Monday, August 15, 2005

Conversations with Angie: Why Plantinga argues the way he does

Cutting out parts of my response, too.

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Angie,

After much toil, I think I finally understand Plantinga's argument. Of course there were a couple of times when I thought I understood his argument, and then I'd say, "Now wait just a minute, there's a problem with that!" But then I'd figure it out. I wrote a little about it on a couple of my blog entries if you want to have a look-see.

http://www.philochristos.blogspot.com

[Those posts can be found here, here, and here.]

It sort of has to do with a conflict with God's nature, but not exactly. Since God is wholly good, he would want to actualize a world that had the greatest good over evil that he could actualize, but that world happens to have some evil in it. The reason he goes into all of this is because there's nothing incoherent about the idea of a world containing free creatures who never choose to go wrong. So there is a possible world in which people are significantly free to do good or evil, but always choose to do good. That's why he goes into the whole argument that there are possible worlds God can't actualize. But it isn't really because of his nature that he can't actualize them. He can't actualize them simply because it's not possible for them to be actual no matter what God's nature is.

Sam

Conversations with Angie:  Does evidence of editorial work on the Bible imply that God did not inspire the writings?


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