Response to Tektonics - Part XII
Well, a bit of a change in my debate with JP Holding. I had been posting my portion both here on my site, and on the TheologyWeb, where JP Holding has been posting his entries. I must readily acknowledge that JP Holding has been perfectly civil and polite in dealing with me. But, to any other skeptic that might post in the thread, they would be subject to the personal attacks Holding is famous for. Further, I reported his behavior to the TheologyWeb moderators, who did not even give me the courtesy of a reply. For that reason, I will no longer post my entries there, and only post them here on my site.
A secondary topic was started there, discussing Richard Carrier's comparison of historical evidence for Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon vs. the Resurrection. I haven't decided whether to put up a second set of pages here on my site for that discussion, or just drop it. I guess I will wait for what happens after this posting on this topic:
So, without further ado, here is round 12 with my debate with JP Holding:
PJ: Please consider enrolling in a logic class at your neighborhood community college or university.
JPH: What for? To become a student assistant?
Um, no. To improve your logic skills.
PJ: You may then say that evil and free will are generally correlated.
JPH: Nah, I'll pass on that one.
But that is exactly what you did argue in the previous paragraph, where you said, "Showing one instance where free will did not result in evil does NOT negate the collective evidence that it will, at some point, inevitably result in evil." Ergo, you are arguing correlation. Now, it is true that causation will result in correlation, and it is not always easy to determine if there is a causative relationship or not. Further, since I concede that we don't have any other worlds to investigate, discerning causation vs. correlation may not possible. You could even possibly argue that causation would be a reasonable conclusion baring further evidence to the contrary. Which would make sense, EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT WE ARE DEALING WITH POSSIBILITIES OF THE OMNIPOTENT! Correlations or causations in our world prove nothing about what is possible or impossible for the omnipotent.
PJ: If God wants "innocence", he's capable of creating "innocence" is He not?
JPH: Christian theology avers that He did. But it does not hold that He is capable
JPH: of preserving innocence, which requires a choice by a free and independent actor.
So is God incapable of preserving innocence in heaven? Besides, why did He stop creating innocence when Adam and Eve fell, meaning why did he make everybody carry Original Sin?
PJ: Why not zap up everybody to heaven when they are 5?
JPH: Why should He?
Because I thought He wanted nobody to perish.
PJ: If Brand God's cookie jars always seem to ship out of the factory broken,
PJ: there is something wrong with Brand God's design or manufacturing process.
JPH: To say that freedom is equal to being "broken" is misdirected.
I wasn't talking about "freedom" per say, I'm talking about Original Sin, that everybody is born a sinner. Everybody is born a "broken cookie jar." But, as far as "freedom", if "freedom" is 100% guaranteed to result in something "bad" from God's perspective, then freedom must indeed be "bad" from His perspective. Ergo, He shouldn't have created it.
PJ: But you are expecting me to believe in things for which
PJ: knowledge is inaccessible. They could be true, but I can't know it.
JPH: I'm sure this is not a problem for you when it comes to knowing if, i.e., a
JPH: member of your family truly loves you;
Okay, fair enough, we can't really know anything for certain. But simply not knowing something is for certain false is not grounds to believe it is true. Like in my revised critique of Strobel, in Objection 1, I note that simply not knowing for certain that a greater good can't come from an apparent injustice is not reason to conclude that a greater good will come.
JPH: If you want to compare it to an invisible alligator -- I'd have to ask, would
JPH: you write essays about invisible alligators? No.
I would if there were invisible alligator apologists.
JPH: I speak of positions separate from or independent of the
JPH: religions, which are conceptually the same as Christianity.
What "positions" in Buddhism or Hinduism are "conceptually the same as Christianity"? Doesn't Zacharias argue in Objection 5 that other religions are NOT "conceptually the same as Christianity"?
JPH: That's not enough information for me to answer,
What more information do you want?
JPH: but I can't see why this young Muslim might not arrive at the sort of position
JPH: I have in mind: "Allah, whatever your true doctrine is, I do not know; but I humbly
JPH: accept that you must be my guide."
Why should he? *You* don't accept that Allah is your guide, why should he?
Next up, I gave two hypotheticals. Here they are for review:
1. If dying as a fetus would have provided me with eternal life and happiness, and if I was given the choice to change history such that I was killed as a fetus, I'd take that in an instant. Sounds like a great choice to me. How 'bout you? Wouldn't you take that?
2. Say that before you were given that choice of reversing history and dying as an infant, you were also shown irrefutable proof that Islam is true, not Christianity. But since you had picked Christianity before giving this knowledge, you are destined for hell. So, your only choices then are to die and go to hell, or have your entire life erased and die as an infant and go to heaven. Which choice would you pick then?
And your answers to the two hypotheticals were:
JPH: H1: No. And I'd have to say that anyone who would take it is,
JPH: H1: at a minimum, extremely ungrateful
JPH: H2: if that is the info I was given, why didn't I convert to Islam? And
JPH: H2: why was my ignorance resulting in condemnation? I don't think
JPH: H2: even Islam holds that those ignorant of Islam will be condemned
JPH: H2: to hell, though I need to check that. The question is like asking
JPH: H2: what I think the color nine would smell like.
Well, it is true that hypotheticals have the problem that, well, they are hypothetical. They require "suspension of disbelief" and you can never really know what you would do in a hypothetical until you are really there. But, none-the-less, the point of my hypotheticals is to make the point that there isn't anything really terribly wrong with "endorsing a world wherein all are killed as fetuses"-- the statement of yours that I was responding to.
Yes, hypotheticals have problems. But even so, I think my hypotheticals were not so far-fetched as to be "asking what the color nine would smell like." My first hypothetical was too easy for you to say no to, because there you had no downside to having both your current life and, presumably, your eternal life to come. The point to the second hypothetical was to give you a potential downside. You ask why your ignorance results in condemnation. You are not ignorant of Islam, you have rejected it. You ask why you didn't convert upon giving the proof of its validity. The answer is the same answer you would give me if I ask you why I can't convert to Christianity after I'm dead--its too late. God or Allah wants you to convert *before* you have proof-positive. The point of the second hypothetical is to put you in roughly my shoes, should Christianity be true. If Christianity really is true, I'd be better of having died as an infant. And if Islam is true, you would have been better off dying as an infant.
So, as far as "endorsing a world wherein all are killed as fetuses," I still say, "why not?"
JPH: I don't even need help staying away from beer -- to me it
JPH: smells like something my dog did on the rug.
Well, I'll be ding-danged--we actually agree on something. Just yesterday somebody told me that the Brits call beer "piss". I don't know if this is true or not, but my response was, "I knew it!"
JPH: But would they also say that we have no control over how much
JPH: and to what extent we are influenced?
I think we have *some* control, but not as much as we might think we do.
PJ: If someone might knock at the door, like a Jehovah's Witness, my parents
PJ: would say something like they believe in God but not in church
JPH: For even more fun, say, "Oh, we're members of the Church of Satan.
JPH: Would you like to come to our services?"
On atheist forums, I hear people saying things like that. But I'm surprised you would say something like that. Aren't JW's misguided brethren from your perspective?
PJ: I'll never read all the Buddhist Sutra, Hindu Vedas, Koran,
PJ: Native American scriptures, etc.
JPH: Why not? It's not a particularly large corpus, and at the very least,
JPH: if you have any humanist tendencies you can look at it as an
JPH: exercise in appreciating the human mind.
Well, indeed, if you just limit the subject to the official holy books of current major religions, then yeah, it isn't beyond my ability to read it all. But it is beyond my ability to *understand* it all. I've tried to read the Bible. Some portions are reasonably readable, I read Genesis and the Gospels and Acts. Those are reasonably readable. But for most of the OT, it was just impossible to keep awake for let alone understand. And even in the books that I acknowledge are reasonably readable, even among believers, there is a great deal of debate on what much of it means.
JPH: You treat the Bible as a collective though it is in fact 66 separate books.
JPH: You realize that just because Genesis might be unreliable, this does
JPH: not mean Luke is as well?
I've generally felt that inerrests make a good case that either the entire Bible is the Word of God, or none of it is. Once you start to admit some of it is wrong, it is hard to make a case that any of it is right. Christians claim that Jesus fulfilled prophesy. How can Jesus be a prophesized Messiah from the OT if the OT isn't reliable?
JPH: I see you hold the same for all history (we can never know what is
JPH: reliable), yes?
Based on Occam's Razor, we can judge what is likely reliable, but you are correct, we can never know what is for certain reliable.
JPH: Well, that does leave you out in the woods as far as what the majority
JPH: of scholarship on history would hold, does it not?
Someday I really need to research more on metaphysics. I don't really know what most doctorate history professors believe. But, I can't help but suspect they probably more agree with me that you admit. But, I can't defend this for certain.
JPH: one which cannot even guarantee that you existed a few moments ago.
This is correct, you cannot "guarantee" that we existed yesterday. You remember doing things yesterday and earlier? Those were just memories implanted by my god that created the universe 5 minutes ago. Prove this wrong. You can't prove it wrong. You can conclude it being unlikely based on Occam's Razor. But you can't prove it wrong.
A secondary topic was started there, discussing Richard Carrier's comparison of historical evidence for Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon vs. the Resurrection. I haven't decided whether to put up a second set of pages here on my site for that discussion, or just drop it. I guess I will wait for what happens after this posting on this topic:
So, without further ado, here is round 12 with my debate with JP Holding:
PJ: Please consider enrolling in a logic class at your neighborhood community college or university.
JPH: What for? To become a student assistant?
Um, no. To improve your logic skills.
PJ: You may then say that evil and free will are generally correlated.
JPH: Nah, I'll pass on that one.
But that is exactly what you did argue in the previous paragraph, where you said, "Showing one instance where free will did not result in evil does NOT negate the collective evidence that it will, at some point, inevitably result in evil." Ergo, you are arguing correlation. Now, it is true that causation will result in correlation, and it is not always easy to determine if there is a causative relationship or not. Further, since I concede that we don't have any other worlds to investigate, discerning causation vs. correlation may not possible. You could even possibly argue that causation would be a reasonable conclusion baring further evidence to the contrary. Which would make sense, EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT WE ARE DEALING WITH POSSIBILITIES OF THE OMNIPOTENT! Correlations or causations in our world prove nothing about what is possible or impossible for the omnipotent.
PJ: If God wants "innocence", he's capable of creating "innocence" is He not?
JPH: Christian theology avers that He did. But it does not hold that He is capable
JPH: of preserving innocence, which requires a choice by a free and independent actor.
So is God incapable of preserving innocence in heaven? Besides, why did He stop creating innocence when Adam and Eve fell, meaning why did he make everybody carry Original Sin?
PJ: Why not zap up everybody to heaven when they are 5?
JPH: Why should He?
Because I thought He wanted nobody to perish.
PJ: If Brand God's cookie jars always seem to ship out of the factory broken,
PJ: there is something wrong with Brand God's design or manufacturing process.
JPH: To say that freedom is equal to being "broken" is misdirected.
I wasn't talking about "freedom" per say, I'm talking about Original Sin, that everybody is born a sinner. Everybody is born a "broken cookie jar." But, as far as "freedom", if "freedom" is 100% guaranteed to result in something "bad" from God's perspective, then freedom must indeed be "bad" from His perspective. Ergo, He shouldn't have created it.
PJ: But you are expecting me to believe in things for which
PJ: knowledge is inaccessible. They could be true, but I can't know it.
JPH: I'm sure this is not a problem for you when it comes to knowing if, i.e., a
JPH: member of your family truly loves you;
Okay, fair enough, we can't really know anything for certain. But simply not knowing something is for certain false is not grounds to believe it is true. Like in my revised critique of Strobel, in Objection 1, I note that simply not knowing for certain that a greater good can't come from an apparent injustice is not reason to conclude that a greater good will come.
JPH: If you want to compare it to an invisible alligator -- I'd have to ask, would
JPH: you write essays about invisible alligators? No.
I would if there were invisible alligator apologists.
JPH: I speak of positions separate from or independent of the
JPH: religions, which are conceptually the same as Christianity.
What "positions" in Buddhism or Hinduism are "conceptually the same as Christianity"? Doesn't Zacharias argue in Objection 5 that other religions are NOT "conceptually the same as Christianity"?
JPH: That's not enough information for me to answer,
What more information do you want?
JPH: but I can't see why this young Muslim might not arrive at the sort of position
JPH: I have in mind: "Allah, whatever your true doctrine is, I do not know; but I humbly
JPH: accept that you must be my guide."
Why should he? *You* don't accept that Allah is your guide, why should he?
Next up, I gave two hypotheticals. Here they are for review:
1. If dying as a fetus would have provided me with eternal life and happiness, and if I was given the choice to change history such that I was killed as a fetus, I'd take that in an instant. Sounds like a great choice to me. How 'bout you? Wouldn't you take that?
2. Say that before you were given that choice of reversing history and dying as an infant, you were also shown irrefutable proof that Islam is true, not Christianity. But since you had picked Christianity before giving this knowledge, you are destined for hell. So, your only choices then are to die and go to hell, or have your entire life erased and die as an infant and go to heaven. Which choice would you pick then?
And your answers to the two hypotheticals were:
JPH: H1: No. And I'd have to say that anyone who would take it is,
JPH: H1: at a minimum, extremely ungrateful
JPH: H2: if that is the info I was given, why didn't I convert to Islam? And
JPH: H2: why was my ignorance resulting in condemnation? I don't think
JPH: H2: even Islam holds that those ignorant of Islam will be condemned
JPH: H2: to hell, though I need to check that. The question is like asking
JPH: H2: what I think the color nine would smell like.
Well, it is true that hypotheticals have the problem that, well, they are hypothetical. They require "suspension of disbelief" and you can never really know what you would do in a hypothetical until you are really there. But, none-the-less, the point of my hypotheticals is to make the point that there isn't anything really terribly wrong with "endorsing a world wherein all are killed as fetuses"-- the statement of yours that I was responding to.
Yes, hypotheticals have problems. But even so, I think my hypotheticals were not so far-fetched as to be "asking what the color nine would smell like." My first hypothetical was too easy for you to say no to, because there you had no downside to having both your current life and, presumably, your eternal life to come. The point to the second hypothetical was to give you a potential downside. You ask why your ignorance results in condemnation. You are not ignorant of Islam, you have rejected it. You ask why you didn't convert upon giving the proof of its validity. The answer is the same answer you would give me if I ask you why I can't convert to Christianity after I'm dead--its too late. God or Allah wants you to convert *before* you have proof-positive. The point of the second hypothetical is to put you in roughly my shoes, should Christianity be true. If Christianity really is true, I'd be better of having died as an infant. And if Islam is true, you would have been better off dying as an infant.
So, as far as "endorsing a world wherein all are killed as fetuses," I still say, "why not?"
JPH: I don't even need help staying away from beer -- to me it
JPH: smells like something my dog did on the rug.
Well, I'll be ding-danged--we actually agree on something. Just yesterday somebody told me that the Brits call beer "piss". I don't know if this is true or not, but my response was, "I knew it!"
JPH: But would they also say that we have no control over how much
JPH: and to what extent we are influenced?
I think we have *some* control, but not as much as we might think we do.
PJ: If someone might knock at the door, like a Jehovah's Witness, my parents
PJ: would say something like they believe in God but not in church
JPH: For even more fun, say, "Oh, we're members of the Church of Satan.
JPH: Would you like to come to our services?"
On atheist forums, I hear people saying things like that. But I'm surprised you would say something like that. Aren't JW's misguided brethren from your perspective?
PJ: I'll never read all the Buddhist Sutra, Hindu Vedas, Koran,
PJ: Native American scriptures, etc.
JPH: Why not? It's not a particularly large corpus, and at the very least,
JPH: if you have any humanist tendencies you can look at it as an
JPH: exercise in appreciating the human mind.
Well, indeed, if you just limit the subject to the official holy books of current major religions, then yeah, it isn't beyond my ability to read it all. But it is beyond my ability to *understand* it all. I've tried to read the Bible. Some portions are reasonably readable, I read Genesis and the Gospels and Acts. Those are reasonably readable. But for most of the OT, it was just impossible to keep awake for let alone understand. And even in the books that I acknowledge are reasonably readable, even among believers, there is a great deal of debate on what much of it means.
JPH: You treat the Bible as a collective though it is in fact 66 separate books.
JPH: You realize that just because Genesis might be unreliable, this does
JPH: not mean Luke is as well?
I've generally felt that inerrests make a good case that either the entire Bible is the Word of God, or none of it is. Once you start to admit some of it is wrong, it is hard to make a case that any of it is right. Christians claim that Jesus fulfilled prophesy. How can Jesus be a prophesized Messiah from the OT if the OT isn't reliable?
JPH: I see you hold the same for all history (we can never know what is
JPH: reliable), yes?
Based on Occam's Razor, we can judge what is likely reliable, but you are correct, we can never know what is for certain reliable.
JPH: Well, that does leave you out in the woods as far as what the majority
JPH: of scholarship on history would hold, does it not?
Someday I really need to research more on metaphysics. I don't really know what most doctorate history professors believe. But, I can't help but suspect they probably more agree with me that you admit. But, I can't defend this for certain.
JPH: one which cannot even guarantee that you existed a few moments ago.
This is correct, you cannot "guarantee" that we existed yesterday. You remember doing things yesterday and earlier? Those were just memories implanted by my god that created the universe 5 minutes ago. Prove this wrong. You can't prove it wrong. You can conclude it being unlikely based on Occam's Razor. But you can't prove it wrong.
