Bnonn, it sounds like Jamsco wants to have a more substative debate, but I’m not sure Vox is up for that.

Seth,

Thanks for the good links. I need to get back to the Atonement debate.

I have some posts that link to the conferece MP3’s and notes…might take a look:

Resurgence Conference Review

The Resurgence Conference Videos

Here is a great starter book on the subject:

Their God is Too Small

Hope these materials help.

You are correct. Libertarian free will does turn people into random number generators, but without the benefit of being able to explain the cause of the actual random number generation itself.

That being said, open theists accept libertarian free will; and the reason they reject God’s foreknowledge of human choices is simple. Libertarian free will is defined by the ability to choose otherwise. If God has perfect, definite foreknowledge of your choices, then they will come to pass inevitably and inexorably in the way that he foreknows. Therefore, since they are inevitable and inexorable, no ability exists on our part to choose the alternative. Thus, libertarian free will is destroyed.

In order for libertarian free will to be possible in this particular instance, the future must be indeterminate as regards our choices. Not even God could know them in advance. Therefore, some heretics who cling to the false doctrine of the autonomy of man—who are so enamored with their own desire for personal sovereignty in their attempts to remain logically consistent—will conclude that God does not have perfect, definite foreknowledge.

Bob: I honestly don’t see how Vox has responded to J at all. All he has offered is some vague speculation. To be fair, J himself did not forward any particularly strong arguments so much as point out the inconsistencies and flaws in Vox’s original post. Hopefully I don’t sound overly critical, but all in all I must confess that if this is a debate, it has failed from the start. A clear moot should be established, and some opening statements with rigorous exegesis and argumentation should be forwarded.

Regards,
Bnonn

Thanks for interacting here. Of course I side with you on this. I must say it does seem a convenient doctrine for Vox, although I admit I don’t follow his blog much at all (except for a couple months a while back).

Blessings in Christ,

Bob Hayton

He can’t know the free decisions of humans before those decisions occur, otherwise they wouldn’t be completely free.

This view seems to me to be fundamentally philosophically confused. Why can’t free decisions be known prior to being made? What is the actual reason? As far as I can, the reason seems to be “because that makes things easier on us for theodicy,” which is a pretty lame ad hoc justification for such a bizarre principle.

What people seem to be implying is that these decisions are not caused by anything and do not come from anywhere. But that makes them “free” only in the sense of fundamentally “random.” It at the same time prevents them from really being decisions.

Consider: if you know me tangentially, then you can maybe guess what choice I’ll make in a certain situation. If you know me well, then your guess is likely to be even better. In fact, if you know me down to the neuron, then you can know what choice I’m making even before I do (as has been shown experimentally: the brain fires before we have conscious experience of choosing to act). So it seems that, contrary to the idea that choices are not part of causal chains, we see evidence of exactly the opposite the more we look at the question.

And the philosophical reason for this is that the choices you are guessing at are not random and unpredictable: they are choices made by a PARTICULAR person: me! Were someone else making them, they would make different choices. The open theism position basically seems to treat human beings as if they were random number generators: which totally destroys concepts like moral responsibility, people’s particular character being good or bad, and so on. It also seems remarkably inaccurate based on pretty much everything we know about human beings.

Vox does this a lot: he takes a position that he has no real intention of justifying or explaining the basis of, and then simply attacks other people for not holding it: claiming there are all sorts of weaknesses in their positions. There may well be: philosophy ain’t easy, and most things about human beings, choice, and so on are a mystery.

But Vox’s “answer” to this mystery is a complete black hole: it doesn’t explain anything, doesn’t even attempt to explain anything, about how or why particular people come to make particular choices. Heck, even the very idea of explaining these things seems fatal to his position.

He seems to hold to his position not because there is any evidence for it in its own right, not because he can even explain in any positive sense what it even is, but because it happens to be convenient to his chosen theology.