RE: Objective morality as a proper basic belief
July 12, 2017 at 12:10 pm
(This post was last modified: July 12, 2017 at 12:11 pm by mordant.)
(July 12, 2017 at 11:38 am)SteveII Wrote:Then why is this suddenly not a problem in heaven? Why, in heaven, will you not be "happy puppets following a predefined path"?(July 12, 2017 at 10:56 am)mordant Wrote: Irrelevant. Nothing happens without god either permitting it or causing it, and nothing is outside his ability to prevent, so he is still ultimately responsible for the mayhem. If a burglar comes into my house and slits my children's throats while I passively watch, I can't claim I'm a good father, using as an excuse that I'm not interfering in the burglar's free will.
Your analogy is lacking. So while God does permit evil, it is only because it is a by-product of a much greater goal: free will. Without free will we would have just been happy puppets always following a predefined path. God instead wanted people to *choose* to obey, love and worship Him as well as having loving, respectful, etc. relationships with others (none of which is possible without free will).
(July 12, 2017 at 11:38 am)SteveII Wrote: You seem to think that God should intervene and prevent evil things from happening. It does not seem to me that we could have a world where we have free will and not have suffering because every wrong choice we made that resulted in suffering (however small) would be met with a supernatural intervention. Such a state of affairs would result in a complete lack of morally sufficient freedom --effectively eliminating free will. So it would seem that a world in which everyone had free will but no possibility of suffering would not be able to be actualized.Not at all. People could still choose to do good, where there'd be no intervention needed.
You don't seem to believe that your god is truly all powerful, all knowing, and all good. Because if he's all those things he could have done, or could do, any of the following:
1) Construct humans that are capable of following his ruleset
2) Construct a ruleset that humans are capable of following
3) Have at least a puny human standard of rule enforcement that focuses on rehabilitation and reconciliation and restoration to a productive member of the kingdom of god, rather than on punishment, up to and including infinite punishment for finite transgressions.
4) Insure that, as is supposedly his desire, none should perish, but all should come to repentance. In other words, universal reconciliation.
All of this and more is possible for a tri-omni god, without breaking the slightest sweat. All of this and more can be done while still satisfying the requirements of his righteousness, since god can make any arbitrary set of laws and definitions he wants. Indeed, it could all be done without violating your sacred and indispensable free will that somehow no longer matters to you in heaven.
Of course, the notion that god will be sullied by contact with this thing-in-itself called "sin" is a separate debate, I'm just allowing it here for the sake of argument.