beefcalf wrote:No, I hadn't missed your references to being Protestant. That being said, the fact that you are Protestant does not preclude the possibility that you grew up LDS, or had been converted for a time, and reverted to mainstream Christianity later. In those cases, you could be a Protestant who has a fairly in-depth knowledge of Mormonism. I was being cautious in not assuming too much about you. The vagueness was in my incomplete understanding how familiar you are with LDS culture and teachings, nothing more.
I was referring to my response to you in which I admitted being a neverMo and accepting your correction about the Mormon position on divine intervention. (I don’t know how to link to specific posts on this forum.) No matter. I meant my last response to be somewhat jocular, but now it just sounds smart-alecky to me.
Sorry about that.
Moving on.
I read through your more more formalized restatement of my argument. I didn't like it. Now that may be because you did a really crappy job of formalizing my argument. Or, it might be that my argument itself is crappy, and you made short work of making that apparent. I haven't yet decided. What I have noted, however, is that you haven't said much about it other than organizing it and declaring it as bad. I get the impression you have just the perfectly devastating response to my silly atheistic ramblings but you'd like me to paint myself a little tighter into my corner before springing the trap shut. That's fine. What do you need me to say? I'll say it. I just want to hear why you think the argument doesn't work.
You're giving me too much credit, here, beefcalf. I just wanted to respond to the most accurate possible form of your argument—a form that you would agree with and say, “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying”; or, conversely, “Nope, that’s not what I had in mind”— and I have no idea if my version of it fits that bill. I’m not trying to trap you; I’m the one on the defensive here. In short, I think the argument is bad because I see no compelling reason to grant (4) or (6).
Here again is my version of your argument. Note that, in the interest of parity, I’ve added the bolded phrase in (6) “
with or without intercession.” I think that is in line with what you previously wrote.
(1) God is all-knowing
(2) If (1), God gains no knowledge from intercessors
(3) God is merciful
(4) If (3), God always intervenes on behalf of a deserving person with or without intercession
(5) God is just
(6) If (5), God never intervenes on behalf of an evil person
with or without intercession (7) Therefore, intercessory prayer never causes God to intervene
My (7) is intended to reflect your statement: "It is irrational to imagine that such a prayer would ever cause such a God to intercede." This is functioning as a sort of internal critique of the Christian claim that God does, in fact, intervene in response to intercessory prayer. By 'internal critique' I just mean that you're attempting to show that the Christian worldview is incoherent at this point. Something like: "Christians claim that God intervenes in response to human intercession, but if Christians also believe O, M, and J about God, then their claim is incoherent."
In order for your internal critique to be successful, obviously your premises must be true and consistent with the worldview that Christians actually espouse. (1), (3), and (5), I grant, obviously.
Neither (4) nor (6) appears self-evident to me. In fact, I'm a Christian and I flatly reject (4) and (6). Since (4) and (6) are not beliefs I hold, the internal critique stalls before it gets off the ground. Unless you can convince me that (4) follows from (3) and (6) follows from (5), there's no compelling reason to believe your conclusion (7).
You'd have to demonstrate, for example, that on the Christian worldview the sentence "God is merciful and sometimes does not intervene on behalf of a deserving person" is incoherent.
Further, in order to accept your argument as valid, you’ve essentially asked me to stipulate that the Bible is incoherent (or something near it) with regard to its teachings on prayer. The Bible commands Christians to intercede on behalf of others regardless of whether or not they are deserving (or, at least, certainly that sort of knowledge is not presupposed in this particular command): “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior” (1 Tim 2:1-3, ESV). But, if “intercessory prayer never causes God to intervene,” and God knows this; and scripture commands us to intercede for others with the express purpose of asking God to intervene; and God inspired the relevant scripture, then the Bible is incoherent, here, at worst, or, at best, just highly confused.
But, for a Protestant Christian such as myself, scripture is
norma normans non normata. So, it’s unreasonable for you to build into your argument the requirement that I stipulate incoherency on the part of the Bible just so that I can affirm the premises of your argument. Since you haven’t argued for (4) or (6) but are merely assuming them.
Apropos (4), Paul prayed to God and asked that God remove his “thorn in the flesh,” and God said no:
“So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.
Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.
But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Cor 12:7-9, ESV).
This is not intercession, true. But, it does effectively falsify (4):
If (3), God always intervenes on behalf of a deserving person with or without intercession.
Unless you wish to argue that Paul was not a deserving person on whose behalf God would always intervene with or without intercession, or that Paul wasn’t asking for a blessing. But, you’d have to argue that.
Likewise, Jesus’ prayer in the garden:
“And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled.
Then he said to them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.’
And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will’” (Mat 26:37-39, ESV).
God didn’t answer Jesus’ prayer. Intercession? No. But,again, it effectively falsifies (4) unless you wish to argue that Jesus was not a deserving person on whose behalf the Father would always intervene with or without intercession, or that Jesus wasn’t asking for a blessing. But, you’d have to argue that.
Apropos (6), Moses interceded on behalf of the people of Israel and asked that God not destroy them for their sin:
“But Moses implored the LORD his God and said, ‘O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
Why should the Egyptians say, “With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth”? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people.
Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, “I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever."’
And the LORD relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people” (Exo 32:11-14, ESV)
That certainly appears to me to be effective intercession on behalf of evil people. Unless you wish to argue that the Israelites were actually deserving of blessing here, or that being allowed by God to continue to live relative to their imminent destruction is not a blessing. But, you’d have to argue that.
Examples could be multiplied.
Some less central problems.
Non-human entities. It’s easy to imagine intercession on behalf of non-human entities. Prayer for the healing of an injured animal, for example. There’s no room for this type of intercession in your argument. You could remedy this by explicitly limiting your argument to God’s intervention in purely human affairs (no dogs allowed), but I’d then be curious how you would deal with the animal question. Would God already have intervened based on the righteousness of the animal in question? But Christians typically don’t attribute moral qualities to animals, etc.
Libertarian freedom. Your argument seems to assume libertarian freedom, so I’ve assumed it as well in my responses to you. As for myself, I’m a determinist. Your argument doesn’t really touch what I believe about God’s interaction with his creation. Nevertheless, even Christians who hold to libertarian freedom can safely reject your argument.
Deserving. For the sake of response, I’ve assumed that there is some sort of baseline, agreed-upon definition of a deserving person that we both share. But, at some point, you’d need to define precisely what you mean here. I’m pretty sure I’d disagree with your definition.