cksalmon wrote:As a defense against the logical problem of evil (à la Plantinga's Free Will Defender), it ably succeeds. But that's a pretty low bar.
I use to think so too, but I’ve come to change my mind on this. In Plantinga’s case, I think his use of middle knowledge leads to some problems, I think that counterfactual creaturely freedoms wreck havoc on the traditional God of Theism, and his sovereignty, because in the end, God cannot actualize the world he would really want.
Does Plantinga go that far in FWD? Arguably, he does: "...[W]hat is really characteristic and central to the Free Will Defense is the claim that God, though omnipotent, could not have actualized just any possible world He pleased."
The weaker FWD claim is that any possible state of affairs in which God chooses to instantiate evil (at whatever remove) is sufficiently better than the opposite so as to just possibly (not even plausibly) balance the scale, and there you go.
But, yeah. When I read Mackie, I thought: Duh. Of course he is correct.
Nightlion wrote:We can see today a fable has developed around the Restoration by those who actually are inexperienced and who fail to come to know the truth. How ironic. I might have to take another look at Gnosticism to see if my new perspectives can utilize anything I missed before.
Keep in mind Nightlion, that the Nag Hammadi texts should be looked as kind of a library. You don’t know what sort of hidden meanings Gnostics put into the text, nor what they thought of them.
I doubt whomever is still hanging onto Gnostic traditions today, if anyone, has much of a pristine clue about it either. No more than Christians today have a clue what Jesus was really teaching. I have my nets to sieve come what may.
quark wrote: Joseph Smith's Abraham-God theory, the general idea of ascension of gods per the gradual process of deification.
What? Please explain. How do you come by this? I must have missed something.
And please, why do we need to think by way of used thoughts of previous thinkers. Seems to compound the issues with useless encumbrance. We think, so we are. Why is it; THEY THOUGHT SO WE ARE? OR AS THEY THOUGHT SO MUST WE THINK TO BE THOUGHTFUL. Huh? I could not care less what other thought. Why should I have to think through all their thoughts before I can think for myself. Dumb. Are we striving to come off intellectually correct? Phooey.
Sorry, Stak, and all those invested heavily in used thoughts. What if artists were constrained to express by way of used art. Used music. Blah!
Last edited by Guest on Mon Nov 28, 2011 4:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
cksalmon wrote:But, yeah. When I read Mackie, I thought: Duh. Of course he is correct.
Josh Rasmussen changed my mind with a paper from Religious Studies, here is the abstract:
An important question raised in the Molinist debate is, ‘Given God's access to counterfactual knowledge, could God create a world in which free creatures always refrain from evil?’ An affirmative answer suggests that God cannot possess counterfactual knowledge since such knowledge would allow God to create seemingly more desirable worlds than the actual world. However, Alvin Plantinga has argued that it is at least possible that every possible person is transworld depraved – meaning that each person would perform some wrong actions if any world in which that person is morally free were actualized. I argue that, given an infinite number of possible persons, the probability that everyone is transworld depraved is exceedingly low. In addition, I investigate whether there are enough possible persons vis-à-vis the number of moral choices per person so that God could create worlds like the actual world, except lacking in moral evil.
Here is the PDF, if you are interested in reading the whole thing.
ETA- Josh is one fantastic dude, a former student to William Lane Craig, and a former TA to Wes Morriston. I consider the guy a subject matter expert when it comes to Cosmological arguments.
Aristotle Smith wrote:Jesus, the incarnation, and atonement work much differently in orthodox Christian thinking than they do in modern LDS thought. Because of the strict separation between members of the LDS Godhead, it leaves God the Father as being aloof and kicking the crap out of Jesus as substitution for sins. Having Jesus and God the Father much more intimately connected (i.e. the Trinity) personalizes this as adds a human dimension to God. On the Christian view of things God does help and does makes things better, but only by becoming human, suffering how we suffer, and dying ignominiously.
the God of classical theism can seem remote and some senses not the God of the Bible. I don't think this is necessarily the case, but I see the point. One way of overcoming this is through limiting God's power or knowledge in some way. I understand why people do that, but like I said I think the orthodox Christian conception of Jesus does a lot to overcome/undermine some of the perceived aloofness of the God of classical theism.
cksalmon wrote:But, yeah. When I read Mackie, I thought: Duh. Of course he is correct.
Josh Rasmussen changed my mind with a paper from Religious Studies, here is the abstract:
An important question raised in the Molinist debate is, ‘Given God's access to counterfactual knowledge, could God create a world in which free creatures always refrain from evil?’ An affirmative answer suggests that God cannot possess counterfactual knowledge since such knowledge would allow God to create seemingly more desirable worlds than the actual world. However, Alvin Plantinga has argued that it is at least possible that every possible person is transworld depraved – meaning that each person would perform some wrong actions if any world in which that person is morally free were actualized. I argue that, given an infinite number of possible persons, the probability that everyone is transworld depraved is exceedingly low. In addition, I investigate whether there are enough possible persons vis-à-vis the number of moral choices per person so that God could create worlds like the actual world, except lacking in moral evil.
Here is the PDF, if you are interested in reading the whole thing.
ETA- Josh is one fantastic dude, a former student to William Lane Craig, and a former TA to Wes Morriston. I consider the guy a subject matter expert when it comes to Cosmological arguments.
Thanks for the link, Stak. I'll definitely check it out.
An important question raised in the Molinist debate is, ‘Given God's access to counterfactual knowledge, could God create a world in which free creatures always refrain from evil?’ An affirmative answer suggests that God cannot possess counterfactual knowledge since such knowledge would allow God to create seemingly more desirable worlds than the actual world. However, Alvin Plantinga has argued that it is at least possible that every possible person is transworld depraved – meaning that each person would perform some wrong actions if any world in which that person is morally free were actualized. I argue that, given an infinite number of possible persons, the probability that everyone is transworld depraved is exceedingly low. In addition, I investigate whether there are enough possible persons vis-à-vis the number of moral choices per person so that God could create worlds like the actual world, except lacking in moral evil.
I find some difficulty with this paper, It may be that my patterns of thought are enough different that I do not relate to this style of thought. Still I do not think the article completely unreadable. I just remain unconvinced that the idea of infinite number of possible person qualities is valid. To speak of instantiating a pure selection of all possile human qualities does noy strike me as real or related to real creation. Instead we persons are family and do not have any qualities to select from untill we have gone through the family process of coming into being.
There is an expample in the article offering that it may be better to select for creation people like Socrates instead of Adam. My problem with this idea is that I do not see Socrates as existong without Adam. Socrates is in Adam and Adam remains part of the life of Socrates.
A person may imagine that this interlock is something to be outgrown so perhaps bypassed in a better creation. I do not believe such a thing. I think all aspects of Christian thinking point to a goal of richer establishment of our human family in the kingdom of God. These interlocks in our being are a part of who we are and will become.