Nic Hautamaki

Why is it necessary for us to be able to make meaningful choices between good and evil? Why is the best possible world one in which we must make meaningful choices between good and evil? I don't see a rational reason to believe that it is necessary. I don't see any reasons at all to make that assumption.

If God is all good, how can evil exist period? And why is it assumed that there must be an ability to choose evil? This underlying assumption, to me, should only point more evilness in god's nature. Ethics period, should be totally unnecessary. Ethics are tools to help us decide between good and evil. Get rid of evil, and you don't need ethics either. What's wrong with that? To me, it's sort of like getting rid of guns, since we won't be needing those either, if there are no wars to fight and no criminals to defend ourselves against. Surely no one would lament the loss of weapons, so why lament the loss of ethics?

We don't have free will anyways, if God exists (since omniscience + the fact that he created the universe means that a) determinism must be true, and b) he is the first cause of the deterministic system, leaving God responsible for all the choices that every person ever made) so why should evil exist? None of these assumptions make any sense to me. Justice, that isn't an intrinsic good either, and I deny that idea. It's only necessary because evil is necessary. Your line of thought seems to be that justice leads to a necessity for Evil. I say that evil leads to a necessity for Justice. Why is your world view assumed more coherant than mine? I deny these assumptions in their entirety and I challenge you to give me reasons why I shouldn't.


If all that seems extremely convoluted and poorly worded it's because it's a response to a Christian who used the free will = evil argument against me in a different forum. I editted it slightly to give it coherance but I'm too tired to do much better with it. If this forum is supposed to be for professional quality posts only, I apologise, and by all means delete it and I'll rewrite it much better tomorrow.

stretch

It would be interesting to see what the other person actually said, but ....

(1) omniscience does not equal pre-determination in 'christian-talk'. It partially refers to a view that God is outside of time and can 'look' at the universe from a different perspective ... knowing something and/or everything does not equal controlling how and when it happens.

(2) 'first-cause' does not imply a deterministic system. Why can't you have a first cause and a universe that has random elements? 'First cause' does not in and of itself imply a determistic system.

Free will is still a possibility in the presence of omniscience and a first cause. Taken in and of themselves, they don't imply free will, but they also do not imply the absence of free will.

There is a little piece in a book called 'Paradoxes from A to Z' by Michael Clark on "the paradox of foreknowledge" that you might find interesting.

Nic Hautamaki

As to your points about free will, I'm still working on that one but I'm pretty sure I can come up with a proof that omniscience = determination, and the first cause = responsibility for our choices. I know that Christians aren't so quick to swallow that but I'm not convinced it's because they are right.

As to what the Christian said, all I've gotten so far is a demand to define what Good is =[

Nic Hautamaki

while I'm at it, I might as well try to justify that statement here and see what you make of it.

ok.

I should never have said that Omniscience implies a deterministic system, since it obviously does not. That was a gross oversimplification I used because I did not want to spend 500 words on a subsection of my main point in that post.

What I should say is that with omniscience, God knows everything that we will do before we do it. Nothing we can do will surprise God.

Since God is also the first cause, our creator, everything we do is therefore to God's design. Whether or not you define what we have as Free Will, God is the one who ultimately pulls all the strongs. It is logically impossible for us to act against God's will, given his properties and the fact that he created the universe.

Re: the Free Will argument. The most coherant counter thought I have seen to this argument is not, in fact, that God exists outside of time, but rather that God exists inside of our time, and that he temporarily 'contracted' (word she used) himself, limiting his Omnimax powers at the time of creation in order to truly give us Free Will.

To which I have 2 responses: if God truly does not exist outside of time, what consequences are there? I haven't had time to give this a lot of thought (only heard that counter argument today) but I'm sure that it must result in something bad for the Christian. The best I can come up with immediately is that if God exists inside of time that might clash with his omnipotence (though I'm not really sure how)

The second, and actual significant response, is basically my first question. Why is the ideal world one in which God gives us the ability to choose these gross evils. If God gave us truly free will and respects it, meaning that he has almost no control over our world, is that really a better world than one that he regulates? Why should I accept that this is the most likely act of an omnibenevolent being? It seems to clash with my intuitions. An analogy might be the one in The One, where criminals are teleported to a prison planet, where anarchy reigns and only the strong survive for long, as opposed to locked up in a cell. I would say that while neither is exactly nice, the second is a lot nicer.

stretch

Have you actually looked at the bit by Clark? It's only 2 pages and an easy read.

stretch

You're not going to get very far with this line of argument. Omniscience + first cause doesn't rule out the possibility that an omniscient creator can relinquish free will to what he creates. What logically prevents an omniscient creator from letting something created do whatever they want?

Your later arguments where you add specifics regarding other properties might get you some mileage ... hint, hint

Jamie_L

Well, the thing is, an omniscient creator knows all the things his creations will choose, even before he creates them. So, the creator must choose: (a) create the world knowing that these choices will happen, or (b) create the world differently so that different choices will happen. So, God has the ulimate responsibiliy for these choices happening. God can't claim "I didn't know this guy would choose to rape somebody". He knew. He created that universe anyway. He can't escape responsibility for the rape coming to pass. Likewise with all the rest of the evil out there.

Jamie

stretch

I certainly wouldn't argue either that an omniscient first cause is not responsible for creating the type of universe that was created. At the same time, if 'free will' exists neither can the rapist escape responsibility.

Nor would I ever argue that an omniscient creator necessarily creates the 'best of all possible worlds'.

Nic Hautamaki

I sort of feel that your building straw men on me Stretch. By the way no I have not read that article, nor have I ever heard the book. Unless it's on the internet somewhere it's not really that easy. I'd have to locate a copy of the book somewhere, and for 2 pages I'm not convinced the effort is worthwhile.

Ok, I'll try to lay it out all as plain as possible so there is no possibility that I'll be misconstrued.

Basically, what Jamie said is what I believe in. God is omniscient, therefore he knows everything that will result from the way that he makes you. Suppose God knows that if he makes somebody predisposed to becoming addicted to drgus, that person will become a crack addict at age 16, and kill people for his habit by age 18. Suppose God creates that person with that property anyways. God could have created the person differently, in a way that would not result in him becoming a crack head murderer, but he created him that way anyways. God is not responsible for this persons actions?

To me, the only way that Free Will exists, is that God either blocked himself from knowing for certain how this person would turn out, so that he did not know that he was making the person into a crackhead murderer, or that God wishes the person would not be a crackhead murderer, but makes himself not omnipotent, so that he lacks the power to prevent the person from becoming a crack head murderer (sort of like real life parents, who may encourage, teach, and punish children, but ultimately must some day face the fact that their children will do whatever they want regardless)

Or Free Will could exist with God being the way he is, just that God did not create the universe but instead just passively observes it.

See the thing that Theists like to say is that Free Will and Evil are compatible with the Omnimax God because the Omnimax god chooses not to act. This completely overlooks the fact that the Omnimax God either did not create the universe, or he ALREADY HAS ACTED. This is like saying that I drop a cement block from 100 feet directly above your head, but that I am not really responsible when it crushes your skull like a melon, because failing to act (byshouting a warning) does not necessarily imply that I am responsible. Guess what. It does when I'M the one that dropped the block in the first place, and Christians everywhere agree that God did.

stretch

Believe it or not Nic, I wasn't trying to build a straw man. I think that there are some good arguments out there against an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, creator god ... but I also think that you were going off on the wrong track to find them. I don't think enough steps ahead to be good at 'trapping' people into a corner ...

The book I recommended is good for anybody that is interested in paradoxes. Having a bit of a math background helps for some of the paradoxes, but not for all of them.


Nevertheless, I do not think you can make a strong argument against free will with only omniscience and creation as the starting points of the argument.

"Knowing" what choices somebody will make is not the same as forcing them to make those choices. And I never said that God does not have to take ultimate responsibility for creating the type of world that he decided to create. If there's anyone out there operating under full information, it would be God.