Kevin Harris:
The Vatican astronomer goes on to say that perhaps if there are intelligent beings in another solar system that they don’t need salvation, they don’t need the atonement of Christ, they may have remained in full friendship with the Creator.
Dr. Craig:
This is the most interesting theological speculation. If there is intelligent life made in God’s image somewhere else in the universe, have they fallen into sin? Or was this a civilization or culture in which the Fall did not occur? Adam did not take the apple or Eve did not take the fruit of the tree. Is it possible that there could be a race of intelligent beings that has not fallen into sin? Well, it seems to me that that is possible. C. S. Lewis imagined such a thing in his science fiction trilogies. It is possible, I think. Adam did not have to sin; Eve didn’t have to sin. Neither did their descendants. So it is possible there could be such a population. In that case, they wouldn’t have fallen into sin and wouldn’t need redemption.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/ufos#ixzz3T6qXeohl
He's conceding, as a live possibility (i.e. feasible), that you could have actual planets where every member of that intelligent species is unfallen. So that cuts the nerve of the freewill defense insofar as that's predicated on God's inability to create sinless rational agents without infringing on their libertarian freedom. And not just isolated individuals, but in this case, everyone in that particular class of agents.
By Craig's admission, a freewill theist can no longer say the world contains moral evil because God was unable to create a world in which all free agents do right.
Major oops for Craig. That he "thinks" it is possible clearly implies that he's not speaking of a possible world that cannot be actualized (one that is not feasible) but rather a feasible world that might actually exist. So much for the view that God was dealt a bunch of bad cards.
ReplyDeleteI guess he'd "save" himself by saying that he put the bad apples in this world-cart?
ReplyDelete"A Simpler Freewill Defense"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.academia.edu/10307899/A_Simpler_Free_Will_Defence
And how does that salvage the problem?
DeleteIt doesn't. He's conceded that God could have created a world where nobody sinned. The save I had in view was no save at all but rather the only thing I can imagine him saying as an explanation for this world.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I was responding to MelancholyDane.
DeleteOh, because my second post was somewhat unclear. :)
ReplyDelete"By Craig's admission, a freewill theist can no longer say the world contains moral evil because God was unable to create a world in which all free agents do right."
ReplyDeleteI agree. To spring off from this, however, I never understood how anyone could think that "it's impossible for God to have created a world in which all free agents do right" is a defense in the first place. Surely, it would be better for God to have not created the world rather than to create a world in which evil must occur.
That's what Arminian tell me all the time, at any rate.
Admittedly I may be muddled in this, but it seems that Craig's position is that original sin, outside of this odd discourse on alien fallenness, is based in libertarian free will worked out through the medium of belonging in the human race instead of being based on belonging in the human race worked out through our necessarily limited free will.
ReplyDeleteAny corrections to my understanding of Craig's backwards thinking here?