The practical problem Calvinists face in the "real world"

From Facebook:

Leighton Flowers shared a link to the group: 316 Roundtable 
This is hard to watch but it's the practical problem Calvinists face in the "real world."

A Calvinistic state congressman is asked if rape is God's will.

Oklahoma State Rep says Rape or Incest is "the will of God"

Hays 

According to freewill theism, God willingly allowed the rapist to commit rape. Doesn't God will the consequences of what he does or refrains from doing?

Coords 

When the father of the prodigal son allowed his son to leave with his share of the inheritance, does that mean that the father willed or wanted for his son to leave?

Hays

Are you saying the father didn't will to allow his son to leave? Keep in mind that in the story of the parable, the father didn't have the ability to restrain a grown son from leaving. That's hardly analogous to God's relation to a rapist. 

If God allows a rapist to rape, the consequence of divine permission is rape. And that consequence is due in part to divine permission. So, once again, are you saying that God doesn't will to permit the rapist to commit rape? 

Coords

However, the father didn't want to hold him against his will, and so he willed to let his son do as he wanted."

Hays

How do you suppose a human father would be able to hold a grown son against his will, anyway? 

Coords 

Even John Calvin mocked the concept of divine permission within the paradigm of exhaustive divine determinism.

Hays

i) No, he "mocked" the concept because God's permission is either willing or unwilling. And that's not an issue unique to Calvinism. Freewill theism has the same issue. Does the freewill theist God permit evil willingly or unwillingly?

When we say someone was acting against their will, we typically mean that either it wasn't in their power to refuse or else they were acting under extreme duress, viz. acting at gunpoint, or hostages taken as collateral.

But clearly the freewill theist God is never forced to act against his will in that sense. So he willingly permits evil.

ii) I'm not invested in divine permission language. And just punting to divine permission is hardly an adequate theodicy. Do we excuse a human parent who left a child unattended in the kitchen with a boiling pot of water on the stove, if the child scalds itself? 

iii) However, if you wish to make hay about Calvinism in relation to permission, there's no contradiction: an agent permits what he could prevent.

Coords 

In that parable, no, I don't believe that the father wanted or willed for his son to leave, though he did decide to allow his son to leave by acquiescing to his demand."

Hays

So you admit in a roundabout way that he willed to let his son leave. 

Coords

So if God allows the rapist to proceed, it is again, a matter of acquiescing to the will of another.

Hays

In that case, the freewill theist God is acquiescing to the will of the rapist rather than the will of the rape victim not to be raped. Why does the freewill theist God honor the will of the rapist rather than the victim? 

Coords

That is a mystery of God's working that we will not fully understand until God presents the entire story."

Hays

So it's okay for freewill theists to retreat into mystery, but not for Calvinists to invoke mystery. 

Coords

However in Calvinism, God does not merely passively foreknow and just allow and intervene, but instead God causes and ordains every evil act ever committed throughout human history as an exercise of divine 'sovereignty' so that God may be most glorified."

Hays

The freewill theist God causes moral and natural evils. According to a standard philosophical definition of causation, "We think of a cause as something that makes a difference, and the difference it makes must be a difference from what would have happened without it. Had it been absent, its effects — some of them, at least, and usually all — would have been absent as well" (David Lewis). 

Put more formally, B causally depends on A in case, if A didn't occur occur, B wouldn't occur.

Hence, the freewill theist God causes evil by refusing to prevent evil or stop evil. 

Coords

But that's like saying that a husband who hires a secondary agent to be a Hit Man to kill his estranged wife is innocent because, after all, the Hit Man did it.

Hays

Which applies with equal force to freewill theism, inasmuch as God initiates a chain of events resulting in natural and moral evils. It's traceable back to God's creative fiat. Moreover, Coords admits that these are divinely foreseeable evils. So the freewill theist God knows that by initiating that chain of evils, natural and moral evils will be the end-result. 

Coords

Calvinists don't like that analogy because Calvinists say that you cannot hold God to the same standards that He sets forth for man, but that would make God into a hypocrite. Calvinism just doesn't work."

Hays

i) Let's see. Humans have a duty to intervene if they see a rapist about to commit rape. But the freewill theist God doesn't do that. So freewill theists say you can't hold their God to the same standards as human duties, which makes the freewill theist God a hypocrite according to their own yardstick.

ii) Or take the recent story of the four year old boy (Ryu Pena) who accidentally hanged himself in a dressing room. A human would have an obligation to save his life. But the freewill theist God didn't do that. So freewill theists hold their God to a different standard.

iii) BTW, what theodicies could a freewill theist offer to justify God's inaction in this case? The freewill defense won't work. It's not as if God would be violating the little boy's freewill if he miraculously intervened to save his life. It's not as if the little boy wanted to accidentally strangle himself. It's not as if his grandmother wanted that to happen. 

iv) The natural law theodicy won't work. Since the little boy was hidden from public view, if God temporarily suspended the laws of nature in that situation, it would be undetectable. 

Coords 

Calvinists love Calvinism, 'a lot'…

Hays 

I'm not a Calvinist because I'm enamored with Calvinism. Rather, I'm a Calvinist by process of elimination. I'm a Calvinist because I'm not an atheist. I'm a Calvinist because I'm not a freewill theist (or Hindu or Buddhist, &c.). The alternatives are bunk.