One final time: freedom of will does NOT logically lead to evil actions

[distracted]

And I would suggest that if you have a presumption problem (which is apparent) that you both take your own advice as well as discipline yourself to reading more and more carefully of what you choose to respond to. Realize how much you don’t really know about what you think you see clearly.

But the choice is yours of course.

oh please…

 

[Betterave]

Adam & Eve were absent original sin, possessed free will and committed the first moral evil anyway. Did mans’ ignorance precede or follow his sin? Was man in some sense corrupt prior to OS?

Of course man’s knowledge is always partial (i.e., partially ignorance) so ignorance preceded as well as followed the fall. What followed was corruption of man’s capacity to reason without being influenced by concupiscence. But man was not corrupt prior to sinning. Lucifer was not corrupt either prior to his sin and his knowledge was much greater than uncorrupted man’s knowledge - yet he still chose to rebel against God, in full knowledge that rebellion was futile! The awesome power of pride.

 

[Spock]

it’s not necessary to be so insulting to another poster.

Very kind of you. But it does not bother me. The trick is to scan the poster’s name, and when warranted - bypass the post itself. Works like a charm. Some people love to taunt in the vain hope that this “technique” will get attention. When it does not, eventually they stop doing it.

 

[distracted]

Very kind of you. But it does not bother me. The trick is to scan the poster’s name, and when warranted - bypass the post itself. Works like a charm. Some people love to taunt in the vain hope that this “technique” will get attention. When it does not, eventually they stop doing it.

yes, i am always telling people i don’t respond to ad hominem or hostile remarks…

i think pepole who do this continously are in need of therapy (as you may have read in that one post i sent to the offender)…

i think we all need therapy… :blackeye:which is why God gave us Jesus…

He is SO under-used, shall we say… neglected… so neglected (the Real Presence)… When i go There i am usually alone, which is good for me but what about the other milliions of Catholics? where are they??? hmmmm

anyhow… i was wondering if you could give me (us) some background info on your spirutality… How you were raised, etc… so i could u/ stand you better (without having to read every single post… i have very limited time & can’t read them all… )… although i’d surely like to be able to do that…

Godbless.,.

 

[Spock]

yes, i am always telling people i don’t respond to ad hominem or hostile remarks…

i think pepole who do this continously are in need of therapy (as you may have read in that one post i sent to the offender)…

i think we all need therapy… :blackeye:which is why God gave us Jesus…

He is SO under-used, shall we say… neglected… so neglected (the Real Presence)… When i go There i am usually alone, which is good for me but what about the other milliions of Catholics? where are they??? hmmmm

anyhow… i was wondering if you could give me (us) some background info on your spirutality… How you were raised, etc… so i could u/ stand you better (without having to read every single post… i have very limited time & can’t read them all… )… although i’d surely like to be able to do that…

Godbless.,.

Sure. In a nutshell I was born and raised Calvinist (or Presbyterian). I was never “real” religious, though I attended church and I really liked our pastor. He was a wonderful man. This lasted until about my age of 18. In college I pretty much lost interest but I was still a believer. Only at about the age of 35 did I start to think about the whole subject, and lost all my faith. I just could not believe in a good, benevolent, loving God any more. Not that I had any special “misfortune”… quite the contrary. Loving wife, great kid, reasonable life, I had all, and still have them. I never had any negative experince in church. It just stopped to make sense. So here I am, a happy (and hard-core) atheist - aged 63, generally being considered a devout Christian (or was considered a good communist, please don’t laugh, in principle these are quite close to each other) - based upon my lifestyle and attitude. This pretty much sums it up.

 

[James_S_Saint]

Short of a lie, you can only insult the pride of the egotist thus he must maintain a policy to hide the eyes from anyone exposing his weakness and certainly get others to hide their eyes as well, especially if he can do it even better than you. Thus is born the cultist.

 

[o_mlly]

Adam & Eve were absent original sin, possessed free will and committed the first moral evil anyway. Did mans’ ignorance precede or follow his sin? Was man in some sense corrupt prior to OS?

Being temporal, men are ignorant of the final effects of their choices. It is this “felix culpa” that allows a loving God to send His only Son to redeem us.

In contrast,non-temporal beings, the angels, see immediately the eternal effects of their acts. Satan rejection of God’s grace in this respect is quite different than man’s rejection.

Peace,
O’Malley

 

[James_S_Saint]

Being temporal, men are ignorant of the final effects of their choices. It is this “felix culpa” that allows a loving God to send His only Son to redeem us.

In contrast,non-temporal beings, the angels, see immediately the eternal effects of their acts. Satan rejection of God’s grace in this respect is quite different than man’s rejection.

Peace,
O’Malley

So true.

 

[fhansen]

Being temporal, men are ignorant of the final effects of their choices. It is this “felix culpa” that allows a loving God to send His only Son to redeem us.

In contrast,non-temporal beings, the angels, see immediately the eternal effects of their acts. Satan rejection of God’s grace in this respect is quite different than man’s rejection.

Peace,
O’Malley

Could it be said that mans job here on earth is simply to learn that Gods word is true after all-that “the final effects of their choices” did cause them to die by separating them from the Source of their life-and that we’re in need of salvation in order to be found and come to know that Source again-and live?

 

[promethius]

Irrelevant. The proof I presented is mathematical and irrefutable. Among all the possible worlds there is at least one, where there is no need for God to restrict his will, because everyone always chooses the moral way to act, out of their own volition.

Both of these are wrong, but they do not belong to this thread, so let’s discuss them somewhere else.

I think you have two fundamental flaws here:

First, I have never heard a good catholic argue that free will necessarily leads to evil. To do so would be heresy, since mankind was created with free will by God, and a perfect God most certainly did NOT create a system which could only inevitably produce evil. In other words, your premise 1 is a logical fallacy by means of false straw man argument. This is why you get confused responses, you’re arguing a point that the defenders never made, ergo their response has a disconnect.

Second, your premise is that God actualizes which one of your “many worlds”. In effect then, no matter which example you choose (and let’s go for N agents with M decisions), only the FIRST example actually applies (since God would then be actualizing the world, that would make Him the only moral agent, all other agents would be subject to God’s actualization and therefore would not actually be free acting agents). In other words, in each of your examples your moral agent lacks free will and therefore is not a moral agent at all.

The reality is that God does not actualize people’s choices, they do. Is it possible that there COULD exist a world with free will and no evil? Certainly, that is what God created us for in the first place. However, in order for free will to exist the moral agent in your examples must be able to make independent choices (not be actualized by an outside agent) and those choices must meet an effective range of choice to qualify as different objectives (ie, in a moral decision where only moral outcomes exist, no free will exists since every choice I make inherently leads me to the same objective).

QED, not case closed as you haven’t even argued the proper debate. You’re discussing case A which your supposed opposition doesn’t even hold to.

 

[Betterave]

Being temporal, men are ignorant of the final effects of their choices. It is this “felix culpa” that allows a loving God to send His only Son to redeem us.

In contrast,non-temporal beings, the angels, see immediately the eternal effects of their acts. Satan rejection of God’s grace in this respect is quite different than man’s rejection.

Peace,
O’Malley

Of course quite different, and, the point I was getting at, a much deeper mystery as to how such a free choice could be possible.

 

[Spock]

I think you have two fundamental flaws here:

First, I have never heard a good catholic argue that free will necessarily leads to evil.

The so called free-will defense is originated by Plantinga, who is not a Catholic, but a very prominant Protestant philosopher. And many Catholic philosophers agree with him.

Second, your premise is that God actualizes which one of your “many worlds”. In effect then, no matter which example you choose (and let’s go for N agents with M decisions), only the FIRST example actually applies (since God would then be actualizing the world, that would make Him the only moral agent, all other agents would be subject to God’s actualization and therefore would not actually be free acting agents). In other words, in each of your examples your moral agent lacks free will and therefore is not a moral agent at all.

The choices of the moral agents are indeed free (by the hypothesis), but the choices are only actualized if God “creates” those agents. Without “creating” those agents the whole question becomes moot. Therefore God is ultimately the one who creates the moral and immoral actions - not directly, rather indirectly, by creating those ones who will make the decisions (isn’t that a kind of “outsourcing”? ). And God is under no “obligation” to create anyone and everyone. He has the option to create only those ones, who will freely and volitionally choose correctly.

 

[fhansen]

If the possibility of moral evil comes from, in simplest terms, combining 1) free will, with 2) human beings, then, while recognizing that free will cannot be separated from a human being-because it’s part of what defines “human” to begin with-the question still arises: if the ability to act freely in the moral realm does not necessarily lead to moral evil, is there yet another aspect of humanity that might, when enabled by free will, guarantee all humans would inevitably commit moral evil to some degree, unless for, presumably, some sort of extra help from God? And how might this relate to verse 23 in Romans 3: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”?

 

[distracted]

Sure. In a nutshell I was born and raised Calvinist (or Presbyterian). I was never “real” religious, though I attended church and I really liked our pastor. He was a wonderful man. This lasted until about my age of 18. In college I pretty much lost interest but I was still a believer. Only at about the age of 35 did I start to think about the whole subject, and lost all my faith. I just could not believe in a good, benevolent, loving God any more. Not that I had any special “misfortune”… quite the contrary. Loving wife, great kid, reasonable life, I had all, and still have them. I never had any negative experince in church. It just stopped to make sense. So here I am, a happy (and hard-core) atheist - aged 63, generally being considered a devout Christian (or was considered a good communist, please don’t laugh, in principle these are quite close to each other) - based upon my lifestyle and attitude. This pretty much sums it up.

so why do you come to CAF??

 

[distracted]

The so called free-will defense is originated by Plantinga, who is not a Catholic, but a very prominant Protestant philosopher. And many Catholic philosophers agree with him.

i don’t have time to read all posts here…

in a nutshell, what is it about the Catholic faith you most have a problem with??

 

[promethius]

The so called free-will defense is originated by Plantinga, who is not a Catholic, but a very prominant Protestant philosopher. And many Catholic philosophers agree with him.

You have read plantinga incorrectly. He stated that it is POSSIBLE for an all powerful and all loving God to create a world in which moral agents COULD choose to do evil… he did NOT state that it was a MANDATORY result of free will that moral agents WOULD choose evil. This is not heresy.

The position you’re arguing against, however, is that Christian theology teaches that evil is a mandatory requisite of free will. That IS heresy and in no way conforms to christian teaching or even to what Plantinga had to say.

The choices of the moral agents are indeed free (by the hypothesis), but the choices are only actualized if God “creates” those agents. Without “creating” those agents the whole question becomes moot. Therefore God is ultimately the one who creates the moral and immoral actions - not directly, rather indirectly, by creating those ones who will make the decisions (isn’t that a kind of “outsourcing”? ). And God is under no “obligation” to create anyone and everyone. He has the option to create only those ones, who will freely and volitionally choose correctly.

Not so, because you are still viewing it as God actualizing agents who will always make moral choices, rather than moral agents who always have the POSSIBILITY of making moral choices. In other words, your position you state where only moral choices are made is, in effect, predestination. There are still some christian sects that hold to that heresy, but they are few and far between.

We really argue the same point anyway: both sides of this debate are teaching that it IS possible for free moral agents to make only moral choices: just exceedingly unlikely that they do so.

 

[Betterave]

You have read plantinga incorrectly. He stated that it is POSSIBLE for an all powerful and all loving God to create a world in which moral agents COULD choose to do evil… he did NOT state that it was a MANDATORY result of free will that moral agents WOULD choose evil. This is not heresy.

The position you’re arguing against, however, is that Christian theology teaches that evil is a mandatory requisite of free will. That IS heresy and in no way conforms to christian teaching or even to what Plantinga had to say.

Not so, because you are still viewing it as God actualizing agents who will always make moral choices, rather than moral agents who always have the POSSIBILITY of making moral choices. In other words, your position you state where only moral choices are made is, in effect, predestination. There are still some christian sects that hold to that heresy, but they are few and far between.

We really argue the same point anyway: both sides of this debate are teaching that it IS possible for free moral agents to make only moral choices: just exceedingly unlikely that they do so.

predestination is believed by the big ‘sect’ too (Catholic Church)!

 

[promethius]

predestination is believed by the big ‘sect’ too (Catholic Church)!

not in the sense that the OP is teaching, and not in the sense that is destructive to free will. Certainly not in the calvinistic sense at all.

The only “predestination” is because God is omniscient, but that is because God is outside of time, not because we lack free will in accepting Saving Grace.

 

[tdgesq]

The so called free-will defense is originated by Plantinga, who is not a Catholic, but a very prominant Protestant philosopher. And many Catholic philosophers agree with him.

The free will defense is much much older than Plantinga. It was far from a new idea. What was new was Plantinga’s extensive use of formal logical notation against two of the most prominent atheistic/agnostic philosophers of the time, J.L. Mackie and Antony Flew. Since this was all published for the entire public to see, it made Plantinga’s work the reference for this type of debate. It is no accident that Plantinga now is the head of the philosophy department at Notre Dame University.

The choices of the moral agents are indeed free (by the hypothesis), but the choices are only actualized if God “creates” those agents. ] Therefore God is ultimately the one who creates the moral and immoral actions - not directly, rather indirectly, by creating those ones who will make the decisions . . . . And God is under no “obligation” to create anyone and everyone. He has the option to create only those ones, who will freely and volitionally choose correctly.

Of course the entire question is whether there are people who would freely choose to do what is correct. Perhaps there are not. In that case there isn’t anybody for God to actualize that would do what is correct. This is the elephant in the middle of the room that you, with varying degrees of success, keep dodging.

I frankly don’t understand why you continue to argue against a point that your chief proponent (Mackie) conceded. I mean, I’ve been watching this thread for the last couple of weeks to see if you could produce anything new, but it’s all been Mackie warmed over. All the free will defense states is that it is possible that there are no persons who will choose correctly. Nobody can say for certain whether this is the case. As others have stated, the free will defense is not a theodicy; it’s simply a defense against those who insist that by logical necessity God could have created a world where everybody freely only chooses correctly.

So far as I can tell (and I am apparently not alone) you insist that there must be some persons who will freely choose to do what is correct. That statement contains a contradiction though. You can’t on the one hand affirm that persons can freely choose to do what is correct and on the other hand state that one, some, or all of them must choose to do what is correct.

 

[david_friol_1]

For one final time I am going to show that it is possible to have a world, where there is free will and there are no evil choices. I am tired of seeing the nonsensical argument that there are only two possibilities, either having free will and actual evil choices, or dummies (or robots) who are preprogrammed to do everything “right”. The proof will be a mathematical one, unquestionable.

1. Let’s start with a very simple world, where there is one moral agent, who makes one decision. In that case there are two possible worlds, one, where the agent makes a moral choice (regardless of how moral is defined) and another one, where the agent makes an immoral choice. God can actualize either one of these worlds. Therefore there is one world with free will and no evil evil choices. For any mathematician, this is sufficient. To those of you who are not mathematicians, it seems like a trivial example, which does not correspond to the real world. Therefore I am going to spell it out.
2. Now let’s consider a world, with one moral agent, who makes many decisions. Let the number of decisions be “N”. In this case there are “N + 1” possible worlds, where the agent makes exactly 0, 1, 2, etc… all the way up to N morally upright decisons. God can actualize either one of these worlds, so he can actualize the world, where the agent makes “N” moral decisions - in other words, when all the decisions are morally proper. One can make the argument, that this world is also too simplistic. So, let us carry on.
3. The next possible scenario is when there are “M” moral agents in the world, and each of them makes exactly one decision. In this case there are “M + 1” possible worlds, where 0, 1, 2, etc… up to “M” moral choices are made. God can actualize any one of these worlds, so he can actualize the one where each moral agent makes a morally good choice. In this world we also have free will, no coersion, and no immoral choices. Just in case some of you still harbor doubts I will spell out the final scenario.
4. The final possible scenario is where there are “N” moral agents, and each of them makes “M” decisons. Both “N” and “M” can be any arbitrary number, so this scenario precisely reflects our current world. Since each agent makes “M” decisions, the number of possible worlds is “(N + 1)*(M + 1)”. Of these possible worlds there is one where each agent makes only moral decisions. In all the other ones at least one agent makes at least one immoral decision. God can also instantiate or actualize any one of these worlds, since none of them contains a logical contradiction.

Result: No matter how many moral agents are in a world, and no matter how many decisions are made, there is at least one possible world where all the agents make only morally upright decisions - while retaining their free will. God can actualize this world since it contains no logical contradiction.

This is a **mathematical **proof. It shows that the existence of free will does not logically lead to immoral decisions - therefore it does not lead to pain, misery and suffering. If God wanted to, he could have actualized this world. Ours is not that world. Why God chose not to actualize that world is none of my concern. But the fact is that he did not, even though he could have done it.

Case closed. The argument that freedom of action inevitably leads to immoral choices is null and void. Please do not use it again. Of course I am not naive to hope that all of you will read this post, or that those who read it can understand it. But be as it may, if anyone ever brings up the incorrect argument, I will only point them to this thread.

Hey Spock
I’m not going to answer this one since it is so similar to the one on “The constructor and his world”
But since you add the mathematical thing to it I just want to say that I think all mathematicians would agree that things that can be worked out on the chalk board can be impossible in reality. Both Einstein and Galileo found that out. But I’m sure God could have followed your advice on this but he chose to do things the way they are so it only becomes for you another “what if…?”.
God bless you Spock I hope you get your own Starship some day!