Sin nature, Free will,and Blaming God
"I'm Skeptical" (IMS) is at it again, over on the CADRE blog ( comment section).[1] He argues two things that I think are very important to stamp out. First the idea that free will and sin nature are contradictions. The other is that since God created all things, therefore, if there was a god he would be evil and we could blame him for everything. Both concepts are typical atheist excuse making. The first point needs an answer as an interesting intellectual problem. The second is manifest crap but I'm going to answer it anyway.
He starts by arguing that they are contradictions, free will and sin nature. If something leads you to sin you have no choice, you can't decide otherwise. If you can decide then you aren't led by a nature.
"Can't you see that the two things are contradictory? If our will is truly free, then we there is nothing pushing us in the direction of sin. If there is something influencing our behavior, that's causation. It isn't free will. You can't have it both ways." My position was very rational, logical and true to what we know in life. I say we have two counter balancing forces each pulling us in two different directions: sin nature and the imago dei. This means we have to have acerter of desire within us that originates the will. The will is free to choose between the two as the ego balances between id and superego. In fact there is good scientific evidence supporting free will.[2]
IMS asserted that the situation is way too complex to allow for any sort of choices unless we have total choice. He doesn't allow for influences that can be resisted; it's all or noting, either an influence is a strict cause or there is no influence. We can't originate ideas or desires. We can only be a passive vessel waiting to be acted upon. That's the new atheist understanding of cause and effect. Although oddly enough he also argued there is no cause and effect. He says there is no cause and effect and yet he also sees a mass of tangled causes too complex to resist.
When you deliberate about a choice of actions, you are weighing various competing influencing factors. There is self-interest and altruism, for example. Even the desire to please an imaginary god can play a role. But (aside from external influences) all those things are part of your make-up. Of course I hold you responsible for your actions, to the extent that you are able to exercise control over what you do.I argued that in general it is very complicated and complex and we can't reduce c/e to a simple set of factors but that doesn't mean that certain choices are not obvious enough that we can't decide to do the right thing. He contradicts his determinism by saying he could still hold blame. I do not see sin nature as some demonic force takes over the mind and forces one against their will. At that rate the complexities involves are irrelevant because they neither enter into nor hinder our decision-making sense. We don't have to answer for them in making a decision. That argument comes from the desire to clear oneself of guilt of sin.
Before going any further I will explain my view of the fall and sin nature. My view comes from St. Augustine, via Reinhold Niebuhr's reading of Augustine.[3] Niebuhr did not accept the literal account of the fall in the Garden of Eden story. I do believe we are fallen creatures and need Christ's redemption. But not because the first woman once sinned by easting an apple. Like Niebuhr, I see Adam and Eve as Metaphors for all people and they point us to a coming of age myth. When we reach the age of accountability we suddenly realize the nature of sin as Adam and Eve realized they were nacked and tried to make clothes. Then we are accountable. There's actually more to it than this. But the point is there is no line of despair drawn literally across history.
The fall is working in every moment and even distributed throughout time not in one year. Not one act, in every act. The mechanism of Fallen nature is psychological anxiety that arises from self transcendence. Self transcendence is the ability to project our mental experience forward in time and backwards in order to plan for the future. Understanding the risks in living, we are anxious and thus seek to feather our nests to find security. This anxiety leads us to leads us to commit acts of injustice in order to gain security. In other words I might think, "If I don't get some one I'm going to be out on the street." I can imagine the pain that will bring. Thus I might be willing to steal or commit some other act to secure myself against this. It's not irresistible. We need God's grace to have the strength but we have the ability to ask. It's not supernatural forces forcing us to sin but our own existential condition.
At this point I'm sure IMS would ask, "why would god make things like this?" In fact he does ask this: "From a design perspective, with God as the architect of everything, he must have deliberately made us to be vulnerable to the influences of our sinful nature. Could he have designed us to more virtuous? Why not?" God can do anything to control laws of physics but they are not logic. Logical necessity is the only limitation on God. That's because violating the law of logical necessity is a contradiction in terms. Can't have your cake and eat it too. Can't make square circles. You can't have love without free will. If God wants creatures who actually love then must risk his creatures making wrong choices and being able to reject love. God can't create people good, that would defeat the idea of moral agency. These are the very thing that IMS says God could do.
It doesn't imply that we would lose our ability to deliberate about our own actions. It just makes the choice easier. If God wants us to be good, and also wants us not to be robots, there's no inherent conflict. We could be good people who are not robots. But that's not the Christian vision of what God has done with us. It was his design choice to make us sinful.That is just a naïve reading. It's the same problem in reverse. If God makes us good without our struggling though the deliberations of choice then we are not free oral agents but automatons. The struggles of anxiety that lead to sin are not insurmountable demonic powers but our own fear and our won mortal limitations. We do have the ability to seek God's help. I am not saying that there are forces of evil. I'm talking about our daily struggles not Hitler.
The idea, they say, is that we need to learn lessons in life. That makes no sense at all. If we are to spend eternity in the spiritual realm, what is the point of corrupting our souls with earthly influences in the first place? Those lessons are meaningless unless we continue to live in this world.The problem with this, is denying this about learning is super foolish. We have to learn in life all the time so obviously life is about learning. We are not learning to be good, however, that would be a works oriented notion of salvation. We are learning to seek the values of the good. That's so we can be free moral agents a willingly choose the good. We are not training to save ourselves. We are seeking to be free moral agents because that will enable us to be loving agents. We can't love without free will love involves choice and value. We learn the values of the good so we can' value others and love them. Here are some passages that would seem to decimate that one of our major reasons for being here is to learn to learn to be good. Not to save ourselves but to fulfill God's love and to know God better.
* James 5:14 "But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil."
*1 Kings 3:9
"So give Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people to discern between good and evil. For who is able to judge this great people of Yours?"
*1 Corinthians 2:6
Among the mature, however, we speak a message of wisdom--but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.
*Ephesians 4:13
until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, as we mature to the full measure of the stature of Christ.
*1 Timothy 4:7
But reject irreverent and silly myths. Instead, train yourself for godliness.
*Hebrews 6:1
Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith in God,
.
[1] "Im skeptical" in comment section of article by JBsptfn,"Bi Weekly Report: Ben Love from Ex-Christian.net," Cadre Comments, (June 7, 2016 ) blog URL:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6363362&postID=5945340226329252579&isPopup=true
[2] Bob Doyle, "Lebit Experiments," The Information Philosopher, on line Resource URL:
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/libet_experiments.html accesed 6/10/6
Bob earned a Ph.D in Astrophysics from Harvard and is now an Associate in the Harvard Astronomy Department.
The neurologist Benjamin Libet performed a sequence of remarkable experiments in the early 1980's that were enthusiastically, if mistakenly, adopted by determinists and compatibilists to show that human free will does not exist. His measurements of the time before a subject is aware of self-initiated actions have had a enormous, mostly negative, impact on the case for human free will, despite Libet's view that his work does nothing to deny human freedom...Libet found that although conscious awareness of the decision preceded the subject's finger motion by only 200 milliseconds, the rise in the Type II readiness potential was clearly visible at about 550 milliseconds before the flex of the wrist. The subject showed unconscious activity to flex about 350 milliseconds before reporting conscious awareness of the decision to flex (the red arrow above). Indeed an earlier slow and very slight rise in the readiness potential can be seen as early as 1.5 seconds before the action..
Libet's results have been noised about by reductionists and hailed as science proof that there is no freewill while Libet himself thinks he proved there is.
[3] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature sand Destiny of Man, Volumes 1-2.
: A Christian Interpretation. Westminster :John Knox Press; 1st edition, 1996, 175.
Comments
I write a lot about that topic around here, too; and I actually agree atheists and other theistic sceptics are right to complain about this! -- when we Christian apologists ignore trinitarian theism in the account. Which tends to happen a lot. {lopsided g}
Anyway, I had a few minutes free this morning so I did some editorial cleanup on your dyslexia, Meta. I couldn't figure out what you meant by "acerter", though, so you may want to go back and fix that one yourself.
JRP
Yep, the way I see it that's what the "soteriological drama" (as you have termed it elsewhere) is all about. Without freedom love is meaningless.
In fact I have a paper just out on those themes, in the larger context of God's overarching eschatological scheme:
"A Theodicy of Incompleteness"
Right now you have to either purchase a Kindle version (or read the article in the preview pane), but it should be out in print eventually.
Meanwhile, I'm sure I'll be talking about this again when I post my followup articles to Friday's entry; but until then here's a 2013 article on discussing how far God is authoritatively responsible for my sin. How far? As far as the cross and beyond.
(I'm sorry Ben, whose article, linked here, started this line of response, left Christianity chiefly, he says, because he thought Christians seemed completely disinterested in the "problem of God's complicity". But I think we Christians actually have the best reason to be interested in it, and the best solution for the problem -- if we're trinitarian Christians. But as I complained Friday, we tend to only be trinitarian when its time to distinguish ourselves from those-other-theists-over-there.)
JRP
I am a compatibilist. That means that I believe that our mental activity and our choices are determined by physical factors and influences. But many of those influences are in our own brain. As such, they become part of our deliberative process. For example, we learn many things during the course of our lives, and all those things are impressed physically in our brains. They become part of our "nature". When we make a decision, our brain weighs those various influences, and arrives at the choice in accordance with its own "nature". This process is done in a deterministic way. Sometimes, we have conscious awareness of parts of this deliberation process. Scientific investigation (far more than just the Libet study) tells us that the brain makes a choice first, and then we experience a conscious thought about it. This gives us the feeling that we are freely deliberating, but that's just an illusion. Our deliberations are all physically determined. Nevertheless, in the absence of external constraints, it is still our own "nature" that decides what we do. By "nature" I mean that the brain physically contains a complex set of influencing factors - memories, habits, what we have learned, our likes and dislikes, our needs and goals, etc. - are all physically impressed in the brain. So we are nor billiard balls. We act in our own interest, and we participate in the process of deciding what to do. We act in accordance with our own nature.
Joe completely misunderstands the issue of choice: IMS asserted that the situation is way too complex to allow for any sort of choices unless we have total choice. He doesn't allow for influences that can be resisted; it's all or noting, either an influence is a strict cause or there is no influence. We can't originate ideas or desires. We can only be a passive vessel waiting to be acted upon.
Choice is not incompatible with determinism. Anyone who has written a computer program understands that choices are made in a deterministic way, but they're still choices. Yes, we do make choices, and sometimes we even think about them. But whenever you make a choice, it isn't some immaterial homunculus tossing a coin - it is your brain processing an algorithm of sorts to arrive at that choice. Yes, there are competing influences, but the brain resolves them. The dominant influence is the one that wins out, and that's an influence that you are unable to resist, whether it's sin or something else. And note that under different circumstances, it may be some other influence that wins out, according to the way your brain processes the information.
- I spoke of responsibility, not blame. And there is no contradiction. We do make choices in a deterministic way, and if our nature is bad, then we make bad choices. But as I said, we are not billiard balls. We play a role in the deliberative process. We don't just passively watch what happens. We are in control, at least to some degree. If our brains are not completely defective, it is within our ability to make choices that affect our own nature - that is to say we can deliberately make ourselves better people. To the degree that we have this deliberative power, I hold people responsible for their actions. That doesn't imply there must be libertarian free will. It is not a contradiction. If your brain is defective, it may not be your fault that you make bad choices, but you should still be locked up. Or it might be the case that you just need some kind of therapy that will get you back on the right track. If your brain is partially defective and you make some bad choices, you may still have the ability to do something that will improve your standing in society. You are responsible to society to do the right thing. If you don't, then you are defective. This is not a question of "blame".
Joe also misses the boat on cause and effect. He speaks of the "law of cause and effect" as if that were some kind of real thing in physics. It isn't. He speaks of "direct causes" as if there were such a thing. There isn't. That fact is that modern physics has pretty much dispensed with the notion of cause altogether. Instead, we have the laws of nature, which as you may have noticed, are not expressed in terms of causality. The term is generally used only in a much more limited sense - in determining whether a specific variable or factor plays a role in the outcome of some experiment. So we might speak of something as having a causal role, but not as being "the cause". In a more general sense, we understand that there is never one single thing that causes an outcome. The outcome is always the product of many influencing factors. The notion of a "chain of causality" has been superseded by the notion of a matrix of causality, and there is never a "direct cause" for anything.
I'm one of the Christians who agrees that our brains and minds are physical. It's kind of a mystery to me why that bothers people (some Christian friends of mine in particular). Most comments I'd had on a single post in awhile ...
Take care & God bless
WF
O man you never heard of "acerter?" Man! that's the going thing. And you call yourself a Shakespearian scholar? If you find one call him for me too. I don't thanks for the proofing, serially. wish I had known you in undergrad school.
I think the mind id physical in the sense that it's not Casper the friendly ghost, I don't think it's tangible or solid. Maybe analogous to electricity. when I say spirit = mind I am not saying mind is wrath I'm saying mind an dispirit are synonymous.
BTW we don't know what electrical charges are made of. we say they are made of electrons but those are charges. we don't know what they are made of apart from more charges.
everybody's a critic! no seriously, you are welcome to do that, thank you.
6/13/2016 10:38:00 AM
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Blogger Weekend Fisher said...
So ... when the true determinists want to post a comment, how would they respond to the box that insists that we specify "I'm not a robot"? It's a dilemma.
great to see you Fisher! guys this is One of the first members of the CADRE. I mean when it was just being formulated in my brain she was one of the fist three to know about it.
Blogger im-skeptical said...
The first thing I need to do in response to this is to clarify all the issues that Joe misunderstood about my own position.
I am a compatibilist. That means that I believe that our mental activity and our choices are determined by physical factors and influences. But many of those influences are in our own brain. As such, they become part of our deliberative process. For example, we learn many things during the course of our lives, and all those things are impressed physically in our brains. They become part of our "nature". When we make a decision, our brain weighs those various influences, and arrives at the choice in accordance with its own "nature". This process is done in a deterministic way. Sometimes, we have conscious awareness of parts of this deliberation process.
I know what compatibilist is but I don't think you do. I could call myself a compatibilist, or some might me that but I resist labels. It's also hared to know if you understand it or not so the first things I thought was you didn't understand the hard problem so you probably don't[ eg this.
Scientific investigation (far more than just the Libet study) tells us that the brain makes a choice first, and then we experience a conscious thought about it.
yes but that process dopes not negate veto. it's the gives us free will. Veto could enable us to resist sin. Brian making choice choice fist is not counter to free will.
This gives us the feeling that we are freely deliberating, but that's just an illusion. Our deliberations are all physically determined.
If you really mean that point blank that contradicts any kind of responsibility so I expect you will qualify it when you are foced to,.If you mean it s is it's a contradiction.
Nevertheless, in the absence of external constraints, it is still our own "nature" that decides what we do.
contradiction. It's an illusion that we are deliberating(above, but we really are(just now)contradiction.
all totally uninteresting no e of it changes my argument,t
Joe completely misunderstands the issue of choice: "IMS asserted that the situation is way too complex to allow for any sort of choices unless we have total choice. He doesn't allow for influences that can be resisted; it's all or noting, either an influence is a strict cause or there is no influence. We can't originate ideas or desires. We can only be a passive vessel waiting to be acted upon."
Choice is not incompatible with determinism.
yes it is. it's not incompatible with cause and effect, That's not true determinism. There different kinds of compatiobaloism. that might be a idiosyncrasy of the wayI think about it, The thing is compatibilism itself is a contradiction in terms but something like it is true. But determinism is all or nothing we have to find different word to describe the "determinism;"
Anyone who has written a computer program understands that choices are made in a deterministic way, but they're still choices.
Anyone who has written a computer program understands that choices are made in a deterministic way, but they're still choices.
that's just bad English, that's not anything else but a contradiction in terms, youaugjentingbwhatdeterniniwnvm eansdo youcan fitvthe twovtogehger,Ithinks thatmustbe gecauseyou areconufssedabout c/e
Yes, we do make choices, and sometimes we even think about them. But whenever you make a choice, it isn't some immaterial homunculus tossing a coin - it is your brain processing an algorithm of sorts to arrive at that choice.
my concept is not analogous to homunculus. I agree it is your calculation process in your brain you doing it, But that just means it's not deterinistic to use the term is misleading Certain aspects may be deterministic but it's not universal to the whole system in our heads. It's limited determinism. What that boils down to is there are aspects of choice over which we have rights and those are things for which we are accountable.
your obfuscation between responsibility but no blame is just that, obfuscation.
Yes, there are competing influences, but the brain resolves them. The dominant influence is the one that wins out, and that's an influence that you are unable to resist, whether it's sin or something else. And note that under different circumstances, it may be some other influence that wins out, according to the way your brain processes the information.
that is a silly ass refusal to come to grips with meta-ethical theory,. There is no brain resolving it for us because competing values cannot be resolved that way. deliberation doesn't mean just a little ratiocentenation in your head; true deliberation requires choices. it also means competing goals and our desire has to resolve. it, it's not something the process does automatically.
6/13/2016 10:00:00 AM
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- I spoke of responsibility, not blame.
we are blameworthy
And there is no contradiction. We do make choices in a deterministic way, and if our nature is bad, then we make bad choices.
It is not bad it's impossible. determinism means the outcome is totally set, it's fixed. the fix is in. Choice means one may select from between alternatives The fix is not in. Those are contradictions.
Compatibablism is possible iff you allow for deferent domains where choices and determinism don't' compete. I MEAN DIFFERENT DOMAINS IN THEAME HEAD.
But as I said, we are not billiard balls. We play a role in the deliberative process. We don't just passively watch what happens. We are in control, at least to some degree. If our brains are not completely defective, it is within our ability to make choices that affect our own nature - that is to say we can deliberately make ourselves better people. To the degree that we have this deliberative power, I hold people responsible for their actions. That doesn't imply there must be libertarian free will. It is not a contradiction. If your brain is defective, it may not be your fault that you make bad choices, but you should still be locked up. Or it might be the case that you just need some kind of therapy that will get you back on the right track. If your brain is partially defective and you make some bad choices, you may still have the ability to do something that will improve your standing in society. You are responsible to society to do the right thing. If you don't, then you are defective. This is not a question of "blame".
you are just contradicting yourself and using bad English,
Joe also misses the boat on cause and effect. He speaks of the "law of cause and effect" as if that were some kind of real thing in physics. It isn't. He speaks of "direct causes" as if there were such a thing. There isn't. That fact is that modern physics has pretty much dispensed with the notion of cause altogether. Instead, we have the laws of nature, which as you may have noticed, are not expressed in terms of causality. The term is generally used only in a much more limited sense - in determining whether a specific variable or factor plays a role in the outcome of some experiment. So we might speak of something as having a causal role, but not as being "the cause". In a more general sense, we understand that there is never one single thing that causes an outcome. The outcome is always the product of many influencing factors. The notion of a "chain of causality" has been superseded by the notion of a matrix of causality, and there is never a "direct cause" for anything.
we are talking about limited areas we are not talking about big bang singularity. what you are regurgitating is a paradigm and paradigms sift. This one will too, hat will not shift is the fact that there is a law-like regularity in actual reality that wont go away. The big debate is a out what to make of t, they don't even know what to call it. they still use C/.e that is still a useful idea the term "law" is being re-thought.
sciences still speaks of distal cause and proximate cause. proximate is what we might call "direct." or "immediate" that sis still used.used.
Indeed it is! I suppose they feel a pang of cognitive dissonance and then try to forget about it. LOL
Hey, it's more teamwork than criticism. I'm just glad you're willing to fearlessly put it out there in the first place.
- My understanding of compatibilism is fairly well described in this article. I have no idea where you get yours.
yes but that process dopes not negate veto. it's the gives us free will. Veto could enable us to resist sin. Brian making choice choice fist is not counter to free will.
- A veto of some action under consideration is nothing more than part of your deliberative process. It is the result of one influence in your brain being stronger than other influences.
If you really mean that point blank that contradicts any kind of responsibility so I expect you will qualify it when you are foced to,.If you mean it s is it's a contradiction.
- Joe, you keep accusing me of contradicting myself. The problem is that you have your own interpretation of what I say, and it's not what I'm actually saying. You don't listen.
contradiction. It's an illusion that we are deliberating(above, but we really are(just now)contradiction.
- In your mind, deliberation implies free will. In reality, it just means a mental process of consideration of the alternatives.
all totally uninteresting no e of it changes my argument,t
- This is just proof of your obstinate refusal to listen to a perspective that is different from you own. No wonder you don't understand a word I say.
yes it is. it's not incompatible with cause and effect, That's not true determinism. There different kinds of compatiobaloism. that might be a idiosyncrasy of the wayI think about it, The thing is compatibilism itself is a contradiction in terms but something like it is true. But determinism is all or nothing we have to find different word to describe the "determinism;"
- Or you could learn what others mean when they use certain terminology in a normal way.
that's just bad English, that's not anything else but a contradiction in terms, youaugjentingbwhatdeterniniwnvm eansdo youcan fitvthe twovtogehger,Ithinks thatmustbe gecauseyou areconufssedabout c/e
- You have your own idiosyncratic views. If you understand a decision as a selection between alternatives, there is no implication that it involves any kind of magical agency that is free from physical laws. There is always something that causes the decision to go one way or another.
my concept is not analogous to homunculus.
- As I understand it, your concept involves some magical immaterial agent that is free from physical laws. But you can't even begin to explain how this agent interacts with the physical brain. It is unscientific, and completely unsupported by empirical evidence.
that is a silly ass refusal to come to grips with meta-ethical theory,. There is no brain resolving it for us because competing values cannot be resolved that way. deliberation doesn't mean just a little ratiocentenation in your head; true deliberation requires choices. it also means competing goals and our desire has to resolve. it, it's not something the process does automatically.
- And where is your evidence for all these assertions? I don't know if you are aware of it, but there are different meta-ethical theories. So what you are saying is that I don't come to grips with YOUR meta-ethical theory. I'm cool with that. You refuse to come to grips with science.
Here