[Thank you to the folks at the Millennial Star for inviting me to participate here by cross posting some of the content from my own blog. It has been several years since I last participated here and I look forward to contributing in a small way. - J. Max Wilson]
One of my favorite definitions of logic comes from Ambrose Bierce’s satirical Devil’s Dictionary: “Logic: n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.”
History is a testament to the nearly limitless incapacity of the human misunderstanding. And while each generation reserves a regular chuckle for the naiveté of its ancestors, it is often just as blind to its own errors.
I believe that our minds are not only limited by lack of experience and information. They are fundamentally limited by mortality. Our two eyes can only extrapolate three dimensions, though with some effort we can conceive of a tesseract even if we cannot visualize it in its true form. We can only perceive colors of light within about 380 to 750 nanometer wavelengths, and as a result plants and flowers that exhibit intricate ultraviolet patterns and designs appear to us quite plain and ordinary to our limited vision. Technology allows us discover their patterns by translating the ultraviolet into our visible spectrum, but we are incapable of actually seeing them as they really are.
Reality is not circumscribed by your or my ability to comprehend, conceive of, or perceive it.
Just because you cannot see how your neighbor’s sub-prime mortgage can affect the value of your own home does not mean that it cannot. Just because you cannot conceive of how same-sex marriage could possibly threaten the institution of the family does not mean that it cannot do so.
So it is especially arrogant to presume to circumscribe God and his church with the incapacities of human misunderstanding. Just because you cannot conceive of a way in which God can have exhaustive knowledge of the future while simultaneously allowing mankind to have true free will does not mean that it is not possible for him to do so. Just because you cannot see how a good God can allow so much suffering in the world, doesn’t mean that God is not good. Just because the priesthood restrictions before 1978 don’t make sense to me doesn’t mean that they were not God’s will. It just means I cannot comprehend it.
Now don’t misunderstand me. I am not advocating for irrationality. I am not saying that reality is not rational. It just means that our ability to apprehend reality through purely rational means is inherently limited by nature.
As members of the LDS church, our knowledge of God by necessity comes through authorized revelation. We have a prophet. If we only follow the prophet when the information he receives can be reconciled with our reason then there is no need for a prophet at all because reason alone would suffice.
So, until we receive additional information from the proper authority, we should probably refrain from relying on our human misunderstandings as our own special versions of Hyum Page’s seer stone to suggest publicly which doctrines should be accepted or abandoned by the church, or to correct her direction. Either the watchmen are indeed on a tower that permits them to see beyond where we are able, or they are not. And I believe that they are.
Interesting topic. Let me say that I largely agree with J. Max, that our limited ability to reason should in no way result in us imposing limitations on God. A few comments from the peanut gallery.
Faith in a principle is a temporary thing. We are asked repeatedly in the scriptures to test or try God. Even the brethren remind us of this. We are told to try out a doctrine, implement it in our lives. If it bears good fruit then you know it is of God. If it bears bad fruit you know it is not. It take faith to implement the new doctrine in your life. It takes faith to continue with that doctrine until the fruit has had time to grow and mature so you can assess the value of the fruit. It does not take faith to continue to live that doctrine once you know the validity of it. Knowledge replaces faith. We then move on to the next doctrine to try it out.
As many have said, logic is based on assumptions and hence has inherent weaknesses. We have been told to study a thing out in our mind and then ask God if it be true. That process should involve logic, even with its limitations based on our initial data set. We then ask God, who’s data set is far better than our own for validation of our decision. We are told we will receive a burning in our bosom or a stupor of thought depending on the quality of our decision. Sometimes we are left without an answer to proceed on our own strength and faith. Sometimes this leads to a good decision, sometimes to a bad decision with natural consequences and an opportunity for learning.
Mark D. #36: You presuppose that knowing the future means that future has to happen. An alternate way to look at it is to say that every decision point in life there are multiple future paths. If I skip breakfast this morning the future will be different than if I have a bowl of Cherrioes. If I make eggs and bacon the future will be different still. Will those different futures be large? Likely no, but I have no way of knowing for certain. Perhaps I will miss a car accident I would have been involved in otherwise, because I leave for work 10 minutes earlier. Had I stayed home and had the Cherrioes my wife may have been a widow. Had I made the eggs and bacon she may not have been since that would have taken more than the 10 minutes. Let’s say God can see the possible outcomes of these three scenarios. It does not force a particular path for Him to know the results of all three. It also does not lock Him down to a particular future. He has the ability to change that future by prompting me to leave early for work that day.
Clark #34: I need to go read your post so I know the assumptions you are using in your statement, but it does not follow to me that God outside of time needs to be material, and God inside time has problems as well. (2nd Law of Thermodynamics comes to mind).
In regard to the several people who have mentioned the invariance of the laws of physics with position in the universe, this is not proven to my knowledge. If someone has a scientific paper with data supporting this supposition I would love to see it. This, like the superposition principle, is generally assumed in science to simplify problems and make our lives easier. There is much left of science to learn and understand if Mormon theology is correct; and if history has taught us anything it is that every time we think we have the universe figured out a new curve ball is thrown our way. Look at the field of physics in the late 19th century. We thought we had everything pretty much figured out at that point, just a few odds and ends to tie up. Along comes sub-atomic particles, quantum mechanics, and a host of other discoveries to open the field back up for another century and change.
J. Nelson-Seawright,
What a pessimistic outlook! Our access to God is mediated by the Holy Ghost. While our minds may not be able to synthesize the why, the how, or to what end, the Holy Ghost is capable of communicating to us what is right and wrong so that we may act with confidence. Of course our leaders are fallible humans. But God is in control of his church and is certainly capable of piercing man’s fallibility to make his will known. God made it clear when the priesthood restriction was to be lifted. If he had wanted to do it earlier he could have. Why he did not is not known.
I agree God outside time need not be material but to deny his materiality is to deny a significant conception of the resurrection in LDS thought. i.e. scriptures claiming God has a material body.
Doug, God’s knowing the possibilities isn’t the problem. The problem is when the possibilities diverge how God can know particular things like that Jesus will be crucified about 600 years before the crucifixion. If God’s knowledge is just of possibilities (paths) then that entails God has to use power to bring things about which raises an ethical question concerning God’s responsibility for evil. (I raised this issue at Thang as well)
Regard the 2cd law, I confess I don’t see the problem with God. Now certainly there is a problem if the universe is all there is. However even many physicists believe in a multiverse and I think that for LDS doctrine to make sense there must be a multiverse as well with infinite content. If there is infinite content then that resolves the 2cd law issue.
Regarding proof in science technically proof is something that exists for logic and mathematics and not science. Science can but say there is lots of evidence and very strong reasons. I think this confusion between reasons and proof lies at the heart of the misunderstandings people make of science.
As to the final point, as I said, science is fallible. To make that the criticism that our conception of science has changed since the 19th century ends up being fairly deceptive. Especially when applied to simply disbelieve all science. It reminds me of “recovery from Mormonism” folks who point to erroneous teachings in our history like blacks and the priesthood or the like and then claim that all religious claims should therefore be discounted.
The issue is how to compare competing claims. Some claims simply have much, much stronger reasons than others. If one wants to say that some aspects of physical phenomena are radically different elsewhere in the universe one has to ask why one would assert that. Then you have to compare the reasons. Like I said with the claim about being in a virtual reality, most things can’t be absolutely proven or disproven. However often there are no good reasons to believe something.
My whole point is simply to point out that humans are fallible. Thus we should investigate all aspects of our reasoning. The problem is that some seem quite willing to attack fairly strong reasoning while supporting uninvestigated rather weak reasoning.
J. Max, the racist views I was talking about aren’t the priesthood restriction alone, but the panoply of racial theories that various leaders of our church — like others of their day — taught and believed.
How do we receive the Holy Ghost? How do we decide what it says to us? It’s all mediated by the body, I’m afraid. Even the basic feelings that we describe as the Holy Ghost are appearing, based on laboratory experiments, to be emotions that the brain can sometimes be manipulated into feeling.
I suppose my argument, that we as humans can only access God through our humanity — just as we do our logic — might seem pessimistic. But other arguments strike me as dangerously overestimating the degree of certainty, and underestimating the degree of fear and trembling, that humans have the right to claim.
At best, if we say that we cannot apply the most basic rationality to our thoughts about God, we must conclude that we know nothing about him at all. The via negativa – where we understand nothing about God except perhaps the proposition that we understand nothing about him – or anything else for that matter.
Exact-ly! ;D
From what I understand J. Max to be saying, we should not reject logic simply because it is imperfect any more than we reject science because it is always changing and adapting to knew understanding. He is merely saying that, as in science, we should not assume that now we know all.
Therefore, one can say “according to what I now comprehend, I don’t see how XXX is possible,” but not “XXX is impossible and anyone who disagrees is a fool.”
The Blind Men and the Elephant
by John Godfrey Saxe
It was six men of Hindustan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind)
That each by observation
Might satisfy the mind.
The First approached the Elephant
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side
At once began to bawl:
“Bless me, it seems the Elephant
Is very like a wall.”
The Second, feeling of his tusk,
Cried, “Ho! What have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear.”
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Then boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake.”
The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“’Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”
And so these men of Hindustan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right
And all were in the wrong.
Clark, don’t get me wrong; I am not anti-science. Science provides me interesting work 40-50 hours a week and a decent living. My point is simply that science, like logic, is our attempt to understand something larger than us and therefore suffers from our limitations. Science evolves as we learn more and are able to observe more about the universe. We should always tread carefully when applying our understanding to deity.
Being a practicing father, I find many insights in to God through my children and parenting. Patience is a huge one, though not applicable here. If my two four year olds ask the same question, I may not answer it the same way. I may explain it one way to one of them, and another way to the other. Developmentally they are not at the same point and they each learn in a very different way. (creative vs. analytical) I think God has the same problem with His children. We ask questions, He wants to answer, but He has to do it in a fashion we can understand. I believe this is applicable to the Bible and ancient scripture as well. He had to explain creation in a manner that Adam and his children would be able to understand. I doubt a lecture on nuclear physics, general relativity, and quantum mechanics would have helped them much. (Assuming we have it right with those disciplines).
I think there are ethical questions regarding God’s responsibility for evil, unless you accept a God that is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. But that would be a different post.
How does LDS doctrine require a multiverse with infinite content? I miss the connection. (I dislike infinities too, I think they are a mathematically construct that you will never find in existence.)
“My whole point is simply to point out that humans are fallible. Thus we should investigate all aspects of our reasoning. The problem is that some seem quite willing to attack fairly strong reasoning while supporting uninvestigated rather weak reasoning.”
I agree completely. Someone at work has a bummer sticker that says “Question the answers” I’d say questioning never hurts, so long as you are prepared to go without answers quite often.
)
Clark: I think the case for an infinite backward recursion of gods is sufficiently dubious that similar arguments apply – in particular that it implies that no one person, nor arbitrary group of persons had anything to do with the plan of salvation, that the latter is essentially “written in the stars”, authored, devised and indeed planned by no one.
Doug D., the idea of knowing all possible futures, but not knowing which one will actually occur is an interesting way out with a long history, but it is certainly not what most people think of when they make the claim that God knows the future in detail.
Also, the second “law” of thermodynamics has never been derived from fundamental principles in a way that isn’t essentially subjective. According to statistical mechanics, entropy is simply a measure of what the observer knows he doesn’t know about the detailed state of the system under observation.
Of course there are a lot of interesting questions surrounding that, e.g. all known physical laws are deterministic, and determinism is strictly incompatible with a macroscopic sense of the second law, and yet the latter seems to prevail (in general) in a way that hardly seems to be purely subjective, but not remotely as rapid as wholesale injection of randomness or anything statistically resembling randomness would imply.
Personally, I trace the prevalence of the second law to the after echo of the consequences of the knowing and unknowing exercise of libertarian free will, but in any case no one knows enough about the second law of thermodynamics for it legitimately to be considered an exceptionless law of nature. It remains a physical mystery, incredibly poorly understood before we consider adding spiritual considerations at all. Not exactly a matter of basic logic from simple premises.
Mark, I’ll hold off that debate over the KFD. I know Blake shares your view. I confess I favor the traditional view and don’t find any trouble with it. One day when I have time to blog again I may take that topic up along with the question of when a regress is vicious or not. (I actually have discussed it at my blog a bit in the past – a search for vicious regress should locate the discussions)
Doug the issue of infinities gets tricky. The question ends up being whether creation is finite or infinite. Clearly most LDS thinkers have held to it being infinite. The traditional reading of the KFD (King Follet Discourse) take it to imply an infinite regress of gods. (Our Father had a Father and so on…) If creation is infinite then the universe must be infinite. The issue of continuity and infinity in existence is a tricky one. I favor the idea that it is but I completely understand those who don’t. Those who reject actual infinities end up rejecting a lot of Nauvoo Theology. While that’s become more popular the past few decades (with Blake being probably the most noted person making the case) I think one should tread carefully and not throw things out unless there is very, very strong evidence to do so.
Despite the way I’ve argued here and on NCT I actually think one should adopt a conservative theology. By conservative meaning one should give traditional theology and especially the scriptures the benefit of doubt. Significant evidence should be present before discounting something – our personal subjective likes or dislikes should enter in at best only slightly. However even with that caveat I think our theology is much more open than most realize. (By open meaning that there are many more readings and interpretation possible than most assume – there tends to be a lot of dogma on all sides where people assume that because something seems obvious to them it ought be treated dogmatically. I think we know a lot less theologically than most think.)
Clark: Speaking of conservative theology, I think there are numerous scriptural reasons to conclude that God (speaking generally) had something to do with the plan of salvation. The war in heaven, for example. All are fallen and all are lost except for this atonement which must be made. The scriptures are full of the principle of alternative possibilities. Repent and be baptized – more than a rhetorical flourish?
So if one is going to maintain a rational theology at all, as opposed to maintaining a collection of conventional articles of faith, it would seem
that the idea that the future is open (and was open when this whole process started) has a lot more support, and contradicts far fewer gospel principles than the idea of a world where a collection of random initial conditions completely determine the fate of the universe.
Personally, I find the gospel of divine impotence a rather more extreme wresting of the scriptures than the idea of an open future. Why should the universe care whether we are baptized or not, let alone predestine us to do so?
Mark, I’d say the those two choices form a false dichotomy. While I don’t have anything approaching strong opinions on the mater my own highly tentative view rejects both an open future (Presentism) and causal determinism.
Just to clarify that comment since it may have come off as enigmatic.
To adopt causal determinism is to say for the set of events at a given time t1 it uniquely entails the events at a future time t2. One can reject that and say that for a set of events at time t1 there are many, potentially infinitely many, events at time t2. That said, even if one thinks that events at time t2 are underdetermined by events at t1 one might say there is a truth about the matter regarding events at time t2. Likewise to say that just because events at t2 in the future are determined it does not logically follow that there may not be some other time t3 which is undetermined.
My own view is that there are regions of potential space/time undetermined yet there are regions of space/time such that they are future to me yet are determined. Yet I think that the events from one given region of spacetime underdetermine events at future spans of spacetime. (That is I reject causal determinism)
I would say that one only accepts causal determinism if he maintains that the state of the universe at time t1 entails the complete state of universe at all times t2 that follow t1.
Of course those who reject causal determinism may none the less maintain that causal rules partially constrain the state of the universe at all future times.
Supposing that the complete state of the Universe at t2 is determined but that complete state at a later time t3 is not logically requires the intervention of non-causally-determined events at times in between t2 and t3. An unpredictable change in the nature of causation would qualify.
In real world terms, you seem to be suggesting that God exhaustively knows the future until time t2, and then something unusual happens in preparation for God (generally speaking) to know the future for some future interval of time.
In an idle moment I once entertained the theory that all material events were pre-determined and set in motion for some testing period, during which not our actual actions, but our internal attitude and reaction to those actions was evaluated. As if we were a ghost in a machine we could not control, until the testing period was over. Can’t say I think such a theory is particularly viable. Yours may be better.
The thrust of this post is absolutely spot-on: we should all be very cautious about articulating a vision of God that is circumscribed by our own logic, desires, and ideals (to say nothing of trying to insist that others accept and embrace that vision).
Clark: I’m not talking about heavy bombardment in an accelerator. This concept of half-life variableness due to solar/cosmic radiation is a new thing, and has not been previously explored. Carbon-dating’s assumption that half-lives have been constant and never vary has been pretty much set in stone, it’s part and parcel of carbon-dating. This awareness of variableness is a _new_ thing. Neither has carbon-dating been connected to the possibility that the earth was not always the same distance from this sun or another star. If those who are currently studying this variableness are correct, this is really going to shake up all the fields of study that use carbon-dating. Geological time periods would have to be rewritten.
I don’t think your assertion “they would have known” really applies, because I don’t think the issue has been studied before. If what I read is correct, it’s very recent. Plus there’s tons of inertia and academic capital invested in the current method of radio-isotope dating.
Thor: When premises are wrong or incomplete (or a combination of both), the operations upon them don’t matter a hill of beans. Garbage in – Garbage out. The elegance of the process doesn’t impress me when the raw materials upon which they operate are bad.
Our human fallibility also includes the possibility of insufficient or incomplete logical operations. So not only are we starting with a deficient set of ingredients, as humans we also lack all the necessary instructions to process the ingredients into a cake.
Our logical processing (operations) upon matters, even though it may appear “whole” (complete, logical, etc) within our sphere, is to the logical processing of eternal (exalted) beings, perhaps like how Newtonian physics and Euclidian geometry, is to Einsteinian physics and geometry.
In Einsteinian physics, time is elastic and space bends. Those concepts are completely beyond Newtonian physics and Euclidian geometry. Newton’s and Euclid’s system were only “close approximations” that did not hold true as you get closer to the extremes.
Hawking’s theories then went beyond Einsteinian physics.
What’s next?
No matter how far we go, we are incomplete both in our starting assumptions _and_ in our processes in this mortal sphere. When we cross over to the next world our eyes will be open to more, but still not a fullness. Brigham Young said that one of the first thoughts we’ll have after crossing over to the spirit world is how stupid we were in mortality. Then, for those who go the next step up and eventually “cross over” to the level of exalted beings, “eternals”, I would imagine they have an even greater “awakening” in terms of perceiving the true nature of existence, both in knowledge of things as they really are, and the ability to process that knowledge.
Clark: I’m not sure what Nauvoo theology people who dislike infinities reject, I’m still learning a lot of the “non-Sunday school” stuff about Mormon theology; so if you have reading to recommend, feel free. My objections to infinities is on a more practical level. They are useful things for someone with finite limitations like us. For example, I often say that anything more than about 1mm away is infinitely distant. For the purposes of semiconductor device physics this is often a useful approximation. You and I both know it’s not true, but it works darn well.
Another example often given of something “infinite” or without beginning or end is a ring. Yet while it has no beginning or end you and I can both see the bounds of our wedding bands (assuming you’re married). The ring is not infinite even if it has no beginning or end. It’s all a matter of perspective.
I personally entertain the thought that time is trickier than we think. We know it is variable and not constant from Einstein. I suspect that in the afterlife time is not the same as now. Certainly if we are to have eternal bodies the matter will need to be different is some way to prevent decay, yet will in fact interact with normal matter. (We can shake hands with an angel.)
Mark and Clark: God’s knowledge of the future is tricky. Given that God and His agents, can and do routinely interfere with the present thereby altering the future I do not think foreknowledge on God’s part requires a lack of agency on ours. I find causal determinism to be a unsatisfying and problematic philosophy. (Especially given Heisenberg)
In regard to theology, I adopt this one. I’m stupid, God is smart. God has to explain things to me in a very simplified way so I can understand them. My limitations are not His limitations. I know I will die with many questions. I also know that we are told to seek out knowledge in this life and that it gives us an advantage in the next. Doctrine I can’t make sense of I chalk up to my limited understanding and not an incorrectness in the doctrine per se. The plan of salvation can be sketched out on a napkin and explained to an 8 year old. That’s what we need for salvation, the rest is interesting but secondary. I live in constant reminder of my own shortcomings, it makes it easier to avoid hubris before God.
Bookslinger, all dating methods are tested against other dating methods. Carbon dating is actually only used back a little ways to the point it is already known to be inaccurate. So the approach you are taking simply has already been tested even if the particular effect hasn’t been studied relative to the data – but it hasn’t been studied simply because it has already been falsified as a potential problem. The effect of solar radiation on carbon measurements would be minor. You can test that by simply looking at how things are affected within an accelerator.
Mark, I’m trying to be fairly general so there can be lots of various ways to instantiate the other choices. One obvious example can be found amongst several multiverse postulates in physics. Each universe is an independent block of space/time. So “until” a new block is formed due to sufficiently flat spacetime in an other universe it doesn’t exist. So instead of moments you have blocks of universes. I’m not saying that’s right, mind you, just that it is one example that would fit that alternative. Obviously some block universe theories would be incompatible.
Bookslinger, what Einstein’s theories are more general than Newton’s one should note that for the range of phenomena examined until just a few decades prior to Einstein Newton’s theories fit. And still fit. So one has to be very careful how one views this progression of science. One can’t say that because Einstein partially supplanted Newton that we can simply discount science. (Not that you are saying that, but it is a very common approach among say Evangelical fundamentalists)
Once again no scientist is saying we know everything nor that we know all phenomena. What scientists will say is that there are some things we know very well and that if you are going to overturn them you ought have a lot of evidence. When someone pits a naive reading with little investigation against established knowledge with considerable evidence it is simply deceptive to raise the mystery cry and say reasons don’t matter. My point is simply that one ought investigate how one reads and look at the evidence for a particular reading. What I see all too often is a willingness to simply discount what has reasons without recognizing that how we read is based upon readings. I’m certainly not portraying science as infallible. Just that most critiques of science are based on very poor reasoning.
Doug, the King Follet Discourse in most readings postulates an endless regress of Fathers. There never was a person without a father. That logically demands that there be an actual infinity of gods going into an infinite past. There was no absolute beginnings. Just beginnings to various stages of existence. This was a pretty prominent part of Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo theology and was held very prominent through the 19th century and through most of the 20th.
Of course to say something is infinite is not to say it is boundless. An obvious example is the set of odd integers versus the set of even integers. There are clear bounds on each but both are infinite.
Regarding foreknowledge, that debate is primarily a semantic one. That is what is the meaning of the word “free.” The condition for foreknowledge is simply that if I know at t1 what is true at t2 in the future then the very meaning of truth entails that the event at t2 is fixed at t1. One problem though is that most lay people who look at that confuse the truth conditions with additional metaphysical implications like fatalism (what I do doesn’t matter) and that’s simply false. I put some links on this over at NCT which I think pose problems for those appealing to human intuitions on the matter. More importantly I tried to emphasize that the matter is ultimately a semantic issue of the words “free” and “responsibility.” Those, like Geoff over there, who demand an absolute incompatibility between foreknowledge and freedom or responsibility are really making a claim about what freedom and responsibility mean as words.
Sadly the fact that this is all a semantic debate is all too often missed in these debates.
Just to add that while the debate about free will is ultimately a semantic issue there obviously are other issues involved. So for instance Blake Ostler argues that the sense of free will he favors is required for there to be responsibility in the sense he uses the term. Further he argues that it would be immoral to punish or reward people if they were not responsible in that sense. Since the scriptures talk about God rewarding or punishing he feels that free will of the sense he uses it must be true.
It’s actually a strong argument although I don’t think it’s sufficiently strong to render competing views unreasonable. For instance there are many very smart philosophers who believe one can be responsible yet not free in the sense Blake and Geoff use the terms. (I gave some links at NCT for those interested) Secondly there’s no reason to assume that the words used in the scriptures must be absolutely bound by the way we use the terms. Rather it is sufficient for them to be “close enough” to get God’s point across – which is rarely about the ontology of time. We also have passages such as D&C 19 where terms where a traditional sense, such as “endless punishment”, don’t mean what we thought.
So I’m very skeptical of pushing a semantic argument into a claim for a certain way of reading a word in scripture. As I said the argument to responsibility is stronger but I don’t think it ultimately works simply because I don’t think most people would be upset if we found out punishment or reward were more complex than it first appeared or if responsibility meant something quite similar but not exactly the same as our intuitions tend to portray.
None of this is to address the larger issue of humility and arrogance. As I’ve said I think it crucial to be humble in our reasoning but always look to understand the reasons we are reasoning with.
Clark: This is not just a semantic debate. This is a logical debate about what kind of theological propositions are compatible with each other.
If God (generally speaking) has compatibilist free will, we can be sure that (for example) everything he has ever done is ultimately traceable to a metaphysical accident. It is nothing more than a substitution of the Calvinist doctrine of God’s Eternal Decree with the doctrine of Fate’s Eternal Decree, where Fate doesn’t even have the benefit of personality.
I don’t think Fischer’s arguments, by the way, are persuasive – does a circuit breaker demonstrate moral responsibility simply because it triggers when the electrical current flowing through it is too high, thereby preventing a house with small children inside from burning to the ground? What if it doesn’t trigger?
You all have enriched my life with this post and discussion. Thank you.
Mark, it’s a semantic debate (and pretty much every philosopher working in free will explicitly states this). However the question of whether two things are logically compatible clearly is a logical issue, but one that depends upon the semantic issue being resolved. The theological issue is thus really secondary in most ways. Certainly there are theological implications but they depend upon a semantic issue of how to read the scriptures. But I think I’ve been explicit about that all along.
I recognize not everyone finds Fischer persuasive. My point isn’t whether one agrees with Fischer just that many do and that this is very much an open problem in philosophy. The fact that it is such an open philosophical issue for the experts ought inform how we proceed in theological disagreements. That is things aren’t as obvious or resolved as some claim.
It’s fine to argue the issue. And clearly I’ve done that over the years. But when we move from that into portraying it as a resolved issue or judging those who disagree then I think we’ve crossed a significant line.
Mormons generally speaking have a number of theological commitments that philosophers in general either do not have or are not allowed to wield.
That means the issue is far more closed for Mormonism that it is for a world where (say) God may or may not exist, where eternal recurrence is unobjectionable, where repentance isn’t the primary focus, where God if he exists may not have a purpose or mission, where the conflict between good and evil may be purely subjective, where sin may be nothing more than a matter of genetics, and so on.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Why? Can determinism ever answer any why question? Why do why need to repent? God said so. Why did he say so? Because there was never any possibility for him to say otherwise. Why did Adam sin? Bad genetics. Why did Adam have bad genetics? Cosmic radiation. Why did God punish Adam for bad genetics? There was no other alternative. It was in God’s nature to punish Adam for bad genetics. What determined God’s nature? Fate. Anything Fate isn’t responsible for? No. Why?
Mark, certainly ones religious context puts constraints on ones philosophy. However in this case I just don’t think it the case. Further the theology depends upon the semantics and not vice versa.
Clark: I am sure I disagree in many respects, but that question is far enough off the beaten track that we should probably table it for now.
The only germane point is that whatever one’s theology is, it is dangerously unstable if it entails logical contradictions. It is not like one can pick any semantics that are convenient and expect some sort of rational theology to pop out. Would that were the case…
I must admit that the infinite regression issues with the KFD I have always chalked up to teaching a child. If there truly is an infinite regress of Father’s in Heaven then I will be sorely disappointed. I would be left with the feeling that there would always be an unanswerable question, or at the very least a question with an unsatisfactory answer…. where did it all begin? It never did, it always has been would be the answer.
A blog thread, warning against the perils of circumscribing God with man’s logic, that circumscribes God with the logic of its author: the price of a beret.
Followed by scores of comments in which God’s nature is debated according to the ontological categories of post-Enlightenment philosophy: the price of a paperback copy of Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.
Irony so ironic that it’s like a snake swallowing its own tail: utterly priceless.