Calvin on the Sensus Divinitatis

[QMan]

Harry Baird wrote:
You also write: "Or take consciousness...how does a purely material world suddenly "cough up" this completely non-material property, something the dead opposite of "material"?". Good question. Another atheist friend (they're everywhere, God help us!) affirms to me that consciousness *is*, in fact, material. He declares that, after all, we sense our thoughts, so, given that we can sense them, they must be "physical things". I think, though, that even if we allow him this (and I'm not sure that we ought to), we (he) cannot apply the same little "trick" to awareness itself, to that which senses (*experiences*) thought in the first place, the "perceptive and experiential space" within which thought occurs. This, it would seem to me, is a whole other category of existence than "matter", and, truly, it seems to me to be highly unlikely that one might ever convincingly explain how the one category of existence might spawn the other in the direction of matter=>consciousness.

Qman:
Sorry for the interruption, but this may contribute something to this interesting discussion.
This link sheds a great deal of light on how thought, perception, and consciousness works in the human brain. It is a talk by neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. She had a stroke and as a consequence was able to deduce how the above properties arise in the left and right brain hemispheres. Totally unexpected and possibly shedding some light onto this topic.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_tay ... sight.html

[Immanuel Can]

Qman:
Sorry for the interruption, but this may contribute something to this interesting discussion.
This link sheds a great deal of light on how thought, perception, and consciousness works in the human brain. It is a talk by neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. She had a stroke and as a consequence was able to deduce how the above properties arise in the left and right brain hemispheres. Totally unexpected and possibly shedding some light onto this topic.

No problem, Qman. Your input's welcome, of course.

I've seen this video before. I like it. I think it's very interesting.

It's interesting that the one continuity in her experience is "consciousness." The "meat" of her brain is malfunctioning, and her grasp of reality is slipping in and out, but whatever "ghost" is inside that "machine," it's still rapidly doing whatever it is that strange creature does. Even when she says, "my brain went totally silent," even at that moment, she's asking herself how "cool" it is to be inside a silent brain. How can the "self" still be, in some manner, operating when the material isn't feeding it correct impressions from reality?

It's interesting that she experienced the collapse of her brain functions as a "spiritual." Some people would cynically say something like, "It just proves that spiritual people are all brain damaged." Others would say that maybe there's something fundamentally "spiritual" in our essential constitution, a thing which is resisted by our strict Physicalism. As for Dr. Bolte, after it was all over, the residual impression is of the "spiritual," not of the necessity of the physical.

As "proof," perhaps it doesn't prove which conclusion to believe -- or neither -- since it is only one person's experience, and an experience produced by a neurological malfunction at that; but it is terribly interesting and provocative. And Dr. Bolte is a good speaker.

Thanks for reminding me of this; I'm sure those who have not seen it will also find it stimulating of further reflection.

[Harry Baird]

Nice, I like having my views challenged in that way, thanks mate. It's very helpful in developing them.

Well, I tried to clarify in the following few sentences, one of which you quote below, that by "conscious function" I meant at the broadest possible level, that by which consciousness "functions" in providing us with experiences according to which we (broadly speaking) suffer or feel pleasure. *That* is the level at which I think all conscious beings are equally valuable, at least from a moral perspective.

I don't see anything self-evidently compelling in this suggestion, Harry. We are "conscious" -- so what? We "feel pain and pleasure" -- so what? The mere *fact* that we experience these things does not get us the *value conclusion* that this is right or wrong, merely that it *is so.* To refer to one of this month's PN articles, how do we get an "ought" from your mere "is" statement?

There's nothing the compels us to "a moral perspective" here. And I think there should be. I think you think there should be too. But what is it?

"Capacity to experience" has precisely the same problem.

To kind of come at your question (how do we get an "ought" from an "is") from the side (and then subsequently deal with the need for a direct response): I think we have to start with the fact that there *is* an ought in the first place - there are few of us (certainly neither you nor I) who deny the reality of moral prescriptiveness - so it has to arise *somehow*. If it doesn't arise from an "is", then what's the alternative? "Because God says"? But then we have to deal with the Euthyphro Dilemma. No doubt, you have some sort of response to this dilemma, and I'd be interested to know what it is. But it seems to me that based on the two horns of the dilemma, either morality would be whimsical, which, it seems to me, would disqualify it as "objective", or morality would be anterior to God, in which case we still have not discovered the basis for its objectivity, and, in which case, we might very well come to the view that my notion of the inherency of objective morality in conscious experience is compatible with a "Because God says" view of morality anyway, and that they are not really alternatives - and, in fact, this is the view that I *do* take.

Are there any other alternatives that I've missed? Perhaps there are more than these two, but right now, it seems to me that the latter is inadequate (at least insofar as the two views do not coalesce as I described), and it then remains to me to show that the former *is* adequate, lest we be left without *any* explanation, and so - to my direct response:

...what could be more self-evident to conscious beings such as ourselves, who *do* experience such things, that we *ought* to promote the one, and *ought* to diminish the other? Is this not what morality, at root, reduces to? One main difference, it seems to me, between different moralities, is that they are based in different ideas of *what* leads to pleasurable and/or painful conscious experiences...

That's the point, Harry --it's not "self-evident" at all.

Well, you say this, and yet I think you *might* admit that if, when you asked me, "Why is it wrong to stick a small child's hand in a fire?", I were to reply, "Because it would cause that child to suffer", I *would* have meaningfully answered your question. As far as I'm concerned, that's as far as it goes, and I would have *sufficiently* answered your question; that's in my view the only grounding for objective morality that there is: the very nature of suffering is what compels the "ought" of "We ought not to unnecessarily cause others to suffer", and similarly but in reverse for causing pleasure. Honestly, I'm not sure what more you could hope for; what more there could possibly be. But you do seem to hope for more - can you give me any sort of idea of what that is, and how we might arrive at it?

Here's another way to come at it, just for completeness. I'd like to borrow something that I wrote in a post in another thread:

"Needs" are always (it seems to me) relative to goals and objectives. We "need" to eat relative to our goal of physical survival. We "need" to visit the newsagent relative to our goal of obtaining the latest issue of our favourite magazine.

I would suggest that the same is true of "oughts". We "ought" to eat relative to our goal of physical survival. We "ought" to visit the newsagent relative to our goal of obtaining the latest issue of our favourite magazine.

These examples, of course, are not moral oughts. So, what makes an "ought" moral? Can you guess what my answer is? If you guessed that my answer would be that what makes an "ought" moral is that it is relative to our goal of promoting pleasure and minimising suffering, then you guessed right.

But, of course, the question of justification inevitably raises its head, in this alternative formulation as much as in the original, and it does so in this way: why would/should we have the goal of promoting pleasure and minimising suffering in the first place? And my answer to that is: we simply *do* by the very *definitions* - i.e. natures - of suffering and pleasure! Suffering is by definition (I would argue) that which we seek to minimise (overall, at least), and pleasure is by definition that which we seek to promote (again, overall, at least). So, again, even in this alternative formulation, it all seems very self-evident (inherent in the nature of conscious experience) to me, and as objective (deriving from the nature of conscious experience) as it can get.

Your description of morality turns out to be purely Utilitarian.

I'm not entirely sure about that, but then, I'm not well read in moral theory, so I'm not entirely sure quite *how* to label my own idea of morality. It is to some extent rights-based, and, given that, I'm not sure it's "purely" Utilitarian, although without doubt it makes use of Utilitarian concepts.

And the critiques of Utilitarianism are many and well-known, so there's no reason for me to relist them here -- unless you decide you want me to, of course.

I do decide! I would be very interested to hear these critiques, and assess to what extent they apply to my own views.

Some systems think that causing or accepting pain is acceptable in certain cases, and in others positively morally meritorious. Pleasures, in a similar way, can be both good and evil, and are characterized differently by different systems.

But none of that is incompatible with my views...

Causing pain is acceptable when there is no alternative, or, in certain cases with more restrictions than I'm mentioning, when it leads to greater future well-being (and could be morally meritorious for that reason too - enhancing (especially another's) future well-being). And pleasure can be evil when it leads to (especially a greater amount of, and especially for others) future suffering.

Yes, there are different systems of moral prescriptions, but that's not fatal to my view either, because I think that morality is objective only at the most abstract level of "we ought to promote pleasure and to diminish pain"; *how* to go about doing that both generally and in specific cases is to *some* extent a matter of opinion/heuristics.

"Self-evidence" is what people allude to when they have absolutely *no* evidence. Personally, you can trust that I will not refer to "self-evidence" in order to back a questionable view of my own; but because I will not, I feel quite free to call "foul" whenever others try it. There is no such thing as "self-evidence."

Come on now, don't hold back, mate.

I wonder whether your view that there is 'no such thing as "self-evidence"' would extend to the proposition "I [Immanuel Can] exist[s]"?

e.g. in Christianity, unredeemed sin leads one to the painful experience of hell, which is one reason why tempting a man into sin, and thus promoting rather than diminishing his potential future suffering, is an immoral act. Of course, there is a lot more that could be said about Christian morality and how I would frame it in terms of what I see as an objective moral grounding, but I won't bend your ear too much.

Bend on, Harry...I'm interested.

Actually, Christianity is no example of pain-pleasure calculus. You forget that it's centered on a Man who was brutally crucified and who never morally deserved it at all, and then was resurrected in defiance of this brutal human judgment by a righteous God. There has never been a more powerful statement that the moral values of God are not those of mankind. Pain, in this case, is the price of love, and is what a God of righteousness and kindness puts upon Himself in order to obtain redemption for human beings who have, of their own free will, gone astray from right relationship with their Creator.

I'm so glad you brought up Christ's sacrifice, because it's a case in point, and it's odd that you don't see this *exactly* as a pain-pleasure calculus, as I do. The point of Christ's sacrifice (short-term pain) was... the redemption of mankind, the ultimate in long-term "pleasure".

Bending on - basically, how I would frame the moral prescriptions in Christianity is in this way: they ultimately are for our benefit (or would be, in the case that they were/are correct, which I don't personally know to be true) in exactly the way I see as moral - in other words, they are (with the same qualification) for our increased long-term pleasure and decreased long-term suffering - but it is not always or necessarily immediately apparent to *us* just *why* this is so; it is only because (the Christian) God knows everything that He *does* know why these particular prescriptions have that effect. I'm not really sure how you could find objection in this - why *else* would God have provided these moral prescriptions? For the mere fun of it? I don't think any Christian would argue that it was not for our benefit, which, essentially, if a little crudely, reduces to "for our future pleasure".

Now it's my turn to echo you: thank you for provoking me to deeper reflection!

--- Response to QMan's first post before change of subject ---

Hey, QMan, that's a great video (of the doctor's near-death experience)! I'd heard of her story before but not seen that particular interview until you posted it in another thread. You might also like Todd Burpo's story - there are quite a few YouTube videos about it. His parents wrote a book based on his story called "Heaven is for Real". I haven't read the book yet but it does sound well worthwhile.

--- Subject change ---

Let me start by saying that perhaps some of what is sponsoring your objections is a somewhat stereotypical and crabbed view of what you might call "Heaven." The Bible generally says very little about it, beyond "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him." It says nothing about harps, wings and togas, and it has much more to say about the reconstituted Earth by comparison. If you try to shed those somewhat cliched preconceptions we have been handed by weak theology and the media, then some of what is perplexing you about the Heaven idea will alter, I think.

Hmm, well, I didn't say anything about harps, wings and togas either, only that (as far as I understand Christian doctrine) in heaven, there is no possibility of harm. Does that accord with your own views on the matter?

Later I will talk more about Heaven if you like, but I think we need to start at the other end right now, and that is the question of whether or not human beings have any kind of freedom at all. For if they do not, then Heaven and Hell and everything in between make no sense at all. After all, why discuss a state you haven't yet found the reasons to believe in?

Oh, but I do believe in it - not least of all because of testimony like that of the doctor in the video QMan linked to. I'd be interested in hearing you talk more about heaven, but for now all I really hope for is your acknowledgement/denial that there is no possibility of harm in heaven. My assumption that you acknowledge it forms the basis of some of my arguments, so it's kind of hard to proceed in parts without knowing whether or not I've made a false assumption.

Sure, but even in a fallen Creation, one would not expect a wholly good, immensely powerful and *unopposed* Creator to simply permit people to do harm to one, would one? The Christian belief is that God is one's best friend, right? What kind of a best friend sits by idly whilst His best friends are harmed, without stepping in to prevent that harm, even though He has more power than could ever be imagined to be enough to do exactly that?

Have you ever taught a child to ride a bike? Heck, did you ever have a child at all?

No to both. I made the decision very early in life (when I was still a child myself) not to have children, and up until this point in my life I have not seen fit to change my mind, nor my reasons. The population of the Earth was around 4 billion when I made my decision; it has nearly doubled since then. To me, apparently-unchecked growth in a finite and already over-taxed medium is a serious problem, and I couldn't in good conscience contribute to it; indeed, I am disappointed in myself for not doing enough to contribute to a *solution* to this problem. Aside from that ethical/environmental concern, I have no desire to introduce unnecessary responsibilities into my life - I find it hard enough to make responsible decisions for myself, let alone adding dependants into the mix.

If you did, you let him be harmed in order to achieve something you considered more important. You sent him/her out on a date, knowing all the while that he/she was going to be hurt emotionally because very few teen relationships endure. You let him/her go to a school where they would take away his/her freedoms and subject him/her to humiliating tests; where scores of his/her peers would be assembled and might easily pick on him/her. You let him/her wear painful braces on his/her teeth. You let him/her play sports and sustain injuries. In a thousand ways, you opened him/her up to harm, knowing full well what the risks were. And yet you did it, and you called it "love."

Pain is not an unconditional evil; its evilness depends on whether or not what is potentially gained is capable of relativizing the price that must be paid. Likewise, "harm prevention" is not always an expression of love -- especially in cases where cutting off someone from the potential of harm leaves him or her stunted, controlled and dominated. You can become a very bad parent by thinking of nothing but harm-prevention.

"Harm" is also perceivable in two dimensions. There is "harm" in this life, and "harm" in eternity. I don't think I'll have to make the case that eternal "harm," if such exists, is by far the worse of the two. One might excuse a great many "harms" now in order to avoid eternal "harm."

All of which makes perfect sense assuming the possibility of harm in the first place, but what I'm arguing is that this possibility need not exist - indeed, if my assumption is correct, you even believe in a place where it *doesn't* exist. Given, then, that it's possible for it not to exist in some realm, why not everywhere?

I'd like, if I may, to contrast the two scenarios. In my (tentatively/provisionally-suggested) dualistic scenario, pain exists as motivation for us (as agents/aspects of the one pole of the duality, in the face of the machinations of the opposing pole) to evolve; to strengthen and sophisticate our wills and consciousnesses. This is, ultimately, for the good of all, because enhanced sophistication opens up enhanced possibilities (upon reunification, on which, more below) for pleasurable experiences.

In the Christian scenario, there is no such justification for pain. The Christian God, being perfect, could have created a perfect universe (a universe where all there was was heaven) where the thought of harming another simply never occurred to any of the beings in that universe; where there was no possibility of a "fall" because no beings ever had even the possibility of evil thoughts; indeed, where evil itself did not exist.

Now, I think you are saying (and please correct me if I've misunderstood): oh, but there *is* a justification for pain on the Christian view; that it is entailed by "genuine freedom". We apparently disagree on that, more on which following:

But why should *others* have to suffer for *your* bad choices? I could totally understand a concept of freedom like that which you propose if, when you did the wrong thing, *you*, and you alone, suffered for it, and if, when you did the right thing, *you*, and you alone, benefited from it, but why should we accept the notion of collateral damage given an all powerful Creator who can step in to prevent it?

I want to answer this question. But before I do, we have a problem: you don't even believe in the concept of human freedom, apparently. Until I can make the case to you that individual freedom requires that one be free to do both good or evil it would be premature to move on to explanations of how that illuminates the suffering of others. So I must first establish whether or not you recognize that basic to human freedom is the ability to choose *both* good and evil.

I recognise that the ability to choose both good and evil *is* basic to human freedom, but not that it *would be* if the Christian God truly did exist. I see no advantages in this freedom (on the Christian view), only disadvantages. Seriously, name me an advantage. If we are free to choose evil, then sometimes we will - in what way is this of benefit to anybody? Aren't we all striving to be good people, or at least is this not the ideal? If so, why would a handicap in that respect (potential to succumb to temptation to *not* be good) be of any value whatsoever? I just really don't see anything about the freedom to do evil that would interest a perfect, good God in imbuing it in His Creation.

Furthermore: is not (the Christian) God Himself incapable of evil? And is (the Christian) God not infinitely admirable? So then, is this not suggestive that such a thing (lack of capacity for evil) is admirable and desirable? Why, then, would (the Christian) God imbue His creatures with anything less?

In case you plan to object with (despite that it is God's nature) "but this would limit our freedom", then consider this: freedom is *infinite* no matter whether we are free to do evil or not! I am free to give my friends (and the world) this gift or that gift or the other gift; to *create* any of an infinite number of gifts - poems, songs, paintings, computer programs, dances, affirmations, touches, personalised handshakes, praises, recognitions, sacrifices, puzzles, games, toys, light shows and jokes, all without the slightest expression of evil. I am free to express my individuality *without* harming anybody in any of an infinity of ways: I can choose to be introverted, extroverted, silly, serious, fun, spontaneous, quirky, unpredictable, random, smart, considered, measured, gentle or assertive. What more freedom is necessary than *that*?? Why would I want to be free to be (tempted to be) evil too? What possible benefit could that bring me or anybody else?

For, if, as you write in your first sentence, freedom includes the option to do either kindness or harm, then how can those in heaven be considered to be "free", since heaven is a place where there *is* no option of harm? And if those in heaven are not free, yet you (presumably, as a Christian) aspire to heaven, then of what ultimate value is this supposed freedom anyway?

Well firstly, Heaven is not what you think it is. But secondly, and more importantly, the freedom to choose does not have to be perpetual in order to be genuine. For example, if your wife *chose* to give her life to being married to you, that was a free act. She does not afterward have to go and be with other men to *prove* that her choice to continue with you is still a free one. It is enough that she had the option to choose other men, or none at all, and chose you instead. She did it once, and it was done. She made a free decision, and this free choice of hers is the basis of your permanent relationship. Yet there is no loss of genuineness in the choice, though it is now permanent. In fact, I might dare to hope she's found the relationship itself is a new and deeper grounds for freedom, not a mere limitation on her ability to choose other partners. Yet that initial free choice is crucial: without that, she would not truly be your wife in the full, free sense that relationship should imply.

If we choose relationship with God, that choice can be permanent, and yet we do not need to revisit that choice on an ongoing basis in order to know it was the right one. There is no loss of freedom in that; there is rather an embracing of right relationship, grounded in free choice.

Yet if we are to *remain* free (as you would have freedom, not as I would have it (given a Christian God)), would it not be necessary that we might at any point *change* our "permanent" choice? Is it not possible (of course it's not, mate, I'm speaking hypothetically of course!) that your wife will one day decide that she no longer wishes to be with you? Is it not possible that a person who has chosen a relationship with God will one day change his/her mind? Yet, in heaven, apparently, such choices are *not* possible. So, surely, heaven is (by your view, not by mine) a place where we are not "genuinely free"? And yet you aspire to it. What, then, to repeat my question in my previous post, is the value of "genuine freedom" if you aspire to a lack of it?

foreknowledge + creatorial "making" = creatorial responsibility for "created-permitted" decisions

I think perhaps I'm finally seeing your distinction: correct me if I'm not yet getting it. You are suggesting that even if we *were* free, then God would still be responsible for the evil that happened in the world simply by dint of having the power to prevent it and not doing it. Is that what you meant?

Pretty much, yes, but contingent on an understanding of what "power to prevent it" means. It all hinges on whether or not and to what extent (the Christian) God is an interventionist God. If He were more like a deist God, then He would have more limited preventive powers - basically either "do not create" or "tinker with the initial parameters so as to produce more favourable results": again, granting that the results are not "predetermined", and that they entail free will human choices - but also recognising that they are nevertheless foreknown (by God), and thus that in some sense God is responsible for those results if He creates anyway foreknowing what evil will come of/in His Creation (per my "free will android" analogy).

But Christians believe in an interventionist God, not a deist God, so we can certainly say that the possibilities for prevention are much more sophisticated. Still, we do not know to what extent exactly (the Christian) God intervenes, nor to what extent his intervention inspires free will choices. Does He intervene so as to "place a soul in a body"? Does He intervene so as to "nudge people in the right direction"? These seem to me to be compatible with Christian doctrine. This, then, gives God great scope to change the parameters upon which free will choices are built, and thus to change the results of the free will choices themselves - again admitting that God is not "predestining" those free will choices so much as ... Himself "choosing" which free will choices will (given His creation/intervention and His foreknowledge of what we will choose given the parameters of that creation/intervention) exist.

Does that make sense to you? It's all very clear in my own mind.

If so, then I see why you're saying you're not a Calvinist Predestinarian about this. But then I also don't understand the second part of this...

Hmm. It seems I'm still not communicating my point as effectively as I might hope to. Let me press on in hope!

I agree. I just don't think that this is sufficient to absolve a Creator of responsibility for *instantiating us and all of our future decisions in the first place, knowing what they would be* when He could have chosen not to. I think the fact that *He chose* to bring us into existence, including all of our (admittedly, free will) decisions, knowing from before He brought us into existence what they would be, when He could have alternatively chosen *not* to instantiate us, confers at least *some* moral responsibility onto Him for those decisions.

I get what you're saying about God creating *us*, but if you include *our decisions,* then it falsifies your claim not to be a Calvinist.

Hmm. Either the distinction between Calvinism and my own view is eluding you, or I am mistaken that there is in fact a distinction. But I really don't think I'm mistaken, so I'll press on trying to elucidate the distinction. Let me try to expand on it, and its problems:

OK, so, the Christian God Creates, without "forcing" any choice on anybody; everybody in His Creation is free to choose as they see fit. At the same time, He knew *before* Creating *what* we would all choose, and when. Furthermore, He intervenes from time to time in His Creation, and likewise, we will make (free) choices in response to those interventions, and, likewise, He will know beforehand what our choices will be.

So, it's kind of tricky. On the one hand, He doesn't "force" us to make any of our choices, since we have genuine free will. On the other hand, He is free to alter the parameters of His Creation and His intervention therein, such that, with the different parameters, we make different (free will) decisions *which he foreknows before prompting them*. So, it's not quite the case that in doing so He "determines" our decisions, since He cannot (does not) abrogate our free will, but I think (would you agree?) that it's fair to say that He "picks" them (out of the mass of possibilities available through His various possible interventions and choices of different parameters, foreknowing what choices (of ours) will result from those interventions and parameters).

I really hope I've explained myself as clearly as possible, but, no doubt, I can do better.

I'm arguing that the very idea that God micromanages our decisions is Hypercalvinism and erroneous, and if you believed it would make you a Strict Determinist at the very least, a position I would never wish to defend. I think it's simply wrong. I suggest that God does not "make our decisions for us."

Yes, yes, I agree that God doesn't "micromanage" our decisions, but with the (tricky) qualification I raised above: that even though (the Christian) God doesn't "make" (or "micromanage") our decisions for us, He *does* choose (Himself) the initial and interventionist parameters which lead to the choices He foreknows we will make, and in a sense "picks from our alternative choices and 'instantiates' us in one or the other scenario in which He foreknows (and in a sense, then, 'permits') the actual choices that we *will* (free willingly) make".

Again, trying, but no doubt failing, to be as clear as possible.

All I'm asking at the moment is, "If human freedom were a real thing (and you needn't concede that it is, if you like) then what would be rationally required in order for it to exist?" I'm suggesting that a minimal definition would include the ability to choose *both* for *and* against God. Can we agree at least to that -- even hypothetically?

I can't agree to that, no. I can conceive of a perfectly satisfactory, and, what's more, *desirable* freedom (reference the infinity of good freedoms I listed above) in which I did not have the ability to choose against God. Why on Earth would I want that freedom? It would be an abominable error to choose against God, would it not?! My soul would be damned and my pain intractably unbearable for eternity! Why on Earth would I want to be free to make a mistake of that magnitude? Good lord, man, I am a computer programmer, and I don't even desire to be free to make the mistake of introducing bugs into my own programs - they sometimes take days of painstaking detection and analysis to eliminate - why would I be content with the possibility of making an error that would damn me into insufferable agony for eternity?! Equally relevant: why would any truly good God be satisfied with the possibility that any of His creations might *make* that error (with His foreknowledge, and hence, capacity to avoid, no less!)?

Here's a better analogy:

I think this shows me a little better what you're trying to say to me, Harry. You're trying to say, "If God foreknows, why does He not prevent; and if he does not prevent, then is He not being unconscionable?" Is that right?

Something very much like that, yes - again, as I wrote above, predicated on an understanding of what "prevention" means (see above).

What if the price of prevention were the loss of genuine freedom -- not just for one person, but for everyone? What if the only way to keep evils from ever happening were the total deprivation of all choice, the destruction of the self, the elimination of the very grounds of personhood, and the reduction of the world itself to a petty exercise in robotics? Is there no way you could conceive of that as being a greater evil than the allowance of possibility of "harm"? Because I would think it is worse, and I think most people who thought it through might well agree.

Wow! I have no belief, nor do I think it can be rationally justified, that freedom from the desire to do harm entails all of *that*! All I can do is refer you to the examples of harm-free-but-nevertheless-infinite freedom which I offered above, and suggest that they are more than enough (and satisfying) for both you and I, and, indeed, for every created being.

Well, Biblically speaking, God is a "Person," which would mean He can "feel," of course. But he's the prototype, and we are the copy, so our ability to "feel" is but a pallid analogical reflection of His greater ability. So it would not be a surprise if He could. At the same time, since our abilities are only a pallid copy, He might choose sometimes to use anthropomorphic language concerning Himself, merely to make himself analogically comprehensible to us in our limited state. Yet we should not push analogical statements too far: for example, the Bible talks of "the right hand of God," and that is clearly an analogy. How God "feels," then should not be taken to be too directly comparable to how we "feel."

Hmm. I can't think of even an analogical "feeling" that could explain why God would "react with emotion" if He knew in advance what was going to happen (and which He, in a sense, as I've been arguing throughout this and the past few posts, "picked to happen"). At least not if He's perfect. A perfect being would have perfect control of itself, and it's far from self-controlled to react to that which you knew in advance (and even picked) was going to happen. Perhaps you can clue me in though.

In a similar way, statements about God being "sorry" or "repenting" or "changing His mind" about something should clearly not be taken as literal statements but rather analogical ones, I would suggest. Consequently, how far we could take them remains an open question, not a certainty on either side. I take them to anthropomorphize an action to a level we can understand, rather than to be an exhaustive description of the cognitions and of the actions of God. Thus I would not personally choose to take refuge in such statements to build my case for free will. I will make it on other grounds, so you may feel free if you wish to ignore those analogical statements.

Sure: because I am basing my case on (the Christian) God's foreknowledge, and because I had been suggesting that (the Christian) God's (Biblical) emotional reactions count towards an invalidation of His foreknowledge, I'm more than happy to have your permission to ignore them!

However, I would grant you that foreknowledge is a very strong doctrine, Biblically speaking, and it doesn't suffer from analogical uncertainties in the way that statements of "feeling" on God's part do.

Sweet, I don't lose my argument from foreknowledge.

Why need "genuine" freedom include the ability to harm others? I can perfectly well imagine a very satisfying freedom in which neither I nor anyone else had any inclination to harm anyone else. Indeed, isn't this the Christian ideal?

Indeed it is. But I'm going to later suggest there are reasons why, if "freedom" is to be real at all, that there has to be some period of time in which another state of affairs is possible.

Hmm, I haven't been able to find this later suggestion. Do you mean in a later post? It doesn't seem to be subsequent in this one.

That period of time need not be forever (and indeed, it cannot be) but it has to have obtained at some point. If you think of the marriage example I used earlier, you'll catch the drift --if your wife never had a choice about marrying someone else or staying single, then she never had a choice to marry you; and she isn't your wife, she's your prisoner.

Not if she wanted you anyway.

Aside from that, I can only repeat my earlier suggestion that your notion of freedom seems to imply that the possibility of re-choosing (changing one's mind) is perpetual, and thus that the "period of time in which another state of affairs is possible" *must be* (as opposed to your "cannot be") forever. And if in your view it doesn't imply this, then you only validate the idea that this "freedom" is not in fact necessary, because there are periods of (ongoing) time during which it need (does) not apply.

So you're really not a Gnostic, then? Nor an evil/good Dualist? Are you opting instead for a sort of Darwinian account? (your subsequent statement at least suggests that possibility)

To be honest (alas, my impoverished reading), I'm not entirely sure what a Gnostic is. I gather that it has something to do with "direct knowledge of God". If so, I can only say that I have had some... suggestive... experiences, but nothing that would incline me to say that I "know" God. My views are almost entirely based on reasoning from (other) experience(s). I would say that I am an evil/good Dualist, yes, but at the same time I would say that my (provisional/tentative) suggestion is based on evolution of the Source, yes. More on this below.

But if so, then evil has no cure at all...in a Darwinian view, evil and the so-called "good" are both merely byproducts of an impersonal, contingent process called "evolution."

Yes, as metaphysical, embodied forces, good and evil are "by-products" of the decision of the Source to split itself into polarities to further Its own evolution (for the ultimate good), but this is not to say that there is no "cure" for evil - more on this below.

Just as with the Dualism problem, there is no such thing as "evil" except to mean "what I don't happen to like," and there's no such thing as injustice, only "I don't like what chance gave me."

Again: no no, evil is "that which causes (overall) suffering", and (to introduce a new and very provisional definition [edit: which on reflection seems pretty inadequate, but I will leave it for now]) injustice is that which unfairly promotes suffering for no good reason.

There is absolutely no remedy for evil in such a world either. Yet perhaps you have a different option in mind...

I do (have a different option in mind)! You suggest below that 'there's zero chance we'll ever "defeat" [evil]', and yet I have not stipulated this, this is something you have (incorrectly) inferred on your own. Just because conscious Reality split in two does not mean it will never be Whole again, nor that the righteous will never dominate and defeat the wicked!

don't know the ultimate explanation for duality, but here's just one possibility: conscious Reality (all that existed in the first place) split itself in two in an intuitive move for reasons we cannot know, but potentially to do with fostering the evolution of Itself. After all, we are all familiar with the concept of an "arms race" and the incredible technology that results from such a thing, not to mention the superhuman feats that people accomplish in the "necessity" of defending themselves in war. Is it not possible that this duality is Reality's attempt to generate an internal "arms race" and thus facilitate Its own evolution?

Indeed, this is "a different option"! This is a new one: I've never seen it before. Interesting, and yet quite savage. You mean that "evolution" "wants" something?

No, I didn't "anthropomorphise evolution", instead I suggested that an anthropomorphic primary force ("God", if you will, only I will not use that word, because I prefer to use it for the good pole of the duality, so let's instead use the term "the Source") desired to further its own evolution. It is not "evolution" that wants something, but the Source (its own evolution).

Why would it want this? Well, consider it like this: you're a strapping and fit young lad with a lot of potential, you could go far with your physical aptitude: stamina, endurance, flexibility, strength, and reactivity. But you're on your own. You kind of try a few things on your own, mess around with this and that, but there's no sense of urgency, no feeling of reality to the need to grow in physical aptitude, and it's really hard on your own to stimulate your growth. One day, you have a brilliant idea! What if you pitted yourself against people in mortal combat?! Would that not *necessitate* your growth as a physical being? So, you sign up with a martial arts academy. Suddenly, you're not only training with people "on your side", but you're cast against fighters who are "out to get you". The only way to win is to be better than them, and you are suddenly *forced* to improve yourself. You have no other option, lest you be beaten senseless in the ring.

I'm suggesting that this is the way it is with the Source: it was alone, unable to realise its potential in any realistic way save by creating (by splitting) an opposing force which *impelled* its growth (evolution) as a "fighter". Now, I'm not saying that this is the way it will be forevermore, in fact I'm actually suggesting that at some point there will be a reunion, in which all of the lessons learnt by both "fighters" on opposing teams will be integrated, with the result that the Union has more "stamina, endurance, flexibility, strength, and reactivity" than it could ever possibly hope to have had had it not split and challenged itself. And all of these things, analogically, contribute to a sophistication and hence enhancement of its capacity for pleasure, the enhancement of which, as I have been trying to suggest, is one of the key components of morality. All of which is not to say that prior to the Union, it will not at times be a bitter, ugly and merciless struggle... just that it will be (Source hopes) worth it in the end (short term pain for long term gain).

(Surely that is an analogical problem even greater than anthopomorphisms of the Supreme Being.) How odd would that be: that an impersonal, deterministic process "wants" something?

Well, like I said, it is not the process that wants, but the original, conscious, Source. If you ask me the cause of this Source, I can only say that the answer (whatever it is) is the same as for the Christian God.

Why should we think it should "get" what it "wants" anyway?

Whether or not we think it "should" we'd better hope that it *does*, because we are inextricably a part of its destiny.

Should we embrace it, along with the evils it entails, or should we fight it?

In this scenario, the only choice, as for God, is "overcome or suffer" (unless others offer to suffer on your behalf).

And how the heck would we ever know?

Through experience and reasoning - that's the way I came to this idea. I'm not sure whether everyone else has the same opportunities. I would hope that if they don't, they at least "fight the good fight" regardless.

In fact, why should we even *care* where "the race" is going, and not just take care of our own skinny selves?

Because we are inextricably linked to its outcome. We are part of God's team; if His team fails, we go down with it.

So many questions!

Feel free to pose as many more as you like.

But if, as Dualism implies, this "merciless oppositional force" is one of the two basic constituents of reality, Harry, then there's zero chance we'll ever "defeat" it, since that would mean "defeating" the nature of reality itself.

No, as I said above, there are various possibilities, one being that it is possible for the one pole to defeat the other, and the other that there is a sort of "timeout" reunion, where, after a certain period of time, both poles are reunited to integrate their lessons, regardless of which one was "winning" at the time.

And how could that possibly be "meaningful"?

The meaning comes in the joy of the lessons learnt through mortal combat. Isn't that how we got the internet? Through, essentially, a department of war evolving its technology to have the upper hand in battle? And who could deny the civil (reunion) benefits of that technology? I'm suggesting that the same thing occurs when Source reunifies: it reaps the "civil" benefits of the wartime technologies developed by its opposing dualities.

If its contrary to the fabric of reality itself, then from whence this strange quality you call "meaning"?

It's not contrary to the fabric of reality; what you refer to as "the fabric of reality" is actually a contrivance of Source, the original, unified consciousness which might otherwise (if we are not to reserve that word for the good pole of the duality), be referred to as "God".

Yes, Harry, very: I'm finding this conversation very fresh, interesting and engaging. Please continue as long as you feel likewise.

If I told you how long it has taken me to compose this post (I dare not, you would be shocked), you would know that I most certainly *do* feel likewise.

P.S. I know you're still wondering "Why should others suffer for our bad choices?" and I want to honour that question, because I think it's fair and important: but I need to see where we are on the issue of personal freedom first, okay? Then I will move on to that answer. Feel free to remind me if, for any reason, I forget. As soon as we get a mutually agreed upon definition for "freedom," then let's go there.

It's OK, I can't see us ever getting there, because I can't see myself accepting a definition of freedom (given the Christian God) that allows for harm in the first place. But sure, I'm open to the possibility that you will convince me, and that the question will then become relevant, in which case I'll try to remind you to answer it.

--- Responding to QMan's second post ---

Sorry for the interruption, but this may contribute something to this interesting discussion.
This link sheds a great deal of light on how thought, perception, and consciousness works in the human brain. It is a talk by neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. She had a stroke and as a consequence was able to deduce how the above properties arise in the left and right brain hemispheres. Totally unexpected and possibly shedding some light onto this topic.

Wow! What a brilliant talk! Jill is a talented speaker, she really knows how to convey her own experience to others, almost viscerally. Thanks for sharing that link. (Incidentally, I wonder whether I've ever left my left brain!)

(Justified) praise over, I'll only suggest that there's not really anything in that speech that suggests a solution to the problem of how matter might produce consciousness.

[Immanuel Can]

Holy Toledo, Harry...

Well, I may have met my match for extended messages. Despite that, you've got a lot of interesting stuff there.

I think we have to start with the fact that there *is* an ought in the first place - there are few of us (certainly neither you nor I) who deny the reality of moral prescriptiveness - so it has to arise *somehow*. If it doesn't arise from an "is", then what's the alternative? "Because God says"? But then we have to deal with the Euthyphro Dilemma. No doubt, you have some sort of response to this dilemma, and I'd be interested to know what it is.

Indeed I do. I think it's actually a false problem.

Why do I say that, you ask? I'm so glad you asked.

As William Lane Craig has pointed out, for Plato, "gods" meant a plurality of putatively divine beings, each with it's own bailiwick or responsibilties, and each squabbling with others. Thus it always made good sense to ask questions like "Do the gods approve something because it's good, or is it good because they approve it?" because there was always a difference between what any particular "god" in the polytheistic pantheon wanted and what was ultimately "right" or "good"? So if Poseidon wanted to shipwreck Ulysses, and Athena wanted to get him home, the "good" might well be one, the other, or a third thing that neither of them wanted -- in short, there was a basic conceptual difference between "good" and "the will of the gods."

But consider the Monotheistic view. In that case, "good" is a characteristic of God. He wants "good" because He is "good," and it is "the good" because it is according to the basic character of the goodness of the Supreme Being. In other words, there is no longer any conceptual difference between the terms, "what God approves" and "the good". They are alternate descriptions of precisely the same thing.

If Dr. Craig is correct (and I think he is) then Euthyphro question thus has no more sense to it than the question, "Are you a bachelor or a male?" or "Is that a cat or a feline?" There's no "or" anymore, because one does not exclude the other. God can be said to be good because He is God, and yet from another perspective, good is also defined by the character of God Himself. There is no conflict there, just two sides of the same coin, so to speak.

Of course, that solution is only available to a Monotheist. Any Polytheist is going to find the problem reappears.

As for morality being "anterior to God," as you put it, in Monotheism there is nothing "anterior to God," either conceptually or chronologically, since "God" precisely names the metaphysical Ground of being itself.

we might very well come to the view that my notion of the inherency of objective morality in conscious experience is compatible with a "Because God says" view of morality anyway, and that they are not really alternatives - and, in fact, this is the view that I *do* take.

Then we agree, after a fashion. But whereas you suggest "conscious experience" as some sort of essential ground (which I cannot see, frankly, because both human consciousness and human experience are merely contingent, and thus cannot ground any objective or non-contingent morality) I suggest that the ground of "good" is the very character of God Himself, which is not contingent.

New subject, new message next.

[Immanuel Can]

IC wrote: That's the point, Harry --it's not "self-evident" at all.

Well, you say this, and yet I think you *might* admit that if, when you asked me, "Why is it wrong to stick a small child's hand in a fire?", I were to reply, "Because it would cause that child to suffer", I *would* have meaningfully answered your question. As far as I'm concerned, that's as far as it goes, and I would have *sufficiently* answered your question; that's in my view the only grounding for objective morality that there is: the very nature of suffering is what compels the "ought" of "We ought not to unnecessarily cause others to suffer", and similarly but in reverse for causing pleasure. Honestly, I'm not sure what more you could hope for; what more there could possibly be. But you do seem to hope for more - can you give me any sort of idea of what that is, and how we might arrive at it?

Well, there's all kinds of problems with this solution, Harry. One is that you suppose it's "self-evident" that it would be wrong for me to harm a child, and I should know that. Maybe I should. But plenty of people claim not to know that.

Let's move back one step, and call it not a "child" but a "third-trimester fetus." Let's not say, "stick its hand in the fire," but something more, like "pierce its skull and suck it's brains out." Now, are there not plenty of people who will tell you that this action is not only permissible but also meritorious as an expression of my "freedom of choice" or "right to self-ownership," and that those who, like you, might oppose it are Neo-Nazi, Fundamentalist, militant, sexist, wackos? And will they not, in the same name of "morality" that you would invoke to preserve the well-being of the child call you an evil, oppressive man?

"Self-evidence" too often means no more than "It looks perfectly clear to me," but not "It is perfectly clear to everyone." In any case, by merely by defining down particular potential "people," I can justify all sorts of cruelty, and still claim to be acting "morally." It is because a "fetus" is said to have no moral standing that it can be disposed with as its carrier pleases. At one time, slaves in the US were defined out of moral "existence" by means of the same strategy. "Self-evidence" is always invoked in such cases, by all sides.

I'm not wanting to pick up the abortion debate here, and far less the slavery debate; but I do want to point out how very much we need some means of arbitration. It just can't be "self-evidence," because anybody can claim that...and who's to say they're being disingenuous? Only a larger-scale moral index could establish that.

So, what makes an "ought" moral? Can you guess what my answer is? If you guessed that my answer would be that what makes an "ought" moral is that it is relative to our goal of promoting pleasure and minimising suffering, then you guessed right.

But, of course, the question of justification inevitably raises its head, in this alternative formulation as much as in the original, and it does so in this way: why would/should we have the goal of promoting pleasure and minimising suffering in the first place? And my answer to that is: we simply *do* by the very *definitions* - i.e. natures - of suffering and pleasure! Suffering is by definition (I would argue) that which we seek to minimise (overall, at least), and pleasure is by definition that which we seek to promote (again, overall, at least). So, again, even in this alternative formulation, it all seems very self-evident (inherent in the nature of conscious experience) to me, and as objective (deriving from the nature of conscious experience) as it can get.

And what do you do with the fact that others "experience" a different moral perspective, Harry?

Not only that, but the *fact* that we "experience" something doesn't tell us whether that "experience" is justified or not. When I am dreaming, I "experience" being chased by a tiger through Selfridges. Or when I am possessed of bad information, I still "experience" the feeling of being possessed of true information. The judgment of the relevance of my particular "experience" has to come from an objective source above all experiences.

In short, we can't overcome the is-ought fallacy by pretending it doesn't exist, of course, as I can see you sense. Yet facing it reveals that we need some bridge from fact to value, to show us how the relevant facts should issue in a particular moral judgment. And that's the thing we lack.

Next message: more stuff on Utilitarianism.

[Immanuel Can]

I'm going to try to be brief on Utilitarianism, because whole books, and plenty of them, have been written on the subject. But perhaps I can point to a few traditional areas of controversy, plus what I consider to be the biggest one. But I think, Harry, you'll find it a lot to deal with...possibly too much for this forum.

Let's begin with the basic idea: Utilitarianism is the belief that one's actions are justified by their tendency to produce the greatest amount of pleasure and/or the greatest reduction of possible pain. The idea ran into its first big problem with questions over the issue of "For whom," and "How calculated." Jeremy Bentham tried to remedy this with an elaborate mechanism of calculation, synchronizing such diverse considerations as the magnitude, duration, number of individuals involved, closeness (propinquity) of the achievement, and so on. All of this has always remained very controversial, and countercases abound...but Bentham thought he had something.

On to additional problems. Another problem emerged over whether Utilitarianism should be understood as a principle for identifying right actions (Act Utilitarianism) or right principles (Rule Utilitarianism). The two conflict, and no solution has been found that can satisfy all Utilitarians.

Another problems was, "Is an act Utilitarian-moral if it actually produces a the 'good outcome' at which it aims, or is it enough that when one originally calculated, one *supposed* that it was the most likely way to achieve that end?" Then another was, does it actually have to have achieved the desired outcome in order to be judged 'right'? And if so, how can we suppose we know the relevant factors to make the right decision, when so much of life is affected by unforseeable contingencies?

Other problems have also emerged, but I think the biggest is this: the Teleological Question. That question is, "How do we know that the 'end' at which any form of Utilitarianism or Consequentialism aims is really 'right'?" And there is no singular answer at present, since there are many things that different people consider "goods" that could be the right outcome of any such calculation.

There needs to be a meta-perspective to arbitrate such disputes: but Utilitarianism and its big sister Consequentialism have no access to any such thing.

So Harry, if you're really a Utilitarian, then there are a whole lot of very compelling critiques marshalled to call your view into serious question; and three hundred years of philosophical reflection hasn't yet done the job.

Next: Why I exist.

[Immanuel Can]

I wonder whether your view that there is 'no such thing as "self-evidence"' would extend to the proposition "I [Immanuel Can] exist[s]"?

Well, it doesn't need to, Harry.

Descartes offers all you need to know that you exist. It just needs the rejoinder, "Who's askin'?" If there's no consciousness to pose the question, there's no question that needs to be answered.

Next: Theology.

[Immanuel Can]

I'm so glad you brought up Christ's sacrifice, because it's a case in point, and it's odd that you don't see this *exactly* as a pain-pleasure calculus, as I do. The point of Christ's sacrifice (short-term pain) was... the redemption of mankind, the ultimate in long-term "pleasure".

This isn't quite the way the Biblical account goes, Harry. It goes to the effect that salvation requires a thing called "grace," which amounts to "unmerited favour" given by God to those who, in and of themselves, are not really up to the price paid to obtain them.

Speaking for myself, I can easily understand why eternal fellowship with me would not be any kind of compensation for any pain at all. I'm sure I could get no end of people who would concede me that point. This I say with no false humility: I'm just not that great of a treat.

As for you, I cannot speak, of course: but the Biblical record suggest that humanity as a whole is not such a wonderful thing as they like to imagine themselves to be. Only the intrinsic goodness of God himself saves the situation.

All of which makes perfect sense assuming the possibility of harm in the first place, but what I'm arguing is that this possibility need not exist - indeed, if my assumption is correct, you even believe in a place where it *doesn't* exist. Given, then, that it's possible for it not to exist in some realm, why not everywhere?

Indeed...according to the Biblical account, it eventually can and will be everywhere.

In the Christian scenario, there is no such justification for pain. The Christian God, being perfect, could have created a perfect universe (a universe where all there was was heaven) where the thought of harming another simply never occurred to any of the beings in that universe; where there was no possibility of a "fall" because no beings ever had even the possibility of evil thoughts; indeed, where evil itself did not exist.

That is a counterfactual suggestion, so it's of course impossible for me to say what "could have" been. Yet I think there's still a key issue missing from this account. The question in hand is this: Is it possible to grant rational beings genuine freedom without allowing them any alternative but complete obedience." So far, my answer is "No," and yours is....?

Now, I think you are saying (and please correct me if I've misunderstood): oh, but there *is* a justification for pain on the Christian view; that it is entailed by "genuine freedom". We apparently disagree on that..[/quote]
Yes. We're stuck on the analysis of what constitutes genuine "choice" or genuine "freedom." That's why in my last message I put it in colour, to distinguish it as the fundamental point we need to work out before going on.

If we can agree on it, then I think I have something further to offer; if not, perhaps I can't make sense to you of how I would ever think the existence of any evil or harm could find any justification. So I'm camping on it a bit, because I consider it so important to establish.

So again, perhaps I could ask: In your analysis, what are the sufficient conditions for genuine freedom of choice?

I recognise that the ability to choose both good and evil *is* basic to human freedom,

So far so good...

but not that it *would be* if the Christian God truly did exist

.
Hmm. Too bad. We're still stuck.

I see no advantages in this freedom (on the Christian view), only disadvantages. Seriously, name me an advantage. If we are free to choose evil, then sometimes we will - in what way is this of benefit to anybody? Aren't we all striving to be good people, or at least is this not the ideal? If so, why would a handicap in that respect (potential to succumb to temptation to *not* be good) be of any value whatsoever? I just really don't see anything about the freedom to do evil that would interest a perfect, good God in imbuing it in His Creation.

For me, this misunderstands what "freedom" essentially is. My understanding is that it requires at minimum two alternatives: a yes and a no, if you will. An "I will," and an "I will not." If one of those two alternatives is not actually available, then in my understanding "freedom" is no longer an apt word to use in describing the situation.

Furthermore: is not (the Christian) God Himself incapable of evil? And is (the Christian) God not infinitely admirable? So then, is this not suggestive that such a thing (lack of capacity for evil) is admirable and desirable? Why, then, would (the Christian) God imbue His creatures with anything less?

John Milton said that human beings were created "sufficient to have stood, but free to fall." He meant that while the original creation was itself good (as the Biblical record also says), but that it had within it the possibility of genuine freedom as well -- meaning the choice to "stand" or "fall."

If we conceive of "freedom" as an essential good (which I do), then I would also argue that any state of Creation that did not include that alternative possibility would not be genuinely "good." Ironically, then, if the *possibility* (yet not the actuality, of course) of disobedience were excluded, then so would be the possibility of any genuine obedience as well; and that would clearly not be a good state of affairs. Could mankind have stood? Milton thought "Yes." But were they free to do otherwise? Again, Milton said "Yes."

freedom is *infinite* no matter whether we are free to do evil or not!

I do not think this is a true statement, at least when the issue in hand is the freedom to relate to the ultimate Source of Good Himself. I think that any "freedom" as regards that relationship would analytically also have to include the freedom to refuse such a relationship, and hence, to refuse the Good.

I think that's the core issue. All the other examples you listed are not apt examples for this situation, because the issue as I have suggested involves not merely the choice of whether or not to relate to other human beings, but rather the *choice* to relate or not to relate to *the very Source of Life, Morality, Light and Truth Himself.* The opposite choice, the opposite of these things, can only be the choice of death, immorality, darkness, lies, and all other such associated evils. I suggest that's what "The Fall" means: the rejection of such a relationship in favour of the only alternatives available to those qualities inherent in God.

Yet if we are to *remain* free (as you would have freedom, not as I would have it (given a Christian God)), would it not be necessary that we might at any point *change* our "permanent" choice? Is it not possible (of course it's not, mate, I'm speaking hypothetically of course!) that your wife will one day decide that she no longer wishes to be with you? Is it not possible that a person who has chosen a relationship with God will one day change his/her mind? Yet, in heaven, apparently, such choices are *not* possible. So, surely, heaven is (by your view, not by mine) a place where we are not "genuinely free"? And yet you aspire to it. What, then, to repeat my question in my previous post, is the value of "genuine freedom" if you aspire to a lack of it?

I would suggest this: that one can make a genuinely "free" choice that is such that one ever thereafter does not have any wish to make a contrary choice, and yet one's freedom remains. My own experience is that anyone who genuinely knows God does not wish to go back. Yet I do not feel deprived of any choice, but rather rejoice in the choice I have made, and continually find reasons to be more and more happy with that choice.

My life has not always been easy. But I can honestly say that my relationship with God is a thing that I have never had reason to regret, a thing which has become of all things most precious to me, and has yielded me every good thing I have in life. I do not feel that I am not free: but at the same time I have no desire at all to reverse that choice. I suspect I never will. God is not a disappointment; once you know Him, you can't imagine life without Him anymore.

But free? Of course: no problem there.

I can't agree to that, no. I can conceive of a perfectly satisfactory, and, what's more, *desirable* freedom (reference the infinity of good freedoms I listed above) in which I did not have the ability to choose against God. Why on Earth would I want that freedom? It would be an abominable error to choose against God, would it not?! My soul would be damned and my pain intractably unbearable for eternity! Why on Earth would I want to be free to make a mistake of that magnitude? Good lord, man, I am a computer programmer, and I don't even desire to be free to make the mistake of introducing bugs into my own programs - they sometimes take days of painstaking detection and analysis to eliminate - why would I be content with the possibility of making an error that would damn me into insufferable agony for eternity?! Equally relevant: why would any truly good God be satisfied with the possibility that any of His creations might *make* that error (with His foreknowledge, and hence, capacity to avoid, no less!)?

I would say that the answer to that was fairly straightforward: the Biblical account suggests that "The Fall" was a consequence of mankind choosing to disbelieve in the good intentions of God, and preferring to seize for themselves the knowledge of both good and evil. Yet it goes on to say that God mitigated the effects of that bad choice, and in fact made a way (at great Personal cost) to reverse the destruction of the relationship between God and man that was precipitated by mankind's foolish abuse of freedom. Moreover, out of that potentially disastrous situation a new kind of higher "good" has ultimately come -- but all of this by the grace of God, not by our wit or engineering.

You're right, then, to say that to abandon God is a foolish, irrational and horrifically self-destructive choice; the Christian view is one of salvation, however, which entails Divine rescue rather than a dependence on the ability of human beings to keep themselves from bad choices. (We're clearly not very good at that on our own.)

IC asked: What if the price of prevention were the loss of genuine freedom -- not just for one person, but for everyone? What if the only way to keep evils from ever happening were the total deprivation of all choice, the destruction of the self, the elimination of the very grounds of personhood, and the reduction of the world itself to a petty exercise in robotics? Is there no way you could conceive of that as being a greater evil than the allowance of possibility of "harm"? Because I would think it is worse, and I think most people who thought it through might well agree.

Wow! I have no belief, nor do I think it can be rationally justified, that freedom from the desire to do harm entails all of *that*! All I can do is refer you to the examples of harm-free-but-nevertheless-infinite freedom which I offered above, and suggest that they are more than enough (and satisfying) for both you and I, and, indeed, for every created being.

Not quite, Harry: I wasn't saying that "freedom from desire to do harm" entails those things, but rather that having *no* freedom would entail them. I just also suggest that "freedom" entails at least two choices, a view that, though we do not share it at present, I think essential to an understanding of the subject.

why God would "react with emotion"

You're actually taking a literalist view of that phrase when I was suggesting there were good reasons for not regarding it that way.

I would suggest that if the Supreme Being were seeking to make Himself comprehensible to the limited intellectual capabilities of finite humans, He might well use metaphor to do that, and might well use the language of the emotions that humans know to explain phenomena that are not only greater in magnitude but also not precisely equivalent in content. We routinely "step down" our language when we explain difficult concepts to children, recognizing that their limitations must be respected when we find a way to communicate with them. Why should we think the "step down" from God to man was a smaller step?

Just so, to say "God is angry" would not mean *precisely* the same thing as to say "Harry is angry." There might be some reductional content in a metaphor conceived from the human world when applied to the Supreme Being. In fact, I would be terribly surprised if it were otherwise.

Sure: because I am basing my case on (the Christian) God's foreknowledge, and because I had been suggesting that (the Christian) God's (Biblical) emotional reactions count towards an invalidation of His foreknowledge, I'm more than happy to have your permission to ignore them...

I thought you'd like that. And I'm happy to grant it. You were actually being more charitable to my case than I needed you to be.

Sweet, I don't lose my argument from foreknowledge

.
No, not at all: I would not dispute foreknowledge, just the idea that it comes bundled with Determinism.

Hmm, I haven't been able to find this later suggestion. Do you mean in a later post? It doesn't seem to be subsequent in this one.

Oh, you're quite right -- I meant that in a future message, once we'd settled the definition of "freedom," I already had an idea where our discussion might go in two or three exchanges from now. It was purely a promissory note, to be filled later.

I still offer it.

Now, can I try to summarize your own cosmology, as you spell it out at some length?

It seems to me that you are arguing that the cosmos is composed of two opposite forces -- or dieties, or whatever -- one essentially what we might call "good," and the other what we might call "evil" or "harm" or whatever. You seem to suggest that the "good Source" is sponsored by evolution, in some way, so that we as humans grow by overcoming the "evil Source." You suggest that perhaps "the righteous will dominate and defeat the wicked." (Though I'm not sure how you mean that.) This will happen, as you say, "through experience and reasoning." This triumph of "righteousness" will one day create a Unification that will eliminate the "evil" factor in the Source.

Am I getting anywhere close to the view you're suggesting?

Whew. This has been a long reply. Try to stop posing so many interesting things, Harry. I know I skipped a few passages, though for no purpose more sinister than to keep my own messages of reasonable length. Yet if in doing so I've forgotten any of the questions you deemed most important, please feel free to highlight them at the beginning of whatever reply you may choose to make, whenever you find time to make it, and I will do my best to cover them. I don't want to miss anything important.

Thanks for all the effort on your end.

[Harry Baird]

Hey there, IC,

Yes, that was a ridiculously long message of mine, but it felt necessary for some reason. I doubt that this one will be quite as long. Thanks for your continuing responses in the face of all of *that*. Once again, I'll split my post into hyphen-delimited sections mirroring your separate posts.

--- The Euthyphro Dilemma ---

Ah, I had a *hunch* you'd recur to the old WLC defence against the Euthyphro Dilemma, and, curiously enough, it's one I'm already familiar with, having some time back perused a YouTube video in which he outlines it. You summarise it as follows:

But consider the Monotheistic view. In that case, "good" is a characteristic of God. He wants "good" because He is "good," and it is "the good" because it is according to the basic character of the goodness of the Supreme Being. In other words, there is no longer any conceptual difference between the terms, "what God approves" and "the good". They are alternate descriptions of precisely the same thing.

If Dr. Craig is correct (and I think he is) then Euthyphro question thus has no more sense to it than the question, "Are you a bachelor or a male?" or "Is that a cat or a feline?" There's no "or" anymore, because one does not exclude the other. God can be said to be good because He is God, and yet from another perspective, good is also defined by the character of God Himself. There is no conflict there, just two sides of the same coin, so to speak.

But I really don't think that Dr. Craig has evaded the dilemma at all! He has, in my view, essentially simply chosen the first horn (that what God says is good because God says it is good), except that he stipulates instead of good being what God "says", good is what God "is" - and I don't see any essential difference between the two. Either way, it falls under the first horn of the dilemma, under "whimsical" or "arbitrary". There is no necessary reason why a monotheistic God *must* be good as *we* understand good to be - He might equally have been evil. Would, then, given an evil God, Dr. Craig have argued likewise that such a God was "good" by the very nature of His being? Surely not! We all know what good is, and we would recognise an evil God if we saw one. So, if we can distinguish good Gods from bad Gods, it cannot be the mere fact of being God that makes God good: there must be some independent criteria for "good" by which we can *recognise* that He is good. And I think there is, and I think it's an exceedingly simple one, as I've been trying to argue in preceding posts.

--- Self-evidence ---

One [problem --HB] is that you suppose it's "self-evident" that it would be wrong for me to harm a child, and I should know that. Maybe I should. But plenty of people claim not to know that.

I don't think self-evidence means that everybody will necessarily agree or see it for themselves. People disagree about and fail to see the self-evidence of all sorts of self-evident notions. Would you suggest that because the woman in this video fails to recognise a plainly self-evident notion, that the notion is not, after all, self-evident? Isn't the very reason this video is so popular that the notion *is* self-evident, yet that she fails to recognise that fact?

At your prompting, I won't enter into the abortion (or slavery) debate, suffice it to say that you guessed my view on that issue correctly.

And what do you do with the fact that others "experience" a different moral perspective, Harry?

I'd frame it like this: there is a moral grounding (in my view) based in the nature of conscious experience as I've described. People are free to imagine other moral groundings if they like, and many of them (apparently including yourself) do like - but because the moral grounding is common, even if not consciously recognised, most of these different ideas lead to much the same outcome in terms of a general sense of what is right and what is wrong, i.e. we generally all agree that it is bad to hurt without a good reason those who can be hurt, etc.

In short, we can't overcome the is-ought fallacy by pretending it doesn't exist, of course, as I can see you sense. Yet facing it reveals that we need some bridge from fact to value, to show us how the relevant facts should issue in a particular moral judgment. And that's the thing we lack.

Well, in fact I don't pretend it doesn't exist, you just apparently don't like my solution to it. I don't think I can explain my solution any more clearly than I have already, so it's kind of frustrating that you don't accept it. I shall have to content myself with the thought that perhaps you have intellectual commitments that prevent you from agreeing.

--- Utilitarianism ---

Thank you very much, IC, for those interesting critiques. Rather than responding to them individually, I will explain why I don't view any of them as fatal - in fact, you might already be able to glean it from what I've already written, but to be explicit and repeat myself: as I've explained, I see morality as objective only at the most abstract level of "that which detracts from the well-being of feeling creatures (which includes human creatures) ought to be avoided, and that which leads to the well-being of feeling creatures ought to be promoted". *How* to achieve those abstract aims, and what *specifically* counts as "well-being" (other than the blatantly obvious - being fed, watered and sheltered, etc) is to some extent a matter of opinion/heuristics. I am comfortable enough (although of course I would wish for agreement in the ideal) with the fact that not every utilitarian shares the same opinion or advocates the same heuristics.

I agree that it would be useful to have "a meta-perspective to arbitrate such disputes", and I suspect that you would hold that in Christianity there is such a meta-perspective. In my view, though, as I've been trying to explain, some of the tenets of Christianity, particularly with respect to God's nature, are so highly implausible as to be in need of revision, and so I obviously don't agree with you that it provides such a meta-perspective.

--- Why I exist ---

I wonder whether your view that there is 'no such thing as "self-evidence"' would extend to the proposition "I [Immanuel Can] exist[s]"?

Well, it doesn't need to, Harry.

Descartes offers all you need to know that you exist. It just needs the rejoinder, "Who's askin'?" If there's no consciousness to pose the question, there's no question that needs to be answered.

I must admit that I find your response confusing. On the one hand, you seem to suggest that "I exist" is *not* self-evident ("Well, it [my [IC's] view --HB] doesn't need to [extend to that proposition --HB]"), but then you go on to explain why it *is* self-evident. Perhaps you can clear up my confusion.

--- Theology ---

Harry: I'm so glad you brought up Christ's sacrifice, because it's a case in point, and it's odd that you don't see this *exactly* as a pain-pleasure calculus, as I do. The point of Christ's sacrifice (short-term pain) was... the redemption of mankind, the ultimate in long-term "pleasure".

IC: This isn't quite the way the Biblical account goes, Harry. It goes to the effect that salvation requires a thing called "grace," which amounts to "unmerited favour" given by God to those who, in and of themselves, are not really up to the price paid to obtain them.

Well, there's nothing in my view of (pleasure-pain calculus) morality that disqualifies (or even just qualifies the morality of) an act as moral if it is taken for the benefit of the undeserving. It only makes it even more moral.

Harry: All of which makes perfect sense assuming the possibility of harm in the first place, but what I'm arguing is that this possibility need not exist - indeed, if my assumption is correct, you even believe in a place where it *doesn't* exist. Given, then, that it's possible for it not to exist in some realm, why not everywhere?

IC: Indeed...according to the Biblical account, it eventually can and will be everywhere.

Really? You seem to interpret the Bible differently than I do. As far as I understand the Bible, heaven is not the only end-point; there is also a place of unending pain and suffering in which souls might be interred.

Now, collecting a few of your quotes together to respond to them simultaneously:

The question in hand is this: Is it possible to grant rational beings genuine freedom without allowing them any alternative but complete obedience." So far, my answer is "No," and yours is....?

[...]

So again, perhaps I could ask: In your analysis, what are the sufficient conditions for genuine freedom of choice?

[...]

My understanding is that it [freedom --HB] requires at minimum two alternatives: a yes and a no, if you will. An "I will," and an "I will not."

[...]

I do not think this is a true statement, at least when the issue in hand is the freedom to relate to the ultimate Source of Good Himself. I think that any "freedom" as regards that relationship would analytically also have to include the freedom to refuse such a relationship, and hence, to refuse the Good.

[...]

I think that's the core issue. All the other examples you listed are not apt examples for this situation, because the issue as I have suggested involves not merely the choice of whether or not to relate to other human beings, but rather the *choice* to relate or not to relate to *the very Source of Life, Morality, Light and Truth Himself.* The opposite choice, the opposite of these things, can only be the choice of death, immorality, darkness, lies, and all other such associated evils.

I think it needs to be stated up-front that the "fact" of the choice being between "relationship with God" and "death, immorality, darkness, lies, etc" is one that a powerful Creator would have to take responsibility for. It need not be this way. There are certainly other possibilities. I think you might admit that many atheists, despite not relating to God, nevertheless lead moral lives, and are not evil people. It is only in the Creator's "set-up" that they are condemned for their lack of relationship/belief. It need not have been this way. If (the Christian) God were truly to respect a (wo)man's freedom, He would not punish that (wo)man for making choices of which He disapproves. Punishment smacks of coercion, the opposite of freedom. So, that's the first point I'd make: that what you suggest is "freedom" is in fact more like "coercion" than "genuine" freedom.

Now, in terms of genuine freedom entailing a choice between a yes and a no, an "I will" and an "I will not", I would wholeheartedly agree, but I would say this: when the consequences are so *incredibly, mind-blowingly, unbelievably* vast and consequential as "either you will exist in bliss for eternity, or you will SUFFER IN UNBEARABLE, UNIMAGINABLE, TERRIFIC, HOPELESS AND GHASTLY AGONY FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER", a truly just God would make 100% certain that the choice was made with full and complete knowledge, in a completely sane state of mind, with every chance to fully consider the consequences of that choice.

What might that look like? Well, God might bring a person in front of Him and explain the situation in full: "Look, Harry, here's your choice. Either you choose a relationship with me, and experience *this*, or you reject me and you experience *that*, and both of these will be for eternity. Now, I've sucked all of the delusions and imbalances from your mind. Right now you are as sane and clear-headed as you will ever be. You need to be to make a choice of this magnitude. We're going to start with this: I'll dip you for an *instant* into the experience of hell, and then for an *instant* into the experience of heaven, and you can contemplate those two possibilities for as long as you like. After that, you can choose to dip into both or either for a more extended period, and get more of a sense of what they would be like for eternity, and you can do this as many times as you like. And when I say "an extended period", I mean it - take as long as you need to decide; whatever it is, it will be infinitesimal compared to the infinity you will have to live with your choice. Talk to me here and now, for as long as you like - get to know me as much as you like, so as to decide whether or not you would prefer an infinity of suffering to being in bliss with me".

Something like *that* I might accept as a process leading to "genuine" choice; there might be "genuine" freedom in that process. I would be utterly shocked and aghast if, following a process like that, anybody actually *did* choose hell, but if they did, it would be as genuine a choice as I can imagine - however, I still think it would be utterly and unequivocally wrong for a good and powerful God to have set up a choice like that in the first place (suffering in infinity! With no hope of changing one's mind! How foul a situation to be in!). Not as wrong, though, as allowing for the possibility of people to be tricked and deceived into hell by Satanic forces, in all sorts of unbalanced and insane states of mind, not knowing what they are doing, and in many cases being incapable of truly "rejecting a relationship with God" because they don't even believe He exists in the first place!

So, yes, I would agree with you that genuine freedom entails a choice between yes and no, but: my argument is that if God were truly all-powerful, good and Creator, the *consequences* of both of those choices would be good; there would be no possibility of making a choice that leads to "badness" or harm or suffering. [God might say:] "Don't want to be with me? OK, well, you can choose to end your existence, or you can choose to live in a realm where I do not make my presence known, with other people who, like you, don't want to relate to me, and, as in heaven, there will be no possibility of harm, and you will be happy forevermore. And if you ever change your mind, you can come and join in the fun in the place where I relate to people! It's all good, mate, I'm not going to force you into anything bad, I act in everybody's best interests at all times, no matter what they decide!"

Similarly, with respect to choices to be with one or the other person: your wife, to be with you, presumably chose to reject other suitors. In a perfect world created by a truly good God, those other suitors would have been created with a presence of mind such that they accepted your wife's choice with equanimity, philosophically: "Oh well, she couldn't have chosen all of us at once, and she and her husband are going to be happy, so I am happy for both of them, and even though my happiness would have been enhanced had she chosen me, I am not *unhappy* that she did not".

Do you see what I am saying? I am saying that "genuine" freedom might simultaneously entail a choice between yes and no *without* entailing any harm or suffering or evil whatsoever.

[P.S. I am in principle (but not current practice) polyamorous, so in my view it would be possible that your wife (and you) chose to include those other suitors in your relationship(s) too, but, again, that would have to have been by genuine choice]

I would suggest this: that one can make a genuinely "free" choice that is such that one ever thereafter does not have any wish to make a contrary choice, and yet one's freedom remains.

That's all very well when your choice is a good one, but what when it's a bad one? Do you think the repentant sinner, stuck in hell for infinity, feels "free" that he can no longer change his choice?

I would say that the answer to that was fairly straightforward: the Biblical account suggests that "The Fall" was a consequence of mankind choosing to disbelieve in the good intentions of God, and preferring to seize for themselves the knowledge of both good and evil. Yet it goes on to say that God mitigated the effects of that bad choice, and in fact made a way (at great Personal cost) to reverse the destruction of the relationship between God and man that was precipitated by mankind's foolish abuse of freedom. Moreover, out of that potentially disastrous situation a new kind of higher "good" has ultimately come -- but all of this by the grace of God, not by our wit or engineering.

All of this with God's foreknowledge though...

You did not respond to my elaborations on my argument that God's foreknowledge + creation entails at least *some* degree of creatorial responsibility for everything, including the free will decisions of His creatures, given that He foreknew them in advance, with the possibility of altering them based on tinkering with the parameters and interventions of His Creation, yet chose to create anyway.

I am very interested to know whether you *finally* accept this argument.

Now, can I try to summarize your own cosmology, as you spell it out at some length?

It seems to me that you are arguing that the cosmos is composed of two opposite forces -- or dieties, or whatever -- one essentially what we might call "good," and the other what we might call "evil" or "harm" or whatever. You seem to suggest that the "good Source" is sponsored by evolution, in some way, so that we as humans grow by overcoming the "evil Source." You suggest that perhaps "the righteous will dominate and defeat the wicked." (Though I'm not sure how you mean that.) This will happen, as you say, "through experience and reasoning." This triumph of "righteousness" will one day create a Unification that will eliminate the "evil" factor in the Source.

Am I getting anywhere close to the view you're suggesting?

That's close enough, with a couple of clarifications:

• I am only confident in the idea that there is a duality. How that duality arose, and in particular my idea that it arose as a result of the Source splitting Itself in two so as to foster Its own evolution, is pure speculation on my part.
• My reference to "experience and reasoning" was as to how I came (and how others might come) to confidence in the reality of duality. It doesn't have much if anything to do with how the war will be won.

Thanks for your continued engagement!

[Immanuel Can]

There is no necessary reason why a monotheistic God *must* be good as *we* understand good to be - He might equally have been evil.

Ah, I see the problem: you're thinking of "good" as at least *potentially* definable in some way that makes it a mere predicate of "God," and a quality the reality of which would thus conceptually precede Him in some way.

If I were thinking of a smaller kind of "god" than I am, that might look reasonable. But what I'm suggesting is that "God" analytically refers to the very ground of Being itself, including the "being" of "good" and all such adjectival properties. Your presuppositions, if not your entire view, as I have suggested earlier, is a bit Gnostic, even if you're not aware it is: but it's not genuinely monotheistic. We don't understand the same thing by the term "God," then. I would even decapitalize your word, since it's a merely local understanding of the concept.

Would, then, given an evil God, Dr. Craig have argued likewise that such a God was "good" by the very nature of His being? Surely not! We all know what good is, and we would recognise an evil God if we saw one.

Two suppositions evident in your statements here: that "good" and "evil" are self-existing, or self-instantiating properties of some kind, and secondly, that we human beings have judgmental access to these existing properties prior to making an assessment of God. I would suggest that there is no coherent way to sever the concept "good" from a correct understanding of "God." But since you're assuming Gnostically, that is, that there is some prior knowledge base from which we could apply those adjectives to an object known as "god."

So, if we can distinguish good Gods from bad Gods, it cannot be the mere fact of being God that makes God good: there must be some independent criteria for "good" by which we can *recognise* that He is good. And I think there is, and I think it's an exceedingly simple one, as I've been trying to argue in preceding posts.

There it is...clearly spelled out. Yes, you're a Gnostic -- or at least assumptively speaking, you share all the important features of what we call the Gnostic worldview. That's why you're stuck on a dilemma like the Euthryphro critique.

Your position makes human judgment the true possessor of the adjective "good," the true court in which the "goodness" of God can be known and judged, if at all. But we've got to find that view suspect, even on empirical grounds, right? A concept of "right" or "good" grounded in nothing more than a personal human inclination must surely be very perilous to defend. I would put the problem to you this way: if "good" is a self-instantiating property, one divorced from any grounding in the Supreme Being, then precisely what *is* it, and how is it *known* and *establishable conceptually*?

Surely it won't be enough to say "intuitively," because "intuitions" vary. But from whence then?

But what if our own concept of "good" is actually a derivation, an imperfect intuition, drawn from the fact that things in the world we are experiencing is itself not "good," or as I should say, not in step with the actual character of God? If even our definition is merely a derivation and God is the 'prototype' from which the concept appears, then the question, "Is good good because the gods love it or is it what the gods love because it's good" becomes, I have suggested, a simple nonsense question.

But perhaps that's as far as we can go, since our basic understandings of the "God" concept are not the same. We are actually not referring our predications to the same Entity.

I would say that the reason your "god" has Euthyphro problems is that your "god" is not a coherent conceptualization or a reflection of the truth concerning the nature of the Supreme Being. You mean "a subject of 'good,'" whereas I mean the very "Basis of predication of the 'good' concept."

You might say, "Well, I think I *am* referring my predications to some real entity."

Okay. We just disagree about what we are discussing. But I can't defend your "god" concept or your "god" questions to you, since I believe in a very different "God" instead. If I were a Gnostic, I would find Euthyphro a very good question. As it is, I can't make it make sense, since it depends on faulty predications.

To be continued...

[Immanuel Can]

I don't think self-evidence means that everybody will necessarily agree or see it for themselves. People disagree about and fail to see the self-evidence of all sorts of self-evident notions. Would you suggest that because the woman in this video fails to recognise a plainly self-evident notion, that the notion is not, after all, self-evident? Isn't the very reason this video is so popular that the notion *is* self-evident, yet that she fails to recognise that fact?

Ah. By "self-evident" you just mean "really, really simple." You don't mean what the word analytically means, which is a thing so clearly true that it isn't even *possible* not to agree to it.

If "really, really, simple" is what you mean, then all you're suggesting is that people who don't accept your moral perspective are missing a simple argument: but you're not saying that your view is so realistic that no one could possibly deny it.

I think, though, that you're underestimating the problems inherent in your view, and perhaps underestimating your opposition. For while I would probably be inclined to agree with you personally on the question of harm avoidance, for example, I am not completely confident that no other person has a reason-based argument for why certain "harms" would be good, and even morally laudable. For example...

At your prompting, I won't enter into the abortion (or slavery) debate, suffice it to say that you guessed my view on that issue correctly.

Oh, but I don't prompt that at all -- In fact, I would strongly invite you to get into them; but not for their own sake, but rather as counterexamples to your (possibly too sanguine) conviction that people will "self-evidently" reject them. I would counter that it is empirically clear that they do *not* reject them.

What I meant was, "I don't want to get sidetracked by trying to prove abortion or slavery right or wrong." It is enough for my argument that *some* people *somewhere* do, in fact mount arguments quite contrary to your "no harm" assumptions.

Let's tackle that one head-on. I'd be very interested in your perspective on that. What do you do with people who make "morality" the precise opposite of what you and I think it is, in either case? How do you account for that?

Are they lying? Are they evil? Are they deceived in a way you've escaped? How do we ground our case to set them straight?

To be continued, different subject...

[Immanuel Can]

most of these different ideas lead to much the same outcome in terms of a general sense of what is right and what is wrong, i.e. we generally all agree that it is bad to hurt without a good reason those who can be hurt, etc.

No, Harry, I don't think we can say this -- at least, not if we take what other people actually *say* to be indicative of what they really believe.

The quickest way to justify doing "harm" to someone is just to redefine them as "not someone." Then the "harm" issue is entirely avoided, and your precept against doing it becomes impotent. For example, if we can define "Jew" as "subhuman," then we can make ourselves morally comfortable about killing six million. Or if we define "child" as "socially-useful unit" or "post-birth-canal human," then we can terminate at will. Or if we define "human" as "not black," then we can morally convince ourselves it's alright to possess, enslave and abuse such a being. Or if we define "woman" as "sub-man," then we can justify them denying them the vote. Now, you know that all these moves have been used in times past, by large numbers of people, to justify actions you and I might well consider immoral.

Then there's redefining "harm." What if we allow that, say, third-timester fetuses are truly "human," but tell ourselves that the supposed "harm" occasioned in killing them is less than the "harm" of letting them grow up as a mentally or physically handicapped person, or even as a person in an economically-deprived family? Or what if we admit that grandma is a human, but justify harvesting her organs because five younger people can be saved by so doing?

What then is "harm"? And what then is "person"? And most importantly, what is "moral" in all these cases? For your precept, "Don't cause harm" is insufficiently informative to guide us in any of these cases.

Well, unless you think people are actually lying about not knowing what's *really* right or wrong in these cases, and unless you have some mechanism for proving your view right.

This is just the beginning of sorrows for your program.

I see morality as objective only at the most abstract level of "that which detracts from the well-being of feeling creatures (which includes human creatures) ought to be avoided, and that which leads to the well-being of feeling creatures ought to be promoted". *How* to achieve those abstract aims, and what *specifically* counts as "well-being" (other than the blatantly obvious - being fed, watered and sheltered, etc) is to some extent a matter of opinion/heuristics. I am comfortable enough (although of course I would wish for agreement in the ideal) with the fact that not every utilitarian shares the same opinion or advocates the same heuristics.

Well, whether or not you (or I) are particularly "comfortable" with allowing multiplicity of opinions is not the problem. The real problem is that you've provided absolutely no basis for moral judgment. We can't base a just law on such an idea. Not only that, but when our children ask us what right is, we can't explain in a way that instructs them how to avoid things like slavery, infanticide or sexism. We can't even show that a "feeling of well-being" is a thing we are entitled to have; what if we really need is a certain mount of creative unease, struggle, competition and strife? What if a self-sacrificial life, a giving up of my happiness for the good of another is what's really good?

Your view seems entirely uninformative for law, education or even personal decision-making. In fact, it doesn't seem to work for anyone but (if I take your word for it) you.

I don't think you've solved the anti-Utilitarian critiques.

I agree that it would be useful to have "a meta-perspective to arbitrate such disputes", and I suspect that you would hold that in Christianity there is such a meta-perspective. In my view, though, as I've been trying to explain, some of the tenets of Christianity, particularly with respect to God's nature, are so highly implausible as to be in need of revision, and so I obviously don't agree with you that it provides such a meta-perspective.

Fair enough. I see you're still at variance with me on the nature of God, so yes, I can understand why we're still not connecting on that. But I don't need to defend the Christian view in order to point out that your perspective isn't capable of being that meta-perspective. So even if I were not a Christian at all, your view would still have the same problems.

Next: Descartes

[Immanuel Can]

I must admit that I find your response confusing. On the one hand, you seem to suggest that "I exist" is *not* self-evident ("Well, it [my [IC's] view --HB] doesn't need to [extend to that proposition --HB]"), but then you go on to explain why it *is* self-evident. Perhaps you can clear up my confusion.

Sorry, Harry...I went too fast there. I was trying to be pithy.

What I meant was this: "I exist" is not, per se, "self-evident" if we mean, as you suggest above, "really, really simple," or even if we mean "impossible not to know." But when we think about it, as Descartes pointed out, that even for there to be a "doubt" there must be a "doubter," a consciousness that is voicing the doubt. Otherwise there is no meaningful way that we can say, "There is a doubt that..." as in "There is a doubt that I exist."

If you asked, "How do I know I exist," Descartes would respond, "Who's asking?"

So we might say that Descartes aphorism amounts to "I doubt, therefore I exist." But such a thing is hardly "self-evident" if it took philosophers until the 17th Century to discover it. In fact, many people do not even know that argument today.

So when I say "I exist," I'm not saying it's "self-evident" in the way you imagine; rather, I'm saying it is deduced from the awareness that a doubt is present, just as Descartes said.

[Immanuel Can]

I think it needs to be stated up-front that the "fact" of the choice being between "relationship with God" and "death, immorality, darkness, lies, etc" is one that a powerful Creator would have to take responsibility for. It need not be this way. There are certainly other possibilities. I think you might admit that many atheists, despite not relating to God, nevertheless lead moral lives, and are not evil people. It is only in the Creator's "set-up" that they are condemned for their lack of relationship/belief. It need not have been this way. If (the Christian) God were truly to respect a (wo)man's freedom, He would not punish that (wo)man for making choices of which He disapproves. Punishment smacks of coercion, the opposite of freedom. So, that's the first point I'd make: that what you suggest is "freedom" is in fact more like "coercion" than "genuine" freedom.

There's a lot in this paragraph, Harry, and even more in the ensuing ones. If I do not make some attempt to be parsimonious in response, I fear we shall balloon to immense dimensions. I feel we're on the verge of a book.

Well, we must make do with what spaces we have, I suppose. So let me tackle this first paragraph, then see where our thoughts go from there.

I conceive of the situation rather differently: not as the choice of a morally-neutral free agent between ultimate bliss and ultimate disaster, but rather as a rescue operation after the fact, for a type of being that already *had* the blissful situation, but acted on free initiative to explore the alternative, with disastrous effects. God doesn't *owe* us a perfect, harm-free environment; He already *gave* us that, and we chose to throw it away in order to enact a rebellion against that order.

The Supreme Being, I would suggest, is doing everything He can do to mitigate those bad effects of the free decision, even to giving His own life to open up a way of salvation -- but short of forcing those free agents to give up freedom itself, since He sees their freedom as tied up with their identity and personhood in such a way that to destroy their freedom would essentially be to destroy "them."

However, freedom, though infintiely valuable, is not a 'safe' property, and nor are things like 'individuality' and 'personhood.' These things also imply the ability to refuse an offer, even when it is absolutely the best thing that could happen to one. We can turn down bliss and chose...well, whatever the opposite would be. God could warn, counsel, advise, plead, and even chasten us in an effort to get us to choose what is in our best interests; but short of killing the real "us" in "us," He could not force compliance.

At some point, as C.S. Lewis points out, God stops pleading with us to say to Him, "Thy will be done...," and bows to our obdurate refusal, saying, "Very well; then thy will be done...." Lewis thought there were no reluctant admittants to Hell; they all went there by free choice.

And if you suppose people always act in their own best interests, consider the numbers of smokers, drug abusers and other risk takers we have in this world. Their ranks are not small. But each one tells himself he is 'different' from the others, in that he is 'beating the odds' and getting the benefits of his self-destructive freedoms without experiencing the detriments. And the cancer wards are all full.

So who is "coercing" here? God literally could not possibly do more for us than He already has; but on the assumption that human freedom is a necessary condition for real relationship with God, He cannot make us obey. If anyone is "coercing" us to Hell, it must surely be ourselves.

And what is "Hell" anyway, save a separation from everything that is good, holy, true, bright, lively, sweet, beautiful, kind, pure and delightful -- in short, a self-willed separation from the very qualities we call "good" and their living embodiment, God Himself? If we reject relationship with Him, what else is left? Banishment is not a punishment or coercion at all; it is a consent to our own decision, one we have insisted upon taking in defiance of all possible wisdom, counsel and intervention.

I think you might admit that many atheists, despite not relating to God, nevertheless lead moral lives, and are not evil people.

Oh, "moral" as I might conceive it? Sure. Some of them are no doubt a "better" person on the face of things than I can hope to be. But it's not about that. It's about a free choice they're making. God's not the big Punisher-In-The-Sky, waiting on the sidelines to hit those who refuse Him. In fact, the Bible says that God deliberately keeps the distance to the day of reckoning long and slow, because He is "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."

But we do not grant God His wish, and one day justice must come and our free decision be honoured. At that time, I would not want to be an Atheist, no matter how "nice" a one. For the Atheist's wish is to be without God.

I would rather be a forgiven wretch, yet one who has cried out to God for help, than a "good" Atheist.

[Immanuel Can]

Something like *that* I might accept as a process leading to "genuine" choice; there might be "genuine" freedom in that process. I would be utterly shocked and aghast if, following a process like that, anybody actually *did* choose hell, but if they did, it would be as genuine a choice as I can imagine - however, I still think it would be utterly and unequivocally wrong for a good and powerful God to have set up a choice like that in the first place

Well, perhaps that's because you're conceiving it as a sort of choice made from an Archimedean middle, between good and evil possibilities. And perhaps it's also because you aren't perhaps thinking of just how significant the omission would be if genuine freedom were to be replaced with enforced conformity.

To pick up the train of my thought, let's suppose you grant me for a moment (just to explore the possibilities) that at least *some* sort of choice of refusal would be analytically necessary in any situation of "genuine" freedom. Let's just play with that idea. Let's just have some fun.

What would be the minimum conditions a good God could arrange for us to live in such a world that in it a situation of genuine choice could obtain? I would suggest, in order to be maximally "good," it would be a situation of almost uniform goodness, but (in order to keep to the minimum) a single, solitary option for disobedience, because "freedom" (as we are for the moment conceiving it) would require just one single negative option. Let's say God made things so that it wasn't even *necessary* that this single, solitary option should ever be taken, since there was an abundance of other options. Metaphorically speaking, let's call this situation "garden," because of its abundance of good things, and its lack of nothing.

Now in the middle of that, what if we installed a single option for disobedience, just so freedom itself could be real and genuine. But what if we also hedged it about with so many prohibitions that there was literally no reason anyone should want to or would ever need to take that option. Continuing the metaphor, let's call this option "tree." But because this "tree" isn't like other trees, let's distinguish it by its most basic feature, as a further warning against ever taking it. Let's call it "tree of the knowledge of evil." Or something like that.

Now, human beings would remain in a blissful condition, in a situation of perfect happiness, and yet would be remaining there simply by the genuinely free choice of obeying the edict not to participate in this "tree" and thus acquiring a kind of knowledge that does them no good, the knowledge of evil. But, of course, there would be a genuine possibility that in spite of all warnings, alternatives and protections, the human beings would choose to exercise their option to do what we would sincerely wish them not to do. This is not a thing we could absolutely prevent without simultaneously destroying the basic conception of "freedom."

But still, we would wish they would never take such an option, and would do what we could to safeguard against such a monstrous mistake. So what if we followed that up with a final "fail-safe": namely, some sort of way that if any person later regretted their situation and desired to reverse it, they could find a road back. Let's call that buy-back strategy "redemption."

So now, with almost universal goodness, plus genuine freedom, plus warnings and instruction, plus a final fail-safe measure, if after all that human beings simply became obdurate and continued to use their freedom to reject all options, all pleas and all help...then what could be done for them that would not entail with it the destruction of their autonomy and personhood? And if they refused to admit their bad choices, and freely refused the proffered help, then what would honouring their freedom entail at that point? Would it not mean finally giving them the thing for which they are opting?

Now, you might say, "Why would they opt for such a bad choice?" Well, maybe because they foolishly continue to believe their freedom actually consists in *permanently* rejecting the good, or that they like their present situation and don't want to change it, or that they prefer short-term advantages to their long-term well-being. Or perhaps it's because, like their first mistake, they find themselves asking, "...has God really said..." Or perhaps it's just pride. But whatever reason they might choose, if they are genuinely free beings, they are allowed to choose it.

Of course, it's just a speculative metaphor. But still, it shows how the things you might suppose can't be reconciled might actually be reconcilable.