franz kiekeben
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Philosophy
  • Publications
  • Contact

A TIMELESS GOD AND THEOLOGICAL DETERMINISM

10/31/2017

10 Comments

 
Many theists believe both in a god with infallible knowledge about the future and in libertarian free will, and thus face the problem of how to reconcile these two ideas. An attempted solution which has come up in the comments section here more than once is the so-called “Boethian solution.” It maintains that God is outside of time, and so does not actually have foreknowledge. From his extra-temporal vantage point, God sees all of time — past, present, and future — all “at once,” so to speak. Therefore, he does not foresee what you’re going to do tomorrow; rather, he sees it, much as we see the present. 

The most common reply to this is to point out — correctly, in my opinion — that a timeless god is a contradiction in terms. But there is another problem with the Boethian solution, which is that, even if we set aside problems with timelessness, it doesn’t work! 

To understand why, it’s important to first be clear on what the problem of theological determinism is. God’s foreknowledge implies that there is only one possible future: the only events that can happen are the ones God knows will occur. It is this that is incompatible with the kind of freedom most people believe in. The Boethian solution therefore can only work if it allows there to be more than one possible future. And yet it’s pretty clear that it doesn’t. 

To begin with, the Boethian solution is a perfect “have your cake and eat it too” kind of move. It is an attempt to find a way for God to know the future (while it is still the future) without, however, knowing it beforehand. Contrast this with “open theism,” which says that God only knows what happens once it happens (and thus does not know the future). The Boethian claims that God knows everything that happens because he “sees” it happening — just like the open theist does. However, because God sees it, not as it is happening, but rather from outside of time, he supposedly does not have to wait until it happens. Simple, right? 

Not so fast. Here’s the problem: if there is more than one possible future, then there is more than one set of future events compatible with what is happening right now. But from God’s timeless vantage point, what is happening now and what happens in the future are combined into one overall set of events. Thus, from his vantage point, there isn’t more than one possible set of events in the future to go along with the present. Our present is combined with one-and-only-one possible tomorrow, since they are together present before God’s eyes. It follows that there can only be one possible future — and therefore, no free will. 

By analogy, when we watch a movie, it seems that the characters are making free decisions — but of course we know that they aren’t: there is only one possible set of events that can play out, since the entire movie is already on the reel. If God is outside of time looking at it as a whole, he is seeing it much the same way as we would see a movie reel. The scenes of our lives are all already there, and thus can only turn out one way. The Boethian solution therefore implies that there is only one possible set of events for us to perform. It doesn’t avoid theological determinism.

​

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

10 Comments

WILLIAM LANE CRAIG AND ALTRUISM

10/19/2017

0 Comments

 
[The following was originally published on the Patheos blog A Tippling Philosopher as a guest-post:]

In a debate with Paul Kurtz, William Lane Craig contrasted theism and atheism with respect to self-sacrifice. He claims that on the theistic view,


“God holds all persons morally accountable for their actions. Evil and wrong will be punished; righteousness will be vindicated. Despite the inequalities of this life, in the end the scales of God’s justice will be balanced. We can even undertake acts of extreme self-sacrifice that run contrary to our self-interest, knowing that such acts are not empty and ultimately meaningless gestures.”

On the atheistic worldview, on the other hand, acts of self-sacrifice are “just stupid”:

“A firefighter rushing into a burning building to rescue people in danger… does nothing more praiseworthy, morally speaking, than an ant that sacrifices itself for the sake of the ant heap… The absence of moral accountability from the philosophy of atheism thus makes an ethic of compassion and self-sacrifice a hollow abstraction.”

In fact, this is exactly backwards. As philosopher Don Hubin pointed out in an excellent analysis of Craig’s position*, theism as Craig sees it actually makes it impossible for someone to perform a morally praiseworthy act of self-sacrifice. After all, anyone doing a morally praiseworthy act that incurs a loss to them in this life will be rewarded in the next, and thus will not actually have sacrificed anything.

What is particularly interesting, however, is what this implies about the motivation for doing good on Craig’s view. As Hubin points out, even a theist who believes as Craig does can perform altruistic acts. That is, such a theist can do something for the sake of others. Provided they perform the act, not in order to benefit themselves, but from selfless motives, then they behave altruistically. (And this is possible even if they believe they eventually will benefit.) But note that exactly the same selfless motives must be present whenever someone behaves altruistically without the belief that they will eventually benefit. In other words, an atheist who intentionally performs a self-sacrificial act does so from precisely the same motives as a theist who does so for altruistic reasons. And yet this is what Craig describes as “just stupid.”

The obvious conclusion is that according to Craig’s position, the only reason for “loving one’s neighbor as oneself” is because of what’s in it for us! Craig says that on the atheistic view, we “should resist the sociobiological pressures to… self-destructive activity and choose instead to act in our own self-interest.” But in fact, his argument implies that this is what one ought to do whether or not there is a God.

Needless to say, Craig’s entirely egoistic ethics would probably come as a surprise to most of his Christians followers!

 
* Donald C. Hubin, “Empty and Ultimately Meaningless Gestures?”, in Garcia and King, Is Goodness without God Good Enough?


0 Comments

THOSE SINFUL ATHEISTS

10/17/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
A common criticism of atheism is that we atheists “just want to sin.” Dinesh D’Souza, for example, said that “the perennial appeal of atheism” is that it “liberates us for the pleasures of sin and depravity,” while Lee Strobel claimed that prior to becoming a Christian, he had a strong motivation for remaining an atheist – namely, a “self-serving and immoral lifestyle” that he would have to give up if he ever became a follower of Jesus.

Of course, if we are nonbelievers just so we can sin, then this fact should be reflected in our behavior – and as we all know, that’s simply not the case. Moreover, if our desire to sin is the reason we fail to accept Jesus, then what about members of other faiths? Presumably, people like D’Souza and Strobel would agree that religious non-Christians have reasons other than a desire to sin for not following Jesus. But if so, then why can’t the reasons atheists give – such as lack of evidence, the incoherence of the Christian doctrine, or a scientific worldview – also be accepted as sincere?

Another problem with the “atheists just want to sin” claim is that, even if it were true, it wouldn’t show that atheists are wrong! The claim that there is no god, or that there is no reason to believe in a god, is separate from whatever motivates someone to accept it. One therefore cannot be justified in dismissing atheism this way.

And there’s at least one additional problem with the claim: an argument can be made that if one wants to sin, then one should actually be a Christian –​ and many believers accept this, at least implicitly. As Koseighty put it in the comments section [at Debunking Christianity] a few days ago, “Some of the wildest girls I knew in college were Christians. They were quite comfortable doing the things they did because they'd been saved.”
​

One can see the Christian logic here by means of a Pascal-style argument:



 

If I want to sin and God doesn’t exist, then it makes no difference whether or not I believe: either way, I won’t get punished. But if God does exist, then it matters: I will only be punished if I don’t believe. Therefore, if I want to sin, I should become a Christian.
 
Maybe we should start claiming that Christians just want to sin?


[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]
​

0 Comments

IS EVERYTHING PERMITTED? ATHEISM VS. THE DIVINE COMMAND THEORY

10/4/2017

2 Comments

 
It’s a common claim that if God does not exist, then everything is permitted. In particular, those who accept some form of the Divine Command Theory (DCT) tend to say this. It’s not true, of course — but given what their theory implies, it is rather ironic that proponents of DCT claim such a thing. 

On the traditional DCT, God determines right and wrong by issuing commands. Moreover, from a moral standpoint, these commands have to be arbitrary. (If they weren’t — if there were some moral reason why God commands one thing rather than another — then there would be something other than God’s commands making things right or wrong.) But this arbitrariness means that, morally speaking, God can command anything he wants. There are no moral rules preventing him from doing so. It is therefore in principle possible for God to permit anything. It follows that on the traditional DCT, anything might be permitted. 

Nor is this problem entirely solved by modified DCT. Modified theorists say that God’s nature is such that he can only command those things that are compatible with his nature. Thus, they may argue that God is by nature a loving being — and therefore that we can say that cruelty, for example, will never be permitted. 

However, if the most fundamental principle of modified DCT is that it is God’s nature that determines what is good, then it follows that that is the case even if theists are wrong about what that nature is. But in that case, they must admit that it is possible that they are wrong about what might be permitted. In other words, if what makes something right is that it is a command that follows from God’s nature, and theists might be mistaken about that nature, then they cannot rule out anything being permitted. 

At this point, some theists might of course reply that they cannot be wrong about God's nature. And yet, these are the same people who on other occasions say that no one can truly understand God's ways. Or who, when something bad happens, say that God must have had his reasons — reasons which he obviously has kept from us. But then God may also have a reason to hide his true nature from us. 

It appears that it is the DCT, then, and not atheism, that creates this kind of problem for morality.
 

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]
 

2 Comments

    Archives

    April 2022
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014

    Categories

    All
    Atheism
    Creationism
    Determinism And Free Will
    Ethics
    Infinity
    Politics And Religion
    Presuppositionalism

    RSS Feed

Link to my author's page on Amazon