“even as you chose to create Bob, you chose to create the parts of Bob that his freedom is made of – his motivations, his reasoning, and so on. You chose for a particular sort of free being to join you in the world – one that will, in fact, choose the way you want them to”
This is one observation that Lewis, I think, would not endorse. After all, he is a Christian apologist, yet very clearly does not thereby consider God a tyrant whose complete control over the creation of the universe takes away human freedom. Calling the moral realist thing Tao instead doesn’t actually help with that, I think? Either the Tao can influence the world in the present, in which case the conditioners can never really prevent it from reasserting itself; or it can’t, in which case how did we first find it anyway; or it controlled the beginning as first cause in which case whatever happens anywhere ever is what it intended; or it intended something different but it’s not very good at it’s job. In that last case we can either let it fail or else choose for ourselves what we think we should do to help it out (which either way puts us right back in the situation of being conditioners, unable to be sure where the line between it’s will and our will lies in steering the future).
Christianity has a paradox in its heart, that an all-knowing and all-capable God created everything (directly or indirectly), and yet He is responsible only for the good parts of the creation.
The standard excuse is that the possibility to ruin everything was a necessary cost of our freedom, which doesn’t make much sense, because (1) an all-knowing God could predict which humans would sin and which would not, and could create only the ones who would not sin, and (2) somehow it does not oppose the divine plan that human freedom is limited by thousand other things anyway, such as other humans, sickness, mortality, limited resources.
Trying to use this incoherent response as a lesson how we should shape the future… I guess we should give the future humans a random number generator, and tell them that for everything good that happens, they should thank us, and for everything bad that happens, they should blame the random number generator?
And perhaps, from a religious perspective, this even makes some sense, because we are keeping the door open for God to intervene by influencing the random number generator? The ultimate sin would be to make all the choices ourselves and not give the God an opportunity to intervene with plausible deniability?
Less charitably, the thing Lewis is optimizing for is not creating the best possible future, but avoiding blame.
The standard excuse is that the possibility to ruin everything was a necessary cost of our freedom, which doesn’t make much sense
There’s one further objection to this, to which I’ve never seen a theist responding.
Suppose it’s true that freedom is important enough to justify the existence of evil. What’s up with heaven then? Either there’s no evil there and therefore no freedom (which is still somehow fine, but if so, why the non-heaven rigmarole then?), or both are there and the whole concept is incoherent.
Fundamentally I agree, and I think it sounds like we both agree with Spock. Christianity tries to get around this by distinguishing between timeless/eternal and within-time/everlasting viewpoints, among other approaches, but I think very much fails to make a good case. I do think there are a few plausible counterarguments here, none of which are standard AFAIK.
One is Scott Alexander’s Answer to Job, basically that we’re mistaken to think this is the best possible world (assuming “world” means “Earth”), because God actually created all possible net-good universes, and (due to something like entropy) most of those are going to be just-barely-net-good. That post combines it with a discussion of what the words “create” and “exist” actually might mean, in terms of identity, value, quantity, simulation, computation and how to sum utilities.
Another is dkirmani’s answer below, that for some functions and initial conditions there might not be a well-defined analytical solution to the problem of future-prediction, only a computational solution, such that even God has to simulate the whole process to do the prediction or the goodness-summation (which might be equivalent to creating minds and experiences and worlds). This one is also a plausible solution to the question of why God would create anything at all.
an all-knowing God could predict which humans would sin and which would not
And how would God predict (with perfect fidelity) what humans would do without simulating them flawlessly? A truly flawless physical simulation has no less moral weight than “reality”—indeed, the religious argument could very well be that our world exists as a figment of this God’s imagination.
Either the Tao can influence the world in the present, in which case the conditioners can never *really *prevent it from reasserting itself; or it can’t, in which case how did we first find it anyway; or it controlled the beginning as first cause in which case whatever happens anywhere ever is what it intended; or it intended something different but it’s not very good at it’s job.
Or it influences the world in proportion to how much it is recognised, and how much you influence the world is proportional to how much you recognise it. The Tao that controls you is not the Tao: the Tao you control is not the Tao. The Tao that does everything is not the Tao; the Tao that does nothing is not the Tao.
This is one observation that Lewis, I think, would not endorse. After all, he is a Christian apologist, yet very clearly does not thereby consider God a tyrant whose complete control over the creation of the universe takes away human freedom. Calling the moral realist thing Tao instead doesn’t actually help with that, I think? Either the Tao can influence the world in the present, in which case the conditioners can never really prevent it from reasserting itself; or it can’t, in which case how did we first find it anyway; or it controlled the beginning as first cause in which case whatever happens anywhere ever is what it intended; or it intended something different but it’s not very good at it’s job. In that last case we can either let it fail or else choose for ourselves what we think we should do to help it out (which either way puts us right back in the situation of being conditioners, unable to be sure where the line between it’s will and our will lies in steering the future).
Christianity has a paradox in its heart, that an all-knowing and all-capable God created everything (directly or indirectly), and yet He is responsible only for the good parts of the creation.
The standard excuse is that the possibility to ruin everything was a necessary cost of our freedom, which doesn’t make much sense, because (1) an all-knowing God could predict which humans would sin and which would not, and could create only the ones who would not sin, and (2) somehow it does not oppose the divine plan that human freedom is limited by thousand other things anyway, such as other humans, sickness, mortality, limited resources.
Trying to use this incoherent response as a lesson how we should shape the future… I guess we should give the future humans a random number generator, and tell them that for everything good that happens, they should thank us, and for everything bad that happens, they should blame the random number generator?
And perhaps, from a religious perspective, this even makes some sense, because we are keeping the door open for God to intervene by influencing the random number generator? The ultimate sin would be to make all the choices ourselves and not give the God an opportunity to intervene with plausible deniability?
Less charitably, the thing Lewis is optimizing for is not creating the best possible future, but avoiding blame.
There’s one further objection to this, to which I’ve never seen a theist responding.
Suppose it’s true that freedom is important enough to justify the existence of evil. What’s up with heaven then? Either there’s no evil there and therefore no freedom (which is still somehow fine, but if so, why the non-heaven rigmarole then?), or both are there and the whole concept is incoherent.
Fundamentally I agree, and I think it sounds like we both agree with Spock. Christianity tries to get around this by distinguishing between timeless/eternal and within-time/everlasting viewpoints, among other approaches, but I think very much fails to make a good case. I do think there are a few plausible counterarguments here, none of which are standard AFAIK.
One is Scott Alexander’s Answer to Job, basically that we’re mistaken to think this is the best possible world (assuming “world” means “Earth”), because God actually created all possible net-good universes, and (due to something like entropy) most of those are going to be just-barely-net-good. That post combines it with a discussion of what the words “create” and “exist” actually might mean, in terms of identity, value, quantity, simulation, computation and how to sum utilities.
Another is dkirmani’s answer below, that for some functions and initial conditions there might not be a well-defined analytical solution to the problem of future-prediction, only a computational solution, such that even God has to simulate the whole process to do the prediction or the goodness-summation (which might be equivalent to creating minds and experiences and worlds). This one is also a plausible solution to the question of why God would create anything at all.
And how would God predict (with perfect fidelity) what humans would do without simulating them flawlessly? A truly flawless physical simulation has no less moral weight than “reality”—indeed, the religious argument could very well be that our world exists as a figment of this God’s imagination.
The Tao (according to Lewis) is objectively true, like mathematics. Does mathematics “influence” the world? It, and the Tao, are how the world works.
Or it influences the world in proportion to how much it is recognised, and how much you influence the world is proportional to how much you recognise it. The Tao that controls you is not the Tao: the Tao you control is not the Tao. The Tao that does everything is not the Tao; the Tao that does nothing is not the Tao.