Is morality objective or subjective?

[Immanuel Can]

I'd like a proper answer, please.

That is one. In both cases, what does the antipathy change?

In my case, the antipathy means I'll stick with my own moral values,...

You can, and you will, plausibly. But subjectively, nobody needs to think that means anything, or signals that you're right.

[Harbal]

That is one. In both cases, what does the antipathy change?

In my case, the antipathy means I'll stick with my own moral values,...

You can, and you will, plausibly. But subjectively, nobody needs to think that means anything, or signals that you're right.

It looks like we've reached an agreement, at last.

[promethean75]

"and you will not be thrown into prison. Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last [penny]." - JC

J did time on the yard? He's talkin about canteen prices then. A single Ramen noodle pack is $1 at the canteen while it's $.18 at the grocery store.

[Will Bouwman]

God is "...longsuffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."

But:

He knows who will and won't respond to His free offer of salvation.

Can you explain why those aren't contradictory?

[Immanuel Can]

God is "...longsuffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."

But:

He knows who will and won't respond to His free offer of salvation.

Can you explain why those aren't contradictory?

Yes.

To say that somebody "foreknows" something is not the same as saying they "arranged" it or "made it happen."

I already know, of a certainty, that Manchester United will not be relegated to the lower division of English football this year. I know it absolutely: they have already achieved enough points to be free of the drop zone. But I did not play for the team, never scored a goal, don't wear their jersey, and did absolutely nothing to make them qualify to stay in the Premier League this year. I foreknow, but did not make it happen. And it's not even the end of the season yet.

The same would be true at the beginning of the season, before all the playing. I already knew that Manchester United had too many strong players to end up being relegated at the end of the year. It turns out my expectation was entirely correct: and yet, I still did nothing to make it happen. I foreknew, but I did not arrange or make them escape the drop zone.

The choices were made by the players. They played the games. Yet I knew, and knew correctly, the result. Foreknowledge does not imply arranging or making things happen a particular way. It just means knowing what the results of their decisions are going to be. I knew the players well...their skills, inclinations, abilities, and intentions, and could foresee the result, too.

But there was nothing preventing Manchester United from being relegated, either. Like every team in the Premier League, they began with no points... in the relegation zone, in fact. They could have lost every game and been relegated, if they weren't the people they were, didn't want the things they wanted, and hadn't made the choices they had. They were sufficient to have stayed in the Premier League, but free to fail. Their choices were their own, and the responsibility for what they did was none of mine.

Clear?

[Will Bouwman]

Clear?

No. The difference between you and what you claim for God, is that God doesn't simply know that some football team is going to stay up, because they already have enough points, or even that he knows "their skills, inclinations, abilities, and intentions". Your God, as I understand, knows every result not only between now and the end of the season, but every result that every team will ever play. He knows it, and it will all come to pass. Whether or not God makes anything happen, it remains so that what he already knows will happen, is going to happen. As you say:

He knows who will and won't respond to His free offer of salvation.

What can anyone do to change what God already knows?

[Immanuel Can]

Clear?

No. The difference between you and what you claim for God, is that God doesn't simply know that some football team is going to stay up, because they already have enough points, or even that he knows "their skills, inclinations, abilities, and intentions". Your God, as I understand, knows every result not only between now and the end of the season, but every result that every team will ever play. He knows it, and it will all come to pass. Whether or not God makes anything happen, it remains so that what he already knows will happen, is going to happen. As you say:

He knows who will and won't respond to His free offer of salvation.

What can anyone do to change what God already knows?

Well, our problem, as human beings, is that we are inevitably thrown back on analogies here. We do not have perfect foreknowledge, nor are we the Creator of all things. So we do not have access to any experience of our own that is an absolute fit. That being said, all criticisms are subject to exactly the same problem: we don't know how to criticize the idea of foreknowledge without depending on the vagaries of human experience to do it. So we have to admit we're at a deficit here, and there's no reasonable expectation, either for the advocate or the critic of foreknowledge, that our experiential analogies are going to grant us a perfect ability to explain divine foreknowledge.

But let's simplify, if we can: and let me put it this way: to KNOW something, even beforehand, is not at all to DO it.

When I foreknew that you would have an objection (which you can see from my question, "Clear?" at the end), this does not even remotely imply I made you respond. It was your keys that tapped the keyboard. It was your mind that decided what form your objection should take. It was you who pressed "return," to send the message to me. And I'll warrant that you, too, expected I would respond.

And you know what? Your foreknowledge is now revealed to have been perfect. That's exactly what happened. Still, I am far from suggesting that you "made" me respond. I could have huffed away, had I been inclined to. I could have chosen to go and play a game of table tennis instead of typing. But I didn't: I did what you knew I would. And that your foreknowledge was imperfect changes absolutely nothing about those dynamics...not a thing. I am totally responsible for my answer, as you were for yours. Shall we blame God, and say, "God made Will type, then God made IC answer, so God's having a debate with Himself?" How absurd that would be!

If things are any other way than that, then I think the onus is entirely on the Determinist to show that it was not Will and IC, but God who made us do what we did.

[Will Bouwman]

He knows who will and won't respond to His free offer of salvation.

What can anyone do to change what God already knows?

Well, our problem, as human beings, is that we are inevitably thrown back on analogies here.

Very well. Can God make 2+2=5?

[Immanuel Can]

What can anyone do to change what God already knows?

Well, our problem, as human beings, is that we are inevitably thrown back on analogies here.

Very well. Can God make 2+2=5?

Of course not. But not because of some deficiency in God, but because the "equation" is inherently self-contradictory. It's the question that contains the absurdity: it asks us not to know what "2" and "2" refer to, both individually and compositely.

[Age]

Well, our problem, as human beings, is that we are inevitably thrown back on analogies here.

Very well. Can God make 2+2=5?

Of course not.

This response here shows and reveals just how little this one actually knows here.

But not because of some deficiency in God, but because the "equation" is inherently self-contradictory. It's the question that contains the absurdity: it asks us not to know what "2" and "2" refer to, both individually and compositely.

[Will Bouwman]

Well, our problem, as human beings, is that we are inevitably thrown back on analogies here.

Very well. Can God make 2+2=5?

Of course not. But not because of some deficiency in God, but because the "equation" is inherently self-contradictory. It's the question that contains the absurdity: it asks us not to know what "2" and "2" refer to, both individually and compositely.

Do you not think that one also needs to understand what free will and impotence to change mean individually and compositely? If you believe that you can avoid contradiction, you are left with the whole purpose of life being futile. God knew Lucifer would fall. He knew Eve would be tempted. He knew he would flood the planet killing everything not on Noah's ark. He knew his son would be tortured to death. He knew that most of the world's population would never hear of it. He knew that of those who did, many simply wouldn't believe it, and of those who have heard the stories, the vast majority would not interpret them the way that you do. He knew that people would kill each other for how they interpret the same bible. He knew the pain and suffering he would cause on Earth and he knew the eternal torment he would inflict on most of its inhabitants. But not you, so you are fine with all of the above because since most people are damned, it seems that your God's ultimate purpose is not to love mankind, he clearly doesn't, it is to love you.

[Immanuel Can]

Very well. Can God make 2+2=5?

Of course not. But not because of some deficiency in God, but because the "equation" is inherently self-contradictory. It's the question that contains the absurdity: it asks us not to know what "2" and "2" refer to, both individually and compositely.

Do you not think that one also needs to understand what free will and impotence to change mean individually and compositely?

Well, they can't be "compositely" understood. If there is free will, then "impotence to change" is not real. If we are "impotent to change," then free will is unreal. That's a contradiction by definition, so not in doubt. That's one of the things that makes Compatibilism a simple error in terms.

If you believe that you can avoid contradiction, you are left with the whole purpose of life being futile.

I agree that free will and "impotence to change" are contradictory. However, I don't at all think we're "impotent to change," and don't know how you'd get that idea. So you'll have to explain why you think we're "impotent to change." And that would be especially true if, by having this argument, you're hoping to "change" somebody's mind, obviously.

I think, Will, you're still not clear on the difference between "knowing" and "making" as verbs. To "know" that a thing will happen is in no way to suggest one "made" it happen, whether one's knowledge is right or wrong. That's really a pretty straight-forward distinction: I've never made anything happen by knowing about it, and neither have you. Foreknowledge and Determinism are different propositions entirely.

The reason a sensible Theism doesn't have this problem is because of God's knowledge of counterfactuals. This is sometimes called "middle knowledge." What it means is that God knows both the choices you will make and the choices you will not make; but the choices themselves are authentic and remain made entirely by you. It's like an observer watching a car travelling on a GPS map: if one knows where the car is going, one can perhaps correctly predict every turn the car will take; nevertheless, the observer is not driving the car or making the choices of the turns. There is a whole map out there, and many possible turns, all genuinely open to the driver. The observer's foreknowledge does not affect that in the least.

But of course, the Atheist does indeed have this contradiction problem. For denying God any role in making things happen (by definition) he must believe that everything is nothing more than a product of time and chance, spontaneously generating physical forces that issue in an inevitable physical-causal chain. That being so, there can be nothing operating in the Atheist's cosmology but physical laws which, though unpredictable to you and me through our limitations as human beings, are still in principle assumed to be strictly predictable and regular, had we the maths to do the calculations. In other words, the Atheist has to presuppose a Determined universe, and to deny any possibility at all to free will. What appears to be free will must be nothing more than the end of a chain of pre-existing physical causes. And that means that from the original moment of the universe, every action within that universe was inevitable, through scientific regularities. Thus, human volition is a complete illusion, and free will does not exist. So does human identity: for human beings are also mere cogs in the cosmic machine. And science, since it is only the mechanical issuance of a mechanical universe, is also simply an illusion: for the reason we believe things is the prior causal chain that makes us believe things -- not the actual truth of those things, but the causal chain.

Obviously, this gets silly fast. And you and I are currently engaged in an intellectual exchange that is, in its very performance, a denial and refutation of Determinism. So it's up to Atheism to handle its Determinism problem. Theism doesn't have it, unless one invents it by presupposing that God is micromanaging the universe -- not at all a necessary assumption in Theism, and denied multiple times by the Biblical account. Foreknowledge is enough for God's sovereignty. He doesn't have to micromanage the world timidly, like a nervous parent, afraid something will "go wrong." He's got the a view of the whole map, not merely one set of roads.

[promethean75]

"The reason a sensible Theism doesn't have this problem is because of God's knowledge of counterfactuals. This is sometimes called "middle knowledge." What it means is that God knows both the choices you will make and the choices you will not make; but the choices themselves are authentic and remain made entirely by you."

All that would be logically possible. But remember our short exchanges in one of the freewill threads (i think) where i was sayin that becuz god can't be wrong or incorrect about what he knows (by virtue of his omniscience), if he knows u will eventually cheat on your wife, kill your boss, burn down your house, become a satanist and end up dying and going to hell, u then had no freewill to avoid this.

The only alternative would be that god was wrong about what he thought he knew would end up happening, and u in fact became a monk instead and went to live in tibet.

In a roundabout way u could say that becuz of god's prerequisite omniscience, human beings (or anything else) can't have freewill.

If they could, it would mean that god may end up being wrong about what he knows u will be and do. This is not possible for god x. Ergo, freewill is a logical impossibility if god x exists.

[promethean75]

So u have to come up with a way around that problem. One way is to say there is freewill, but there are not individual freewills existing under observation by some transcendent creator. U could say instead that individuals are deterministic effects of a causal system (nature) that is bound by nothing external to itself... hence its freewill or its power as a causa sui.

Nature itself is not a contingent and hence determined causal property like an object in the world (like us). But natural things are. Determined effects of some creative stimulus or naturatus santana naturata that is the cause of its own being. Us individual souls are contingent embodiments of the effects of causal chains and we are dependent entirely on them to exist at all. We may might as well not exist and nothing substantial would be changed. I say 'substantial' with qualification. Nothing about what is necessary for nature to exist would be different if i didn't exist. And if i do exist, i cannot be a causa sui on that account. I'm justa mode or certain order of effects like a house plant or the Indianapolis 500. Neither of these have freewill. They're just contingent events in nature.

[Gary Childress]

Just listen to the Man. You'll know, if you want to know.

It's laudable that the Christian Church encourages love and forgiveness, I'm just not sure that Christ was God. What if he wasn't?

This is where faith makes its stand. God requires very little of it from you; but it must be enough to consider it possible that God exists and that He will reward you for searching that out.

Faith is a good thing. I see a lot of young people today finding new vitality in Christian revivalism. Good for them. However, I'm past the youth and community stage. Unfortunately, every instinct ingrained in my mind from childhood onward gets in the way of my having much in the way of faith or belief in such things. I was born outside of theology. It's my first nature. Religion is just not in my upbringing. I would love for God to find it in his heart to save me or whatever (if it is true that I'm going to hell for not being a believer, and if indeed s/he is out there). But I've lived for 56 years without religion and I will probably finish things out that way as well. I don't have a driving desire to find God, in essence. My life is fine these days. I've gotten over my unrequited love and mostly keep to myself and it seems to be working for me insofar as I am content and have my basic needs more than met.

In the end, for me, spirituality is just not a basic necessity. I've lived through heartbreaks and loss of vitality at the hands of mental illness but I'm still alive so far and too old to care anymore about such things. I don't see reason to believe that turning to religion is going to change anything fundamental with me. And to be honest, being told I'm going to hell just for not believing is kind of a put off to me. It's like trying to force someone to like something they don't at threat of retaliation. It tends to make a person more resentful and bitter toward that thing than anything else.