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KD and 7up on ex nihilo, free will and evil

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  • #76
    On a lighter note...

    Originally posted by seven7up View Post
    Hey kids, what do you want for breakfast? Cheerios, Cheerios or Cheerios. Your choice.
    I was surfing around and happened to read about cereal cafes. There's one in London, along with a porridge cafe, but there's also a cereal cafe in Texas. So 7up, you can go there and exercise your free will all you want.

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    • #77
      Originally posted by seven7up View Post
      I am not sure we have defined a difference between uncaused or self-caused, if there is one.
      "Caused existence" implies that the thing did not exist prior to whatever caused its existence. Therefore "uncaused existence" implies that the thing always existed. "Self-caused" is a logical contradiction, because something that does not exist yet cannot create itself. I think the idea you are describing would perhaps be better labeled "uncaused, self-modifying existence".

      Our current attributes/characteristics are self-caused in the sense that who and what we are now are a result of our we have used our free will in relation to others from past infinity. In "eternity past", I don't think you can say "what comes first".
      The point is not so much which came first, but that your view falls apart regardless of what came first.

      Even if people existed from eternity past as uncaused intelligences, according to your view there would have been a first decision of some kind that was the first one to affect their attributes. Therefore there must have been a "starting point," whatever the person was prior to this first self-affecting decision.

      If the starting intelligence had attributes of some kind, then according to your view, those attributes would determine their future decisions, even the first one. The intelligence would not have had direct control over those initial attributes. Now, your argument against free will in ex nihilo is that even if the person can make future choices that shape who they are, those "choices" were actually predetermined by the starting characteristics God gave them. If that argument holds against ENCT, it holds here. If initial attributes fully predetermine choices, then they do that regardless of their origin.

      If the starting intelligence didn't have attributes of some kind, then there would be nothing to distinguish it from any other intelligence. There would be no sense of individual identity, for all the billions of intelligences would be exactly the same. And in this case, what you said about our "choices" being random and not actually free would apply.

      So yes, your explanation for how your attributes came into being matters very much. According to your own arguments, you don't have free will even in your own theology. If you handwave these problems away by claiming it doesn't matter, then you will be the one who is dodging the logical implications of your own worldview. And I'm not going to let you do that any more than you would let me.

      So stop trying to draw my attention back to the supposed problems with ENCT (and yes, we will get to those) and address the problems with your own worldview. How is it possible for you to have free will, given your views on it, when you either have attributes that you didn't determine or your attributes were determined by initial decisions that were effectively random?

      In this view, while it is logically possible to create morally infallible creatures with free will, classic theists do not have a very good reason for explaining why God did not create morally superior beings.
      Well, that's what we've been discussing -- whether it is in fact logically possible and why God created people he knew would sin.

      Yes; there is some internal aspect of our being, who and what we are, that has always existed. The attributes/characteristics of our being is reflected in how we exercise our free will/agency. The same is true for God.
      So it sounds like you're going to go with option #1 above. To paraphrase your own video (#1, slide at 7:59), you do the things you do because of your characteristics and your environment. In your ex materia scenario, your starting characteristics and your initial environment are both out of your control. According to you, this means your actions are predetermined and therefore you have no free will.

      Feel free to resolve this dilemma by making a paradigm shift and realizing, finally, that having characteristics doesn't mean that your every action is predetermined. In fact, instead of thinking of it as one's characteristics being what determines one's actions, maybe characteristics are simply our way of saying/describing what we think someone is likely to do. That is, we infer the existence of attributes based on what we observe a person doing, and it's really just an abstract concept that we have come up with in order to talk about personality vs. something that completely defines a person and predicts what they will do as you have postulated.

      I don't think anyone can be "entirely self caused". That would only be possible if one being existed without any relation whatsoever to any other beings; an entirely isolated entity. I don't think that exists.
      It's logically impossible. Period. But...are you saying that people's attributes depend in part on who they interact with? I agree per 1 Cor 15:33, but it seems odd for you to state this in this context, given your insistence that "The attributes/characteristics of a being ARE that being." and "We are responsible for our own nature."

      7up: Free will/agency is what we use to decide whether or not we will allow God to work in us in order to sanctify us.

      KD:I thought you said it was humility that decided that.

      7up: And it can be argued that being humble is a choice.
      And yet, if I say that in response to your arguments, you will say that whether or not a person will choose humility depends on the other attributes they already have, and therefore it isn't a choice.

      You know, another way out of your dilemma is to say that some attributes, at least, are like tools that we can choose to use or not. For instance, I can choose whether to put a lot of thought into my posts, or just respond with the first thing that comes into my head. In our RPG analogy, a character with the ability to cast spells and shoot arrows could choose which to use in a fight. Our options are limited by our attributes and abilities -- I can't choose to be the life of the party or compete in the Olympics -- but they don't have to be fully determined by them. Probably we all have some ability to be humble, and we can choose to exercise that ability (and thus strengthen it) or let it atrophy.

      Originally posted by 7up
      Originally posted by KD
      Are you saying you can improve yourself without God's help?
      No.
      Good.

      Are you arguing that God will save people against their will?
      No.

      BTW, I am trying to get to all of your outstanding posts/points, while moving some things to the Calvinism thread. Feel free to let me know if I have missed something.

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