Bride of Frankenstein

BOSSMANHAM SAID:

“I'm surprised that you actually used this argument, Steve. I will rebuff it in two ways.__First I want to stress that knowledge of an event in no way makes someone culpable for an event.”

Since that simplistic reformulation hardly represents my argument, your rebuff does nothing to rebuff it.

The real question is, in part, whether it’s normally culpable to allow a foreseeable evil which you could prevent. A further aggravating factor is if you not only foresee the evil event, but far from taking actions to prevent it, take actions which make it inevitable.

Your threadbare denial hardly constitutes a counterargument. What is more, your threadbare denial is quite counterintuitive.

“Second, I want to show your example is faulty because it ignores the relational aspect of God's interaction with man (as do most of these Calvinist logic games). I will use a slightly more realistic example to show why yours is fault.”

i) How is my example an unrealistic analogy for divine action? It might be an unrealistic analogy for human action, but it was never meant to illustrate human action.

ii) A thought-experiment doesn’t have to be realistic to prove the point.

iii) I’d add that there are real world examples.

a) For instance, if some postal employees have advance knowledge that one of their colleagues is planning to go on a shooting spree the next day, they have a duty to report that information to the authorities. They are culpable of they keep it to themselves.

b) Likewise, some conspiracy theorists accuse Bush of having advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Their accusations are highly implausible. However, it if were true that Bush had advance knowing of the impending attacks, then it would be an understatement to say he was culpable.

One can cite other real world examples in which, if someone fails to act on a tip regarding a preventable atrocity, then he is blameworthy.

“Parents know that when they conceive, their child will sin. Their child will do things that dishonor them and others and God. But this doesn't make the parents culpable for the child's sin.”

i) For your example to work, it must be an analogy for divine action. In that respect, your example is already a failure.

Human beings don’t shuffle the deck. They simply play the hand they’ve been dealt.

Our only choice is to either have sinful children or not have children.

But in analogy to God, that’s hardly the only choice. At that level, the analogy would be between having sinful children or sinless children.

ii) I’d also add that God commanded the human race to propagate. However, God is not, himself, subject to a preexisting command.

So your comparison already falls apart in two key respects.

“For if it did, perhaps pro-aborts aren't so bad, since they're stopping any sins those children will commit.”

That’s a sloppy conclusion. The correct conclusion, given the premise, wouldn’t be to have an abortion, but to use contraception.

“Sure it's by committing another sin, but doesn't God want to bring the best good out of the bad He causes? Remember Steve, this practice that we decry as evil, in your theology, has its origin with God. He wants it, He causes those who do it to do it, and it supposedly glorifies Him, since everything He does glorifies Him. But I digress.”

Perhaps you think that’s clever, but I’ve often dealt with that shallow argument. In brief, it fails to draw a rudimentary distinction between a sinner’s motive for sinning and God’s motive for creating sinners.

“Not only are the parents not culpable for the free will decisions of their offspring even though they know their offspring will sin…”

Well, that depends. As the Dude points out, if you knew that by sleeping with your wife on a certain day, she’d conceive Adolph Hitler, then that would make you deeply complicit in his atrocities.

“But to be able to show His great love and justice to us, He had to create us.”

How very supralapsarian of you!

“But He is not culpable for free will decisions He knows about, for He didn't necessitate those decisions.”

Once again, that’s hardly a sufficient theodicy. Let’s say the 9/11 hijackers had libertarian freewill. If I had advance knowledge, or inside knowledge, of their plot, I’d be as guilty as they were if I failed to report it to the authorities.

“Man's sin originates in his heart due to his own selfish desires.”

Even if that tendentious assertion were true, it’s only half the answer you need to furnish an adequate theodicy. The fact that one party is culpable doesn’t automatically exonerate a second party. If two bank robbers pull a heist, the culpability of one robber doesn’t exculpate his partner in crime.

“Furthermore, if determinism of sin is true, then God's relationship with us is no more a relationship than Sherri Lewis' was with Lamb Chops. Looked convincing, but was a farce.”

Of course, that’s hardly an argument. Rather, it’s just a tired metaphor which mentally-challenged Arminians who can’t actually muster an argument substitute for reasoned argument.