"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." (John Muir)
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." (John Muir)
But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you” (Jude 9).
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan!
Wesley was familiar with all the discomforts of the road. His horses fell lame or were maimed by incompetent smiths. Sometimes there were more serious accidents. In July 1743, he and John Downes rode from Newcastle to Darlington. They had young horses, which were quite vigorous the day before, but now both seemed unwell. The ostler went in haste for a farrier, but both animals died before they could discover what was the matter with them. In June, 1752, a young strong mare which Wesley borrowed at Manchester fell lame before he reached Grimsby. Another was procured, but he was “dismounted” again between Newcastle and Berwick. When he returned to Manchester, he found that his own mare had lamed herself whilst at grass. He intended to ride her four or five miles, but some one took her out of the ground. Another which he had lately bought ought to have been forthcoming, but she had been taken to Chester. In one journey his horse became so exceeding lame that it could scarcely set its foot to the ground. Wesley could not discover what was amiss. He rode thus seven miles till he was thoroughly tired, and his head ached more than it had done for months. He says, “What I here aver is the naked fact. Let every man account for it as he sees good. I then thought, ‘Cannot God heal either man or beast by any means, or without any’ Immediately my weariness and headache ceased, and my horse’s lameness in the same instant. Nor did he halt any more that day or the next. A very odd accident this also!”
http://wesley.nnu.edu/?id=95
A friend asked about a video. Here's my response (with some minor revisions):
I just watched the "Why I am no longer a Creationist - Part 1: Genus Homo" video. Here are some thoughts:
Dont be absurd there ARE NO rights or freedoms according to the bible for humans, the very concept of human rights go against what the bible teaches
What is wrong with you? dont you think this through do you,if what was the case you would not be outraged if i owned people as slaves?
Also you cannot account for the existence of psychopaths and sociopaths, your bible clearly says God had written his moral laws in the hearts of men, but psychos and socios do not care for anyone but themselves WHAT SO EVER, nor can they feel love, the closest thing they can to love is control and domination. And to top it all off these traits emerge when psychos and socios are CHILDREN…
if morality is rooted in the will of any being it is subjective by definition
its to show how God did not write his law on anyone’s heart if he did write them on the hearts of men then there would still be evidence of that law being written on his/her heart…
if you follow Christian ethics to their conclusions you should be owning slaves and killing everyone who doesn’t follow your religion in a brutal and painful fashion.
God cannot be objective, he is a person and anything rooted in a person is by def subjective…
you must steal Chinese or any number of other culture’s morality to support your own primitive stone age tribal morality
it would be impossible for psychopaths to suppress such things completely, and yet they do as they show no signs of any moral outrage at anything bible god says he finds disgusting
sorry buddy your God isnt objective,because he is a person anything that is based on a person is not objective
if he was objective he would do things that are considered good INPEDENTDENT of his own opionion .
not really… plenty of ethical systems work without a person that enforces things
you do realize that all you did was re-word the problem not solve it right? why is something that is considered objectivity good apart of God’s nature instead of something else? how does God’s nature know something is good or bad? in other words is God’s character the way it is because it is good or is God’s character good simply because it is God’s character? If we identify the ultimate standard for goodness with God’s nature, then it seems we are identifying it with certain of God’s properties (e.g., being loving, being fair,being kind). If so, then the dilemma resurfaces: is God good because he has those properties, or are those properties good because God has them?
Since you acknowledge that your own moral compass is corrupt, I wonder what mechanism you employ in order to ascertain that God is more moral than man – would that be your admittedly flawed moral compass?
You’re merely blindly accepting DCT from what I read here.
So let’s make a hypothetical situation here. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument, and I do not believe this at all, that the first two chapters of Genesis are in error. Does that mean the whole NT is untrustworthy? No. It does not. It just means we need to change our doctrines of inspiration and Inerrancy. Note I am taking a scenario that is unfavorable towards us intentionally and using it to show that the central truth can still stand.
So in that case, I again repeat, if you want to know if Christianity is true, you don’t need to answer the question of evolution. If evolution is wrong, I would rather someone come to Christ with a belief in evolution, than to avoid Christ while having a true belief that evolution is wrong. I am more interested in getting people to Christ and removing as many hurdles from them as I can. I don’t want them to think they have to overcome a hurdle with evolution. Just show them what alone is essential.
Now if you want to critique evolution, then have at it! Go for it! Just make sure that it is a scientific critique and not a Bible critique. The last thing we need is to have this be the case of science vs. the Bible. As soon as we put that to the world, guess which one they will go with.
http://deeperwaters.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/clarification-on-discussing-evolution/
Nonteleological Evolution, the view that, while the supernatural may exist, it does not intervene after the universe comes into existence…This view affirms evolution and shares many similarities with naturalistic evolution because even though a supernatural being may have jump started the process, the universe, as it evolved, did not originate or progress with an intended telos, or plan, in view. Therefore, the randomness that characterizes evolution in philosophical naturalism is preserved, as is the attempt to explain everything from naturalistic causes. M. Barrett & A. Caneday, eds. Four Views On the Historical Adam (Zondervan 2013), 20.
In fact we object to violence and to the destruction of our enemies because this is precisely what God does too; this how God manifests himself when he is in us. The virtue lists in the New Testament depict human likeness of God in fundamentally nonviolent, benevolent terms: poor in spirit, mourning, meek, hungry for righteousness, merciful, pure, peacemakers, persecuted (Mt 5.3-10); lovers of enemies (Mt 5.43-8); loving, joyful, peaceful, forbearing, kind, good, faithful, gentle, self-controlled (Gal 5.22-3); not angry, not malevolent, beneficent in speech and deed, not bitter or rageful, kind and compassionate and forgiving (Eph 4.25-32); pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and goodness, impartial, and sincere (Jas 3.17). Persons who embody and manifest these traits are not violent; they are not descriptions of persons acting violently or malevolently. If this is what it means to have God present in you, then we infer that this is what God is truly like.
“But God is demonstrably violent and malevolent to some.” Yes, but he is not being himself. This is an important insight Jon D. Levenson mentions in his analysis of Torah in Creation and the Persistence of Evil: in his battle against sin and the forces of evil, God is forced to behave himself in a way with which he does not identify, which he does not desire. His ultimate goal is to be the benevolent, sovereign ruler of a freely cooperative world in which all flourish; but when evil threatens to destroy everything, he must cease to be benevolent to work towards preserving his threatened sovereignty.This is why it is important that we do not accept depictions of divine violence, of divine judgment, of damnation, etc., as final and definitive realities: God must be himself, he must be his true self in the end, and his true self is not the damning God but the saving God. Like Levenson says, God may not be proximately good, but he must be ultimately good.
So it is very much incompatible with God’s goodness to create a world in which everyone is damned.
http://acthe.wordpress.com/2014/01/17/the-goodness-of-god-and-the-damnation-of-all/
What would follow from that difficulty is not that “the God of Molinism is fallible” or that “God is fallible on the Molinist view” or that “according to the Molinist view there are possible worlds in which God’s plans fail”. No, they are clearly committed to ID. That’s their view! Rather, at worst, they’ve given an inadequate metaphysical defense of how ID could be true.
When an Arminian comes to us Calvinists and says, “According to the Calvinist view, people are robots and God is a moral monster,” don’t you think that’s a misrepresentation? Isn’t it better for them to say, “Calvinists say that humans have free agency and that God is holy, but I don’t see how they give a consistent defense of those commitments”?
Here’s a quicker analogy: “Molinists say that God knows these counterfactuals, but we all know they haven’t solved the grounding objection. Without grounds, there aren’t any truths to know. Therefore, Molinists believe in an ignorant God. The God of Molinism is ignorant.” Surely something has gone awry here.
http://www.proginosko.com/2014/01/the-fallible-god-of-molinism/#comment-1901
At the very least, your statement of the claims elides the distinction between would and could. This distinction is crucial. Would-claims are about actual truth, whereas could-claims are about possible truth.
Would-claims are about the actual world. They indicate brute facts true from eternity. They could be otherwise, but they are what they are. They are just about the only element of the actual world that God doesn't actualize. They are actualized and 'in place' from eternity.
Craig is not claiming that Peter "both affirms and denies" Christ under those circumstances. Craig claims that it is possible that Peter affirms Christ under those circumstances, and Craig claims that it is possible that Peter denies Christ under those circumstances. But those are mere could-claims. They don't tell us (and aren't intended to tell us) what Peter would actually do if he were created and placed in C. That's what claim (i) tells us. Claim (i) is better described as the claim, not that "Peter denies Christ under those circumstances," but that Peter *would* deny Christ under those circumstances.
Maybe it's implausible. But as long as the conditions for libertarian freedom are met (source and leeway), where's the problem? Libertarian freedom isn't some kind of empirical inference from trial runs or something! We don't have access to that.
I think Molinists would want an argument for thinking that. What metaphysically precludes there being brute facts about what creatures would choose? Many critics of Molinism have raised this issue, and they make interesting points. But Molinists have directly engaged them on these issues. So we have to see more than just a claim that it's not metaphysically sustainable. Why can't there be these facts?
And I'm not sure what you mean by "this hypothetical stage"
What does it matter what possible worlds are, or if there are any possible worlds in some metaphysically robust sense, as long as those claims are true?
Molinists are unique in holding to the contingent truth of CCFs. But these are claims about the actual world.
How is Molinism "heavily invested in possible worlds," where the latter are entities in some metaphysically robust sense?
All Molinism needs are facts about possibilities, and facts about subjunctive truth.
Molinism can survive an eliminativist ontology of possible worlds just in case there doesn't need to be such worlds in order for claims about possibilities to be true.
PWs are necessary but CCFs are contingent. Holding that "God is the ultimate source of possible worlds" because PWs are "divine ideas" doesn't tell us anything at all about CCFs.
Some people think that possible worlds are just giant propositions
Why would the fact that possible worlds are "complete, timeless, spaceless alternate scenarios" somehow "erase the would/could dichotomy"? I'm not getting the connection here.
In the actual world -- that is, in the only possible world that is in fact actualized -- a particular set of claims is true, including would-claims. If these contingent claims about the actual world are indistinguishable from possibly true claims, on the grounds that possible worlds are "complete, timeless, spaceless alternate scenarios," then there can be no contingency at all.
I don't see why it's "too facile," when all you've done is repeat the claim I've disputed: that epistemological concepts -- of what choice we would "expect him to make," of the uniformity 'indicating' some outside factor of influence, that there are 'odds' that are relevant here -- have any bearing on the fact of libertarian free will.
You don't have an argument that the counterfactual must be necessary.