The more i go forward in life, the more i think that we're guided by invisible forces in our choices and i'm more and more annoyed by people who claim they have a free will when, at the same time, they keep repeating the same mistakes years after years.Originally Posted by PeterL
Similarly, I notice that there are small changes in human activity or behavior that suggests that there might be something to astrology.
That people continue making the same mistakes suggest that they are not capable of learning from their mistakes; it has nothing to do with free will.
I agree with that if the word "guided" is used in a non-deterministic sense. Also there is no point in using the word "choice" if one does not have some freedom to make a choice.
I don't think anyone who claims that free will exists insists that it is absolute. It is quite limited. It is just enough free will to function as a human being. The same would go for any other species. We aren't the only species with the ability to make a choice within the limits of our species' behavior. Now how do I know that? Because other species reproducing through sexual means have similar chemical reward systems prompting them to have sex and reproduce. This implies they have a choice to have sex or not. And that implies some freedom to choose.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
I’ve been out of town, not checking this site, but not that I’m back I don’t buy Cioran’s (formal) argument that man is “morally blameless” for all iniquity. First, I think some of the postulates are iffy. Second, I don’t think the conclusion follows from the postulates.Modal logic employs a heuristic called possible worlds. For example, there are possible worlds that are actual and non-actual possible worlds. The latter are counterfactual worlds. In a possible world JFK was not assassinated, but that possible world is non-actual. On other hand, there is no possible world at which a square has three sides or a triangle four sides.
Let "Adam at the apple" stand for the introduction of evil into our world.
Using the "possible worlds" heuristic lets us understand human free will as follows: Humans can choose, of their own free will, to actualize a possible world, and make a competing possible world non-actual. If Adam was free to eat the apple or not, and chose to ate it, then by choosing to eat it he actualized a possible world of evil, and made the alternate world of "no evil" possible but non-actual.
1. God is all-knowing, all powerful and all-loving.
2. At the creation, because God is all-knowing, he would have known the entire future history of the world that he was about to create. More: he would have known, to the smallest detail, the entire potential future histories of all possible but non-actual worlds that he could have chosen to create, but did not.
3. Adam eating the apple is a contingent, not necessary, act. If it had been a necessary act, Adam would have had no choice, and could not be morally culpable for the introduction of evil.
4. God, being all powerful, can create exactly the world he wants to, without error of any kind.
5. There is a possible world at which Adam eats the apple. There is also a possible world at which he does not eat it. God can choose, with perfect knowledge and precision, to create either of those worlds.
6. God chose to create the world in which Adam ate the apple.
7. Because God chose to create the world at which Adam ate the apple, it was he, and not Adam, who actualized the world in which evil exists.
8. Conclusion: God is indicted as the author of all iniquity, and man is morally blameless. For God to punish man for evil acts when really God is the source of all evil is about the most perverse (and nonsensical) thing one could imagine.
Q. E. D.
Of course it is obvious that if God is the “author” of everything that happens in the Universe, he is the “author of all iniquity”, as Cioran suggests. Cioran need not go through his nine steps to prove that – it’s self-evident. Nonetheless, it does not follow that “man is blameless”. Why would it? Why is it impossible for us to “blame” both an author, and one of his characters? We could say, “Robert L. Stevenson is the author of all of the iniquities of Mr. Hyde.” That’s obvious. But were we to say, “Therefore, Mr. Hyde is blameless for his murders,” that would not follow from the fact that Stevenson is the “author” of them. It remains reasonable to find Mr. Hyde (and Dr. Jekyll) morally culpable.
As far as the postulates are concerned, it seems to me that Cioran is over-simplifying. 1) God is all-knowing, all powerful and all-loving. What does this mean? We know (for example) that Odin is commonly called the “All-knowing all father”. However, the “all-knowing” bit is contradicted by the details of the story. Odin finds out what happens in the world by sending his two ravens out for reports. If he was REALLY “All-knowing”, he wouldn’t need to rely on reports from his ravens.
I’ll grant that the Christian, Jewish and Muslim God is often described in the terms Cioran uses. Nonetheless, He is also called (among other things) “ineffable” and “indescribable”. “For who can know the mind of God?” asks the Bible. So his “knowledge” and “power” may be different from that of (say) a Marvel comic superhero who was described in those same terms.
Second, an “omni” God would (presumably) know what would happen in the world He created, and could (as Cioran suggests) have created a different world. However, we puny mortals don’t know everything about our own world. What we see as horrible and evil might be logically necessary to the greater good. For example, virtues such as “courage”, “prudence” and “fortitude” would be logically impossible without such “evils” as pain, or death. The ancient Greeks, for this very reason, thought that heroism was impossible for the Gods. I’m no expert on Christian theology – but I think that the Christian approach is to think God is IN THE PROCESS of creating a perfect world, but that He can’t (i.e. it would be logically impossible) bake the cake without breaking a few eggs.
So, Cioran – of course God created a world where evil and pain are present (if he created THIS WORLD). Nonetheless, it doesn’t follow that man is “blameless” (as your own modal logic about free will indicates).
When men can hold the acts of other men as culpable why should we assume that the Creator by whatever name He is called shouldn't hold his creation culpable for its acts?
God seems to be beyond human intelligence and He is 'visible' only through his signs or manifestations. According to Muslims, Man has Free Will but subordinate to Allah, the Almighty, the Omnipotent, the Omniscient, etc etc
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When asked how World War III would be fought, Einstein replied that he didn't know. But he knew how World War IV would be fought: With sticks and stones.
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Yes, it certainly does follow, for the reasons given. If Adam eating the apple was a necessary act, this means that at all possible worlds (modal heuristic) Adam must eat the apple. If Adam must eat the apple, then he has no freedom, no choice in the matter, and hence cannot be blamed for introducing evil. We can only hold someone morally culpable if he has a choice in what he does.
However, since there is no reason to think that Adam's act is necessary, it is therefore contingent. Modally, contigency means that there are any number of possible worlds at which Adam does not eat the apple.
But, as I explained, for free will to hold in this case, it must be up to Adam, and no one else, to actualize the world in which he lives. For Adam to be morally culpbable, it is he who must actualize the world in which he eats the apple, and by his act, and his alone, make possible but non-actual the world in which he does not eat the apple.
Unfortunately for the theist, as soon as you invoke God's omnipotence and omniscience, it readily becomes obvioius that it is not Adam, but God, who actualizes the world in which Adam eats the apple. God chose to make the world in which Adam introduced evil. Thus it was God, and not Adam, who rendered possible but non-actual the world in which Adam did not eat the apple. Thus Adam's act is God's choice, not Adam's. Thus God is responsible for all evil.
You mention Odin and his ravens. Fine. If God's omni traits are just a metaphor, not to be taken seriously, then the Abrahamic theist must admit that God actually lacks some perfect trait. Then God must be redefined. I suspect most theists would not go along with this.
You also mention that for good to exist in the world, it must have some contrasting evil; otherwise good would be meaningless. This idea was explored in the Brothers Karamazov, and in much philosophical literature. It may be a perfectly valid idea. It may also be a perfectly valid idea that the evil in this world is necessary for some greater good to come. We could say, for instance, that the horrific slaughter of the Civil War was justified by the fact that it freed the slaves; not only the slaves existing at the time, but it made a better world for the millions yet unborn who otherwise would have been slaves. So perhaps the war could be justified on these terms.
The problem here, though, is that if the above is correct, then people who do evil acts ought to be commended, not condemned . Judas ought to be held a hero on this account! Since such evil acts are necessary to bring about a greater good, I trust the best place in heaven is reserved for the worst of us. This is the logic of your argument.
In this vein, it must be noted that if evil is necessary for a contrasting good to exist, then Adam did a good thing in introducing evil; and, after all, his doing so was part of God's plan. So Adam should be commended, and not condemned, for doing what was needed to bring a contrastive evil to the world, that good might be recognized.
Instead, God threw a big hissy fit and evicted Adam and Eve from the Garden and imposed toil and sorrow on them. Maybe that was all an act: so that future generations could realize the good by taking Adam and Eve's punishment as a lesson. But even so, we must suppose, for the sake of logic, that Adam and Even have been rewarded in heaven for doing what God needed and wanted them to do -- bring about evil, for the sake of good.
There you have the incoherency of the Abrahamic religions.
Last edited by Cioran; 02-23-2013 at 11:50 AM.
Sure, who could know an infinite mind? If such a mind existed, it would be ineffable.
But that's another hopeless problem for the Abrahamic religions! If God is unknowable, then why, at the same time, do the people who hold this position acribe properties to God, such as moral perfection? If you hold that God is ineffable, you cannot logically ascribe any properties to him without instantly contradicting yourself. For all we know, God may be totally evil, or beyond good and evil, or he may not care about humans at all. Perhaps he made the world because he likes empty space, of which most of the universe is made? Perhaps humans are just an accidental byproduct of the creation of empty space? Who knows? God is unknowable, after all!
Last edited by Cioran; 02-23-2013 at 12:10 PM.
Amen.
There are other irrationalities in the Abrahamic religions, but this is one of the most basic.
I don't think it is logically valid to conclude that "Adam's act is God's choice" simply because God made a choice to create the universe.
To show this is invalid consider the case where I make a free choice to buy a car. I have now rendered possible, but not actual, an opportunity for someone else to steal that car. Suppose a guy named Bill steals the car. If your argument is valid, then my act of buying the car means that I am also responsible for Bill's stealing the car.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
Good point by YesNo
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When asked how World War III would be fought, Einstein replied that he didn't know. But he knew how World War IV would be fought: With sticks and stones.
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Any event is ultimately God's choice. We simply pray that His choice will be on the side of our best intentions. In God we trust.
Your analogy is invalid, not my argument.
You are NOT responsible for Bill stealing your car, unless you knew infallibly in advance that he would do so -- and, more: unless you were the creator of the world, and could have created a world in which Bill did NOT steal the car.
Your analogy only serves to reinforce my point: Humans are neither omnipotent nor omniscient, and cannot know the outcomes or consequences of their acts, and can only partly, if at all, achieve certain goals or bring about certain results. But God is supposedly omniscient and omnipotent. This means he infallibly knew every possible way the world could be, and could choose to create any of them. He could have created a world in which Adam chose not to sin, but he created the world in which Adam chose to sin. This means he wanted Adam to sin. More, under this scenario, Adam MUST sin, because God, not by his foreknowledge alone but by his perfect creative act, rendered it impossible for Adam to do otherwise. It's not Adam who actualized the world in which he sinned, and thereby made non-actual the world in which he did not. It was God.
Of course God is omnipotent and omniscient but he does NOT control the ACTS of humans because HE has already given them FREE WILL. In YesNO case the thief is the culprit for the evil he committed enabled by his own Free Will, YesNo knowing it or not doesn't matter. Of course, God will make humans accountable for their deeds as and when he chooses to do that. Similarly, the owner of the stolen car will bring the thief to book after the act or perhaps he would have caught him in the act.
Blaming God for evil is not fair....it's we humans who choose to be good or evil as per our Free Will. The Free Will is subordinate to God's Master will which may come into action as, if or when God chooses to do that.
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When asked how World War III would be fought, Einstein replied that he didn't know. But he knew how World War IV would be fought: With sticks and stones.
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Bearing in mind that we are dealing with hypotheticals -- God does not exist, of course -- this conversation is still fruitful as an exercise in logic and philosophy. By pure logic alone, for instance, it can be shown that God's infallible foreknowledge by itself does not and cannot preclude human free will. But in your reply, you are forgetting the other side of the coin: God created the world, and did so exactly as he intended it to be. If God created the world but made a mistake, such that evil was introduced without his consent, then he would fail to be omnipotent at the very least, and perhaps fail to be omniscient as well.
As the theistic assumption of omnipotence and omniscience, God stands wholly indicted for all evil in the world. Given his omniscience together with his omnipotence, Adam certainly does NOT have free will, and nor does anyone else. In order for Adam to have free will in eating or not eating the apple, it is required that he himself be able to actualize the world in which he ate it, and render possible but non-actual the world in which he did not eat it. In other words, Adam must be a self-creator of his own world. But he did not create the world. God did. It was God, not Adam, who had the choice of creating a world in which Adam ate the apple, or a world in which he did not. He chose to create the world in which Adam ate the apple, rendering non-actual the world in which Adam failed to eat the apple. Thus the act of apple-eating was God's will and not Adam's.
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