franz kiekeben
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ANOTHER PROBLEM WITH THE BOETHIAN SOLUTION

11/16/2017

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This may be beating a dead horse, but since some people are convinced the horse is alive and well, here’s something else that's wrong with the Boethian attempt to escape theological determinism. 

According to Boethians, God doesn’t have foreknowledge of one’s future actions because God is outside of time. He therefore does not foresee what we are going to do, he timelessly sees what we are going to do. And that, they claim, means that we remain free to choose among different possible courses of action. 

I’ve already argued that this doesn’t solve the problem (see my blog post from 10/31/17, A Timeless God and Theological Determinism). But even if you disagree with my criticism in that earlier post, there's another reason for rejecting this Boethian solution. For even supposing God is timeless, it is still the case that as an omnipotent being, he ought to be able to make himself temporal. One must accept this as a possibility unless it is metaphysically impossible for God to exist in time — and that’s something the theist would have to argue for. Moreover, this would be especially difficult for a Christian to maintain, for obvious reasons. And yet, as a temporal being, it seems clear that God would be able to foresee the future if he so chose. After all, it would take nothing more out of the ordinary than remembering what he already knew during his timeless existence. 

The problem here isn’t (as Linda Zagzebski implies in her Stanford Encyclopedia article https://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/free-will-foreknowledge/) whether or not Jesus actually had infallible foreknowledge. If it were, then this would be of concern only to Christians — and they could easily escape it by pointing out that there are reasons for denying Jesus had such knowledge. After all, he himself claimed he didn’t know exactly when the world would end. Moreover (though Christians will be less happy to admit this), he was way off when he predicted it would happen during the lifetime of some of his contemporaries. 

No, the problem is wider than that. It is that God could be in time and know the future. It is important to realize that the problem of foreknowledge is not essentially a problem with there actually being such knowledge; it is a problem about it being possible for there to be such knowledge. So long as there is the possibility that someone could know the future infallibly, the future cannot be open to different possibilities. And the Boethian, it seems, must admit that God could have such foreknowledge.



[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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WHAT WERE THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH VICTIMS PRAYING FOR?

11/13/2017

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I have little doubt that last week’s mass shooting in Sutherland Springs made even many religious people question their faith. How could such a thing happen in a church, to people who were worshipping? Where was God? One preacher, however, explained it in a way that even those of us who’ve pretty much heard it all might find surprising.

According to Hans Fiene, a Lutheran pastor from Illinois, “When those saints of First Baptist Church were murdered yesterday, God wasn’t ignoring their prayers. He was answering them.”

Yes: Fiene essentially argues that the victims were praying to be murdered – praying for God to deliver them “out of this evil world and into his heavenly glory.” And that the massacre is “proof that Christ has counted us worthy to suffer dishonor for his name.” 

I heard a bishop criticizing this lunacy in one of the weekend television talk-shows. Good for him. But here’s the thing: from the point of view of Christianity, why are the pastor’s comments crazy? After all, there must be a reason God allowed the massacre. And people do pray “thy will be done.”

This is the price one pays for the comfort that religion provides. It means one must rationalize away even the greatest of evils as somehow justified.
 
https://thefederalist.com/2017/11/06/saints-first-baptist-church-murdered-god-answering-prayers/

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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WHY ARE ATHEISTS MISTRUSTED?

11/10/2017

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The first commandment doesn’t say “Thou shalt not have no gods,” but rather “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The main concern there is not with atheism, but with competing religious beliefs. And at first it does seem that belief in rival deities should, if anything, be regarded as worse than lack of belief. Just like atheists, members of other religions fail to believe in the Christian’s god of choice. But in addition, they believe in false gods! Surely, that’s the greater crime.

And yet, that’s not how the religious see it these days. Ever since religion stopped being central to one’s tribal identity – especially in the West – those with different religious beliefs have been tolerated. “Thou shalt have no other gods” is no longer so important. Rather, it is atheists who are now viewed as the remaining enemy. And the reason seems obvious. Atheists don’t merely reject these people's religion; they reject the very idea of religion.

Consider how much easier it is to convert someone from one religion to another than it is to convert a non-religious person. Missionaries are much more effective among those who already believe in gods than they would be at an atheist convention. Having a religious mind-set makes one open to the acceptance of beliefs without evidence; nonbelievers tend to be far less malleable in this respect.

Atheists may of course say that if they were shown real, conclusive evidence, they would believe. But that’s not good enough for the religious – and I suspect the reason is that subconsciously, they realize they don’t have any actual evidence. The "very idea of religion" that atheists reject is the acceptance of belief on faith. Thus, the religious probably feel more ill at ease with atheism than they do with other faiths.

What’s worse as far as the religious are concerned, however, is that we atheists openly state the fact that there is no basis for religious belief. We are the ones pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.
​

No wonder we are the enemy!
 
[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]
 
 
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