The Problem of Good

[orangebox21]

If I, living in the United States, somehow was able to know what a Russian woman was going to eat for breakfast tomorrow, does that mean that I determined what she was going to eat?  No.

It does mean that she had no choice.

By what mechanism is there causation?

Foreknowledge of a free-will choice does not determine the choice.

Foreknowledge and free will are incompatible.  It's not an issue of whether or not the entity with foreknowledge is determining whether or not the lady will have -x- for breakfast..or that the foreknowledge itself somehow makes it so.........but the simple fact that foreknowledge is possible, which causes the issue.  If knowledge of a future choice is possible, then the person could very literally make no other future choice.  Does this, to you...sound like a "free will" scenario?

This is precisely the issue.  If foreknowledge of a choice does not determine what choice is made but is solely the knowledge of what choice will be made [as my illustration] then foreknowledge and free-will are compatible.  If you are going to claim that foreknowledge of a choice determines which choice is made (and therefore foreknowledge and free-will are incompatible), then you will need to show the mechanism by which foreknowledge is the cause of the choice not an observation of it.    

I do agree that at the moment of creation every single choice is set in stone, but again, a being's knowledge of future events does not necessitate he/she has causally determined said events.

You believe we have no free will, then.  Unless you have a special meaning for the word "choice", or "free will" which is identical to the phrase "set in stone since the moment of creation".

Again, knowing what future events will take place does not mean a person has determined [caused] them to happen.  You've shown correlation, but not causality between foreknowledge and determinism.

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Interestingly I thought about discussing God working in mysterious ways but figured it would be viewed as a "cop out."  Ultimately I choose not to because I think the passage explains God's mysterious ways.  It doesn't leave the reader solely with the question "who are you to question me?"  It says that He is acting in this way to make Himself known.  He is revealing that He is just (wrathful) and that He is merciful.

While I try to not base the foundation of my argumentation on such arguments, I would agree this is in a sense like the "Best of all Possible Worlds defense."  I would rather that you consider the passage in Romans 9.  It answers the question:  How can God who is both just and merciful communicate these attributes to His creation?  By creating a world in which good and evil exists, He and His glory are greater.  In other words, in a world with only good where all men are saved, the glory and attribute of His justice would be unknown.  Similarly in a world with only evil, where all men are condemned, the glory and attribute of His mercy would be unknown.

Couldn't your god do both, though? I mean, couldn't the guy who speaks through revelation and so on just reveal his mercy and justice both, while still having a perfect world where everyone is saved? Isn't that within his power set?

Can a person be both completely forgiven and completely punished for the same crime?

I mean, this is just me accepting your unspoken premise that communicating these two aspects to humanity is necessary, which I don't think is true.

Given our conversations in the past I'll grant that you have support for the above statement, that it's not just an argument from personal incredulity.

What you're essentially saying is that god allows the world to be significantly bad solely for the purposes of letting everyone know how Just he is,

That's a misrepresentation of what I said.  I didn't say that God allows the world to be significantly bad solely for the purposes of letting everyone know how just He is.

which strikes me as nothing but an ego thing, and frightfully immoral at that; he's willing to allow people to suffer just so they all know how cool he is?

This is a misrepresentation or a misunderstanding of the Christian position.

Why is that something he needs to do? What makes that worth the suffering it causes?

I don't know.

Regarding "mysterious ways" in general, to hit upon another topic, it's not so much a cop out as it is a total non-argument; theists present god's mysterious ways as though they obviate whatever immorality is under discussion, but that's not how it works.

"Mysterious ways," just puts the topic outside of the theist's reach, it's just an acknowledgement that the theistic position is that nobody can know why god works this way... which means that they have no reason at all for assuming benevolent intent, nor does anybody have a justifiable reason for believing that god's actions have anything more to them than what the actual evidence indicates, which is that they are immoral or nonsensical.

"Mysterious ways," just puts an end to the conversation. It's not an argument for the theist side.

Using the phrasing "obviate whatever immorality is under discussion" simply assumes the act is immoral without having proven it.  I've demonstrated the benevolent intent, perhaps you didn't read that part or didn't understand it, and I have provided justifiable reasons for believing God's actions are such.  Claiming that God's actions are immoral or nonsensical based upon the 'actual evidence' without providing any evidence is simply an unsupported claim.  Now again, I recognize you most likely have support for your conclusions that you haven't included in the post, but in not providing them you haven't made an argument. 

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I'm not confusing foreknowledge and determinism, you're just redefining words to try and make impossibilities possible. As Lorenz showed even small variations will quickly baloon out in unforeseen and unforseeable ways. And giving about 20bn people free will is introducing masses of huge changes into the system.

What was the definition of the words we were initially using and what is the definition I am now using?

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Foreknowledge cannot be possible without the nature of the future being available to view or predictable and hence certain.

If God is "outside of our timeline" then as soon as he makes our reality, in his own timeline, then presumably he instantly sees all the results and so knows them all. For us inside the reality, where time appears to pass, we're simply playing out what he already knows will happen.

What is the mechanism by which foreknowledge of a choice determines the choice?  You've assumed that the knowing agent is also necessarily the causing agent.  Prove that claim.

I'd advise theists to drop this from omniscience, and stick to "it knows everything it is possible to know". If we have some sort of real choices to make, then knowing what we will choose is impossible. So he can be realistically omniscient without knowing this, because it's just impossible, in the same way as making a rock he can't lift is impossible. It's a question which is posed so as to be logically impossible.

He must still remain within the laws of logic, or else you can't even use logic to talk about him. Then you're really screwed.

I understand the reluctance to drop even one iota of his power, and the need for the "get out of jail free" card of free will. But it doesn't work, only one can be the case. Because it's not something real, it never turns up so you can find out which, so you can continue to believe contradictory things about it all you want.

What you're asking here is to accept the open theist position.  What you'll find here is that accepting this view of God's foreknowledge eliminates any possibility of God's decree.  In other words, He created the world knowing that evil had the potential to exist but then had no purpose for that evil.  In this case evil would be without purpose.

And seriously, when are you going to start sticking to verifiable science for your assertions????

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Sure, and the context here is our legal debt before God as a result of breaking His law.  If He is merciful to us and forgives us our legal debt that is a good action.  If He justly punishes us for our lawbreaking, that is good too.

It's still spin. If he is irresponsible to let us out of the punishment we deserve, that is an evil action. If he unnecessarily punishes us for breaking arbitrary laws, that is evil, too. See? The exact same actions can just be spun a different way. The "context" you're describing is merely getting things to conform to how you view them.

It would be irresponsible for sin to not be punished and I agree it would be unjust for God to do so.  That is why "He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."  This is the great exchange and we see both God's wrath (punishment of sin) and His mercy in the same event without violating His holiness.  

This is an excellent illustration of the compatibilist fee will we have been talking about.  A person makes a choice to kill an unborn child.  God chooses to be merciful and redeem that child and thus brings him/her into His presence for all eternity.  The action the person did was wrong and he/she is accountable for it.  The action God did was good and He is responsible for it.  The wills of the two beings involved are compatible.

And this is what I was talking about in my OP. God getting credit for the good and us for the bad. See, if we know that God will always let an unborn child into heaven*, then a person is capable of acting on that knowledge. How would this make the person's actions bad? The person is taking a deliberate action to send someone to heaven.

Because you're conflating the two events.  The result of the person's choice is a dead person.  The result of God's choice is resurrection and eternal life.  The person's choice does not resurrect nor give eternal life to the child, it only sends the child to the grave.

Your answer also ignores the possibility of more than one person acting toward a particular end. For example: who is dispensing justice in a capital offense: the judge who sentences the criminal, or the executioner? I would argue it's both. If the person knows what action God will execute, they can act on that knowledge and they would both be acting in mercy.

I would agree that both are dispensing justice, but this is a false analogy.  The multiple people acting in this situation have both been given the authority to achieve the same end.  Both the judge and executioner have been given authority to dispense justice.  A person having an abortion has not been given the authority to resurrect nor to give eternal life.

Now to address the question: is an abortion merciful?  Within our context [of mercy] the person choosing to have the abortion isn't the one being merciful (mercy is a result of being forgiven the legal debt to God).  Therefore no, an abortion is not merciful. If you want to expand the context of 'mercy' to include 'preventing suffering,' then sure it could be considered merciful.  Although that definition is misleading.  First, it makes it appear as if a wrong action is right only from the assumption that a life of 'no suffering' is better than a life involving suffering.

Well, given that we consider it bad to cause suffering to others (without good reason) and that people generally attempt to minimize their own suffering, I see no reason to believe that's not the case. Unless you're going to try to come up with some arbitrary definition of "better" to show why suffering just doesn't matter, or why it's actually better, then I think it is absolutely the case.

That's my point.  You have to assume that the suffering of a person is without good reason in order to consider an abortion merciful under these definitions.  With our limited understanding of the world and the future we can't make this assertion.

Second, there is the problem of foreknowledge.  How do you know it's better for a person to not be born?  You can't.  Maybe the child who was killed would have developed a renewable energy source that eliminated poverty.  Would it not then be more merciful to let the child live [to alleviate the suffering of the impoverished]?

1) Given the way most people describe heaven, it is infinitely better to be there than here. Both in terms of how good heaven is and in terms of time line (you are only here a finite amount of time).
2) Would it not be merciful (good) for God to develop renewable energy and eliminate poverty? Sitting idly by and allowing fixable problems is depraved indifference, at best.

1)  Yes, for them individually.  But your criteria isn't what eliminates suffering for an individual, but rather what is the least amount of collective suffering we can achieve as a society.
2)  How do you know the child who would have developed that technology wasn't aborted?

The end does not justify the means.  The end (a child in heaven) does not justify the means (murder).  This is ultimately an abuse of God's mercy.  Doing a wrong knowing that God will right it, doesn't make the wrong right.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but this is the exact argument other Christians have had with me involving whether it was right for God to drown young children in the flood. They're literal answer is "God brought the children to heaven, so it was a net gain".

I appreciate that you don't want to put words in my mouth.  I would agree with you here, that's not a good argument nor do I think it is an accurate representation of God.  The reason God was justified in killing the people in the flood is clearly stated in Genesis and it's not because some of them would end up in heaven.  Our modern society has no problem with the concept of mercy.  We struggle to accept justice.