If you could make your mother sinless...

One Catholic "argument" Mike Winger mentions in his demolition of Marian typology is: "If you could make your mother sinless, wouldn't you?"

Winger doesn't respond to that directly, in part because his focus is exegetical, and because he thinks that's bad theological method. I agree, but it's still good to address it head-on:

1. Ironically, it's a proof for the Immaculate Conception which, if sound, disproves the Immaculate Conception. If the Immaculate Conception is true, then Jesus wasn't the agent of the Immaculate Conception. For one thing, Jesus didn't exist prior to his own conception. Jesus is a product of the Incarnation. 

Of course, the Son is eternally preexistent, so that in principle, the Son could be the agent of the Immaculate Conception, but the Catholic prooftexts single out the Holy Spirit as the agent of the Immaculate Conception. So the argument, even on its own grounds, is self-refuting. 

2. Then there's the argument from analogy: 

i) How could a human son makes his mother sinless before he was conceived?

ii) As a preliminary step, a Catholic apologist would have to demonstrate that retrocausation is possible. That's a very tall order.  

iii) But even if (ex hypothesi), he could retroactively make his mother sinless, at her own conception, yet in that event he wouldn't exist in the first place since his mother would have a different future if she was sinless from the moment of conception. He wouldn't exist in that future. He only exists in the future where his mother isn't sinless. So the attempted parallel, using merely human sons and mothers as a basis of comparison, is incoherent on yet another ground. It's like the Grandfather paradox. If the time-traveler succeeds, he erases the future he came from. So he never existed! 

iv) In Catholic theology, Jesus and Mary are both sinless. Yet in the comparison with merely human mothers and sons, the mother would be sinless but the son would not be. That, however, would be a very strange mother/son relationship. How exactly is that supposed to work?

v) Everyone who dies in the faith will be sinless. So what's the hurry? I don't need to make my mother sinless. That will happen in due time. There's a reason why God doesn't make humans sinless in this life. Faith is waiting. 

The best of both worlds

1. I assume much of the appeal of time-travel scenarios and parallel universe scenarios lies in the fact that in reality, we can't go through both doors at once. There are unrealized possibilities we wish we could explore.

There are situations where, with the benefit of hindsight, we'd make a different choice. At least if we could hang onto the good things. One of the principles that time-travel stories illustrate is that when you change even one variable, that has a domino effect. By changing one variable, you change the direction of all the succeeding dominos.

2. In addition, there are situations where, if we had the benefit of hindsight, we wouldn't change anything despite having the benefit of hindsight, even if the consequences are, in some respects, undesirable. Because we know the consequences, we'd repeat the same chain of events in spite of undesirable consequences. 

For instance, suppose I have a younger blind brother. We're about a year and a half apart. Because he's more dependent on me than a sighted brother, I'm closer to him than if he was sighted. If he was sighted, it would be easier to take him for granted. 

Still, there are brotherly things I'd like us to do together that I can't do with him. I can't go hiking with him because he can't see. I mean, I could still go hiking with him, I could take him by the hand. But part of the pleasure of hiking is sightseeing, and that's not something he's in a position to appreciate. So it won't be a shared experience at that level, yet the point of doing things together is for the shared experience. This leaves me with three options:

i) Go hiking with friends, and take him along, even though he won't get much out of it. My friends and I will be talking about things we see on the trail, that he can't see. That's insensitive. 

ii) Go hiking with friends, but leave him behind. Yet that would be mean.

iii) Skip hiking to avoid the dilemma. But in that event we both miss out. 

3. Suppose I have access to the proverbial time machine. I don't know the night on which he was conceived, but I have a rough idea of the time range, and if I travel back into the past several times, I'll be able to disrupt parential activities on the crucial evening. Would I do it? Should I do it?

i) Even from a purely selfish standpoint, that might backfire. I might get a sister instead of a new brother! Not that there's anything wrong with having a sister, but if the problem is that I'm unable to do the usual brotherly stuff with my blind brother, then I can't very well do it with a sister. And it would serve me right. 

ii) Perhaps, moreover, my mother isn't very fertile. She might have a condition like polycystic ovarian syndrome. She only had a few babies on tap. By preempting my blind brother's conception, I don't get a sighted brother in his place–I get nothing. My mother only had two brothers on tap. Once again, it would serve me right.

4. From a Christian standpoint, sacrificial love is a deeper kind of love. Love that's cost-free isn't very loving. That's fair-weather love, which is barely love at all. I don't love you for you, but only for what I might get out of it. 

5. Finally, from a Christian standpoint, if my brother and I die in the faith, then in the world to come we'll be young again, and this time around my brother will be sighted. So we'll be able to do the brotherly stuff we missed out on in this life. We'll have our memories from this life, we'll have the special bond that's a carryover from his disability, but without the disability. Truly the best of both worlds. Two kinds of goods that can't happen in the same world history, but are now combined as two different world histories converge in the eschaton. 

The Bible for modern readers

An atheist objection to Christianity is that if the Bible is divinely inspired, it should contain some prophecies about advanced technology. I've discussed that before. I'll make two points.

ii) To recap my first response, suppose you're a moviemaker with a penchant for science fiction. You want to set your story in the future, several centuries from now. And suppose you have actual knowledge of the future. So your depictions of the future are fantastically prescient and realistic. 

That, however, generates a conundrum. It will give your nerdy, geeky movie viewers some clues about the future. Although they think the movie is just science fiction, the depiction of advanced technology gives them ideas. They think about designing gizmos that could really do that. So the effect of your movie is to kickstart the future it depicts. By giving a preview of the future you change the future because your preview influences how people behave, as an intellectual stimulus. 

But because it's premature, because it doesn't represent an incremental development of technology, because it utilizes the resources at hand, at an earlier stage of history, the inventions and discoveries will be different than in the film. By interfering with the natural progression of science, the future it causes isn't the same future, because the modifications begin at an earlier point in the timeline. 

The paradoxical consequence of your movie is that before anyone saw your movie, it accurately predicts how the future will turn out, but once enough people see your movie, it no longer predicts how the future will turn out. Rather, it's an accurate prediction of the future without a past containing your movie. 

iii) But here's another point. It's easier for a modern reader to understand an ancient text than for an ancient reader to understand a modern text. References to modern technology would be unintelligible to an ancient reader. By contrast, references to ancient technology are intelligible to modern readers. We know the past. We have the benefit of hindsight. 

In addition, future technology is constantly changing at a rate that didn't occur in the ancient world. Take the comical spectacle of teenagers who don't know how to use a rotary phone. For today's teenagers, rotary phones might as well be advanced alien technology. 

Suicide by time-travel

i) Proabortionists often trot out situations where raising the child is a hardship on the mother. And there are undoubtedly situations where that's the case. 

Consider cases where raising the proabortionist was a hardship on the mother. Suppose the proabortionist could step into a time-machine, travel back into the past, and preempt his/her own conception, thereby sparing his/her mother the ordeal of having to raise the proabortionist. 

That would be both contraception by time-travel as well as suicide by time-travel. Or suicidal contraception by time-travel.  How many proabortionists would step into the time-machine to preempt their conception, so as to spare their mother the onerous experience of having to raise them? How many proabortionists would commit suicidal contraception if they had that opportunity? I daresay not a single one would care enough about the hardship their existence imposed on their mother to prevent their existence from ever happening. Proabortionists are far too selfish to be suicidally altruistic. 

ii) Now, I don't expect proabortionist to admit that. Since it's just hypothetical, it wouldn't cost them anything to lie about it. But it's a way of exposing their hypocrisy.

iii) In addition, sometimes you can plant an idea which will eventually cause a person to change their mind. They may not admit it to you at the time, yet it's something that never occurred to them, but once the idea is planted in their mind, it works its way through to the conclusion.

iv) A critic might object that my thought-experiment is unrealistic. It generates a classic time-travel antinomy, like the grandfather paradox. But that's irrelevant. The point of time-travel scenarios is to illustrate a principle in a picturesque way which makes it easier to grasp and appreciate. They can visualize the principle. It gives the principle a concrete setting. But the principle doesn't depend on the coherence of the illustration. It's just a fictional story. 

Me, myself, and I

i) A stock objection which unitarians raise to Trinitarian theology is that in the Gospels, Jesus talks to the Father or prays to the Father. Unitarians point to that and exclaim: "Ah ha! Jesus and the Father must be different! How silly to think God is talking to himself!"

ii) Now, at one level, that's a brainless objection because Trinitarian theology requires the Father and the Son to be different in a fundamental respect. So that's hardly inconsistent with Trinitarian theology. To the contrary, that's what we'd expect if it's true.

iii) But here's another point: there's nothing necessarily incongruous about the same individual addressing himself or talking to himself. Suppose a time-traveler in the future writes a letter to himself in the past. In contains important information. Reading the letter will avert a disaster. Based on his advance knowledge of how the past will eventuate, he plants the letter at a time and place where his younger self is sure to find it.  

Whether or not time travel is incoherent, there is nothing incoherent in principle about sending a message to yourself. There's nothing contradictory about the idea of doing that. This is just a graphic way to illustrate that principle. 

iv) Or, to take a more prosaic example, suppose you keep a diary because you don't want to forget what happened to you, from day to day. Even though daily incidents might seem to be insignificant at the time, some might prove to be highly significant in retrospect. 

Every so often you review earlier entries in your diary. The diary was written by the writer to the writer. The diarist is both writer and reader. Although it's possible for someone else to read your diary, the reason you kept a diary was to remind yourself of things that happened to you. The diarist is the intended reader of his own diary. 

v) Or take a two-way correspondence between you and your counterpart in a parallel universe. Suppose the multiverse is real, and it's possible to communicate with yourself in the alternate timeline. So you and your counterpart in the parallel universe exchange messages, back and forth. 

Even if there is no multiverse, or even if, assuming there is a multiverse, communication between you and your counterpart is technically impossible, there's nothing contradictory about the idea of doing so. Once again, this is just a graphic way to illustrate that principle. 

vi) I'd add that (v) raises tricky issues about personal identity. Yet that's no different in principle from counterfactual scenarios generally. Many philosophers, unless they are diehard reductionists, make allowance for a certain amount of give in personal identity to accommodate the truth-value of counterfactuals. The price for denying that is extremely high. 

Time travel filicide

A young couple learns that there is a 50% chance any child they conceive will be born with a terrible, untreatable disease which will result in the child's painfully slow death in a matter of weeks or months. Under those conditions, *is it morally wrong* for them to have a child?

— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) March 17, 2019

1. Wouldn't the same logic justify eugenic abortion?

2. Since Rauser is fond of thought-experiments, here's a test-case: suppose a couple has three kids. The first kid has a congenital untreatable disease which will result in the child's painfully slow death in a matter of weeks or months. His younger siblings are healthy. 

Suppose a time-machine is invented. The couple can travel back into the past and erase the first child from the original timeline. But that action will automatically erase their two younger children from the original timeline. All three children never existed in the new. Would it be wrong to do that to their healthy kids? Would that be tantamount to filicide? 

Retroactive abortion

By Clark Kent

Daily Planet staff reporter

Having legalized infanticide for 5-year-olds and euthanasia for men and women on their 30th birthday (inspired by Logan's Run), secular progressives were stymied. There wasn't much room left over to carry out their misanthropic policies in a forward direction. So it was more efficient to go backward by mandating retroactive abortion. This utilized time-travel technology. All citizens were ordered to report to abortifacient time-machines. This enabled secular progressives to implement a consistent policy. It was so successful that a week later, the human race was scrubbed from the space-time continuum. That timeline never happened. Earth instantly reverted to the Cretaceous age. 

When tomorrow never comes

Although I don't think unanswered prayer casts doubt on God's existence (too much evidence for that), it does cast prima facie doubt on God's benevolence. Ironically, Deists think the problem isn't with unanswered prayer but answered prayer! They think a God who intervenes is a God who lacks foresight to get it right the first time around. They view divine intervention as God rewriting the script. Editing his rough draft. That's actually a good objection to open theism. 

In theory, this ranges along a continuum from a God who never answers prayer to a God who always answers prayer. What would a world be like where God answers every prayer? 

To begin with, are we confining that to Christian prayers and pre-Christian Jewish prayers? Or does that extend to, say, Hindu prayers? Even if we confine it to Christian and Jewish prayers, do we distinguish between nominal believers and true believers? 

One problem with God answering every prayer is that some prayers cancel out other prayers. Some prayers are mutually incompossible. 

We might compare efficacious prayer to time-travel scenarios. In the sci-fi lore, time travel has a disruptive impact on the future by replacing the original future with an alternate timeline. The more often that happens, the more disruptive the effect. Cumulative temporal dislocation. 

Imagine a world in which there was no time-travel from January until the first Thursday in July. Up to that point there's continuity as people cycle through the week, a day at a time. But on the first Thursday in July (of that year), time travel became ubiquitous. 

That means you never get beyond Thursday. Friday never comes because Friday is constantly replaced by alternate futures. Every morning, when you wake up, it's Thursday. Each time it's a different Thursday. Not a different calendar date Thursday. The same calendar date Thursday, but a Thursday in a different timeline. You go through Thursday, go to bed, fall asleep, and it's Thursday all over again when you wake up because the disruptive effect of ubiquitous time travel resets the starting-date. 

Efficacious prayer would have a similar effect. Two alternate timelines sharing their histories up to the moment where they fork off. If God answers a prayer, that stands in contrast to what might have been had he not, and vice versa. If God answered every prayer, that's like constantly resetting the starting-date–so that we keep repeating the same calendar day. Different things happen each time because it represents a road not taken, but there's no continuity and no progression. You're forever stuck in Thursday. It's not the same as a time loop, because things change every time that happens, but it's always on that particular day. The next day never comes. Hence, the paradox of efficacious prayer. 

If efficacious prayer generates a conundrum like that, then that may be one reason why God selectively answers prayer, even though some prayers seem to be just as "deserving" as others. God strikes a balance between stability, intercession, and chaos. 

Seers and time-travelers

I've discussed this before, but I'd like to use a different illustration to make the same point. A common objection to the argument from prophecy is that Bible prophecies are said to be too vague. In general, they don't have a name, date, and address. 

But predicting the future poses something of a paradox. It's necessary to strike a balance between to much specificity and too little.

A seer is like a time-traveler who takes a trip into the future, then returns to his own time. He literally meets himself coming and going. 

But he doesn't simply come full circle. He returns with additional information. That's potentially disruptive, because he now knows what he will do before he does it. Yet foreknowledge of his own decisions now threatens to affect the decision-making process. He will make decisions about the future knowing how things turned out. But that advance knowledge is likely to influence his decision-making, resulting in different decisions than if he hadn't witnessed the future. Knowing the future carries the risk of changing the future. 

That's a familiar conundrum in time-travel stories. If you see the future, you act in light of the future you saw, which may in turn change it. Your intrusion replaces the future you initially saw with an alternate future. 

That's why prophecies are, by design, more clearly seen in retrospect. Once fulfilled, it's too late to willfully or inadvertantly frustrate the prediction. 

One safeguard is multiple prophecies. It won't be clear in advance how these synchronize. And so it won't be possible to disrupt the predicted outcome. How they're coordinated can't be discerned ahead of time. But once they converge, the predicted outcome is recognizable, after the fact. 

Dawkins, Fermat, and Jesus

Richard Dawkins‏Verified account @RichardDawkins  17h17 hours ago17 hours agoMore 

Missing verse. Jesus said, no three positive integers a, b, and c shall satisfy the equation a^n + b^n = c^n. Now that would be impressive.

Apparently, Dawkins is alluding to Fermat's Last Theorem. Several issues:

i) It's prudent not to endeavor to be more clever than you are, because a failed attempt will make you look less clever than you aspire to be. 

ii) I'm no expert, but it's my impression that Dawkins bungled the formulation by omitting n>2. He should leave math to mathematicians and stick to evolutionary biology.

iii) What is the implicit argument in his tweet? I suppose it's something like this: Gospel writers can fabricate reported miracles, but a scientific or mathematic theory, theorem, conjecture, or discovery that's centuries ahead of its time can't be faked. It would be unmistakably anachronistic and undeniably impressive. Assuming that's in the ballpark of what he was gesturing at:

iv) Since modern mathematical and scientific notation didn't exist in the 1C, how could that be expressed in Aramaic or Koine Greek?

v) Since the formula would be unintelligible to Christian scribes (as well as readers), it would almost inevitably be miscopied. 

vi) Unbelievers don't think the Gospels reliably record the sayings of the historical Jesus. So even if the Gospels contained something like Fermat's Last Theorem, unbelievers could chalk that up to the narrator, or his hypothetical source, rather than Jesus. He just put that in the mouth of Jesus.

vii) Assuming (ex hypothesi) that Jesus said that, it might prove that he was a mathematical genius, but human genius is no proof of deity, and it's irrelevant to his mission as the Redeemer and eschatological judge.

viii) Is Fermat's Last Theorem especially impressive–or the solution! 

ix) Premature scientific and mathematical theories and discoveries would alter the future course of history by kickstarting math and science. It's like those scifi scenarios in which the time-traveler inadvertently changes the future because he carries his modern knowledge with him when he goes back in time, where he says or does something that seeds the past with future know-how or technology. Indeed, he becomes trapped in the past because the future from which he came no longer exists, so he's now unable to return to that point in the erstwhile timeline. 

To be or not to be

I've used variations on the same idea idea in two different contexts (abortion, theodicy). Now I'd like to combine them in reference to theodicy. When atheists raise the problem of evil, the unspoken assumption is that a better world is possible. They can imagine various ways of improving the world we inhabit. If, therefore, an omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent God really exists, the actual world would correspond to the better world an atheist imagines. Or so goes the argument. 

But as I've often pointed out, that's shortsighted. There is no best possible world. For alternate timelines have unique goods. Some goods are contingent on prior evils. Preventing the evil prevents the resultant good.

Just about every human life produces a chain reaction. Whether or not a particular individual exists will affect the course of history in complex ways. If he exists, history will go one way. If he doesn't exist, history will go another way. Time-travel stories illustrate the principle of tradeoffs in that regard. Our individual lives may seem insignificant, but lives have long-range consequences–as does their absence, counterfactually speaking. The upshot is that when an atheist imagines a better possible world, there are losers in that scenario. Indeed, people who are winners in one possible world may well miss out in the "superior" alternative. It's no improvement for them.

One objection I encounter to this observation is that people who never exist in the first place have nothing to lose. That may be true given the status quo, but the objection is superficial and misses the point. Nonexistence is the greatest conceivable deprivation. Every lesser deprivation is a matter of degree. But this is a lost opportunity in the most absolute sense. 

If, for some odd reason, it just isn't possible for someone to exist, then there's nothing to lose. There was no alternative. If, however, the alternatives are existence and nonexistence, and those are both live possibilities, then to be denied the opportunity to exist when that was feasible is a genuine loss. 

To take a comparison, when a teenager dies, we consider that an "untimely" death. He "died before his time". We lament the death of the young because they had their "whole life ahead of them". 

The sense of loss is based on wasted potential. Lost opportunities. The future he never had. He missed out on so much.

But if that's valid for a teenager, we can extend the same principle back in time. If a 16-year-old has so much to lose, doesn't a 6-year-old have at least as much to lose, if not more? What about a 2-year-old? Or a 6th-month old baby? Or a 3-month-old baby in utero? At each stage of premature death, there's lost potential. And the further back you go, the greater the deprivation. The greater the unrealized potential. 

What about a minute before conception compared to a minute after conception? If that really different in kind? You may say that prior to conception, he doesn't exist, but isn't one minute's difference either way rather arbitrary? Since the principle concerns potential futures, it ranges along a continuum. There's no intrinsic cutoff at any point along the continuum. Suppose you make the cut at 20. But you could just as easily make cut at 19. You could make the cut a moment earlier, or an hour earlier, or a day earlier, or a week earlier, or a month earlier, or a year earlier. The sooner the cut-off, the more there is to lose. The lost opportunity is that much more extensive. 

Notice, I'm not saying that possible people who never exist were wronged or harmed by never existing. But there's a weighty sense in which some people are better off existing than not existing. Given the opportunity, they'd enjoy that. 

Before an atheist complains about how God could make a better world, the atheist needs to think several moves deep. Like a chess game, changing one move changes subsequent moves. 

Are serial killers entitled to respect?

Atheist Jason Thibodeau left some comments on my post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/12/city-on-edge-of-forever.html

I'm posting a separate response, in part because the original post is heading into the archive. But you can refer to the original post for contextual background:

"Saying that a person has infinite value is just a way of saying that the value of a person is not measurable or comparable to other things of value."

If that's how you wish to define your usage, fine. But in that case, "incommensurable" or "incomparable" would be more accurate than "infinite".

"There is nothing that is more valuable than the value of a person. We don't know how to measure it and it is inappropriate to put a numerical value on it."

Or course, I never suggested putting a "numerical" value on human life.

"I don't think you have shown that any person can forfeit the respect to which they are entitled. Even serial killers have dignity and their dignity deserves to be respected."

1. That remark is unresponsive to what I wrote. Here's what I wrote:

"Moreover, what's wrong with saying some lives are less valuable than others? What about the possibility that some people devalue their lives through their misconduct? Take serial killers…some people can forfeit their prima facie right to life. Take serial killers."

Thibodeau recasts the issue in terms of "respect" and "dignity". He's free to frame the issue however he sees fit, but those weren't my categories, so his remark fails to engage or counter what I actually said. His categories are not equivalent to mine.

2. I don't think serial killers are entitled to "respect". 

3. Although it's fashionable in some circles to frame human rights in terms of "dignity," that's a terribly vague designator. 

4. To say I haven't shown that "any person can forfeit the respect to which they are entitled" (even if we bracket "respect") is a tendentious way of framing the issue, for I don't grant that's an inalienable entitlement. 

I agree that people can't forfeit an entitlement; by definition, an entitlement is something you're entitled to receive. So on that tautological level, it's something that can't lost or denied. But that begs the question of whether, in fact, this is something to which they are entitled. 

5. I think there's a baseline for how humans should treat other humans. But I say that as a Christian. From a secular standpoint, anything goes.

6. It's true that I didn't argue for my contentions, but I was responding to Thibodeau, who didn't argue for his contentions, either. It's not as if the onus is on me but not on him. 

7. To flesh out my position a bit more, one of my moral principles is the Aristotelian principle that we ought to treat like cases alike and unlike cases unalike. Apropos that distinction, the essence of justice is to distinguish between innocence and guilt, good and evil. 

Hence, serial killers should not be treated the same way as people who exhibit common decency, for that would be treating unlike cases alike, and erasing a necessary distinction between justice and injustice. 

It follows that people can, through misconduct, lose a prima facie status (i.e. immunity to harm). Put less abstractly, someone who commits murder (to take one example) has crossed a moral threshold from innocence to guilt, in that regard–which demands a correspondingly differential treatment. 

I could say more, but that's a start, and that's more than Thibodeau is said in defense of his own position. So the ball is back in his court.

"ii) I have no idea what point you are trying to make here."

That's too vague to respond to.

"Suppose McCoy had reason to believe that his judgements about what is good and bad (including his comparative judgements) are not reliable. He might have this reason if he had good reason to believe that there are things the existence and value of which we are ignorant. In this case, for all he knows, the death of Edith Keeler is a very good thing. This must be McCoy's judgement. Notice that this is true regardless of Kirk's viewpoint. We don't have to even suppose that Kirk is involved to see that, if McCoy is a skeptical theist, he must believe that, for all he knows, Edith's death is very good indeed. If this is so, then he must believe that he is not in a position to know whether it is his prima facie duty to try to save her life. 

According to skeptical theism, Kirk's viewpoint is not superior to McCoy's. Kirk knows things that McCoy does not. However, if skeptical theism is true, then for all Kirk knows, there are things the existence and value of which he is ignorant. For example, it is possible that the nazi conquest is necessary for the realization of something that is much more valuable than the elimination of Nazi Germany. Thus, given Kirk's viewpoint, it is possible that nazi conquest is not bad; it is possible that it is very good indeed. Thus, if skeptical theism is true, Kirk must be agnostic about his moral duty. He has no reason to think that he ought to let Edith die."

A number of confusions on Thibodeau's part:

1. As I already pointed out, but Thibodeau ignores, this is not unique to skeptical theism. Rather, this can be a quandary for any ethical system where the impact of our actions should be a factor in our moral deliberations. Does Thibodeau suppose we should never take the expected effects of our actions into account when we compare and contrast different courses of action? So that's not a predicament for skeptical theism in particular, but for moral deliberation in generation, of which skeptical theism is a special case. 

2. Keep in mind that some secular ethicists think genuine moral dilemmas are sometimes unavoidable. Cf. W. Sinnott-Armstrong, Moral Dilemmas (Blackwell, 1988). So why does Thibodeau act as though skeptical theism generates a unique challenge in that respect? Indeed, part of the appeal of time-travel stories is to illustrate moral dilemmas. 

3. Thibodeau repeats his simplistic classification, according to which something is either good or bad. But as I already explained, it's more complicated than that. A particular event can be good or bad in its own right. Yet that's in distinction to good or bad side-effects of the precipitating event. And, again, this is by no means exclusive to skeptical theism. 

4. I think some actions are intrinsically right or wrong. In that case, a good outcome can't override an intrinsically prohibitory action while a bad outcome can't override an intrinsically obligatory outcome. So those need to be separated from cases where something that's prima facie right or wrong might be overridden by circumstances.

5. There's also the question of our moral responsibilities. From a Christian perspective, I'd say there are many cases where we need to take the intended or foreseeable impact of our actions into consideration. But we're not responsible or blameworthy for unpredictable consequences. Our duty is to make decisions based on the available evidence. 

If Thibodeau disagrees, he needs to show how that's inconsistent with Christian ethics. 

6. Apropos (5), when we talk about doing the right thing, that's ambiguous. That can mean either of two different things:

i) Right in the sense of morally right 

ii) Right in the sense of doing what's best, or making a factually correct decision

Put another way, there's an elementary difference between what's morally good or bad, and what's better or worse–in the sense of more ideal or less ideal. 

These are distinct and separable considerations. I have a obligation to do what's morally right and avoid doing what's morally wrong.

It doesn't follow that I have an obligation to do what's best or be correct:

a) To begin with, I may be in no position to know what's best. The future is unpredictable.

b) In addition, there may be no single best outcome. Different outcomes each have tradeoffs. 

c) It may not be possible for me to be factually correct if the evidence at my disposal is inadequate. 

I don't think it's blameworthy to do the "wrong" thing in the sense of (ii) if I lack the evidence to make a better-informed decision. And it's a commonplace of human experience that we must often make decisions, including momentous decisions, despite insufficient information. We can't be sure that we made the "right" choice–in the sense of (ii). But I don't consider that culpable. 

If Thibodeau disagrees, he needs to show how that's inconsistent with Christian ethics. 

7. From a Calvinistic perspective, our actions never thwart the good that God is aiming for. Rather, God uses our fallible decisions to further his goal. Even though our decisions may be individually unwise, they unintentionally contribute to a wise  and worthwhile outcome. (Unintentional from our blinkered viewpoint.) 

Calvinism and the God of love

Jerry Walls did a lecture several weeks ago on "Calvinism and the God of Love":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IBUtF8EtAo

He and I then had an impromptu Facebook debate about his lecture. 

Steve Hays 

Jerry, you quoted the WSC, and noted that it omits to mention the attribute of divine love. Why didn't you quote the WCF, which, among other things, says God is "most loving" (as well as "gracious" and "merciful," "abundant in goodness")? I hope you weren't attempting to deceive your audience by selectively quoting from Reformed documents. So how can we account for your conspicuous oversight? 

There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and withal, most just, and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty (WCF 2:1).

I'm struck by Jerry's insinuation that Calvin can't bring himself to affirm God's love. Certainly that's the impression that Jerry fosters through his selection quotations. Jerry makes a big deal about the fact that Calvin doesn't quote 1 Jn 4:8,16 in the Institutes. Keep in mind that there are about 55,000 verses in the Bible, so it's hardly surprising or suspect if even a systematic theology omits many verses. But in addition, consider what Calvin does say, which Jerry conveniently leaves out:

Thus he is moved by pure and freely given love of us to receive us into grace…Therefore, by his love God the Father goes before and anticipates our reconciliation in Christ. Indeed, 'because he first loved us' (1 Jn 4:19), he afterward reconciles us to himself.  

For this reason, Paul says that the love with which God embraced us "before the creation of the world" was established and grounded in Christ [Eph 1:4-5]…God declared his love toward us in giving his only begotten-Son to die [Jn 3:16]…I shall quote a passage of Augustine where the very thing is taught: ''God's love," says he, "is incomprehensible and unchangeable. For it was not after we were reconciled to him through the blood of his Son that he began to love us. Rather, he has loved us before the world was created"…"God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" [Rom 5:8]" Institutes 16.2.3-4 [Ford Lewis Battles trans.].

Jerry Walls 

It is not a comprehensive list of all Reformed sources, and I said it is only suggestive. The fact that love did not make the short list is suggestive since the NT explicitly says "God is love," unlike some of the other things that made the list. My claim that it is suggestive of Calvinist priorities is a modest claim, and my case hardly hinges on it.

Steve Hays 

Jerry, you said a consistent Calvinist may only deny #1 or #3 of your six-point argument. But that's not the case. A consistent Calvinist may also deny #5. According to that proposition, "God could (properly) give all persons irresistible grace and thereby determine all persons to be saved."

Problem with that proposition is that "all persons" is indefinite. A world in which everyone has irresistible grace will not have the same set of people as a world in which only some people have irresistible grace. I can spell that out if you need me to. 

In that event, "all persons" is an ambiguous or shifting referent. The Calvinist God cannot determine all the same persons to be saved. 

So you're implicitly comparing and contrasting two different possible worlds with different sets of people in each. It's not a case of God either saving all the same people or God only saving some of the same people. For if God gives everyone in the past irresistible grace, that will produce a different future than if God refrains from giving everyone in the past irresistible grace.

Jerry Walls 

Did you not listen to the whole lecture before criticizing? I discussed at length the Calvinist option to deny #5.

Steve Hays 

Jerry, the shoe is on the other foot. Note that I'm raising a different objection to #5 that you discussed at length. You discussed Piper's position. I'm not using Piper's argument. The difference isn't hard to see.

Jerry Walls 

I also discussed Hart,who says: "In short, if Calvinism is true, it seems perfectly easy for God to create a world in which universalism is true--a world in which everyone accepts God's offer of salvation and goes to heaven." Indeed, many Calvinists think that is the actual world, that all will be saved, that in the long run God will break the resistance of all persons. No reason God could not give postmortem irresistible grace to those who did not receive it in this life.

Steve Hays 

Jerry's you're still not following the argument. I didn't deny that God could save "everybody". But it's not the same "everybody". 

Suppose God gives everyone in the world irresistible grace. That will affect how they behave. For instance, there will be far less promiscuity, fornication, adultery, war, murder. 

Giving everyone irresistible grace begins in the past. That affects who will be conceived. Conception is about who mates with whom. Conception is about timing. A different day or hour, and a different person is conceived. If everyone in the past had irresistible grace, that would impact mating patterns, among other things. 

Moreover, little changes in the past generate big changes in the future. Changing past variables has a snowball effect.

Therefore, it's inaccurate to suggest a comparison in which you have two possible worlds with the same set of people, where God saves only some in one possible world but everyone in the other possible world. That's incompossible.

Jerry Walls 

My only concern is the actual world, and in the actual world, a God who determines all things and has infinite power and creative resources could eventually determine the salvation of all, in something like the way Talbott or Marilyn Adams have argued. Or if not that, he could have determined a different set of people, all to be saved in the course of this life. Those in this world who are not included in that world would have been none the poorer since they would ever have existed.

Steve Hays 

You say your only concern is the actual world, but you're comparing alternate outcomes: one in which everybody is saved in contrast to one in which only some are saved. That's not just about the actual world, but which possible world will become actual.

Steve Hays 

So you take the Epicurean position that nonexistence is not a deprivation?

Jerry Walls 

It is not a deprivation for those who have never existed at all.

Steve Hays 

If nonexistence is not a deprivation, does that mean a world in which a billion people exist, all of whom are saved, is no better than a world in which only 10 people exist, all of whom are saved?

Given Jerry's Epicurean view of nonexistence, I wonder how, if at all, he'd be able to argue against the antinatalistic position of David Benatar.

Jerry Walls

Those in this world who are not included in that world would have been none the poorer since they would ever have existed.

Steve Hays

i) Once again, Jerry, you seem to have a bad habit of failing to distinguish between an external critique and an internal critique. When you say the Calvinist God could save everyone, that implies that you're attempting to assess Calvinism on its own terms. 

But when you turn around and say "it is not a deprivation for those who have never existed at all," or "those in this world who are not included in that world would have been none the poorer since they would ever have existed," you suddenly shift gears to assessing the issue by your own standards. Yet that's confused. 

If you going to say the Calvinist God could save everyone, the question at issue isn't, in the first instance, whether you think nonexistence is a deprivation, but whether you've made an accurate statement about the implications of Calvinism. 

ii) Apropos (i), let's revert to my illustration. The time-traveler wants to save his contemporaries from disaster, but try as he might, he can't, since changing the past erases the future in which they exist. He can never save just those people. At best, he can takes actions that will replace them. A future without that disaster. A future without those particular people. 

By the same token, the Calvinist God can't save everyone is the sense of saving the very same people. Rather, in order for the Calvinist God to save everyone, he must cancel out the world in which he only saves some people, and substitute a different world with different people. For if God grants everyone irresistible grace, that produces a different alternate future. At the very least, you need to introduce that distinction into your argument. 

iii) That said, let's consider the issue from your own perspective. Your dismissive attitude regarding nonexistence is odd coming from a proud granddad. Are you prepared to look your granddaughters in the eye and say to them, "If the world didn't include you, if you never existed, you'd be none the poorer!" Are you prepared to tell your mother that? 

iv) Likewise, your dismissive attitude is odd for someone who treats divine love as God's most important attribute. Suppose God knows that if he creates this or that possible person, they will enjoy eternal bliss. (And that's a supposition of classical theism.) And no overriding good will be lost if he does so.

Is it not more loving for God to create them so that they will experience eternal bliss that not to create them? If you don't think that's an expression of divine love, why do you think God created heavenbound humans in the first place?

v) One problem with your Epicurean view of nonexistence is your failure to distinguish between the perspective of a nonentity and the perspective of an outside observer. Even though the nonentity has no viewpoint at the time, an outside observer can have a viewpoint regarding what would be beneficial for the nonentity if it were to exist. 

To take a comparison: a patient in a coma may have no viewpoint, no awareness of what's good for him, but an outside observer can act in the patient's best interest. Conversely, a rock exists, but lacks even a potential viewpoint. So existence, per se, is not the salient differential factor.

Surely you appreciate the fact that lost opportunities can be a deprivation. Not just losing what you had, but what you might have had. 

Jerry Walls 

Yes, lost opportunities for actual people is a deprivation, which is why it makes no sense to be indifferent to the hope of heaven as a future possibility on the ground that there were goods you missed out on before you ever existed. But those who never exist at all cannot regret either missing out on future goods or past ones. Actual people could, in a sense, have regrets on their behalf I suppose, like a married couple without children might mourn children who "might have been." But those possible children themselves suffer no loss because merely possible people suffer nothing.

Steve Hays 

Jerry, a comatose patient may have no regrets. He lacks the presence of mind to entertain regrets. A person with senile dementia may have no regrets for the same reason. 

You're confusing subjective awareness of missing out on future goods with the objective fact of missing out on future goods. Those are separate issues. You can't collapse one into the other. 

A lost opportunity is a loss. A counterfactual loss. Not to exist in the first place, if existence resulted in eternal bliss, is total loss. Not just a particular missed opportunity, but missing out on any and all opportunities for future goods. 

Your position is at war with your claim that God was justified in creating people he knew were hellbound for the benefit of people he knew were heavenbound. Your cost/benefit analysis is based on possible persons and hypothetical outcomes.

Jerry Walls 

Not all possible, all feasible, or creatible....which worlds are feasible depends on which free choices we would make if the world was actualized.

Steve Hays

You say it as if that's an established fact. But wasn't the notion of infeasible worlds just a postulate that Plantinga floated to deflect the logical problem of evil? The fact that his postulate is conceivable doesn't make it true or even plausible. It's not entailed by freewill theism. 

Jerry Walls

If Calvinism is true, it seems perfectly easy for God to create a world in which universalism is true."

Steve Hays

Jerry, even if (ex hypothesi) some possible worlds are infeasible, yet given the infinite number of possible worlds, it seems antecedently improbable in the extreme that there's not a single feasible world in which everyone freely goes to heaven. So why doesn't your own position suffer from the same objection you raise to Calvinism?

Prayer and prevention

Hemant Mehta@hemantmehta Why would anyone #PrayforAmerica when it hasn't prevented any of the previous tragedies? America needs people who can take action, not God.11:56 PM - 7 Jul 2016 

https://mobile.twitter.com/hemantmehta/status/751309080803745792?p=v

Mehta seems to have quite a following in secular circles, yet this is such a dumb objection. Consider those science fiction scenarios in which a time-traveler goes back in time to change the past to avert a future tragedy. A side-effect of his success is that when he instantly returns to his own time, he has no recollection of what he did. By producing a new timeline, his action erases all evidence of the old timeline. No one remembers that past because that past never happened in the new timeline in which they now exist. There's nothing for them to remember. 

God preempting a tragedy is similar to that except it doesn't suffer from time-travel antinomies, inasmuch as the tragedy never happened in the first place. So how would Mehta be in any position to know that God hasn't prevented any previous tragedies, in answer to prayer. 

What could God do about evil?

Atheist Keith Parsons did a long post on the problem of evil:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/01/20/what-could-god-do-about-evil/ 

This included some lengthy comments as well. I'm of two minds about responding to this post. I don't like to repeat myself. But I'll make a few brief observations:

i) One concerns the starting point. The argument from evil typically begins with a definition of God supplied by philosophical theology. The "God" in question is a philosophical construct. Here's a standard example:

1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2. If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3. If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4. If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5. Evil exists.
6. If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn’t have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn’t know when evil exists, or doesn’t have the desire to eliminate all evil.
7. Therefore, God doesn’t exist.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/#SomImpDis

And here is Parsons' version:

P: A perfectly good, omnipotent, and omniscient being will actualize an evil e only if (a) the actualization of e is a logically necessary condition for the prevention (the non-actualization) of an even worse evil e*; in other words, necessarily, e* is actualized if e is not. Or (b) the actualization of e is a logically necessary condition for the actualization of a redeeming good g; in other words, necessarily, if e is not actualized, then redeeming good g is not. 

ii) This begins by defining God by a set of attributes. (At least, the minimal attributes need to frame an argument from evil.) But suppose, instead of commencing with a philosophical abstraction, we took Yahweh as our starting point. Several things follow:

a) In Scripture, Yahweh isn't merely defined by his attributes, but by his actions. What is meant by the attributes is elucidated by his deeds. You don't begin by consulting a Hebrew lexicon to define justice, mercy, might &c. Rather, you study God in action. Yahweh's behavior in the historical narratives of Scripture explicate his attributes. 

b) Bible history is a catalogue of evil. Moral and natural evils. I doubt there's any basic kind of evil outside the Bible that you can't find described in Bible history.

c) In Scripture, Yahweh and evil coexist. In Scripture, Yahweh's existence is consistent with evil's existence. 

It would be a peculiar argument to claim the existence of evil is incompatible with Yahweh's existence when Scripture constantly depicts God and evil coexisting. 

If you take a concrete example of God, like Yahweh, then it's unclear how the argument from evil ever gets off the ground. The Biblical concept of God is consonant with the existence of evil. 

Even if an atheist regards Biblical narrative as fictional, that doesn't change the fact that the Scriptural idea of God is compatible with the occurrence of moral and natural evil. With examples of evil of the same kind that atheists cite to typify the argument from evil. 

iii) At the risk of repeating myself, time-travel stories illustrate the fact that if you change the past to improve the future, your action prevents one set of evils at the cost of producing another set of evils–as well as eliminating another set of goods. Indeed, Parsons concedes that very principle:

It is the case that evils and goods are connected in intricate ways so that some goods, indeed, some of the most important ones can only arise in the face of evils, and eliminating those evils would also cost us the related goods. 

Given the staggeringly complex effects of changing variables, where even altering a minor variable may snowball over time, I don't see how an atheist is in any position to say a selective improvement here or there would result in a net benefit. 

iv) Parsons cites the parable of Roland Puccetti about an absentee landlord who allows the apartment complex to fall into disrepair. But some tenants rise to his defense: For aught we know, he may have good reason for letting this sorry state of affairs transpire. 

Sure, it's always possible that there's a reasonable explanation, but that's not a justification to suspend judgment indefinitely. 

But that's misleading. This isn't simply an appeal to ignorance. There are many concrete examples where preventing one evil prevents some attendant good or goods, as well as causing a different evil or evils down the line. So it's not just speculation. 

For instance, we evaluate the past from the viewpoint of the present. There are cases in which an evil which seemed to be irredeemable to someone living in the past, at the time it occurred, can now be seen to be beneficial in retrospect. So there's ample precedent for taking that long-range view into account. 

v) And that's not an appeal to global skeptical theism, but local skeptical theism. It's not sheer skepticism, but, to the contrary, skepticism that builds on knowledge: examples of apparently gratuitous evil which, with the benefit of hindsight, can be seen to be purposeful. To say that divine providence is inscrutable is not to say that it's thoroughly opaque. Rather, it can be shot through with many examples of redeemed evils, second-order goods. 

vi) Furthermore, Parsons is addressing the problem of evil in isolation to evidence for God's existence. So it's not just a question of logical consistency, where, for all we know, a Deity could have a reason for not preventing it–and, for all we know, no such Deity exists. We're not balancing two antithetical propositions in abstract equilibrium. Put that way, it may seem like special pleading to hypothesize an ultimate rationale–in the absence of any evidence. Rather, the scales are heavily tipped in favor of God's existence. 

vii) Parsons atomizes good and evil as though every individual evil must be offset by an individual good, in one-to-one correspondence. But there's no reason to think that's what makes an evil gratuitous. It's not a matching quiz, but a chain of events. Does a particular evil contribute to a second order good? 

This deflates his objection to the soul-making theodicy. It's quite true that for some people, suffering is "soul-destroying" rather than "soul-building." Yet that's only a defect in the theodicy if you imagine that everyone is supposed to be purified by suffering. But what if some justly suffer for the sake of others? 

viii) In the prequel post, Parsons said:

Would any decent and sane person who could have thwarted the 9/11 attacks not have done so? The simple and highly intuitive point is that some evils are so heinous and bring about so much suffering, that any decent person would have prevented them. 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/01/11/evil-still-no-good-answers/#comment-2460021899

a) The question is deceptively simple. Normally, a good person should thwart a humanitarian disaster. 

b) But that depends in part on whether we view the event as past or future. Suppose I was born in the 21C. Let's bracket time-travel antinomies. Suppose I can go back in time and prevent WWI by thwarting the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. But if I do so, I will preempt my mother's birth–and, of course, my own birth!

By preventing WWI, I save many lives, but by the same token, I erase many lives. All the men and women to be born as a result of that catastrophe–including my own. 

And that's not the same thing as sacrificing my life to save others. Rather, this is sacrificing my existence to save others. That's far more radical. I will never come into being!

But even if I were that altruistic, it doesn't follow that I'd prevent WWI at the expense of my own mother. I'm not prepared to do that.

Conversely, suppose you were the time-traveler. Suppose you could prevent a disaster that would kill your mother (after you were born), but at the expense of killing my mother. If you must choose whose mother to save, you will save your mother rather than mine. And I'd do the same thing in reverse. 

We can dilate in the abstract about saving lives, but that ignores the element of personal attachment. When it comes to saving strangers, it may make no difference, but people are connected to other people in complex ways. It's not a game of checkers, with identical pieces. Even if people look alike on the outside, there are hidden affinities between some people. 

Now, we might say God has a more impartial perspective. But in that case, the analogy breaks down. If, moreover, God doesn't have the same emotional investment in the lives of any particular individual, then saving every life might not be his priority.