Thanks u/Plemethrock
We can have a discussion on whether or not free will exists. Discuss if every action we do is already predetermined by how our brain is wired, with the environment around us being the inputs.
We can also have a discussion on whether or not humans have souls and analyze the evidence for and against us just being our bodies
(I made an error and had to repost, apologies)
I've been under the impression that evil things occur in this world because God gave us free will. I do agree that God has seen past present and future but would that HAVE to mean free will doesn't exist?
The eastern philosophies deal with this quite elegantly imo. They divide things into:
-The Will of Heaven, aka Tianming - this is the path laid down for each soul by God. Call it Destiny, Fate, Predestination, whatever.
-Karma - this is a result or effect of the free will choices we make over our lifetime
So if life is a “Choose your own adventure book” that God authored for us (Will of Heaven), our karma is simply the journey we took along the way
If God knew the future when he created the world then he created things knowing that they would devolve into evil. So then God purposely went ahead and caused all the evil in the world. Does that make God evil? I don't think so, because I think this decision could be justified by the good also caused, but most people aren't comfortable with God being the author of evil.
The idea that God merely permits evil doesn't make sense given that God set everything up knowing how it would turn out, meaning he actively caused everything we witness, not merely permitting it.
As to whether free will exists, that depends how you want to define it and what other things are true. See my top-level comment on this post.
A loving father doesn't coddle his children and make them weak. So why wouldn't our Heavenly Father be the same and give us things to struggle against and grow stronger?
I never said that life doesn't have struggles. Clearly it does. That's separate from whether our will is free or not.
God created all things good. His foreknowledge doesn't make Him an accomplice. What you're saying is basically this: you having children makes you evil, because you have them while knowing they will inevitably suffer and experience evil. But having children is still a net good and you go ahead. What appears bad to us, God uses to make good. Christ was betrayed and crucified but out of this a much greater good came to the world. This is how God operates and us having limited knowledge means we can't foresee and judge how thing ultimately end up. God can do only good because that's His nature.
No, that's a common mistake when critiquing theodicy (problem of evil). Knowing something in advance doesn't make you the cause of it. You conceive of only one type of causality (the domino effect one) - this is the result of materialism being the ruling paradigm in our modern world. But there are other types of causality that were widely accepted before metaphysics was done away with. Humans are secondary causal agents, meaning our will is separate from God's will and what we cause in the world is separate from God's causes.
There's no love without free will but free will inevitably leads to the possibility of evil (not choosing the good). God made us in His image having free will and being capable of love, even at the cost of evil and suffering entering His creation. Therefore love is greater than evil and triumphs in the end when all evil will be destroyed at the final judgement.
The key difference is you or I did not create the universe and all the conditions within it. Evil arises due to the nature of things. We live in a world where essentially every single thing must kill or at the very least rely on death (plants needing decaying organic matter in the soil) to survive. Where primal desires fuel all, or almost all (depending on your perspective) behaviors. Equivocating someone born into this system reproducing to a Being that ostensibly constructed the system this way is not honest
That's the world as we know it after the fall which is cosmic in scope. Before that there was no death or evil. The Earth was paradise, Eden.
Exactly. I'm not the one equivocating though - I specifically said God's uncreated will is the primary cause and our created wills are secondary causes. There's a very clear distinction between God's nature and our human nature.
Scripture and tradition alike tell us that it wasn't always that way and science tells us all these things are designed to live optimally in a world without death, but that the use of death is always an adaptation.
Either there is evil and so there is free will, or there is no free will and so there is no evil. You are free to choose the horrid consequences of the latter.
You just agreed with my position (that God causing all the evil in the world doesn't make him evil) while claiming to be arguing against me.
That was never my argument. My argument is this. If a non-deterministic action A makes outcome X a certainty when an alternative action B would have made not-X a certainty then A is the ultimate cause of X. If additionally A is performed by an agent who is aware that A will make X happen while B would have avoided X then the agent deliberately causes X. Therefore if God wasn't pre-determined to create a universe that certainly (as proved by his foreknowledge) led to evil (action A leading to X) and could have chose not to create (action B leading to not-X), but yet he did, it follows that God creating the universe was the ultimate cause of evil in the universe. Additionally God was aware this action would lead to evil in the universe while the alternative would have avoided it, so therefore God deliberately caused evil in the universe.
Which part of this argument is wrong? Notice I said nothing about causing evil being evil, God being morally accountable for causing evil or humans lacking accountability for their role in bringing the evil about.
You need to define what a secondary causal agent is. In a row of dominoes ending with a button you can call the second domino a "secondary causal agent" but it doesn't change the fact that if laws of physics are deterministic then the fall of the first domino causes the button to get pressed. Same thing if a general orders a soldier to kill someone - we say the general caused the death, regardless of the fact that there was a soldier who also caused the death and could have opted to disobey orders.
Citation needed. We all know people can love and make choices yet it is conceivable that these things happen via deterministic mental processes. If you say that a deterministic love cannot be love then you are simply defining love to be something that humans may not be capable of.
That's a strawman. I explicitly said God doesn't cause ANY evil in any way shape or form because it's contrary to His nature. Everything God does is good, true and just.
The part that's wrong is that you equivocate between primary and secondary causation. But the argument is not even valid when talking about secondary causation (created causes). Here's a very clear example:
If I have a son and I do a great job being a good father, but still my son, who's now an adult, falls into bad habits and eventually commits murder, am I responsible for the evil caused by him?
I'd say the whole argument as you put it begs the question because it assumes determinism and takes away the ability of real choice from the equation. Just like I said in the comment above - you presuppose physicalist domino-effect causality (A-> B-> C) where each each cause is the predetermined effect of a previous cause and acts a certain with no free will - basically it behaves like an inanimate physical object (so naturally, you arrive to determinism and the circle is complete).
Aristotle is cool and all, but like all ancient philosophers, he took a lot of things for granted because at that point no one was questioning the foundational ideas about metaphysics and epistemology. Many centuries passed before Descartes and later Hume, Kant and the existentialists had the ball rolling questioning foundational beliefs.
Secondary causation refers to the created causes we normally talk about (fire causes heat, choices cause actions, medicine causes healing, etc.) These causes are real and effective, operating according to their own natures.
No, you can't because a domino is an inanimate object and not an agent. Agent refers to a rational being capable making choices which influences other objects and agents in the universe.
That's because in that context, the soldier is supposed to defer his personal assessment and act as a tool, an extension of the higher-up's will. Also, in the many cases soldiers are also held responsible for not disobeying orders on some occasions like the nazi executions. This a deontological and ethical question about when "I was just following orders" is appropriate and when it's not (and who gets to decide where the line is drawn).
But if determinism is true, the general isn't responsible too, because he's simply a domino down the causal chain. Responsibility, justice or any moral judgement is nonsensical in that system.
First of all, if determinism is true it's not simply about people not having free will and choice - that's just the surface of the problem as normies see it. Philosophically, it also leads to the impossibility of knowledge and truth. Why? Because truth necessitates a choice between the true and the false. But if every mind in existence is predetermined, no real evaluation of a given proposition ever takes place (I'm predetermined to say A is true, and you - B is true and at no tie-breaker is possible because C is also predetermined to output either A or B).
If determinism is the case, all that there is is matter governed by predetermined chemical reactions, that are effects of previous reactions and so on going back to the First cause. Where is love in that equation? Do you mean more predetermined chemical reactions? I highly doubt many people will agree on that definition (not an appeal to majority, just saying). Is the water boiling at 100 degrees any different than love? What's the meaningful distinction between me loving something vs the opposite?