Comment on The Creator of Time by Lindley.
I appreciate this discussion tremendously. I just stumbled upon this website a couple of days ago and have been trying to digest this post and discussion.
I really have little idea or experience in these areas, so I hope you don’t mind a comment here.
Recently I have been endeavouring to find my way spiritually and have found that it is no easy undertaking. A while ago I was having great difficulty with understanding the nature of morality or good and evil. There are potentially 7+ billion ways of figuring this out and it seems extraordinarily challenging.
To me it seems that we are always dancing around the edge of figuring it out. In considering good and evil we talk about moral values or moral law (one reason for law seems to be to protect things of value) and about freedom or free-will. I feel that the key to understanding is staring us straight in the face, right here. In fact it is so blatantly obvious that we simply cannot see it as we look straight past. Without choice, or moral freedom, there is no discussion of good and evil. If there is no good or evil then our choices have no moral bearing. Any external definition dependent on anything else must always fail or fall short. Perhaps then this entire thing is self-defining? Should we talk in relative or absolute terms? Let’s try some self-referencing definitions of good, evil and moral choice that transcend the relative or absolute.
Good is that which promotes individual and societal moral free-will.
Evil is that which destroys individual or societal moral free-will.
Alternatively and stronger, evil is that which fails to promote good.
It is obvious here that liberty is paramount and that coercion has no place. The question of relative or absolute is surpassed by the idea of growth. While both the individual and corporate are equally considered, the responsibility of the individual is listed first. If absolute good and evil are to be defined, it now requires complete absolute knowledge alongside an incorruptible free-will. This is because the promotion has to be boundless while at the same time the destruction, or any failure to promote has to be fully perceived, and the good has to be realised requiring absolute incorruptible free-will. Note here that any absolute incorruptible moral agency (any absolute good personified) will paradoxically leave room for the exercise of any other finite individual moral agencies. At the same time, it would seek to protect societal agency at any cost. I believe these definitions still allow good and evil to be circumstantial according to the potential capabilities of the free-will beings to which they apply. Interestingly it may be seen that in the ultimate pursuit of good, one should rather die than to realise any action of evil. It should be evident that the nature of evil is both destructive and malignant and thus should only be tolerated for a finite period.
How I came about the above was by considering the single most valuable thing in existence and that good must have something to do with this. While life is certainly unique and stunning, it does not seem to be the thing of greatest value, as people will give life to preserve freedom. Intelligence alone is inspiring, yet Artificial Intelligence does not seem be all we are. Our capability to choose, our agency and most interestingly our moral free-will seems to be the most valuable thing in existence. This is why it evokes such passion.
In the Christian scenario, the provision of moral agency to mankind cost God His life in the person of Immanuel again showing that moral agency is the most valuable thing in existence. Noting that there can only be a finite tolerance of evil due to its nature, one reason why evil cost the life of God, is because if God is good, then He can only inflict that which He Himself is prepared to suffer. Therefore, if He is to destroy, He must be willing to cease to exist. This point was established on the cross.
Anyway, this is the first time I’ve tried to share any of these ideas anywhere. Perhaps I have it all upside-down and am completely off the track. This is just where my understanding of things has brought me. Any definitive perspective in the above should not be taken seriously as this is only my petty opinion which I have been a little forward to present.
Table of Contents
Lindley Also Commented
The Creator of Time
Theology seems to go amiss whenever we try to rationalise God instead of seeking a relationship with God. Let us start with who God is, who we are and a little of our relationship.
God is Love! God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit self-exist in a relationship of love. God has complete knowledge and power, but by His own will and sacred law God is Love.
“What is man that You are mindful of him?” We are created in the image of God. We are capable of intelligent love and faith. Our sublime, joyful purpose is to know God, to grow in friendship with Him as we appreciate His character and to love each other. The privilege of worshiping God ensures our fastest and most effective growth, and guarantees our individual and corporate safety for eternity. The command to worship God has no shadow of a Divine self-seeking, but is an immutable promise by God that He will always be worthy of worship and so it is a Divine commitment to us. Why worship God? Well, why not? Some being must be first in our lives and God is the only one that cannot be corrupted by worship as He is incorruptible.
God creates all things from nothing. Our commission is, by our choices, to create a character after the Divine similitude.
Because we are seeking God in knowledge and friendship, the last thing we want to do is to rationalise, simplify or reduce Him. We desire to know God in the fullness of His beauty and character. Because reductionism is not our approach (try reductionism on any friend or spouse) paradoxes present no problems. Systems of rational thought, logic or mathematics may avoid paradoxes or be constructed to prevent paradoxes as they break reductionism allowing anything and thus nothing to be proven. But these systems cannot divine God nor us and certainly not our relationship since the totality of Divine or human experience is not covered by “God is rationality” or “I think, therefore I am,” but rather perhaps is intimated by “God is Love” and “I love, therefore I am.” So, let us seek God and expect a paradoxical openendedness where God’s plans of creation and redemption will be our science and song for the whole of eternity.
Does foreknowledge prevent free-will? To understand this, we need to unpack both God’s knowledge and our free-will. Since we love God because He first loved us and love requires freedom or agency, we have free-will.
As God knows best, He does not simply know the future, but He has complete knowledge of everything potentially future encompassing all that is deterministic, random and of free choice of all beings and He has total understanding of all causes, consequences and interactions. The type of argument which supposes foreknowledge to prevent free choice should allow complete knowledge of all potentials to not prevent free choice.
Determinism is not free-will. Neither is randomness free-will. These are the only two things, it would seem, that are at work in the natural world. Thus, we may argue as does Sam Harris quite convincingly that free-will is only an illusion. However, God asks us to love Him and certainly gave Adam the volition to do so. Here we have a problem. Let us look at another problem in an endeavour to find a solution. God created everything perfect, but evil exists. The existence of iniquity is a mystery and iniquity was first found in the devil. God, though He has a knowledge of evil, is in no way responsible for the existence of evil. Therefore, the devil created evil, or brought evil into existence by choice. So perhaps choice is essentially a creative act. Perhaps when we choose, something that is neither deterministic nor random but new happens, something is brought into existence as we, block by block, create our character. Thus, we find that in the natural world of determinism and randomness, beings created in the image of the Creator God have the power themselves to create through the process of choice, according to their commission to build a character after the Divine similitude. It could be that quantum mechanics and the paradox of life and additionally/or the paradox of self-awareness is/are sufficient to explain this choice-creative capability without invoking anthropological dualism. Our understanding of the precise mechanism is not necessary to accept the Divine revelation that we truly are free to love God. (Note 1: Life is a paradoxical state of matter as it is ongoing in the natural world but can only be induced by the Life Giver. Note 2: Because we are carnal, we need to be born of the Spirit as true agency can only be experienced when we are a temple of the Holy Spirit.)
In summary, what is important to understand is that God loves us and we may love Him to experience fullness of joy. God only asks us to do what is good and since God asks us to worship Him, therefore He is worthy and it is simply the greatest blessing individually and corporately if we take advantage of worshiping God.
