tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post4586005213727698044..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: Must God make the best?Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-84304385779671715652016-09-11T11:15:52.168-04:002016-09-11T11:15:52.168-04:00There's a false dichotomy between necessary or...There's a false dichotomy between necessary or arbitrary, as if those are the only logical alternatives. However, a choice can be rational without being necessary or arbitrary. So long as God as a reason for his selection, the selection is not a brute fact. There is, in principle, an explanation for his choice, because he had a reason for what he action. Contingent isn't conceptually synonymous with arbitrary. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-60138626275465341102016-09-11T02:37:15.880-04:002016-09-11T02:37:15.880-04:00I always thought that God is God apart from consid...I always thought that God is God apart from consideration of creation, but I formerly thought that this could be consistent with necessitarianism. I now think that in making a particular act of will like creation as necessary to God as His [other] attributes, whatever it is that He wills would inform His nature. The creative act would itself be a divine attribute: if God must create, He must be Creator; if He must be Creator, and He can't be that without a creation, then creation informs His nature. No matter how the position is qualified, necessitarianism seems to entail a metaphysical interdependence between Creator and creature.<br /><br />"If there is a collection of best possible universes that God can make, then God must create one of them, and hence is not significantly free with respect to the creation of universes."<br /><br />I assume by "best possible universes" Oppy also concedes that God did not have to create. Given that, God's wisdom, goodness, etc. may rule out some of what we might otherwise imagine as possible, but I don't see how that means God isn't significantly free. Is the suggestion that God is only significantly free if He can do what is logically impossible? If not, why does Oppy draw the line of "significant freedom" so quickly? <br /><br />How he defines "best" is indeed relevant. If it's not something like "brings God glory," it doesn't apply to Christianity. But then, you'd be right that "best" isn't a good word to use because God can't create any other kind of world. There are no possible worlds which wouldn't qualify as the "best." There may be better and worse worlds relative to creations, but the perspective of creations isn't relevant to this scenario.<br /><br />"A problem with that premise is Oppy's failure to explain why God's selection must be arbitrary. Since different possible worlds are different, having alternate histories–like stories with different plots and characters–there's no reason to assume God's selection must be indiscriminate."<br /><br />What would be your reply if Oppy said that while God may discriminate among possibilities, God's criteria by which He discriminates must be non-necessary and, thus, arbitrary or else collapse into necessitarianism?<br /><br />I think the underlying desire for necessitarianism is to have, in principle, an explanation for why every particular action occurs: God's particular act to create rather than not-create, for instance. If divine fullness or self-sufficiency is true, why did God create? The choice to create doesn't "fulfill" God as on Hegelianism, so it might initially strike someone as completely arbitrary.<br /><br />But in the context of personal agency, choice per se is not completely arbitrary. The particular choice of creating rather than not-creating may be arbitrary in that there is no discriminatory criteria God must necessarily use in His selection of a possible world, but God had to choose *something.* He couldn't choose both to create and not-create. It was one or the other, and God's necessarily being a personal agent required a choice of one or the other. He chose to create. The end. Does Oppy think this has bad consequences for the theist?Ryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07883500968749756873noreply@blogger.com