(April 22, 2017 at 1:49 am)Grandizer Wrote:(April 21, 2017 at 4:08 pm)SteveII Wrote: The PoE argument is trying to prove that evil and God logically cannot exist. The burden of proof is on the atheist (the proponent of the argument). It is not successful (there are a variety of defenses) and most philosophers have moved on and it only continues to get discussed by the internet atheist.
Stop shifting goalposts please. It was clear what I was saying and what I was responding to. Go back and read my previous post with your quotes in it. Nothing you say here has anything to do with what I argued.
Now please demonstrate how it is impossible for people to freely choose good all the time. You made a claim without warrant, so you need to back it up when asked.
Quote:If you want to attack free will, you have a long uphill climb. The only defense you have is the assumption of naturalism.
Uphill climb my ass, lol. The logical incoherency is often clear in the definition itself for the type of "free will" defended specifically by theists who believe in libertarian free will. Note, by the way, my specific usages of the word "libertarian" in both this post and my previous response to you. I'm personally a compatibilist, but compatibilist free will is obviously pointless to argue for in the context of this discussion.
I was not shifting the goal post. I thought your response about burden of proof was directed at the PoE.
Regarding whether it is impossible for people to always choose good, you have to distinguish between broadly logical possible and actually possible (logical modality). A world where everyone chooses good is broadly logically possible--logic alone cannot rule it out. But clearly, additional criteria/information is needed to determine if it is actually possible. I think it is entirely more likely than the negation that trillions of sequential, interacting, human choices cannot all be good.
What is your basis for believing determinism/compatiblism to be true? Isn't just the prior assumption of Naturalism--which is clearly question begging?
Libertarian free will is not incoherent. It is the best description of what we experience and the only reasoning to deny it is to salvage scientism. Those that espouse scientism do not want any part of allowing for emergent properties that themselves have causal power--it turns their deterministic worldview on its ear.