True Philosophical Defenses of Mormonism

[_Robert F Smith]

It is not originality which is at issue, bur rather being conversant with a long tradition of philosophical debate going back at least as far as the Greeks.

A long tradition that doesn't turn on whether or not man is a contingent being. It is equally contradictory for God to allow non-contingent beings to do evil. The hard part is justifying the free will, not proposing it.

Wrong and illogical. Both God and humans are necessary beings. They are coeternal beings, and each has free agency. God cannot be responsible for the actions of necessary beings. However, God is responsible for contingent beings, i.e., God is fully responsible for the actions of beings which he has created from nothing -- and this is the Achilles heel of normative christianity. It is usually discussed under the heading of "theodicy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy

[_Robert F Smith]

Both of you are long on assertions and short on specifics. Hint: assertions are not facts.

Assertions will have to do, since FAIR's organics are much too recent for any carbon dating. I suppose you could do a cross cutting on early Mormons and count their wedding rings.

In other words, you pretend to respond.

[_Gadianton]

Wrong and illogical. Both God and humans are necessary beings. They are coeternal beings, and each has free agency. God cannot be responsible for the actions of necessary beings. However, God is responsible for contingent beings, i.e., God is fully responsible for the actions of beings which he has created from nothing -- and this is the Achilles heel of normative christianity. It is usually discussed under the heading of "theodicy."

The necessity or contingency of humans in the problem of evil may be central to the "short tradition" of Mormon apologetics, but in the "long tradition" of Christianity and Western Philosophy, it is not central. Please see the discussion on the problem of evil from the SEP:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/

1.If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2.If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3.If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4.If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5.Evil exists.
6.If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn't have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn't know when evil exists, or doesn't have the desire to eliminate all evil.
7.Therefore, God doesn't exist.

Notice in these steps, whether man is contingent or necessary is irrelevant. The motivation for this is described in the preceding paragraphs. If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, he will stop the crime, independent of whether or not the man with the knife has free will. Free will enters the "long tradition" for reasons other than you propose. In the "free-will defense", the crime is justified by the supposed greater necessity of free will, not to absolve the prime mover as the author. If the shorter tradition of Mormon apologetics wishes to redefine the problem of evil more congenial to its precepts, it may do so, but those of us who have an appreciation for the "long tradition" are not so easily impressed. We note your apologetic, and then point out points 1-7 above.

The Mopologetic free-will assumption is inferior to the Christian free-will defense. Consider, man's agency is only half the problem, the other half is the existential evil caused by God putting the elements into motion. Your free-will assumption, if we buy it, only rids God of human evil. From your wiki source, consider this:

William L. Rowe's famous example of natural evil: "In some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree, resulting in a forest fire. In the fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering

Both Christian and Mormon invocations of free-will struggle to answer this, but the Christian position has a much better chance of doing so. In the Mormon conception, God is immediately guilty. What does it matter, if through a causal chain going back to God, lightning and fire torture the fawn vs. abuse doled out by an automated puppet? The only way the Mormon constrained by the logic of "author is culpable" to deal with this is to further limit the power of God as creator or even significant to the point where the label of "God" becomes a real stretch.

A Christian might get some traction here with "greater good" arguments that revolve around free will. For instance, without the fire, the fireman had no opportunity to exert his free choice and bravely enter the flames, and thus prove his good moral character. In your version, God is flat out guilty of the damage done by the fire since he caused it. If a Mormon wishes to justify natural evil as necessary to the "proving" of man, that route might be open, but it would allow the Christian to use the logic of the free-will defense for human evil, and thus renders the Mormon contribution of "man is necessary" irrelevant.

[_SteelHead]

Free will as a defense for the problem of evil is problematic for both Christians and Mormons. Evidenced by a god in the biblical narrative that makes free will a myth by routinely violating the free will of individuals, parties and nations.

[_moksha]

Assertions will have to do, since FAIR's organics are much too recent for any carbon dating. I suppose you could do a cross cutting on early Mormons and count their wedding rings.

In other words, you pretend to respond.

Well, this is after all true philosophical defenses.

[_Robert F Smith]

Assertions will have to do, since FAIR's organics are much too recent for any carbon dating. I suppose you could do a cross cutting on early Mormons and count their wedding rings.

In other words, you pretend to respond.

Well, this is after all true philosophical defenses.

At least SteelHead and Gadianton make a real attempt to reply, even though they fail to do so adequately.

[_Robert F Smith]

Wrong and illogical. Both God and humans are necessary beings. They are coeternal beings, and each has free agency. God cannot be responsible for the actions of necessary beings. However, God is responsible for contingent beings, i.e., God is fully responsible for the actions of beings which he has created from nothing -- and this is the Achilles heel of normative christianity. It is usually discussed under the heading of "theodicy."

The necessity or contingency of humans in the problem of evil may be central to the "short tradition" of Mormon apologetics, but in the "long tradition" of Christianity and Western Philosophy, it is not central. Please see the discussion on the problem of evil from the SEP:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/

1.If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2.If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3.If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4.If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5.Evil exists.
6.If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn't have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn't know when evil exists, or doesn't have the desire to eliminate all evil.
7.Therefore, God doesn't exist.

Notice in these steps, whether man is contingent or necessary is irrelevant. The motivation for this is described in the preceding paragraphs. If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, he will stop the crime, independent of whether or not the man with the knife has free will. Free will enters the "long tradition" for reasons other than you propose. In the "free-will defense", the crime is justified by the supposed greater necessity of free will, not to absolve the prime mover as the author. If the shorter tradition of Mormon apologetics wishes to redefine the problem of evil more congenial to its precepts, it may do so, but those of us who have an appreciation for the "long tradition" are not so easily impressed. We note your apologetic, and then point out points 1-7 above.

False. You ignored the fact that SEP is assuming an exclusively necessary God, with no other necessary beings. On that basis the premises logically reach the conclusion that God cannot exist. Moreover, free will is impossible (as every Calvinist knows). That is the dilemma for normative christianity, and the reason for the death of God theologies. That is the reason also why Europeans have largely abandoned belief in God.

Western philosophy and Mormonism agree on this key issue.

The Mopologetic free-will assumption is inferior to the Christian free-will defense. Consider, man's agency is only half the problem, the other half is the existential evil caused by God putting the elements into motion. Your free-will assumption, if we buy it, only rids God of human evil. From your wiki source, consider this:

William L. Rowe's famous example of natural evil: "In some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree, resulting in a forest fire. In the fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering

Both Christian and Mormon invocations of free-will struggle to answer this, but the Christian position has a much better chance of doing so. In the Mormon conception, God is immediately guilty. What does it matter, if through a causal chain going back to God, lightning and fire torture the fawn vs. abuse doled out by an automated puppet? The only way the Mormon constrained by the logic of "author is culpable" to deal with this is to further limit the power of God as creator or even significant to the point where the label of "God" becomes a real stretch.

It is completely false to say that "In the Mormon conception, God is immediately guilty." That is utter nonsense, since God's children (in the Mormon view) are necessary beings and commit their own sins with reckless abandon. In normative christianity, all of God's creations are contingent, and so have no free will. Any evil is entirely attributable to God, which is a contradiction of terms and completely illogical.

A Christian might get some traction here with "greater good" arguments that revolve around free will. For instance, without the fire, the fireman had no opportunity to exert his free choice and bravely enter the flames, and thus prove his good moral character. In your version, God is flat out guilty of the damage done by the fire since he caused it. If a Mormon wishes to justify natural evil as necessary to the "proving" of man, that route might be open, but it would allow the Christian to use the logic of the free-will defense for human evil, and thus renders the Mormon contribution of "man is necessary" irrelevant.

False and illogical, as stated above.

[_Robert F Smith]

Free will as a defense for the problem of evil is problematic for both Christians and Mormons. Evidenced by a god in the biblical narrative that makes free will a myth by routinely violating the free will of individuals, parties and nations.

Free will is only an issue where it actually exists. In the normative Judeo-Christian-Muslim conception, God creates the world and contingent beings from nothing, making them fully his creatures -- completely dependent upon Him. Contingency means no independence whatsoever. Only uncreated, necessary beings (coeternal with God) have free will and can be responsible for their own sins.

Thus, theodicy is not a problem for Mormonism, while it spells death for the absolute, unitary God of some other religions.

[_Gadianton]

False. You ignored the fact that SEP is assuming an exclusively necessary God, with no other necessary beings.

Go back and read the first few paragraphs of the SEP article. It clearly demonstrates that the necessity/contingency of humans is irrelevant to the problem of evil. That was the main point of my response to you.

I trust that SEP is in a better position than a lone, crusading Mopologist from the MI to tell us about the "long tradition" of the problem of evil. Like I said, you can re-define the problem however you like. I, further, being several steps ahead of you, pointed out where this would become problematic and backfire for your case, such as in answering the existential problem of evil.

I invite you to bring Midgley and Hamblin to this forum to help you out, so I can own them too.

PS. Free will is not impossible for Calvinists, go back and read Jonathan Edwards. Calvinists hold a position similar to compatibilism. The non-Calvinist arguments for libertarian freedom came long before Mormonism, and work independent of whether humans are contingent or necessary. But that's an aside, since whether humans are contingent or necessary has nothing to do with whether or not God allows bad things to happen. See steps 1-7 in the SEP article; the philosophy department at Stanford understands the "long tradition" of the problem of evil better than you do.

[_subgenius]

Mormons aren't the first to posit free will, and the problem of evil isn't costrained to God explicitly setting the atoms in motion that cause the evil. The fact that God is all powerful and all loving and refuses to stop evil caused either by "accident" or other "free agents" calls into question his Godliness.

your characterization of God is wrong.
Evil and Good are not characters of God, they are constructs of man. This is the overwhelming, blatant, and obvious lesson from the book of Job.
Therefore, to assume that God has created, coordinated, or facilitated Evil/Good is wrong.

So, to consider God as being less than Godly because He seemingly does not stop what you may consider as being Evil is rather like a child considering their parent as less than parental because they "ruined my life!". Many parents have this awareness and experience with their own children, wherein the child considers a situation as being "the end of the world" - a consideration that is genuine and sincere - but the parent seems to be indifferent or uncooperative with the desire of their child.
To God there would be sin and not sin...and those conditions are always and only a consequence of a person's conscious decision.