It's a useful metaphor to illustrate how a creator can exist outside the "world" (time and space) of his creation but also be indirectly present in everything that happens. A limitation of the metaphor is that storybook characters lack consciousness. However, that would be analogous to possible worlds in God's imagination.
As I've mentioned, the metaphor can be updated using the thought-experiment of artificially intelligent virtual characters in a computer simulation. That would be analogous to the author bringing his story to life. Rather like the Greek myth of Pygmalion.
I watched about half of the second link, which was about as much as I could tolerate of it. I found it a waste of time and brain-power, an example of someone reading someone else in a pointlessly hostile way, in order to generate apparent contradictions to score attack points, but without really elucidating anything. By all means, critique Doug Wilson; I have, and do, where I think he's getting it wrong. But like this? No, this video is low-grade point-scoring using a surface level analysis of verbal contradictions which anyone can do to anyone who's written a non-trivial amount output. At the end of the video he concludes that Wilson is fundamentally incoherent. Well, some people are, but in this case that could have been a clue to the creator of the video that he needed to go back to his desk and do more toil on understanding the position he wanted to interact with, and how to harmonise surface-level contradictions, rather than perform a low-grade drive-by take-down. The material on Triablogue is almost always much better than this.
As the creator of these videos, I'm happy to hear anyone out who thinks mine are low-grade. Reading your comment as it is, I can't even tell which point you thought would be easily resolved. Would you like to go to bat for Wilson on, say, his belief that a wife's looks are her husband's responsibility, and that if she doesn't look more attractive even after 10 years, that that's his fault? Or was that just verbal contradiction?
Personally I appreciated these videos. I don't think the statements by Doug Wilson, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, and the others in the videos are taken out of context or are isolated remarks or the like. Rather, their statements do seem to reflect their true beliefs.
Looks like David Anderson isn't going to defend Wilson's absurd statements. I'm not surprised- especially when it comes to Wilson teaching that a man can make his wife more pretty even after ten years go by, IF he marries biblically... It's just garbage. It's a fanciful myth you would find in fairy tales. But he teaches it, and his defenders can't begin to muster a defense for it, other than to shame his critic for daring to point and laugh.
I’d be interested to know what your thoughts are on Craig’s latest Q&A:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/are-we-characters-in-a-book/
I’ve long favored the authorial analogy to describe how God relates to the world, even if it has limits. But this seems really confused to me.
It's a useful metaphor to illustrate how a creator can exist outside the "world" (time and space) of his creation but also be indirectly present in everything that happens. A limitation of the metaphor is that storybook characters lack consciousness. However, that would be analogous to possible worlds in God's imagination.
DeleteAs I've mentioned, the metaphor can be updated using the thought-experiment of artificially intelligent virtual characters in a computer simulation. That would be analogous to the author bringing his story to life. Rather like the Greek myth of Pygmalion.
Thanks for the plug, Steve!
ReplyDeleteI watched about half of the second link, which was about as much as I could tolerate of it. I found it a waste of time and brain-power, an example of someone reading someone else in a pointlessly hostile way, in order to generate apparent contradictions to score attack points, but without really elucidating anything. By all means, critique Doug Wilson; I have, and do, where I think he's getting it wrong. But like this? No, this video is low-grade point-scoring using a surface level analysis of verbal contradictions which anyone can do to anyone who's written a non-trivial amount output. At the end of the video he concludes that Wilson is fundamentally incoherent. Well, some people are, but in this case that could have been a clue to the creator of the video that he needed to go back to his desk and do more toil on understanding the position he wanted to interact with, and how to harmonise surface-level contradictions, rather than perform a low-grade drive-by take-down. The material on Triablogue is almost always much better than this.
ReplyDeleteAs the creator of these videos, I'm happy to hear anyone out who thinks mine are low-grade. Reading your comment as it is, I can't even tell which point you thought would be easily resolved. Would you like to go to bat for Wilson on, say, his belief that a wife's looks are her husband's responsibility, and that if she doesn't look more attractive even after 10 years, that that's his fault? Or was that just verbal contradiction?
DeletePersonally I appreciated these videos. I don't think the statements by Doug Wilson, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, and the others in the videos are taken out of context or are isolated remarks or the like. Rather, their statements do seem to reflect their true beliefs.
Delete"Rather, their statements do seem to reflect their true beliefs."
DeleteAt least at the time they made their statements.
To be fair, Driscoll is an easy target. However it's eye opening to witness these sorts of statements from the others.
Looks like David Anderson isn't going to defend Wilson's absurd statements. I'm not surprised- especially when it comes to Wilson teaching that a man can make his wife more pretty even after ten years go by, IF he marries biblically... It's just garbage. It's a fanciful myth you would find in fairy tales. But he teaches it, and his defenders can't begin to muster a defense for it, other than to shame his critic for daring to point and laugh.
Delete