virginia tech and determinism

Originally posted by Coletti
I've given the answer to "why not".

You have merely said "of course we have the right".

Why do we have the right?

You've given an opinion based on an unshored axiom. I'll tell you what, I'll stop complaining about your God the moment he shows up here to stop me.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
You've given an opinion based on an unshored axiom. I'll tell you what, I'll stop complaining about your God the moment he shows up here to stop me.

You're evading the question. Why do you have the right to complain?

Originally posted by Coletti
You're evading the question. Why do you have the right to complain?

Until you prove to me that God exists, you have no reason to say that I don't. Since I have the ability, and there are no rules prohibiting it, I have the right.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Until you prove to me that God exists, you have no reason to say that I don't. Since I have the ability, and there are no rules prohibiting it, I have the right.

😀

If God doesn't exist, then you can't complain to Him!

Ability does not covey a right so that's pointless.

"No rules against it" is equivelent to saying "why not" which has been answered already. I've told you why not.

Originally posted by Coletti
😀

If God doesn't exist, then you can't complain to Him!

Ability does not covey a right so that's pointless.

"No rules against it" is equivelent to saying "why not" which has been answered already. I've told you why not.

You already told me why not based on a presumption (God exists) and an opinion. However, we all know what opinions are like, and everyone has one.

Originally posted by Coletti
😀

If God doesn't exist, then you can't complain to Him!

Ability does not covey a right so that's pointless.

"No rules against it" is equivelent to saying "why not" which has been answered already. I've told you why not.

But at least the God of Scripture not only knows the future, but He determines it. He predestines all events, and nothing occurs outside of His willing it. Every hair on your head is numbered.

In which case, all talk of people having, or not having, a “right” to behave as they do is incoherent. Scotty’s complaining is as predetermined as is your criticism. If his criticizing god is hubris, then that is because God has willed it so. Since belief is not volitional, he cannot do other than believe as he does. And your criticism of the behavior that God has willed for Scott would be hubris as well, if you actually believed that you could "rightfully" criticize God’s action in Scott, except that your believing that would also be non-volitional on your part...

In such a world, there is only one moral agent: God.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Makes you wonder why he'd go about commanding them in the first place.

How would you assess the sanity of a being that issues imperatives that he wills be broken?

Such a God is the author of confusion—to such a deep degree that it totally removes all epistemological grounds for making any moral statements, or any justified statements of belief about such a God.

A being who both thought that his commandments were good and willed people to violate them, would at the very least be a being plagued by cognitive dissonance. In the face of such inconsistency, there is nothing coherent that one can say about that being, except perhaps that he is incoherent.

There is no reason to believe* that any other aspect of God’s revelation is any more consistent. All God-talk is rendered epistemologically ungrounded and unjustified.

(Those who might assert that God’s coherency is not the same as ours, are essentially asserting that we can say nothing.)

* Coletti has also said, however, that belief is not volitional—so, in fact, with regard to such a God, there is no “reason to believe.”

Originally posted by vistesd
[b]But at least the God of Scripture not only knows the future, but He determines it. He predestines all events, and nothing occurs outside of His willing it. Every hair on your head is numbered.

In which case, all talk of people having, or not having, a “right” to behave as they do is incoherent. Scotty’s complaining is as predetermined as is your c lso be non-volitional on your part...

In such a world, there is only one moral agent: God.[/b]

(First the wind up)

Scotty’s complaining is as predetermined as is your criticism.

Yes. And?

If his criticizing god is hubris, then that is because God has willed it so.

Yes. So? (Although the reason it's hubris is not simply because God willed it. I explained why it's hubris.)

Since belief is not volitional, he cannot do other than believe as he does.

Yes. Go on. (Now the pitch.)

And your criticism of the behavior that God has willed for Scott would be hubris as well, if you actually believed that you could "rightfully" criticize God’s action in Scott, except that your believing that would also be non-volitional on your part...


Ad this does not follow. It's not God's action, it's God's will.

In such a world, there is only one moral agent: God.

Not at all. We are all willing actors. Scotty is not being forced to do anything against his will.

Originally posted by Coletti
(First the wind up)

[b]Scotty’s complaining is as predetermined as is your criticism.

Yes. And?

If his criticizing god is hubris, then that is because God has willed it so.

Yes. So? (Although the reason it's hubris is not simply because God willed it. I explained why it's hubris.)

Since belief is not volitional, he cannot do We are all willing actors. Scotty is not being forced to do anything against his will.

[/b]It's not God's action, it's God's will.

Perhaps I misunderstand you: I took you to say that all particular events are predetermined according to God’s will—that God does not simply desire that certain outcomes obtain. Or is God’s will not perfectly efficacious?

Are my choices (including thoughts, beliefs, etc.) predetermined by God or not? If they are, then the fact that I go through the psychic processes related to choice have no bearing—the “choice” has been forced from the beginning. My thinking I have made an efficacious choice is illusory. As is language differentiating between God’s will and God’s action.

Suppose I set up one of those Rube Goldberg contraptions, where I set a ball in motion and all the subsequent events in the chain are determined such that they always happen according to the design (i.e., my will in designing the contraption is perfectly and inescapably realized at every stage). Now, I do not directly cause the mouse to drop the cheese, sending the rabbit skyward to knock the man off the diving board, etc., etc.—or any of the other particular events; but I have predetermined each one of them, and my will for how the contraption works is perfectly efficacious.

Suppose I am able to build such a contraption using conscious beings as the implements, and I design their consciousness in such a way that they will always and inescapably “choose” to take the action that I have willed, and predetermined by design.

In such cases, to say that it all happens according to my will but not by my action is simply specious. All the causality is embedded in my initial action to design the thing and set it in motion.

(Note: I am not making the simple “omniscience argument” here.)

We are all willing actors. Scotty is not being forced to do anything against his will.

Again, I may be misunderstanding you. Is Scotty’s will to complain predetermined or not?

Originally posted by vistesd
Such a God is the author of confusion—to such a deep degree that it totally removes all epistemological grounds for making any moral statements, or any justified statements of belief about such a God.

A being who both thought that his commandments were good and willed people to violate them, would at the very least be a being plagued by c

There is God's will, and God's commands. These are not equivalent. God's will is a function of God's omniscience and omnipotence. It is a metaphysical reality that all things happen according to God' plan and in his time. At this level, we realize we are fully dependent on God. Only God knows his ultimate will.

God's commands are laws or precepts that God has given us to instruct us in our daily lives regarding how we are to behave, to guide the decisions we make at our level of knowledge. The are summed up in "love God with all you heart/mind" and "love your neighbor as yourself". These are rules for us to follow on a practical and cognitive level.

We are not "aware" of God's ultimate will - we can not see the future. We simply know that God is almighty. This does not effect our moral agency.

Epistemic ground for our moral decisions are based on God's commands. The unknown - God's ultimate will, the future - has no epistemic basis except for what God revealed to us. God's promises have epistemic value. But since we can not know God's ultimate will, then it can not inform our moral decisions or knowledge.

P.S. We are cross posting so I may not have addressed the prior post. I'll try to follow up on it next.

Originally posted by Coletti
There is God's will, and God's commands. These are not equivalent. God's will is a function of God's omniscience and omnipotence. It is a metaphysical reality that all things happen according to God' plan and in his time. At this level, we realize we are fully dependent on God. Only God knows his ultimate will.

God's commands are laws or precepts tha so I may not have addressed the prior post. I'll try to follow up on it next.

Since we are posting past one another, and since I’m going to pack it in for awhile, I tried to pull it together somewhat here.

This is the way I would lay out the matter:

(1) Every action in the cosmos is determined according to God’s will.

(2) God’s will is always perfectly efficacious.

(3) What we can know about God is given in divine revelation; and (3)(a) what God does not reveal, we cannot know.

(4) God’s revelation includes commandments.

(5) Such commandments reflect God’s will for our behavior.

(6) God’s revelation also reveals that God wills that some people will keep, and some will violate those commandments.

(7) Every such keeping or violation of a commandment is completely determined according to God’s will. [By (1) and (2)]

(8) Both keeping and violating the commandments enact God’s will. [By (5), (6) and (7)]

I believe that you have specifically stated premises (1), (3) and (6). Premise (2) could be entailed by (1), but I stated it separately for clarity. (4) is “revelation-dependent,” but clearly holds for the Judeo-Christian-Islamic “revelations.” Premises (1), (2) and (5) seem to me to be critical.

_______________________________________

Now, I am not claiming that (8) represents a logical violation of the “A and ~A” type. I am simply saying that the contradiction is sufficient so that I can make no positive moral claims for God’s commandments or God’s character.

If I were to add the premise (5)(a) that God’s commandments reflect what God considers to be morally good,* then God’s willing that people violate those commandments represents the willing of moral evil on God’s part. This disables all moral talk with regard to God, and raises the question as to what (if any) talk about the character of God is at all meaningful.

For example, if the revelation says that God is love (agape), and at the same time reveals a God who wills the rape of children, then I am left with either (i) rape is a loving act, (ii) God is not love, or (iii) complete incoherence in a revelation that presumably speaks at the level of human cognition.

To say that something is moral strictly because God commands it** is as meaningful for human discourse as it would be for me to say that “tall is what I say it is”—and then I demonstrate no clear pattern of measurement that would allow you to conclude what are the characteristics of tall and short. Or, if I were to say that “tall is better than short”—and then I select short over tall in a statistically significant pattern (or randomly).

*Or wishes us to consider morally good.

** That is, divine command is the only epistemic ground for morality.
_____________________________________

Even if I were to grant the distinction between God’s will and God’s action (which might raise the question as to whether God’s actions were ever non-volitional) as a technicality, as long as God’s will is perfectly efficacious, the distinction is literally immaterial.

EDIT: To say that Scotty is “not being forced to do anything against his will” is a strawman, if Scotty’s will itself is forced by God’s perfectly efficacious willing determining the content of Scott’s will.

Since I’m playing with inferences, here is a simplified reductio which does not require that God’s will be perfectly efficacious—

Consider an action A pursuant to a divinely revealed commandment:

(1) God is internally logically consistent in what he wills.

(2) God commands that I A.

(3) The commandment reflects God’s will.

(4) God wills that I A. [By (3)]

(5) God wills that I ~A.

(6) Therefore, God is not internally logically consistent in what he wills.

______________________________________

Premise (1) simply states that God is not logically inconsistent—in his own mind—concerning what he wills. This in no way implies that God may not will different actions by different people for different purposes in his grand scheme, only that God himself does not will inconsistently.

Premise (2) entails that God’s command in fact applies to the person in the case ("I" ); in the context of revelation it assumes that God’s commands are intended to be taken universally unless clearly restricted to given persons, time or place (e.g., the command to love God and our neighbor). Relaxing this premise would entail that, in any case in which a person violated God’s command, the command did not in fact apply to that person (whether that person is aware of being dispensed from obeying the commandment or not).

If premise (3) does not hold, then God’s command contradicts God’s own will.

Premise (5) goes to your statement, in reply to Dr. Scribbles, that God wills that people violate the commandments. It does not entail that I am consciously aware of God’s will to ~A in this case, although I may know of the possibility through reading God’s revelation.

This inference eliminates all need for any talk of God’s will versus God’s actions, or my own will and actions for that matter. I can either A or ~A. In either case that single act will simultaneously both enact and contravene God’s will, given that God’s will is logically inconsistent.

EDIT: Premise (1) in the above does not require peering into God’s mind. It merely assumes that God is not internally inconsistent. If God is internally inconsistent—especially with regard to something as basic as giving commands that themselves do not contradict God’s own will, and then also willing that people to whom those commands have been given violate them—then any consistent reading of the revelation in which those commandments are given goes by the boards. A God who is plagued with such volitional dissonance in his own mind can hardly be trusted with regard to other aspects of his revelation—such as promises of eternal salvation, and whatever conditions such salvation entails—which may be subject to the same inconsistencies.

LATE EDIT to the above post:

I am aware that you said that God’s commands and God’s will are “not equivalent.” However, one of God’s commands is to obey his commands. If that does not reflect God’s will, then the whole affair is simply incoherent, even at the level of simple divine fiat.

Originally posted by Coletti
The clay is in no position to complain. If I have a lump of clay, I can make it into an ashtray or a vase or a piss-pot. I can make it into whatever I want. I have no obligation to make all my clay into pretty flower pots.

Yet none of that will stop the clay from complaining nor remove its 'right' to do so nor make you 'right' in your actions. It will also show that you do not love the clay if you make it into a piss-pot.
You are starting to sound like the thread (I cant seem to find it) where a poster was claiming that the winner is always right and that since God always wins he must be right.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Yet none of that will stop the clay from complaining nor remove its 'right' to do so nor make you 'right' in your actions. It will also show that you do not love the clay if you make it into a piss-pot.
You are starting to sound like the thread (I cant seem to find it) where a poster was claiming that the winner is always right and that since God always wins he must be right.

You have got a point here whitey. Infact there is interestingly enough a whole jewish tradition of shouting and complaining at God in the Bible. They were always at it. I actually think complaining to God is very very healthy. I think God wants us to have a rant at him , it's a way of finding out stuff.