Blu

To Jamie_L:

I am also curious to why you often use the word "fight"? Why do people have to "fight" about any beliefs what-so-ever?

People who "fight" against something they can never change, like other people's beliefs, are "fighting" for control.

I believe Christians and other people who believe in God out number Atheists in the world a great deal. People have a right to believe what they want to believe no matter what they believe. Legally, if you aren't committing a crime then believe whatever you want because it is a right.

So why fight?

I just don't understand.

Kenny

Who’s to say that God could have made “Smith” any other way. Indeed, if it is truly part of Smith’s nature to reject God then rejecting God is entailed by the set of abstract characteristics which define Smith in every possible world. God could not have actualized Smith, then, without actualizing Smith’s nature. God would be responsible for creating Smith, but He wouldn’t be responsible for giving Smith the nature he has as opposed to a different one because, had God given “Smith” a different nature, it wouldn’t have actually been Smith anymore. Smith’s nature, itself (defined as an abstract set of characteristics which define a possible person) would have simply existed eternally in the mind of God as part of the set of possible persons that God could have chosen to create. Smith’s actions which proceed from his own nature without being coerced by external factors (which, would be true in this case, since Smith chooses to reject God in all possible environments), since they stem from within Smith himself – all that makes Smith, Smith -- Smith is fully responsible for, making punishment of him just.

Now, why choose to create Smith in the first place? Well, I’m not God so I don’t know, but maybe God could not have accomplished certain other good objectives without creating Smith. There is a theological view, for instance, that our souls are derived from our biological parent’s and could not have come into existence without that particular set of parent’s being involved. This means that for any person, X, if this view is correct, X could not have existed unless X’s entire family line preceded him or her. Perhaps Smith, then, is just a link in a chain a several possible persons who are to receive God’s blessings and Smith’s existence is necessary for these persons to exist. Why should those other persons be denied existence and the benefits of those blessings just because of the actions Smith would take?

Also, it cannot be said, that it is more beneficial to Smith to not exist than to exist, since no benefit can be conveyed to a nonexistent person. It is also not harmful to Smith to be give existence for the same reason. God simply gives Smith existence and then Smith acts out of the characteristics that make Smith, Smith and is judged accordingly. In no way is Smith being unjustly treated in this situation.

God Bless,
Kenny

Bill Snedden

An interesting viewpoint. However, if "good" is defined as "in compliance with God's will" and Smith is as he is as a result of God's will, then how can God possibly judge Smith anything but "good"?

I also wonder if you've considered completely the fact that the viewpoint for which you've argued has God condemning billions of individuals to eternal torment in order to bestow blessings on a chosen few. Does this seem like an act worthy of the "god of love?" Even further, why should anyone wish to worship such a creature?

Regards,

Bill Snedden

bd-from-kg

theophilus:

There is no speculation involved. I’m not talking about any God, but about a God with certain attributes. The form of the argument is: “If there is a being with these attributes, certain things follow”. This does not assume that there is such a being, any more than an argument of the form “If there are finitely many primes there is a prime larger than any of them” assumes that there really are finitely many primes. Nor does the fact that there are really infinitely many primes make the latter argument “meaningless”.

I’m not especially interested in what a bunch of primitive desert barbarians believed about their savage tribal god.

I’m not talking about what an omnimax god can do; I’m talking about what it would be just for such a being to do.

I’m not talking about what I’d do if I were God; I’m talking about what it would be just for an such a being to do.

The claim that God is perfectly just is a moral assertion, and it is one made by most theists. I’m analyzing whether this assertion is consistent with the claim that He has certain other attributes as well.

Ah, here we come to the crux of the matter.

If “justice” has no objective meaning, it is indeed absurd to argue about whether anything God might do is just. But in that case it is equally absurd to say that God has the attribute of justice, or of being just. If anything God does is by definition “just”, then in saying that God is “just” you are saying nothing more than that God does what God does. It is not a property of God that He does what He does; it is a property of our language : this is necessarily true of any being.

Thus, in order for it to be meaningful to say that God is just, “just” and “unjust” must be objective properties. In that case, it’s pointless to ask what my “standard of justice” is. When I say that some possible action would be unjust, I do not mean that it violates some personal standard, but that it has the objective property of being unjust.

The next question is whether it is possible for us to know what is “just” and “unjust” other than being told by God or by observing God’s actions. Now as to the latter possibility, many Christians have pointed out that it faces insuperable difficulties, because what is just for an omniscient, omnipotent being who created us may not be just for us and vice-versa. There’s also the problem that it seems to be impossible to “observe” any of God’s actions; at best it’s possible to know of only a very small fraction of them, which might not be representative.

This leaves only the possibility of being “told” by God what is just and unjust. But this alternative involves an unresolvable epistemological dilemma: unless we already know that it would be unjust for God to tell us that actions that are really just are unjust (and vice-versa), we have no way of knowing whether what God tells us is true. What’s more, we would have no reason to trust Him if He should tell us, for example, that we can attain eternal bliss by following Him. It might be that justice demands that He tell us this even though it also demands that He punish those who follow Him with eternal torment and reward those who reject Him with eternal bliss.

Thus we must have at least a fundamental understanding of justice in order to have any rational grounds for believing anything that (we suppose) God has “told” us. But my argument depends only on some of the most elementary, fundamental principles of justice, namely that it is unjust for A to punish B for things for which A is responsible, or for things which were completely beyond B’s control. If our fundamental intuitions (or if you prefer, our innate knowledge) about what is just and unjust are so far wrong that we are wrong about such basic principles, there is no reason to suppose that they are right about the principle that it would be unjust for God to lie to us about what is just and unjust, or about what His intentions toward us are.

So unless you are willing to accept moral nihilism, you must accept that we can know something about the nature of justice independently of anything that God might tell us. And this “something” is sufficient for my argument.

bd-from-kg

Kenny:

Is saying that I painted a picture of someone and gave him blue eyes really different from saying that I 'actualized' a painting of a person with blue eyes? Isn’t this just another way of describing the same thing? If so, isn't "God 'actualized' a fatally flawed Smith" the same thing as "God chose to make Smith fatally flawed"? How can describing the same act differently (in a rather weird way, in fact) change it from being unjust to just?

This is a very peculiar line of reasoning. It’s just for God to create defective creatures and then to punish them for being defective?

God is omnipotent. He can accomplish any desired objective in any logically possible way. What objective (other than “actualizing” Smith) could be logically impossible to achieve without actualizing the defective Smith?

This theological view would seem to entail that God is not omnipotent. Biological parents are needed as such only to bring their children’s material bodies into existence. If there is some mysterious connection between the souls of parents and children it has to be contingent, which means that an omnipotent God could have arranged things differently so that there would be no need for people like Smith. But if this were so, it would seem to be only fair for Smith to share, at least in some degree, in the infinite bliss that he has made possible for his descendants.

Finally, while such a theory might explain why bringing people like Smith into existence might be necessary for the “greatest good”, it cannot begin to explain how doing so would be just. If such a theory is true, perfect justice and perfect goodness are intrinsically incompatible, in which case God cannot be both perfectly good and perfectly just.

This argument only makes sense, of course, if one rejects the idea of Hell. Besides, God’s purpose in creating individuals is surely not solely to benefit them, but to make the Universe (in the sense of everything-that-is) better, on the whole, than it would have been had they not been created. Actualizing individuals who reject God would seem on its face to be incompatible with this purpose. After all, God is said to want all of His children to come to Him. How is this compatible with His deliberately creating “children” who are guaranteed not to come to Him?

Anyway, all of your arguments up to this point have been aimed at showing that God might have been justified in bringing Smith into existence. That would be fine if the subject were, say, the Argument from Evil. But the question here is whether God is justified in punishing Smith for being who he is. Even if we grant that God might have good reasons for creating such a pathetic creature, how can He be justified in punishing him?

Of course, you might argue that in withholding eternal bliss (or even subjecting him to eternal torment) God is not “really” punishing Smith. In that case you’d be conceding that God would not be justified in punishing Smith (or by extension, anyone). You also would need to explain why, if Smith is not deserving of punishment and is not in fact being punished, he is being deprived of this infinite good. (Also, this position seems incompatible with your final comment below.)

Perhaps you might see this differently if you were Smith.

It’s difficult to come up with an adequate analogy for something like this, but here’s a try. Suppose that (in a future where such things are possible) I want to have Jones killed and create a person (we’ll call him Smithy) to do the job. I design Smithy so that his sole purpose in life is to kill Jones. I know that once Smithy has done the job he’ll be caught. (After all, he wasn’t designed to avoid being caught.) As it happens, I also serve as the judge in his case (there is no jury) and I sentence him to extreme torture for the rest of his life. (And by the way, I designed him to live indefinitely.) But I figure, what the heck, it’s what he deserves; after all, it’s in his nature to be a murderer. Have I treated Smithy justly?

Also, unlike Smithy, Smith is fully aware (in some possible worlds at least) that the consequence of his rejection of God will be the loss of eternal bliss (at the least) and perhaps eternal torment as well (if one accepts the notion of Hell). Moreover, in some possible worlds, he will be made to understand, so far as humanly possible, the nature of the “eternal bliss” in question. Only a complete madman would opt for losing an infinite good in return for any finite good whatsoever. So it must be part of Smith’s innate nature that he is completely insane. Yet God holds this madman (whose madness is His doing) fully responsible for his actions. Is this compatible with your notions of justice?

[ March 13, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

theophilus

This is an interesting (and perceptive) point. It is just because the God of the Bible is as he is revealed to be that atheism must argue against him particularly.
A "take it or leave it" god can be ignored as can a system where men are evaluated on their personal "goodness." It is only a god who demands obedience and declares man to be hopelessly lost who must be argued against by those who are in rebellion against him.
You see, that's really what's at issue here. I don't believe in Allah, but I don't feel the necessity of going on-line to argue against him. The purpose of atheist arguments here is self-justification for denying God.

bd-from-kg

theophilus:

It’s because so many people that we know believe in this idiotic nonsense and keep trying to foist it off on us that we find it necessary to argue against it particularly.

Christians prefer to ignore this possibility because it’s much easier to just accept Jesus as one’s Savior than to actually try to live a virtuous life.

Only such a God can satisfy a Christian’s masochistic, self-abasing impulses.

The purpose of Christian aguments is to perpetuate their self-delusion and justify their absurd feeling of superiority over those who don’t share it.

You see, these kinds of stupid ad hominem attacks can be directed at any position. Now shall we get back to having a serious intellectual discussion? Or would you prefer to trade a few more insults first?

Bill Snedden

Excellent post. You are my new best friend...

Bill

Kenny

bd-from-kg,
I think the painting analogy is a bad one, since it assumes that human persons are just a collection of independent pieces that can be put together any way we want. It may be the case that a particular possible person is made up of a whole set of integrated abstract characteristics which cannot be logically separated. I think a better analogy might be to ask if it is possible for you to actualize a sequence of rings which approach a perfect circle (I set it up this way to avoid difficulties with actually physically constructing a perfect circle) without the circumference to diameter ratio of those rings approaching the value of pi. The answer, is, of course, no, because such is in the nature of the objects you are trying to create. You can’t have circles without pi. Likewise, you might not be able to have “Smith” without the significant moral choices which accompany Smith.

But God didn’t make Smith defective under this line of reasoning. God simply actualized Smith’s nature and then Smith acted accordingly. Smith’s choices were entailed by his nature which is a set of logical relations that are essential to Smith. God did not create Smith’s nature anymore than he created the nature of a circle. Such things are logical parameters in which God must work. God could not have made “Smith” with any other way anymore than God could have made a circle with a circumference to diameter ratio other than pi.

Creating a world in which persons are related to and connected each other in certain ways (and such relations may be necessary, or they me be part of a set of contingent laws which nevertheless make for a better world on the whole) such that the existence of other persons or perhaps certain positive outcomes for those persons depend on the existence of Smith.
Not necessarily. The ancient Hebrews seemed to see a deeper connection between the soul and body than many modern Christians do (hence the whole idea behind the resurrection of the body and not just some “spiritual” afterlife). Perhaps human beings make up an inseparable “soul/body” unit such that it is impossible to actualize a particular soul without a particular body. Even if the link were contingent, however, there may be some set of values which make it better for the link to be there than not be there. Also, Scripture suggests that human beings share a great deal more solidarity on mystical levels than our current individualism and materialism would suggest. This sort of solidarity may involve a connection between parents and children that goes beyond mere biology, and is still necessary in some sense.

Why? If Smith makes bad choices and his descendents do not, why should Smith benefit from their rewards and not suffer the consequences of his own bad choices?

I see nothing unjust about God punishing Smith for choices which flow out of Smith’s own essential nature. The fact that they flow out of Smith’s nature is what makes Smith responsible for them in the first place. God’s choosing to actualize Smith does not make God the one who makes Smith’s choices and commits Smith’s actions.
No, it makes sense either way. In either case, neither benefit nor harm can be conveyed to a non-existent person so it makes no sense to say that it is of more or less benefit to Smith to not exist.

Agreed.

It may not be possible to actualize a world in which all do come given certain logical constraints or other sets of values which God also wishes to accomplish.

Because Smith is the one making the choices which result in his punishment, not God.

I think that is simply a bad analogy because God didn’t necessarily design Smith to reject him. He may have permitted it for certain morally sufficient reasons, but God in no way compelled Smith to make the choices he did.

The Bible suggests that, in our fallen state, that while we do want infinite bliss and happiness, we don’t want to submit to God (which is the only way that infinite bliss can be achieved). We share the attitude of Milton’s Satan, that is better to reign in Hell (carry out our rebellion against God to the bitter end) than to serve in heaven (submit to God and receive the blessing of the relationship that results). Our lack of desire to submit to God is a moral choice which makes us morally responsible for it.

God Bless,
Kenny

bd-from-kg

Kenny:

As usual, your posts are interesting but perplexing. It takes a while to respond to them because I have to try to understand what you’re saying, then figure out exactly why it’s wrong, then try to figure out how to explain why it’s wrong.

Anyway, let’s try this again. X creates Y, which he chooses to give certain properties. I say that it would be unjust for X to then punish Y for having those properties. You disagree. Quite honestly, I am completely unable to understand this point of view. No amount of verbal gymnastics can make this self-evidently unjust act appear just.

In attempting to defend the indefensible, you point out that, in giving Y these properties, X is creating something different from what he would have created if he had given it different ones; one might say that he is choosing to create Y rather than Y'. This is self-evidently true, but so what? Where I speak of giving Y certain properties instead of others, you speak of “actualizing” Y instead of Y'. But these are just two ways of saying the same thing. How can using different words turn a transparently unjust act into a just one?

For example, you say:

But “Smith” is just a convenient tag for whoever God is creating. In the terminology of formal logic, it’s a variable rather than a constant. What’s the difference between saying that God created an (unspecified) defective person and saying that He “actualized” a possible person with a defective nature? It seems to me that you’re just playing word games here.

Well, yes. That’s the point. He could not in any sense have chosen otherwise. His choice not to accept God was like my choice not to grow wings and fly to the moon. It’s not in my nature to do this, just as it was not in Smith’s nature to accept God. He simply could not have done it, no matter what.

Of course God created Smith’s nature, in the only possible sense: namely, He brought into existence a creature with this nature. In what other sense can God be meaningfully said to create anything? If God didn’t create our natures, He didn’t create us. For that matter, He didn’t create the (physical) universe; He just “actualized” one possible universe out of the many “possible universes”. This appears to me to be nothing but a way to obfuscate the issues by adopting a vocabulary so weird and novel that its’ difficult to think clearly in terms of it.

This argument suggests that God would not be culpable for Smith’s actions even if He did not have a good purpose for creating him. And this entails that God would not be culpable if He chose (for no particular reason) to create an army of murderous thugs whose nature was such that they would do everything in their power to eliminate (for example) every black person from the face of the earth. After all, it would be the thugs who would make the choices and commit the acts; God would just be an innocent bystander.

Let’s consider another case. Say that God creates a universe filled with an infinite number of immortal creatures who are not only capable of unimaginable suffering, but who in fact by their natures suffer unimaginably from the very moment they are created. Would God be doing anything wrong by creating such a universe? By your reasoning the answer is “no”: God did not cause the suffering, nor is he responsible for the fact that it’s their nature to suffer; he merely actualized a great many beings whose nature it is to suffer! What could be wrong with that?

This makes a mockery of the claim that God is either good or just. You’re beginning to sound like theophilus.

However, the main point here is not whether God can be considered culpable for bringing certain entities into existence (although it seems self-evident to me that in some cases He would be culpable, and therefore wouldn’t do so). The point is whether an entity can be culpable for the fact that God chose to “actualize” it. Again, it seems self-evident to me that it can’t; how can it be culpable for something God did? And finally, there is the question of whether an entity can be considered culpable for doing what it can’t help but do; what it must do because of its nature. And again the answer seems to me to be self-evident: it cannot. This is a basic principle of justice which is recognized even in human courts. In order for an agent to be considered responsible for an act, it must have been possible for him to do otherwise. The question of exactly what “possible” means in this context has been the subject of endless dispute, but in Smith’s case it is crystal clear that it was impossible in any meaningful sense for him to do otherwise; as you have pointed out, to do otherwise he would have had to not be Smith.

Now we come to the example I used to try to illustrate this point:

OK, let’s change the example slightly. My purpose in creating Smithy was not to eliminate Jones; in fact it was something completely unrelated to Jones, and was not furthered in the least by Jones’s death. It just happened that the only way available to me to accomplish it was to create someone whose only purpose in life was to kill Jones. Now, how does this affect matters? Would it be just to punish Smithy in this case, because of the existence of some purpose of mine of which he knew nothing, but unjust to punish him if my purpose in creating him had been to have him kill Jones?

At this point it should be clear that, while the existence of such a purpose might have some bearing on God’s culpability in creating Smith, it has nothing whatsoever to do with whether it would be just for God to punish Smith. The relevant factors, so far as I can see, are these: (i) God designed Smith for a purpose; (ii) achieving that purpose (for some mysterious reason) required the existence of a creature who would inevitably reject God; (iii) Smith fulfilled God’s purpose (perhaps by simply existing); (iv) he did exactly what he was designed and intended to do; (v) in so doing he made the Universe a better place than it would have been. It’s not his fault that he was designed in such a way that he must inevitably reject God. So how can it be just to punish him?

Here’s a related example suggested by Asimov’s Foundation series. A character called the Mule is able to twist the mind of anyone who comes anywhere near him so that he becomes, in effect, a willing slave of the Mule. Before long he becomes extremely powerful and threatens to create total chaos in the galaxy. To prevent this, a secret group trains a few people to resist the Mule’s mental powers for a few seconds, and one of them manages to kill him.

Now this was a desperate strategy; it might easily have failed. But suppose that one of them (call him Good) had figured out how to create a person who was totally resistant to the Mule’s powers, but for technical reasons he would have to be immortal and would have an irresistible impulse to kill everyone in sight. He creates such a person (call him Terminator) and gives him a body that cannot be destroyed, but also implants a switching device he can use to turn him off. Terminator is sneaked into the Mule’s vicinity and turned on. He proceeds to kill everyone in sight (several thousand of them, since the Mule is always surrounded by a lot of people) including the Mule himself. Mission accomplished; Terminator is switched off. Good then locks him in a secure container designed to turn him back on and torture him severely forever.

Note that Good’s purpose was not to have all those innocent people killed, or even to have the Mule killed; it was to keep the galaxy from falling into total chaos. Killing the Mule was necessary to that purpose, but killing all the others was just an unavoidable side effect – collateral damage, so to speak. And Terminator is not being punished for killing the Mule, but for killing the bystanders. Is he being treated justly?

While we’re considering this example, we might ask whether the many people whose minds were “twisted” by the Mule were culpable for their actions. Many of them were adamantly opposed to the Mule and everything he stood for until they were subjected to his mental powers. Would it be just to punish them for what they did afterwards? Once again, it seems perfectly clear to me that it would not. Once the Mule got to them their choices were no longer theirs in any meaningful sense; they were the Mule’s. In effect, they were extensions or instruments of the Mule. In just the same way, because Smith must reject God, this choice is not really Smith’s choice at all. He is acting as an extension or instrument of his Creator.

The mythologies of primitive tribes are of little interest to me. Let’s forget about the nonsensical doctrine of original sin and ancient stories about a mythical creature and talk about what I was discussing in the first place – namely, what’s rational.

You suggest that we don’t want to “submit” to God. Yet a creature who understands both his own nature and God’s fully enough will understand that submission to God is the perfect fulfillment of his own nature, it is what he is intended for, and the only thing that will satisfy his deepest longings. And this is quite aside from the fact that it will result in eternal bliss. He will also understand that rejecting God is a denial of his own nature, that in the end it can only lead to misery and despair, and that ultimately this rebellion against his own Creator must fail. Anyone who understands all this understands that there are absolutely no rational grounds for rejecting God. And anyone who understands this and
still chooses to reject God is being completely irrational. Anyone who does something knowing that there is no rational reason for doing it, even in terms of self-interest, is insane.

Now if Smith is by nature capable of understanding all this well enough to see that rebelling against God is necessarily irrational, then he will understand it in some possible world. Yet he will rebel. Thus Smith must be insane.

Still, it’s possible that Smith is not by nature capable of understanding enough of this to understand that rebelling against God is necessarily irrational. In that case, he’s in essentially in the position of a two-year-old boy who rebels against his mother because she won’t let him go outside and play by himself in the playground because the playground is filled with perverts who delight in torturing two-year-old boys and then hacking them to pieces. The child rebels because he doesn’t understand the situation. What kind of mother would tell him “all right, since you’re so determined, today you may play in the playground”? Or what kind of mother would punish him for his perfectly natural desire to use the swings, sliding boards, etc., that he sees every day from the window, or for the natural rebelliousness of two-year-old boys? (Of course, she might well be justified in disciplining him, but discipline is not the same thing as punishment, especially if one is dealing with a two-year-old.)

So we see that either Smith is completely insane, or like the two-year-old boy, he is inherently unable to understand the nature of the choice he is making. Either way, it cannot be just to punish him.