According to Billy Birch, of Classical Arminianism, Dan Chapa, of Arminian Chronicles, is not a real Arminian:
"Dan Chapa would be a Monlinist [sic], then, not an Arminian."
http://snemes.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/is-he-the-author/#comment-55
Since both Dan and Billy contribute to the Society of Evangelical Arminians, this, in turn, raises the question of whether SEA represents true Arminianism.
Perhaps SEA should split into the Real Society of Evangelical Arminians and the Fake Society of Evangelical Arminians.
And when I asked Billy if Molinism makes God the author of sin, he said "Once again, if Molinism is accurately represented here, then yes."
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Temporal Responsibility
I’ve been mulling over something. I noticed that in discussions involving responsibility and culpability, there is often a hidden variable smuggled into the definition of terms. It’s a variable that, when you think about it, doesn’t seem to be relevant to the discussion; yet it is one which nearly every philosopher discussing the subject has, at the very least implicitly (and quite often explicitly), in his or her definition. That variable is time.
Consider for a moment a typical generalized libertarian definition of responsibility. “A person is responsible if at time (t) a person could have done other than he did do.” Here we have an explicit reference to time. Yet it can also be hidden in the shorter version: “A person is responsible if he could have done otherwise.” The assumption of “could have done” is that time is relevant to determining responsibility. (Note: to be fair, the “could have done otherwise” is really dealing more specifically with the idea of “freedom” rather than “responsibility,” but this is usually crammed together in the idea that “one cannot be responsible unless one is free” so I will be treating this concept as being part of “responsibility” throughout.)
This is immediately awkward when we view God. God is outside of time. He is eternal and transcends time. Indeed, time itself was created by God. If responsibility implies a time aspect, then it seems to me that by definition God can be responsible for nothing that has been created. For “God is responsible for creation because at time (t) God could have done otherwise” is nonsensical—there is no time (t) before God created time.
Yet it seems completely absurd to say that God is not responsible for creating the universe. It seems that only if responsibility refers instead of the concept of cause that God is responsible for creating the universe, because He caused the universe. Yet causality requires no reference to time, it only requires logical precedence. In other words, a logical effect cannot logically precede its cause, which (when it comes to the physical world) will typically mean the logical effect cannot temporally precede its cause too; however, there are certain relative space-time frameworks where a cause and its effect are temporally simultaneous (Einstein’s example of a moving train with a signal being observed simultaneous to some other event for the observers on the train, but not simultaneous for those outside the train, being an example of such a relative framework).
Or think of it this way. Suppose C is a cause and E is an effect such that E cannot occur unless C has caused E. C is therefore responsible for E (in the causative sense), no matter what; yet C is only responsible for E if C could have done otherwise in the libertarian sense, and that requires a temporal distinction between C and E.
E cannot occur apart from C regardless of any temporal aspect though. E necessitates a logically prior C regardless of the length of time between C’s occurring and E coming about. We can even think about E temporally preceding C (such could even already occur with antimatter, which is mathematically described as normal matter going backwards through time). Regardless of that, one can always say C and E can be simultaneous.
So it seems to me that any definition of responsibility that requires a temporal aspect must be a completely different “animal” than any definition of responsibility that deals only with a logically causal chain. Perhaps the libertarian will say that this shows the difference between moral responsibility and causative responsibility. I think this means merely that which definition you chose will automatically beg the question.
Regardless, it appears to me that under libertarian principals, God’s responsibility for creating the universe cannot have any moral connotations. That is, He was not commendable for His creation, nor can He be condemned for it. In other words, this would automatically defuse the concept that God is the author of evil in any moral sense of the word “author.”
On the other hand, if one were to claim that God is still morally responsible for creation (as I would argue—after all, we commend Him for what He has done), then it seems to me that one cannot keep a view of responsibility that necessitates a temporal aspect within its definition.
Thoughts?
Consider for a moment a typical generalized libertarian definition of responsibility. “A person is responsible if at time (t) a person could have done other than he did do.” Here we have an explicit reference to time. Yet it can also be hidden in the shorter version: “A person is responsible if he could have done otherwise.” The assumption of “could have done” is that time is relevant to determining responsibility. (Note: to be fair, the “could have done otherwise” is really dealing more specifically with the idea of “freedom” rather than “responsibility,” but this is usually crammed together in the idea that “one cannot be responsible unless one is free” so I will be treating this concept as being part of “responsibility” throughout.)
This is immediately awkward when we view God. God is outside of time. He is eternal and transcends time. Indeed, time itself was created by God. If responsibility implies a time aspect, then it seems to me that by definition God can be responsible for nothing that has been created. For “God is responsible for creation because at time (t) God could have done otherwise” is nonsensical—there is no time (t) before God created time.
Yet it seems completely absurd to say that God is not responsible for creating the universe. It seems that only if responsibility refers instead of the concept of cause that God is responsible for creating the universe, because He caused the universe. Yet causality requires no reference to time, it only requires logical precedence. In other words, a logical effect cannot logically precede its cause, which (when it comes to the physical world) will typically mean the logical effect cannot temporally precede its cause too; however, there are certain relative space-time frameworks where a cause and its effect are temporally simultaneous (Einstein’s example of a moving train with a signal being observed simultaneous to some other event for the observers on the train, but not simultaneous for those outside the train, being an example of such a relative framework).
Or think of it this way. Suppose C is a cause and E is an effect such that E cannot occur unless C has caused E. C is therefore responsible for E (in the causative sense), no matter what; yet C is only responsible for E if C could have done otherwise in the libertarian sense, and that requires a temporal distinction between C and E.
E cannot occur apart from C regardless of any temporal aspect though. E necessitates a logically prior C regardless of the length of time between C’s occurring and E coming about. We can even think about E temporally preceding C (such could even already occur with antimatter, which is mathematically described as normal matter going backwards through time). Regardless of that, one can always say C and E can be simultaneous.
So it seems to me that any definition of responsibility that requires a temporal aspect must be a completely different “animal” than any definition of responsibility that deals only with a logically causal chain. Perhaps the libertarian will say that this shows the difference between moral responsibility and causative responsibility. I think this means merely that which definition you chose will automatically beg the question.
Regardless, it appears to me that under libertarian principals, God’s responsibility for creating the universe cannot have any moral connotations. That is, He was not commendable for His creation, nor can He be condemned for it. In other words, this would automatically defuse the concept that God is the author of evil in any moral sense of the word “author.”
On the other hand, if one were to claim that God is still morally responsible for creation (as I would argue—after all, we commend Him for what He has done), then it seems to me that one cannot keep a view of responsibility that necessitates a temporal aspect within its definition.
Thoughts?
Bride of Christ or femme fatale?
steve hays
May 24th, 2010 | 12:17 pm | #8
Dale Coulter
“I like David Mill’s ‘Anatomy of a Conversion’ article in the New Oxford Review that he blogged about over on First Thoughts. Ultimately, conversion is about falling in love.”
Of course, men have also been known to fall in love with a femme fatale (as well as women falling for the masculine equivalent). Is the church of Rome the Bride of Christ or a femme fatale?
steve hays
May 24th, 2010 | 3:40 pm | #15
Orthodoxdj
“Is it really either/or?”
I see. So, according to Orthodoxdj, I should have said the church of Rome is both the Bride of Christ and a femme fatale. Thanks for the logic lesson.
steve hays
May 24th, 2010 | 3:54 pm | #17
Francis Beckwith
“It is for an anti-Catholic bigot.”
Notice that Beckwith is resorting to the same tactics as liberal smear-merchants. If you oppose homosexual marriage, that makes you “homophobic.” If you oppose amnesty for illegal aliens, that makes you “racist.” If you oppose abortion “rights, that makes you “sexist.”
“Imagine if he had said this, ‘Are Jews partakers of the Old Covenant or Christ killers?’ Yep, that’s anti-Semitism. We all recognize it, immediately.”
For a philosophy prof., Beckwith isn’t very logical. All he’s given us is an argument from analogy minus the analogy.
He takes for granted a case of anti-Semiticism. He than compares that to “anti-Catholic bigotry” under the assumption that both two cases are comparable. All he’s done is to take a case where something is admittedly wrong (anti-Semitism), then posit a parallel with another case which he deems to be wrong. But he hasn’t begun to show that what I said about Catholicism is wrong. Therefore, he’s not comparing two wrongs. He is merely asserting two wrongs. Very tendentious and very fallacious.
“Yep, that’s anti-Semitism. We all recognize it, immediately. The fact that Steve thinks nothing of saying something similar about Catholics (we are the 'Church,' after all) shows how deeply the bigotry remains culturally acceptable in some fundamentalist enclaves in the U.S.”
While we’re on the subject of “bigotry,” let’s take a case of anti-Protestant bigotry:
“Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith… It is forbidden to any man to change this, our declaration, pronouncement, and definition or, by rash attempt, to oppose and counter it. If any man should presume to make such an attempt, let him know that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus_en.html
steve hays
May 24th, 2010 | 3:57 pm | #18
Since Beckwith raises the issue of anti-Semitism, here’s a choice example of how a church council deemed to be ecumenical by Beckwith’s own denomination viewed the Jews:
CANON 67
Summary. Jews should be compelled to make satisfaction for the tithes and offerings e churches, which the Christians supplied before their properties fell into of the Jews.
Text. The more the Christians are restrained from the practice of usury, the more are they oppressed in this matter by the treachery of the Jews, so that in a short time they exhaust the resources of the Christians. Wishing, therefore, in this matter to protect the Christians against cruel oppression by the Jews, we ordain in this decree that if in the future under any pretext Jews extort from Christians oppressive and immoderate interest, the partnership of the Christians shall be denied them till they have made suitable satisfaction for their excesses. The Christians also, every appeal being set aside, shall, if necessary, be compelled by ecclesiastical censure to abstain from all commercial intercourse with them. We command the princes not to be hostile to the Christians on this account, but rather to strive to hinder the Jews from practicing such excesses. Lastly, we decree that the Jews be compelled by the same punishment (avoidance of commercial intercourse) to make satisfaction for the tithes and offerings due to the churches, which the Christians were accustomed to supply from their houses and other possessions before these properties, under whatever title, fell into the hands of the Jews, that thus the churches may be safeguarded against loss.
CANON 68
Summary. Jews and Saracens of both sexes in every Christian province must be distinguished from the Christian by a difference of dress. On Passion Sunday and the last three days of Holy Week they may not appear in public.
Text: In some provinces a difference in dress distinguishes the Jews or Saracens from the Christians, but in certain others such a confusion has grown up that they cannot be distinguished by any difference. Thus it happens at times that through error Christians have relations with the women of Jews or Saracens, and Jews and Saracens with Christian women. Therefore, that they may not, under pretext of error of this sort, excuse themselves in the future for the excesses of such prohibited intercourse, we decree that such Jews and Saracens of both sexes in every Christian province and at all times shall be marked off in the eyes of the public from other peoples through the character of their dress. Particularly, since it may be read in the writings of Moses [Numbers 15:37-41], that this very law has been enjoined upon them.
Moreover, during the last three days before Easter and especially on Good Friday, they shall not go forth in public at all, for the reason that some of them on these very days, as we hear, do not blush to go forth better dressed and are not afraid to mock the Christians who maintain the memory of the most holy Passion by wearing signs of mourning.
This, however, we forbid most severely, that any one should presume at all to break forth in insult to the Redeemer. And since we ought not to ignore any insult to Him who blotted out our disgraceful deeds, we command that such impudent fellows be checked by the secular princes by imposing them proper punishment so that they shall not at all presume to blaspheme Him who was crucified for us.
[Note by Schroeder: In 581 the Synod of Macon enacted in canon 14 that from Thursday in Holy Week until Easter Sunday, .Jews may not in accordance with a decision of King Childebert appear in the streets and in public places. Mansi, IX, 934; Hefele-Leclercq, 111, 204. In 1227 the Synod of Narbonne in canon 3 ruled: "That Jews may be distinguished from others, we decree and emphatically command that in the center of the breast (of their garments) they shall wear an oval badge, the measure of one finger in width and one half a palm in height. We forbid them moreover, to work publicly on Sundays and on festivals. And lest they scandalize Christians or be scandalized by Christians, we wish and ordain that during Holy Week they shall not leave their houses at all except in case of urgent necessity, and the prelates shall during that week especially have them guarded from vexation by the Christians." Mansi, XXIII, 22; Hefele-Leclercq V 1453. Many decrees similar to these in content were issued by synods before and after this Lateran Council. Hefele-Leclercq, V and VI; Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIlIth Century, Philadelphia, 1933.]
CANON 69
Summary. Jews are not to be given public offices. Anyone instrumental in doing this is to be punished. A Jewish official is to be denied all intercourse with Christians.
Text. Since it is absurd that a blasphemer of Christ exercise authority over Christians, we on account of the boldness of transgressors renew in this general council what the Synod of Toledo (589) wisely enacted in this matter, prohibiting Jews from being given preference in the matter of public offices, since in such capacity they are most troublesome to the Christians. But if anyone should commit such an office to them, let him, after previous warning, be restrained by such punishment as seems proper by the provincial synod which we command to be celebrated every year. The official, however, shall be denied the commercial and other intercourse of the Christians, till in the judgment of the bishop all that he acquired from the Christians from the time he assumed office be restored for the needs of the Christian poor, and the office that he irreverently assumed let him lose with shame. The same we extend also to pagans. [Mansi, IX, 995; Hefele-Leclercq, III, 7.27. This canon 14 of Toledo was frequently renewed.]
CANON 70
Summary. Jews who have received baptism are to be restrained by the prelates from returning to their former rite.
Text. Some (Jews), we understand, who voluntarily approached the waters of holy baptism, do not entirely cast off the old man that they may more perfectly put on the new one, because, retaining remnants of the former rite, they obscure by such a mixture the beauty of the Christian religion. But since it is written: “Accursed is the man that goeth on the two ways” (Ecclus. 2:14), and “a garment that is woven together of woolen and linen” (Deut. 22: ii) ought not to be put on, we decree that such persons be in every way restrained b the prelates from the observance of the former rite, that, having given themselves of their own free will to the Christian religion, salutary coercive action may preserve them in its observance, since not to know the way of the Lord is a lesser evil than to retrace one’s steps after it is known.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.html
May 24th, 2010 | 12:17 pm | #8
Dale Coulter
“I like David Mill’s ‘Anatomy of a Conversion’ article in the New Oxford Review that he blogged about over on First Thoughts. Ultimately, conversion is about falling in love.”
Of course, men have also been known to fall in love with a femme fatale (as well as women falling for the masculine equivalent). Is the church of Rome the Bride of Christ or a femme fatale?
steve hays
May 24th, 2010 | 3:40 pm | #15
Orthodoxdj
“Is it really either/or?”
I see. So, according to Orthodoxdj, I should have said the church of Rome is both the Bride of Christ and a femme fatale. Thanks for the logic lesson.
steve hays
May 24th, 2010 | 3:54 pm | #17
Francis Beckwith
“It is for an anti-Catholic bigot.”
Notice that Beckwith is resorting to the same tactics as liberal smear-merchants. If you oppose homosexual marriage, that makes you “homophobic.” If you oppose amnesty for illegal aliens, that makes you “racist.” If you oppose abortion “rights, that makes you “sexist.”
“Imagine if he had said this, ‘Are Jews partakers of the Old Covenant or Christ killers?’ Yep, that’s anti-Semitism. We all recognize it, immediately.”
For a philosophy prof., Beckwith isn’t very logical. All he’s given us is an argument from analogy minus the analogy.
He takes for granted a case of anti-Semiticism. He than compares that to “anti-Catholic bigotry” under the assumption that both two cases are comparable. All he’s done is to take a case where something is admittedly wrong (anti-Semitism), then posit a parallel with another case which he deems to be wrong. But he hasn’t begun to show that what I said about Catholicism is wrong. Therefore, he’s not comparing two wrongs. He is merely asserting two wrongs. Very tendentious and very fallacious.
“Yep, that’s anti-Semitism. We all recognize it, immediately. The fact that Steve thinks nothing of saying something similar about Catholics (we are the 'Church,' after all) shows how deeply the bigotry remains culturally acceptable in some fundamentalist enclaves in the U.S.”
While we’re on the subject of “bigotry,” let’s take a case of anti-Protestant bigotry:
“Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith… It is forbidden to any man to change this, our declaration, pronouncement, and definition or, by rash attempt, to oppose and counter it. If any man should presume to make such an attempt, let him know that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus_en.html
steve hays
May 24th, 2010 | 3:57 pm | #18
Since Beckwith raises the issue of anti-Semitism, here’s a choice example of how a church council deemed to be ecumenical by Beckwith’s own denomination viewed the Jews:
CANON 67
Summary. Jews should be compelled to make satisfaction for the tithes and offerings e churches, which the Christians supplied before their properties fell into of the Jews.
Text. The more the Christians are restrained from the practice of usury, the more are they oppressed in this matter by the treachery of the Jews, so that in a short time they exhaust the resources of the Christians. Wishing, therefore, in this matter to protect the Christians against cruel oppression by the Jews, we ordain in this decree that if in the future under any pretext Jews extort from Christians oppressive and immoderate interest, the partnership of the Christians shall be denied them till they have made suitable satisfaction for their excesses. The Christians also, every appeal being set aside, shall, if necessary, be compelled by ecclesiastical censure to abstain from all commercial intercourse with them. We command the princes not to be hostile to the Christians on this account, but rather to strive to hinder the Jews from practicing such excesses. Lastly, we decree that the Jews be compelled by the same punishment (avoidance of commercial intercourse) to make satisfaction for the tithes and offerings due to the churches, which the Christians were accustomed to supply from their houses and other possessions before these properties, under whatever title, fell into the hands of the Jews, that thus the churches may be safeguarded against loss.
CANON 68
Summary. Jews and Saracens of both sexes in every Christian province must be distinguished from the Christian by a difference of dress. On Passion Sunday and the last three days of Holy Week they may not appear in public.
Text: In some provinces a difference in dress distinguishes the Jews or Saracens from the Christians, but in certain others such a confusion has grown up that they cannot be distinguished by any difference. Thus it happens at times that through error Christians have relations with the women of Jews or Saracens, and Jews and Saracens with Christian women. Therefore, that they may not, under pretext of error of this sort, excuse themselves in the future for the excesses of such prohibited intercourse, we decree that such Jews and Saracens of both sexes in every Christian province and at all times shall be marked off in the eyes of the public from other peoples through the character of their dress. Particularly, since it may be read in the writings of Moses [Numbers 15:37-41], that this very law has been enjoined upon them.
Moreover, during the last three days before Easter and especially on Good Friday, they shall not go forth in public at all, for the reason that some of them on these very days, as we hear, do not blush to go forth better dressed and are not afraid to mock the Christians who maintain the memory of the most holy Passion by wearing signs of mourning.
This, however, we forbid most severely, that any one should presume at all to break forth in insult to the Redeemer. And since we ought not to ignore any insult to Him who blotted out our disgraceful deeds, we command that such impudent fellows be checked by the secular princes by imposing them proper punishment so that they shall not at all presume to blaspheme Him who was crucified for us.
[Note by Schroeder: In 581 the Synod of Macon enacted in canon 14 that from Thursday in Holy Week until Easter Sunday, .Jews may not in accordance with a decision of King Childebert appear in the streets and in public places. Mansi, IX, 934; Hefele-Leclercq, 111, 204. In 1227 the Synod of Narbonne in canon 3 ruled: "That Jews may be distinguished from others, we decree and emphatically command that in the center of the breast (of their garments) they shall wear an oval badge, the measure of one finger in width and one half a palm in height. We forbid them moreover, to work publicly on Sundays and on festivals. And lest they scandalize Christians or be scandalized by Christians, we wish and ordain that during Holy Week they shall not leave their houses at all except in case of urgent necessity, and the prelates shall during that week especially have them guarded from vexation by the Christians." Mansi, XXIII, 22; Hefele-Leclercq V 1453. Many decrees similar to these in content were issued by synods before and after this Lateran Council. Hefele-Leclercq, V and VI; Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIlIth Century, Philadelphia, 1933.]
CANON 69
Summary. Jews are not to be given public offices. Anyone instrumental in doing this is to be punished. A Jewish official is to be denied all intercourse with Christians.
Text. Since it is absurd that a blasphemer of Christ exercise authority over Christians, we on account of the boldness of transgressors renew in this general council what the Synod of Toledo (589) wisely enacted in this matter, prohibiting Jews from being given preference in the matter of public offices, since in such capacity they are most troublesome to the Christians. But if anyone should commit such an office to them, let him, after previous warning, be restrained by such punishment as seems proper by the provincial synod which we command to be celebrated every year. The official, however, shall be denied the commercial and other intercourse of the Christians, till in the judgment of the bishop all that he acquired from the Christians from the time he assumed office be restored for the needs of the Christian poor, and the office that he irreverently assumed let him lose with shame. The same we extend also to pagans. [Mansi, IX, 995; Hefele-Leclercq, III, 7.27. This canon 14 of Toledo was frequently renewed.]
CANON 70
Summary. Jews who have received baptism are to be restrained by the prelates from returning to their former rite.
Text. Some (Jews), we understand, who voluntarily approached the waters of holy baptism, do not entirely cast off the old man that they may more perfectly put on the new one, because, retaining remnants of the former rite, they obscure by such a mixture the beauty of the Christian religion. But since it is written: “Accursed is the man that goeth on the two ways” (Ecclus. 2:14), and “a garment that is woven together of woolen and linen” (Deut. 22: ii) ought not to be put on, we decree that such persons be in every way restrained b the prelates from the observance of the former rite, that, having given themselves of their own free will to the Christian religion, salutary coercive action may preserve them in its observance, since not to know the way of the Lord is a lesser evil than to retrace one’s steps after it is known.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.html
Where Dreams Come True
Computer genius Charlie Sebold has been kind enough to create a new blog for my collected fiction. The name of the new blog is "Where Dreams Come True" (http://truedreamsfiction.blogspot.com/). You will find a link on the sidebar, under "Fiction by Steve Hays."
I'll add new short stories as time and inspiration allow.
I'll add new short stories as time and inspiration allow.
The libertarian lottery
Arminians are fond of alleging that unconditional election is like a lottery. The elect got lucky, while the reprobate were unlucky. I've already commented on the deficiencies of that comparison, but I'd also note that libertarianism has its own version of the cosmic lottery:
************************************************************
No best world : creaturely freedom
B R I A N L E F T O W
Religious Studies 41, 269–285 f 2005 Cambridge University Press
doi:10.1017/S0034412505007778 Printed in the United Kingdom
"God has no control over what CFs there are. He must just accept them. They aid, impede or perhaps even block His projects altogether. And they could easily have been far worse for Him, or far better. All of this seems to make it perfectly sensible to say that He has been lucky or unlucky in them, depending ; on Molinism, God suffers circumstantial moral luck. If Molinism is true, God’s record of benevolence might well vary from world to world independent of His degree of that virtue."
"Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder suggest another divine moral-luck scenario. They suggest that a deity, Jove, might pick among good creatable worlds by creating a randomizing device and creating the world it picks.23 On their story, Jove determines a range of acceptable worlds, then lets the indeterministic machine pick, and creates the world picked. Jove places the pick of a world to create in something he can overrule – he might after all refuse to create the world the randomizing machine selects, or decide to control it after all – then does not overrule it. That it is in Jove’s control whether he is in control of what world he makes doesn’t alter the fact that he is not in complete control of what world he makes if he does not overrule the machine. That is, that he is in control of whether he is subject to moral luck in creating does not change the fact that if he does not overrule the machine, he is subject to moral luck ; as the fact that drunken drivers control whether they drink and drive on any given night does not change the fact that if they drink and drive, they incur either the bad moral luck of causing an accident or the good moral luck of avoiding this bad luck. I submit that if Molinism is false, then if God creates free agents, the world eventually made actual is selected by something like the Howard-Snyder procedure, and God is as a result subject to consequential moral luck. If Molinism is false, God does not, in deciding what to create, know what free agents would do in various possible circumstances."
"If God creates free agents, it is up to them how well they co-operate with His plans. He may be lucky or unlucky in how His creatures choose to act, even if He has great control over their initial endowments, natural tendencies etc., and constantly tries to influence events in His direction.2 8 For He could fully control their actions only by abrogating their freedom. Again, how creatures act will affect what gifts God is able to give them, if e.g. He has overriding reason to give certain sorts of gift only if creatures act in certain ways. So if there are worlds in which God creates free agents, God’s record of benevolence might vary from world to world due entirely to factors over which He (voluntarily) has no control. Some might suggest that permitting freedom does not subject Him to luck, strictly so-called. Perhaps God wasn’t lucky the Virgin Mary said ‘ Yes ’. He was able to stack the odds in His favour, and likely did so. Still, He did not control this, it could have gone the other way, and what He could do depended on what she said. And any case in which factors outside one’s control help determine one’s moral record is one of moral luck."
http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Leftow-No-best-world.-creaturely-freedom.pdf
************************************************************
No best world : creaturely freedom
B R I A N L E F T O W
Religious Studies 41, 269–285 f 2005 Cambridge University Press
doi:10.1017/S0034412505007778 Printed in the United Kingdom
"God has no control over what CFs there are. He must just accept them. They aid, impede or perhaps even block His projects altogether. And they could easily have been far worse for Him, or far better. All of this seems to make it perfectly sensible to say that He has been lucky or unlucky in them, depending ; on Molinism, God suffers circumstantial moral luck. If Molinism is true, God’s record of benevolence might well vary from world to world independent of His degree of that virtue."
"Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder suggest another divine moral-luck scenario. They suggest that a deity, Jove, might pick among good creatable worlds by creating a randomizing device and creating the world it picks.23 On their story, Jove determines a range of acceptable worlds, then lets the indeterministic machine pick, and creates the world picked. Jove places the pick of a world to create in something he can overrule – he might after all refuse to create the world the randomizing machine selects, or decide to control it after all – then does not overrule it. That it is in Jove’s control whether he is in control of what world he makes doesn’t alter the fact that he is not in complete control of what world he makes if he does not overrule the machine. That is, that he is in control of whether he is subject to moral luck in creating does not change the fact that if he does not overrule the machine, he is subject to moral luck ; as the fact that drunken drivers control whether they drink and drive on any given night does not change the fact that if they drink and drive, they incur either the bad moral luck of causing an accident or the good moral luck of avoiding this bad luck. I submit that if Molinism is false, then if God creates free agents, the world eventually made actual is selected by something like the Howard-Snyder procedure, and God is as a result subject to consequential moral luck. If Molinism is false, God does not, in deciding what to create, know what free agents would do in various possible circumstances."
"If God creates free agents, it is up to them how well they co-operate with His plans. He may be lucky or unlucky in how His creatures choose to act, even if He has great control over their initial endowments, natural tendencies etc., and constantly tries to influence events in His direction.2 8 For He could fully control their actions only by abrogating their freedom. Again, how creatures act will affect what gifts God is able to give them, if e.g. He has overriding reason to give certain sorts of gift only if creatures act in certain ways. So if there are worlds in which God creates free agents, God’s record of benevolence might vary from world to world due entirely to factors over which He (voluntarily) has no control. Some might suggest that permitting freedom does not subject Him to luck, strictly so-called. Perhaps God wasn’t lucky the Virgin Mary said ‘ Yes ’. He was able to stack the odds in His favour, and likely did so. Still, He did not control this, it could have gone the other way, and what He could do depended on what she said. And any case in which factors outside one’s control help determine one’s moral record is one of moral luck."
http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Leftow-No-best-world.-creaturely-freedom.pdf
The reality of choice and the testimony of scripture
Arminian, on May 25, 2010 at 1:28 am Said:
**** Of course people don’t make choices if Calvinism is true. That’s one among many reasons to reject Calvinism. it is inconsistent wit hthe very conceot of “choice”, and if true means that no human beings ever have a choice nor choose. Calvinism claims to believe in people making choices. But its tenets are incompatible with that position. See Ben’s excellent article: http://arminianperspectives.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/the-reality-of-choice-and-the-testimony-of-scripture/ ( also at SEA: http://evangelicalarminians.org/Henshaw-Determinism-Free-Will-The-Reality-of-Choice-and-the-Testimony-of-Scripture).
http://arminianperspectives.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/fallacies-of-calvinist-apologetics-fallacy-8-calvinism-doesnt-charge-god-with-the-authorship-of-sin/#comment-4625
I’ve responded in detail to Ben’s “excellent” article, so I won’t repeat myself here. But now I’d like to make a more general point. Critics of open theism object that open theism is incompatible with Biblical prophecy. God can’t predict the future unless God knows the future.
But Arminianism represents the flip side of the same problem. Arminians traditionally affirm Biblical prophecy. But if God can predict the future, then the future can’t be open-ended. For if the future could go either way, then the outcome is unpredictable.
Let’s also keep in mind that Biblical prophecy often involves many different human agents. Indeed, a serious of human agents whose cumulative choices result in the forecast outcome. For the prophecy to come true, all these independent agents must unwittingly work in concert to yield that particular result. So the testimony of Scripture runs counter to libertarian choice.
Of course, Arminians try to get around this, but they lose any prima facie presumption for the Scripturality of their position.
**** Of course people don’t make choices if Calvinism is true. That’s one among many reasons to reject Calvinism. it is inconsistent wit hthe very conceot of “choice”, and if true means that no human beings ever have a choice nor choose. Calvinism claims to believe in people making choices. But its tenets are incompatible with that position. See Ben’s excellent article: http://arminianperspectives.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/the-reality-of-choice-and-the-testimony-of-scripture/ ( also at SEA: http://evangelicalarminians.org/Henshaw-Determinism-Free-Will-The-Reality-of-Choice-and-the-Testimony-of-Scripture).
http://arminianperspectives.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/fallacies-of-calvinist-apologetics-fallacy-8-calvinism-doesnt-charge-god-with-the-authorship-of-sin/#comment-4625
I’ve responded in detail to Ben’s “excellent” article, so I won’t repeat myself here. But now I’d like to make a more general point. Critics of open theism object that open theism is incompatible with Biblical prophecy. God can’t predict the future unless God knows the future.
But Arminianism represents the flip side of the same problem. Arminians traditionally affirm Biblical prophecy. But if God can predict the future, then the future can’t be open-ended. For if the future could go either way, then the outcome is unpredictable.
Let’s also keep in mind that Biblical prophecy often involves many different human agents. Indeed, a serious of human agents whose cumulative choices result in the forecast outcome. For the prophecy to come true, all these independent agents must unwittingly work in concert to yield that particular result. So the testimony of Scripture runs counter to libertarian choice.
Of course, Arminians try to get around this, but they lose any prima facie presumption for the Scripturality of their position.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Catholicism and Darwinism
I'm posting some excerpts of a document which then-Cardinal Ratzinger signed off on. Whether or not this represents official Catholic teaching, it clearly represents a position which the Vatican sanctions. For the moment I'm not stating if this is a good or bad development. I merely cite it as a reference point in the shifting sands of Catholic identity:
**********************************
According to the widely accepted scientific account, the universe erupted 15 billion years ago in an explosion called the “Big Bang” and has been expanding and cooling ever since. Later there gradually emerged the conditions necessary for the formation of atoms, still later the condensation of galaxies and stars, and about 10 billion years later the formation of planets. In our own solar system and on earth (formed about 4.5 billion years ago), the conditions have been favorable to the emergence of life. While there is little consensus among scientists about how the origin of this first microscopic life is to be explained, there is general agreement among them that the first organism dwelt on this planet about 3.5-4 billion years ago. Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution. While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage. However it is to be explained, the decisive factor in human origins was a continually increasing brain size, culminating in that of homo sapiens. With the development of the human brain, the nature and rate of evolution were permanently altered: with the introduction of the uniquely human factors of consciousness, intentionality, freedom and creativity, biological evolution was recast as social and cultural evolution.
Pope John Paul II stated some years ago that “new knowledge leads to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge”(“Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Evolution”1996). In continuity with previous twentieth century papal teaching on evolution (especially Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis ), the Holy Father’s message acknowledges that there are “several theories of evolution” that are “materialist, reductionist and spiritualist” and thus incompatible with the Catholic faith. It follows that the message of Pope John Paul II cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe. Mainly concerned with evolution as it “involves the question of man,” however, Pope John Paul’s message is specifically critical of materialistic theories of human origins and insists on the relevance of philosophy and theology for an adequate understanding of the “ontological leap” to the human which cannot be explained in purely scientific terms. The Church’s interest in evolution thus focuses particularly on “the conception of man” who, as created in the image of God, “cannot be subordinated as a pure means or instrument either to the species or to society.” As a person created in the image of God, he is capable of forming relationships of communion with other persons and with the triune God, as well as of exercising sovereignty and stewardship in the created universe. The implication of these remarks is that theories of evolution and of the origin of the universe possess particular theological interest when they touch on the doctrines of the creation ex nihilo and the creation of man in the image of God.
With respect to the immediate creation of the human soul, Catholic theology affirms that particular actions of God bring about effects that transcend the capacity of created causes acting according to their natures. The appeal to divine causality to account for genuinely causal as distinct from merely explanatory gaps does not insert divine agency to fill in the “gaps” in human scientific understanding (thus giving rise to the so-called "God of the gaps”). The structures of the world can be seen as open to non-disruptive divine action in directly causing events in the world. Catholic theology affirms that that the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations) represents an event that is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation and which can appropriately be attributed to divine intervention. Acting indirectly through causal chains operating from the beginning of cosmic history, God prepared the way for what Pope John Paul II has called “an ontological leap...the moment of transition to the spiritual.”
* Preliminary Note
The theme of “man created in the image of God” was submitted for study to the International Theological Commission. The preparation of this study was entrusted to a subcommission whose members included: Very Rev. J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P., Most Reverend Jean-Louis Bruguès, Msgr. Anton Strukelj, Rev. Tanios Bou Mansour, O.L.M., Rev. Adolpe Gesché, Most Reverend Willem Jacobus Eijk, Rev. Fadel Sidarouss, S.J., and Rev. Shun ichi Takayanagi, S.J.
As the text developed, it was discussed at numerous meetings of the subcommission and several plenary sessions of the International Theological Commission held at Rome during the period 2000-2002. The present text was approved in forma specifica, by the written ballots of the International Theological Commission. It was then submitted to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the President of the Commission, who has give his permission for its publication.
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html
**********************************
According to the widely accepted scientific account, the universe erupted 15 billion years ago in an explosion called the “Big Bang” and has been expanding and cooling ever since. Later there gradually emerged the conditions necessary for the formation of atoms, still later the condensation of galaxies and stars, and about 10 billion years later the formation of planets. In our own solar system and on earth (formed about 4.5 billion years ago), the conditions have been favorable to the emergence of life. While there is little consensus among scientists about how the origin of this first microscopic life is to be explained, there is general agreement among them that the first organism dwelt on this planet about 3.5-4 billion years ago. Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution. While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage. However it is to be explained, the decisive factor in human origins was a continually increasing brain size, culminating in that of homo sapiens. With the development of the human brain, the nature and rate of evolution were permanently altered: with the introduction of the uniquely human factors of consciousness, intentionality, freedom and creativity, biological evolution was recast as social and cultural evolution.
Pope John Paul II stated some years ago that “new knowledge leads to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge”(“Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Evolution”1996). In continuity with previous twentieth century papal teaching on evolution (especially Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis ), the Holy Father’s message acknowledges that there are “several theories of evolution” that are “materialist, reductionist and spiritualist” and thus incompatible with the Catholic faith. It follows that the message of Pope John Paul II cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe. Mainly concerned with evolution as it “involves the question of man,” however, Pope John Paul’s message is specifically critical of materialistic theories of human origins and insists on the relevance of philosophy and theology for an adequate understanding of the “ontological leap” to the human which cannot be explained in purely scientific terms. The Church’s interest in evolution thus focuses particularly on “the conception of man” who, as created in the image of God, “cannot be subordinated as a pure means or instrument either to the species or to society.” As a person created in the image of God, he is capable of forming relationships of communion with other persons and with the triune God, as well as of exercising sovereignty and stewardship in the created universe. The implication of these remarks is that theories of evolution and of the origin of the universe possess particular theological interest when they touch on the doctrines of the creation ex nihilo and the creation of man in the image of God.
With respect to the immediate creation of the human soul, Catholic theology affirms that particular actions of God bring about effects that transcend the capacity of created causes acting according to their natures. The appeal to divine causality to account for genuinely causal as distinct from merely explanatory gaps does not insert divine agency to fill in the “gaps” in human scientific understanding (thus giving rise to the so-called "God of the gaps”). The structures of the world can be seen as open to non-disruptive divine action in directly causing events in the world. Catholic theology affirms that that the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations) represents an event that is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation and which can appropriately be attributed to divine intervention. Acting indirectly through causal chains operating from the beginning of cosmic history, God prepared the way for what Pope John Paul II has called “an ontological leap...the moment of transition to the spiritual.”
* Preliminary Note
The theme of “man created in the image of God” was submitted for study to the International Theological Commission. The preparation of this study was entrusted to a subcommission whose members included: Very Rev. J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P., Most Reverend Jean-Louis Bruguès, Msgr. Anton Strukelj, Rev. Tanios Bou Mansour, O.L.M., Rev. Adolpe Gesché, Most Reverend Willem Jacobus Eijk, Rev. Fadel Sidarouss, S.J., and Rev. Shun ichi Takayanagi, S.J.
As the text developed, it was discussed at numerous meetings of the subcommission and several plenary sessions of the International Theological Commission held at Rome during the period 2000-2002. The present text was approved in forma specifica, by the written ballots of the International Theological Commission. It was then submitted to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the President of the Commission, who has give his permission for its publication.
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html
The decline and fall of Francis Beckwith
Back in his better days, as an Evangelical ethicist, Francis Beckwith distinguished himself as leading advocate for the rights of the unborn. Unfortunately, by converting to Rome, Beckwith has now betrayed the very constituency he used to serve. For he has become a shameless enabler of a pedophilic institution. You only have to compare his apparatchik defense of Rome on clerical abuse with organizations like BishopAccountability.org to see what is sadly amiss.
Mind you, he continues to defend the life of the unborn while simultaneously defending a pedophilic institution–rather like a guy who punches the clock 9-5 as a fireman while moonlighting as an arsonist on his off-hours.
It’s a pity to see the moral compromises which Beckwith prepared to make to justify his conversion, or the moral freefall which that has precipitated.
Unless he defends the sanctity of the womb as a prenatal harem or brothel to supply future butt-boys for the Roman priesthood and episcopate, it’s hard to see how his divided loyalties are morally or logically coherent.
Mind you, he continues to defend the life of the unborn while simultaneously defending a pedophilic institution–rather like a guy who punches the clock 9-5 as a fireman while moonlighting as an arsonist on his off-hours.
It’s a pity to see the moral compromises which Beckwith prepared to make to justify his conversion, or the moral freefall which that has precipitated.
Unless he defends the sanctity of the womb as a prenatal harem or brothel to supply future butt-boys for the Roman priesthood and episcopate, it’s hard to see how his divided loyalties are morally or logically coherent.
Providence & evil
Steven [Nemes] is light on scripture, and heavy on philosophy, which he has declared is his standard of truth on a previous thread. He failed to deal with the Bible on that thread, and he is repeating the same thing here...So if you attribute evil to God, you are denying scripture. You may think you are blazing a new philosophical trail, but when you leave the Bible, you’ve left Christianity. It’s obvious from your posts you’ve got a lot more studying to do, outside of the philosophy classes.
http://arminianperspectives.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/fallacies-of-calvinist-apologetics-fallacy-8-calvinism-doesnt-charge-god-with-the-authorship-of-sin/#comment-4619
Three basic problems:
i) Quoting Scripture does nothing to negate the logical implications of Arminian theology. Nemes is arguing from Arminian presuppositions.
iii) Libertarian freewill is a philosophical theory.
iii) Quoting Arminian prooftexts like 1 Jn 1:5 or Prov 6:18 is hardly sufficient to fully explicate God's relation to evil. Consider the following:
"But Sihon the king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him, for the LORD your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might give him into your hand, as he is this day" (Deut 2:30).
"For it was the LORD’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the LORD commanded Moses" (Josh 11:20).
"But his [Samson's] father and mother said to him, 'Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives, or among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?' But Samson said to his father, "Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.' His father and mother did not know that it was from the LORD, for he was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines. At that time the Philistines ruled over Israel" (Judg 14:4).
"If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?" But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the LORD to put them to death" (1 Sam 2:25).
"And Absalom and all the men of Israel said, 'The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.' For the LORD had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the LORD might bring harm upon Absalom" (2 Sam 17:14).
"Now therefore behold, the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the LORD has declared disaster for you" (1 Kgs 22:23; par. 2 Chron 18:22).
"But Amaziah would not listen, for it was of God, in order that he might give them into the hand of their enemies, because they had sought the gods of Edom" (2 Chron 25:20).
"He turned their hearts to hate his people, to deal craftily with his servants" (Ps 105:25).
"And if the prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, the LORD, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel" (Ezk 14:9).
"Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false" (2 Thess 2:11).
http://arminianperspectives.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/fallacies-of-calvinist-apologetics-fallacy-8-calvinism-doesnt-charge-god-with-the-authorship-of-sin/#comment-4619
Three basic problems:
i) Quoting Scripture does nothing to negate the logical implications of Arminian theology. Nemes is arguing from Arminian presuppositions.
iii) Libertarian freewill is a philosophical theory.
iii) Quoting Arminian prooftexts like 1 Jn 1:5 or Prov 6:18 is hardly sufficient to fully explicate God's relation to evil. Consider the following:
"But Sihon the king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him, for the LORD your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might give him into your hand, as he is this day" (Deut 2:30).
"For it was the LORD’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the LORD commanded Moses" (Josh 11:20).
"But his [Samson's] father and mother said to him, 'Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives, or among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?' But Samson said to his father, "Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.' His father and mother did not know that it was from the LORD, for he was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines. At that time the Philistines ruled over Israel" (Judg 14:4).
"If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?" But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the LORD to put them to death" (1 Sam 2:25).
"And Absalom and all the men of Israel said, 'The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.' For the LORD had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the LORD might bring harm upon Absalom" (2 Sam 17:14).
"Now therefore behold, the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the LORD has declared disaster for you" (1 Kgs 22:23; par. 2 Chron 18:22).
"But Amaziah would not listen, for it was of God, in order that he might give them into the hand of their enemies, because they had sought the gods of Edom" (2 Chron 25:20).
"He turned their hearts to hate his people, to deal craftily with his servants" (Ps 105:25).
"And if the prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, the LORD, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel" (Ezk 14:9).
"Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false" (2 Thess 2:11).
Mighty Mouse Returns
“Steve Hays attempts to respond to my pointing out a rather obvious fallacy in his reasoning; namely, he tries to make the case that God is being cruel if He lets a believer fall away.”
No, that wasn’t my argument. Thibo can’t follow the argument. This was my argument: given the nature of Arminian attacks on Reformed theism (viz. the Calvinist God is “cruel,” “monstrous,” “bloodthirsty,” &c.), the Arminian charge rebounds on Arminian theism.
And I didn’t merely argue that God “lets” a believer fall away. What I argued, rather, is that when the Arminian deity saves a would-be apostate, he knows in advance that by saving him, the would-be apostate will be worse off in the long run that if he never saved him in the first place.
“For anyone who bothers to read, notice that I first show how charges of cruelty don’t fit the Arminian view in that God isn’t making anyone fall.”
This is Thibo’s decoy, to distract the reader’s attention away from the actual argument.
My argument doesn’t depend on God “making” a believer fall. Thibo tries to substitute that contention in lieu of the actual argument because he is impotent to counter the actual argument. My argument takes Arminian freewill for granted.
“This is of course a red herring. I never claimed to be able to reveal God’s purposes behind everything He does or allows; but the issue is whether God is cruel, not why He would create certain people.”
Well, that’s pretty obtuse inasmuch as the two issues are interrelated. God knows that by creating certain people, he will doom them to hell. How is that a loving thing to do? Doesn’t Jesus tell us that it would be preferable for them had they never been born?
“To claim it was a set-up‘ when speaking in terms of those who hate God doesn’t constitute much of an objection.”
Of course, this is a bare denial, not a counterargument. I presented an argument for why that constitutes a set-up.
Thibo also acts as if God has to play the hand he’s been dealt. As if there’s some higher God, over and above the Arminian deity, who deals the hand which the Arminian deity must play.
But it’s hardly adequate to confine our analysis to how God deals with the apostate after the fact. For the Arminian God foreknew the outcome. The apostate could only lose his salvation because the Arminian deity saved him in the first place. So it’s not as if the Arminian deity is confronted with a fait accompli. Rather, the Arminian deity had a hand in this chain of events.
I said: “If God knew they would fall, He intended the outcome of destroying them.”
Thibo responds: “God does intend to destroy anyone who turns from Him, that doesn’t change the fact that who specifically turns from Him hinges upon the free agents themselves, not God’s decree. Such an execution of justice therefore neither implies necessitation of their damnation by God’s decree, nor gives God pleasure in destroying them, and wouldn’t constitute cruelty for letting them have the results of their own choices.”
We’re back to Thibo’s decoy. Notice how his reply is unresponsive to my statement.
The question at issue is not whether God intends to punish the apostate. Rather, the question at issue is whether God, given his foreknowledge of the consequences of his own actions (viz. in saving the would-be apostate), intended that outcome (viz. the believer’s subsequent apostasy and aggravated guilt).
If God foresaw the outcome, and God’s own action (in saving the would-be apostate) was a necessary condition of the outcome, then God intended the outcome. So, by the logic of Arminian theism, God always intended to do the would-be apostate maximal harm. An actual apostate can only be a prospective apostate in case God saves him in the first place, fully cognizant of the dire consequences to the prospective apostate.
“Of course God doesn’t act in the best interests of those who turn against Him.”
Thibo keeps acting as if the Arminian God is a shortsighted deity, like the Greek gods, who can only deal with each situation as it arises. But the question is not how the Arminian deity deals with the apostate, given his apostasy, but how the Arminian God contributed to that situation. If the Arminian deity foresaw the dire consequences of saving the would-be apostate, but went ahead and saved him anyhow, then the Arminian deity was never acting in the best interests of the apostate. It’s not simply that such a God ceases to act in the best interests of that individual once he fell away. Rather, the Arminian God knowingly elevated that individual to a position from which he could (and would) subsequently fall, and suffer the dire consequences.
“God is more than loving and fair in giving one genuine opportunity to be saved at all, He can’t be rightly called cruel for expelling those who despise Him.”
How does that follow from Arminian premises? In his previous response to me, Thibo admitted that those who fall away from the faith are worse off than if they never came to the faith. Therefore, by saving them, God deliberately exposes them to a greater liability. And unlike the God of open theism, this outcome was never in doubt.
“Not if the one who allows it isn’t under obligation to prevent it… which God isn’t….”
That’s a bare denial, not a refutation.
“If Steve is arguing from my assumptions then how is it ‘diversionary’ to cite the assumptions he’s supposedly arguing from?”
It’s diversionary for Thibo to cite Arminian assumptions as if my argument was at odds with Arminian assumptions, when, it fact, Arminian assumptions were granted for the sake of argument.
“If by ‘toying’ Hays is implying that God shows goodness and mercy to those who love Him, but will show wrath to those who later turn from Him.”
“Who later turn from him.” Once again, Thibo acts as though the Arminian deity can’t think ahead and foresee the consequences of his own actions. He can only deal with situations on the fly. But the question at issue is not merely that God shows his wrath to those who later defect from the faith. Rather, the question at issue is the fact that, on Arminian assumptions, God knowingly and deliberately put them in a position to suffer aggravated guilt and aggravated condemnation by saving them at the outset.
“Then all the term amounts to is a subjectively rhetorical smear against God’s mercy and justice as revealed in the Bible.”
When Arminians are pinned to the wall by their own logic, they resort to quoting Scripture. But that’s another diversion. The question at issue is not the nature of Biblical justice and mercy, but the nature of Arminian justice and mercy. Arminians have no right to quote Scripture in defense of their theology if their theology is implicitly opposed to Scripture.
Arminians have leveled charges against Reformed theism which boomerang against Arminian theism. Thibo’s repeated attempts to deflect attention away from an argument he cannot rebut merely underscores the cogency of the argument against his Arminian position.
“If one reads the ‘morally analogous situation’ Hays came up with, he’ll find that Steve excludes the idea of apostasy itself so he can paint the Almighty as ‘cruel’ for letting the traitor perish. Morally analogous indeed, except of course for the whole moral reason for destroying the apostate to begin with.”
i) I responded to that objection in my previous reply. It’s irrelevant to the question at issue for, Calvinism can (and does) make the same move. Yes, the apostate deserves to be punished. However, that’s a question of justice, not mercy.
So this is another one of Thibo’s decoys. The question I’ve been debating is not whether the Arminian deity is just (which is a separate issue), but whether he is merciful. Is it merciful for the Arminian deity to save those who will lose their salvation, when the Arminian deity knows that by so doing, they will be worse off than if he left them in their unsaved state?
Arminians constantly attack Calvinism because the Calvinist God lacks the attribute of omnibenevolence. By contrast, Arminians assure us that their God loves everybody. But is that logically tenable give the logical implications of Arminian theism?
“Hays conveniently ignores the apostate actually turning from God…”
Thibo conveniently ignores the fact that the apostate actually turning from God was a foreseen consequence of God saving him in the first place.
“I didn’t say ‘saved from hell.’ From the context, it’s quite clear to anyone who grasps the basics of reading comprehension that I was speaking of their being physically saved from Pharaoh, which is analogous to our salvation in Christ.”
To be saved from death is analogous to being saved from damnation? Notice how Thibo trivializes the notion of Christian salvation.
Someone who is saved from death may still face damnation. Converse, someone who dies may go to heaven.
“The same twisted logic he employs that would condemn God as cruel for redeeming a sinner and later cutting him off for rebellion would necessarily have to condemn God as cruel for saving many of the Israelites and later cutting them off for rebellion.”
It would by cruel, by Arminian standards, if by saving the Exodus generation, they were ultimately worse off in the long run.
This isn’t a difficult concept to grasp. Something can be good it its own right, but be harmful over the long haul.
That’s a commonplace of SF movies, where a character travels back into the past to improve the future. The character changes the past. His change is a discrete improvement. But it results in a worse net-effect.
Suppose I see a friend walking home in the rain. I offer him a ride home. If I hadn’t let him hitch a ride home, he would catch pneumonia.
Was that an act of kindness? Was I doing him a favor? Well, offering him a ride home, and thus sparing him a bout of pneumonia, is a good thing in its own right, considered in isolation.
But suppose I foresaw that if he didn’t catch pneumonia, which took him out of play for a week or so, he’d killed the next day in a traffic accident. How does my apparent act of kindness now appear in light of that larger and darker outcome? Is that an act of benevolence or malevolence?
As long as he was laid up in the hospital bed, he wouldn’t die in a traffic accident. He’d recover, and have a normal lifespan.
But by saving him from pneumonia, I actually condemn him to premature death. By my prescient actions I deliberately consign him to a worse fate than if I didn’t give him a ride home.
No, that wasn’t my argument. Thibo can’t follow the argument. This was my argument: given the nature of Arminian attacks on Reformed theism (viz. the Calvinist God is “cruel,” “monstrous,” “bloodthirsty,” &c.), the Arminian charge rebounds on Arminian theism.
And I didn’t merely argue that God “lets” a believer fall away. What I argued, rather, is that when the Arminian deity saves a would-be apostate, he knows in advance that by saving him, the would-be apostate will be worse off in the long run that if he never saved him in the first place.
“For anyone who bothers to read, notice that I first show how charges of cruelty don’t fit the Arminian view in that God isn’t making anyone fall.”
This is Thibo’s decoy, to distract the reader’s attention away from the actual argument.
My argument doesn’t depend on God “making” a believer fall. Thibo tries to substitute that contention in lieu of the actual argument because he is impotent to counter the actual argument. My argument takes Arminian freewill for granted.
“This is of course a red herring. I never claimed to be able to reveal God’s purposes behind everything He does or allows; but the issue is whether God is cruel, not why He would create certain people.”
Well, that’s pretty obtuse inasmuch as the two issues are interrelated. God knows that by creating certain people, he will doom them to hell. How is that a loving thing to do? Doesn’t Jesus tell us that it would be preferable for them had they never been born?
“To claim it was a set-up‘ when speaking in terms of those who hate God doesn’t constitute much of an objection.”
Of course, this is a bare denial, not a counterargument. I presented an argument for why that constitutes a set-up.
Thibo also acts as if God has to play the hand he’s been dealt. As if there’s some higher God, over and above the Arminian deity, who deals the hand which the Arminian deity must play.
But it’s hardly adequate to confine our analysis to how God deals with the apostate after the fact. For the Arminian God foreknew the outcome. The apostate could only lose his salvation because the Arminian deity saved him in the first place. So it’s not as if the Arminian deity is confronted with a fait accompli. Rather, the Arminian deity had a hand in this chain of events.
I said: “If God knew they would fall, He intended the outcome of destroying them.”
Thibo responds: “God does intend to destroy anyone who turns from Him, that doesn’t change the fact that who specifically turns from Him hinges upon the free agents themselves, not God’s decree. Such an execution of justice therefore neither implies necessitation of their damnation by God’s decree, nor gives God pleasure in destroying them, and wouldn’t constitute cruelty for letting them have the results of their own choices.”
We’re back to Thibo’s decoy. Notice how his reply is unresponsive to my statement.
The question at issue is not whether God intends to punish the apostate. Rather, the question at issue is whether God, given his foreknowledge of the consequences of his own actions (viz. in saving the would-be apostate), intended that outcome (viz. the believer’s subsequent apostasy and aggravated guilt).
If God foresaw the outcome, and God’s own action (in saving the would-be apostate) was a necessary condition of the outcome, then God intended the outcome. So, by the logic of Arminian theism, God always intended to do the would-be apostate maximal harm. An actual apostate can only be a prospective apostate in case God saves him in the first place, fully cognizant of the dire consequences to the prospective apostate.
“Of course God doesn’t act in the best interests of those who turn against Him.”
Thibo keeps acting as if the Arminian God is a shortsighted deity, like the Greek gods, who can only deal with each situation as it arises. But the question is not how the Arminian deity deals with the apostate, given his apostasy, but how the Arminian God contributed to that situation. If the Arminian deity foresaw the dire consequences of saving the would-be apostate, but went ahead and saved him anyhow, then the Arminian deity was never acting in the best interests of the apostate. It’s not simply that such a God ceases to act in the best interests of that individual once he fell away. Rather, the Arminian God knowingly elevated that individual to a position from which he could (and would) subsequently fall, and suffer the dire consequences.
“God is more than loving and fair in giving one genuine opportunity to be saved at all, He can’t be rightly called cruel for expelling those who despise Him.”
How does that follow from Arminian premises? In his previous response to me, Thibo admitted that those who fall away from the faith are worse off than if they never came to the faith. Therefore, by saving them, God deliberately exposes them to a greater liability. And unlike the God of open theism, this outcome was never in doubt.
“Not if the one who allows it isn’t under obligation to prevent it… which God isn’t….”
That’s a bare denial, not a refutation.
“If Steve is arguing from my assumptions then how is it ‘diversionary’ to cite the assumptions he’s supposedly arguing from?”
It’s diversionary for Thibo to cite Arminian assumptions as if my argument was at odds with Arminian assumptions, when, it fact, Arminian assumptions were granted for the sake of argument.
“If by ‘toying’ Hays is implying that God shows goodness and mercy to those who love Him, but will show wrath to those who later turn from Him.”
“Who later turn from him.” Once again, Thibo acts as though the Arminian deity can’t think ahead and foresee the consequences of his own actions. He can only deal with situations on the fly. But the question at issue is not merely that God shows his wrath to those who later defect from the faith. Rather, the question at issue is the fact that, on Arminian assumptions, God knowingly and deliberately put them in a position to suffer aggravated guilt and aggravated condemnation by saving them at the outset.
“Then all the term amounts to is a subjectively rhetorical smear against God’s mercy and justice as revealed in the Bible.”
When Arminians are pinned to the wall by their own logic, they resort to quoting Scripture. But that’s another diversion. The question at issue is not the nature of Biblical justice and mercy, but the nature of Arminian justice and mercy. Arminians have no right to quote Scripture in defense of their theology if their theology is implicitly opposed to Scripture.
Arminians have leveled charges against Reformed theism which boomerang against Arminian theism. Thibo’s repeated attempts to deflect attention away from an argument he cannot rebut merely underscores the cogency of the argument against his Arminian position.
“If one reads the ‘morally analogous situation’ Hays came up with, he’ll find that Steve excludes the idea of apostasy itself so he can paint the Almighty as ‘cruel’ for letting the traitor perish. Morally analogous indeed, except of course for the whole moral reason for destroying the apostate to begin with.”
i) I responded to that objection in my previous reply. It’s irrelevant to the question at issue for, Calvinism can (and does) make the same move. Yes, the apostate deserves to be punished. However, that’s a question of justice, not mercy.
So this is another one of Thibo’s decoys. The question I’ve been debating is not whether the Arminian deity is just (which is a separate issue), but whether he is merciful. Is it merciful for the Arminian deity to save those who will lose their salvation, when the Arminian deity knows that by so doing, they will be worse off than if he left them in their unsaved state?
Arminians constantly attack Calvinism because the Calvinist God lacks the attribute of omnibenevolence. By contrast, Arminians assure us that their God loves everybody. But is that logically tenable give the logical implications of Arminian theism?
“Hays conveniently ignores the apostate actually turning from God…”
Thibo conveniently ignores the fact that the apostate actually turning from God was a foreseen consequence of God saving him in the first place.
“I didn’t say ‘saved from hell.’ From the context, it’s quite clear to anyone who grasps the basics of reading comprehension that I was speaking of their being physically saved from Pharaoh, which is analogous to our salvation in Christ.”
To be saved from death is analogous to being saved from damnation? Notice how Thibo trivializes the notion of Christian salvation.
Someone who is saved from death may still face damnation. Converse, someone who dies may go to heaven.
“The same twisted logic he employs that would condemn God as cruel for redeeming a sinner and later cutting him off for rebellion would necessarily have to condemn God as cruel for saving many of the Israelites and later cutting them off for rebellion.”
It would by cruel, by Arminian standards, if by saving the Exodus generation, they were ultimately worse off in the long run.
This isn’t a difficult concept to grasp. Something can be good it its own right, but be harmful over the long haul.
That’s a commonplace of SF movies, where a character travels back into the past to improve the future. The character changes the past. His change is a discrete improvement. But it results in a worse net-effect.
Suppose I see a friend walking home in the rain. I offer him a ride home. If I hadn’t let him hitch a ride home, he would catch pneumonia.
Was that an act of kindness? Was I doing him a favor? Well, offering him a ride home, and thus sparing him a bout of pneumonia, is a good thing in its own right, considered in isolation.
But suppose I foresaw that if he didn’t catch pneumonia, which took him out of play for a week or so, he’d killed the next day in a traffic accident. How does my apparent act of kindness now appear in light of that larger and darker outcome? Is that an act of benevolence or malevolence?
As long as he was laid up in the hospital bed, he wouldn’t die in a traffic accident. He’d recover, and have a normal lifespan.
But by saving him from pneumonia, I actually condemn him to premature death. By my prescient actions I deliberately consign him to a worse fate than if I didn’t give him a ride home.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Permutations of Molinism
“It’s no contradiction or incoherence to permit something you hate, so long as you have good reason to do so…Yes, God is willing to permit sin to obtain the greater good.”
It’s no contradiction or incoherence to decree something you hate, so long as you have good reason to do so. Yes, God is willing to decree sin to obtain the greater good.
“On Molinist grounds, ultimate responsibility is essential to moral culpability. Sometimes people are responsible for the downstream consequences of what they do when they are ultimately responsible, and sometimes they are not. But UR is and must always be a factor (even if an upstream one).”
That’s unresponsive to my question, since you’re collapsing two issues into one. The problem of evil involves two parties: God and man. A successful theodicy must satisfy at least two conditions:
i) Show how man can be blameworthy
ii) Show how God can be blameless.
Libertarians often act as though, if they succeed is doing (i), that ipso facto achieves (ii) at the same time. But these are distinct issues.
And I think this is especially the case given the objections which they level against Calvinism. For example, they say the God of Calvinism is culpable because he lacks the attribute of omnibenevolence. He doesn't act in the best interests of all his rational creatures.
Now, suppose, for the sake of argument, that libertarianism can successfully ground human responsibility. Yet that, of itself, fails let God off the hook. Inculpating man doesn't automatically exonerate God–on libertarian grounds.
For even if the damned richly deserve their fate, there is still the question of whether God acted in their best interests.
I don't see that Molinism is any improvement over what it finds so odious in Calvinism in that respect. For, as Craig admits, God doesn't always act in the best interests of all parties concerned. Even though it lay within his power to created a world in which all men are heavenbound, he chooses instead to create a world with a mix of heavenbound and hellbound men inasmuch as that will have more heavenbound men overall.
But in that case, his intentions towards the hellbound are arguably malevolent rather than benevolent. He means them harm. And he always meant them harm.
So God isn't equitable on that scheme. He doesn't treat everyone equally or lovingly. He doesn't even try to do what's best for each and every individual.
Moreover, they never had a chance. He didn't say to Judas, "Hey, Judas, here you are in a possible world where you will enjoy eternal bliss when you die, and here's your counterpart in another possible world where you will suffer eternal misery when you die. Which possible world would you like me to instantiate?"
“The order of the decrees has more to do with the arrangement of events in a specific world rather than the selection on one whole world over another.”
i) I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. Given the linearity of time and causation, you can’t rearrange the order of events and still have the same events. For instance, your father can’t be born after you were born.
Therefore, you’re not describing different ways to arrange the same events, but a different set of events. Hence, different possible worlds.
ii) Are you now denying that Molinism involves a divine choice between different possible worlds? Is there only one possible world? In that event, the actual world is necessary.
“God does have an ultimate goal; His glory. He had multiple ways of achieving His goal; His wisdom and power ensured He would reach His end regardless of the many paths He could have taken or multiple possible worlds He could have created.”
i) How does that distinguish Molinism from Calvinism?
ii) It’s an overstatement to suggest that every possible world is a God-glorifying world. Not all logical possibilities glorify God.
“In some of those worlds, freedom to sin, but not sin itself, was a necessary means to obtaining God's ultimate goal.”
Why would they need the freedom to sin unless they exercise that option?
“Supralapsarianism seems to require, as a brute fact, the election/reprobation of specific individuals to glorify God.”
i) How is that a brute fact? You just stated a teleological relationship. If election/reprobation are instrumental in the glorification of God, then that is not a brute fact, for you have just given an underlying rationale for election/reprobation.
ii) Do you deny that, according to Molinism, God elects/reprobates specific individuals?
“Supralapsarianism hardly seems consistent with the idea of possible worlds. If God decrees the outcome first, what other outcome could there be?”
i) I’ve repeatedly explained that to you, Dan. Why do you chronically raise the same objections without even acknowledging, much less refuting, the explanation?
Given the decree, then the outcome cannot be otherwise. But that hardly makes the decree a given. The fact that things cannot be otherwise if God decrees one particular outcome hardly means that God can only decree one particular outcome.
That’s not a hard distinction to grasp, Dan. Why do you persist in misrepresenting the issue?
There are two parties to the transaction: God and man. To say that man lacks the freedom to do otherwise given the decree hardly suggests that God lacks the freedom to decree otherwise.
Try to be honest, Dan.
ii) Moreover, as I’ve explained to you, Dan, a possible world is a reflection of what God could possibly do. Divinely conceivable possibilities. That supplies the reservoir from which God decrees one possibility over another. So, yes, there’s something prior to the decree.
“If the outcome requires certain specific means, what other means could there be?”
Surely you’re not serious, Dan.
i) To begin with, to say specific ends demand specific means scarcely negates other possible worlds. For other possible worlds don’t have the same ends.
ii) Moreover, it’s sometimes possible to achieve the same end through different means. There can be different ways to reach one city from another. I might drive. Or fly. If I drive, I might take one route rather than another.
Are you even trying to offer a serious response?
iii) Furthermore, different possible worlds can encapsulate incommensurable goods. Different possible worlds can better in some respects, but lesser in other respects.
iv) Finally, some differences are trivial differences. In one possible world, Dan Chapa wears light brown socks to church one Sunday; in another possible world, dark brown socks. Does one shade bring greater glory to God than another? No.
“Perhaps you are confusing me with Robert. I don’t have a problem with Kane’s definition for what Kane uses it for.”
You’ve certainly changed your tune since you were debating Manata and me on the subject.
“I consider possible worlds as God's knowledge of what He can do and enable us to do.”
In that event, God is the ultimate source of human freedom. So wouldn’t that make him ultimately responsible as well?
“If two events are related determinately God knows it as a determinate relationship, if two events are related indeterminately, God knows the relationship as such.”
That only pushes the question back a step. What makes them determinate in the first place, such that God knows their determinate relationship? If it goes back to God, then God is the ultimate source.
“God's knowledge is atemporal but He knows things that can have temporal and causal relationships. So it's wrong to deny time and causal relationships are 'in play' in possible worlds.”
You’re equivocating. Possible worlds may represent time and causality, just as a novel may represent time and causality–even though the representation is, itself, timeless. An abstract object.
“Possible conscious agents do not make real choices, they make possible choices.”
Since merely possible agents aren’t conscious agents, they can’t make intentional choices. So how does Molinism satisfy libertarian demands on deliberation?
“What God knows He knows immediately; His epistemology is unique to Him so we cannot explain it.”
i) So Molinism must retreat into brute factuality. Yet you found that objectionable in Calvinism (as you misrepresent it).
ii) Moreover, retreating into mystery at this point is arbitrary. The question at issue is how possible outcomes subsist, such that God can know them. Do they inhere in a coeternal plenum, independent of God’s nature or will (a la Creel)?
Or do they inhere in the nature of God? If the latter, then God is their ultimate source.
“Well, the hypothetical situation includes hypothetical creation and concurrence…”
You keep missing the point. What constitutes possible worlds (and possible persons) in your understanding of Molinism? Are they self-subsistent entities, or do they subsist in the mind of God?
If the latter, then God knows what they would or could do because they are the expression of divine cognition. Divine ideas.
“The alternative seems to be believing that if God created Bob in such and such circumstances, Bob would do nothing.”
You persist in missing the point. You treat possible worlds as a given. But what makes them a given, Dan?
What makes them a given in relation to which God knows the outcome? Do you subscribe to an ontological dualism according to which God and possible worlds eternally coexist as distinct entities? Where do possible worlds (qua possible) come from, Dan? What’s their source of being?
“On the one hand, it's wrong to say that since Judas didn't choose every aspect in the universe, he didn't make any choices at all.”
When was he given that choice, Dan? Not as a merely possible agent. As a merely possible agent, Judas was in no position to choose between alternate courses of action. A merely possible agent is not a conscious agent. He can’t deliberate. He can’t give informed consent.
“The issue you raise could be avoided by either appealing to trans-world damnation of all that will actually be damned.”
If you say that Judas suffers from transworld depravity, then you admit that Judas never had the freedom to do otherwise. So what becomes of libertarian freedom as a precondition of responsibility?
“Or by saying God's decree of who to create precedes middle knowledge.”
If God’s decree of who to create precedes middle knowledge, then Judas didn’t have a say in which Judas-containing world that God decreed to create. Judas wasn’t given the option of choosing the Judas-inclusive world in which Judas enjoys eternal bliss, rather than the Judas-inclusive world in which Judas suffers eternal misery. How does that do justice to libertarian freedom, Dan?
“Or the issue could be embraced as an asset rather than a liability, by those who deny the possibility of trans-world damnation and place election prior to the decree to create this or that world.”
Even if that’s an asset for most parties concerned, that’s a liability for Judas in particular. So is Judas the pawn whom the Molinist God will sacrifice to achieve the common good?
“Finally, a mediating position says God choose which possible world to create, which entails election. This last position falls outside of Calvinism as defined by Dort, yet still contains a different type of unconditional election.”
And how does that do justice to the demands of libertarianism?
“Molinism reconciles God's providence with man's responsibility in a way that permits the natural reading of scriptural passages.”
i) So Molinism is an extrabiblical filter. It doesn’t represent the explicit or implicit teaching of Scripture. Rather, you filter the teaching of scripture through this extrascriptural grid.
ii) Given all of the rival versions of Molinism that you just ticked off (transworld depravity v. the decree to create precedes middle knowledge v. the decree to elect precedes the decree to create v. creation entails election), it’s hard to see how Molinism represents “the natural reading” of Scripture.
“The source of action.”
Isn’t God a source of human action? Does that make God a cause of sin and evil? What about the “author” of sin?
“UR.”
Surely you don’t think that’s a serious response. How is sufficient conditionality consistent with UR, while sufficient causality is not? Where’s the argument?
“Calvinists seem to believe our actions have sufficient causes.”
Once again, you’re not even attempting to offer an intellectually serious response.
What theory of causation do you attribute to Calvinism? For example, do you think Calvinism is consistent or inconsistent with a counterfactual theory of causation? And how does that compare with a Molinist theory of causation?
“In Molinism, people have contra-causal powers.”
How can you attribute contra-causal freedom to human agents if you admit sufficient conditionality into your system? If X is a sufficient condition of Y, then given X, Y must obtain.
It’s no contradiction or incoherence to decree something you hate, so long as you have good reason to do so. Yes, God is willing to decree sin to obtain the greater good.
“On Molinist grounds, ultimate responsibility is essential to moral culpability. Sometimes people are responsible for the downstream consequences of what they do when they are ultimately responsible, and sometimes they are not. But UR is and must always be a factor (even if an upstream one).”
That’s unresponsive to my question, since you’re collapsing two issues into one. The problem of evil involves two parties: God and man. A successful theodicy must satisfy at least two conditions:
i) Show how man can be blameworthy
ii) Show how God can be blameless.
Libertarians often act as though, if they succeed is doing (i), that ipso facto achieves (ii) at the same time. But these are distinct issues.
And I think this is especially the case given the objections which they level against Calvinism. For example, they say the God of Calvinism is culpable because he lacks the attribute of omnibenevolence. He doesn't act in the best interests of all his rational creatures.
Now, suppose, for the sake of argument, that libertarianism can successfully ground human responsibility. Yet that, of itself, fails let God off the hook. Inculpating man doesn't automatically exonerate God–on libertarian grounds.
For even if the damned richly deserve their fate, there is still the question of whether God acted in their best interests.
I don't see that Molinism is any improvement over what it finds so odious in Calvinism in that respect. For, as Craig admits, God doesn't always act in the best interests of all parties concerned. Even though it lay within his power to created a world in which all men are heavenbound, he chooses instead to create a world with a mix of heavenbound and hellbound men inasmuch as that will have more heavenbound men overall.
But in that case, his intentions towards the hellbound are arguably malevolent rather than benevolent. He means them harm. And he always meant them harm.
So God isn't equitable on that scheme. He doesn't treat everyone equally or lovingly. He doesn't even try to do what's best for each and every individual.
Moreover, they never had a chance. He didn't say to Judas, "Hey, Judas, here you are in a possible world where you will enjoy eternal bliss when you die, and here's your counterpart in another possible world where you will suffer eternal misery when you die. Which possible world would you like me to instantiate?"
“The order of the decrees has more to do with the arrangement of events in a specific world rather than the selection on one whole world over another.”
i) I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. Given the linearity of time and causation, you can’t rearrange the order of events and still have the same events. For instance, your father can’t be born after you were born.
Therefore, you’re not describing different ways to arrange the same events, but a different set of events. Hence, different possible worlds.
ii) Are you now denying that Molinism involves a divine choice between different possible worlds? Is there only one possible world? In that event, the actual world is necessary.
“God does have an ultimate goal; His glory. He had multiple ways of achieving His goal; His wisdom and power ensured He would reach His end regardless of the many paths He could have taken or multiple possible worlds He could have created.”
i) How does that distinguish Molinism from Calvinism?
ii) It’s an overstatement to suggest that every possible world is a God-glorifying world. Not all logical possibilities glorify God.
“In some of those worlds, freedom to sin, but not sin itself, was a necessary means to obtaining God's ultimate goal.”
Why would they need the freedom to sin unless they exercise that option?
“Supralapsarianism seems to require, as a brute fact, the election/reprobation of specific individuals to glorify God.”
i) How is that a brute fact? You just stated a teleological relationship. If election/reprobation are instrumental in the glorification of God, then that is not a brute fact, for you have just given an underlying rationale for election/reprobation.
ii) Do you deny that, according to Molinism, God elects/reprobates specific individuals?
“Supralapsarianism hardly seems consistent with the idea of possible worlds. If God decrees the outcome first, what other outcome could there be?”
i) I’ve repeatedly explained that to you, Dan. Why do you chronically raise the same objections without even acknowledging, much less refuting, the explanation?
Given the decree, then the outcome cannot be otherwise. But that hardly makes the decree a given. The fact that things cannot be otherwise if God decrees one particular outcome hardly means that God can only decree one particular outcome.
That’s not a hard distinction to grasp, Dan. Why do you persist in misrepresenting the issue?
There are two parties to the transaction: God and man. To say that man lacks the freedom to do otherwise given the decree hardly suggests that God lacks the freedom to decree otherwise.
Try to be honest, Dan.
ii) Moreover, as I’ve explained to you, Dan, a possible world is a reflection of what God could possibly do. Divinely conceivable possibilities. That supplies the reservoir from which God decrees one possibility over another. So, yes, there’s something prior to the decree.
“If the outcome requires certain specific means, what other means could there be?”
Surely you’re not serious, Dan.
i) To begin with, to say specific ends demand specific means scarcely negates other possible worlds. For other possible worlds don’t have the same ends.
ii) Moreover, it’s sometimes possible to achieve the same end through different means. There can be different ways to reach one city from another. I might drive. Or fly. If I drive, I might take one route rather than another.
Are you even trying to offer a serious response?
iii) Furthermore, different possible worlds can encapsulate incommensurable goods. Different possible worlds can better in some respects, but lesser in other respects.
iv) Finally, some differences are trivial differences. In one possible world, Dan Chapa wears light brown socks to church one Sunday; in another possible world, dark brown socks. Does one shade bring greater glory to God than another? No.
“Perhaps you are confusing me with Robert. I don’t have a problem with Kane’s definition for what Kane uses it for.”
You’ve certainly changed your tune since you were debating Manata and me on the subject.
“I consider possible worlds as God's knowledge of what He can do and enable us to do.”
In that event, God is the ultimate source of human freedom. So wouldn’t that make him ultimately responsible as well?
“If two events are related determinately God knows it as a determinate relationship, if two events are related indeterminately, God knows the relationship as such.”
That only pushes the question back a step. What makes them determinate in the first place, such that God knows their determinate relationship? If it goes back to God, then God is the ultimate source.
“God's knowledge is atemporal but He knows things that can have temporal and causal relationships. So it's wrong to deny time and causal relationships are 'in play' in possible worlds.”
You’re equivocating. Possible worlds may represent time and causality, just as a novel may represent time and causality–even though the representation is, itself, timeless. An abstract object.
“Possible conscious agents do not make real choices, they make possible choices.”
Since merely possible agents aren’t conscious agents, they can’t make intentional choices. So how does Molinism satisfy libertarian demands on deliberation?
“What God knows He knows immediately; His epistemology is unique to Him so we cannot explain it.”
i) So Molinism must retreat into brute factuality. Yet you found that objectionable in Calvinism (as you misrepresent it).
ii) Moreover, retreating into mystery at this point is arbitrary. The question at issue is how possible outcomes subsist, such that God can know them. Do they inhere in a coeternal plenum, independent of God’s nature or will (a la Creel)?
Or do they inhere in the nature of God? If the latter, then God is their ultimate source.
“Well, the hypothetical situation includes hypothetical creation and concurrence…”
You keep missing the point. What constitutes possible worlds (and possible persons) in your understanding of Molinism? Are they self-subsistent entities, or do they subsist in the mind of God?
If the latter, then God knows what they would or could do because they are the expression of divine cognition. Divine ideas.
“The alternative seems to be believing that if God created Bob in such and such circumstances, Bob would do nothing.”
You persist in missing the point. You treat possible worlds as a given. But what makes them a given, Dan?
What makes them a given in relation to which God knows the outcome? Do you subscribe to an ontological dualism according to which God and possible worlds eternally coexist as distinct entities? Where do possible worlds (qua possible) come from, Dan? What’s their source of being?
“On the one hand, it's wrong to say that since Judas didn't choose every aspect in the universe, he didn't make any choices at all.”
When was he given that choice, Dan? Not as a merely possible agent. As a merely possible agent, Judas was in no position to choose between alternate courses of action. A merely possible agent is not a conscious agent. He can’t deliberate. He can’t give informed consent.
“The issue you raise could be avoided by either appealing to trans-world damnation of all that will actually be damned.”
If you say that Judas suffers from transworld depravity, then you admit that Judas never had the freedom to do otherwise. So what becomes of libertarian freedom as a precondition of responsibility?
“Or by saying God's decree of who to create precedes middle knowledge.”
If God’s decree of who to create precedes middle knowledge, then Judas didn’t have a say in which Judas-containing world that God decreed to create. Judas wasn’t given the option of choosing the Judas-inclusive world in which Judas enjoys eternal bliss, rather than the Judas-inclusive world in which Judas suffers eternal misery. How does that do justice to libertarian freedom, Dan?
“Or the issue could be embraced as an asset rather than a liability, by those who deny the possibility of trans-world damnation and place election prior to the decree to create this or that world.”
Even if that’s an asset for most parties concerned, that’s a liability for Judas in particular. So is Judas the pawn whom the Molinist God will sacrifice to achieve the common good?
“Finally, a mediating position says God choose which possible world to create, which entails election. This last position falls outside of Calvinism as defined by Dort, yet still contains a different type of unconditional election.”
And how does that do justice to the demands of libertarianism?
“Molinism reconciles God's providence with man's responsibility in a way that permits the natural reading of scriptural passages.”
i) So Molinism is an extrabiblical filter. It doesn’t represent the explicit or implicit teaching of Scripture. Rather, you filter the teaching of scripture through this extrascriptural grid.
ii) Given all of the rival versions of Molinism that you just ticked off (transworld depravity v. the decree to create precedes middle knowledge v. the decree to elect precedes the decree to create v. creation entails election), it’s hard to see how Molinism represents “the natural reading” of Scripture.
“The source of action.”
Isn’t God a source of human action? Does that make God a cause of sin and evil? What about the “author” of sin?
“UR.”
Surely you don’t think that’s a serious response. How is sufficient conditionality consistent with UR, while sufficient causality is not? Where’s the argument?
“Calvinists seem to believe our actions have sufficient causes.”
Once again, you’re not even attempting to offer an intellectually serious response.
What theory of causation do you attribute to Calvinism? For example, do you think Calvinism is consistent or inconsistent with a counterfactual theory of causation? And how does that compare with a Molinist theory of causation?
“In Molinism, people have contra-causal powers.”
How can you attribute contra-causal freedom to human agents if you admit sufficient conditionality into your system? If X is a sufficient condition of Y, then given X, Y must obtain.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Causal determinism
“As an Arminian and Molinist, I specifically oppose all forms of causal determinism. If there’s one aspect of Calvinism I object to, it’s causal determinism. Yet some Calvinists are hesitant to say they are causal determinists. This post is to lay out the various forms of causal determinism; Naturalism, Occationalism, Concurrence and Mainline Calvinist Causal Determinism; all of which I oppose.”
http://www.arminianchronicles.com/2010/05/four-flavors-of-causal-determinism.html
Speaking for myself, I avoid “causal determinism” for the following reasons:
i) I distinguish between exegetical theology and philosophical theology. “Causal determinism” is not an article of faith. Only teachings of Scripture are articles of faith. Causal determinism is a philosophical construct.
My primary concern is to defend Biblical doctrines, not philosophical doctrines. Philosophy can often be useful in defending articles of faith, but philosophical constructs are not articles of faith.
ii) There is no philosophical consensus on how to define causation.
iii) Likewise, determinism is hardly synonymous with Calvinism (as I recently pointed out).
iv) Apropos (i), my primary concern is to defend what the Bible has to say about predestination, providence, and so forth.
“Occationally, Calvinists are occasionalists, but this view has not gained widespread support among Calvinists.”
I’d add that one can be an occasionalist, but not be a Calvinist (e.g. Berkeley, Malebranche).
“Concurrence is similar to occationalism but rather than denying the efficiency of secondary causes, Molinia’s Catholic opponents (the Dominicans) said God's concurrence with secondary causes determines the effects.”
But Arminianism also has a doctrine of concurrence:
http://classicalarminianism.blogspot.com/2010/01/arminians-doctrine-of-divine.html
Therefore, one cannot use concurrence to distinguish Calvinism from Arminianism.
And to my knowledge, Molinism also has a doctrine of continuous concurrence. So concurrence fails to distinguish Calvinism from Molinism or Arminianism alike.
Of course, you could say they have different versions of concurrence, but that, once again, complicates the effort to distinguish these positions by reference to concurrence.
“Francis Turretin, Jonathan Edwards and Charles Hodge articulated the view that man’s actions are determined by his motives, reasoning, state of mind, emotions and feelings.”
i) A problem with this statement is that Dan classifies these three theologians under the heading of “causal determinism,” in distinction to “occasionalism.” Yet Edwards was an occasionalist.
ii) This also illustrates a limitation to using Edwards as a standard representative of “mainline” Calvinism. For, by Dan’s own admission, occasionalism is an anomalous position in Calvinism.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that occasionalism is wrong. Or that occasionalism is necessarily at odds with Calvinism. But in terms of his metaphysical paradigm, one can’t simply default to Edwards as a representative spokesman for mainstream Calvinism.
“Turretin, Edwards and Hodge relied on Luther and Calvin’s groundwork by developed the system somewhat.”
This also means that we can’t judge Turretin, Edwards, and Hodge by the standards of contemporary action theory. They were indebted to, and responding to, the intellectual ethos of their time and place. In contemporary debates over action theory, it’s important to compare and contrast contemporary compatibilists with contemporary incompatibilists.
“Today there view is popularized by authors like RC Sproul using the catch phrase that ‘we choose according to our strongest desire.’”
True. And in that respect, it’s important to keep in mind that Sproul is a theologian, not a philosopher. Therefore, if we’re debating the philosophical merits of Calvinism, Molinism, Arminianism, &c., we need to cite Christian philosophers in each tradition.
“In a world were some people underarticulate their views out of fear of criticism, I admire Turretinfan’s courage, even thought I disagree with his views.”
I appreciate TFan too, However, I hope Dan isn’t insinuating that Calvinists who avoid “causal determinism” are “underarticulating” their views “out of fear of criticism” –as if we couldn’t have principled reasons for our avoidance of that jargon.
“Beyond these four views, many Calvinists simply reject libertarian free will, which seems to imply causal determinism without specifying how our acts are determined.”
Which is a perfectly respectable option.
http://www.arminianchronicles.com/2010/05/four-flavors-of-causal-determinism.html
Speaking for myself, I avoid “causal determinism” for the following reasons:
i) I distinguish between exegetical theology and philosophical theology. “Causal determinism” is not an article of faith. Only teachings of Scripture are articles of faith. Causal determinism is a philosophical construct.
My primary concern is to defend Biblical doctrines, not philosophical doctrines. Philosophy can often be useful in defending articles of faith, but philosophical constructs are not articles of faith.
ii) There is no philosophical consensus on how to define causation.
iii) Likewise, determinism is hardly synonymous with Calvinism (as I recently pointed out).
iv) Apropos (i), my primary concern is to defend what the Bible has to say about predestination, providence, and so forth.
“Occationally, Calvinists are occasionalists, but this view has not gained widespread support among Calvinists.”
I’d add that one can be an occasionalist, but not be a Calvinist (e.g. Berkeley, Malebranche).
“Concurrence is similar to occationalism but rather than denying the efficiency of secondary causes, Molinia’s Catholic opponents (the Dominicans) said God's concurrence with secondary causes determines the effects.”
But Arminianism also has a doctrine of concurrence:
http://classicalarminianism.blogspot.com/2010/01/arminians-doctrine-of-divine.html
Therefore, one cannot use concurrence to distinguish Calvinism from Arminianism.
And to my knowledge, Molinism also has a doctrine of continuous concurrence. So concurrence fails to distinguish Calvinism from Molinism or Arminianism alike.
Of course, you could say they have different versions of concurrence, but that, once again, complicates the effort to distinguish these positions by reference to concurrence.
“Francis Turretin, Jonathan Edwards and Charles Hodge articulated the view that man’s actions are determined by his motives, reasoning, state of mind, emotions and feelings.”
i) A problem with this statement is that Dan classifies these three theologians under the heading of “causal determinism,” in distinction to “occasionalism.” Yet Edwards was an occasionalist.
ii) This also illustrates a limitation to using Edwards as a standard representative of “mainline” Calvinism. For, by Dan’s own admission, occasionalism is an anomalous position in Calvinism.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that occasionalism is wrong. Or that occasionalism is necessarily at odds with Calvinism. But in terms of his metaphysical paradigm, one can’t simply default to Edwards as a representative spokesman for mainstream Calvinism.
“Turretin, Edwards and Hodge relied on Luther and Calvin’s groundwork by developed the system somewhat.”
This also means that we can’t judge Turretin, Edwards, and Hodge by the standards of contemporary action theory. They were indebted to, and responding to, the intellectual ethos of their time and place. In contemporary debates over action theory, it’s important to compare and contrast contemporary compatibilists with contemporary incompatibilists.
“Today there view is popularized by authors like RC Sproul using the catch phrase that ‘we choose according to our strongest desire.’”
True. And in that respect, it’s important to keep in mind that Sproul is a theologian, not a philosopher. Therefore, if we’re debating the philosophical merits of Calvinism, Molinism, Arminianism, &c., we need to cite Christian philosophers in each tradition.
“In a world were some people underarticulate their views out of fear of criticism, I admire Turretinfan’s courage, even thought I disagree with his views.”
I appreciate TFan too, However, I hope Dan isn’t insinuating that Calvinists who avoid “causal determinism” are “underarticulating” their views “out of fear of criticism” –as if we couldn’t have principled reasons for our avoidance of that jargon.
“Beyond these four views, many Calvinists simply reject libertarian free will, which seems to imply causal determinism without specifying how our acts are determined.”
Which is a perfectly respectable option.
Countering racism with racism
Before responding to Sarah’s latest string of tendentious, sob-sister assertions, let’s take a reality check:
i) Suppose a normal man has a choice between dating Rosie O'Donnell and Lena Horne. Will he “consciously/unconsciously” discriminate against the black woman in favor of the white woman? I don’t think so. Clearly looks and charisma trump race.
ii) Likewise, if Bill Clinton and Thomas Sowell were running for president, would I favor the white candidate over the black candidate? Obviously not. I’d choose a black conservative over a white liberal any day of the week.
iii) What about multiracial sports teams, military units, and the like. Don’t the members of the sports team or military units share a sense of camaraderie which transcends race?
iv) In my observation, social class is more relevant to social acceptance than race or ethnicity.
Finally, Sarah keeps talking about “unconscious” racism. Of course, the beauty of imputing unconscious motives to people is that it’s unfalsifiable.
SMOKERING SAID:
“Yes, racism will never cease in a fallen world. Neither will spousal abuse, but that doesn't mean laws can't be enacted to outlaw some forms of it, which may eventually result in a societal shift away from certain manifestations if it.”
i) What manifestations of racism are you alluding to?
ii) Do you think we should rectify spousal abuse by beating up on husbands who are not wife-beaters?
“Unspoken indeed, as I never said anything like that. I've heard people say that in academic discourse racism equals prejudice plus power on a systemic level, so that while a Black person in America could be prejudiced he couldn't technically be racist (being in the non-powerful group).”
I see. So black policemen, black judges, black mayors, black Congressmen, &c., are powerless. A white pizza delivery boy has more power than a black police chief, is that your argument?
“Universities in America are very largely controlled by white people.”
Universities in America are largely controlled by white liberals. Therefore, you’re imputing systemic racism to institutions controlled by white liberals.
The solution is to purge American universities of white liberals.
“Well... what? It's worth mentioning, because you don't seem to be aware of that ideology.”
Listen, young lady, I lived through the Sixties civil rights movement. I watched the network news. I attended public school I-12. I’ve been exposed to liberal politics all my life. So spare me the unctuous notion that I’m unacquainted with liberal ideology.
“It is racist stereotyping to state that white people have conscious and unconscious biases towards POC?”
By definition, that’s grossly prejudicial.
“I'm stating a social trend.”
You’re asserting a social trend.
“I wasn't aware that anyone denied the existence of racism in hiring and applications.”
Actually, it’s circular. Affirmative action requires an applicant to check a box to identify his race on the application form. If the application form didn’t require the applicant to reveal his racial identity, then in many or most cases, a college admissions board would be in no position to know the race of the application, and therefore in no position to discriminate against him even if it were so inclined.
“Even having a name that ‘sounds’ Black is enough to prevent some people getting hired; surely that indicates racism to you?”
i) Black-sounding names like “Colin Powell,” you mean?
ii) If you think corporations and college admissions boards are racist, then they’d be racist in how they enforce affirmative action, yes? Same with state and federal gov’t. If you think whites are bound to be racist, then white officials, who “control” state and federal gov’t, would be racist in how they enforce affirmative action. So how is that any solution, even on your own terms?
At best, the only way to prevent racist college admissions boards from discriminating against minorities would be to use arbitrary quotas. Is that what you’re proposing?
“I don't see that they're more salient in terms of getting hired or accepted to colleges.”
Now you’re changing the argument. You originally talked about “centuries” of “systemic” racism. How do you think that is a salient factor in 21C hiring or college admissions?
“On Triablogue you frequently call for the government to fix injustice - for example, outlawing abortion. You don't dismiss that as ‘paternalism’ towards the fetuses.”
Well, that’s a very revealing comparison on your part. Yes, I think we should baby babies. Adults have a duty to be paternalistic towards little children.
To judge by your comparison, you think white adults should treat adult minorities like children who require the adult supervision of enlightened whites. Speaking for myself, I don’t view myself as the grown-up in relation to minorities.
“What makes you say this isn't the government's problem, while other injustices are?”
Of course, that begs the question by assuming there’s a systemtic injustice in reference to hiring and admissions which gov’t needs to rectify.
“I believe systemic racism is a problem and results in plenty of POC being denied jobs in favour of equally qualified white people for no reason other than race; and I think something should be done about it.”
The only systemic racism I see is emanating from the power centers of liberal ideology.
“I'd like a charitable discussion on this, if you're up for that.”
I'd like a rational discussion on this, if you're up for that.
“Now you've admitted that injustice exists, what is the next step?”
Purge the liberal media, academia, the judiciary, executive, and legislative branches of white liberal racists.
“People’s resumes are being chucked out because they have Black-sounding names, and that's not a good thing either.”
Didn’t seem to be a hurdle for Barack Hussein Obama. Or is that a white-sounding name?
“Having a white-sounding name is something else.”
What does a “white-sounding” name sound like, exactly? How does that compare with a “black-sounding” name. Does “Jeremiah Wright” sound white or black?
i) Suppose a normal man has a choice between dating Rosie O'Donnell and Lena Horne. Will he “consciously/unconsciously” discriminate against the black woman in favor of the white woman? I don’t think so. Clearly looks and charisma trump race.
ii) Likewise, if Bill Clinton and Thomas Sowell were running for president, would I favor the white candidate over the black candidate? Obviously not. I’d choose a black conservative over a white liberal any day of the week.
iii) What about multiracial sports teams, military units, and the like. Don’t the members of the sports team or military units share a sense of camaraderie which transcends race?
iv) In my observation, social class is more relevant to social acceptance than race or ethnicity.
Finally, Sarah keeps talking about “unconscious” racism. Of course, the beauty of imputing unconscious motives to people is that it’s unfalsifiable.
SMOKERING SAID:
“Yes, racism will never cease in a fallen world. Neither will spousal abuse, but that doesn't mean laws can't be enacted to outlaw some forms of it, which may eventually result in a societal shift away from certain manifestations if it.”
i) What manifestations of racism are you alluding to?
ii) Do you think we should rectify spousal abuse by beating up on husbands who are not wife-beaters?
“Unspoken indeed, as I never said anything like that. I've heard people say that in academic discourse racism equals prejudice plus power on a systemic level, so that while a Black person in America could be prejudiced he couldn't technically be racist (being in the non-powerful group).”
I see. So black policemen, black judges, black mayors, black Congressmen, &c., are powerless. A white pizza delivery boy has more power than a black police chief, is that your argument?
“Universities in America are very largely controlled by white people.”
Universities in America are largely controlled by white liberals. Therefore, you’re imputing systemic racism to institutions controlled by white liberals.
The solution is to purge American universities of white liberals.
“Well... what? It's worth mentioning, because you don't seem to be aware of that ideology.”
Listen, young lady, I lived through the Sixties civil rights movement. I watched the network news. I attended public school I-12. I’ve been exposed to liberal politics all my life. So spare me the unctuous notion that I’m unacquainted with liberal ideology.
“It is racist stereotyping to state that white people have conscious and unconscious biases towards POC?”
By definition, that’s grossly prejudicial.
“I'm stating a social trend.”
You’re asserting a social trend.
“I wasn't aware that anyone denied the existence of racism in hiring and applications.”
Actually, it’s circular. Affirmative action requires an applicant to check a box to identify his race on the application form. If the application form didn’t require the applicant to reveal his racial identity, then in many or most cases, a college admissions board would be in no position to know the race of the application, and therefore in no position to discriminate against him even if it were so inclined.
“Even having a name that ‘sounds’ Black is enough to prevent some people getting hired; surely that indicates racism to you?”
i) Black-sounding names like “Colin Powell,” you mean?
ii) If you think corporations and college admissions boards are racist, then they’d be racist in how they enforce affirmative action, yes? Same with state and federal gov’t. If you think whites are bound to be racist, then white officials, who “control” state and federal gov’t, would be racist in how they enforce affirmative action. So how is that any solution, even on your own terms?
At best, the only way to prevent racist college admissions boards from discriminating against minorities would be to use arbitrary quotas. Is that what you’re proposing?
“I don't see that they're more salient in terms of getting hired or accepted to colleges.”
Now you’re changing the argument. You originally talked about “centuries” of “systemic” racism. How do you think that is a salient factor in 21C hiring or college admissions?
“On Triablogue you frequently call for the government to fix injustice - for example, outlawing abortion. You don't dismiss that as ‘paternalism’ towards the fetuses.”
Well, that’s a very revealing comparison on your part. Yes, I think we should baby babies. Adults have a duty to be paternalistic towards little children.
To judge by your comparison, you think white adults should treat adult minorities like children who require the adult supervision of enlightened whites. Speaking for myself, I don’t view myself as the grown-up in relation to minorities.
“What makes you say this isn't the government's problem, while other injustices are?”
Of course, that begs the question by assuming there’s a systemtic injustice in reference to hiring and admissions which gov’t needs to rectify.
“I believe systemic racism is a problem and results in plenty of POC being denied jobs in favour of equally qualified white people for no reason other than race; and I think something should be done about it.”
The only systemic racism I see is emanating from the power centers of liberal ideology.
“I'd like a charitable discussion on this, if you're up for that.”
I'd like a rational discussion on this, if you're up for that.
“Now you've admitted that injustice exists, what is the next step?”
Purge the liberal media, academia, the judiciary, executive, and legislative branches of white liberal racists.
“People’s resumes are being chucked out because they have Black-sounding names, and that's not a good thing either.”
Didn’t seem to be a hurdle for Barack Hussein Obama. Or is that a white-sounding name?
“Having a white-sounding name is something else.”
What does a “white-sounding” name sound like, exactly? How does that compare with a “black-sounding” name. Does “Jeremiah Wright” sound white or black?
While the World Slept
You know how you sometimes remember something out of the blue? You hadn’t thought about it for years. Then, all of a sudden, it comes to you. It was hibernating in your memory, waiting to awaken at the slightest touch.
Aaron hadn’t thought about her since his was a boy. But he’d been thinking about her lately. He didn’t remember when he started to remember her. Or why.
She was just some girl he knew in second grade. Decades ago. He didn’t recall her name. He hadn’t seen her since second grade.
What made her memorable? She was poor. That’s all he remembered about her.
He’d attended a suburban grade school where most of the students were middle class. So she stuck out. She wore the same pale blue dress to school every day, rain or shine.
Now he wondered what happened to this poor nameless girl he met in second grade. For years and years he hadn’t given her a second thought. But now it haunted him.
He could only imagine. Where was she now? She’d be his age, if she was still alive. She probably had a hard life all her life.
You see people like that. Prematurely aged. Their face a map of their life.
How many of her classmates still remembered that sad little girl from second grade? But he remembered her. And God remembered her. Indeed, that’s why he remembered her. God reminded him.
Maybe it was his own time of life that made him reminisce. When you’re young, there is no urgency. Time is on your side. The horizon lies distant. But as year follows year, the horizon draws near–like a wall advancing to meet you.
He was sorry now that he hadn’t befriended her when they were young. And now it was too late. But even if he could go back in time, there’s only so much that one second-grader can do for another.
He thought about other desperate women on whom the Lord had shown his mercy. Like Leah, Hannah, Hagar, Rahab, and Mary Magdalene. As well as other nameless women–like the Samaritan, the Shunammite, the Syrophoenician, the hemorrhagic, and the widow of Zeraphath. Forgotten by time, but remembered by God. Lost to the world, but not to the Lord.
She, too, was forsaken and forgotten by so many of her peers. He might be the only one left who remembered–or cared. But as long as he remembered her, he could pray for her. He couldn’t pray for her by name, but God knew who she was.
So he prayed for her, that God would bless her like Lazareth. That God could take her to Abraham’s bosom. A loser in this life, but a winner in the life to come. He prayed to God to confound the wisdom of the world.
He thought about the parable of the seed growing at night. God planted and tended his garden after dark, out of sight. For the world was oblivious to the growing seed–lacking the nocturnal vision of faith. Unable to see God’s secret garden.
Aaron prayed for her every day until the day he died. And when he passed over to the other side, there she was. A seed planted in a dying world, to blossom in eternity. God took her to heaven by a quiet backstreet–while the world slept.
Aaron hadn’t thought about her since his was a boy. But he’d been thinking about her lately. He didn’t remember when he started to remember her. Or why.
She was just some girl he knew in second grade. Decades ago. He didn’t recall her name. He hadn’t seen her since second grade.
What made her memorable? She was poor. That’s all he remembered about her.
He’d attended a suburban grade school where most of the students were middle class. So she stuck out. She wore the same pale blue dress to school every day, rain or shine.
Now he wondered what happened to this poor nameless girl he met in second grade. For years and years he hadn’t given her a second thought. But now it haunted him.
He could only imagine. Where was she now? She’d be his age, if she was still alive. She probably had a hard life all her life.
You see people like that. Prematurely aged. Their face a map of their life.
How many of her classmates still remembered that sad little girl from second grade? But he remembered her. And God remembered her. Indeed, that’s why he remembered her. God reminded him.
Maybe it was his own time of life that made him reminisce. When you’re young, there is no urgency. Time is on your side. The horizon lies distant. But as year follows year, the horizon draws near–like a wall advancing to meet you.
He was sorry now that he hadn’t befriended her when they were young. And now it was too late. But even if he could go back in time, there’s only so much that one second-grader can do for another.
He thought about other desperate women on whom the Lord had shown his mercy. Like Leah, Hannah, Hagar, Rahab, and Mary Magdalene. As well as other nameless women–like the Samaritan, the Shunammite, the Syrophoenician, the hemorrhagic, and the widow of Zeraphath. Forgotten by time, but remembered by God. Lost to the world, but not to the Lord.
She, too, was forsaken and forgotten by so many of her peers. He might be the only one left who remembered–or cared. But as long as he remembered her, he could pray for her. He couldn’t pray for her by name, but God knew who she was.
So he prayed for her, that God would bless her like Lazareth. That God could take her to Abraham’s bosom. A loser in this life, but a winner in the life to come. He prayed to God to confound the wisdom of the world.
He thought about the parable of the seed growing at night. God planted and tended his garden after dark, out of sight. For the world was oblivious to the growing seed–lacking the nocturnal vision of faith. Unable to see God’s secret garden.
Aaron prayed for her every day until the day he died. And when he passed over to the other side, there she was. A seed planted in a dying world, to blossom in eternity. God took her to heaven by a quiet backstreet–while the world slept.
Friday, May 21, 2010
The secret things belong to the Lord
I'm going to quote some recent statements by Paul Helm:
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Following on from this, while how the ‘two wills’ of God are elements of one divine will is ‘inscrutable’ to us, I suggest that nevertheless there is a fittingness, even perhaps a necessity to the indiscriminate offer of grace in a situation in which salvation is freely given and the enjoyment of that grace is through justification by faith alone and its inseparable accompaniment, sanctification. Perhaps we may put the point as strongly as this: The execution of the one divine will of salvation through free grace must have different phases if the freeness of grace is to be received as such, and preserved from serious misunderstanding or even compromise. As we have seen, on Calvin’s view there are not two wills in God, but different elements of the one will. The one will not only has differential outcomes, in the case of the elect and the reprobate, but it is also brought to pass through various phases. These are not (in this case) the much-discussed covenantal or redemptive-historical phases, but phases in which those elected and reprobated are in different epistemic situations, phases in which certain outcomes must be hidden from those about to enjoy them, if they are to receive them with understanding.
The Lord’s one will is decretal, distinguishing between election and reprobation, but there is a phase in the execution of that decree, let’s call it the ‘proclamation phase’, in which the presentation is worded universally. From that universal presentation no inferences can be drawn as to who among those to whom the presentation is made are reprobate, and those who are elect. Discriminate grace, but indiscriminate preaching.
Why is there this phase? Why is it that ‘announcement’ is a part of the scheme? Why does God choose to bring his grace to sinners by means of an announcement that anyone who turns from his sin will be received? Partly, of course, because it is true! Whoever wills may come. God does desire the return of the penitent sinner. But suppose for a moment that there was no such phase, but instead an economy which was conducted uniformly, either in terms explicitly directed to the elect, or in terms directed explicitly to the reprobate. If this happened (as it tends in fact to happen in some hyperCalvinist settings) the hearers would not be invited to come to Christ, but (by the terms of the preaching) they would be forced to ask ‘Which am I? Am I among the elect, or among the reprobate? Do I fulfil the requirements or conditions of being among the former or among the latter?’ In these circumstances there could be no full, direct invitation. The gospel could not be proclaimed ‘by invitation only’. In other words, under such terms ‘gospel preaching’ would have the effect not of turning men and women to face a Christ who invites them to come to him, but of turning them in upon themselves. And such a turning in is but a very short step from a person being concerned about whether or not he is qualified to come to Christ. Or concerned about the hardness of his heart, in which case there would be despair over what would be taken to be the marks of retribution. Either way, instead of facing Christ a person would introspect. At such a point grace would become legalised. So I suggest that what Calvin is identifying is not an arbitrary procedure on God’s part, but a necessary feature of the preaching of God’s free grace in Christ. This is a pastoral necessity, and perhaps even a logical necessity. So while God’s procedure is ‘ineffable’ in the sense that it is difficult to see how the one will of God possesses different phases, there is a rationale for it.
It would also have implications for prayer and more generally, for the desire for the salvation of men and women. For example, if, after setting forth in Romans Ch. 9 his theology of the remnant according to grace, Paul had known by some means who among his Jewish contemporaries were elect, and who reprobate, how could he have had a desire that they might (without exception) be saved (Rom.10.1), or had the thought that he might be accursed form Christ for the sake of his brothers, his kinsmen according to the flesh? (Rom. 9.1-5).
http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2010/05/tale-of-two-wills.html
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Following on from this, while how the ‘two wills’ of God are elements of one divine will is ‘inscrutable’ to us, I suggest that nevertheless there is a fittingness, even perhaps a necessity to the indiscriminate offer of grace in a situation in which salvation is freely given and the enjoyment of that grace is through justification by faith alone and its inseparable accompaniment, sanctification. Perhaps we may put the point as strongly as this: The execution of the one divine will of salvation through free grace must have different phases if the freeness of grace is to be received as such, and preserved from serious misunderstanding or even compromise. As we have seen, on Calvin’s view there are not two wills in God, but different elements of the one will. The one will not only has differential outcomes, in the case of the elect and the reprobate, but it is also brought to pass through various phases. These are not (in this case) the much-discussed covenantal or redemptive-historical phases, but phases in which those elected and reprobated are in different epistemic situations, phases in which certain outcomes must be hidden from those about to enjoy them, if they are to receive them with understanding.
The Lord’s one will is decretal, distinguishing between election and reprobation, but there is a phase in the execution of that decree, let’s call it the ‘proclamation phase’, in which the presentation is worded universally. From that universal presentation no inferences can be drawn as to who among those to whom the presentation is made are reprobate, and those who are elect. Discriminate grace, but indiscriminate preaching.
Why is there this phase? Why is it that ‘announcement’ is a part of the scheme? Why does God choose to bring his grace to sinners by means of an announcement that anyone who turns from his sin will be received? Partly, of course, because it is true! Whoever wills may come. God does desire the return of the penitent sinner. But suppose for a moment that there was no such phase, but instead an economy which was conducted uniformly, either in terms explicitly directed to the elect, or in terms directed explicitly to the reprobate. If this happened (as it tends in fact to happen in some hyperCalvinist settings) the hearers would not be invited to come to Christ, but (by the terms of the preaching) they would be forced to ask ‘Which am I? Am I among the elect, or among the reprobate? Do I fulfil the requirements or conditions of being among the former or among the latter?’ In these circumstances there could be no full, direct invitation. The gospel could not be proclaimed ‘by invitation only’. In other words, under such terms ‘gospel preaching’ would have the effect not of turning men and women to face a Christ who invites them to come to him, but of turning them in upon themselves. And such a turning in is but a very short step from a person being concerned about whether or not he is qualified to come to Christ. Or concerned about the hardness of his heart, in which case there would be despair over what would be taken to be the marks of retribution. Either way, instead of facing Christ a person would introspect. At such a point grace would become legalised. So I suggest that what Calvin is identifying is not an arbitrary procedure on God’s part, but a necessary feature of the preaching of God’s free grace in Christ. This is a pastoral necessity, and perhaps even a logical necessity. So while God’s procedure is ‘ineffable’ in the sense that it is difficult to see how the one will of God possesses different phases, there is a rationale for it.
It would also have implications for prayer and more generally, for the desire for the salvation of men and women. For example, if, after setting forth in Romans Ch. 9 his theology of the remnant according to grace, Paul had known by some means who among his Jewish contemporaries were elect, and who reprobate, how could he have had a desire that they might (without exception) be saved (Rom.10.1), or had the thought that he might be accursed form Christ for the sake of his brothers, his kinsmen according to the flesh? (Rom. 9.1-5).
http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2010/05/tale-of-two-wills.html
Criminal Minds
According to Arminian apologist Josh Thibodaux:
“The term ‘author‘ as employed by Arminians/Synergists in this case, is used in an originative sense to describe where the evil ultimately arose from. If we can identify, ‘whose idea was this?’, then we’ve found the author…[Originate] Thought it up, dreamed it up, came up with the idea apart from anything external…I would say He allowed it contingent upon the creatures’ wills, but didn’t dream up their evil schemes Himself.”
This fails to draw a couple of elementary distinctions:
i) It fails to distinguish between evil ideas and ideas of evil. There is nothing intrinsically evil in thinking about evil deeds.
For example, an FBI profiler from BAU will try to get inside the mind of a serial killer. In so doing, the profiler will contemplate “evil schemes.”
ii) What is more, the profiler will try to anticipate the serial killer’s next move. As such, he will “dream up” “evil schemes” in his effort to stay one step ahead of the killer. The profiler came up with this idea on his own. The killer didn’t plant that idea in his mind. Rather, the profiler “originated” this idea in his effort to forestall that very eventuality.
So there’s nothing intrinsically evil about entertaining or even originating the notion of an evil scheme.
“The term ‘author‘ as employed by Arminians/Synergists in this case, is used in an originative sense to describe where the evil ultimately arose from. If we can identify, ‘whose idea was this?’, then we’ve found the author…[Originate] Thought it up, dreamed it up, came up with the idea apart from anything external…I would say He allowed it contingent upon the creatures’ wills, but didn’t dream up their evil schemes Himself.”
This fails to draw a couple of elementary distinctions:
i) It fails to distinguish between evil ideas and ideas of evil. There is nothing intrinsically evil in thinking about evil deeds.
For example, an FBI profiler from BAU will try to get inside the mind of a serial killer. In so doing, the profiler will contemplate “evil schemes.”
ii) What is more, the profiler will try to anticipate the serial killer’s next move. As such, he will “dream up” “evil schemes” in his effort to stay one step ahead of the killer. The profiler came up with this idea on his own. The killer didn’t plant that idea in his mind. Rather, the profiler “originated” this idea in his effort to forestall that very eventuality.
So there’s nothing intrinsically evil about entertaining or even originating the notion of an evil scheme.
Fighting injustice with more injustice
SMOKERING SAID:
“From all I've read about affirmative action, its proponents don't see it as the final and ultimate good, simply a necessary and temporary corrective. If and when racism ceases and POC have truly equal opportunities, affirmative action will not be necessary - and I haven't seen anyone suggest it should continue beyond that point.”
i) In a fallen world, racism will never cease.
ii) Affirmative action discriminates against POC in case you’re the wrong POC. If you’re Asian-American, then affirmative action discriminates against you because Asian-Americans are “overrepresented” in college.
iii) BTW, an unspoken assumption of your claim is that only whites are racist. Couldn’t be that POC are ever racist. No, racism is a one-way street.
“In fact, the bloggers I've read on the topic are transparent about considering it a necessary evil.”
Well, if you only read bloggers who reflect a certain ideological slant…
“What is your solution to the issue, if you are anti-affirmative action? Do you affirm that there is a problem with white people in positions of power giving other white people privileges over POC due to conscious and unconscious biases?”
Since you’re given me no reason to accept your racist stereotyping, why should I offer a solution to your prejudicial claim?
“Do you agree that being black results in decreased opportunities (AA aside) in education and the workforce regardless of other personal qualities?”
Why would I accept a sweeping claim like that?
“Do you admit that various races are not on an equal footing in the USA due to decades or centuries of small-scale and systemic racism?”
What about more salient factors like rampant single motherhood, a culture of dependence (welfare), a drug subculture, bad role models (e.g. hip-hop “artists”), &c.?
“Do you think something should be done about this?”
Done by whom? I don’t share your racial paternalism.
“Do you think the current racial discrimination is better than the legalised discrimination that AA mandates…”
You have a habit of posing loaded questions, which beg the question by building tendentious assumptions into the question.
I also don’t think that we should rectify injustice with injustice.
“Even though the latter has benefits to oppressed people…”
Throughout your comments you assume what you need to prove. Here’s what a black economist has to say:
In the United States, where many group preferences have sought to justify themselves as counterweights to discrimination that would otherwise prevail, such “discrimination” often turns out to be statistical “under-representation” in desirable occupations or institutions. The implicit assumption, tenaciously held, is that great statistical disparities in demographic “representation” could not occur without discrimination. This key assumption is seldom tested against data on group disparities in qualifications. For example, as of the year 2001, there were more than 16,000 Asian American students who scored above 700 on the mathematics SAT, while fewer than 700 black students scored that high—even though blacks outnumbered Asian Americans several times over. Data such as these are simply passed over in utter silence—or are drowned out by strident assertions of “covert” discrimination as explanations of a dearth of blacks in institutions and occupations requiring a strong background in mathematics.
False beliefs are not small things, because they lead to false solutions. In the field of medicine, it has long been recognized that even a false cure that is wholly harmless in itself can be catastrophic in its consequences if it substitutes for a real cure for a deadly disease. Proponents of affirmative action cannot console themselves for their false assumptions on grounds that their intentions were good, because social quackery likewise substitutes for real efforts to deal with real problems that can tear a society apart. Despite an orientation of asking what “we” can do for “them,” those who want to see blacks advance in fields requiring a mathematics background need to confront black students with a need to master this subject, even if that means giving up other diversions and giving up attitudes that doing academic work is “acting white.” This will win few friends and fewer votes. But the question is whether one is serious about results for others or simply wants to feel good about oneself.
Such data as can be gleaned from a variety of private sources in the United States suggest that the more fortunate American blacks receive a disproportionate share of the benefits going to blacks as a whole in the United States, just as the more fortunate Malays tend to benefit most from affirmative action in Malaysia or the more fortunate untouchables benefit from affirmative action in India.
Affirmative action programs also generate major social costs that fall on the population as a whole. Losses of efficiency are among these costs, whether because less-qualified persons are chosen over more-qualified persons or because many highly qualified members of non-preferred groups emigrate from a society where their chances have been reduced. However, the cost of inefficiency is overshadowed by the cost of intergroup polarization, violence, and loss of lives. Bloody and lethal riots over affirmative action in India are the most obvious examples, but there have also been young brahmins who have died by setting themselves on fire in protest against policies which have destroyed their prospects.
As the country which has had preferences and quotas for the less fortunate longer than any other, India presents the clearest historical picture of their consequences, as well as the clearest statistical picture. Its history is not one to encourage other countries to follow in India’s footsteps, much less the footsteps of Sri Lanka.
The history of blacks in the United States has been virtually stood on its head by those advocating affirmative action. The empirical evidence is clear that most blacks got themselves out of poverty in the decades preceding the civil rights revolution of the 1960s and the beginning of affirmative action in the 1970s. Yet the political misrepresentation of what happened—by leaders and friends of blacks—has been so pervasive that this achievement has been completely submerged in the public consciousness. Instead of gaining the respect that other groups have gained by lifting themselves out of poverty, blacks are widely seen, by friends and critics alike, as owing their advancement to government beneficence.
Within the black community itself, the possible ending of affirmative action has been portrayed as a threat to end their economic and social progress. Thus whites are resentful and blacks are fearful because of policies which have in fact done relatively little, on net balance, to help blacks in general or poor blacks in particular. Among black students in colleges and universities, those admitted under lower standards face a higher failure rate and those admitted under the same standards as other students graduate with their credentials under a cloud of suspicion because of double standards for minority students in general.
One of the most widely used defenses of group preferences and quotas is that there are precedents for them. In college admissions, for example, there have been preferences for athletes and for alumni children. Merit criteria have not been universal in other institutions either. Why then the objections to racial or ethnic preferences or preferences for women? As a strategic argument, this arbitrarily puts the burden of proof on critics of affirmative action, as if the demonstrable social costs of this program needed no justification. But of all justifications, precedent is one of the weakest. Everything that has ever been done wrong—from jaywalking to genocide—has had precedents. Any justification or criticism of affirmative action must be based on its actual consequences. If we took the argument from precedents as conclusive, then nothing could ever be corrected until there was perfection in everything else.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3010426.html
“From all I've read about affirmative action, its proponents don't see it as the final and ultimate good, simply a necessary and temporary corrective. If and when racism ceases and POC have truly equal opportunities, affirmative action will not be necessary - and I haven't seen anyone suggest it should continue beyond that point.”
i) In a fallen world, racism will never cease.
ii) Affirmative action discriminates against POC in case you’re the wrong POC. If you’re Asian-American, then affirmative action discriminates against you because Asian-Americans are “overrepresented” in college.
iii) BTW, an unspoken assumption of your claim is that only whites are racist. Couldn’t be that POC are ever racist. No, racism is a one-way street.
“In fact, the bloggers I've read on the topic are transparent about considering it a necessary evil.”
Well, if you only read bloggers who reflect a certain ideological slant…
“What is your solution to the issue, if you are anti-affirmative action? Do you affirm that there is a problem with white people in positions of power giving other white people privileges over POC due to conscious and unconscious biases?”
Since you’re given me no reason to accept your racist stereotyping, why should I offer a solution to your prejudicial claim?
“Do you agree that being black results in decreased opportunities (AA aside) in education and the workforce regardless of other personal qualities?”
Why would I accept a sweeping claim like that?
“Do you admit that various races are not on an equal footing in the USA due to decades or centuries of small-scale and systemic racism?”
What about more salient factors like rampant single motherhood, a culture of dependence (welfare), a drug subculture, bad role models (e.g. hip-hop “artists”), &c.?
“Do you think something should be done about this?”
Done by whom? I don’t share your racial paternalism.
“Do you think the current racial discrimination is better than the legalised discrimination that AA mandates…”
You have a habit of posing loaded questions, which beg the question by building tendentious assumptions into the question.
I also don’t think that we should rectify injustice with injustice.
“Even though the latter has benefits to oppressed people…”
Throughout your comments you assume what you need to prove. Here’s what a black economist has to say:
In the United States, where many group preferences have sought to justify themselves as counterweights to discrimination that would otherwise prevail, such “discrimination” often turns out to be statistical “under-representation” in desirable occupations or institutions. The implicit assumption, tenaciously held, is that great statistical disparities in demographic “representation” could not occur without discrimination. This key assumption is seldom tested against data on group disparities in qualifications. For example, as of the year 2001, there were more than 16,000 Asian American students who scored above 700 on the mathematics SAT, while fewer than 700 black students scored that high—even though blacks outnumbered Asian Americans several times over. Data such as these are simply passed over in utter silence—or are drowned out by strident assertions of “covert” discrimination as explanations of a dearth of blacks in institutions and occupations requiring a strong background in mathematics.
False beliefs are not small things, because they lead to false solutions. In the field of medicine, it has long been recognized that even a false cure that is wholly harmless in itself can be catastrophic in its consequences if it substitutes for a real cure for a deadly disease. Proponents of affirmative action cannot console themselves for their false assumptions on grounds that their intentions were good, because social quackery likewise substitutes for real efforts to deal with real problems that can tear a society apart. Despite an orientation of asking what “we” can do for “them,” those who want to see blacks advance in fields requiring a mathematics background need to confront black students with a need to master this subject, even if that means giving up other diversions and giving up attitudes that doing academic work is “acting white.” This will win few friends and fewer votes. But the question is whether one is serious about results for others or simply wants to feel good about oneself.
Such data as can be gleaned from a variety of private sources in the United States suggest that the more fortunate American blacks receive a disproportionate share of the benefits going to blacks as a whole in the United States, just as the more fortunate Malays tend to benefit most from affirmative action in Malaysia or the more fortunate untouchables benefit from affirmative action in India.
Affirmative action programs also generate major social costs that fall on the population as a whole. Losses of efficiency are among these costs, whether because less-qualified persons are chosen over more-qualified persons or because many highly qualified members of non-preferred groups emigrate from a society where their chances have been reduced. However, the cost of inefficiency is overshadowed by the cost of intergroup polarization, violence, and loss of lives. Bloody and lethal riots over affirmative action in India are the most obvious examples, but there have also been young brahmins who have died by setting themselves on fire in protest against policies which have destroyed their prospects.
As the country which has had preferences and quotas for the less fortunate longer than any other, India presents the clearest historical picture of their consequences, as well as the clearest statistical picture. Its history is not one to encourage other countries to follow in India’s footsteps, much less the footsteps of Sri Lanka.
The history of blacks in the United States has been virtually stood on its head by those advocating affirmative action. The empirical evidence is clear that most blacks got themselves out of poverty in the decades preceding the civil rights revolution of the 1960s and the beginning of affirmative action in the 1970s. Yet the political misrepresentation of what happened—by leaders and friends of blacks—has been so pervasive that this achievement has been completely submerged in the public consciousness. Instead of gaining the respect that other groups have gained by lifting themselves out of poverty, blacks are widely seen, by friends and critics alike, as owing their advancement to government beneficence.
Within the black community itself, the possible ending of affirmative action has been portrayed as a threat to end their economic and social progress. Thus whites are resentful and blacks are fearful because of policies which have in fact done relatively little, on net balance, to help blacks in general or poor blacks in particular. Among black students in colleges and universities, those admitted under lower standards face a higher failure rate and those admitted under the same standards as other students graduate with their credentials under a cloud of suspicion because of double standards for minority students in general.
One of the most widely used defenses of group preferences and quotas is that there are precedents for them. In college admissions, for example, there have been preferences for athletes and for alumni children. Merit criteria have not been universal in other institutions either. Why then the objections to racial or ethnic preferences or preferences for women? As a strategic argument, this arbitrarily puts the burden of proof on critics of affirmative action, as if the demonstrable social costs of this program needed no justification. But of all justifications, precedent is one of the weakest. Everything that has ever been done wrong—from jaywalking to genocide—has had precedents. Any justification or criticism of affirmative action must be based on its actual consequences. If we took the argument from precedents as conclusive, then nothing could ever be corrected until there was perfection in everything else.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3010426.html
Disproportionate impact
Victor Reppert has made a shocking discovery. Thankfully, it took a man of his philosophical acumen to ferret this out. Reppert just discovered that laws disproportionately impact lawbreakers. Yes, you heard me right. Laws discriminate against outlaws. They have the insidious potential to single out non-law abiding citizens.
For example, laws against drunk driving single out drivers. By contrast, laws against DUI don’t profile joggers or swimmers–only drivers.
It’s appalling that in this day and age we still have such pernicious laws on the books. Time to stage a protest. Riot in the streets.
For example, laws against drunk driving single out drivers. By contrast, laws against DUI don’t profile joggers or swimmers–only drivers.
It’s appalling that in this day and age we still have such pernicious laws on the books. Time to stage a protest. Riot in the streets.
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