Hmmmm….RobE said:Hmmmm....
Without the right to choose evil then morality is meaningless, huh? It's been said before by many who you might not agree with.
So what?
Wrong question. And what’s worse, is that I'm reasonably certain that you knew it was the wrong question when you asked it. The correct question would have been...Do you allow your children to do anything they wish? How about your neighbor? Are you being unfair?
Are your kids capable of choosing to do something that you have not given them permission to do?
If not, then your children's obedience is morally meaningless.
or you could have asked...
Are you capable of allowing your kids to do things that you currently do not allow them to do?
If not, then your proficiency as a parent is morally meaningless.
No, my statement was correct as stated. If God knows the future, by whatever means, we are not free at all and morality is meaningless because we could not have done other than that which God knew in advance that we would do. Having only a single possible course of action is antithetical to morality. Or to put it in more formally logical terms, the genuine ability of an agent to do or to do otherwise is a necessary condition of morality.So True.....even though we both agree your statement should be "we are not completely free".
You read it here...Your righteousness is like 'filthy rags'. Hmmm..... I've read this somewhere.
Isaiah 64:6 But we are all like an unclean thing,
And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;
We all fade as a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind,
And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;
We all fade as a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind,
A completely meaningless passage of Scripture if we do not have the genuine freedom to choose our actions by our own will.
I said that with a misunderstanding of the term culpable. Here's a definition for the sake of clarity...Did you really mean this, Clete? Aren't you saying that if God foreknows the future, by whatever means, that He is culpable; and that this, is unacceptable?
culpable - deserving blame or censure as being wrong or evil or injurious; "blameworthy if not criminal behavior"; "censurable misconduct"; "culpable negligence"
By this definition, God would indeed be culpable for evil if your theology is correct. Proof enough for me that your theology is quite wrong and that it is you then who are culpable for propagating it.
This is faulty logic. This is exactly the same sort of thinking that lays the blame for gun crimes at the feet of gun manufacturers. After all, if they hadn't made the guns, the crimes couldn't have been committed and therefore the crimes are the fault of companies like Smith & Wesson. This is stupidity for reasons too obvious to go into here.That He would be immoral to start a series of events which would end up in some going to Hell. At the same time you say that He couldn't get His desired goal without doing this same thing. For without free will, none would go to Hell. Yet God gave you free will thus causing some to have the ability to go to Hell.
I wouldn't put it this way but depending on what you mean by "if He foresaw some going to Hell" I would not disagree with this statement.Yet, if He foresaw some going to Hell; it would be immoral; and, at the same time, if He gave man free will some would go to Hell that would be ok.
If God knows the future and I have no ability to do other than what I do then I cannot justly be held responsible for my action any more than a robot can be held responsible for a bad welding job on a Chevy Tahoe. But if by some means that robot were given a genuine ability to choose and it intentionally made bad welds, I, as the owner, would rightly throw the robot in the scrap heap.
So, to once again put this in more formal terms, while the ability to choose is a necessary condition of morality (good or evil), it is not a sufficient condition of either good or evil and so cannot be considered a cause of it.
God does not know which individuals will choose to love Him and which will not. And the ability to choose is not a cause of the choice. Having the ability to choose to do otherwise is simply what gives any one choice moral meaning.What was the initial cause, in your mind, that some go to Hell? Was it (1) God created them good or (2)God gave them free will to do good? Who'll eventually send these same people to Hell at the judgment? Does He know, in your opinion, that He'll send some to Hell and some not?
NO! Again, the ability to choose is not a cause of the choice, it simply gives that choice moral meaning. If given the ability to choose good or evil and I then choose evil, I cannot blame my ability to choose for my choice of evil because I could have just as legitimately chosen good.Does your argument stand that:
A: If God foresaw before creation that some would go to Hell and continued the creation then God has culpability for evil deeds
That’s a brilliant solution Rob! Give evil people eternal life! :BRAVO:And,
B: If God knows some will go to Hell and He allows them to die then God does not have culpability for evil deeds?
In your system would the condemned never die? By allowing their deaths doesn't He send some to Hell? Couldn't God keep them alive until they 'learned' their lessons?
If they didn't die then the Earth would become Hell Rob, only worse. At least in Hell, no one will be able to hurt others any longer.
Resting in Him,
Clete