Demiurge

"I am the perfect toymaker. My toys are intelligent and are free to do as they wish. I have given them rules to follow, such as to obey me and love me. However, the flaws within them are such that some of them will be unable to consistently follow my rules. These variables ensure that over time, at least some of them will break my rules and disobey me. And, I will make them feel very guilty about their rebelliousness."

"But aren't you responsible for their very rebellion?"

"No! Of course not! Didn't I say they are all free to do as they wish?"

Transworldly Depraved

Demiurge:

You wrote:

Does the claim that "we can choose between good and evil" entail that some of us "will be unable to consistently follow [God's] rules"?

The theistic philosophers I have studied all claim that we cannot be held responsible for an action unless we are free to do otherwise or if we are not free to do otherwise we must be responsible for the fact that we are compelled.

Further, when they do claim that God is responsible for an evil they claim God causes it or permits it because such an evil is a logically necessary condition for a greater good that outweighs it and justifies him in permitting or causing the evil.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Transworldly,
I don't know what theistic philosophers you've been reading, but if they were Catholic ones, they are heretics. It is untrue that God causes evil:


What the Law of Contradiction is to logic, the dictum that "the ends don’t justify the means" is to morality. Thus, the god you describe would be immoral.

Also, your formulation "permitting or causing" is an equivocation. These are not at all equivalent concepts. God does permit evil but He does not cause evil. The difference between the two is the difference between stubbing one's foot and kicking someone in the groin. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Transworldly Depraved

Albert Cipriani:

If God is such that everything is ultimately dependent upon him then evil must also be dependent upon him. What you seem to be suggesting is that there are objects, properties, states of affairs, or events which God does not or cannot control. The latter claim is obviously heretical.

Further, God (if he exists) at the very least permits an enormous amount of evil. If the causal powers of objects that can produce evil do not owe their powers to God then you must admit that there are sources of power in reality distinct from and independent of God.

CodeMason

Albert: I believe you mean the Law of Noncontradiction. It would be a pretty topsy turvy world if by necessity, things had mutually exclusive properties.

CodeMason

Why haven't you responded to my argument? If something is perfect, all aspects of its being must be perfect as well. So the temporal aspect of its being must be wholly perfect. Thus, in no future event, could a perfect being possibly become imperfect.

Therefore, if Adam and Eve were created perfect, by the Law of Noncontradiction, they cannot have become imperfect through Sin at a later stage.

Chicken Little

I have some questions about perfection that may, or . . may not be of interest here:

- Is perfection relative? In other words, is it possible that what is perfect for one situation or purpose, is not at all perfect for another?

- It is my understanding (perhaps flawed) that perfection as used in biblical terms is actually a standard denoting absolute completeness. If this is so, is it possible to at one juncture to be complete, and at another, to be incomplete? <judging from the number of love songs in human history, and their content, this should be an easy one>

- If we *come* from somewhere, anywhere, and are made of *something*, anything, do those very truths imply moral responsibility on the source or material of our origin, especially if there is no God?

- If perfection is not relative, is it guaranteed? In other words, if I acquire a perfect car, without fault or blemish, and I lend my car to some half-wit, because we went to college together, and he/she trashes it, does that mean that the car was *never* perfect?
Further, who is responsible for the apparent loss of perfection, the source of the vehicle, me, or Mr./Ms Wit?

BTW, the sky *may* be falling.

-CL

Jamie_L

Albert,

Okay, we're starting to get a little circular again. Let's take this from a different angle:

If Adam and Eve were (as you say) created with the ability to resist temptation, why didn't they resist it? Why is it that they chose to disobey the God's instructions?

Jamie

Demiurge

When you're omnipotent and omniscient, what you allow to happen is equivalent to what you cause to happen.

We hold people responsible not only for what they can do, but what they can prevent -- ESPECIALLY when it involves little or no danger to them for intervening. If a perfectly healthy man who knows how to swim stands and watches a child drown in a pool, we should indeed take him to task.

In our minds, inactivity may not seem as malevolent as actually causing something bad to occur. In most cases, inactivity just seems lazy or uncaring. Imagine the man watching a child drown using the argument, "I had to allow her her free will. She chose to go into the pool, and to try to learn how to swim. People have to suffer the consequences of their choices." That is essentially the theistic argument for God allowing evil to exist in the world, even though he can prevent it.

[ January 11, 2002: Message edited by: Demiurge ]</p>

Albert Cipriani

Dear Transworldly,
This statement is a fallacy of reification:


You are equating an abstraction, "evil" with a "thing." It's a form of equivocation. Evil is not a thing. In the sense you are using it, it is a series of good events that collectively result in what colloquially is called a bad event.

To illustrate the error of your words, consider the "evil" of a drunk driver killing a family of four. The evil was dependent upon alcohol. Ergo, whisky did it and ought to be jailed.

I don't know why you think it is heretical to believe that there is something God does not control. Even the word "control" is a misnomer, for it implies that something exists independently of God that may or may not be controlled.

The better way to express my position which you call heretical is to say that there is one thing that exists that is not God, and that is the free will of living beings. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic