Post by Josh on Jul 27, 2009 17:56:54 GMT -8
Talbott's response:
As Beversluis rightly points out, "an omnipotent God is bound neither by the present properties of matter nor by the causal laws now in operation".It simply does not follow, however, that God "could have created the universe in any way he saw fit"; at least this does not follow if free agents are a possible part of the created universe.
Talbott then spends some time explaining why free will limits God's options in any universe.
He then considers the option of God creating a world in which persons are unable to feel pain or harm each other. He then asks whether such a world would be a better world- whether
"the result would have included greater possibilities of joy and happiness, more interesting life situations, more enduring friendships, better examples of moral courage and self-giving love, or a more favorable balance of good over evil than God will eventually produce in the universe that actually exists..."
He then suggests a "thought experiment":
"Try to imagine what God might have acheived if he had eliminated all cancer from his creation while retaining exactly the same persons in it. Our experiment will not be at all technically accurate and may even be incoherent, but it may also be pedagogically useful. To begin with, then, let us delete from the world (in our imagination) all the pain and suffering caused by this terrible disease as well as all the psychological torment that both cancer victims and those who love such victims have experienced; then, let us delete all those goods-- such as the courageous endurance of certain specific pains-- for which the cancer is a logically necessary condition; then, let us delete all the free choices-- and all the consequences of such free choices-- that either would nothave been made at all or would have been made differently if our world had been devoid of all cancer. As one can see, things quickly get complicated. If God exists and there is an afterlife, some of the choices deleted may be choices that result in eternal joy and happiness for some persons. But that is just the beginning of our experiment. To fill out our world, we must also add in all the options, all the free choices, and all the consequences of such free choices that would have been different. If some persons would have become more arrogant and vicious, that must be added in; and if others would have become more humane and charitable, that too must be added in. At this point our experiment breaks down completely. We cannot possibly know what free choices people would have made in a world without cancer, whether they would have become more vicious or less; nor can we know what options God might have had in working with these people. And that is just the point. Trying to figure what a world of free persons would be like in the absence of cancer is not like calculating where the planets would be today if they had been in certain specified positions last year. Even if we restrict our attention to physical suffering, we cannot know that the total quantity of such suffering would have been less had there been no cancer. If, in the absence of cancer, more people would have become more vicious, more likely to engage in warfare or inflict suffering on others, the elimination of cancer might have increased the total suffering of the world. God could, to be sure, have created different people or have placed those he did create in different circumstances or have given them different bodies. But once again, we face the same difficulty as before: How are we to know what the consequences of these more radical moves would have been? -- whether for instance, in other bodies we would have become more loving or less loving, more bored with life or less bored with life? Unless Beversluis has a kind of knowledge that even some philosophers deny even of God... he cannot know that a good and omnipotent God would have created things differently."
==Thomas Talbott
from
Heading: Human Freedom and the Quantity of Evil in the World
Chapter: Omnipotence and the Mystery of Evil
Book: The Inescapable Love of God
As Beversluis rightly points out, "an omnipotent God is bound neither by the present properties of matter nor by the causal laws now in operation".It simply does not follow, however, that God "could have created the universe in any way he saw fit"; at least this does not follow if free agents are a possible part of the created universe.
Talbott then spends some time explaining why free will limits God's options in any universe.
He then considers the option of God creating a world in which persons are unable to feel pain or harm each other. He then asks whether such a world would be a better world- whether
"the result would have included greater possibilities of joy and happiness, more interesting life situations, more enduring friendships, better examples of moral courage and self-giving love, or a more favorable balance of good over evil than God will eventually produce in the universe that actually exists..."
He then suggests a "thought experiment":
"Try to imagine what God might have acheived if he had eliminated all cancer from his creation while retaining exactly the same persons in it. Our experiment will not be at all technically accurate and may even be incoherent, but it may also be pedagogically useful. To begin with, then, let us delete from the world (in our imagination) all the pain and suffering caused by this terrible disease as well as all the psychological torment that both cancer victims and those who love such victims have experienced; then, let us delete all those goods-- such as the courageous endurance of certain specific pains-- for which the cancer is a logically necessary condition; then, let us delete all the free choices-- and all the consequences of such free choices-- that either would nothave been made at all or would have been made differently if our world had been devoid of all cancer. As one can see, things quickly get complicated. If God exists and there is an afterlife, some of the choices deleted may be choices that result in eternal joy and happiness for some persons. But that is just the beginning of our experiment. To fill out our world, we must also add in all the options, all the free choices, and all the consequences of such free choices that would have been different. If some persons would have become more arrogant and vicious, that must be added in; and if others would have become more humane and charitable, that too must be added in. At this point our experiment breaks down completely. We cannot possibly know what free choices people would have made in a world without cancer, whether they would have become more vicious or less; nor can we know what options God might have had in working with these people. And that is just the point. Trying to figure what a world of free persons would be like in the absence of cancer is not like calculating where the planets would be today if they had been in certain specified positions last year. Even if we restrict our attention to physical suffering, we cannot know that the total quantity of such suffering would have been less had there been no cancer. If, in the absence of cancer, more people would have become more vicious, more likely to engage in warfare or inflict suffering on others, the elimination of cancer might have increased the total suffering of the world. God could, to be sure, have created different people or have placed those he did create in different circumstances or have given them different bodies. But once again, we face the same difficulty as before: How are we to know what the consequences of these more radical moves would have been? -- whether for instance, in other bodies we would have become more loving or less loving, more bored with life or less bored with life? Unless Beversluis has a kind of knowledge that even some philosophers deny even of God... he cannot know that a good and omnipotent God would have created things differently."
==Thomas Talbott
from
Heading: Human Freedom and the Quantity of Evil in the World
Chapter: Omnipotence and the Mystery of Evil
Book: The Inescapable Love of God