Steven Carr

'Necessarily true' means, of course, highly dubious assumptions, which Plantinga claims are 'necessarily true'.

But Guthrie's logic is self-contradictory.

Mr. Guthrie invites to consider a man called Ivan,who has free will. Guthrie writes 'Under no circumstances will Ivan enroll in Philosophy 101.'


However, Christian philosphers vehemently deny that such a person has free will.

Take <a href="http://philarete.home.mindspring.com/philosophy/freewill.html" target="_blank">http://philarete.home.mindspring.com/philosophy/freewill.html</a>

This states 'Van Inwagen first submits that an action is freely performed only if the agent could have done otherwise.'

Inwagen says for somebody to have the free will to choose X, there must be some circumstances in which he will choose X.

So if there are no circumstances in which Ivan will enroll for Philosophy 101, Inwagen says that Ivan did not have free will.

Guthrie also declares that free will decisions are free of causal determinism, yet he writes in
<a href="http://sguthrie.net/kalamshort.htm" target="_blank">http://sguthrie.net/kalamshort.htm</a>
'Everthing that Begins to Exist has a Cause for its Existence.'

Guthrie writes 'I suppose that even empiricists unite on the most basic of beliefs when it comes to obvious truths such as this one.'


So Guthrie says free will decisions must have a cause, yet he defines 'free' as not caused.


Pure self-contradiction!

If Mr. Guthrie considers it *obviously* true that his free will decisions are caused, then there is a good case that these causes determined his decisions.

[ November 20, 2002: Message edited by: Steven Carr ]</p>

Dr. Retard

Remember, "It's not that there are no possible worlds where Ivan never chooses evil. Such happy words are quite possible." So Ivan can still have free will by van Inwagen's lights, at least.