lobotomizing someone is a far greater violation of free will than just removing their desire to sin, this view is inconsistient and also makes god look like an utter monster.
I think creating someone kinda violates their free will in the first place. In the absolute technical sense, no -- as they had no will before they came into existence and couldn't have willed not to exist -- but something about it feels off. I think it's because "Well, they couldn't have refused the offer to exist because they didn't exist" ignores the symmetry of "They also couldn't have accepted the offer to exist because they didn't exist," as if assuming acceptance is permissible but assuming rejection is not.
Hey Emerson, I have a request that I hope you will consider. I'd really like to see someone with your philosophy chops refute some of the more popular strains of presuppositionalism. I've found some pretty good YT resources, such as Joseph Lowell's livestream he did on Robert Boylan's podcast, but I really would like to see you're approach to refutation. Bonus points if you can specifically go into Jay Dyer's specific brand of presup, as he was my first exposure to the argument and his formulation, on the surface, seems a bit more sophisticated than many other apologists I've seen.
If God is good, he would never make an universe in which a single soul gets eternal suffering. As he is outside time, the results of any creation he makes can be seen by him instantly. If he makes any action, the results of this action are clear to him immediately, in fact, they are clear to him even before the action. So, any action he does that ultimately leads to infinite suffering is metaphysicaly impossible. Even if you argue that some people will use their free-will to choose to eternally suffer, as God is all-knowing, he would prevent the existence of these people the first place. Preventing the existence of someone is not a restriction of free-will, in the same way a person who chooses to not having kids is not preventing the free-will of anyone. You can only restrict the free-will of someone who already exists.
And if, somehow, it's COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE to create a world where free will exists without at least one free-willed being ending up suffering forever, just create nothing. You're already perfect and complete in and of yourself, you are the maximum of goodness and no greater goodness or glory can be achieved that you don't already possess, so just do nothing.
@@gabri41200 Can't disagree. That's why I think that Christianity and Islam that include both the belief in a perfect God and the belief in eternal torture, are necessarily false. I say necessarily because these two beliefs are self-contradictory. Contradictions are necessarily false. They cannot possibly be true. The prior probability of these two religions before we even look at any evidence is 0. Whatever you multiply by 0 will still yield 0, so I don't really bother that much looking at their evidence. I suspect that any evidence they can offer would be flawed, fabricated or whatnot. And when I do look at some evidence, that's exactly what I find. We can include Judaism because, although it doesn't teach eternal torment in a literal Hell, it still presents a supposedly perfect God as morally deficient in too many places in the Hebrew Bible. I am fairly certain that Abrahamic religions are false.
Thank you :) I'm inclined to agree with you, actually. My problem is that I edit and proof on the same pair of headphones, where it comes through really clearly. Back when I used to work on music, I'd always listen to the final draft in the car, on a stereo, on several different pairs of headphones, computer speakers, etc. to make sure the mix and EQ and so on weren't just good for one but not others. But now I just check things on my airpods and call it good.
I find Mr. Buck's concern for "the consent of the damned" a bit puzzling, as assuming God does care about free will to such an extent, it appears to undercut God's motivation for creating in the first place. If indeed he is committed to the belief that God desires the salvation of all, one presumes God desires the MAXIMAL salvation of all; it seems reasonable to think that, even if God establishes a three-tiered Heaven, his deepest desire as a maximally loving being is that the two lower tiers are empty and everybody ends up in the highest one, regardless of what actually results. To think it fine if half of all people fail to reach even the second tier does not sound to me like the will of a perfectly loving being; it should grieve such a being if half of all people can't even get past the first rung of the ladder in exactly the same way Hell should grieve them. But at the same time, I think respect for created persons' free will is inadequate to try to get around this, for several reasons. First: 1a) If God's maximal knowledge is such that he knows what every created being would do under every circumstance, then he would foresee that some people would fail to reach the best afterlife state, which is something that they would not desire were they perfectly rational and in better circumstances that would make them open to reaching the best state, and that God would not desire to happen if it is within his power to prevent it. But it IS within God's power to prevent: Just don't create them, or create them under the right circumstances. If God cannot do this, it undermines maximal power, as this seems like something that even a sufficiently knowing and powerful creator could screen for. This is just a retread of an anti-Hell argument, but it would apply to Buck's more limited anti-universalism equally well unless God is conceded to have limitations that would make this unpreventable, which I think he has theological commitments to deny. 1b) If instead God's maximal knowledge is such that, due to libertarian free will and/or open theism, God cannot know where each created individual will end up, the question becomes what justifies God's assumption of the risk in choosing to create any person with free will. Even if God does not know what will happen, he would be aware of what COULD happen, particularly if as the creator he sets the parameters of possibility. So again, he could manipulate the initial parameters to mitigate or avoid the risk, or if such is not possible, he has the option not to create moral agents at all. So God ought not create if there is even a RISK his will that all attain the maximal result will be frustrated. If this is a true, genuine desire of God -- and such desires, coming from the source of goodness or maximally good being that can exist, surely must be the best thing one can desire -- then it seems incompatible with the combination of a respect for moral agents' free will such that he will permit them to frustrate it if he can do otherwise. And he can do otherwise, by refraining from creating any moral agent who has a chance of utilizing their free will to frustrate his desire that "top-tier" salvation be earned by all. So it just seems like this kind of God that Mr. Buck is implying may exist can't exist, because if it did exist, either we would not, or universalism in the robust sense would be true (in that God actually HAS only created those who will not frustrate his desire). I could see a play being made here to undermine this by suggesting that the creation of libertarianly-free moral agents is a good so great that it somehow counterbalances any risk God would assume in creating such moral agents, such that a multi-tiered Heaven-esque system is simply the maximally loving option provided it is morally justified to take the risk that many won't get all the way to the top. And God, knowing there's a chance people will reach the perfect fulfillment of a relationship with him, creates moral agents to grant them that chance. So, second: 2a) I see no motivation whatsoever to value free will that highly. I can think of no explanation for why God would think that either. At least under full universalism God could argue the ends will justify the means; though I find that completely at odds with Christianity, under some other form of theism it may be allowed. It's not clear why God would create me with the motive, means, and opportunity to permanently reject him if that is the very thing God DOESN'T want out of me. What about my freedom to do this is so important? Why is it valuable to God, and to me, that I have not only the chance to do this, but a fairly high chance? 2b) Where is the concern for the "consent of the damned" with respect to the as-yet-uncreated? If I were some disembodied preexistent soul and God told me that I'd live my life and be unwilling to change and become a better person, so he'd turn me into being with diminished capacity for all eternity, I would ask that I not be created at all. If Mr. Buck's theory is true, at least SOME people were created seemingly without their consent and destined for a divine lobotomy. I fail to see how this is better than Hell or Annihilationism, and I fail to see how this respects their free will. Does Mr. Buck genuinely believe there are people who would rather have the faculties of a chimp or a dog for all eternity, and that only such people end up that way? It is deeply implausible to me that anyone would consent to that, and if preexistence isn't a thing then it's irrelevant because no one DID consent to that, and there's no clear justification for why God is allowed to presume someone's consent if he's so concerned about free will that he won't violate it under other circumstances. 2c) This seems to run into a speculative problem where a sufficiently knowledgeable God ought to give consideration to the free will of uncreated persons he knows could exist. The number of moral agents who have ever existed or ever will exist is dwarfed by the infinitely vast pool of possible moral agents who by circumstance of creation never do come to exist. But at least SOME of those people would PROBABLY have been of sufficient capacity to fulfill God's desire to achieve perfect union with him had they existed at certain places and times, and given the choice would probably want to exist in order to do that; yet it seems improbable that this has actually happened. We humans don't concern ourselves morally for the desires of nonexistent potential-but-not-actual people (though arguably in some instances we should), but we're also not an all-powerful creator who could have brought any of those potential people about. If free choice is that important to God, reality should be set up in such a way as to maximize free choosers. But it sure doesn't seem like it; in fact, our reality seems to put moral agents in situations that diminish their control, capacity, and options for free choices.
A few points that are relevant to some of your observations. Omnipotence doesn't mean the power to break the laws of logic or instantiate contradictions. Coerced love or union is as contradictory as a square circle. Rape isn't love. Free will is highly valued because love-union with the supreme good is supremely and exhaustively valuable and the latter is impossible without the former. A person's response to sufficient grace isn't a random, accidental thing due to happenstance. It's fully self-appropriated, despite the contingencies, influences, and constraints of life. Are we capable of definitively determining the nature of an individual's response to sufficient grace, probably not. But God can. God is the supreme good - all good realities are good through participation in Him - and goodness is self diffusive (it wants to share itself) so God wants to share Himself, and so God creates creatures capable of participating in his life and goodness. By saying God is taking gratuitous risk by creating creatures that can reject him you're saying an individual's reciprocation or rejection is the result of happenstance and not full self-appropriation based on sufficient grace, which I would reject. Also, participation in the Supreme Good is the highest reality that can be experienced, so arguing that potential creaturely rejection of it should persuade God to avoid creating will deprive those who say yes to the Supreme Good and reality itself of instantiating the highest creaturely good of creaturely participation in the Supreme Good. Faulting God for not seeking a creatures's consent prior to creation given the attendant hazards is incoherent given that there's no one to offer consent prior to their creation. The point reminds me of Augustine's remark: "God created us without us: but he did not will to save us without us." Creation of creatures with the ability to embrace or reject the Supreme Good is not a reckless, irresponsible risk if God knows that all reciprocations-rejections of sufficient grace are fully self-appropriated within each individual's particular circumstances.
@@kosmosgalactic6221 There's a little dilemma for non-universalist Christians in the intersection of free will vs foreknowledge and maximal power of the creator before creation though. Does foreknowing what people will freely do, and then choosing with your maximal power to actualize that state of affairs, allow for free will or not? If you say no, then that means under this idea of God there cannot possibly be free will. But I believe the vast majority of Christians would say this type of God does still allow free will, and I would agree, and I believe you would also agree based on your characterization. However we then run into the second horn of the dilemma. If knowing what every single creation will freely choose before creating them and then actualizing that state of affairs is not a violation of free will, then it CANNOT be a violation of free will for God to foreknow and actualize the existence only of beings that he knows will freely choose love-union with the supreme good. You seem to agree that the only possible restriction that could prevent this from being the case at this point, given God's maximal power, is to claim that foreknowing and actualizing a creation that contains only beings that freely choose the supreme good entails a logical contradiction. But at this point the burden of proof would be on you to demonstrate what exactly that logical contradiction is. What logical contradiction can you demonstrate in an omnipotent, omniscient, and maximally loving being actualizing a state of affairs in which all created beings freely choose the supreme good? It cannot be that it is merely UNLIKELY for such a thing to occur, because improbability is not a limit that is relevant to a being with maximal power. It seems to me that it would in fact be far, FAR easier to demonstrate a logical contradiction in such a being actualizing a state of affairs that does not result in the highest good for ANY of the beings that they create. And indeed, I have had a far easier time developing syllogisms that with relatively uncontroversial premises seem to me to demonstrate that this is the case.
@@matthewnitz8367 Foreknowledge doesn't cause what's foreknown. Why does God create rational creatures who He knows will reject Him? Not doing so would seem to be a profound rejection and preemptive foreclosure of freely willed self-determination.
@@kosmosgalactic6221 If foreknowledge before creation does not preemptively foreclose free will, then how can you say foreknowledge of the fact that all of his creations will freely choose the supreme good would be foreclosure of their free will? I don't see how you can claim that what the sum total of all created beings are foreknown to freely choose metaphysically effects the individual free will of each. If there is just one person that is foreknown to not choose the supreme good, does that then not foreclose free will? Does it have to be at least 1%? Going down this route seems entirely arbitrary and apparently only done in order to preserve a free will defense, regardless of whether or not it can be logically defended.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that everyone who is currently a Christian was manipulated by God into thinking they have a relationship with him. At some point in their lives their free will was violated such that they would have the information they need to be a Christian.
Its a stretch to describe the giving of information as violating free will. The problem is not manipulation, it's that everyone doesn't have sufficient access to this same information.
@@AlexADalton You're right that we don't all have sufficient access to the same information. I just think that granting a Christian for the sake of argument Yahweh exists, it is manipulative of him to withhold information needed for salvation from those who would believe in him, even follow him if they were well-enough informed. Like a student preparing for a test, but someone manipulates their test score by preventing them from accessing needed information.
i say no, because there's no reason to think god would be good or loving in any meaningful sense. of course, classical theism defines god as good, but it's just a function of its omnipotence on a moral theory of might makes right. god does what it wills, and you can't stop it. that's easily compatible with sending literally everyone to eternal conscious torment just for its own pleasure, let alone most people, as in christianity.
Again, if we put aside eternal vindictive torture.. On the point about people being culpable for rejecting something they cant understand - If hell is the ultimate rejection of relationship with God then its plausible that there may be some relationally necessary limitations regarding the value of love and free will that come with that as a process. For example, relational trust cannot simply be imparted it must be chosen and built.. This is obviously well trodden ground but i dont see how these considerations have been overrurned here. I appreciate this chat Emerson.
Yeah, I think there's a dimension to this where the binary of Heaven and Hell (whatever one conceptualizes them as) is a false dichotomy. There could very easily be people who would not "ultimately" reject God, but who lack the means or circumstances to realize that their present rejection is unwarranted. As Mr. Green said, any rational person would probably choose a relationship with perfect goodness if they were reasonably sure that such a thing was possible, so if one posits that such a being does exist then either those rejecting him lack enough epistemic confidence that the relationship is possible (which God can fix by granting them more knowledge without violating their free will) or are irrational (in which case they're not "ultimately" rejecting God, because they don't rationally understand what they're rejecting). These gradations would require more nuance on the part of God to address, which is weight in favor of universalism as e.g. allowing for post-death conversion with greater epistemic confidence would mean far fewer people reject God post-death than reject him pre-death.
@@Uryvichk While i see the general appeal of this line of thinking, especially from a birds eye view. I am ultimately weary of it, for it reduces all evil to a lack of knowledge when in fact, without knowing everything, the majority of the time we do know what we need to know. What's more I think it's wrong-headed for ofcourse, if someone were to have absolutely clarity of vision about the nature of eternal separation from God it is true that they could not choose it (the same goes for absolute clarity about the nature of God). Yet such absolute clarity of vision cannot be imposed onto the human will without destroying its ability to choose. If people don't have the freedom to gain or reject that knowledge then they are not genuinely free. Or at least not in any relevant sense. Regarding God not valuing free will per your reply to my other comment - the subtext of practically the entire Bible is saturated in the assumption of human free will. For example God calls people to repent hundreds of times as if they actually can..moreover he allows them to not do so. So for me, I wouldn't say that is a viable avenue to argue down.
@@racsooj456 God can command something and then act to prevent it happening, e.g. Pharaoh in Exodus. On the one hand, Pharaoh is supposed to heed Moses and let the Israelites go, but on the other hand, he is either made to be unable to by Yahweh or has his reservations against doing so strengthened by Yahweh to ensure he does not. There's also a lot of prophetic literature which takes the basic form of "God says you people are wicked and you need to repent, but he knows you won't, so here's what's going to happen to you." In some respects the Book of Jonah is a parody of this notion, in that Jonah doesn't want to preach Nineveh's destruction because he knows they WILL listen to him and repent, earning God's mercy, which Jonah doesn't want them to receive. This all suggests that God could and does command things that cannot or will not be accomplished. Indeed, lowercase-o orthodox Christian tradition is that Pelagianism -- the idea that God would not command anything we cannot accomplish, and thus that it must be possible to live a righteous life without special help from God -- is heretical. If orthodoxy objects to this idea, they must believe that in at least some sense, it is possible for God to command us toward e.g. holiness or perfection which we cannot achieve. So he knows what our will is capable of and commands things our wills can't manage without him, which by definition means he's interfering with our wills to perfect those things.
@@Uryvichk Re Pharoah, i dont think you are taking into account the story leading up to that point. To my mind this is key. Moreover, if we are to seek precedent for God overriding peoples wills in such scriptures, we should really ask, why do none of them ever portray God overriding peoples wills in order to make them repent? I don't see how any such scriptures indicate that this is how God treats the will. Also, i think there is an important difference between a will that is freely surrendered to another's help and one that is overriden by another. God doesn't override our wills to help us do that which we cannot do alone anymore than a counselor does not override their patients will in order to help them. The will must be surrendered first for the help to be received. When responding to concerns that the standard of the kingdom was impossible, Jesus responded that, while such things are impossible with man, such things are not impossible 'with' God. 'With' implies that He did not see the relationship between God and humanity as simply a feigned call to surrender one's will which, in fact, is no more than a thinly veiled facade of eventual determinism.
You need an incredibly reductionist and unrealistic understanding of good, evil, and free will to make any of these infernalist options work. I hate the game that always has to be played in this discussion where we start to come up with these obviously ridiculous, impossibly masochistic people (somebody with full knowledge who still rejects God) to make any of them live options in the first place. There's this ambient fantasy vibe I always feel in these discussions. Btw, what's the outro music again Emerson?
This approach covers a lot of your misgivings: God desires the salvation of all and therefore provides sufficient grace to all to freely unify their will with God's will, and the amount of sufficient grace differs for each person based on their live's particulars embedded within a wider-global-cosmic providential narrative, and 'infinite chances' doesn't change anything because beyond the sufficient grace given no new information can be provided nor new apprehension of said information fostered in order to facilitate co-operation with said grace and so there can be no new-amended-revised decision to freely unify one's will with God's will beyond the sufficient grace given within a finite setting , hence the will becomes fixed, and God respects the will fixed on rejecting sufficient grace.
If the grace offered does not result in the correct decision, in what sense can one claim that the grace was "sufficient?" Clearly it was not sufficient, because it didn't work! And if God desires the salvation of all and provides what he believes to be sufficient grace to all, and it doesn't work, then hasn't God failed and mistakenly underestimated the sufficient grace necessary to fulfill his desire that all be saved? I find it also highly implausible that this scenario reflects reality. It is unbelievable that "no new information can be provided nor new apprehension of said information fostered in order to facilitate co-operation with said grace." It is plainly false: I know for a fact that there is new information God could provide me which would very much facilitate my willingness to cooperate. I can't speak for anyone else, of course, but I can speak to my own subjective experience, and regardless of whether the grace I have supposedly been provided is "sufficient," it is not true that there could be no additional information God could provide that would influence my relationship with him. Thus God either does not desire my salvation (though he may desire the salvation of all others, for all I know), already intends to save me regardless of my cooperation (thus universalism), lacks the ability to provide me with new information that we both know would effect my salvation (either through nonexistence, or insufficient power due to being more limited than he lets on), or permits me to be in error about whether new information would be of use to me, causing me to overlook the sufficienct grace I've already been provided by mistake (in which case my will is not fixed on rejecting sufficient grace, as I am mistaken in thinking I don't have it).
Re: 1st paragraph Sufficient doesn't mean doxastic compulsion, it doesn't mean "to the degree that compels/coerces"; it means enough romancing-wooing via multiple means to enable meaningful reciprocation or rejection, before the will becomes fixed. God desires humans to freely unify their wills with His (salvation/sanctification), if someone rejects that union it's not due to a 'shortcoming' on God's part given that He offers sufficient levels of romancing-wooing (neither over-determined nor under-determined) to enable a meaningful, doxastically and volitionally uncoerced response. The degree of sufficient grace for each person and what's considered meaningful reciprocation isn't absolutely relative but there's probably some idiosyncratic latitude. Re: 2nd paragraph You're still alive and therefore sufficient grace is still operative, so you might receive more information or develop greater apprehension of what's already known relative to you current state. Ask for more of what you need - information and/or apprehension. Like I said, you're still alive, your will isn't yet fixed. Ultimately and overall, you'll have received sufficient grace within your particular circumstances to enable a meaningful, personal response. Re: 3rd paragraph Hard to make out your point. But seems like you're expressing the objection that sufficient grace can only be rejected due to ignorance or weakness, and so any rejection of sufficient grace is due to factors outside one's control, and therefore one can't be held responsible. This objection presupposes doxastic and volitional involuntarism, and I reject both. If the latter were true, there would be no culpable ignorance (I don't want to learn how to drive a car, takes too long and too annoying, so just going to jump in and go for a spin), negligence (I probably really should have read the instructions on how to cut up a Japanese blowfish before serving it to my guests), willful malice ( I know they're innocent, and sure it won't be any hardship for me to be honest, but I want to get mine and have my way, and so too bad for them, I'm going to do me).
@@kosmosgalactic6221 It seems to me that your idea that a certain amount of information causes doxastic compulsion is at odds with you saying that doxastic involuntarism is false. If we can meaningfully choose what we believe, then more information allows us to freely make more informed and better choices. If we make different decisions with less information, it is not because we would be COMPELLED to do so with more information, but because we are able to freely choose what we now know more certainly is right. Therefore withholding that information reduces the freedom we have to be able to make the objectively correct decision, and instead increases the chances we will inadvertently make a mistake. If the supreme good is truly to choose belief and free unification with God's will, then with regards to the information given there are 2 options for why someone would not choose that supreme good and instead make a choice that is objectively harmful to themselves: 1) They have not been provided sufficient information to fully understand that they are making a choice that will be bad for them. In this case the lack of sufficient information has not only reduced their capability to make the right choice, but is in fact clearly causally responsible for their making the wrong decision. 2) They have been provided sufficient information to fully understand they are making a choice that will be bad for them, but still desire and choose the more harmful outcome. Given their sufficient knowledge that this choice will be bad for them, and therefore deliberate choosing of the harmful option, this must mean they have a desire to harm themselves. But desire for self-harm is one of the most obvious signs of someone being mentally unhealthy and unwell. Given this apparent defect, why would a God that truly wants the best for everyone not cure them of this desire for self-harm, or even just not create them with it in the first place? Let's imagine that I saw someone that continuously had a desire to cut themselves and kept attempting suicide, and I had a method to eliminate their desire to harm themselves while still letting them freely choose what they wanted WITHOUT that harmful desire. It seems to me that I would be a monster not to heal them of that burden they are carrying. Even if they begged and pleaded with me to let them keep wanting to cut themselves and desiring to kill themselves, that is not a state of mind in which that person appears rationally capable of freely making the best decision for themselves. Even if you want to claim that if I heal them of that illness, then by removing such desires I have eliminated some vital part of who thus have in some way removed the free will of the person they used to be. If that is the case, then why did God actualize such a being knowing that an integral part of their nature would be a desire to harm themselves?
@@matthewnitz8367 In the spirit of concision: one can choose against the good because of ignorance, weakness, or a malicious will; the first two diminish culpability and in many cases eliminate it; a malicious will, on the other hand, is inherently evil. And yes, a malicious will is irrational in a gravely self-destructive sense, and yes mental illness can be analogically irrational, but the ontologically destructive irrationality of a malicious will is not the same as the irrationality of mental illness, metaphysically, epistemically, or ethically.
@@kosmosgalactic6221 "Malicious will" would seem to be saying they make the decision regardless of the fact that it will harm them, because they know it will harm others and they desire the harm of others more than their own good. Would that be an accurate statement of your position? If that is the case, I can see an argument that that would be different from just desiring their own self harm. However, it seems to require a uniquely deranged individual that derives so much pleasure from the suffering of others that they would willingly choose eternal suffering themselves to cause whatever temporary suffering they can in others. Unless you think their decision will cause eternal suffering in others, and that will give them a counterbalancing infinite pleasure? I also am not entirely clear on who they are harming by making the decision to harm themselves. Either way, this type of speculation seems to me to posit that very few truly broken and deranged individuals will be condemned. If not that, I would say you have an ideology that dangerously paints all those that disagree with you as truly evil and abominable people that are so irredeemably malicious that they will knowingly and willingly choose terrible suffering for themselves in order to make others suffer some as well.
I think you would have a more interesting discussion with muslims. Most of which do not subscribe to the idea that God wills the salvation of all and would probably deny he is all loving.
Don't muslims emphasize the mercy of God, though? Why would God will the least merciful punishment conceivable? I have another video on eternal conscious torment where I talk about the conflicts between the strong view of hell and a God who is just and merciful, not just loving.
@@EmersonGreenMercy is only for those who repent in Islam. The Quran states often that God does not love disbelievers and will have no mercy on them in the hereafter. He leads astray whom he wills and guides who he wills. If love is defined as willing the good of the other, then Allah's love is restrictive in this regard. He is loving and merciful to those who submit to him, he is an enemy of those who do not. There is a diversity in islamic thought of course, but the God of the Quran does not posses unconditional love and those in hell are clearly kept there against their will and are hated by Allah. I can provide more detail if you'd like as I've done a lot of independent comparison between God of the Quran and the God of the new testament. A good book on this is Allah: God in the Quran by Gabriel Said Reynolds. You will find many arguments for universalism (Which I have also spent a great deal studying) do not work on muslims because their assumptions about what God is and his characteristics, both ontological and moral are different than christianity.
As far as the possibility thing is concerned, it's not that always flipping heads is unlikely, it's literally has 0 probability. So while not logically impossible it is mathematically impossible if you define that to mean 0 possibility.
@serversurfer6169 Never, probability zero does not mean logically impossible. All heads is nothing special. All infinite sequences have an equal probability of zero. If they didn't then the sum of all the probabilities would be infinite which is an actual impossibility.
@serversurfer6169 The probabilities of selecting a particular infinite sequence of heads and tails is being sum. Why? Because the sum over all probabilities given in the space must be finite by definition, conventionally usually 1 or 100. Given that every sequence is equally likely, for example TTTTTT... and HTHTHTHTH..., and given there infinitely many ways to create an infinite sequence of heads and tails, then each sequence has probability 0 of occurring. Otherwise you could add same number (the probability for each sequence) over and over infinitely many times and get a finite result which is impossible.
@@jeremyhansen9197 If I’m following you, and my math is comparatively weak, it sounds like you’re saying that as the sequence approaches infinity, the probability of obtaining it approaches zero. Sure, but since the sequence cannot reach infinity, the probability cannot reach zero. No matter how many times in a row you have flipped heads, your probability of doing so was non-zero, and your chance of doing it again is 50%. 🤷♂️ This almost seems like a semantics debate. Is it possible to always flip heads? Sure, but it’s unlikely. Is it possible to flip heads an infinite number of times? No, it’s impossible to do _anything_ an infinite number of times. As you say, the probability of obtaining an infinite sequence is always zero. 😜
Putting aside the potential nature of an eternal separation from God for a second. I don't think these free will objections are conclusive. On the free will override point: what if the infinite pit in Rasmussens analogy was simply the logical necessity of our ability to choose who we ultimately become? If so, and God is willing to override free will to stop people from forming fixed characters against Him, then why would He allow any small amount of character development against Him? If free will doesn't allow for ultimate consequences relevant to character formation then why allow moral evil to exist at all? God could have simply created all in bliss with gifted memories of imaginary past lives and there would be no relevant difference. Thus, if a loving God exists, the fact that our world appears to contain freely willed moral evil strongly suggests that God will not override creaturely free will when it comes to relationship with Him. On the infinite opportunities point: If God creates beings whose salvation is in the eternal sense, essentially inevitable, then they are, at least in the ultimate sense, not free, for their ultimate course is pre-determined to its ultimate destination. And since true relational love cannot be predetermined by one party without undermining the value and reality of that love, there is some reason to think a loving God would not do so.
> If free will doesn't allow for ultimate consequences relevant to character formation then why allow moral evil to exist at all? < So your response to the problem of evil is, "Who else would we cast into the pit?" 😕
@@serversurfer6169 By 'consequences' I mean - allow for people to actually become a particular sort of person. Not that God allows evil just for the sake of hell.
@@racsooj456 Well, you started out saying that maybe the pit needs to exist, cuz evil, but then you ask what the point of evil would be if there was no pit to fall into, as though the pit necessitates the evil. It sounds like a chicken/egg thing. Why is the pit necessary at all? 🤷♂️
Or maybe God, if one exists, does not actually value free will? This doctrine seems to create more problems than it solves, and if that is what is a stumbling block to universalism then free will should go out the window long before universalism, considering God never once says in revelation "I value your libertarian free choices, both in terms of your direct actions and the character you cultivate which motivates your disposition toward me, so much that I will permit you to make the wrong choices and reject me" but revelation says numerous times that God will not allow any to be lost and desires to (or in fact will eventually) save all (plus it says God is always annoyed or upset when Israel turns against him, so apparently he doesn't think their free will is more valuable than their obedience).
@@serversurfer6169 think perhaps you have misunderstood me. My point re the pit was that, for all we know, people may be able to truly become a particular sort of person in the final sense. This framing points the analogy away from the sense of someone simply slipping in. Re evil: I wasn't saying the point of evil is to allow for the pit. My point was an inductive one - given that we have evil in the world, there is evidence that if God exists He will not override someone's free will. For the reasons which restrain Him from doing so now will arguably not disapate simply given more moments of time. And if He was going to have to step in and remove free will for people anyway, then why not simply set things up in an alternative way (I offered one speculative way in my first comment).
🗣️🗣️🗣️ we making it out of hades with this one
I'm dead 💀
Very quality video. Good sound quality too.
You should probably reach out to The Orthodox Universalist. He has researched this topic very well and it would be nice to have him on your channel!
lobotomizing someone is a far greater violation of free will than just removing their desire to sin, this view is inconsistient and also makes god look like an utter monster.
I think creating someone kinda violates their free will in the first place. In the absolute technical sense, no -- as they had no will before they came into existence and couldn't have willed not to exist -- but something about it feels off. I think it's because "Well, they couldn't have refused the offer to exist because they didn't exist" ignores the symmetry of "They also couldn't have accepted the offer to exist because they didn't exist," as if assuming acceptance is permissible but assuming rejection is not.
Hey Emerson, I have a request that I hope you will consider. I'd really like to see someone with your philosophy chops refute some of the more popular strains of presuppositionalism. I've found some pretty good YT resources, such as Joseph Lowell's livestream he did on Robert Boylan's podcast, but I really would like to see you're approach to refutation. Bonus points if you can specifically go into Jay Dyer's specific brand of presup, as he was my first exposure to the argument and his formulation, on the surface, seems a bit more sophisticated than many other apologists I've seen.
If God is good, he would never make an universe in which a single soul gets eternal suffering. As he is outside time, the results of any creation he makes can be seen by him instantly. If he makes any action, the results of this action are clear to him immediately, in fact, they are clear to him even before the action. So, any action he does that ultimately leads to infinite suffering is metaphysicaly impossible. Even if you argue that some people will use their free-will to choose to eternally suffer, as God is all-knowing, he would prevent the existence of these people the first place. Preventing the existence of someone is not a restriction of free-will, in the same way a person who chooses to not having kids is not preventing the free-will of anyone. You can only restrict the free-will of someone who already exists.
Agree
And if, somehow, it's COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE to create a world where free will exists without at least one free-willed being ending up suffering forever, just create nothing. You're already perfect and complete in and of yourself, you are the maximum of goodness and no greater goodness or glory can be achieved that you don't already possess, so just do nothing.
@Uryvichk true, that's why the concept of God is nonsensical
@@Uryvichk Yeah, exactly
@@gabri41200 Can't disagree. That's why I think that Christianity and Islam that include both the belief in a perfect God and the belief in eternal torture, are necessarily false. I say necessarily because these two beliefs are self-contradictory. Contradictions are necessarily false. They cannot possibly be true. The prior probability of these two religions before we even look at any evidence is 0. Whatever you multiply by 0 will still yield 0, so I don't really bother that much looking at their evidence. I suspect that any evidence they can offer would be flawed, fabricated or whatnot. And when I do look at some evidence, that's exactly what I find. We can include Judaism because, although it doesn't teach eternal torment in a literal Hell, it still presents a supposedly perfect God as morally deficient in too many places in the Hebrew Bible. I am fairly certain that Abrahamic religions are false.
Idk. The audio is a bit muffled, needs a bit more higher frequencies blended in. But the content is really subjectively good.
Thank you :) I'm inclined to agree with you, actually. My problem is that I edit and proof on the same pair of headphones, where it comes through really clearly. Back when I used to work on music, I'd always listen to the final draft in the car, on a stereo, on several different pairs of headphones, computer speakers, etc. to make sure the mix and EQ and so on weren't just good for one but not others. But now I just check things on my airpods and call it good.
@@EmersonGreenI was mostly joking.
I look forward to your podcast more than most others. It’s in my top 5 for sure.
I find Mr. Buck's concern for "the consent of the damned" a bit puzzling, as assuming God does care about free will to such an extent, it appears to undercut God's motivation for creating in the first place. If indeed he is committed to the belief that God desires the salvation of all, one presumes God desires the MAXIMAL salvation of all; it seems reasonable to think that, even if God establishes a three-tiered Heaven, his deepest desire as a maximally loving being is that the two lower tiers are empty and everybody ends up in the highest one, regardless of what actually results. To think it fine if half of all people fail to reach even the second tier does not sound to me like the will of a perfectly loving being; it should grieve such a being if half of all people can't even get past the first rung of the ladder in exactly the same way Hell should grieve them.
But at the same time, I think respect for created persons' free will is inadequate to try to get around this, for several reasons. First:
1a) If God's maximal knowledge is such that he knows what every created being would do under every circumstance, then he would foresee that some people would fail to reach the best afterlife state, which is something that they would not desire were they perfectly rational and in better circumstances that would make them open to reaching the best state, and that God would not desire to happen if it is within his power to prevent it. But it IS within God's power to prevent: Just don't create them, or create them under the right circumstances. If God cannot do this, it undermines maximal power, as this seems like something that even a sufficiently knowing and powerful creator could screen for. This is just a retread of an anti-Hell argument, but it would apply to Buck's more limited anti-universalism equally well unless God is conceded to have limitations that would make this unpreventable, which I think he has theological commitments to deny.
1b) If instead God's maximal knowledge is such that, due to libertarian free will and/or open theism, God cannot know where each created individual will end up, the question becomes what justifies God's assumption of the risk in choosing to create any person with free will. Even if God does not know what will happen, he would be aware of what COULD happen, particularly if as the creator he sets the parameters of possibility. So again, he could manipulate the initial parameters to mitigate or avoid the risk, or if such is not possible, he has the option not to create moral agents at all.
So God ought not create if there is even a RISK his will that all attain the maximal result will be frustrated. If this is a true, genuine desire of God -- and such desires, coming from the source of goodness or maximally good being that can exist, surely must be the best thing one can desire -- then it seems incompatible with the combination of a respect for moral agents' free will such that he will permit them to frustrate it if he can do otherwise. And he can do otherwise, by refraining from creating any moral agent who has a chance of utilizing their free will to frustrate his desire that "top-tier" salvation be earned by all. So it just seems like this kind of God that Mr. Buck is implying may exist can't exist, because if it did exist, either we would not, or universalism in the robust sense would be true (in that God actually HAS only created those who will not frustrate his desire).
I could see a play being made here to undermine this by suggesting that the creation of libertarianly-free moral agents is a good so great that it somehow counterbalances any risk God would assume in creating such moral agents, such that a multi-tiered Heaven-esque system is simply the maximally loving option provided it is morally justified to take the risk that many won't get all the way to the top. And God, knowing there's a chance people will reach the perfect fulfillment of a relationship with him, creates moral agents to grant them that chance. So, second:
2a) I see no motivation whatsoever to value free will that highly. I can think of no explanation for why God would think that either. At least under full universalism God could argue the ends will justify the means; though I find that completely at odds with Christianity, under some other form of theism it may be allowed. It's not clear why God would create me with the motive, means, and opportunity to permanently reject him if that is the very thing God DOESN'T want out of me. What about my freedom to do this is so important? Why is it valuable to God, and to me, that I have not only the chance to do this, but a fairly high chance?
2b) Where is the concern for the "consent of the damned" with respect to the as-yet-uncreated? If I were some disembodied preexistent soul and God told me that I'd live my life and be unwilling to change and become a better person, so he'd turn me into being with diminished capacity for all eternity, I would ask that I not be created at all. If Mr. Buck's theory is true, at least SOME people were created seemingly without their consent and destined for a divine lobotomy. I fail to see how this is better than Hell or Annihilationism, and I fail to see how this respects their free will. Does Mr. Buck genuinely believe there are people who would rather have the faculties of a chimp or a dog for all eternity, and that only such people end up that way? It is deeply implausible to me that anyone would consent to that, and if preexistence isn't a thing then it's irrelevant because no one DID consent to that, and there's no clear justification for why God is allowed to presume someone's consent if he's so concerned about free will that he won't violate it under other circumstances.
2c) This seems to run into a speculative problem where a sufficiently knowledgeable God ought to give consideration to the free will of uncreated persons he knows could exist. The number of moral agents who have ever existed or ever will exist is dwarfed by the infinitely vast pool of possible moral agents who by circumstance of creation never do come to exist. But at least SOME of those people would PROBABLY have been of sufficient capacity to fulfill God's desire to achieve perfect union with him had they existed at certain places and times, and given the choice would probably want to exist in order to do that; yet it seems improbable that this has actually happened. We humans don't concern ourselves morally for the desires of nonexistent potential-but-not-actual people (though arguably in some instances we should), but we're also not an all-powerful creator who could have brought any of those potential people about. If free choice is that important to God, reality should be set up in such a way as to maximize free choosers. But it sure doesn't seem like it; in fact, our reality seems to put moral agents in situations that diminish their control, capacity, and options for free choices.
A few points that are relevant to some of your observations.
Omnipotence doesn't mean the power to break the laws of logic or instantiate contradictions. Coerced love or union is as contradictory as a square circle. Rape isn't love.
Free will is highly valued because love-union with the supreme good is supremely and exhaustively valuable and the latter is impossible without the former.
A person's response to sufficient grace isn't a random, accidental thing due to happenstance. It's fully self-appropriated, despite the contingencies, influences, and constraints of life. Are we capable of definitively determining the nature of an individual's response to sufficient grace, probably not. But God can.
God is the supreme good - all good realities are good through participation in Him - and goodness is self diffusive (it wants to share itself) so God wants to share Himself, and so God creates creatures capable of participating in his life and goodness. By saying God is taking gratuitous risk by creating creatures that can reject him you're saying an individual's reciprocation or rejection is the result of happenstance and not full self-appropriation based on sufficient grace, which I would reject. Also, participation in the Supreme Good is the highest reality that can be experienced, so arguing that potential creaturely rejection of it should persuade God to avoid creating will deprive those who say yes to the Supreme Good and reality itself of instantiating the highest creaturely good of creaturely participation in the Supreme Good.
Faulting God for not seeking a creatures's consent prior to creation given the attendant hazards is incoherent given that there's no one to offer consent prior to their creation. The point reminds me of Augustine's remark: "God created us without us: but he did not will to save us without us."
Creation of creatures with the ability to embrace or reject the Supreme Good is not a reckless, irresponsible risk if God knows that all reciprocations-rejections of sufficient grace are fully self-appropriated within each individual's particular circumstances.
@@kosmosgalactic6221 There's a little dilemma for non-universalist Christians in the intersection of free will vs foreknowledge and maximal power of the creator before creation though. Does foreknowing what people will freely do, and then choosing with your maximal power to actualize that state of affairs, allow for free will or not? If you say no, then that means under this idea of God there cannot possibly be free will. But I believe the vast majority of Christians would say this type of God does still allow free will, and I would agree, and I believe you would also agree based on your characterization.
However we then run into the second horn of the dilemma. If knowing what every single creation will freely choose before creating them and then actualizing that state of affairs is not a violation of free will, then it CANNOT be a violation of free will for God to foreknow and actualize the existence only of beings that he knows will freely choose love-union with the supreme good.
You seem to agree that the only possible restriction that could prevent this from being the case at this point, given God's maximal power, is to claim that foreknowing and actualizing a creation that contains only beings that freely choose the supreme good entails a logical contradiction. But at this point the burden of proof would be on you to demonstrate what exactly that logical contradiction is. What logical contradiction can you demonstrate in an omnipotent, omniscient, and maximally loving being actualizing a state of affairs in which all created beings freely choose the supreme good? It cannot be that it is merely UNLIKELY for such a thing to occur, because improbability is not a limit that is relevant to a being with maximal power.
It seems to me that it would in fact be far, FAR easier to demonstrate a logical contradiction in such a being actualizing a state of affairs that does not result in the highest good for ANY of the beings that they create. And indeed, I have had a far easier time developing syllogisms that with relatively uncontroversial premises seem to me to demonstrate that this is the case.
@@matthewnitz8367 Foreknowledge doesn't cause what's foreknown.
Why does God create rational creatures who He knows will reject Him? Not doing so would seem to be a profound rejection and preemptive foreclosure of freely willed self-determination.
@@kosmosgalactic6221 If foreknowledge before creation does not preemptively foreclose free will, then how can you say foreknowledge of the fact that all of his creations will freely choose the supreme good would be foreclosure of their free will? I don't see how you can claim that what the sum total of all created beings are foreknown to freely choose metaphysically effects the individual free will of each. If there is just one person that is foreknown to not choose the supreme good, does that then not foreclose free will? Does it have to be at least 1%? Going down this route seems entirely arbitrary and apparently only done in order to preserve a free will defense, regardless of whether or not it can be logically defended.
@@matthewnitz8367 Again, foreknowledge does not cause what is foreknown.
Jordan Daniel Wood has stated that there appears to be a drift towards Universalism in the Catholic Church.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that everyone who is currently a Christian was manipulated by God into thinking they have a relationship with him. At some point in their lives their free will was violated such that they would have the information they need to be a Christian.
Its a stretch to describe the giving of information as violating free will. The problem is not manipulation, it's that everyone doesn't have sufficient access to this same information.
@@AlexADalton You're right that we don't all have sufficient access to the same information. I just think that granting a Christian for the sake of argument Yahweh exists, it is manipulative of him to withhold information needed for salvation from those who would believe in him, even follow him if they were well-enough informed. Like a student preparing for a test, but someone manipulates their test score by preventing them from accessing needed information.
If God exists, it just seems like a weird waste of his time to engage in all these pointless theatrics.
i say no, because there's no reason to think god would be good or loving in any meaningful sense.
of course, classical theism defines god as good, but it's just a function of its omnipotence on a moral theory of might makes right. god does what it wills, and you can't stop it. that's easily compatible with sending literally everyone to eternal conscious torment just for its own pleasure, let alone most people, as in christianity.
There are mamy kinds of theism.
Again, if we put aside eternal vindictive torture.. On the point about people being culpable for rejecting something they cant understand - If hell is the ultimate rejection of relationship with God then its plausible that there may be some relationally necessary limitations regarding the value of love and free will that come with that as a process. For example, relational trust cannot simply be imparted it must be chosen and built..
This is obviously well trodden ground but i dont see how these considerations have been overrurned here. I appreciate this chat Emerson.
Yeah, I think there's a dimension to this where the binary of Heaven and Hell (whatever one conceptualizes them as) is a false dichotomy. There could very easily be people who would not "ultimately" reject God, but who lack the means or circumstances to realize that their present rejection is unwarranted. As Mr. Green said, any rational person would probably choose a relationship with perfect goodness if they were reasonably sure that such a thing was possible, so if one posits that such a being does exist then either those rejecting him lack enough epistemic confidence that the relationship is possible (which God can fix by granting them more knowledge without violating their free will) or are irrational (in which case they're not "ultimately" rejecting God, because they don't rationally understand what they're rejecting). These gradations would require more nuance on the part of God to address, which is weight in favor of universalism as e.g. allowing for post-death conversion with greater epistemic confidence would mean far fewer people reject God post-death than reject him pre-death.
@@Uryvichk While i see the general appeal of this line of thinking, especially from a birds eye view. I am ultimately weary of it, for it reduces all evil to a lack of knowledge when in fact, without knowing everything, the majority of the time we do know what we need to know.
What's more I think it's wrong-headed for
ofcourse, if someone were to have absolutely clarity of vision about the nature of eternal separation from God it is true that they could not choose it (the same goes for absolute clarity about the nature of God). Yet such absolute clarity of vision cannot be imposed onto the human will without destroying its ability to choose. If people don't have the freedom to gain or reject that knowledge then they are not genuinely free. Or at least not in any relevant sense.
Regarding God not valuing free will per your reply to my other comment - the subtext of practically the entire Bible is saturated in the assumption of human free will. For example God calls people to repent hundreds of times as if they actually can..moreover he allows them to not do so. So for me, I wouldn't say that is a viable avenue to argue down.
@@racsooj456 God can command something and then act to prevent it happening, e.g. Pharaoh in Exodus. On the one hand, Pharaoh is supposed to heed Moses and let the Israelites go, but on the other hand, he is either made to be unable to by Yahweh or has his reservations against doing so strengthened by Yahweh to ensure he does not. There's also a lot of prophetic literature which takes the basic form of "God says you people are wicked and you need to repent, but he knows you won't, so here's what's going to happen to you." In some respects the Book of Jonah is a parody of this notion, in that Jonah doesn't want to preach Nineveh's destruction because he knows they WILL listen to him and repent, earning God's mercy, which Jonah doesn't want them to receive.
This all suggests that God could and does command things that cannot or will not be accomplished. Indeed, lowercase-o orthodox Christian tradition is that Pelagianism -- the idea that God would not command anything we cannot accomplish, and thus that it must be possible to live a righteous life without special help from God -- is heretical. If orthodoxy objects to this idea, they must believe that in at least some sense, it is possible for God to command us toward e.g. holiness or perfection which we cannot achieve. So he knows what our will is capable of and commands things our wills can't manage without him, which by definition means he's interfering with our wills to perfect those things.
@@Uryvichk Re Pharoah, i dont think you are taking into account the story leading up to that point. To my mind this is key.
Moreover, if we are to seek precedent for God overriding peoples wills in such scriptures, we should really ask, why do none of them ever portray God overriding peoples wills in order to make them repent?
I don't see how any such scriptures indicate that this is how God treats the will.
Also, i think there is an important difference between a will that is freely surrendered to another's help and one that is overriden by another. God doesn't override our wills to help us do that which we cannot do alone anymore than a counselor does not override their patients will in order to help them. The will must be surrendered first for the help to be received.
When responding to concerns that the standard of the kingdom was impossible, Jesus responded that, while such things are impossible with man, such things are not impossible 'with' God. 'With' implies that He did not see the relationship between God and humanity as simply a feigned call to surrender one's will which, in fact, is no more than a thinly veiled facade of eventual determinism.
Would you be open to a conversation with me?
You need an incredibly reductionist and unrealistic understanding of good, evil, and free will to make any of these infernalist options work. I hate the game that always has to be played in this discussion where we start to come up with these obviously ridiculous, impossibly masochistic people (somebody with full knowledge who still rejects God) to make any of them live options in the first place. There's this ambient fantasy vibe I always feel in these discussions.
Btw, what's the outro music again Emerson?
19:50 Christian Gnosticism solves this dilemma. We are under quarantine and some will be annihilated when this construct comes to an end.
lol
Don’t be talking’ like that about the Jews!
@@radscorpion8
This approach covers a lot of your misgivings:
God desires the salvation of all and therefore provides sufficient grace to all to freely unify their will with God's will, and the amount of sufficient grace differs for each person based on their live's particulars embedded within a wider-global-cosmic providential narrative, and 'infinite chances' doesn't change anything because beyond the sufficient grace given no new information can be provided nor new apprehension of said information fostered in order to facilitate co-operation with said grace and so there can be no new-amended-revised decision to freely unify one's will with God's will beyond the sufficient grace given within a finite setting , hence the will becomes fixed, and God respects the will fixed on rejecting sufficient grace.
If the grace offered does not result in the correct decision, in what sense can one claim that the grace was "sufficient?" Clearly it was not sufficient, because it didn't work! And if God desires the salvation of all and provides what he believes to be sufficient grace to all, and it doesn't work, then hasn't God failed and mistakenly underestimated the sufficient grace necessary to fulfill his desire that all be saved?
I find it also highly implausible that this scenario reflects reality. It is unbelievable that "no new information can be provided nor new apprehension of said information fostered in order to facilitate co-operation with said grace." It is plainly false: I know for a fact that there is new information God could provide me which would very much facilitate my willingness to cooperate. I can't speak for anyone else, of course, but I can speak to my own subjective experience, and regardless of whether the grace I have supposedly been provided is "sufficient," it is not true that there could be no additional information God could provide that would influence my relationship with him.
Thus God either does not desire my salvation (though he may desire the salvation of all others, for all I know), already intends to save me regardless of my cooperation (thus universalism), lacks the ability to provide me with new information that we both know would effect my salvation (either through nonexistence, or insufficient power due to being more limited than he lets on), or permits me to be in error about whether new information would be of use to me, causing me to overlook the sufficienct grace I've already been provided by mistake (in which case my will is not fixed on rejecting sufficient grace, as I am mistaken in thinking I don't have it).
Re: 1st paragraph
Sufficient doesn't mean doxastic compulsion, it doesn't mean "to the degree that compels/coerces"; it means enough romancing-wooing via multiple means to enable meaningful reciprocation or rejection, before the will becomes fixed.
God desires humans to freely unify their wills with His (salvation/sanctification), if someone rejects that union it's not due to a 'shortcoming' on God's part given that He offers sufficient levels of romancing-wooing (neither over-determined nor under-determined) to enable a meaningful, doxastically and volitionally uncoerced response. The degree of sufficient grace for each person and what's considered meaningful reciprocation isn't absolutely relative but there's probably some idiosyncratic latitude.
Re: 2nd paragraph
You're still alive and therefore sufficient grace is still operative, so you might receive more information or develop greater apprehension of what's already known relative to you current state. Ask for more of what you need - information and/or apprehension. Like I said, you're still alive, your will isn't yet fixed. Ultimately and overall, you'll have received sufficient grace within your particular circumstances to enable a meaningful, personal response.
Re: 3rd paragraph
Hard to make out your point. But seems like you're expressing the objection that sufficient grace can only be rejected due to ignorance or weakness, and so any rejection of sufficient grace is due to factors outside one's control, and therefore one can't be held responsible. This objection presupposes doxastic and volitional involuntarism, and I reject both. If the latter were true, there would be no culpable ignorance (I don't want to learn how to drive a car, takes too long and too annoying, so just going to jump in and go for a spin), negligence (I probably really should have read the instructions on how to cut up a Japanese blowfish before serving it to my guests), willful malice ( I know they're innocent, and sure it won't be any hardship for me to be honest, but I want to get mine and have my way, and so too bad for them, I'm going to do me).
@@kosmosgalactic6221 It seems to me that your idea that a certain amount of information causes doxastic compulsion is at odds with you saying that doxastic involuntarism is false. If we can meaningfully choose what we believe, then more information allows us to freely make more informed and better choices. If we make different decisions with less information, it is not because we would be COMPELLED to do so with more information, but because we are able to freely choose what we now know more certainly is right. Therefore withholding that information reduces the freedom we have to be able to make the objectively correct decision, and instead increases the chances we will inadvertently make a mistake. If the supreme good is truly to choose belief and free unification with God's will, then with regards to the information given there are 2 options for why someone would not choose that supreme good and instead make a choice that is objectively harmful to themselves:
1) They have not been provided sufficient information to fully understand that they are making a choice that will be bad for them. In this case the lack of sufficient information has not only reduced their capability to make the right choice, but is in fact clearly causally responsible for their making the wrong decision.
2) They have been provided sufficient information to fully understand they are making a choice that will be bad for them, but still desire and choose the more harmful outcome. Given their sufficient knowledge that this choice will be bad for them, and therefore deliberate choosing of the harmful option, this must mean they have a desire to harm themselves. But desire for self-harm is one of the most obvious signs of someone being mentally unhealthy and unwell. Given this apparent defect, why would a God that truly wants the best for everyone not cure them of this desire for self-harm, or even just not create them with it in the first place?
Let's imagine that I saw someone that continuously had a desire to cut themselves and kept attempting suicide, and I had a method to eliminate their desire to harm themselves while still letting them freely choose what they wanted WITHOUT that harmful desire. It seems to me that I would be a monster not to heal them of that burden they are carrying. Even if they begged and pleaded with me to let them keep wanting to cut themselves and desiring to kill themselves, that is not a state of mind in which that person appears rationally capable of freely making the best decision for themselves. Even if you want to claim that if I heal them of that illness, then by removing such desires I have eliminated some vital part of who thus have in some way removed the free will of the person they used to be. If that is the case, then why did God actualize such a being knowing that an integral part of their nature would be a desire to harm themselves?
@@matthewnitz8367 In the spirit of concision: one can choose against the good because of ignorance, weakness, or a malicious will; the first two diminish culpability and in many cases eliminate it; a malicious will, on the other hand, is inherently evil. And yes, a malicious will is irrational in a gravely self-destructive sense, and yes mental illness can be analogically irrational, but the ontologically destructive irrationality of a malicious will is not the same as the irrationality of mental illness, metaphysically, epistemically, or ethically.
@@kosmosgalactic6221 "Malicious will" would seem to be saying they make the decision regardless of the fact that it will harm them, because they know it will harm others and they desire the harm of others more than their own good. Would that be an accurate statement of your position?
If that is the case, I can see an argument that that would be different from just desiring their own self harm. However, it seems to require a uniquely deranged individual that derives so much pleasure from the suffering of others that they would willingly choose eternal suffering themselves to cause whatever temporary suffering they can in others. Unless you think their decision will cause eternal suffering in others, and that will give them a counterbalancing infinite pleasure? I also am not entirely clear on who they are harming by making the decision to harm themselves.
Either way, this type of speculation seems to me to posit that very few truly broken and deranged individuals will be condemned. If not that, I would say you have an ideology that dangerously paints all those that disagree with you as truly evil and abominable people that are so irredeemably malicious that they will knowingly and willingly choose terrible suffering for themselves in order to make others suffer some as well.
I think you would have a more interesting discussion with muslims. Most of which do not subscribe to the idea that God wills the salvation of all and would probably deny he is all loving.
Don't muslims emphasize the mercy of God, though? Why would God will the least merciful punishment conceivable? I have another video on eternal conscious torment where I talk about the conflicts between the strong view of hell and a God who is just and merciful, not just loving.
@@EmersonGreenMercy is only for those who repent in Islam. The Quran states often that God does not love disbelievers and will have no mercy on them in the hereafter. He leads astray whom he wills and guides who he wills. If love is defined as willing the good of the other, then Allah's love is restrictive in this regard. He is loving and merciful to those who submit to him, he is an enemy of those who do not.
There is a diversity in islamic thought of course, but the God of the Quran does not posses unconditional love and those in hell are clearly kept there against their will and are hated by Allah. I can provide more detail if you'd like as I've done a lot of independent comparison between God of the Quran and the God of the new testament. A good book on this is Allah: God in the Quran by Gabriel Said Reynolds.
You will find many arguments for universalism (Which I have also spent a great deal studying) do not work on muslims because their assumptions about what God is and his characteristics, both ontological and moral are different than christianity.
As far as the possibility thing is concerned, it's not that always flipping heads is unlikely, it's literally has 0 probability. So while not logically impossible it is mathematically impossible if you define that to mean 0 possibility.
On which flip do you think tails becomes due? 🤔
@serversurfer6169 Never, probability zero does not mean logically impossible. All heads is nothing special. All infinite sequences have an equal probability of zero. If they didn't then the sum of all the probabilities would be infinite which is an actual impossibility.
@@jeremyhansen9197 I’m not sure what you mean. What probabilities are being summed and why? 🤷♂️
@serversurfer6169 The probabilities of selecting a particular infinite sequence of heads and tails is being sum. Why? Because the sum over all probabilities given in the space must be finite by definition, conventionally usually 1 or 100. Given that every sequence is equally likely, for example TTTTTT... and HTHTHTHTH..., and given there infinitely many ways to create an infinite sequence of heads and tails, then each sequence has probability 0 of occurring. Otherwise you could add same number (the probability for each sequence) over and over infinitely many times and get a finite result which is impossible.
@@jeremyhansen9197 If I’m following you, and my math is comparatively weak, it sounds like you’re saying that as the sequence approaches infinity, the probability of obtaining it approaches zero. Sure, but since the sequence cannot reach infinity, the probability cannot reach zero. No matter how many times in a row you have flipped heads, your probability of doing so was non-zero, and your chance of doing it again is 50%. 🤷♂️
This almost seems like a semantics debate. Is it possible to always flip heads? Sure, but it’s unlikely. Is it possible to flip heads an infinite number of times? No, it’s impossible to do _anything_ an infinite number of times. As you say, the probability of obtaining an infinite sequence is always zero. 😜
Putting aside the potential nature of an eternal separation from God for a second. I don't think these free will objections are conclusive.
On the free will override point: what if the infinite pit in Rasmussens analogy was simply the logical necessity of our ability to choose who we ultimately become?
If so, and God is willing to override free will to stop people from forming fixed characters against Him, then why would He allow any small amount of character development against Him? If free will doesn't allow for ultimate consequences relevant to character formation then why allow moral evil to exist at all? God could have simply created all in bliss with gifted memories of imaginary past lives and there would be no relevant difference. Thus, if a loving God exists, the fact that our world appears to contain freely willed moral evil strongly suggests that God will not override creaturely free will when it comes to relationship with Him.
On the infinite opportunities point: If God creates beings whose salvation is in the eternal sense, essentially inevitable, then they are, at least in the ultimate sense, not free, for their ultimate course is pre-determined to its ultimate destination. And since true relational love cannot be predetermined by one party without undermining the value and reality of that love, there is some reason to think a loving God would not do so.
> If free will doesn't allow for ultimate consequences relevant to character formation then why allow moral evil to exist at all? <
So your response to the problem of evil is, "Who else would we cast into the pit?" 😕
@@serversurfer6169 By 'consequences' I mean - allow for people to actually become a particular sort of person. Not that God allows evil just for the sake of hell.
@@racsooj456 Well, you started out saying that maybe the pit needs to exist, cuz evil, but then you ask what the point of evil would be if there was no pit to fall into, as though the pit necessitates the evil. It sounds like a chicken/egg thing. Why is the pit necessary at all? 🤷♂️
Or maybe God, if one exists, does not actually value free will? This doctrine seems to create more problems than it solves, and if that is what is a stumbling block to universalism then free will should go out the window long before universalism, considering God never once says in revelation "I value your libertarian free choices, both in terms of your direct actions and the character you cultivate which motivates your disposition toward me, so much that I will permit you to make the wrong choices and reject me" but revelation says numerous times that God will not allow any to be lost and desires to (or in fact will eventually) save all (plus it says God is always annoyed or upset when Israel turns against him, so apparently he doesn't think their free will is more valuable than their obedience).
@@serversurfer6169 think perhaps you have misunderstood me. My point re the pit was that, for all we know, people may be able to truly become a particular sort of person in the final sense. This framing points the analogy away from the sense of someone simply slipping in.
Re evil: I wasn't saying the point of evil is to allow for the pit. My point was an inductive one - given that we have evil in the world, there is evidence that if God exists He will not override someone's free will. For the reasons which restrain Him from doing so now will arguably not disapate simply given more moments of time. And if He was going to have to step in and remove free will for people anyway, then why not simply set things up in an alternative way (I offered one speculative way in my first comment).