Response from CARM

Michael, “I won't argue that if God created the universe AND God knew what would happen throughout all time when he created the universe we can only make decisions that he created us to make, just as if I program a VCR to start recording MacGyver at 8pm, the VCR wouldn't be responsible for recording it.  I would argue that if I concede that God is good (by nature) and can be nothing else, then God can only take actions which are the most good.  Is this not the case?  If that is the case, it seems to me that God could never make any choice.  That means that God doesn't (and cannot) have free will.  The corollary to that is that since God is constrained on EXACTLY what he can do, he could only have created the universe and us one possible way, which means that we are bound to that path and we have no possible choice in the matter.  Do you believe God has free will, and if so, how” I do believe that God has freewill of the libertarian variety.   But we have to be careful here because I don’t think that God actually makes decisions, at least in the way we would use that word.  I think that I understand your question.  I do disagree with the options as you have laid them out.   I do not believe that God must only take actions that are the most good. I would say that God is incapable of wrong doing but that does not therefore mean that He must perform one *specific* action that we would categorize as “the best”.  I’m not even sure if there is only one option available to Him that would be the best.  It may be that there are several “very good” options available to Him, none of which are “the best”.   So I don’t think that God is constrained in performing only *one* action per circumstance; rather, He is simply incapable of wrong doing as this is contrary to His nature and that He can perform any number of “good” actions according to His purposes. “However, if I accept the Christian worldview it seems to me that killing him would be sacrificing myself for him.  Now, I certainly don't think most (Christian) parents love their child(ren) any less than I do, so I have to question whether or not they truly accept the Christian worldview.  In any case, my question is, if your worldview is correct and I'm willing to sacrifice myself for my child, why wouldn't I kill my child at age five?” But if you accept the Christian worldview then killing your own child would constitute murder, and, is thus, forbidden.  I see the point that you are raising.  However, you must keep in mind that the Scripture is not clear that all infants/children who die necessarily go to Heaven.  That is a plausible position to take (I hold to it myself) but it is not explicitly taught in Scripture.   So I don’t see a person dying in childhood as a guaranteed ticket to Heaven.  It may be or it may not be.  God has seen fit not to reveal this conclusively to us. Let’s assume that it is a guaranteed ticket to Heaven.  It would still constitute murder, one of the gravest of all crimes.  I suppose that you could retort that you may be willing to pay the consequences in order to guarantee your child’s salvation.  But like I said, it would still constitute murder and it would still provide no such guarantee.  God, on the other hand, can take any person’s life-whether young or old-any time He sees fit since He is the giver of life to begin with.  Our lives are His to give and His to take at His good pleasure. He is under no obligation to prolong any person’s life for even another day.  We intuitively recognize this when we accuse certain people of “playing God” when they take human life. “What you refer to our "free will" and our moral values may come from something transcendent, but in order to believe that they only come from (and are dependent on) something transcendent you'd have to believe two very strange things.  First, you'd have to believe that past experience plays no role in your rationality and/or moral values.  You'd have to say, unequivocally, that your experience with your parents as a child, had no role in how you formed your moral values and rationality.  If you attribute ANY of it to your experience then your claim is instantly refuted.  Second, you would have to believe that a person who has never interacted with any other people, is not aware of God and is isolated would have logic, rationality and moral values.  Obviously that's absurd, but I think it demonstrates that we gain some of our logic, rationality and moral values from our experiences, even if our brains are "merely" chemicals.  My question is, do you believe that your experiences played no role in your rationality and/or moral values?” I do think that my experiences had a role in shaping the moral values that I inherited.   Of course, that says nothing about whether or not the values that I inherited are objective and binding.  If naturalism is true, then our moral standards cannot really be objective at all.  They are just a matter of social conditioning and preference.   And yet, we all know deep down that some actions are truly wrong (the Holocaust) and some are truly good (sacrificing one’s life for another).  If that is the case, that morality is objective in some sense, then naturalism is probably false. "In one of your videos ("A question for atheists regarding free will and rationality") you ask whether free will and rationality can exist if our brains are purely chemicals.  I don't know if I could answer that question because "free will" is kind of a loaded term, but I would argue that we can use logic and rationality (and we have moral values) in a purely materialistic world.  First, we apply the law of the excluded middle.  That is, we either can use logic/rationality in a purely materialistic world or you cannot.  So if I can show that your position (that you cannot) is false, my position is true because there is no third option.  I would argue that you are creating a fallacy of composition.  That is to say, you are making the case that the whole is nothing more than the sum of it's part, ever.  Another version of your argument would be syllogistic: A is composed of B B has only property C Therefore, A only has property C But surely you don't believe this, or you would have to believe the following: Cats (brains) are composed of atoms (chemicals) Atoms (chemicals) are invisible to the naked eye (do not have rationality/logic on their own) Therefore, cats (brains) are invisible (do not have rationality/logic” I haven’t seen the video that you are referencing but I will give you my take on what you said.  I think that you may be confusing two different issues.    Typically, the Argument from Reason states that if our cognitive faculties are simply the end product of blind materialistic processes (which most naturalists are committed to) then we really have no good reasons to trust the conclusions that we draw from using such cognitive faculties-including conclusions used to attempt to undermine arguments for theism!   So if naturalism is true, then we have lost our ability to reason our way to the conclusion that naturalism is true. So it may be true, but we could never trust the reasoning processes which led us to that very conclusion. So I think that you would need to show that we have good reasons to trust our cognitive faculties if they are merely the end result of blind materialistic processes.   You mentioned that we can use logic and rationality in a purely materialistic world.  You would need to develop this a little more.  On Naturalism, why should you or I trust the deliverances of our reason if it is just the result of blind natural processes?   If the natural world is all that there is, then it seems that the conclusions that we draw are simply the result of physical processes of some sort or another.  And if that is the case then we have no reasons to trust those conclusions which are the result of such physical processes.  There would really be no genuine free will at all as the conclusions that we draw were simply the result of physical processes.  Kind of like a plant growing. You mentioned being at about a 7.5 or so on a one to ten scale.  If you don’t mind me asking, what arguments or factors prevent you from being a ten on that scale? Is there a particular reason(s) why you think that God may exist?  Anyway, hope I helped to answer some of your questions-from our perspective, anyway.  Dan