CADRE Comments

This week, the United States will celebrate our annual Independence Day (July 4th -- the day in 1776 we declared, a bit preemptorily, our independence from Great Britain). Freedom and independence are words with great political and cultural meaning for us; and not only for us, but for the numerous nations who (more-or-less following our lead) also declared their independence from sovereign rulers whom they believed were oppressing them, both socially and not-infrequently religiously. Sad to say, Christianity was just-as-not-infrequently the religious oppression the people were revolting against. To some extent this is even true of the United States: even though our own national revolution was grounded on a mixture of orthodox Christianity and nominal deism (such as Franklin’s and Jefferson’s), the history of our country’s settlement in the centuries before the revolution was typically based on fleeing religious (as well as financial) oppression in Europe. And it can ha...

Bill's topic from a few days ago is something that Christians (and other theists of all stripes) have been chewing over for thousands of years. It might seem like the answer is a simple yes or no; but there are concepts which supernaturalistic theists are (in principle) committed to, which introduce difficulties. I spent several hundred pages in Sword to the Heart ( which can be found for free in some different formats, including first here on the Cadre Journal ) slowly and carefully working up those concepts, but I'll summarize them below in a progressing topical order relevant to the question of God's responsibility. ( Click here on the jump to proceed. )

It's that time of year again, when I post a link to back to my 2008 Cadre article on the philosophically unique connection between trinitarian theism and freedom. 2009's repost picked up some interesting and polite discussion on the Resurrection of Jesus (between myself and counter-Christian apologist Spencer Lo), and those can be found here -- but they aren't comments about the article per se. God’s hope to all our readers, around the world, this holiday season!

My yearly Independence Day link back to my 2008 Cadre article on the philosophically unique connection between trinitarian theism and freedom. God’s hope to all our readers, around the world, this holiday season!

My yearly Independence Day link back to my 2008 article on the philosophically unique connection between trinitarian theism and freedom. I'm posting it Friday this year for the beginning of the weekend. God’s hope to all our readers, around the world, this holiday season!

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 48, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 49.] What shall God do? The devils have betrayed His love; and do betray those He loves. Yet, as the eternal ground of all reality (including theirs), still being intrinsically Love in His own unique and independent self-existence, God still loves the rebel angels. The humans have betrayed Him, too; and are betrayed in turn by higher tormentors; and also betray whosoever they themselves can find to have power over. Yet, still, God loves them, too. God will do what He can, to mitigate the suffering that His beloved children cause, in their quests to affirm their own self-importance. Such a quest will always involve perverted suffering: for to make suffer, in pain or in pleasure, is to exhibit power over; and so to exhibit power over, in any perverted way, will be to make suffer. Yet God has given them such power that they pervert. And although...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, the first for chapter 21, can be found here. ] [This entry continues Chapter 21, "Some Detours".] The form of my argument so far indicates that this entity is the ground of all existences: it (or He, rather) is the Final Fact, or the Independent Fact (the IF). It is no use postulating an intermediate entity for purposes of providing basic action or for grounding my potential reliability at making judgments. An intermediate entity would be a derivative entity, and would (to that degree) be as subject as I am to the properties of the Final Fact. If an ultimately non-sentient, reactive reality either does not provide me with active cognizance, or leaves me with a requirement that I justify my own ability to reliably justify claims; then a proposed intermediate sentience would be in the same boat I am. What I am discovering is that the IF is God, with no backdoor hatches into a qualified atheism. But...

I wasn't sure I'd be available Sunday to post up the essay this year, so I'm doing it a bit early for the weekend. No particular revisions again this year; so just a link to my annual Independence Day sermon that I like to put up every year. {g!} (The only substantial comments so far can be found at last year's entry here, by the way. Although the comments turn out not to be about the post at all. {wry g}) God’s hope to all our readers, around the world, on this day, and every day! Jason Pratt

And now for today's discussion in metaphysics. Consider the following claim (from this philosophy paper from Spencer Lo, provided for context--the original statement can be found in the second paragraph of Part IV, "Empty Resolution"): "The fact that all phenomena are dependently arisen, entails that all phenomena, without exception, come into being in dependence upon prior phenomena, remain in existence dependent upon prior phenomena, and cease to exist dependent upon prior phenomena.” A.) How cogent is this claim, as it stands? B.) Would it cohere well enough with an attempt to deny the existence of an independently existent reality with at least some intrinsically fixed, unalterable characteristics? C.) Would such a claim, if true, be any protection against, or any denial of, an attempt to claim that phenomena may come into and go out of existence completely uncaused? D.) Would any failure of (A), (B) and/or (C) be remedied by replacing the occurrences of the phr...

This week, the United States will celebrate our annual Independence Day (July 4th--the day in 1776 we declared, a bit preemptorily, our independence from Great Britain). Freedom and independence are words with great political and cultural meaning for us; and not only for us, but for the numerous nations who (more-or-less following our lead) also declared their independence from sovereign rulers whom they believed were oppressing them, both socially and (not-infrequently) religiously. Sad to say, Christianity was just-as-not-infrequently the religious oppression the people were revolting against. To some extent this is even true of the United States: even though our own national revolution was grounded on a mixture of orthodox Christianity and nominal deism (such as Franklin’s and Jefferson’s), the history of our country’s settlement in the centuries before the revolution was typically based on fleeing religious (as well as financial) oppression in Europe. And it can hardly be argued th...

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. The first entry can be found here. ] In my previous chapter I explained why I think the concept of two or more IFs (whatever their other characteristics may be) leads, one way or another, to a functional proposition of only one IF. So far when I have discussed a sentient IF (or a SIF), I have identified the IF as 'God'. But of course our history is full of religions where people declare the existence of numerous gods. Notice I have changed the big 'G' to a little 'g' in that statement. I am not trying to belittle this type of belief, but to preserve an important philosophical distinction. I had to delay this discussion until after I had already covered the issue of what an IF is, and also until after I had established that there was no real point to discussing multiple-IFs (whether sentient, non-sentient, or any mix thereof). Now, I can now safely go back and cove...

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. The first entry can be found here. ] In my discussion building up to (in hindsight) a positive argument for God's existence and character, I have been trying to pare off variations of philosophy which as far as I can tell are contradictory at their primary level--and of course I have tried to explain why I do not accept philosophies which require an active advocacy of contradiction. In the process of trying to avoid absurdity, I have introduced the concept of what I am calling an Independent (or alternately an Interdependent) Fact--an IF. As I have done this, I find I am essentially recognizing and calling attention to something which everyone at bottom agrees exists; because in the process of checking the systemic integrity of fundamental proposals, I have discovered that even the opponents of an IF, if they are saying anything other than meaningless nonsense, are talking (without r...

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. The first entry can be found here. ] In the previous chapter [several entries ago], I said there were three ways the Final Fact can be (and historically has been) considered to transcend our ability to think about it. I have already dealt with the first option: that nothing we say about the IF can be true; and I have explained why I reject this position and any positions built upon it. The second option is that everything we say about the IF can be true. [Footnote: This position is not to be confused with a position stating that all facts have Independent status. I’ll be discussing variants of that position later.] This would certainly qualify as a concept we cannot fully fathom; and its adherents often affirm that such claims are particularly true: i.e., that the IF is not a generality or pure abstraction (although sometimes they go this route, too). Best of all, its adherents can say ...

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous entry in this series of posts can be found here. The first entry can be found here. ] [Note: the previous entry ended with the questions, "So why can there not be grounds stretching on forever with no end, no Final Fact? Why can there not be an infinite regression?"] For what it is worth, I don't think it is possible to prove that an infinite regress does not exist--nor that it does exist. So I will presume each of these two mutually exclusive options; and then check to see if either or both of the options crash. Let me presume, for purposes of argument, that an infinite regress is real. What advantages does a proposed system of thought have, when based on this presumption? None! If an infinite regress is true, then we have no means of reaching valid conclusions. This is because we habitually presume, when we offer explanations or arguments, that somewhere 'behind' or 'under' the explanation (metaphorical...