Posted by DanielCC  7/27/2017 4:00 pm | #1 |
Here's a short animadversion some atheists use against the claim that God is necessarily a perfectly good being.
Premise One: a being's actions are only morally relevant if they are performed freely; we apply praise and blame only for actions that a being is responsible for, in the sense of having chosen
Premise Two: an action is only free if the agent if it is possible for the agent to do otherwise
If these two premises are accepted the atheist then goes on to claim that no being can be necessarily good for to be necessarily good would mean choosing the good as opposed to the bad course of action in every possible world, yet if this was so there would be no world and thus no possibility for it be otherwise, thus violating Premise Two.
My own thoughts? First and foremost the argument requires us to take God's goodness as that of an agent. Secondly I'm not sure the purported conclusion really does follow - this has to do with the second premise: if we grant that a being must have at least two choices in the case of any given action, why could not both these choices be good ones? If there are instances of good which are commensurate then plausibly good can choice between them without any being the better choice.
What do other people think?
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Posted by DanielCC 7/31/2017 6:26 am | #2 |
Alexander wrote:
My first thought was that, though God loves "the good" necessarily, we can say God chooses particular goods freely in the sense that he might have chosen otherwise (for example creation and redemption are both free acts in traditional Christian belief).
Secondly I'm not sure the purported conclusion really does follow - this has to do with the second premise: if we grant that a being must have at least two choices in the case of any given action, why could not both these choices be good ones? If there are instances of good which are commensurate then plausibly good can choice between them without any being the better choice.
A caveat: if one accepts this definition of logical freedom one no longer has access to Plantinga's Free Will Defense against the Logical Problem of Evil and related arguments.
Another thought: if God is not an agent then the question of whether He is free or determined is nonsensical.
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Posted by DanielCC 8/03/2017 5:08 am | #3 |
Sure, as it is, Plantinga's defence can't stand on this view. But I've always thought Plantinga's defence a bit weak anyway - it already needs modifying, from a Christian standpoint, to account for the freedom of those in heaven, which can't be a freedom to choose between good and evil but is classically seen as the greatest possible freedom. I don't think my position rules out every kind of theodicy that appeals to free will (and besides, that brief point about freedom was only what triggered a rather different train of thought, it isn't my main response to the animadversion).
I was mentioning it mainly because Quentin Smith's retooled version of the Logical Problem of Evil appeals to precisely this observation. Interestingly Smith admits that Divine Simplicity would defeat his account of the LPOE though doesn't bother discussing it in any great depth (it''s not clear on Smith's account just how far creatures can be said to have Internal Freedom, if that means freedom from intentions and beliefs states as being casually influencing).
Last edited by DanielCC (8/03/2017 5:09 am)
