Turn or burn isn't freewill.
? What?
This is from the guy who writes on his blog:
"God belief is like a thought virus which sets up residence within our minds. It feeds on emotional insecurities, fear of the unknown, fear of death, psychological insecurities and our all encompassing egotistical states."
"Turn or burn" means "repent or go to hell." The first comment is typical atheist muddleheaded thinking. It's common for atheists to claim that free will isn't really free will if there is a real possibility of eternal damnation for those who freely choose to reject God and His love. Of course what that amounts to is the assertion that only if our choices have no possible negative consequences would we really have free will.
Dave, thanks for this detailed and educated response. Very well done. I've gotten a lot of negative responses to what I wrote at a discussion board. So you are in good company. I may be the odd man out on this one.
Two things. 1) Check the dates of the quotes from people who say that the Logical Problem of Evil (LPOE) is dead against the new articles and books that defend it, and you'll see it isn't dead. Those who say it is dead mostly wrote before the year 2000.
After Kant it was said that the ontological argument was dead, too. But it revives itself every once in-a-while, especially with Malcolhm, Hartshorne, and Plantinga.
2) You quoted the scholars who admitted that their versions don't provide insurmountable problems for theists, as if they didn't present LPOE at all. They did. And you know it. So it appears to me you think it's not considered a LPOE unless it decisively refutes theism. That's an impossible standard for any Logical argument, for at this point these scholars are speaking about what convinces others that they are right. For an argument to be convincing is quite another thing than for it to be sound.
The Ontological argument, for instance, may be sound. But even if it is, it doesn't convince skeptics, for even if one cannot show why it is wrong, the skeptic can merely say it is based upon a premise others don't accept. It's based upon Occidental, not Oriental conceptions of God, so even if the reasoning is correct, it also proves oriental conceptions of God exist, and also that an evil supreme Being exists.
Dave,
Thanks for inviting me to comment on your post. You may notice that my activity at the Debunking site is virtually nil these days. I still write at my own blog, but I have grown rather weary and cynical over time in my interactions with apologists.
"typical atheist muddleheaded thinking" from Jordan above epitomizes the sorts of snipes that have calloused me against thinking that any real conversation or progress takes place in such "dialogues". Contrariwise, I am learning a lot on my own, and having good face-to-face discussions with theists.
On topic, I have been meaning to finish a draft post about the problem of evil for some time.
Suffice it to say that I attempt to break it down like this -- moral freedom which exonerates God from allowing evil is an illusion:
i) The will cannot choose to act upon that which it does not know
ii) The knowledge of a creature is determined by God - experiences, senses, and revelation
iii) The limits of action are twofold -- a) what the will can choose among its options; b) and what the person can physically accomplish
iv) Apropos (b), God sets the limits of human physical freedom by their bodily functions, their environment, their resources, etc.
v) Therefore, from the top to bottom, we see the crucial consideration of how God limits "freedom", from the very knowledge that the will sifts through to choose, to the will itself choosing among options which are available to it, to the creature being able to act upon that which it has chosen
I would also say it is important to flesh out the nature of what is "evil" and what is "good", and why the punishments are what they are -- whether arbitrary or subject to an objective sense of justice that God refers to.
"God belief is like a thought virus which sets up residence within our minds. It feeds on emotional insecurities, fear of the unknown, fear of death, psychological insecurities and our all encompassing egotistical states."
This the so-called "meme-theory". I think it was firts proposed by militant atheist Richard Dawkins. To be fair, he seems to have abandoned it because ultimately it doesn't satisfy because who gets to be the authority that decides what is a meme and what isn't? That is, how do we know that the belief that the "God belief is like a thought virus..." isn't itself a thought virus?
The turn or burn comment as someone else pointed out, is the idea that God is extorting us by suggesting worship him or burn in Hell. This has never bothered me in the least because just as I don't think I am being extorted by water because I must drink it or die, I don't feel extorted by God, the source and orgin of life, if I have to depend on him or die.
Dave,
The problem for anyone seeking to form an atheological argument is that there is no universally accepted concept of a theos. To what concept should any argument be applied? Can any one argument apply to the God of process theologians, open theists, Arminians, Calvinists, Roman Catholics, etc.? Each of these concepts are so very different that I could not imagine any atheological argument being broad enough to cover all of them.
So, does the strong logical argument from evil prove there is no God? Perhaps, it proves that a particular concept of God is untenable, but it does not cover every concept of God imaginable. The God of process theologians and open theists, for example, is completely immune. Reformed believers, seem to reinterpret the idea of evil; so their concept of God appears safe.
Maybe if there was one concept of God and of Christianity universally held, atheological arguments would be more convincing. As it stands, however, arguments can only be directed at particular concepts of God that are not universally held. The free will defense, as exapologist mentions, may be conclusive for non-theologically conservative Christians (who are also not process theologians), but may be less so for other concepts of God.
For what that is worth.
"i) The will cannot choose to act upon that which it does not know"
Sure it can. People make choices in the absence of adequate knowledge all the time. Usually that means they make a bad choice, but it doesn't mean they didn't make a choice.
"ii) The knowledge of a creature is determined by God - experiences, senses, and revelation"
Wrong. God creates the intellect, but He does not determine the contents of the intellect. Making it possible for an intellect to exist and to function is not the same thing as determining an intellect's knowledge.
"iii) The limits of action are twofold -- a) what the will can choose among its options; b) and what the person can physically accomplish"
Again, this does not mean we do not have the ability to choose among the options that we are presented with in life.
"iv) Apropos (b), God sets the limits of human physical freedom by their bodily functions, their environment, their resources, etc."
Limits on the human will are not contradictory to the existence of the human will. The idea that just because I lack the "freedom" to choose to jump off a cliff without my body splattering to bits upon impact means I don't really have free will is quite simply wrong. It's just silly, and it baffles me that people who fancy themselves to be rationalists can be so muddled in their thinking that they find that line of reasoning at all compelling. But that's the kind of thinking behind "turn or burn isn't freewill."
"I would also say it is important to flesh out the nature of what is 'evil' and what is 'good', and why the punishments are what they are -- whether arbitrary or subject to an objective sense of justice that God refers to."
Well, in a truly atheistic/materialistic worldview, there really isn't any "good" or "evil" per se, only things that are convenient or inconvenient, things that are pleasurable or painful, things I like or don't like.
As for punishments, in the Christian view they could neither be arbitrary nor be subject to an objective sense of justice to which God refers. They couldn't be arbitrary because moral arbitrariness is incompatible with a God who is all-good, and God couldn't "refer to" a sense of justice because that implies that there is something outside of God, over and above Him, that determines right from wrong, whereas the Christian God IS the objective sense of justice. God does not have to obey any moral law since He is Himself goodness and morality -- the moral law originates in Him.
It does absolutely no good at all to have free will and not also have the ability to exercise it. Our free will is limited by our age, race, gender, mental capacity, financial ability, geographical placement, and historical location to do whatever we want. I could not be a world-class athlete even if I wanted to, for instance. Therefore, we do not have as much free will as people think. We are limited by our genetic makeup and our social environment in what we can do with our free choices. Therefore, to say free will is such a good thing, as Andrea Weisberger argues, “we should possess it perfectly.” [Suffering Belief: Evil and the Anglo-American Defense of Theism (Peter Lang, 1999), p. 165]. But we don’t. Perhaps Daniel's point is that if free will is used to explain some of the intense suffering in this world when we already have limited choices anyway, then there should be no objection to God further limiting our choices when we seek to cause intense suffering. The theist believes God can do this just as he purportedly did when he hardened Pharaoh’s heart against Moses.
". . . then there should be no objection to God further limiting our choices when we seek to cause intense suffering."
But this is not an objection to God's existence. It's an objection to God allowing us to suffer and to impose suffering. We cannot know why God allows one instance of suffering while preventing another instance of suffering, but we can know that His allowing suffering is not incompatible with His perfect goodness. That is, we can know that it doesn't prove He isn't good.
John Loftus wrote:
"So it appears to me you think it's not considered a LPOE unless it decisively refutes theism. That's an impossible standard for any Logical argument, for at this point these scholars are speaking about what convinces others that they are right."
It all comes down to the nature of the argument. If it is to show that theism by definition is fundamentally illogical and self-defeating (as I understand the classical LPOE to assert, and what Oppy vehemently denied in my excerpt), then it either demonstrates this or not. If it does, theism has insuperable problems, but if it doesn't, then it is a failure.
The very structure and form of the argument appears to make it an all-or-nothing proposition. But I suppose you could make the argument and qualify it on other grounds of plausibility, questionable / not-indubitable premises, etc., and acknowledge that the theist may very well be able to find ways out of it. Gale and Oppy look like they are well aware of its limitations.
I think, then, that one could still make the argument, but if it doesn't succeed in refuting theism altogether, then I think it is greatly weakened and/or simply a clever variant of what in the end comes down to an evidential or more purely emotional argument from evil.
The premises deal with "what God would or should do" and of course, that is always a tricky matter to ascertain and theorize about. Christians have revelation to help determine such ultimately inexplicable questions, but atheists have nothing other than their own minds and speculations (which I have always found presumptuous to the extreme: as if they know how God - if He exists - would or should act).
Since it purports to be a critique of internal Christian logic, and that view contains revelation, the critique must also take into account revelation. otherwise it is not really critiquing Christian philosophy as it is: in all its fullness. It's irrelevant whether the athesit accepts revelation or not, since LPOE is directed towards the supposed incoherence and inconsistency of the Christian view (just as the corresponding "problem of good" takes on atheist internal incoherence).
Thus, I tackle that deeper epistemological / metaphysical presuppositional problem in some of my treatments of the larger issue. But I've had difficulty getting anyone to talk much about that.
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for your candor and thoughtful contribution to the discussion.
In a nutshell, I have responded, I think, to this sort of objection that you mention by noting that an eternal, self-existent God cannot (by definition) make creatures that are also eternal, self-existent, omnipotent, omniscient, etc.
Therefore, the creature, right off the bat, is limited and flawed (compared to what God is like). It cannot be otherwise, for even God is subject to the laws of contradiction, and even His omnipotence is necessarily qualified by those.
In the end I think it is pretty straightforward: the creature is -- in the scheme of things; ontologically -- lesser to its Creator; thus, subject to that same Creator. In that situation, the creature (much like an infant and its parents) can either acknowledge its self-evident ontological inferiority or foolishly rebel against it.
Obviously, Christians believe that the latter occurred, and we call that the fall of man, and consider that it is in some way a corporate rebellion (encapsulated in a semi-mythological [i.e., in literary form] yet historical way [these events actually happened in some form] in the story of Adam and Eve).
Now, one can argue that freedom is impossible for a non-omniscient, non-omnipotent, non-eternal being, but I think that is barking up the wrong tree. Of course freedom of will and action is possible; it is simply inherently limited by the attribute of being created.
Otherwise, our actions are meaningless on the grounds that we don't know everything. I believe that is an apparent reductio ad absurdum, and so I reject it and again assert that we have freedom of will and action, while granting that it is limited by our nature as finite creatures (or, for the atheist, simply finite and non-omniscient).
I deal with these root issues in my paper:
Christian Replies to the Argument From Evil (Free Will Defense): Is God Malevolent, Weak, or Non-Existent Because of the Existence of Evil and Suffering?
http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ124.HTM
Hi interlocutor,
The problem for anyone seeking to form an atheological argument is that there is no universally accepted concept of a theos. To what concept should any argument be applied? Can any one argument apply to the God of process theologians, open theists, Arminians, Calvinists, Roman Catholics, etc.? Each of these concepts are so very different that I could not imagine any atheological argument being broad enough to cover all of them.
This is exaggerated. There is a broadly accepted theistic notion of God that unites virtually all Christians, as well as Jews, and to a great extent, Muslims as well. The differences between the different Christian views on God are greatly exaggerated, and misunderstood among Christians themselves.
The process theologians and open theists are the ones who have departed from the overwhelming norm. I wouldn't waste any time on them because their view is so ioncoherent and indefensible in the first place. It's simply not historic Christianity or even historic theism, so why should anyone waste time playing around with it. Let these folks play their own games about what they think is "God."
So, does the strong logical argument from evil prove there is no God? Perhaps, it proves that a particular concept of God is untenable, but it does not cover every concept of God imaginable. The God of process theologians and open theists, for example, is completely immune.
Sure, because it is a nonsensical conception to begin with, and nonsense is not subject to logical analysis.
Reformed believers, seem to reinterpret the idea of evil; so their concept of God appears safe.
All Christians have to struggle with the problem of evil. As a Catholic, I think the Reformed apologetic on this score is less compelling, but again, the difference is not as great as often supposed, and the Catholic (like any Christian or theist) has more than enough grappling to do with evil.
Maybe if there was one concept of God and of Christianity universally held, atheological arguments would be more convincing. As it stands, however, arguments can only be directed at particular concepts of God that are not universally held.
The consensus on what is meant by "God" is so broad, historically and philosophically, that I think this is a trifle.
The free will defense, as exapologist mentions, may be conclusive for non-theologically conservative Christians (who are also not process theologians), but may be less so for other concepts of God.
I also protest against the assumption that the free will defense only works for less theologically-conservative or non-orthodox Christians. It certainly works for my Catholic view. I see no inherent difficulties in it for Catholic orthodoxy. It may be difficult to reconcile with some extreme versions of Calvinism, such as supralapsarianism (where God predestines even the fall of man), but not all, I don't think.
After all, Alvin Plantinga is
. . . himself a Calvinist, and a rather conservative one, from what I can see.
John Loftus wrote:
Therefore, to say free will is such a good thing, as Andrea Weisberger argues, “we should possess it perfectly.” [Suffering Belief: Evil and the Anglo-American Defense of Theism (Peter Lang, 1999), p. 165]. But we don’t.
I dealt with this above. I think it is a reductio ad absurdum: "either we are omnipotent and omniscient like God, or we possess no free will whatever, or none in any meaningful sense, or none to the extent that we can be considered responsible or accountable for our actions and viewpoints."
I think this is clearly untrue. All it suggests to me is not a logical or moral conundrum or that God may therefore, not exist, but rather, that we are simply upset that we are creatures, limited by definition. It's a variant of the good ole sin of human pride and overinflated self-importance.
That, in turn, gets back to the Christian conception of the fall of man, or corporate rebellion against God. We want to be God. We want to have His power and knowledge and ultra-freedom. So did Satan, we believe. This was the root of evil.
But none of that disproves that we have enough freedom of will to choose for or against God (i.e., for obedience or rebellion) or for good or evil. We certainly do. And the Christian believes that God can (indeed, must) provide grace in order for us to do the good that we otherwise could not do on our own.
But the rub is that we have to follow Him and be willing to do His will. Lots of folks have a problem with that. To call that a lack of freedom is a cop-out. It is a lack of obedience and a rejection of the humanness-grounded-in-God that is how we were created to be. It's a denial of ontological reality and morality-grounded-in-God.
Sorry to sound so "Christian" but what do you expect?! 
I'm not ashamed of it, and I think (broadly speaking) it is thoroughly defensible, even on purely philosophical grounds.
Dave,
I don't think we really disagree. I think of the concept of God like I think of descriptions of possible worlds. Usually, "possible worlds" are described as a list of characteristics that differ in one or more details. This is what I'm suggesting is the case when it comes to the concept of God.
So, I could ask two different Christians to write a list about what God is like. There will, of course, be many similarities between the lists of most Christians (although perhaps not so many similarities between process theologians and open theists, whom you brushed off very quickly--I will leave the defenses of positions to those who actually hold them though).
But there will also be a lot of SIGNIFICANT differences in most of these lists.
So, imagine that I ask a Reformed believe to tell me about God. They might respond:
"He created the world in such a way that humans would fall so that he could show his glory by choosing to save some and damn others."
But, then, I ask a typical Evangelical, and that believer says:
"He created the world to have fellowship with all humanity and was saddened that they fell away and hopes that all people will choose to follow him."
Now, this kind of difference is not trivial and would have serious implications for any atheological argument. But this is exactly the kind of difference one discovers anytime they attempt to form an atheological argument. That argument never covers every concept of God.
I think what you had in mind is similarities like, immaterial, loving, powerful, free, etc. Of course, I agree that most concepts of God includes these. But even here, people mean different things by these words. There are very different interpretations of "omniscience," for instance. These interpretations are not trivial.
My point is that the strong logical argument from evil will be devestating for some concepts of God and will not touch others.
Secondly, Exapologist's point in the post that you cited is that conservative Christians usually believe that angels are free but never sin. This, then, is a counterexample of Plantinga's claim that in any actualized world, a free creature will go wrong at least once.
Interlocutor has a point with most of his post. Not with last paragraph because angels can sin(and did sin) if I am correct.
First of all, I don't buy Plantinga's breezy assumption that rebellion and sin is well-nigh inevitable, and on the basis you note. I think that is a weakness in his argument that can possibly be exploited by the atheist.
But I don't think that this overthrows his hypothesis, because all he had to do was show that God and evil were logically compatible (or that it is not nonsensical to assert this), and he clearly did so.
Nor was it all that hard to do so, I think. His contribution was that he did it in (typically for him) such an extremely clever and engaging way, incorporating modal logic.
As to your main point, I still disagree. Working through how God's providence and sovereignty and predestination operate falls more into the category of God's actions or operations, not His nature. All orthodox Christians agree that God is sovereign and even that He predestines (at least the saved or the elect).
So it is actually an agreement in the main but a disagreement about the far more complex and inexplicable particulars of application of the agreed-upon characteristics.
The Calvinist falsely thinks that Arminians and Catholics and Orthodox deny God's sovereignty, but that is because they (very often) incorrectly understand their theological opponents and wrongly assume that all possible notions of "sovereignty" are restricted to their own conceptions. Believe me, I know this from much first-hand interaction.
This is both shortsighted and uncharitable towards fellow Christians. Is it any surprise, then, that many of these same Calvinists don't even think Catholics ARE Christians?
But this sort of inter-Christian ignorance doesn't affect the atheist arguments, because, rightly-understood, we all accept pretty much the same God.
That's why philosophers have a pretty good grip on what is in mind when the word "God" is thrown out in a theistic context. It's foolish for some to quibble that the word is meaningless or devoid of rationally-construed content. That's just playing games and (for lack of a better description of what I have in mind) "philosophical masturbation," if you will.
Stefan,
Plantinga argues that EVERY free creature will go wrong at least once, not that every KIND of free creature will go wrong at least once. For his argument to work as stated, you would have to argue that EVERY angel went wrong at least once.
Dave,
I don't buy Plantinga's breezy assumption that rebellion and sin is well-nigh inevitable, and on the basis you note.
Exactly what do you think Plantinga's argument is, then? As far as I understand it, trans-world depravity is the very heart of his argument. I could very likely be wrong, but if I am, I don't know what his argument is without this.
we all accept pretty much the same God.
I guess we simply disagree on this. If I ask one person, "What is God like?" and ask another the same question, I get different answers. Even if they use the same words, they have different meanings in mind. What can I say?
I don't want to get into all the intricacies of Plantinga's argument. Too much work and too much else to do. I think what I was driving at was the distinction between mere hypothetical or possible worlds and actualities vs. necessities of actual behavior.
It could be that I have misunderstood that part of Plantinga's argument, too. It wouldn't be the first time anyone has done so. Apparently, according to "exapologist" many atheist philosophers widely misunderstood his argument for some 15 years, so I don't want to be too firm in my critiques.It was just an off-the-cuff statement of mine.
Thanks Interlocutor. That was a detail that I missed.
Plantinga implicitly concedes that there is no necessary, omniscient, omnibenevolent God.
A necessary God exists in all logically possible worlds.
But right from the start, Plantinga concedes that there are many logically possible worlds that are incompatible with the existence of an omnibenevolent, omnipotent God.
His aim is to find *one* logically possible world where an omnibenevolent God can exist.
But if his God is a necessary being, then Plantinga must show that *all* logically possible worlds are compatible with the existence of an omnibenevolent God.
Plantinga can't even attempt to do that.
Is the following a logical argument?
1) My memory and senses tell me that almost everybody has two legs
2) Therefore, almost everybody does have two legs.
Presumably, Plantinga would say no , that is not a logical argument.
It is logically possible that my memory and senses are mistaken.
Does refuting the logical problem of legs mean that it is now rational to believe that Homo sapiens is a one-legged species?
Or , as Mackie said, Plantinga has just missed the point with his 'refutation' of the logical problem of evil, which is an argument at least as strong as the claim that I can *logically* conclude that peole have two legs, simly by looking at them.
You maybe right that the logical "Problem of Evil" has lost some of its prestige, if you will, but it is no less robust and well-supported. Quentin Smith's formulation and Richard La Croix's formulation of the POE have yet to be successfully refuted - each having successfully destroyed or side-stepped (La Croix) the free-will defense. So, it might me a welcome piece of propaganda for some to claim the the logical POE has been successfully refuted but it's just that - propaganda.
Also, the evidentiary POE has never been successfully answered.
Smith's formulation of the POE is 10 years old. Surely, if there was a successful refutation of his version, any theist would have been able to do it. I'm surprised that you didn't include his version or La Croix's in your estimation before declaring the logical POE discredited.
I'm sorry, but it seems that Dr. Loftus is correct that your article is simply propaganda.
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