God. Real. Right.

This post concludes the first difficulty of denying the reality of free will. That first difficulty is that it underestimates the nature and power of God.
2.1.2.2 Even explaining God’s foreknowledge while accepting free will is too great a limit on God.
Using God’s foreknowledge of possibilities as a means of explaining freedom while maintaining God’s control of events misses the significance of freedom (Molinism’s failure regarding the significance of human freedom is not the point of this paper, but it can be mentioned briefly. Creating layers between God’s knowledge and the actions of his creatures in the future does not eliminate the apparent problem for freedom foreknowledge forces. That is, if God knowing the activity of a person means she does not have an option, then God knowing what she will do in every possible circumstance still does not leave her a genuine option since God knows which world [and therefore which circumstances] He will actualize. That is, God actualizing only the circumstances which will produce a certain choice makes her choice no freer than the compatiblist’s subject, although her determination is buried one layer deeper) and inappropriately attempts to explain the knowledge of God. The question is how God could Read the rest of this entry »

2.1.2.1.3 The significance of contingency and revelation are directly proportional.
This post does not argue that revelation would have to be unimportant if determinism were true, but rather that the more likely indeterminacy and contingency are, the more fundamentally important special revelation is. It is a point which emerges from the freedom of God and leads then inevitably to the responsibility of people to respond to submit to the revelation.
The fact that the universe could be otherwise, its contingency, is what makes revelation so essential. There are a couple of different means by which humanity can discern truth: reason and revelation. By reason (which is really just an aspect of general revelation) people discern what is necessarily true. (At the conclusion of this post it is implicit that “necessarily” only means something is necessary subsequent to God’s choice to make it so.) But truth which cannot be known by reason alone—what is not necessarily so, but only contingently so—people can know only Read the rest of this entry »

The closer an election, the greater the shallow promises intended to convince a few more voters toward one side or the other. Since by definition the majority of people are not wealthy, many of those shallow promises are aimed at the middle class and lower. “We will not raise taxes (or we will lower taxes) for anyone making less than $xxxx.” But promises are not the only way to win a middle-class heart. There are also attacks on a minority, in this case the wicked people who make more money than they do. “Greedy corporate executives have abused the free market and they ought to be punished.” Never mind that it is not greed, but the success at acting on their greed which actually aggravates the critic’s audience. That is, there is no political bounty to be had by attacking those who are greedy but fail to gain wealth through it: only those whose greed brings them wealth face the criticism, revealing the hypocrisy of a criticism motivated more by its disdain for wealth (or even profit) than for greed.
But back to the point: even a cursory analysis of those attacks extrudes Read the rest of this entry »

This post continues the series begun here, the to-date-compilation of which is available here.
2.1.2.1.2 That God repents is evidence that God makes things the best, not that He must simply act within some externally defined best.
Even accepting the mistaken idea that there are a finite number of possibilities (too great a limit on God) there is still no reason to believe that there cannot be a plurality of morally equivalent possibilities. The scriptural use of “repentance” in reference to God makes the point. Reducing repentance to relenting neither addresses the problem nor deals fairly with the vocabulary—no one has a problem using the same word to mean repentance when it concerns humans. Is it not the case that every time God has mercy it is because He has repented? His pronouncement of judgment is not false. His mercy is real because the condemnation of the guilty is real and that guilty soul’s future without God is as really condemned as any future can be real. His act of mercy then overturns His pronouncement of judgment—which is why it is mercy. It is not necessity. If it were necessity, then His mercy Read the rest of this entry »

Still on the second part of the overall journey engaged by this set of posts, this entry attempts to show why a sub-point of the claim that even God acts only within reason (rather than with radical freedom) results in a fallacious limitation of God’s sovereignty.
2.1.2.1.1 There is no reason to exclude contingency from descriptions of God.
As the previous post argues, there is no reason to believe God needed to choose between worlds, one of which was best or even better than the others.
But there is something else wrong with the assumption that this world is the best of all possible worlds. The rationalist’s question is why, if God knows everything about all possible worlds and has all power, it would not make sense to surmise that He has actualized the best of those worlds in submission (a term anathema to the supremacy of God) to reason. The question itself is misleading and overlooks something about what is possible to God.
There is an old paradox about Read the rest of this entry »

Warning: this post contains dangerously opiatic speculation about truth and intelligence. It is an effort to clarify for myself what I see as a misguided feature of some hermeneutics, some apologetics, and much if not most skepticism. But it simply will not be interesting to people with real lives!
Intelligence can mean many different things: for example, the mental ability to comprehend things, the essential element of a purposive existence, and the ability to perform computer functions. This explanation uses the first definition, the mental ability to comprehend. So the level of intelligence refers to the capacity of a given person to comprehend something at a given time. The given time is important because it is beyond doubt that mental capacity is variable within a person over time. (For instance, the more a person memorizes, the greater becomes that person’s ability to memorize.)
Truth can also be defined many different ways, only one of which has any real meaning. So while authors can define truth as Read the rest of this entry »

When Hurricanes strike, as Gustav is doing right now, age-old questions are raised again. Some are about how to react and why. But some are more basic, about the source of all kinds of problems persistently faced by man. This post is about that question: from where comes evil?
The first eight and a half lines of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” describe the immediate source (or proximate cause, using Descartes’ language) of problems:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the

Read the rest of this entry »

Two previous posts identify the most difficult philosophical obstacle and most obvious practical objection to believing in a radical free will.
The post on free will before this one identifies the key theological problem of rejecting the possibility of radical free will. This post adds to that one another example of how rejecting free will goes hand in hand with diminishing respect for God’s sovereignty.
Subsequent posts will identify the key moral (or practical) problem of denying the reality of radical free will.
2.1.2 Attempting to explain God’s activity questions His sovereignty.
2.1.2.1 Claiming this world is necessarily the best of all possible worlds is an example of inappropriately explaining God’s activity.
Back to the nature of God’s freedom, which is important as a conceptual framework within which human freedom can then be described: To describe free will as logically absurd diminishes a person’s understanding of God. Why? Here’s a question that narrows the discussion a bit: is it better to describe God as free or rational? (Remember the first problem faced by those who believe in free will.) Obviously the position of this argument is that the best way to express God’s omnipotence and primacy is with His free will. Consider one philosophical system in which reason takes God’s place.
Leibniz’s argument about God’s rational behavior Read the rest of this entry »

Two previous posts identify the most difficult philosophical obstacle and most obvious practical objection to believing in a radical free will.
This post begins the opposite task: identifying the key theological (or philosophical) problem of rejecting the possibility of radical free will. There will be about six posts working on this part of the task.
Subsequent posts will identify the key moral (or practical) problem of denying the reality of radical free will.
2.1.1 To claim that determinism is rationally necessary impugns God’s sovereignty.
One of the first criticisms of the free will position is that the idea of a truly free will impinges on the sovereignty of God. This criticism is actually just Read the rest of this entry »

The previous post on free will established why it is difficult for many to conceive of how there could be a radically free will. The first paragraph below is a reminder of that point. The rest of this post is about how the fact that free will can be abused and can lead to some bad opinions motivates some people errantly to assume it does not actually exist. Both posts are intended only to clarify why it will take so many posts, paragraphs, and arguments to demonstrate the reality and inherent value of a radical free will.

1.2 A Bad Reputation Makes Free Will Seem Undesirable
So there is a metaphysical argument against free will. That is, there is no room for a free will in the reality of this presumed causally closed universe. In fact there is no room beyond the universe for that kind of freedom either—an admission which ought to be disturbing for a theist. But there is also a moral objection to admitting the reality of free will.
In this culture, autonomy takes first place in the race to be the highest value. As with any value, there are good and bad consequences associated with its maintenance. For instance Read the rest of this entry »