Letter to a supralapsarian

This is a response to Steven

He responded, in blog form, to a youtube video I made, and we have been having a discussion at his blog for the past few days. The original video he was responding to can be found here:



Steven,
First I do not believe you have solved the problem of evil at all, most of what we have been discussing has been relevant to how you believe you solved the problem of evil. Though I do admit some of my questions were unrelated and were merely to satisfy my own curiosity, the majority of the discourse has been directly related to how you think you solved the problem of evil.

The problem of evil asks the theist to answer the question in such a way that they do not contradict one of God's principle attributes, and do not redefine God in an unrecognizable way.

I feel that your solution is to make God evil, and responsible for all evil. You disagree on the former but as far as I can tell you have not clearly disagreed to the latter. I can see no distinction and I will get to that a little latter.

Let focus on compatibilism for a moment. You were correct, I was misunderstanding compatibilism, and I freely admit it (wink wink), at least I was not understanding one of it's many schools of thought, though you too were misunderstanding it. Basically we were both arguing for different schools of thought, both of which call themselves compatibilists.

My knowledge of compatibilism comes mostly from David Hume, and to a lesser extent, Dan Dennet. Hume proposed compatibilism as having some agency to do otherwise; as having a variety of determined choices available to you. Dennet as far as I can tell seems to imply roughly the same possibility, he uses Borges short story 'The Library of Babel' to demonstrate an near infinite possibility of potential futures. Though I may be understanding his analogy incorrectly, my model of compatibilism, which is still held by many, was one were an agent is still free if he may choose to do otherwise and is the ultimate source of his agency. The consequence argument has given me no reason to see why the model of compatibilism I was discussing should be discussed any further.

Now part of my misunderstanding here is this; how is your position any different from that of incompatibilist hard determinist? I honestly cannot see how it is, other than you are assigning responsibility to people for wanting to do what they do and doing it with out being physically or mentally forced (though I think your belief allows for neither of these two conditions to be correctly applied). Most hard determinists would not say that people do not have a will, or that they do not make decisions. They would say claim that people cannot be responsible for their will or decisions because the ultimate source of them lies outside themselves, and the decisions they do make could not have been otherwise.

Now I am not even entirely sure that a supralapsarian can be a compatibilist, because unlike infralapsarians, you hold that God intended the fall, he forced it. I am sure they are supralapsarians that disagree with me, and perhaps I am missing something, but I don't fully understand how their view makes sense. As far as I have been able to tell most supralapsarians are hard determinists, not compatibilists, and this seems more consistent to me.

A number of things you are saying seem at least on the surface wholly contradictory and inconsistent. You say-
"In the Reformed school of theology, there is a view called Federalism which holds that Adam acted as a proper representative of the whole human race in the garden of Eden. So, when he sinned, he brought condemnation upon the whole of humanity. So, men are created evil, because their representative Adam failed them."

The problem is, you believe God planned the fall, correct? So obviously Adam's decisions were either a product of his faulty design or God's manipulation, regardless of his desires. How can you believe Adam made a mistake that was divinely planned? Also how is any of this "fair".

Lets also point out that you started this paragraph with the sentence "God doesn't make men intentionally flawed, so far as I can tell" and ended it with "So, men are created evil, because their representative Adam failed them." God doesn't make men intentionally flawed, to men are created evil because of an event that God planned. This is a consistency problem for you, and one that I think makes you an incompatibilist are far as I can tell.

You say-
"However, it is not necessarily my view that God destroys men in hell! It could be, as I said from the beginning, that men are not punished for sin in hell, but rather simply given what they want: which is separation from God and his grace, his goodness, and so on"

Sure, but why is it that they want nothing to do with God? If creation, and every detail contained within, is by and for the ultimate glory of God, the only reason they want nothing to do with him is because he created them with that desire.

I asked you in your comments section if you believed "...people who are acting under the influence of manipulation, delusion, mind control, or mental hallucinations to be acting in accordance with their free will?" You seemed to agree that in all of the above conditions no one could be held responsible for their actions.

So I ask this, how is being determined by either the laws of nature, or in your case God's ultimate plan, any different than being manipulated or deluded? Lets look at an example:

Imagine an near infinite, yet finite, chain of dominoes that branches in millions of directions. This would be creation. God has placed every domino with absolute and perfect precision so that it will set off the chain of dominoes that come after it until the final dominoes fall over. This is God's plan.

A supralapsarian believes that God knocked over the first domino, causing the near infinite chain fall first domino to last, correct? I believe an infralapsarian believes God simply allowed the first domino to fall over on it's own, let me know if I am getting this right.

**(On a side note this debate among Calvinist seems utterly absurd to me because they are talking about a being who is eternal, unchanging, and exists outside of time, so his decisions could not possibly have been in any order, they would simply have been part of his eternal plan. This would seem to give the supralapsarians the upper hand in the argument, but it also seems to make God's existence contingent upon creation. Because he is timeless and eternal there can no point before he created, or for that matter decided to do anything, because his decision would be innate to his essence. Nothing God does can possibly, at least as far as I understand, have a linear order if God exists outside of space and time.)

Now each domino, if given consciousness may indeed wish to fall over, specially if the domino maker made them that way, but can the domino take credit for it's action? I am going to say no, not only can the domino not take credit for such an action, for the domino designer that set up the dominoes the way he did and created the dominoes exactly as he did, the fact that the domino willed to fall over is entirely irrelevant for assigning responsibility. Only the domino designer may take credit for any of this. At no point did the domino choose were in the chain of dominoes in was positioned, the domino also did not get to choose whether it fell or not, and lastly the no domino was the ultimate cause of the chain falling, only the prime move who placed them there in that precise way could take credit for it.

What am I saying here? God setup every condition of his creation, both on purpose and according to a specific intended plan. If God is responsible for all of creation, and every moment of creation is in accordance to God's plan, then how can any one BUT God take any responsibility for anything? How can the wills and desires of any of creature be considered anything more than paint on God's canvas? How is this not divine manipulation?

You agree with the following argument, we have already discussed this:


1. No one has power over the facts of the past and the laws of nature.
2. No one has power over the fact that the facts of the past and the laws of nature entail every fact of the future (i.e., determinism is true).
3. Therefore, no one has power over the facts of the future.

Lets try another version and see what you think:

1. No one has power over the facts of the past and the laws of God's divine plan.
2. No one has power over the fact that the facts of the past and the laws of God's plan entail every fact of the future (i.e., determinism and supralapsarianism are true).
3. Therefore, no one has power over the facts of the future.

Your accounting for freedom does not follow if you feel manipulation is not freedom. Your world view makes us puppets for God, with our every action and desire implanted by him before creation and in accordance to his plan. How can we be held accountable for how God intentionally made us? How are we responsible for anything in your world view? How are we anything more than agreeable puppets?

Imagine in the future there is a man named Bob. Bob has a son. Through the complex processes of biological, mental, and verbal manipulation Bob has turned his son into a cold blooded killer. Bob's son, who we'll call Jon, enjoys every aspect of his nature, because Bob made him to be this way. Jon kills many people. Who is responsible for the murders? How is this any different than how God created us, and how determination determines us? Doesn't your (in your own words in need of revision) definition of freedom and responsibility essentially allow Jon to be primarily responsible? Would you agree that Bob is fact responsible for Jon, not Jon?
What I am getting at here, is if God created evil, God is evil. If God can create evil, then God cannot be omni benevolent, because creating evil is a contradiction to God omni benevolence. As a maximally moral being should not be able to create evil, even if it brings about some good. A maximally powerful, all knowing, moral being should be able to create the greatest possible good with out creating evil, and in fact should have no capacity to create evil at all.

You say- "Yes, if he just creates evil for no reason at all, where there is no evil previously, then probably (unless I later think of a counter-example, which I'm doubtful I will) he is evil. But that is not what I said. I said God creates evil in order to accomplish a good thing such that the good is greater than the evil it takes to have it happen."

You say God created evil so he could have atonement and incarnation, which I will touch on in a moment, both of which bring glory to God. I think this could also read as, "God created evil so that he could make himself more glorious."

I don't really follow any of this. If Atonement and Incarnation make God more glorious, he is not the greatest possible being, he is also not eternal and unchanging for that matter. You give no example how this makes his creation more glorious than a creation with out sin, nor does that logically follow in any way from what you have presented thus far. Never mind that even though you claim you are not, you are still measuring good in units, which is absurd.

You assert, Atonement and Incarnation are good, and then go on to state that God ought to create a world with Atonement and Incarnation over one with out. This doesn't follow, you are deriving an ought from an is, with out giving any explanatory reasoning as to why God ought to do this. If sin exists outside of God's control, they perhaps he ought to bring about Atonement and Incarnation, as they solve the problem of sin from his perspective. But to create sin so he can deal with it is a viciously circular argument. Atonement and Incarnation are necessary only if and only if there is sin, yet sin is necessary so Atonement and Incarnation can occur?

You are not bridging the fact - value gap of why these are necessary. My example of creating criminals so you can build courthouses and prisons demonstrates this point. How any of this improves creation, how this could possibly be a superior creation than one with out sin and and with the complete 100% righteousness of creation is beyond my comprehension. You make an example of a Doctor cutting open a patient so he could conduct surgery on that patient and save his life. Your example misses two steps. It should look like this:

If God is the surgeon, he placed cancer in a patient so he could remove it, at great pain and expense to the patient. He also lets most of his creation simply suffer with the cancer as he does not love them nor have any concern for removing it from those other patients, do in part because he deluded them with the desire not to be operated on, and in part to the fact he choose them never to be operated on.

You argue that it is your intuition that informs you this is the case, and that your and my differing world views are responsible for our disagreement on this fact. This may be, though this is not an explanation. I would think that a better explanation is that you have no choice but to argue for the superiority of your position, because evil is present in reality and you are stuck with that. This I can understand to an extent, but I still feel if you wish to hold this position, and feel you have solved the problem of evil you are going to have to do at least two things.

First you need to demonstrate how your version of God is not responsible for all evil, and therefore evil himself. You clarify what you mean by responsible and demonstrate how your version of compatibilism is any different from incompatibilist determinism by responding to the examples I gave. You need to demonstrate how God is not the ultimate cause of all our actions.

Second you need to demonstrate why God ought to create a world with atonement and incarnation over a sin free world with out, and do this with out contradicting your first condition, that God is not evil. You need to bridge the fact - value gap. This is a huge task, a sword in the stone so to speak, but if you can do this in a coherent way with out making God the author of evil, then perhaps it is a sword you can pull.