyway?

See how the woman has the free will NOT to engage in the grossness, and chooses to refrain?

 

[Peter_Plato]

The example of the Virgin Mary shows that it is possible to create humans, who DO NOT PREFER to do something sinful - and yet still retain full free will. You cannot get around the “fact” that God is unable to act “randomly”. Everything he does is deliberate. If he chooses to create the loser couple of “Adam and Eve”, who will freely choose to disobey, then the alternate choice of creating “Steve and Susie” is an example of a couple who would also be free to obey. No violation of their “free will”.

Except that this merely begs the question, or, rather, buries the issue of free will under an act of creation as if the human being had nothing to say about what they do or choose, but that was all predetermined by the act of creation. It isn’t. The angel asked for Mary’s assent and she gave it. On your view, the request and assent were mere formalities, as if Mary’s choice was predetermined. It wasn’t. The grace was there and Mary fully and freely assented by an act of will. She could have, just as Eve did, simply said, “No thank you!” but she didn’t.

You assume that grace determined her choice, which isn’t true. Grace gave her the choice as a live option. Someone in a state of sin, absent grace, would have had no option but simply would have given into temptation. Grace provides the possibility beyond our own capacity to rise above whatever state we are in. Mary, by grace, was free to choose to assent or to decline. Grace gave her the option, it didn’t cause her to choose nor did it determine her choice. To insist that it did is simply begging the question by asserting that grace determines outcomes rather than provides freedom to choose.

It is your skewed view of what grace is and how it is efficacious that causes you think grace is like some causal factor in creation rather than underwriting our ability to freely choose to rise above ourselves. The choice and responsibility is still ours even though God provides the power to make choices and act on them, we still must make the choice freely.

I just don’t agree on your mechanistic version of creation and the role of grace, which is why I think you are wildly off base in basically all of your conclusions. We are still responsible precisely because God gives us the power to be saints, and even the power to make use of grace to choose to become saints, but the question still is whether we will make that choice when we are so empowered. Having the power does not mean one will make use of it.

We can find all kinds of excuses and engage in finger pointing at God to press the issue that he didn’t do enough, but “enough” in your books means to wrestle our responsibility away from us. That he won’t do. We are autonomous and will be held responsible for our choices precisely because he gives us the power in each instance to make the right choices to get us where we ought to be. The fact that he does not magically put us where we ought to be despite ourselves is the thorn in your side. Renounce responsibility and blame God was never a possibility, no matter how much you wish it would be so.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I answered the same question on the previous page under post #425 forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=13078147&postcount=425
Why don’t you read it? The point is not just create a couple who are “originally” sinless, but to create a different one, which also STAYS sinless? Why create losers, when he could have created winners? Is that too much to ask for from an omnipotent God? Once you can answer that question… then you can “sigh”.

The way freedom of will works is that God can create winners if they choose to be winners and losers if they choose to be losers. If God created winners that stay winners he could only do that with their cooperation, which essentially means it is always going to be up the free agent to determine their standing vis a vis God. It is in the nature of being a free agent that one is not determined beforehand as to what one will do. THAT is no longer free agency, but, rather pre-programming, which is logically inconsistent with free agency. This is, at ground, the problem with your POV.

 

[Peter_Plato]

The example of the Virgin Mary shows that it is possible to create humans, who DO NOT PREFER to do something sinful - and yet still retain full free will. You cannot get around the “fact” that God is unable to act “randomly”. Everything he does is deliberate. If he chooses to create the loser couple of “Adam and Eve”, who will freely choose to disobey, then the alternate choice of creating “Steve and Susie” is an example of a couple who would also be free to obey. No violation of their “free will”.

Yes and this is exactly what God did with Adam and Eve. He created a couple that originally preferred not to do sinful things, but eventually chose to do them anyway. That is why the choice was called the Fall.

Mary, likewise, was created not to prefer sinful things, and freely chose not to. If she had chosen otherwise, that would have been another Fall. You, looking back, view it as happening because it had to, but that is a logical fallacy invoked to press your view on the matter. The fallacy is called retrospective determinism. Look it up.

You can’t conclude Mary was “determined” to choose as she did merely because she so chose.

 

[tonyrey]

1. The “fall”, whatever it might have been exactly was not unavoidable. God could have created a world, where everyone freely and willingly would have been without sin: the “prototype” is the Virgin Mary. There is no logical reason that her disposition could not have been “propagated” into all human beings.

She alone gave birth to our Redeemer. Only one is necessary!

1. Of course, this is the inferior solution. The optimal solution would have been to “bypass” this vale of tears, and create everyone directly into heaven. In this case everyone would share the eternal life, as God - allegedly - wishes.

Bypassing this world would have prevented you from rejecting God!

1. In either case there would be no need for a “redeemer”. The concept of “redeemer” is obviously a leftover from the pagan religions, where the cruel and vile gods had to be appeased by giving up (sacrifice) the “cream of the crop”. For a rational and benevolent God such sacrifice is not necessary. Just like a human father does not demand that his wayward child would break his favorite toy and offer the debris as a “sacrifice” for his “sin”, a benevolent God could simply forgive the trespasses, and also mete out a commensurate punishment - with the intention to teach a valuable lesson.

Forgiveness doesn’t require any effort on the part of of those who are forgiven nor does it make amends from their crimes and the needless suffering they have caused. Injustice would reign supreme if everyone were prevented from choosing what to believe, how to live and who to love.

But of course in the solution #1, with using the Virgin Mary as the prototype there would be no sin at all. And in the solution #2 everyone would be sharing the eternal “love”, so there could be no trespasses either.

To share has no merit if eternal love is not reciprocated.

This is a very short synopsis of what I think about Genesis. My simple approach is this: if someone has a goal in mind, which is very important for him, who has all the available tools to actualize that goal, an that goal is the best solution for all involved, then why not do it? Why chose an inferior approach which is NOT in the best interest of everyone. Simply: “why did God choose the current, highly inferior solution, when there were other options”? Of course this question is pertinent only for you, and not me.

“simplistic” and “simplistically” are more appropriate descriptions of a suggestion which implies privileged insight into the nature of the optimal solution for the entire human race on the part of an individual with limited insight and knowledge of reality. Poor Nietzsche thought the Will to Power was the optimal solution yet wept when he saw a horse being whipped and finished up in an asylum…:dts:

 

[PRmerger]

I didn’t mean that the teaching about Adam and Eve was codified in 1854,

Well then you posted a response about Mary’s IC to the wrong post.

We were talking about Adam and Eve.

but that an opinion about Mary’s “singular grace” was codified in 1854. If the grace was “singular” that means no one else could have had it, including Adam and Eve. Right?

Well, yeah. The grace given to Mary was indeed singular. From the very moment of her conception she was free from Original Sin.

Adam and Eve did not have Original Sin. They weren’t preserved from something that didn’t exist. They were the source of it, no?

As such, Mary’s preservation from it was a…singular grace.

 

[PRmerger]

Based on your blog post, I think you know some of the history. However, if it were such a clear case of “everyone believing it” prior to 1854 why did the pope convene a meeting of theologians to discuss and debate it?

Oh, geez.

Did anyone pay attention to the nuns in the 60’s and 70’s?

No one is asserting that “everyone believed” anything.

What is being argued is that it has been the constant teaching of the Church, even if something is defined formally at a particular time.

The Catholic faith was whole and entire before a single word of the NT was ever put to writ.

Why would it take 19 centuries to come to agreement if it were so obvious and believed by so many?

It didn’t take 19 centuries to come to agreement. As I already stated, this was the constant teaching of the Church for 19 centuries.

That some folks decided to challenge the teaching (and if it wasn’t a teaching, how could some folks challenge it, eh?) was the catalyst for the Holy Father deciding it was time to formally define the teaching.

Why are there many prominent church fathers, saints, and theologians who dissent?

Many?

Could you name at least 5 ECFs, 5 saints, 5 theologians who dissented on the teaching of the Church on the IC. Please cite your source, with primary sources for their writings expressing their dissenting view–Mary did indeed have Original Sin.

At any rate, not sure what your point is? Are you saying that even if you can offer 15 dissenters in the history of the Church to a teaching that this means…what, exactly? That this means that the Church didn’t really teach it?

If so, let’s see how that works with abortion.

I could find 25 Catholics who believe that abortion is not wrong.

Are you going to therefore conclude that the Church hasn’t taught that abortion is immoral?

Really?

 

[Pallas_Athene]

Of course.

But she was certainly ABLE to choose to sin. She just didn’t wish to.

Similarly, Adam and Eve were ABLE to not sin. They just didn’t wish to.

Perhaps this analogy will be helpful:

There is absolutely no need for analogies. The question is simple and direct.

Was God unable to create “Steve and Susie” - instead of “Adam and Eve”, who - just like Mary were able to choose sin, but did not wish to. Or God was able to do it, but did not want to? Was God’s ability to create a Mary-type of sinless human a one-off “lucky break, or a super miracle”, which could not be duplicated even by God’s omnipotence. If so, that would shrink God’s omnipotence to the size of a punctured balloon.

That is the question, and no one is able or willing to answer.

 

[Kurisu35712]

There is absolutely no need for analogies. The question is simple and direct.

If the answer to the question were really as simple and direct as you make it out to be, we wouldn’t still be talking about it. And analogies are useful, don’t bash them.

Was God unable to create “Steve and Susie” - instead of “Adam and Eve”, who - just like Mary were able to choose sin, but did not wish to. Or God was able to do it, but did not want to? Was God’s ability to create a Mary-type of sinless human a one-off “lucky break, or a super miracle”, which could not be duplicated even by God’s omnipotence. If so, that would shrink God’s omnipotence to the size of a punctured balloon.

That is the question, and no one is able or willing to answer.

Peter answered it a few posts ago, so I’ll just quote his answer here.

Yes and this is exactly what God did with Adam and Eve. He created a couple that originally preferred not to do sinful things, but eventually chose to do them anyway. That is why the choice was called the Fall.

Mary, likewise, was created not to prefer sinful things, and freely chose not to. If she had chosen otherwise, that would have been another Fall. You, looking back, view it as happening because it had to, but that is a logical fallacy invoked to press your view on the matter. The fallacy is called retrospective determinism. Look it up.

You can’t conclude Mary was “determined” to choose as she did merely because she so chose.

 

[Bradski]

Ergo, what is “right” as far as the shop owner is concerned may not be right as far as God as. Neither you, nor I, nor the shop owner have that kind of privileged access to the full complement of God’s knowledge, which means what is “right” for us may or may not be what is the best option as far as God is concerned.

That sharp crack you heard was a nail being hit firmly on the head.

It seems God bears no responsibility for events because what appears right for us may not be right for God. Or, in other words, what appears to be so very wrong for us, is actually quite OK for God. Him being omi this and that. We don’t see the full picture. But He does.

So what whatever occurs, as you say, is the ‘best option as far as God is concerned’. Well, that’s a given as far as any Christian understands God. I couldn’t get anyone to agree that what happens is NOT God’s best option. It would be bizarre to suggest that God took the second best option or one that might do for now until He sees how things turn out.

So if families are massacred, children gunned down, babies shot, then despite it being someone’s free will that this occurred, it is isn’t some glitch in existence that God didn’t see coming. There is a reason for this. As you say, WE cannot see what it is. But as you also say, it is, by definition, no argument about it, God’s best option.

So many people dead. So many lives ruined. Such horror. And you want to try to tell me that as far as an omnipotent God is concerned, He didn’t have any better choices.

I don’t believe you. And I don’t think may people do. What happens is that events are couched in some metaphysical word salad so that an unpalatable truth is hidden from serious contemplation.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

If the answer to the question were really as simple and direct as you make it out to be, we wouldn’t still be talking about it.

Well, well… The answer is very simple, but your side doesn’t like it. God could have created Steve and Susie, with full free will, and no desire to disobey. This comes from omnipotence. Not creating the “loser” couple, and instead of them creating the “winner” couple, the whole original sin would have been eliminated. No fall, no sin, no CURSE, no problem, and of course no need for a redeemer. We would all be sinless, and God could “elevate” us into heaven at his discretion. Jesus could have come not as a “redeemer”, but the “transporter” who picks up the people and carries them into heaven.

But of course, reason and logic cannot conquer “blind faith”. The somewhat misquoted phrase from Tertullian is still alive and well: “Credo quia absurdum est”. (I believe it because it is absurd).

So the answer is this, in simple terms: "God could have created Steve and Susie, and there would be no original sin, no fall, no curse, no problem… Why he did not do it, we don’t know. But we can make an educated guess. The solution of “no sin, etc.” is obviously preferable IF God really wanted everyone to be in heaven. So God did NOT want everyone to be in heaven. There is no need to question “why”. The simple fact is that God did not want everyone to be in heaven. Analysis stops…

Of course this is in direct contradiction to the assertion that God is “good”, and he wishes that “everyone would be in heaven”. As such it is time to equivocate, and dust off the method of “doublethink”.

And analogies are useful, don’t bash them.

Sure, analogies are useful, when they are necessary. But when a direct problem is presented, there is no need for them.

Peter answered it a few posts ago, so I’ll just quote his answer here.

Baloney.

 

[Kurisu35712]

Pallas, with all due respect, did you even read the post I quoted?

You are erroneously looking at God creating Adam and Eve through a timeline. It is not as if God was existing for several thousand years and then decided “Hey, I want to make people. Hmm… If I make Adam and Eve, they’re going to eventually disobey me and throw the rest of my creation into chaos through the abuse of their free will… Maybe I should make Steve and Suzie instead because they won’t… Nahh! Adam and Eve it is!”

That’s absurd. For one, God exists outside of time. He created time. It’s not as if he is able to see the future and control time, saw what would happen, and then went through with it anyway. He created the time we experience. He is not subject to it. If He willed to create Adam and Eve, He knew what they would do. He also knew what their children would do, and their children after that, all the way down to the present day and even further past it into what is our future, but not His future. All is present for God. Not in the present, just present. All that is, is for God, because the only reason it can even exist is through Him.

In God’s mind, the fact that Adam and Eve would disobey is not a sufficient reason to refrain from their creation, in part because through their creation, every human being to ever exist, including Jesus and Mary, were brought into being. In creating Adam and Eve, God created every other human being who has ever existed and will ever exist. One mistake was not sufficient to deprive the rest of humanity of it’s existence. Why didn’t God create Steve and Suzie instead? Because He wanted us to have free will. He wills all of us to choose Heaven. He does not will all of us to be forced into Heaven. The problem here is that, in asserting that everyone should have been made in such a way that, despite being given the option to disobey, never would, you disregard the fact that this effectively robs people of their free will. They will never have the desire to disobey because that is how they were made. Thus it will never happen.

Mary was not, in fact, *made *in such a way that she would never desire to disobey. She simply never desired to disobey God’s will. That was her choice and her choice alone. God did not decide for her. Unlike Adam and Eve, when God asked Mary to do something, she obeyed. They did not.

The problem at hand is not the fact that Adam and Eve were somehow imperfect while Mary was more perfect, and that Steve and Suzie would have also been more perfect that Adam and Eve. They would have been literally no different. We have the exact same options that Mary had and that Adam and Eve had and that every other human in history has ever had. Give of oneself and serve God’s will out of love, or assert one’s own will over God’s. Not only do we have the same options, we have the same ability to choose one or the other. The only reason Adam and Eve’s sin was even important is because it passed the state of Original Sin onto the rest of humanity. Other than that, their actions have no real bearing on our own decisions. At the end of the day, what I choose is not your choice, or Mary’s, or Steve’s, or Adam’s, or my parents’. It is mine. Whether I choose to do God’s will or to sin does not reflect Adam and Eve, it reflects only myself. Had our ancestors been Steve and Suzie, that situation would be no different.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

Oh, geez.

Did anyone pay attention to the nuns in the 60’s and 70’s?

No one is asserting that “everyone believed” anything.

What is being argued is that it has been the constant teaching of the Church, even if something is defined formally at a particular time.

The Catholic faith was whole and entire before a single word of the NT was ever put to writ.

It didn’t take 19 centuries to come to agreement. As I already stated, this was the constant teaching of the Church for 19 centuries.

That some folks decided to challenge the teaching (and if it wasn’t a teaching, how could some folks challenge it, eh?) was the catalyst for the Holy Father deciding it was time to formally define the teaching.

Many?

Could you name at least 5 ECFs, 5 saints, 5 theologians who dissented on the teaching of the Church on the IC. Please cite your source, with primary sources for their writings expressing their dissenting view–Mary did indeed have Original Sin.

At any rate, not sure what your point is? Are you saying that even if you can offer 15 dissenters in the history of the Church to a teaching that this means…what, exactly? That this means that the Church didn’t really teach it?

If so, let’s see how that works with abortion.

I could find 25 Catholics who believe that abortion is not wrong.

Are you going to therefore conclude that the Church hasn’t taught that abortion is immoral?

Really?

We can have a debate about whether your conception of what constitutes “church teaching” is supported by the church’s own proclamations or even coherent, but I don’t think this is the appropriate place. Certainly for another thread. Further, we can debate whether or not the doctrine of the immaculate conception is in fact a “consistent” teaching of the church since its inception, but again, maybe not right here and right now. “Re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic” as some may say.

Let’s return to the topic at hand. Here are some simple questions, just to help me better understand your position:

1. Do you consider Mary equivalent to Adam and Eve in terms of the grace given to them by God? Were Adam and Eve created immaculately?
2. Did God’s gift of grace to Mary merely enable her to avoid every and all sin throughout her life, or did it “preserve” her from every and all sins throughout life? What constitutes this preservation (if it is such)? If it is merely the act of her will, how is she spiritually different than any other human being?
3. Can a normal human being born in original sin avoid all and every other sin by his or her own choice?

Depending upon your answers, we may get some insight here I think. What I have noticed on this thread is that many posters seem to be positing various theories that are not in harmony with a Catholic conception of grace, original sin, free will, divine omniscience, etc. There are reasonable answers here, but they aren’t Catholic Answers. Ha just a little joke…

 

[Aloysium]

Pumpkin:
If you were truly interested in Catholic teachings you would not be asking random idiots on the internet like myself. Seriously, why are you here?