I am baffled, please explain

[mamlukman]

The fact that the person, once created, must exercise his free will in order never to sin, is what makes this less about God’s act of creation and more about a human’s ability never to sin.

You lost me at this point. Assume God has perfect foreknowledge of the future. (Your later comment about “middle knowledge” and “counterfactuals” is lost on me, I’m afraid. Maybe there’s an important point there, but I don’t see it. Either God knows the future, or He doesn’t. You seem to be saying He might not know “the road not taken,” if I understand you correctly. That doesn’t make sense to me either. Why wouldn’t it be straightforward: If Sally does X, this opens up choices A, B, and C. If Sally then chooses A, if opens up D, E, and F; but if she chooses B, it opens up G, H, and I, etc. etc.–like a chess game. If a chess player (or computer) can plan on contingencies, why can’t God, on a much larger scale? Or am I missing something?) Anyway, back to the main argument: God has perfect knowledge of the future. God makes Mary and Sally. They both have free will, and God foresees that Mary will end up in Heaven and Sally in Hell. If God then decides that he won’t create Sally because she will end up in Hell, how does that affect Mary and Mary’s free will? Mary and Sally are not dependent variables, they are independent.

You also made a comment about being able to “prove” God’s knowledge…since we can’t “prove” anything at all about God, does that make sense?

Second, there’s the classic objection to Molinism: if God creates a certain situation (which implies that He chooses not to create a contrary situation), then determinism sets in. By creating a world in which only those who will not sin are allowed to be born, God has, de facto, eliminated free will: He has deterministically removed sin from the world. However, the goal of your thought experiment was to create a world with both free will and no sin. Therefore, your construction contains a paradox. In other words, your assertion that this is not logically impossible is false, and therefore, your thought experiment must be rejected.

Lost me again. See my paragraph above about Mary and Sally. If creation with both Sally and Mary is NOT determinism, how is it determinism if Sally is never created? The creation of Sally has nothing to do with Mary. Mary will be created and turn out the way she will no matter if Sally is around or not. No connection.

 

[Gorgias]

You lost me at this point. Assume God has perfect foreknowledge of the future. … You seem to be saying He might not know “the road not taken,” if I understand you correctly.

That’s pretty close. It comes down to the question of whether God has perfect knowledge of those things in the future that never come to pass. If Sally marries John, and they have a baby with blue eyes, then God – with perfect ‘foreknowledge’ of the ‘future’ – knows that their baby has blue eyes. However, if Sally would have married Tom (but doesn’t, in fact, marry him) and they would have had a baby (but don’t, in fact, give birth to that baby), does God know the color of the eyes of the baby who will never be born of the marriage that never will occur? That’s the question. PA’s assertion implicitly assumes that God has knowledge of everything that never happens, and that’s something that’s debated. If PA wants us to assent to the thought experiment, then PA must necessarily demonstrate that its premises are true. No such proof has even been offered.

God makes Mary and Sally. They both have free will, and God foresees that Mary will end up in Heaven and Sally in Hell. If God then decides that he won’t create Sally because she will end up in Hell, how does that affect Mary and Mary’s free will? Mary and Sally are not dependent variables, they are independent.

Let’s presume, for the sake of discussion, that God ‘knows’ Sally (who never comes into existence). The question, then, isn’t about Mary (as an individual) but about humanity (collectively). In play here is the difference between determinism (i.e., every human act is pre-determined) and free will (i.e., every human act is the result of a person’s choice). If God only creates non-sinners, then He has predetermined that free will choices to disobey will never occur. In other words, He has stacked the deck and predetermined the outcome. (There’s a difference between ‘foreknowledge’ and ‘predetermination’; if PA wants to assert the presence of ‘free will’, he needs to show the presence of foreknowledge and the absence of predetermination. His thought experiment fails on the latter consideration.)

You also made a comment about being able to “prove” God’s knowledge…since we can’t “prove” anything at all about God, does that make sense?

That’s a reasonable objection. My question is this: if there is no possible way to distinguish between ‘A’ and ‘B’, can we really say that ‘A’ or ‘B’ even exist? Rather, we can only say that there is some observable condition ‘C’, which does not give any insight as to the presence of either ‘A’ or ‘B’.

Lost me again. See my paragraph above about Mary and Sally. If creation with both Sally and Mary is NOT determinism, how is it determinism if Sally is never created? The creation of Sally has nothing to do with Mary. Mary will be created and turn out the way she will no matter if Sally is around or not. No connection.

I’m a math guy, so let me explain things in that context. I don’t know whether it’ll be helpful or not.

Let’s suppose that I have two sets (people and hair color). The two sets are related by a particular relationship: each member of the set ‘people’ maps to one attribute in the set ‘hair color’.

For example:

People include {‘Tom’, ‘Dick’, ‘Harry’, ‘Sally’}
Hair Color includes {‘blond’, ‘brunette’, ‘redhead’}

Let’s suppose that the mapping goes like this:

Tom → blond
Dick → redhead
Harry → blond
Sally → brunette

With this mapping, we can say that we have the following set:
{(Tom, blond); (Dick, redhead); (Harry, blond); (Sally, brunette)}

Now, what PA is suggesting is a counter-factual: he’s asking the question “what happens if Tom and Harry do not exist?” That is, he’s proposing that the following set of real people is only:
{(Dick, redhead); (Sally, brunette)}

In other words, he’s saying “Blond” is an actual attribute of a person… even though there are no people who are blond. That is, being ‘blond’ is a mathematical possibility, but it doesn’t exist.

To use the categories of our example, we have:
{(Tom, sinner who has free will); (Dick, non-sinner who has free will)); (Harry, sinner who has free will); (Sally, non-sinner who has free will)}

But PA posits that it is possible to instead have:
{(Dick, non-sinner who has free will); (Sally, non-sinner who has free will)}

My objection is two-fold:

First, there is no way to distinguish PA’s set from {(Dick, non-sinner who does not have free will); (Sally, non-sinner who does not have free will)}, and therefore, there is no logical reason to assume that free will actually exists. This would imply that the premises of PA’s thought experiment are logical, and therefore, we must reject the thought experiment.

Second, it seems that there is an Occam’s Razor rebuttal to PA’s thought experiment: the most simple explanation for his proposed universe is not ‘free will’ (which allows a variety of results – none of which are present in the universe) but rather, ‘determinism’ (which allows only one result – that is, the result that’s present in the universe). If all we have is ‘non-sinner’, then Occam’s Razor requires us to conclude that free will does not exist in that ‘possible world’, but rather, that only determinism is present. Therefore, in that case, PA’s thought experiment fails, since it presumes that free will is present.

Either way, PA has created a case that is enumerable (that is, it may be conceived) but not possible (that is, it cannot exist in the way that he posits that it exists). PA’s thought experiment fails scrutiny in all cases, and therefore, must be rejected as a logical impossibility.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

There are actually two beings in consideration here: the creator and the created person. It is the juxtaposition of both that you are considering – and that’s critical to this thought experiment. The fact that the person, once created, must exercise his free will in order never to sin, is what makes this less about God’s act of creation and more about a human’s ability never to sin.

And that is exactly what you said in your analysis of how come that Mary did not sin. I simply built upon this method. That God and Mary “cooperated” in her sinless existence. The question is still this: “Is this cooperation” something that God cannot duplicate? After all there are infinitely many “possible” human beings, of which also infinitely many will be willing to “cooperate”.

Aah – I see where you’re coming from! You’re a Molinist!

Well, no. I am not a Molinist nor a Thomist. I simply refer to the fact that the church has no “official” philosophy, it is a mixture of several philosophies, Molinism included. God’s omniscience is supposed to extend to past, present and future, and even include the never-never land of might have been, but which has never happened, and will never be. Personally, I find this ludicrous, but I use the church’s mixture of philosophies.

However, there are a couple very serious problems with your algorithm:

Considering the knowledge of counterfactuals, there are no problems. You may deny the knowledge of the “could have been”-s but the church does not.

First, there’s the question of middle knowledge – most importantly, the question of God’s knowledge of counterfactuals. It is not clear that this is necessary for omniscience to be tenable. That is, it is not necessary that God know all things that might have been but which in fact, do not exist. For your claims here to hold true, you’ll have to demonstrate that God must, in fact, have middle knowledge.

You are barking up the wrong tree. Since the church embraces Molinism, I do not need to demonstrate anything. I simply built my thought experiment upon the accepted mixture of philosophes of the church.

Second, there’s the classic objection to Molinism: if God creates a certain situation (which implies that He chooses not to create a contrary situation), then determinism sets in.

Are you aware that there is the compatibilist view of free will, which allows both determinism and free will to coexist. Again, personally I do not accept this, but my personal views are not relevant here.

By creating a world in which only those who will not sin are allowed to be born, God has, de facto, eliminated free will: He has deterministically removed sin from the world.

No, it was not God who alone eliminated sin, it was both God and the created beings, who TOGETHER eliminate the sin. The freedom of the people is still there, they just happen to make the right choices. As you said, God merely supplies the framework, where Mary was operating, without determining her choices. If God did not remove Mary’s free will - by actualizing THIS particular world, where Mary freely chose to cooperate - then he would not determine a hypothetical “Paul”-s choices either.

There is only one world which has been actualized, THIS world. In THIS world every dilemma is/has been/will be resolved in a certain manner. This fact does not eliminate the free will. So actualizing one particular world does not eliminate free will, even if God selectively chooses the world, where every dilemma is resolved in a positive manner. As such, there is no paradox.

You’re completely missing the point. I’m asking you to demonstrate that it was baptized babies that were murdered.

It is common knowledge, though I do not have access to any particular documents to support it.

Murdering people in order that they may go to heaven is not ‘walking the walk’: rather, it’s committing a mortal sin.

So what? The murderer will have to face the consequences, but the murdered will receive the passkey to heaven. There is a biblical quote: “There is no greater love than sacrificing your life for someone else”. (Not a verbatim quote). Of course, since THIS life is merely a blink of the eye when compared to eternity, the quotation is nonsense. It should be: “There is no greater love than sacrificing your ETERNAL happiness for someone else”. And if the conquistadores honestly believed that their action will bring those children to heaven, then they exhibited the greatest possible love. They sacrificed their eternal happiness for the benefit of those children. Of course, I do not think that they were THAT sophisticated.****

 

[Lily_Bernans]

In that case why do you say that God is 'love"?

“I am a jealous God” - said God.

We always make judgments based upon the available information. When we see a “loving” parent who just beat his kid to a bloody pulp, we do not stop and say: “Hmmmm, we have only partial information, do let’s not make a hasty call, MAYBE that parent is a LOVING parent…”. No we do not do that. To paraphrase Forrest Gump: “loving is as loving does”, and “evil is as evil does”.

Now, if God wishes to come and take a stand in his own defense, he is welcome. But if I am not in the position to make an accusation, then you are not in the position to conduct the defense.

Personally, I do not say “God is love.” I simply say, “God is.”

Yes, I am aware of places in the Hebrew Scriptures in which God said he was a “jealous” God, but they are allegory and written to make a point. One always has to consider the literary traditions at the time of writing and the audience. God does not have human emotions. He doesn’t “contemplate” making one human being above another, nor does he “decide.”

Again, you’re comparing God to a human. If you want to do that, then I am free to compare humans to my cat, who is more intelligent than many humans I’ve met.

I am not conducting a defense for God. I don’t know how everything will play out any more than you do. Neither of us has sufficient information to make a definitive call. I am making a leap of faith. I believe he chooses the best path for us, but I cannot present evidence, because the jury, as seen from the human vantage point, is still out. However, my free will allows me to believe in the words and actions of Christ and to accept him as my Lord and Savior. By the same token, your free will allows you to disbelieve Christ and reject him. I don’t think anyone disputes your freedom to reject God, not even God. But, the jury is still “out” for you as well. You do not have sufficient information to make a judgment call. (That is why it is called “faith.”)

Unless you are having him or her followed, you do not have sufficient information to tell us definitively your spouse did not see another man or woman today. You can tell us you have sufficient faith in him or her to accept that he or she is faithful, but as for presenting definitive evidence that he or she is not having an affair, no.

 

[Bradski]

Again, you’re comparing God to a human.

He gets angry, He is jealous, He is vengeful, He has needs (He wants us to love Him), He feels emotions (He loves us), He listens to some and not others (answers our prayers or not). He is even referred to as ‘He’ and ‘our father’ – and He didn’t send His daughter to redeem us, it’s an all masculine affair. So it’s a big call to ask anyone not to treat Him as some ubermensch.

He doesn’t “contemplate” making one human being above another, nor does he “decide.”

So there is no thought process as we’d be able to describe it. He makes no decisions. There aren’t options from which He chooses. Yet…

I believe he chooses the best path for us…

The BEST path as you say. Although He doesn’t ‘decide’ what to do, there is apparently an optimal path for each us. Which is to say that there are paths that are less optimal. And God, as you say, chooses the best one. Well, if that is not ‘making a decision’, then I’m not sure any of us are talking the same language any more.

But at least we have your stated belief that God does choose the best path. He’ll obviously know which path that is, because, notwithstanding your free will and your exercise of the same, He knows the outcome. He’s omniscient after all. There were other lesser paths that could have been taken (obviously, because it’s nonsense to talk of a ‘best’ option if there are no other choices), but He chose the best one.

Now, unless I’m very much mistaken, God has made some sort of call here. He has decided on which path your life will travel. It may not be the best path for you personally – maybe you have to go through a lot of pain and anguish for…whatever reason (but chin up, it’s all for the best), but God has decided. Not WILL or MIGHT decide depending on you exercising your free will and outcomes dependent on that - because He already knows what those will be. So your path, as you yourself say, has already been chosen.

And you want to tell me that He bears no responsibility for it.

 

[PRmerger]

He gets angry, He is jealous, He is vengeful, He has needs (He wants us to love Him), He feels emotions (He loves us), He listens to some and not others (answers our prayers or not). He is even referred to as ‘He’ and ‘our father’ – and He didn’t send His daughter to redeem us, it’s an all masculine affair. So it’s a big call to ask anyone not to treat Him as some ubermensch.

Don’t forget that God has feathers.

May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. 2 Ruth”

 

[PRmerger]

Don’t forget that God has feathers.

Oh, wait.

We see that most folks who don’t have their Artifice Glasses on understand that the Bible puts God in anthropomorphic terms, symbolic terms, make references to God being jealous and angry…but we know that they are not meant to be understood literally.

But suddenly, folks who reject the Bible curiously become so literal.

I’ve never heard an atheist think that the statement, “Your eyes are like pools of moonlight” is a statement of lunar impact upon the optic structures.

#never
#ever



I wonder why that is.

 

[tonyrey]

We’ve had this conversation before, but I’ll bite again.

No conversations are ever exactly the same.

I don’t think ruling out miracles is “unreasonable” – in fact, I think you’ll agree that miracles are “unreasonable” in the sense they are against reason. They are a matter of belief, not reason.

Only where materialists are concerned! Life is a miracle and so is the mind.

As for “you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer,” surely you need a lot of footnotes and qualifications for that to be true. I’ve actually read what I could find on that passage, and all I’ve come up with are platitudes about being unselfish, having faith, etc. etc. Clearly the passage does not mean what it literally says; if it was meant in purely a spiritual sense (anything your soul wants…) or a metaphorical sense (God is looking out for you and likes you), then OK. But an actual response to my wishes? I could only wish that were true!!!

I believe our wishes are granted if they are in our best interest.

As for God ignoring our “pleas for help,” I think you’re forgetting the other thread where they discussed free will and God’s foreknowledge. If God has perfect knowledge of the future, He would know before the universe was created that you were going to pray for such-and-such, and there would be no need to “intervene” in space-time. God’s not indifferent nor is He unable to respond. He’s just factored it all in before creation began. To think otherwise is to limit God’s foreknowledge or his ability to factor it in–right? So by taking that position, it seems to me that–I’ve made this argument several times before–what you are doing is limiting the power of God. So instead of exalting God, you are diminishing Him. An interesting paradox, I think.

How can everything for the best be factored into the laws of nature? They are not omniscient nor infallible. Even David Hume realised they are the inevitable cause of natural evil because they cannot cater for every contingency. His argument is identical with yours because he rejected miracles. The only difference is that he realised evil without miracles is evidence against God whereas you cling to the hypothesis they are extremely rare - which suggests that they belong to fiction rather than fact. Why weren’t they factored into nature?

To give an example, you (and countless others, of course) are saying: 1) There is a sequence in time: God creates universe. You are born. You pray that Aunt Tillie doesn’t die. God hears your prayer. God swoops down to earth and saves Aunt Tillie by suspending/reversing natural laws and/or the chance mechanisms that were going to kill Aunt Tillie. 2) Note that this scenario implies–or even depends on–God’s ignorance of your future prayer and His own actions in response: You pray. God is jolted awake–“Billie’s praying!!! Alert!!” God decides to answer your prayer. God intervenes. I’m sorry, that just seems bizarre beyond words–it’s more suitable to the gods of ancient Greece and Rome.

Time and space are irrelevant. God responds to His creatures’ needs according to whether natural laws fulfil them - and very often they do not. He is not a remote Observer as if His power is subject by natural laws limited in their scope and efficacy. Disasters occur due to their inflexibility which results in events like an earthquake in Nepal. Yet God is not subject to the laws He has created and chooses to suspend them whenever He chooses, not capriciously but in accordance with His wisdom and love. He is not a slave of Creation but its Master who controls and directs it personally.

Note that I’m not denying the efficacy of prayer. I just have absolutely no idea how it works. But if Jesus said “Pray,” I’ll pray. But for me that is an extreme test of faith.

No one has any idea of how we exist or how the mind works but it doesn’t require less faith than faith in miracles. It is a miracle! The only difference is that we have provisional scientific theories of natural phenomena which are far less valuable and significant than **our direct knowledge **of our personal experiences. Nature is amoral and physical whereas we exist in a higher dimension in which miracles are constant occurrences - as we should expect if we are made in the image of God.

Calvin went too far in claiming not a drop of rain falls without God’s command but you’re going to the opposite extreme by excluding **all **divine events from human affairs and imposing limits on God’s activity! If miracles occurred after Jesus died there is no reason why they haven’t occurred since. The more remote the time of the Apostles the more need we have of miracles - as the Church wisely recognises in the process of canonisation. The Communion of Saints loses its significance if they are powerless when they intercede for us. To restrict their help to our spiritual needs loses sight of the importance of our physical needs.

We are not “ghosts in machines” but embodied persons whose nature is partly invisible and wholly indivisible! If God **never **mitigated our suffering in any way we would be fully justified in abandoning our faith. “By their fruits you shall know them” and Our Lord gives them in abundance in every conceivable way. There are no limits to the miracles He performs except those we create with our lack of faith and trust in His love. Even when suffering becomes unbearable we lapse into unconsciousness and no one knows the precise extent to which others suffer. I am quite sure God wouldn’t watch impassively while anyone, let alone a child, writhes in agony **without doing anything at all to alleviate the pain **but that is the evil implication of rejecting miracles. We can’t have it both ways: either God is perfect Love or He isn’t.

 

[Bradski]

We see that most folks who don’t have their Artifice Glasses on understand that the Bible puts God in anthropomorphic terms, symbolic terms, make references to God being jealous and angry…but we know that they are not meant to be understood literally.

But suddenly, folks who reject the Bible curiously become so literal.

Takes us under His wing? So add compassionate to the list. But anyway, these aren’t attributes that I claim are God’s. They are attributes that Christians claim are God’s. You can cross off the ones that you don’t think are applicable as you see fit. If you don’t think He loves, then cross it off. If you don’t think He’s compassionate, then remove it. If you don’t think He wants anything, then put a line through it.

We won’t use those terms again. They are too anthropomorphic. They cloud the water. They make it difficult to know exactly what anyone means by them.

But the one in the post that is undeniable, as it has been stated quite explicitly, is that God, just like us, makes choices. He chooses the ‘Best Path’ for us. He decides, making due allowance for our free will, which path we will take. And it will be the Best One (God cannot decide that we take the second best).

That path will lead us, inexorably, in the Best Direction (again, not necessarily for us personally, but the best overall). It will lead us to the Best Outcomes. Which, as been repeated ad nauseum, God knows (obviously, because He chose the Best Path – you cannot do that unless you know what the outcomes will be).

And you still want to say that He bears no responsibility…

 

[Peter_Plato]

So what? The murderer will have to face the consequences, but the murdered will receive the passkey to heaven. There is a biblical quote: “There is no greater love than sacrificing your life for someone else”. (Not a verbatim quote). Of course, since THIS life is merely a blink of the eye when compared to eternity, the quotation is nonsense. It should be: “There is no greater love than sacrificing your ETERNAL happiness for someone else”. And if the conquistadores honestly believed that their action will bring those children to heaven, then they exhibited the greatest possible love. They sacrificed their eternal happiness for the benefit of those children. Of course, I do not think that they were THAT sophisticated.****

This is not sophisticated, it is silly. Justice would not be served by the sacrifice of one’s eternal happiness for the sake of the eternal happiness of another. It’s a net zero gain as far as God is concerned. When Christ spoke the words of sacrificing one’s life for another, that is surely in the context of such a sacrifice being a good and holy deed because the person doing the sacrificing is, thereby, demonstrating what it means to truly love another. It is good for both the one doing the sacrificing since it instantiates love at the same time as being good for the other since they would come to eternally know the one who has loved them with a boundless and eternal love.

Sacrificing one’s eternal happiness cannot be considered a good and holy deed since no moral good would come of it - the eternal unhappiness of the one sacrificing and the ultimate sadness of the other who could not enjoy the love of the eternally unhappy other who did the sacrificing.

 

[Aloysium]

Personally, I do not say “God is love.” I simply say, “God is.” . . .

Jesus reveals God as Love. That is the true nature of “I am who I am”, God, the uncreated Creator, existing by himself for himself, independent of any other cause.

We know the Triune Godhead to be Love, as the transcendent Being who is three persons in one God.
Ontologically,
the Father “breathes” out, the Son “breathes” in;
the Son breathes out, the Father breathes in.
The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, joined in eternal Love.

The Father through the Word brings creation into existence.
The incarnation of the Word,
who sacrifices Himself in order to save a fallen mankind,
becoming one of us,
and with the Eucharist our becoming one with Him,
brings us into the same relationship
shared by the Father and the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

It is God’s will that we commune with the Source of all the Beauty and the Truth that is the eternally living Ground of all being - Love Himself.

 

[Peter_Plato]

But the one in the post that is undeniable, as it has been stated quite explicitly, is that God, just like us, makes choices. He chooses the ‘Best Path’ for us. He decides, making due allowance for our free will, which path we will take. And it will be the Best One (God cannot decide that we take the second best).

That path will lead us, inexorably, in the Best Direction (again, not necessarily for us personally, but the best overall). It will lead us to the Best Outcomes. Which, as been repeated ad nauseum, God knows (obviously, because He chose the Best Path – you cannot do that unless you know what the outcomes will be).

And you still want to say that He bears no responsibility…

I think your error is in supposing you know what “best path” means, as if it is a path that leads through a series of events to an end “place.” That, however, isn’t the only possible meaning regarding “where” the path leads. The end may not, as far as moral agents are concerned, be some place, but rather a state of being, where moral agents “become” a certain kind of being. That is the “outcome” deemed best, worst or somewhere in between. It is also THAT outcome of becoming a certain kind of being that depends upon the interaction and intersection between human free will and God’s grace.

God has a vested interest in the outcome because, simply put, he is “all in.” He gives himself fully in order to become eternally one with the human free agent. What the “best outcome” is, as far as God is concerned is for the human being to receive the unifying love of God that would bring the human moral agent into being, eternally.

This enterprise could not be a one sided act on the part of God. Such a view simply misses entirely what Christianity is all about. It is about man becoming united to God by a free act of will.

… how shall man pass into God, unless God has [first] passed into man? And how shall he (man) escape from the generation subject to death, if not by means of a new generation, given in a wonderful and unexpected manner (but as a sign of salvation) by God-* that regeneration which flows from the virgin through faith? Or how shall they receive adoption from God if they remain in this [kind of] generation, which is naturally possessed by man in this world?

Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book IV, Ch 33, para 4*

God could not create human beings who simply will freely to unite themselves to God without creating human beings who freely do so. This is a free choice made in dynamic response to God’s love where temporal human existence intersects with eternity. There is no “before,” no foreknowledge because this is the door to eternity in the sense of human beings BECOMING one with Eternal Being, not of getting to some place at some time.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . If a chess player (or computer) can plan on contingencies, why can’t God, on a much larger scale? Or am I missing something?) Anyway, back to the main argument: God has perfect knowledge of the future. God makes Mary and Sally. They both have free will, and God foresees that Mary will end up in Heaven and Sally in Hell. If God then decides that he won’t create Sally because she will end up in Hell, how does that affect Mary and Mary’s free will? Mary and Sally are not dependent variables, they are independent. . . If creation with both Sally and Mary is NOT determinism, how is it determinism if Sally is never created? The creation of Sally has nothing to do with Mary. Mary will be created and turn out the way she will no matter if Sally is around or not. No connection.

A chess player and computer exist in time and from that position cannot have knowledge about the future which is unformed.

God’s being is overarching all creation, since He is its Creator. He enters into time to guide us, but He remains transcendent, outside of time.

God has perfect knowledge of the future (which is what has not yet occurred relative to that particular time) when He meets us in the present; that awareness includes His having entered into time and His influence on us then and there.
There is no future or past for God; He is eternally Here and Now.

God cannot not create Sally once He has created her. This is irrational and hence impossible.

It seems also irrational to suppose that God could know the choices made by a person he has not created.
The only way He could know, would be to create us predictable, that is without free choice.

I don’t think you have considered how we are like gods in the sense of our capacity to create.
Unfortunately, what we have done with this creativity in seeking our self-interest is to construct this world.

 

[Bradski]

I think your error is in supposing you know what “best path” means, as if it is a path that leads through a series of events to an end “place.”

It’s irrelevant. If I said I knew what it was, then I might be in error. But I have no idea what the Best Path means. I have no idea what the Best Path entails. I have no idea where the Best Path leads. All I know is that, by its very definition, the Path is the Best one. That is, obviously, there are possible paths that are not the best one. That is, obviously, and as Lily explicitly says: He chooses the best path for us.

If God has (or is or will or whatever bloody tense you want to use) chosen a particular path as being the best, then, obviously, He knows the outcome. If you want to cry ‘Free will!’ then go for it. It makes no difference. God knows the outcome whether you have free will or not. And whatever that path is, it will entail scenarios that will occur as a result of that path being chosen (for you, by God).

But nobody wants to admit that whatever scenarios those are, God bears responsibility for them. Yet they occur on a path that He has chosen.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . I have no idea what the Best Path means. I have no idea what the Best Path entails. I have no idea where the Best Path leads. . . .

The Way, is Love and leads to eternal Love, which is Beauty, Joy, Truth and eternal Life.
The best path is that in which we actualize this love in the context of our particular lives.

Matthew 22:37-40: Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

He died for our sins, so when we are sorry for what we have done, we can be united with Him.

 

[Bradski]

The Way, is Love and leads to eternal Love, which is Beauty, Joy, Truth and eternal Life.

With whiskers on kittens and warm woolen mittens thrown is as well, no doubt.

 

[Aloysium]

With whiskers on kittens and warm woolen mittens thrown is as well, no doubt.

Kitten whiskers and warm woolen mittens speak of a naive reality.
I am talking about transcendent reality which takes on pain and suffering, the way courage overcomes fear, becoming something far greater.
The Man on the Cross and the Martyrs did not simply cease to be; nor was their fate your very fancifully dream of a magic pony world.
You may wish to reflect on the fact that you are ridiculing a scenario formed by your imagination.

 

[Pallas_Athene]

TThat’s the question. PA’s assertion implicitly assumes that God has knowledge of everything that never happens, and that’s something that’s debated.

According to the hodgepodge of the different philosophies employed by the church that is exactly what is happens. Of course I think that it is sheer nonsense, but my opinion is irrelevant. To assert that God “knows” the exact number of words in a book, which was never written, because its author was never born due to the fact that his prospective parents never met - is the epitome of irrationality. Not to mention the actual typeface which was NOT employed by the nonexistent publisher and the imaginary print shop, which never printed the book… But that is what the church asserts by not distancing itself from the concept of Molinism.

If PA wants us to assent to the thought experiment, then PA must necessarily demonstrate that its premises are true. No such proof has even been offered.

My friend, you cannot even demonstrate that God exists… you are not in the position to demand a “proof” for some esoteric attribute of this unproven God. But since the church accepts this, that is sufficient to be presented as an argument.

Let’s presume, for the sake of discussion, that God ‘knows’ Sally (who never comes into existence). The question, then, isn’t about Mary (as an individual) but about humanity (collectively).

Both of them need to be examined.

In play here is the difference between determinism (i.e., every human act is pre-determined) and free will (i.e., every human act is the result of a person’s choice). If God only creates non-sinners, then He has predetermined that free will choices to disobey will never occur. In other words, He has stacked the deck and predetermined the outcome. (There’s a difference between ‘foreknowledge’ and ‘predetermination’; if PA wants to assert the presence of ‘free will’, he needs to show the presence of foreknowledge and the absence of predetermination. His thought experiment fails on the latter consideration.)

I do not assert the existence of “free will”. It is simply a reasonable assumption, which cannot be proven or refuted. There is one thought experiment, which cannot be carried out. Theoretically we can take a “snapshot” of the world; store it somewhere “outside” this world; “rewind” this world and let it go on again. If there would be a discrepancy, that would prove the existence of free will. But this thought experiment cannot be carried out.

But here comes another very interesting problem. Let’s consider a stage magician, who offers you a perfectly ordinary deck of cards, and asks you to “pick a card, any card”. You will use your free will to make a random selection. But you WILL pick the card what the magician wanted you to pick. Did you exercise your free will, or was the result predetermined by the magician? The answer is obvious: “BOTH ARE TRUE”. You exercised your free will, and yet the answer is predetermined. As such the existence of free will and the predetermined outcome are not logically contradictory. Ain’t that real fun?

And one more observation. You, personally “you” asserted that in order to have free will, it is not necessary that one should be able to put that “will” into practice. So God could allow you to have all your “wills” to perform some evil acts, and prevent you from carrying them out. So we would have all the “free wills” and none of the “evil acts” in the world. What a wonderful outcome - exactly as I was arguing for. Any objections?

 

[Ignatius]

We are free to read Genesis as a literal description or the events leading to the original sin, or an allegorical one, with some unspecified command and disobedience. For the sake of simplicity, I will use the literal version.

1. God told Adam and Eve not to touch the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
2. The serpent tempted them, and they disobeyed.
3. God chased them away from his presence and cursed the whole creation.

Looks pretty simple and straightforward, doesn’t it? Disobedience, which leads to punishment. Happens all the time.

The problem occurs when we start to consider God’s omniscience. God KNEW that the humans WILL disobey.

The first question is this:
Could God have created a different pair, like George and Susie, who would NOT have succumbed to the temptation, and would NOT have chosen to disobey? If every conceivable human pair would have succumbed to the temptation then there is no free will; the fall would have been preordained or predestined. Sounds quite unreasonable. The existence of free will is a basic tenet.

Now if God could have created another human pair, who would not have succumbed to the temptation, then the question is: “why didn’t he do it?”. God is supposed to be free to actualize any state of affairs, which is not logically impossible.

**The second question is: **
Why did he put them to the test in the first place if he knew that they will fail? What is the point to put someone to a test which will lead to death when the person fails? There are several solutions here: NOT to place that tree there. Or do not command them not to touch it. No command or no tree - no disobedience - no “original sin” - no “fall”. Everyone wins, we would still be in the Garden.

For God there are no unforeseen events, no surprises. The conclusion is very disturbing: God deliberately chose the sequence of events which lead to the “fall”, God wanted us to fall. That is not how a “loving” father behaves. No loving father would put a bowl of poisoned candy (tasting of which leads to death) on the table and command his child not to taste it. A loving father would not place that candy on the table, he would make sure that the candy is inaccessible.

**The next question is: **
If a father “tricks” his children into an act of disobedience with the explicit aim / desire to teach him a lesson, then the test cannot be a “lethal” one. Moreover, the failed test must be followed by an immediate and minor punishment, which must be followed by an unconditional, free pardon. And, of course, the punishment cannot be extended to other ones, least of all to those who have not even born yet.

There is no need to go one into reconciliation process of God’s self-sacrifice (in the form of Jesus). If there would be no original sin, there would be no need for reconciliation.

So the whole story just does not compute. Unfortunately the concept of original sin is the cornerstone of Christianity. So, there…

I simply don’t get it.

You forgot to factor in free will.

 

[Bradski]

I am talking about transcendent reality which takes on pain and suffering…

And who bears some responsibility for that pain and suffering…?