Argument from Nonbelief

[Spenser]

I've been following the debate going on at TheologyOnline.com and then being battle-royally disappointed with the pastors weak rebuttals followed by the hemorrhoid flare up of the peanut gallery over there showing there overwhelming support for a series of non-arguments. Therefore I thought some of the real arguments might be better discussed here: (Note: From Zakath's posts) Debate Here (http://www.theologyonline.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=7709)


Argument from Nonbelief


This simple argument can be used in a variety of forms to demonstrate the illogic of belief in any deity. I will limit this argument to the Christian deity.

Before we can get to the argument, a few definitions are helpful. First, we can define "the gospel message" very simply as the following:

a) There exists a being who rules the entire universe.

b) That being has a son whom he sent to be the savior of humanity.


This high level description attempts to avoid all denominational entanglements by stating clearly only two main defining points. Another definition, the "salvation situation" is also essential to understanding this argument. In this argument, we'll call this "situation S" – this salvation situation is one in which all, or almost all, humans since the time of Jesus of Nazareth coming to believe both propositions before their physical death. Using these definitions, the ANB can be formulated as follows:

1. If the God of Christianity were to exist, then he would have caused situation S to exist.

2. But situation S does not exist.

Therefore, the God of Christianity does not exist.

The power of this simple argument lies in it's reliance on the nature of the Christian deity. There are a variety of ways we could conceive in which God could have brought about the existence of situation S. He might have spoken to humans worldwide in thunderous tones or written his message clearly across the skies. He appears to have done neither. He might even have used more covert activities including sending angels disguised as humans (something that Christians assure us is possible, based on their scriptures) to preach to people so persuasively that they would believe the gospel. Additionally, he could have protected the Bible from defects possibly by guiding the writing, copying, and translating so that it would contain no unclear or ambiguous writings, or errors of any sort. It might contain very clear and precise prophecies that are amazingly fulfilled, then documented by neutral observers and widely disseminated. If that occurred, people reading the scriptures would be much more likely to infer that everything it contains is true, including the gospel message, making it more believable. Since none of these situations has occurred, this leads us to another question.

That is the question of whether God actually wants everyone to believe in the gospel. According to I Timothy 2:4 (NIV) God, "wants all men to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth." In context, we can presume that "truth" here includes the gospel message. If this is true, then God must want situation S. Other scriptures supporting the idea that the Christian God wants situation S to exist include those commanding people to disseminate (Mt. 28:19-20, Mk 16:15-16) and believe (I Jn 3:23) the gospel. The gospels and epistle are replete with passage upon passage lending credence to the idea that God desires situation S to exist. Thus, premise 1 is true.

This brings us to premise #2. Well, premise #2 is empirical truth; after almost 23 centuries passing since the introduction of the gospel the vast majority of the human race does not believe in both propositions of the Christian gospel by the time of their deaths. While Christianity may claim to be the single most widespread religion (about 32%, according to the World Almanac and U.S. Census Bureau - 2 billion Christians out of 6.3 billion humans), premise #2 is still true.

Since both premises are demonstrably true and the conclusion logically derives from the two premises; the logical conclusion is that God does not exist.

[Spenser]

No takers on this one huh?

[Taamalus]

I am new here, and no real debater just very opinionated. if too primitive just ignore. ;)

First
a) There exists a being who rules the entire universe.

b) That being has a son whom he sent to be the savior of humanity

Point a is invalid. There is no proof of such an entity. They still need to fight it out, Satan and Jesus that is, as per Revelation. B is also invalid. God is three in one. What was sacrificed was the Son of Man.


As an Xian I would respond, people living before and after are saved through Christ by default of his sacrifice. Before and after the crucifixion you are judged by your works, as per Catechism. (Keep in mind, protestant can not argue such, since they believe in a free lunch)

===

Next
1. If the God of Christianity were to exist, then he would have caused situation S to exist.

2. But situation S does not exist.

(Using the Bible is a tricky undertaking.) With the Bible I can show that situation S actually exists. Many people on planet earth follow Christ. As Christ said most would not follow him. Therefore situation S exist, as per the prophecy of Christ. God's will is being done as we speak.

In short - I think using doctrines to disprove God is as risky as trying to prove God.

[SignOfTheCross]

1. If the God of Christianity were to exist, then he would have caused situation S to exist.

2. But situation S does not exist.

Premise #2 is faulty because points a) & b) satisfy situation S

a) There exists a being who rules the entire universe.

80% (adherents.com) of the worlds population profess belief in a deity.

b) That being has a son whom he sent to be the savior of humanity

At least 50% of the worlds population (inc. Islam, Christianity, Hinduism etc) know (or know of) the Gospel message.

Peace,
SOTC

[Wayne Delia]

Originally posted by SignOfTheCross
1. If the God of Christianity were to exist, then he would have caused situation S to exist.

2. But situation S does not exist.

Premise #2 is faulty because points a) & b) satisfy situation S

"Situation S" was defined as "one in which all, or almost all, humans since the time of Jesus of Nazareth coming to believe both propositions before their physical death." So, you need to establish "all, or almost all." Let's see how well you did.
a) There exists a being who rules the entire universe.

80% (adherents.com) of the worlds population profess belief in a deity.While I think that's a fairly liberal estimate, let's go with that number, as it turns out to be irrelevant to the conclusion.

b) That being has a son whom he sent to be the savior of humanity

At least 50% of the worlds population (inc. Islam, Christianity, Hinduism etc) know (or know of) the Gospel message.While I think that's a relatively conservative estimate, you've equivocated from "coming to believe both propositions" into "are aware of both propositions." There's a significant difference between being aware of a proposition and believing the proposition. For example, I am an atheist, but I "know of" the Gospel message. (I'm probably still on the rolls of the Roman Catholic church, having never been officially excommunicated, but to count me as a Catholic believer would be a ludicrous error.)

So, the idea was to show "all, or almost all, humans since the time of Jesus of Nazareth coming to believe both propositions before their physical death." That would be 100%, or greater than say 90% of people *believe* the proposition. You've asserted that at most, 50% of the world's population (not necessarily all theists) either believe in or are merely aware of the proposition.

You've fallen significantly short of your goal. Your assertions a) and b) do NOT satisfy situation S. They may convince you, but perhaps your level of tolerance of evidence is much lower than normal.

WMD

[bd-from-kg]

Spenser:

1. Actually this argument can be made considerably stronger. The real cruncher is not merely that a great number of people do not believe, but that the evidence for God’s existence is so weak that nonbelief is rational. If God really wants us to believe in Him, why doesn’t He provide us with convincing evidence of His existence? After all, if I had a pet toad who could talk and wanted people to believe it, I wouldn’t just arrange to have a book published anonymously, in circumstances such that its origin is a complete mystery, claiming that I had such a toad. I’d put that toad on public display at every opportunity. I’d get it on national television. I’d make sure that it was videotaped talking on numerous occasions. I’d invite skeptics to examine the toad under completely open, transparent conditions and allow them to do every possible test to eliminate any possibility of trickery or fraud. If God wants people to believe in Him, why doesn’t He do stuff like that? In fact, He can do a lot better than I could do since He’s omnipotent.

2. It gets worse. Supposedly a nonbeliever is eventually going to suffer enormously (or at the very least, lose out on the infinite boon of spending eternity in Heaven). This could only be just if he were given a fair chance to believe. But what constitutes a “fair” chance? Well, let’s take the notorious unbeliever Smith for example. God knew when He created Smith how much evidence he would need to believe, or more generally, under what conditions he would believe, and He could have chosen to create Smith in a world and under circumstances in which these conditions would occur. Since He didn’t, one can only conclude that He intended and arranged for Smith to be a disbeliever, and therefore intended and arranged that he would spend an eternity in Hell. Yes, in a sense Smith’s disbelief may be the result of free choices that he made, but if God knew that he would have made different free choices – choices that would have resulted in his salvation - under different conditions and nonetheless subjected him to these conditions, He intended and arranged that Smith make these free, damning, choices rather than the other free, saving, choices that he would have made under other conditions.

The only other possibility is that Smith would have disbelieved under any conditions whatsoever. If so, since disbelief would be plainly, monumentally irrational under some possible conditions, God must have created Smith to be hopelessly, congenitally irrational, to the point of being mad. But if Smith is totally, irredeemably irrational, how can he be responsible for the choices he makes? How can it be just to punish a madman for being mad? In particular, how can it be just for the very being who made him to be a madman to punish him for being mad?

[Buddrow_Wilson]

Originally posted by bd-from-kg
Spenser:

1. Actually this argument can be made considerably stronger. The real cruncher is not merely that a great number of people do not believe, but that the evidence for God’s existence is so weak that nonbelief is rational. If God really wants us to believe in Him, why doesn’t He provide us with convincing evidence of His existence? After all, if I had a pet toad who could talk and wanted people to believe it, I wouldn’t just arrange to have a book published anonymously, in circumstances such that its origin is a complete mystery, claiming that I had such a toad. I’d put that toad on public display at every opportunity. I’d get it on national television. I’d make sure that it was videotaped talking on numerous occasions. I’d invite skeptics to examine the toad under completely open, transparent conditions and allow them to do every possible test to eliminate any possibility of trickery or fraud. If God wants people to believe in Him, why doesn’t He do stuff like that? In fact, He can do a lot better than I could do since He’s omnipotent.

2. It gets worse. Supposedly a nonbeliever is eventually going to suffer enormously (or at the very least, lose out on the infinite boon of spending eternity in Heaven). This could only be just if he were given a fair chance to believe. But what constitutes a “fair” chance? Well, let’s take the notorious unbeliever Smith for example. God knew when He created Smith how much evidence he would need to believe, or more generally, under what conditions he would believe, and He could have chosen to create Smith in a world and under circumstances in which these conditions would occur. Since He didn’t, one can only conclude that He intended and arranged for Smith to be a disbeliever, and therefore intended and arranged that he would spend an eternity in Hell. Yes, in a sense Smith’s disbelief may be the result of free choices that he made, but if God knew that he would have made different free choices – choices that would have resulted in his salvation - under different conditions and nonetheless subjected him to these conditions, He intended and arranged that Smith make these free, damning, choices rather than the other free, saving, choices that he would have made under other conditions.

The only other possibility is that Smith would have disbelieved under any conditions whatsoever. If so, since disbelief would be plainly, monumentally irrational under some possible conditions, God must have created Smith to be hopelessly, congenitally irrational, to the point of being mad. But if Smith is totally, irredeemably irrational, how can he be responsible for the choices he makes? How can it be just to punish a madman for being mad? In particular, how can it be just for the very being who made him to be a madman to punish him for being mad?

Nice. I can't imagine it being put more plainly. Unfortunately, rationality doesn't seem to be a big motivator for the religious.

[luvluv]

1. Actually this argument can be made considerably stronger. The real cruncher is not merely that a great number of people do not believe, but that the evidence for God’s existence is so weak that nonbelief is rational. If God really wants us to believe in Him, why doesn’t He provide us with convincing evidence of His existence? After all, if I had a pet toad who could talk and wanted people to believe it, I wouldn’t just arrange to have a book published anonymously, in circumstances such that its origin is a complete mystery, claiming that I had such a toad. I’d put that toad on public display at every opportunity. I’d get it on national television. I’d make sure that it was videotaped talking on numerous occasions. I’d invite skeptics to examine the toad under completely open, transparent conditions and allow them to do every possible test to eliminate any possibility of trickery or fraud. If God wants people to believe in Him, why doesn’t He do stuff like that? In fact, He can do a lot better than I could do since He’s omnipotent.

I'd agree that on some level both belief and disbelief is rational. I'd argue that the case with the frog is not analogical to rational beliefs because the case you would be presenting with your traveling frog tour would be not be simply rational it would be functionally undeniable. Are you suggesting that if God really exists that His existence should be undeniable?

I would argue that in the interests of free will God's existence HAS to be rationally deniable, and that God's existence, if it was undeniable APART FROM a willing emotional commitment to God, would have the effect of reducing moral decisions to pragmatic, self-interested calculations. One could imagine a scenario in which one would become a Christian not because of conviction of one's own sin or for a desire for communion with a loving Creator, but simply to gain Heaven. Such a knowledge would turn the universe into a situation resembling post Constantine Rome, and with the same effects. Because the awards and punishments for serving or not serving God are so severe, it is impossible that they would not form a more significant factor in conversion than mere conviction of sin or willingness to enter into a loving relationship with God IF those awards and punishments were undeniable facts.

I would argue that the undeniable presence of such incredible incentives and disincentives would render free will practically impossible. And the knowledge of such incentives and disincentives is inherent in your definition of justice: for what good would it do to know of God's existence if one did not know the relative consequences of following Him and not following Him? As such the question of "why is God hidden?" reduces to the question of "why does God value free will?" The consequences of God's not being hidden, followed to their logical implications, involves a world in which there is not any, or at least any SIGNIFIGANT, free will for anyone with a sense of self-preservation. As many have correctly observed on this forum, a wolrd in which God shows up at your doorstep, shows you the splendors of heaven and the depths of hell and says "Choose." is not really offering you much of a choice. But this is exactly what a world in which God was not hidden would entail.

The Bible, for one, is emphatic that God will not accept conversions not entered into for right motives. Those who entered the Catholic faith for social and political advancement in post Constantinian Rome, for example, will not be regarded as having into a relationship with God. (Verily, they have their reward.) In precisely the same way, God would not be likely to accept conversion UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

God certainly does want everyone to come to a saving knowlege of Christ, but he wants them to come to this knowledge for the right reasons, and he wants them to commit to Him for the right reasons. God wants people to love Him for Himself, not for what he can do to them or for them. As such, a relationship to God (like all relationships) can only be entered into from a position of trust and with the prospect of risk. Anything less would be unreal, and it must be remembered that God is, fundamentally, a PERSON. However, He is a person in the unique position that the basic fact of His existence, if undeniable, would make real relationships nearly impossible (at least in the initial stages).

2. It gets worse. Supposedly a nonbeliever is eventually going to suffer enormously (or at the very least, lose out on the infinite boon of spending eternity in Heaven). This could only be just if he were given a fair chance to believe. But what constitutes a “fair” chance? Well, let’s take the notorious unbeliever Smith for example. God knew when He created Smith how much evidence he would need to believe, or more generally, under what conditions he would believe, and He could have chosen to create Smith in a world and under circumstances in which these conditions would occur.

This suggests that God personally is the creator of the intellectual reality that Smith inhabits. He doesn't. There are millions of other individuals in Smith's world all of whom (under the Christian view) freely contribute to the swirling mass of opinions that help to cement Smith's unbelief. In my own theology, I find it doubtful that God even "created" Smith, or that he decided under what circumstances Smith would be born: that was clearly and evidently the decision of His parents. Even if God in his omniscience knew what they would decide, to know is not the same as to do. If God knew that Smith would be born in the wrong circumstances to promote his believing, how could he stop that except by stopping the free will decisions of his parents to have children when and where they wanted? Thus, the hiddenness question again reduces to the question of free will.

The only other possibility is that Smith would have disbelieved under any conditions whatsoever. If so, since disbelief would be plainly, monumentally irrational under some possible conditions, God must have created Smith to be hopelessly, congenitally irrational, to the point of being mad. But if Smith is totally, irredeemably irrational, how can he be responsible for the choices he makes? How can it be just to punish a madman for being mad? In particular, how can it be just for the very being who made him to be a madman to punish him for being mad?

This view suggests that there is nothing to belief other than rationality, and that emotions and will play no part in belief. I find that view utterly unrealistic, if popular. Clearly, some people don't believe because they don't WANT to believe and some people believe because they WANT to believe. Clearly, this desire to believe or disbelieve in many cases plays a more decisive role in belief (or nonbelief) than the actual arguments or evidence in favor of belief (or nonbelief). That being the case, there are clearly cases in which Smith would have been irrational not to believe consistent with free will, but that would not require Smith to be insane. It would simply require a case where not believing was what Smith DESIRED even over rationality. Does this not happen in your view all the time, except with theists? Do not intelligent, informed theists, in your view, believe because they desire for God to exist more than they desire to be rational? And are they insane? (I've actually seen you hint that they WERE insane, I wonder if you will try to defend this here... as well as explain why you seem to enjoy debating with the insane..)

If this can happen IN FAVOR of a belief, why can this not happen AGAINST a belief without the sacrifice of sanity?

There is a good PDF on this subject on the net here:

http://www.wheaton.edu/Philosophy/Lee%20award%20papers/Wood.PDF

(I know we've had this conversation before, but as I can't find it, I want to have it again.)

[Buddrow_Wilson]

Why, in a world where God's existence is undeniable, would it be so unthinkable that some would still reject him? Would there not be Satan to convince you that your best interests are served through other means? Even if he did exist, his actions as stated in the bible would be enough for me to doubt his morality. God could be undeniable yet vague as to which religion is correct. His making himself known would not negate freewill. At any rate, he would still be able to distinguish those that choose him for the wrong reasons.

The fact that he does not make himself known to me in a way that is convincing, proves to me that he either doesn't exist or that my worship is a non-issue.

[luvluv]

Buddrow Wilson:

Why, in a world where God's existence is undeniable, would it be so unthinkable that some would still reject him?

Some certainly would, and they would be the most honest people in the bunch.

But what of those who accept God FOR THE WRONG REASONS and whom God is still obliged to REJECT?

If a person accepts Christ SOLELY for the enjoyment of Heaven, is God oblidged to accept this conversion? Is salvation merely a matter of signing on the dotted line, or does it require an actual commitment of the heart? And could not the inflated presence of incentives and disincentives prevent a commitment of the heart from taking place, EVEN WHERE ONE WAS POSSIBLE?

That's the real problem. In point of fact, a revelation of God's mere EXISTENCE without any explanation of WHAT KIND OF GOD (personal? pantheistic? theistic?) would be close to no information at all. God could be the God of Spinoza, in which case it would make as much sense to go about as if He doesn't exist. But wouldn't God be just as unjust in that scenario as He is in the one we actually inhabit? If we knew God, but not which God, then how much more just would he be? Very few people in this state of affairs take the option of atheism, so why would removing this one (basically statistically insignifigant) category make God so much more just?

So let's assume that in order to be just, that God has to not only prove that he exists, but the nature of His existence, what must be done to enter into a relationship with Him, and the consequences and rewards for choosing to enter into a relationship with Him and choosing not to.

What if this knowledge PREVENTED the development of a love for God in and of Himself even in those for whom such a love was viable? In short, what if the fear of punishment or the prospect of rewards OBSCURED the reality of God's goodness for those who otherwise would have accepted God from the standpoint of disinterested love? To wit: what about everyone who is NOW a Christian? Would we have made those same commitments, with (hopefully) the right motives if the WRONG motives were present to us and undeniable from the momment we were born? If God is oblidged to REJECT inauthentic conversions, then wouldn't many of us who are PRESENTLY in the faith find ourself in your world OUTSIDE THE FAITH due to the seduction of the riches of heaven and the fear of the terror of hell?

So either we don't know about heaven and hell or Jesus or the true nature of God, which doesn't make God much more just (in that this small bit of knowledge, which most people on the planet acknowledge ANYWAY for the record, would not help us much in avoiding hell and gaining heaven) or we DO know about heaven and hell and Jesus and the true nature of God and therefore the prospect of an authentic relationship with God is for most, if not all people, drastically reduced. And thus, many who WOULD BE and PRESENTALLY ARE saved would be potentially lost in your world.

[luvluv]

The fact that he does not make himself known to me in a way that is convincing

Even if He presented his case to you in a way that was convincing, but which was not undeniable, you would still be in the same boat. Provided you have the ABILITY to deny His existence, or to question His exact nature.

What you seem to be asking is for God's existence to be UNDENIABLE, and that is impossible so long as you have free will.

And again, you are ignoring the fact that to an extent you have to be WILLING to be convinced. It is possible to deny rationality, or certain rational premises, in order to preserve atheism, which for many people (probably most people on this board) is a LIFESTYLE. Abandoning it would cost many people friends, academic prestige, personal relationships, possibly even the prospect of career advancement in some fields. In addition, it might cause them to adopt a moral outlook which could be wildly at odds with certain activities which they presently enjoy. It is easy to see, in such situations, that people would be willing to deny rationality in order to preserve these things. (I know this works both ways, by the way.) This would not require them to be insane, as bd-from-kg suggests, it would merely require them to be irrational in ways totally consistent with the irrationality we all constantly display.

[Buddrow_Wilson]

Luvluv, You make it seem as though every or most christians today are not swayed by the promise of heaven or punishment of hell. Aside from the social benefits of a religious lifestyle, I don't know what other aspect of christianity carries more weight. Lest we forget those who question us without god with "what is stopping you from raping and murdering? You have no fear of judgement or retribution."

[Steven Carr]

Originally posted by luvluv


One could imagine a scenario in which one would become a Christian not because of conviction of one's own sin or for a desire for communion with a loving Creator, but simply to gain Heaven........

The Bible, for one, is emphatic that God will not accept conversions not entered into for right motives. ......



Boy, Pascal's Wager is taking a right hammering here....

I'm surprised that Christians offer up Pascal's Wager when they KNOW that the Bible is emphatic that God will not accept conversions not entered into for right motives. Christians can be very duplicitous sometimes. They know their own Holy Book contradicts their apologetics, yet they keep quiet about it when trying to foster Pascal's Wager on non-believers.

http://www.str.org/free/studies/religion.pdf is a set of Lecture notes by Craig.

Craig writes about Plantinga 'He offers the claim that if God existed He'd want us to know him and provide a means for doing so'.

How does God want all of us to know him if he also wants his very existence to be deniable by all of us?

[Steven Carr]

Originally posted by luvluv

What you seem to be asking is for God's existence to be UNDENIABLE, and that is impossible so long as you have free will.



The existence of George W. Bush is undeniable, hence by your criterion , none of us has free will.

Why does the undeniable existence of Bush leave our free will intact, while the undeniable existence of God would not?

[Godless Wonder]

Let me play "Devil's Advocate." Heh.
(disclaimer, I am an atheist, so I cannot know what xtian's think. (And man, have I tried.) There are undoubtedly those who think as I describe below, and those who do not.)

I suppose the xtian response to the fact that their God has not made his existence obvious in a scientfically measurable way might likely involve quoting Paul:

Cor 001:027 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

Cor 003:019 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.

Cor 004:010 We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised.

And so on.

Basically, the way I read it, you are supposed to suppress your reasonable thinking mind and just submit, and accept it, never mind that it makes no damned sense, believe it anyhow.

For practical purposes, what this means is that often there is quite simply no point in trying to reason with these people. As soon as you are trying to use reason, you have already gone wrong, according to these people.

It is exasperating to realize so many people in the world think this way. I am quite amazed our species has not yet killed itself off.

[bd-from-kg]

luvluv:

You’re right that we’ve had this debate before. But it’s probably time to go through it again. Lots of people now on these boards weren’t here at the time. And it’s remotely possible that a few who were here missed it.

As before, many of my comments are from the standpoint of a hypothetical theist who is puzzled by God’s hiddenness, giving his grounds for rejecting the reasons you suggest. I hope that this doesn’t mislead anyone into thinking that I’m a theist.

I'd agree that on some level both belief and disbelief is rational.

(i) Are you referring to belief in God – i.e., to an omnimax being in general – or to belief in the Christian God? I’d say that belief in God per se might possibly be rational (although disbelief is certainly rational), but that belief in the Christian God is clearly irrational. In any case, if belief and disbelief are both rational, the most rational position is clearly nonbelief – i.e., agnosticism.

Are you suggesting that if God really exists that His existence should be undeniable?

That depends on what you mean by “undeniable”. No matter what the evidence was, it would obviously be possible to deny God’s existence. But it should be irrational to do so. Which is to say that His existence could not be rationally denied. In that sense, yes, His existence should be undeniable.

If God’s existence is not undeniable in this sense, it is possible for a rational person of good will to interpret the evidence in a perfectly objective way and fail to arrive at a belief that He exists. But this failure to believe in God would obviously prevent him from forming the kind of relationship with God required for salvation, and thus, according to standard Christian theology, would result in eternal torment, or at least to his being denied the infinite boon of eternal bliss. This would clearly be unjust. Unfortunately this is exactly the situation we find ourselves in. But since God cannot be unjust, this situation is logically incompatible with God’s existence. So the fact that God’s existence is not undeniable is proof that God does not exist. That’s the argument that you have counter.

I would argue that in the interests of free will God's existence HAS to be rationally deniable...

Are you saying that if God’s existence were undeniable we would not be free to deny God’s existence, and that this would infringe on our freedom to believe or disbelieve in Him? Or are you saying that having unavoidably concluded that God exists, we would then be in a position where we were not truly free to choose whether to love, follow, and obey Him, and that this would be an infringement on our free will?

If you mean the former, all that I can say is that this position is too absurd to be worth debating. So I’ll assume that you mean the latter and proceed on that basis.

... God's existence, if it was undeniable APART FROM a willing emotional commitment to God, would have the effect of reducing moral decisions to pragmatic, self-interested calculations.

Not so.

First, knowing that God exists does not equate to knowing the consequences of choosing to accept and serve Him or the consequences of rejecting Him. There’s no reason why God could not have so arranged things that we would have undeniable evidence of His existence but have no knowledge, or even a suspicion, of the existence of Heaven and Hell.

And the knowledge that God exists, in and of itself, would be very valuable indeed. It would tell us that there is a transcendent moral order; that our intuitions that there are objective moral principles are not illusions, that we are justified in opposing evil and punishing evildoers, that sacrificing our own interests for the sake of others is not foolishness but deep wisdom. It would tell us that there is a transcendent purpose to things, that existence is not absurd, that we are not a kind of cosmic joke. And it would tell us that we ultimately have a choice of transcendent significance to make: to accept God, to love and serve Him, or to reject Him.

You suggest that the mere knowledge that God exists would tell us nothing, since we wouldn’t know what kind of being he is. But that doesn’t make sense. If all that we know about a being is the name someone has given it, we don’t know that that being exists; we know only that some being exists which has been given that name. For example, suppose that someone tells me, “Betty Benson exists”, and I know that he’s a very honest fellow so I justifiably believe him. Can I really be said to know that the girl he’s referring to – the tall, vivacious redhead who likes poetry and dancing but detests practical jokes, etc., whose name happens to be Betty Benson, exists? Of course not. And this is even more true when the being in question is purely abstract, so that all that we can possibly know of it is its qualities.

So the knowledge that God exists would necessarily be knowledge of at least some of His most important qualities. To be meaningful, it would have to include knowledge that He is a Person – i.e., that He has purposes and acts on them; that He takes an interest in all that He has created; that He is perfectly wise and good; that He created us and everything else. This would be enough to tell us all of the things that I listed earlier.

Second, God’s hiding Himself wouldn’t help with the “wrong motive” problem anyway. To see this, let’s assume for the sake of argument that a knowledge of God’s nature necessarily entails knowledge of the consequences of accepting or rejecting Him. And let’s also assume for the sake of argument that these consequences include eternal bliss if one accepts Him and eternal torment if one rejects Him. Then as soon as someone begins to suspect that God might actually exist, he will very quickly come to understand these consequences.

The problem, from your argument’s point of view, is that the strength of the “worthy” and “unworthy” motivations for choosing to serve God both depend on the strength of one’s belief that God exists, and in the same way. Thus we have:

(i) Worthy motive: Serve God out of love of God. Clearly any sane person is going to realize that devoting his life to a nonexistent being would be a ridiculous, foolish waste of time. So he will naturally be hesitant about devoting his life to God unless he’s reasonably sure that God exists. Thus the strength of this motive will be in direct proportion to the subjective probability that he assigns to God’s existence.

(ii) Unworthy motive: Serve God out of desire for eternal bliss and/or to avoid eternal torment. Again, any sane person will realize that changing one’s entire life by reorienting it to the service of God for these reasons would be a ridiculous, foolish waste of time unless the prospective eternal bliss and torment are real, which is to say, if God exists. So the strength of this motive will also be in direct proportion to the subjective probability that he assigns to God’s existence.

By “hiding” Himself (at least to some extent, so that His existence is not undeniable) God reduces the subjective probability that most people will assign to His existence. Unfortunately this reduces the strength of both the worthy and unworthy motives equally. So it fails to accomplish the putative purpose of increasing the number of people whose predominant motive for making this choice is the “worthy” one.

Actually the problem is much more acute that this might suggest. For the prospect of eternal bliss and/or eternal torment, even if remote, provides an infinitely strong motive for choosing to serve God. It’s hard to see how any finitely strong motivation can compete with this, and given human nature, love is hardly an infinitely strong motive. So for anyone who assigns a nonzero subjective probability to God’s existence, the unworthy motive is bound to be stronger than the worthy one. By insisting that the worthy motive must be the dominant one, God is asking the impossible.

Of course, this all assumes that we are rational. An irrational person might well be more motivated by the prospect of a finite gain than by the prospect of an infinite one. But that doesn’t help much; it just means that rather than asking the impossible, God is insisting that we be irrational.

Third, even if we had clear and certain knowledge of Heaven and Hell, that wouldn’t reduce moral decisions to pragmatic calculations, as you demonstrate conclusively in your later statements. For example:

The Bible, for one, is emphatic that God will not accept conversions not entered into for right motives.

So what’s a pragmatic, purely self-interested guy to do? You suggest:

One could imagine a scenario in which one would become a Christian not because of conviction of one's own sin or for a desire for communion with a loving Creator, but simply to gain Heaven.

But in fact one cannot imagine such a scenario, for the obvious reason that a person proceeding from such motives would not be a Christian; one might call him a pseudo-Christian. And being a pseudo-Christian would profit him nothing, since he would be entering into this “conversion” for the wrong motives.

So what do purely pragmatic, self-interested calculations suggest? Why, nothing at all. For the purely self-interested pragmatist, no course of action will save him unless he changes – which is exactly the point, isn’t it?

You say:

Because the awards and punishments for serving or not serving God are so severe, it is impossible that they would not form a more significant factor in conversion than mere conviction of sin or willingness to enter into a loving relationship with God IF those awards and punishments were undeniable facts.

But in fact, for anyone who understands that such a “conversion” will have no effect on any prospective rewards or punishments, they would provide no motivation at all for choosing to serve God.

Fourth, choosing to serve God for the sake of infinite bliss isn’t really a “pragmatic, self-interested calculation” anyway. To choose Heaven over Hell is to choose goodness and virtue over evil and vice. So there’s no reason for God to consider it an “unworthy” motive.

To make this clear, recall that most theologians (as well as you) hold that the “bliss” of being in Heaven derives primarily from being with God, while the torment of Hell derives primarily (if not entirely) from separation from God. To those with a love of God in their hearts, being with God is indeed bliss, while being separated from Him would be a torment. But to those who reject God, being with Him for eternity would be a torment even worse than that of Hell, while being separated from Him would be (relatively at least) a mercy. So in preferring Heaven to Hell, a person is, in effect, preferring goodness to evil and virtue to wickedness. But to prefer goodness to evil and virtue to wickedness is to choose God, because God is goodness and virtue. Anyone who loves goodness and virtue loves God, and anyone who chooses goodness and virtue serves god. After all, did not God say, “Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, my children, you have done it unto me”? Anyway, what else could “serving God mean? Flying big planes into tall buildings?

To put it another way, anyone who would choose to be with God (i.e., to spend eternity in Heaven) has chosen God. How can this be unworthy, or why would God reject anyone on the grounds that his motive for choosing to serve Him was to spend eternity with Him? If God wants a purer motive than that, He should not have created humans, because that’s about as pure as human motives get.

Finally, this argument confuses motives for beginning a relationship with God with motives for making the final, irrevocable commitment to God. While God might reasonably want the final commitment to be made from the purest possible motives, it’s absurd for Him to insist that we must begin the journey leading ultimately to this commitment from the purest of motives. After all, He created us to be very impure indeed; in fact, we are (according to standard Christian doctrine) unimaginably debased and degraded as a result of Original Sin. Only God can help us out of this condition; how can He refuse to help us out of it on the grounds that we’re in it? Especially when we’re in it by His choice?

If we knew that God existed and that only He could help us to reach a state in which we’re “worthy” of His grace (or at least worthy enough that He’ll accept our commitment to serve Him) it’s very likely that most people would ask for His help and make a serious, dedicated effort to attain this state of worthiness. Any doubts as to whether He really exists can only weaken our resolve and dedication, causing far more of us to fail. How can this be desirable, either from God’s point of view or from ours?

What if this knowledge PREVENTED the development of a love for God in and of Himself even in those for whom such a love was viable? In short, what if the fear of punishment or the prospect of rewards OBSCURED the reality of God's goodness for those who otherwise would have accepted God from the standpoint of disinterested love?

For several of the reasons already cited, it’s impossible that knowledge of God’s existence and nature could prevent the development of a love of God. Anyway, this whole idea is absurd. Those who love goodness and virtue ipso facto love God, even if they don’t know that He exists. Those who don’t can come to love them. A failure to love these things is, in my opinion, always a result of some combination of ignorance and irrationality. These are correctable problems. God can correct both of them without interfering with a person’s free will in the slightest.

As for the fear of punishment and prospect of award, these can’t possibly obscure the reality of God’s goodness; if anything, they reveal this reality more fully and clearly.

Moving finally to some other points:

This suggests that God personally is the creator of the intellectual reality that Smith inhabits. He doesn't. There are millions of other individuals in Smith's world...

Yes, but God chose (i) when and where to “place” Smith, which in itself involves enormous control over his environmental influences; (ii) which possible world to place him in (God, after all, is free to “actualize” as many possible worlds as needed to achieve His purposes, and for all we know has actualized a great many.) (iii) to create Smith – with his individual weaknesses and vulnerabilities – when He could have chosen to create someone else at that time and place – someone who would make the choice to accept God in the end rather than reject Him.

Besides that, it’s not clear why it’s desirable to allow people to exercise their free will in ways that cause someone to be lost to God. God restricts free will in a great many ways anyway; why should He be such a stickler about interfering with it on a few crucial occasions if this would save a soul? And it’s not even clear that He’d have to interfere with anyone’s free will. For example, if Smith’s path to damnation is crucially influenced by an interaction of some kind with Jones on a certain day, why couldn’t He simply have arranged things so that Jones isn’t there at that time? This could be done in any number of ways that don’t interfere with free will.

I find it doubtful that God even "created" Smith, or that he decided under what circumstances Smith would be born: that was clearly and evidently the decision of His parents.

Excuse me, but at most his parents might have decided to have “a child”; they could hardly have decided to have this specific child. God is the one who decided what child they would have; what soul would inhabit what body on that occasion.

Even if God in his omniscience knew what they would decide, to know is not the same as to do.

Well, the crucial thing is not whether God knew what Smith’s parents would decide, but that He knew what Smith would ultimately decide. He knew that Smith would choose for God in some possible worlds (or even in this world if he’d been born in a different time and place, under different circumstances) but chose to put him into this world, under circumstance that He foresaw would lead to he rejecting God. If someone controls your circumstances and foresees the result, he effectively controls the result, even though you may be exercising free will along the way.

This view suggests that there is nothing to belief other than rationality, and that emotions and will play no part in belief.

You seem to have misunderstood this argument entirely. The point was that if Smith would have disbelieved in God in all possible worlds (which clearly includes some worlds in which he would have overwhelmingly strong evidence of God’s existence) he must be completely irrational to the point of madness. This seems to me to be a pretty simple and unarguable point.

It would simply require a case where not believing was what Smith DESIRED even over rationality.

But at some point, when the evidence becomes sufficiently overwhelming, a refusal to believe what the evidence dictates becomes a form of madness. If you watch Kareem Jabbar move his stuff into the house next door; if he tells you that he’s moving in; if the local paper and TV station announce that he’s moving in; if all your friends start asking what it’s like to live next to him; if you see him lounging by the pool day after day over there, etc., etc., at some point it becomes insane to refuse to believe that Kareem is now your next-door neighbor. It’s insane even if you don’t desire Kareem as a next-door neighbor.

I've actually seen you hint that [theists] WERE insane, I wonder if you will try to defend this here...

I’ve said that believing in God in the absence of any evidence whatsoever would be insane. I stand by this.

[Jobar]

bd- :notworthy

--------------------

luvluv, you say
As such the question of "why is God hidden?" reduces to the question of "why does God value free will?"

OK Mr. Bones, I'll bite. Just why does God value free will? More than the well being of the creature He supposedly values most highly in all the universe, so that even allowing his beloved humans to burn eternally is a cost worth paying?

And, just what *is* this 'free will' anyhow? It appears to be nothing but the freedom to choose to go to hell! (Remember there are vast numbers of things we limited humans are not 'free' to do.)

luvluv, you've been around this block time and time and time again. Don't you see how fruitless it is? The God you want so badly to believe in is incoherent, self-contradictory, and therefore unbelievable- that is, if one is to adhere to any sort of rationality.

[Buddrow_Wilson]

Originally posted by bd-from-kg
I’ve said that believing in God in the absence of any evidence whatsoever would be insane. I stand by this.

Personally, I don't automatically view someone who professes belief in a deity insane, although I find the belief irrational and often disturbing. What is often insane is believing and acting as though you have direct knowledge of this deity's desires. Most of us have some level of delusional/irrational thoughts, but I don't think you can fairly label someone insane based on a single professed belief.

As for the post in its entirety...Well Done!

[bd-from-kg]

Buddrow_Wilson:

Personally, I don't automatically view someone who professes belief in a deity insane, although I find the belief irrational and often disturbing.
I agree. But then, it's not true that there's no evidence whatsoever for God.

My statement was made in response to the presuppositionalist claim that belief in God is a "properly basic" belief. This entails that it would be rational even if there were no evidence for it. I say that, far being rational under these conditions, a belief in God would be insane.

As for the post in its entirety...Well Done!
Thank you.

[SignOfTheCross]

Originally posted by Wayne Delia
"Situation S" was defined as "one in which all, or almost all, humans since the time of Jesus of Nazareth coming to believe both propositions before their physical death."

Then situation S is not to be confounded with the gospel message.

Peace,
SOTC

[luvluv]

Well, I knew there was a high probability that I would receive an intellectual &#@-whipping for starting up this thread. But as I would like to develop a strong defense to the argument from hiddenness, it was the chance I was willing to take. I can't think of a better person to find and exploit every single whole in my argument than you, bd-from-kg, so thanks for the opportunity.

Now then:

Ahead of time, I'm going to say that your arguments (in my view) ultimately fail as an explicit disproof of the Christian God because at certain crucial points your argument depends upon theological assumptions which a Christian need not make.

Principal among these theological assumptions are the following:

1) That hell is preferable over heaven to those who reject God.

2) That there ARE any human beings who, in the Christian sense, love "the good" without loving God. (On the Christian view, that is impossible).

3) That souls have pre-existent qualities (like guiliability, credulity, stubborness) before they are instantiated in a human being, such that God could know who Smith was APART FROM knowing where Smith was born, what Smith's immediate influences would be, etc. (It is true that God does know Smith before He is born, but only because God knows the CONTEXT into which Smith will be born. It is not at all clear that God knows who Smith is apart from ANY CONTEXT whatsoever. It is not necessary for Christianity to commit itself to the notion that we all have essential "essences" to our personalities independant of the time, place, and circumstances of our birth.) Christians could easily take a tabula rasa stance towards the state of the soul, such that God could not know certain essential things about Smith WITHOUT Smith being born into a specific context.

Furthermore, it is possible to arrange a Christian theology such that there is no inconsistency with holding the three premises:

1) God exists.

2) God is loving

3) God is hidden.

Some of these theological arrangements might seem unpalatable to you or unbelievable to you, but they render a loving, hidden God POSSIBLE, and thus render the disproof unsound. So while I personally am not prepared to resort to such tactics, a person maintaining that the noetic effects of sin or the fall as explaining why there is no such thing as truly inculpable disbelief would be sufficient to answer your point. So I offer the following link:

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~howardd/hiddennessintro.html

This page is an introduction to this book:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521006104/qid=1058815942/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-9391397-4223230?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

And describes briefly some of the arguments against divine hiddenness contained therein. So if you find my arguments unpersuasive, don't give up.

Okay, moving on.

That depends on what you mean by “undeniable”. No matter what the evidence was, it would obviously be possible to deny God’s existence. But it should be irrational to do so. Which is to say that His existence could not be rationally denied. In that sense, yes, His existence should be undeniable.

Slightly tangetial to the issue at hand, but a question which will need to be asked eventually: what exactly would this evidence be? An argument? Miracles? I've never understood quite the nature of a piece of evidence which was rationally undeniable and yet uncoercive.

Are you saying that if God’s existence were undeniable we would not be free to deny God’s existence, and that this would infringe on our freedom to believe or disbelieve in Him? Or are you saying that having unavoidably concluded that God exists, we would then be in a position where we were not truly free to choose whether to love, follow, and obey Him, and that this would be an infringement on our free will?

I do mean the latter, and thanks for clearing that up. Hopefully, this will help Steven Carr understand that his Bush analogy misses the point.

First, knowing that God exists does not equate to knowing the consequences of choosing to accept and serve Him or the consequences of rejecting Him. There’s no reason why God could not have so arranged things that we would have undeniable evidence of His existence but have no knowledge, or even a suspicion, of the existence of Heaven and Hell.

Well, firstly, I would ask what in your view is the purpose of knowledge of God in this argument? Is it not that, utlimately, God's goodness would constrain Him to arrange reality such that everyone has the best chance of gaining Heaven and avoiding Hell? If that is the case, then how would the person with knowledge of God, and no knowledge of Heaven or Hell, in any better position to save His soul? Would this person be in a position to assess the PROBABILITY that Hell exists? Such a person would still be signifigantly less free than you or I.

Obviously, the wisdom of hedging one's bets towards the existence of Hell will go up several orders of magnitude in any world where it is rationally undeniable that a moral God exists.

So I must ask you to clarify this possible world a bit. Is it a world where there is not even a concept of heaven and hell? Or is it a world much like our own, where, while God's existence is known, the existence of Heaven and Hell is up for debate?

I would argue that if it is the latter, then any thinking man would immediately place his bets on the side of hell existing, realizing that as a consequence of God's morality He would be likely to punish evil and possibly even extinguish it. If we know that God exists, but do not have any reason to believe He is moral, then we are in the Christian view in no better position to avoid Hell than we are now.

And the knowledge that God exists, in and of itself, would be very valuable indeed. It would tell us that there is a transcendent moral order; that our intuitions that there are objective moral principles are not illusions, that we are justified in opposing evil and punishing evildoers, that sacrificing our own interests for the sake of others is not foolishness but deep wisdom. It would tell us that there is a transcendent purpose to things, that existence is not absurd, that we are not a kind of cosmic joke. And it would tell us that we ultimately have a choice of transcendent significance to make: to accept God, to love and serve Him, or to reject Him.

Well, of that last bit I would ask that if all we knew about God was that He exists, I could rightly ask to love and to serve WHAT exactly?

Beyond that, I would say that the above information provided in your post is ultimately USELESS on the Christian view in obtaining salvation. A person could know all of the above things and still miss heaven if that person had no idea of HOW to accept God, or of HOW to enter into a relationship with Him. If the Christian God exists, and, consistent with Christianity, a relationship with Him was only available through Jesus Christ, then even in the world you envision a signifigant amount of people would still go to hell.

Consider: your average Jew or Muslim could agree with everything in the paragraph above, but on the Christian view of things could still miss heaven because of their rejection of Jesus Christ.

Thus, if the Christian God exists, simple knowledge of the existence of a loving, personal, moral God would not sufficiently answer the dilema set forth by the problem. Anything short of the full knowledge of the essential nature of Jesus Christ and His role in salvation would be insufficient to bring BILLIONS of monotheists into a saving relationship with Christ. They will simply take your above description to show that THEIR GOD exists, not the God of Christianity.

Thus, even in a world where a personal, moral, loving God was KNOWN to exist, billions would still go to hell for lack of knowledge.

It seems that only a full-blown knowledge of God as the God revealed by Jesus Christ would be sufficient to ensure God's goodness, and this full blown knowledge would certainly be coercive.

Further, I must ask you if in your world we would know that there even is anything else to know about God other than that which cannot be denied? In other words, would we even know there was more knowledge about God to be had other than the simple fact that He is loving, just, and personal? Why wouldn't anyone with this knowledge assume this is sufficient, and try simply to live a good life without any further searching that would lead him to Christ? In fact, in such a world, wouldn't there be simply another equally problematic argument from hiddenness? Couldn't a person in your world say that if Christ was necessary, God would have directly revealed that to us, and inasmuch as He has not, Christ must not be necessary? So isn't it possible that your world could PREVENT people from searching for anymore knowledge about God than that which is readily available, and thus put such a person in an even worse position than they are in in this world?

So the knowledge that God exists would necessarily be knowledge of at least some of His most important qualities. To be meaningful, it would have to include knowledge that He is a Person – i.e., that He has purposes and acts on them; that He takes an interest in all that He has created; that He is perfectly wise and good; that He created us and everything else. This would be enough to tell us all of the things that I listed earlier.

But this would not be enough knowledge to get you SAVED, which is the point of Christianity.

Remember, please, that the point of Christianity is not necessarily merely to make people better, but to bring people to their ultimate good. If everyone knew beyond a reasonable doubt everything you mentioned above, then everyone would definitely be better. But there are signifigant ways in which it is possible that such people would be ETERNALLY blocked off from their ultimate good, salvation.

On the Christian view, our righteousness is as "filthy rags." Any moral improvement, any gain in peace, love, and insight, is ultimately FUTILE if you do not come to a saving knowledge of Christ. And it is not only possible, but LIKELY on my view, that in a world where such peace of mind and prosperity is possible WITHOUT a knowledge of Chirst that fewer people would seek a knowledge of Christ. Many people come to Christ from the standpoint of pain and suffering and doubt, and in your world pain and suffering and doubt, of a spiritual kind, would be rare.

Consider two people. One is content in his knowledge of the existence of a moral, personal, loving God which gives order and purpose to His existence. He is contented and at peace. He seeks to live an orderly life, enforce moral codes, and to give God due worship and praise. Such a person lives and dies without ever coming to the knowledge of the necessity of Christ, indeed without ever realizing that there even is anything else to search for, and dies and goes to hell.

Consider, on the other view, a person who lives his life in abject uncertainty. A person who longs for the existence of a loving God, but is constrained by the pains of this word. This person, in his pain and confusion, searches desperately for the truth his whole life and as a result finally finds Christ on his deathbed.

Now on the Christian view the second man is more fortunate than the first, even though the first had more peace, comfot, prosperity, and joy in his lifetime than did the second. I say all this to say that absent a relationship with Christ, it ultimately does not help a person at all even to know that a loving, personal, moral God exists.

So, again, I would say that more than a simple knowledge of God's existence is necessary, and that the necessary knowledge would be coercive if it could not be rationally denied.

I do not understand your second point. We are exploring whether or not our motives for worshiping God would be compromised IF WE KNEW HE EXISTED. Which removes from consideration the role of the status of the probabilty of His existence.

The question is could we worship God from pure motives IF WE KNEW HE EXISTED and IF WE KNEW THE CONSEQUENCES OF UNBELIEF.

I think you yourself later admit that we could not, that these rewards would be infinitely more persuasive than any worthy motive.

It's possible I totally missed what you were trying to say here though. If so, break it down a little further for me. At any rate, I will attempt to respond to what I think you are saying:

(i) Worthy motive: Serve God out of love of God. Clearly any sane person is going to realize that devoting his life to a nonexistent being would be a ridiculous, foolish waste of time. So he will naturally be hesitant about devoting his life to God unless he’s reasonably sure that God exists. Thus the strength of this motive will be in direct proportion to the subjective probability that he assigns to God’s existence.

Well, I disagree here. Clearly, a sane person could love God out of the IDEA of God on the POSSIBILITY that God exists. It is even possible that the greater the risk involved in assuming God's existence, the more worthy the motive becomes in God's eyes.

I call to the witness stand Kierkagaard, among other prominent, influential, passionately commited theists, who nonetheless thought it impossible to prove that God exists, and who thought that such a proof, far from being a prerequisite, would be a HINDERANCE to a real relationship with God.

It is simply not the case, in my view, that a person with worthy motives would need to be reasonably sure that God exists. Worthy motive, from the Christian standpoint, would be willingness to enter into a submissive role in a relationship with a loving authority should that authority exist. That willingness can, and has (in some of the most remarkable theists) obtain even without good evidence for God's existence.

(ii) Unworthy motive: Serve God out of desire for eternal bliss and/or to avoid eternal torment. Again, any sane person will realize that changing one’s entire life by reorienting it to the service of God for these reasons would be a ridiculous, foolish waste of time unless the prospective eternal bliss and torment are real, which is to say, if God exists. So the strength of this motive will also be in direct proportion to the subjective probability that he assigns to God’s existence.

Right, so given a world in which God's existence is rationally undeniable, such a motive would be overwhelming and thus fully and finally coercive.

If I'm reading you right, you seem to be agreeing with me. There is a much higher possibility of someone pursuing God out of an unworthy motive in a world where God's existence, and it's implications, are known than in a world such as our own.

I must be missing something? :confused:

Actually the problem is much more acute that this might suggest. For the prospect of eternal bliss and/or eternal torment, even if remote, provides an infinitely strong motive for choosing to serve God. It’s hard to see how any finitely strong motivation can compete with this, and given human nature, love is hardly an infinitely strong motive. So for anyone who assigns a nonzero subjective probability to God’s existence, the unworthy motive is bound to be stronger than the worthy one. By insisting that the worthy motive must be the dominant one, God is asking the impossible.

Aha! We agree!

I would concur with you that, IF HEAVEN AND HELL WERE KNOWN FACTS, that it would be nearly impossible for anyone to serve God with a right motive.

But if heaven and hell were experienced as PROMISES from a hidden God who revealed Himself partially only to those who desired to follow him, that a knowledge of heaven and hell can exist and yet not be the primary motive for a relationship with God.

I can tell you that I personally hold that there is a higher than zero probability that heaven and hell exist, and yet that thought is not a part of my daily thought process and not a signifigant motivation of my Christianity at all. I declare to you plainly and unequivocably that though I believe in Hell I do not serve God out of fear of it. However, if the existence of Hell were rationally undeniable to me, and if it were rationally undeniable to me BEFORE I KNEW AND LOVED GOD PERSONALLY, I would have tried desperately to pursue a relationship with him on the basis of that threat ALONE and could have quite possibly missed the love I have for Him now.

So, again unless I'm missing something, you seem to be supporting my contention that it is better for God to remain hidden in these respects than to reveal Himself.

But in fact, for anyone who understands that such a “conversion” will have no effect on any prospective rewards or punishments, they would provide no motivation at all for choosing to serve God.

Well, first I would call us again to recognize that such a knowledge would require a more full blown and robust knowledge of God such that knolwedge of his mere existence would not convey. If we get nothing else out of this initial exchange, I feel we shall have to agree that an incomplete knowledge of God's nature would not be sufficient to solve the problem. If all we knew was that God exists, and He is moral, and that Hell and Heaven MIGHT exist, then we could certainly expect the majority of human kind to pursue God and for the wrong motives.

But further, let us see what this course of action would entail for God and the person who does nothing in order to gain salvation.

Were God to take this course of action, He would be condeming hundreds of millions of people to attempt to enjoy their lives in the full and explicit knowledge that EVERLASTING TORMENT awaited them upon the moment of their inevitable demise. Could you live a life worthy of the name if you knew that it was simply a brief prelude to you suffering unimaginably FOREVER?

If you are right, and such people would not serve God IN EITHER CASE, isn't God much more kind for letting them at least live out this life in relative peace and happiness better than forcing them to live with the constant knowledge of an impending eternal doom, about which they could do nothing?

But then, this is assuming that people are as pragmatic as you make them out to be. In all likliehood, at the prospect of eternal suffering, people would not simply throw their hands up in the air and say "Oh well." They would make attempts, no matter how futile, to accept Christ and to love God... and they would do so out of fear. I believe that such people would even try hard to convince themselves that they had right motives and not wrong ones, and would be engaged in a constant struggle with cognitive dissonance which would effectively paralyze whatever ability they might otherwise have had to truly search for God with their whole hearts.

To make this clear, recall that most theologians (as well as you) hold that the “bliss” of being in Heaven derives primarily from being with God, while the torment of Hell derives primarily (if not entirely) from separation from God. To those with a love of God in their hearts, being with God is indeed bliss, while being separated from Him would be a torment. But to those who reject God, being with Him for eternity would be a torment even worse than that of Hell, while being separated from Him would be (relatively at least) a mercy.

This point would, again, depend on everyone having a pretty fair amount of knowledge about God, much more than a mere mental assent of His existence.

Further, you are assuming that we would all KNOW WHAT MAKES HEAVEN HEAVEN, AND WHAT MAKES HELL HELL. So you are insisting on an incredibly nuanced and intimate knowledge of what hell exactly is on the populace, and it is hard to imagine how this could be uncoercive. And obviously without such an intimate knowledge, we would all simply assume that even if we didn't necessarily want to be in heaven, we certainly don't want to be in hell.

In short, for a person's motives to be pure in choosing heaven for these theological grounds one would have to KNOW that Heaven is good primarily because of God's presence, and Hell is bad primarily because of God's absence. Absent this knowledge, all one would know is that Heaven is a place of rewards and Hell is a place of punishment. So operating on the right motive would be impossible without this theological knowledge (which is certainly disputable by the way).

And even knowing this mentally would not equate to knowing this existentially. How would I know, ahead of time, whether or not I would prefer Hell to God's presence, even if I were aware that this was a possibility? Wouldn't everybody shoot for Heaven, all things being equal?

So in preferring Heaven to Hell, a person is, in effect, preferring goodness to evil and virtue to wickedness.

I feel that what you are saying entails that those in heaven and hell are equally happy with their decision, and that is frankly absurd. People in hell are suffering ENORMOUSLY and people in heaven are in ULTIMATE BLISS, they are experiencing the ultimate fruition of the reason for their very existence, the fulfillment of their ultimate purpose. My theology holds that a signifigant portion of the suffering people in hell experience is from missing that very experience. It is the pain of regret.

Consider a man who loves his wife dearly. His wife has a bout of infidelity, and she comes to the man confessing this and asking for forgiveness. The man loves his wife, but finds himself unwilling to forgive her. He thus misses out on the life he would have been able to have with her had he been able to forgive her, and it is possible that this life would have been better than the life he is forced to live without her. Could it be said that this man prefers living alone to living with his wife? Does it follow from the refusal to forgive, that this man PREFERS bitterness, anger, rage, and lonliness to forgiving his wife? No, it simply entails that he is not willing to pay the price in terms of his pride, to receive his wife in forgiveness. What he loves most is not bitterness, anger, rage, and lonliness. What he loves most is HIMSELF. Specifically, his own self-will.

So it is with hell. Everyone in hell does not love hell more than heaven. They may desire heaven a great deal more than hell. But they do love THEMSELVES more than they love GOD, and thus are not willing to pay the price for entering into heaven.

Your entire argument here falls into a category mistake. It is not a matter of the love of good versus the love of evil. It is a matter of love of God versus the love of self. One could easily choose to pursue heaven OUT OF A LOVE FOR ONESELF AND ONE'S OWN WELL BEING, APART FROM ALL OTHERS, and thus miss it entirely.

It is possible that a person could pursue Heaven for their whole lives not because they think it is "the" good, but because they think it is for "their" good. Out of complete self interest. Even if they could not abide being in the presence of God, they would not know that until they were in his presence, and by that time it would be too late to develop the proper motives.

It is possibly true that those who reject God cannot bear the light of His presence, but it does not necessarily follow that they go to Hell because they prefer it. They go because since they cannot abide God's presence THERE IS NOWHERE ELSE FOR THEM TO GO.




Finally, this argument confuses motives for beginning a relationship with God with motives for making the final, irrevocable commitment to God. While God might reasonably want the final commitment to be made from the purest possible motives, it’s absurd for Him to insist that we must begin the journey leading ultimately to this commitment from the purest of motives. After all, He created us to be very impure indeed; in fact, we are (according to standard Christian doctrine) unimaginably debased and degraded as a result of Original Sin. Only God can help us out of this condition; how can He refuse to help us out of it on the grounds that we’re in it? Especially when we’re in it by His choice?

I'm not sure you aren't being a tad bit unrealistic here. You are at the very least inconsistent in this point.

Let's assume that God's revelation of Himself included the constant, never wavering knowledge of the consequences of refusing to obey Him. This would amount to an ever present coercion that would NEVER go away. Is it really possible to develop deeper motives for service and relationship in the presence of constant coercion?

Isn't this, in fact, precisely what you were saying earlier was impossible? That finite concerns could eventually overcome infinite ones given an above zero probabilty for the existence of heaven and hell? (Thus, the inconsistency.)

Yes, I would say that in our world one can start with bad motives and end up with the right ones. But this is precisely because the bad motives are not constant, inescapable, coercive, undeniable FACTS. It is only because the fear of hell can be PUT ASIDE that I can progress from a fear of hell to the love of God. But if the fear of hell could not be put aside, if it were rationally undeniable, then I could not progress to the love of God.

Those who love goodness and virtue ipso facto love God, even if they don’t know that He exists.

From the Christian point of view, which we must assume in this argument, this is not only untrue but impossible.

It is impossible to truly love goodness without a knoweldge of God, because otherwise one would not have experienced goodness.

Those who don’t can come to love them.

Not, I would argue, under the constant, undeniable, unavoidable fear of punishment.

Yes, but God chose (i) when and where to “place” Smith,

I totally disagree. What about Christianity commits me to this position? How does God's being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent entail that he chooses when and where to place "Smith"?

And, as I've argued above, Smith, as a personality, does not exist UNTIL HE IS PLACED. I don't think God has any knowledge of us apart from our genetic information and personality traits developed in us from a combination of our genetics and our upbringing, combined with the character formation that results from our choices. Thus, Smith would have to BE BORN into a SPECIFIC CONTEXT for God to know anything about Smith.

God could no this before Smith was born into that specific context, but he could not know this if Smith were not going to be born into that specific context.

(ii) which possible world to place him in

Only if God were to place him in a possible world with no other rational free beings. Otherwise God would not have complete control over the nature of this possible world.

(iii) to create Smith – with his individual weaknesses and vulnerabilities – when He could have chosen to create someone else at that time and place – someone who would make the choice to accept God in the end rather than reject Him.

I categorically reject this, for reasons cited above, and I further dispute that Christianity entails this notion in the slightest. Liberatarian free will seems to speak against this possibility, and Christianity maintains that we have libertarian free will.

For example, if Smith’s path to damnation is crucially influenced by an interaction of some kind with Jones on a certain day, why couldn’t He simply have arranged things so that Jones isn’t there at that time? This could be done in any number of ways that don’t interfere with free will.

I don't see how. If Jones intends to be at a certain place, and to say a certain thing, and if his intentions would be fulfilled unless God directly acted to stop it, then God's acting to stop it would be an interference with Jones' will. Say it is Jones' express intention to divest his friend Smith of any possibility of theistic belief, such that he will constantly endeavor to do so unless God takes drastic action. How could God prevent Jones from interfering with Smith's belief without interfering with His free will. It might ocassionally be possible, (heck, it probably occurs) but not as a general rule.

Excuse me, but at most his parents might have decided to have “a child”; they could hardly have decided to have this specific child. God is the one who decided what child they would have; what soul would inhabit what body on that occasion.

I'd disagree on both counts. I think the parents, by virtue of their DNA, the time and place of the child's birth, and their decisions they make while raising it in it's early formative years, will have much more to do directly with who the child turns out to be than God (if they choose to rear the child without God's help). Further, I would argue that there is nothing in Christianity which commits us to the proposition that there is a pre-existing soul with pre-existing proclivities which comes to inhabit a bodily form on conception.

If someone controls your circumstances and foresees the result, he effectively controls the result, even though you may be exercising free will along the way.

I would argue that God ONLY forsees the result. He does not have immediate control over your circumstances if you (and everyone else) has free will.

You seem to have misunderstood this argument entirely. The point was that if Smith would have disbelieved in God in all possible worlds (which clearly includes some worlds in which he would have overwhelmingly strong evidence of God’s existence) he must be completely irrational to the point of madness.

What I dispute is that there is any such possible world where Smith's free will is not remarkably coerced. Any possible world where one would have to be insane to deny God's existence is one in which God's existence is as obvious as that of the hypothetical Kareem Abdul Jabbar (and what about that kid in Airplane? Was he crazy to deny Jabbar's existence? ;)).

It is possible that even in the possible worlds where Smith does not accept God's existence, he does so with the intention of denying God's existence even in the face of GOOD evidence, even at the point of sacrificing his sanity. If Smith will for God to exist, above all else, then he will opt for insanity (as much as he is able) if that is what is required. Christopher Hitchens is instructive on this regard, in that I believe I have heard him say that he would deny God's existence even if he were to find out that God existed. (He self-identifies as an anti-theist). Now, when the rubber meets the road Hitchens might not be able to actually do this, but the point is the intent is there. I think a person CAN decide to abandon rationality and even sanity in favor of a strong desire (for independance, love, what have you).

I’ve said that believing in God in the absence of any evidence whatsoever would be insane. I stand by this.

We probably agree there. (Whatever happened with that debate between you and Kenny by the way? And where is Kenny?)

Whew. I'm beat. I look forward to your response should you choose to subject yourself to reading through this drivel.

[Spenser]

:notworthy :notworthy :notworthy Yes bd, incredible read!!! :notworthy :notworthy :notworthy

[luvluv]

Awww ya gotta be kidding me!

You have no idea how pumped I was to come over here this morning!

bd-from-kg, where do you get off having better things to do than argue with me!

j/k... seriously, looking forward to your response.

[luvluv]

Okay, I see from your posts on another topic that you're out of town, so I'll just add this bit of information to my previous response.

My biggest objection to your possible worlds construal of the argument from hiddenness is that it assumes that God has the ability to actualize any possible world.

In my opinion, that is false. If free will is real, then it follows that God ALONE cannot actualize any possible world in which Smith freely chooses to do x, where x is any moral decision. Free will implies the ability to choose between options, and in any world where Smith is free, Smith can choose to do x or ~x. Let x = accepting salvation. If God creates a world in which Smith must do x, and ~x is not a possibility, Smith is not free. If God creates a world in which ~x is a possibilty, then Smith could choose ~x.

So I feel it is incoherent to say that God could create a possible world in which Smith was incapable of freely choosing ~x, if Smith was truly free.

If free will is real, then it will take Smith's cooperation for x to be actualized. Assuming that God has sole decision over where to place Smith's soul (which I dispute, but for the sake of argument) God could place Smith in the world most suitable for Smith to believe in Him, and accept Christ as His savior, and Smith could still decline.

So, as has been argued in other threads involving the argument from evil, I must say that while a world in which everyone freely believes in God and accepts Christ is logically possible, even an Omnipotent, Omniscient Deity, acting alone, cannot actualize it. He would require our cooperation, which, on the assumption of free will, we are perfectly capable of denying Him.

[Steven Carr]

Originally posted by luvluv

So, as has been argued in other threads involving the argument from evil, I must say that while a world in which everyone freely believes in God and accepts Christ is logically possible, even an Omnipotent, Omniscient Deity, acting alone, cannot actualize it. He would require our cooperation, which, on the assumption of free will, we are perfectly capable of denying Him.

God can actualise it in many ways. (Wouldn't it be Heavenly if he did?)

Wasn't there a world of just 2 people, who both freely believed in God? God just had to tell them about Jesus.

Or God could create a world full of incarnated Jesus's. Jesus was FULLY human, so there is no problem about having a world of humans, all of whom are Jesus incarnate.

Will there ever be a world where everyone freely believes in God and accepts Christ?

Presumably, luvluv's answer must be no.

[Steven Carr]

Originally posted by luvluv
Free will implies the ability to choose between options, and in any world where Smith is free, Smith can choose to do x or ~x. Let x = accepting salvation. If God creates a world in which Smith must do x, and ~x is not a possibility, Smith is not free. If God creates a world in which ~x is a possibilty, then Smith could choose ~x.



Free will implies the ability to choose between options, and in any world where Smith is free, Smith can choose to do x or ~x. Let x = urinating. If God creates a world in which Smith must do x, and ~x is not a possibility, Smith is not free. If God creates a world in which ~x is a possibilty, then Smith could choose ~x.

Is Luvluv saying that we have no free will, because we must urinate?

At any particular time 't', we have the choice between urinating and not-urinating (I hope Luvluv agrees , as there are strong sanctions against urinating at certain times and situations). So we have free will about urinating.

Nevertheless, we must all urinate.

The fact that God has created us so that we must do X, does not remove our free will about choosing X.

We must urinate, yet we have perfect free will about when to do so.

So Luvluv's argument fails even in its own terms (even ignoring the dubious claim that God values our free will to reject salvation, a claim not backed up by Bible quotes, I notice)

God could have created us so that we 'must' accept salvation, yet at every time 't', we would have perfect free will to accept salvation or not.

[luvluv]

Free will, quite obviously, only deals with moral decisions.

[Steven Carr]

Originally posted by luvluv
Free will, quite obviously, only deals with moral decisions.

Are you claiming thatb you do not have free will about whether to urinate or not at a time 't'?

God could make us so that we want to accept salvation, but at any particular time 't', we would be quite free to accept salvation or not.

(Just as he has created us so that we must urinate, but we can freely arrange that at any given moment in time, we do not urinate)

[Spenser]

Originally posted by luvluv
Free will, quite obviously, only deals with moral decisions.

There is nothing obvious about this statement. Exactly which decisions are moral and which aren't? If I do not give a homeless guy I see on the street the change in my pocket though he has a sign asking for money did I make a moral decision? :confused:

[Wyz_sub10]

Originally posted by luvluv
Free will, quite obviously, only deals with moral decisions.

I concur with the comments below your post.

Why does free will deal only with moral decisions?

My decision to have "Raisin Bran" or "Froot Loops" for breakfast is hardly a moral one (unless you have an issue with Toucan Sam), yet this decision remains a product of free will, no?

[luvluv]

Well, my major point was that it makes little sense to say that because we have to urinate or die, that we don't have free will.

It's true that free will does expand to more than just moral decisions, so the point needs clarification. It clearly does not cover biological neccessities. (Though perhaps one does not HAVE to urinate, I don't know what would happen if somebody tried holding it INDEFINITELY...)

Regardless, this takes the discussion on a turn towards the absurd and away from all the relavent points. There are options over which we have a limited or restricted choice (to breathe or not to breathe?) but these have little to do with the purposes for which we were given free will, which is, on the Christian view, to develop the character of Christ.

So I think in the end it matters little if there are immediate consequences to not breathing or not urinating. Free will basically means that God will not force you to make ANY decision which requires the suspension of your preferences, judgements, aesthetic or moral sensibilities, etc.

So yes, Fruit Loops are covered in free will, despite the choice of cereals not being a particularly contested moral issue. (however, I would argue that the choice of breakfast cereals could be construed as a moral decision... is it right to feed your body things that may be harmful to it? Not on the Christian view, though most don't make a big deal of it.) But are we less free because we will die if we don't regularly expend bodily fluids? I doubt it.

I would say that free will EXTENDS to trivial decisions like what basketball shoes you prefer to wear (though this could be moral as well, sweatshops and all that), the PURPOSE of free will is to allow us to develop the character of Christ voluntarily. That is the purpose free will plays in a discussion like the one we are having, so I feel that the tangential discussions such as the one we are having now miss the point.

Spenser:

If I do not give a homeless guy I see on the street the change in my pocket though he has a sign asking for money did I make a moral decision?

Yes.

[Spenser]

Was my decision morally wrong? :(

[B. H. Manners]

"""""It's true that free will does expand to more than just moral decisions, so the point needs clarification. It clearly does not cover biological neccessities. (Though perhaps one does not HAVE to urinate, I don't know what would happen if somebody tried holding it INDEFINITELY...)"""""


You WILL urinate or defecate regardless of whether you want to or not. So much waste will build up your brain will override your voluntary muscles and exit out the filth regardless of your desire to hold it in.

[Steven Carr]

Originally posted by luvluv

Regardless, this takes the discussion on a turn towards the absurd and away from all the relavent points. There are options over which we have a limited or restricted choice (to breathe or not to breathe?) but these have little to do with the purposes for which we were given free will, which is, on the Christian view, to develop the character of Christ.

So I think in the end it matters little if there are immediate consequences to not breathing or not urinating. Free will basically means that God will not force you to make ANY decision which requires the suspension of your preferences, judgements, aesthetic or moral sensibilities, etc.


A strange definition of free will.

Normally, free will means that at any time 't', we have the option to do X or not X. This is the normal definition of free will, and it appears to be one which does not suit you. One wonders why?

Although I must urinate, at any time 't' I have the option to urinate or not. I have perfect free will as far as that is concerned.

(I can choose not to urinate at 1030 pm by deciding to do so at 10.25 pm for example)

So , although God has created us as creatures who must urinate, he has not taken away any part whatsoever of our free will.


So God could have created us as creatures who must accept Christ, without taking away any part of our perfect free will to accept Christ at a given time 't', or not accept Christ at that time 't'.

Unless you start messing about with the definition of free will......

[Steven Carr]

Originally posted by B. H. Manners


You WILL urinate or defecate regardless of whether you want to or not. So much waste will build up your brain will override your voluntary muscles and exit out the filth regardless of your desire to hold it in.

Reminder me not to invite you to my house if you have no control of your bodily functions.......

Are you really claiming that if you know you will be on a bus at 11 o'clock you will not be able to choose not to defecate on the bus? (by the simple expedient of going to the toilet earlier at 10 o'clock, for example).

I remind you of the normal definition of free will.

At a given time 't', a person can choose to do X or not-X.

We have perfect free will about whether to choose to defecate or urinate at a given instant in the future.

Nevertheless, we must all (at a time of our own free choice) defecate and urinate.

So God could create us as creatures who must accept Christ, without any dimunition, even in theory, of our free will.

[bd-from-kg]

luvluv:

Well, I’m back from my trip, although I’ll be taking another very soon (Aug. 1 – 11.) Before I get into a long discussion of your last post to me, I want to zero in on one particular comment that amazed an mystified me.

I don't think God has any knowledge of us apart from our genetic information and personality traits developed in us from a combination of our genetics and our upbringing, combined with the character formation that results from our choices. Thus, Smith would have to BE BORN into a SPECIFIC CONTEXT for God to know anything about Smith.

God could know this before Smith was born into that specific context, but he could not know this if Smith were not going to be born into that specific context.

This is an unequivocal rejection of God’s omniscience. And a non-omniscient God cannot be omnipotent. So it appears that we’re talking about different things. I’ve been talking about why your explanation of why the Christian God would remain hidden doesn’t hold water, whereas it appears that you’re talking about a strange, new type of God that I’ve never heard of before, and which very few Christians would recognize at all. Let me explain.

By definition, a being B is omniscient if and only if, for any proposition P, B knows that P if and only if P. Thus saying that there is any proposition P such that God does not know whether P is true is a repudiation of His omniscience. For example, if there is any proposition about Smith such that God at any time did not, or will not, know whether it’s true, God is not omniscient.

It gets worse. You’re saying that there are huge numbers of propositions about every human being such that God does not know whether they’re true. Among other things, He doesn’t know the truth value of “counterfactuals of freedom” – i.e., counterfactuals involving free will such as: “If John had proposed to Sally at such-and-such a time and place in a certain specific way, she would have accepted.”

But this leads to epistemological chaos for God. For example, suppose that God is considering whether to create (or “actualize”) world A or world B. According to you, at every point where a free agent makes a free decision, God doesn’t know which decision he’ll make. To be sure, if He decides to actualize world A, He’ll know this with respect to all free decisions in world A after actualizing it. But He won’t know beforehand. And He won’t ever know these things with respect to world B.

Since this is true for all of the worlds that God might actualize, He really has no idea which world will best fulfill His purposes. He won’t even know after making the decision whether He made the best choice, or even that the world He chose wasn’t in the bottom 1% in terms of fulfilling His purposes. For practical purposes He’s completely in the dark; He’s forced to choose blindly. Thus it might be that God had no intention of creating a world in which Satan would rebel and consequently Adam would sin, resulting in the Fall. According to your theory, it might simply have turned out that way, much to God’s chagrin.

But perhaps God can mend things if He really messes up? Well, to be sure, if He really botches thing up He can simply destroy the world He made and start over. But suppose that He tries intervening to fix things. Then He’s faced with a major problem: the world that results from His intervention is a different possible world than the original one, so all free choices might turn out differently than in the original one. For example, take Sally’s decision to accept John’s proposal. Let’s assume that this occurs at a point in time before the first time directly affected by God’s intervention. If this was truly a free decision, she could have chosen differently under the exact same conditions. If this means anything at all, it means that there are possible worlds in which the exact same conditions occur and she does choose differently. But now that God has intervened, we have a different possible world, so by the definition of free will Sally might choose differently in this new possible world!

Thus any intervention at any point in time will have enormous repercussions through the entire “time line” of the universe, including times before the point where the intervention occurred. And since (on your theory) God does not know the truth values of counterfactuals of freedom, He’ll have no idea what these repercussions will be. Thus any attempt to intervene to “fix” things will have radical effects that are unpredictable even to God. It might well make things even worse than before. We can picture God, on an especially unlucky day, making one change after another to clean up the mess that He’s made, but each time making things worse than ever.

Needless to say, it would be ridiculous to call such a God “omnipotent”. If His every move is fraught with uncertainty; if He has no idea whether anything He does will further His purposes or not, He’s a helpless, pitiful giant.

So I reject this conception of God unequivocally, and so should you. Your God is a proper subject of pity, not of awe. In fact, He may well be the underdog: the chances that He’ll succeed in achieving His purposes might be very poor. In any case, He’s in the same boat as the rest of us: trying hard, hoping desperately that things will turn out well in the end. We can root for Him, of course. We might admire Him. We might even try to help Him out. But worship? Give me a break.

[Jamie_L]

Originally posted by luvluv:
I would argue that in the interests of free will God's existence HAS to be rationally deniable, and that God's existence, if it was undeniable APART FROM a willing emotional commitment to God, would have the effect of reducing moral decisions to pragmatic, self-interested calculations... Because the awards and punishments for serving or not serving God are so severe, it is impossible that they would not form a more significant factor in conversion than mere conviction of sin or willingness to enter into a loving relationship with God IF those awards and punishments were undeniable facts.

I want to add a few comments, although bd did touch on this some.

It seems to me that this arguement applies equally to believers in the world as it exists now. Many (I might even say most) people who believe in God and Jesus Christ have very few doubts about God's existence. They look at the world around them, read their bibles, and determine that God's existence is undeniable. The believe it through and through, to the core of their being, and have virtually no doubt about the consequences of having or not having an emotional commitment to God. In fact, I'd say that's the very definition of "belief in God."

Even if God is rationally deniable to people in general, the specific people who do come to believe in God do not remain in a situation of significant doubt. They come to believe as strongly as if God were undeniable. Once they reach that state, your arguement applies to them: they should lose their ability to freely choose to follow God. In essence, this arguement denies the good intentions of all devout believers in the real world, because it says that believing in the consequences of not loving God prevents you from loving God.

If, on the other hand, you accept that the devout believers of the real world are capable of freely choosing to seek love God and seek deeper relationships with Him for non-selfish reasons, then it follows that anyone believing strongly in God, regardless of how they came to that belief, is capable of freely developing deeper relationships with God.

Whether or not God is hidden or undniable to other people is irrelevant. Hiddenness or obviousness only effects how difficult it is to come to belive, but it does not change the nature of the belief itself.

Jamie

[luvluv]

By definition, a being B is omniscient if and only if, for any proposition P, B knows that P if and only if P. Thus saying that there is any proposition P such that God does not know whether P is true is a repudiation of His omniscience. For example, if there is any proposition about Smith such that God at any time did not, or will not, know whether it’s true, God is not omniscient.

Let's get to the root of this argument.

You suggested that the argument from unbelief was problematic for God because there are other possible worlds, and other circumstances in this world, in which Smith would have become a believer.

I countered that statement in two ways. Firstly, by stating that in a world where free agents are given procreative, as well as moral freedom, God does not have complete control over who comes into the world and under what circumstances.

Secondly, I countered (in so many words) that it is incoherent to speak of Smith as a pre-existent soul with qualities and attributes COMPLETELY without context. That is to say, it is incoherent to suggest that "Smith" would have received Christ if Smith were to be born into a context in which "Smith" was not Smith at all.

From this second modest proposal of mine, you seem to have cast me in with the open theists, in thinking that I am asserting that God does not know ANY of the counterfactuals for ANY decision made by ALREADY EXISTENT individuals. I don't believe my statement entails anything that drastic. I am simply denying that Smith's soul inhabits some heavenly realm before he is born, where Smith's soul has some essential characteristics (such that they will instantiate no matter where Smith is born) and that God decides in what body to put Smith's soul. This view (right out of the film Look Who's Talking Too) seems to be what your view implies.

I am countering that the Christian need not maintain that Smith's soul existed AT ALL before conception, much less that it had any ESSENCE such that God could judge, from the characteristics of that essence, where best to place Smith so that Smith could receive salvation.

I am not saying that there are counterfactuals of freedom that God doesn't know about Smith, I'm saying that if God were to determine that Smith got born to different parents, under different circumstances, THERE WOULD BE NO SMITH. There would only be some other individual who was born into an excellent opportunity for salvation. But of course, this totally ignores the fact that I deny that God takes any role whatsoever (except in extreme cases like Jesus) in determining who comes into the world and under what circumstances. That He leaves up to the free will of moral agents who have the ability to choose, to a limited extent, under what conditions they will have children.

So in my opinion what you are suggesting that God should know and act on is incoherent if a Christian simply denies that souls exist before a person exists. You are not asking what Smith would do if Smith were born into another situation, you are asking what if there were no Smith, and instead there were some other person who was born into a situation more conducive to the gospel and Smith never came to be. You are asking God to know what Smith would do IF SMITH NEVER EXISTED and instead someone else existed in radically different circumstances. Well, Smith wouldn't do anything. He wouldn't exist.

Now, of course there are the possible world construals (which in my view only exist in philosophy classes) in which the world is "just like it is" BUT Smith's situation is ever so slightly different in some way which would ensure salvation. Well, to this I would say that God could have possible knowledge of some change that would put Smith in a better position to receive salvation (once Smith is alive and on this planet) but I am doubtful that there are ways in which God could act to ensure salvation for Smith which would not effect the free will or SALVATION of Smith or some others. Lets say, for instance, that Smith would receive salvation if there were to be an earthquake in Smith's town and Smith was rescued by a Catholic priest. What if this same earthquake killed two faithful churchgoers who also live in Smith's building, and a third churchgoer lost her faith because God saved an atheist and let two churchgoers die? My point is that it is entirely possible that God IS doing everything He can do to bring everyone to salvation freely and without threatening the freedom and salvation of others. (And again I must say that given free will, Smith could actually be living in the best possible circumstances for him to accept Christ and he could still refuse salvation.)

It gets worse. You’re saying that there are huge numbers of propositions about every human being such that God does not know whether they’re true. Among other things, He doesn’t know the truth value of “counterfactuals of freedom” – i.e., counterfactuals involving free will such as: “If John had proposed to Sally at such-and-such a time and place in a certain specific way, she would have accepted.”

I don't think anything I said leads to anything quite so extravagant. Let's be clear: all I denied was the pre-existence of the soul. God could easily (and does) have all knowledge of all counterfactuals of all the people who actually exist. All I'm denying is the coherence of asking why God didn't make "Smith" into someone other than "Smith" who would have recieved salvation, thus saving "Smith".

In fact, God does know who WOULD have been born if Smith's mother would not have procreated with Smith's father, but with someone else. But God knows even this hypothetical person as the person who WOULD HAVE BORN the genetic material of his parents and been born into the specific circumstances that the new father's presence would have created. So there's no limit to the counterfactuals God could know, even about potential people who are never born. However, it is incoherent to ask God to know what Smith would do if Smith never existed.

But this leads to epistemological chaos for God. For example, suppose that God is considering whether to create (or “actualize”) world A or world B. According to you, at every point where a free agent makes a free decision, God doesn’t know which decision he’ll make. To be sure, if He decides to actualize world A, He’ll know this with respect to all free decisions in world A after actualizing it. But He won’t know beforehand. And He won’t ever know these things with respect to world B.

Not so, God does know all the free decisions everyone is going to make. All he doesn't know is what "Smith" is going to do if Smith doesn't exist and some other person exists instead. (Then again I guess God does know what Smith is going to do if Smith doesn't exist - and so do I - nothing.) He knows every free decision Smith will make. He doesn't know, and it is not even coherent to ask, what Smith would do if Smith didn't exist.

I don't believe that anything I've said leads me to the notion that God lacks all knowledge of all free counterfactuals. I'm sorry if that's how my response read. I meant only to deny the existence, pre-birth, of souls with essential personalities which God decides to instantiate with one couple rather than another. In point of fact, I did not actually deny it personally, I only said that a Christian doesn't HAVE to hold to this notion, and could this have a plausible defense to the argument from unbelief.

Since this is true for all of the worlds that God might actualize, He really has no idea which world will best fulfill His purposes. He won’t even know after making the decision whether He made the best choice, or even that the world He chose wasn’t in the bottom 1% in terms of fulfilling His purposes. For practical purposes He’s completely in the dark; He’s forced to choose blindly. Thus it might be that God had no intention of creating a world in which Satan would rebel and consequently Adam would sin, resulting in the Fall. According to your theory, it might simply have turned out that way, much to God’s chagrin.

But perhaps God can mend things if He really messes up? Well, to be sure, if He really botches thing up He can simply destroy the world He made and start over. But suppose that He tries intervening to fix things. Then He’s faced with a major problem: the world that results from His intervention is a different possible world than the original one, so all free choices might turn out differently than in the original one. For example, take Sally’s decision to accept John’s proposal. Let’s assume that this occurs at a point in time before the first time directly affected by God’s intervention. If this was truly a free decision, she could have chosen differently under the exact same conditions. If this means anything at all, it means that there are possible worlds in which the exact same conditions occur and she does choose differently. But now that God has intervened, we have a different possible world, so by the definition of free will Sally might choose differently in this new possible world!

Thus any intervention at any point in time will have enormous repercussions through the entire “time line” of the universe, including times before the point where the intervention occurred. And since (on your theory) God does not know the truth values of counterfactuals of freedom, He’ll have no idea what these repercussions will be. Thus any attempt to intervene to “fix” things will have radical effects that are unpredictable even to God. It might well make things even worse than before. We can picture God, on an especially unlucky day, making one change after another to clean up the mess that He’s made, but each time making things worse than ever.

I'm not going to respond individually to any of this, or any of the rest of your post, because with all due respect I don't think any of it is entailed in my position.

[bd-from-kg]

luvluv:

If I misunderstood your meaning; it’s because you misspoke. If someone says, “I don't think God has any knowledge of us apart from X”, regardless of what X is, one is entitled to conclude that he believes that there are things about us that God does not know. In this case I looked at the “apart from” clause and concluded that at least one of the things you were intending to say that God does not know is how we would freely act if circumstances were different, since this is clearly not entailed by genetic information, personality traits, etc. (If it were, the acts would be caused by these things and hence would not be free in the libertarian sense.)

Also, I’m still a bit confused about your position, because elsewhere I said:

[God] could have chosen to create someone else at that time and place – someone who would make the choice to accept God in the end rather than reject Him.

You replied:

I categorically reject this, for reasons cited above, and I further dispute that Christianity entails this notion in the slightest. Libertarian free will seems to speak against this possibility...

But what is it exactly that you reject? If God has knowledge of counterfactuals of freedom, then He can foresee whether any given individual that He might contemplate creating at this time and place will ultimately accept or reject Him, and choose to create one of those who will choose freely to accept Him. If you say that this is an infringement on free will, you’re saying that knowledge of counterfactuals of freedom is an infringement of free will. In which case you should reject the idea that God has such knowledge. If you say that He can't create whomever He pleases at any time and place that He chooses, you're saying that He's not omnipotent. And if you say that it would be an infringement of the parents' free will, you're just being ridiculous. If this would be an infringement of free will, any action by God that affected humans would be an infringement of free will.

Anyway, regarding “essences” and identity:

The idea that humans have an eternal, unchanging essence is an essential, integral part of Christian theology. The notion of an eternal fate doesn’t makes sense without it.

After all, who or what is going to experience eternal torment or eternal bliss? Surely not the human being who dies – the person who likes to play practical jokes, enjoys reruns of Ozzie and Harriet, who dislikes cantaloupes but loves chocolate sundaes, who has a temper, who likes children in general but doesn't care for very young babies, etc., etc. Perhaps at the time she died, the person in question had become so unhappy as to be very unpleasant to be around; perhaps she has developed Alzheimer’s; perhaps a brain tumor has altered her beyond recognition. Surely this isn’t what goes to Heaven (or Hell)?

In fact, a human being goes through all kinds of changes in the course of a lifetime. All of the “accidental” qualities, including character, personality, appearances, change over time. In order for the concept of rewarding or punishing this person to make sense, there must be a person to reward or punish – i.e., an individual whose identity remains unchanged over time. Otherwise – i.e., if the 25-year-old John Smith who was quite immoral and had no interest in God was a different individual than the 75-year-old John Smith who had a saving relationship with Jesus when he died, then the first one should go to Hell while the second goes to Heaven. Why should an individual be exempted from reward or punishment merely because of the fact that his body was later occupied by a different individual? But if they’re the same individual, you need to be able to give a reasonable account of the sense in which they’re the same individual. And this account cannot be in terms of character or personality traits, which might be very different. The fact that they share the same body, or the same genetic endowment, can’t be the required link because after death John Smith won’t have a body or genes, but you’ll want to say that he’s still the same individual.

So what is it that makes the 25-year-old John Smith the same individual as the 75-year-old Smith? What is it that experiences eternal bliss or torment? Why, his soul, of course: his eternal essence – what’s left over after taking away all of these changing, accidental qualities that he might have had at one point or another in her life. Nothing else makes sense.

Look at this another way. Are those who enjoy eternal bliss being rewarded merely for being in the right place at the right time; for being lucky enough to have experienced the “right” kinds of environmental influences, while those in Hell are being punished for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or if someone would have come to the “right” kind of relationship with God if he’d been given more time but dies in an accident while still young and foolish, is he to be punished for his bad luck in getting killed? This doesn’t make sense. Ultimately an eternal reward or punishment, to make any sense at all, must be linked to a person’s fundamental, unchanging nature. The only other point of view that makes sense is that one’s fate is the inevitable consequence of (rather than a reward or punishment for) one’s basic, fundamental nature. Either way, there has to be a basic, unchanging nature – i.e., an eternal essence.

It also doesn’t make sense to suppose that one’s fate depends on a choice or series of choices that are not the product of one’s fundamental nature, but are merely random, inexplicable events. If this is what the doctrine of libertarian free will says, the doctrine is unintelligible, and the notion that one’s eternal fate should depend on such random, inexplicable events is incomprehensible. This would be transparently unjust. Besides, who would want their ultimate fate to depend on something utterly beyond their control; a cosmic roll of the dice, so to speak? making one’s fate depend on free choices can only be just if those free choices are the product of one’s “true self”. But this requires that one have a “true self” – i.e., a basic, fundamental nature, or in other words an eternal essence.

Thus the doctrine of immortality, especially when coupled with a doctrine of eternal reward or punishment, is incoherent without the notion of an eternal essence.

Contrary to what you seem to think, the issue is not whether there are pre-existing individual essences. It’s consistent with Christianity to believe that a person’s essence only comes into existence when that person is created. What’s not consistent with Christianity is the supposition that this essence is to be identified in any way with a person’s accidental, material properties; an essence is by definition spiritual. That means that its nature does not depend on material things such as one’s genetic makeup; in fact, it has nothing to do with such things. And that in turn means that there is no reason why God cannot create a being with a given essence in one set of material circumstances or in a completely different set. And there is no reason not to identify two individuals (in differ