The following is a to-and-fro Blake Ostler had with one of the most deceptive individuals in Protestant apologetics today a few years ago now on the Mormon Dialogue board (I saved the interaction on a word document [no doubt Dr. Dunning Kruger will repeat the lie that I have made up this interaction]). It reveals how one cannot have genuine free-will in light of creation ex nihilo.
Rob: My view is precisely that one of your belief in creation ex
nihilo is inconsistent with your view that we act freely. I argue that the
notion of craetion ex nihilo entails occasionalism though such a view must be
rejected by those who affirm free will.
You say that you reject premise (2): Every is, as a matter of
fact, created out of nothing. You give a counter-example -- you were created
from the zygotes of your parents. Yes, were were, but the matter from which
these things are derived, in its most essential form, was created out of
nothing. So let's use two words: "actualized" to mean given existence
out of nothing and "organized" to mean giving form to matter that has
been actualized. This matter out of which you are made was created ex nihilo
and your existence is dependent on the existence of the matter of which your
body is made. I make this clear so that you can see that you only move one step
away. So let's amend (2) to make it clearer if that will work better for you:
(2*) The matter of which you are made was created out of nothing. With this
amendment nothing in the argument changes since you cannot exist without the
matter of your body existing.
You also assert: Also,
(6) does not follow necessarily from (4) and (5). You are assuming that
anything that exists must either sustain itself in existence or be re-created
each moment. I don't see why those are the only two possibilities. God might
sustain created things in their existence without re-creating them each moment.
In effect, you are equating sustaining existence with creating ex nihilo. But on what
basis are you equating these? Your argument doesn't provide any basis for this
equation
The position you are asserting is nonsense. If you believe that
God could sustain something in existence without re-creating it in each moment,
then you fail to grasp the meaning of "sustain." Here is the key
concept. A contingent thing requires an active causal power to maintain it in
existence. If that causal power ceases, then the contingent thing ceases to
exist. At t1 CE exists. If God does not cause CE to exist at t2 through his
active causal power of granting esse to CE at t2, then CE does not exist at t2
-- since CE exists contingently in dependence on God's active causal power.
However, God must sustain everything that is true of CE because of all CE's
properties are contingent properties as well. This, at t2 God must cause
through his active causal power every property, both essential and accidental
properties, to exist at t2 as well if t2 exists at t2. If he doesn't CE ceases
to exist at t2. However, CE's free acts are accidental properties of CE -- but
if these properties are directly caused by God then occasionalism follows and
CE is not free.
Thus, (6) follows from (4) and (5) just as I claimed. There are
no alternatives. If CE cannot cause its own existence at t2 because it has no
active causal power that could do so, and only God can impart existence to CE
at t2, it follows that CE doesn't just continue existing at t2 unless God
active causes it.
Rob Bowman: My
statement that it is in a creature's nature to exist contingently refutes the
argument I was presented, and is also at least a partial answer to the
corrected argument you present. I am sure you would not begrudge a Mormon
pointing out to a critic that no Mormon believes what the critic asserts is the
implications of his doctrine!
You are simply mistaken that observing that it is in a creatures
nature to exist is your doctrine -- and if it were, then your doctrine would be
even more incoherent than my argument asserts. Further, you are mistaken that
observing that a creature exists contingently answers my argument in any way.
Existence isn't part of any thing's nature if it exists contingently. If a
thing has existence as part of its nature (as all medieval theologians asserted
was part of God's nature), then the thing exist necessarily exist but it
existence would be contingent. It follows that the very concept of a thing that
"it is in a creatures nature to exist contingently" is an incoherent
notion and the perfect definition of an oxymoron. Neither necessary nor
contingent existence are part of a creature's nature -- being created is merely
what it means to be a creature. A creature that exists contingently is, by
nature, something that doesn't have existence as part of its nature. If a things
exists that could fail to exist, it follows that it exists contingently if it
exists at all -- but that hardly entails that contingent existence is part of
its nature.
Thus, your supposed answer to the argument rests on a
self-contradictory notion of "having contingent existence by nature."
You also assert: In
sustaining the whole, the parts can be sustained without each part being
re-created ex
nihilo.
This is a non-sequitur several times over. A whole cannot exist
as such unless each of its parts exist. Further, the whole is created by
creating its parts. Thus your argument is fallacious.
Rob Bowman: If
there is no enduring object that continues to exist without interruption, but
instead merely a series of objects that were separately created, then there is
no "thing" that God actually "keeps existing."
Yup, I agree. There is no identity and no
secondary causation. You beginning to see the absurd consequences of belief in
creation out of nothing more clearly. I know that advocates of creatio ex
nihilo will try to avoid such absurd consequences of their beliefs. But it does
no good to observe, as you do, that my argument entails that your beliefs are
absurd since that is just the point of my argument. It is a form of reductio as absurdum after all.
NoFear: But,
does the argument apply to esse? Sure, why not. We can simply posit that God
created the property of "esse inertia". Thus, once a substance is
created, it will simply continue its created status without any active causal
power just as motion can continue without any active causal power.
The easy response is that you are not seeing what is entailed by
the notion that something is caused to exist by another contingently. What kind
of property would this inertia be? It would be a property given to a thing to
create itself and hold istelf in existence. But in order to have this property,
the thing in question must be uncreated and in fact have the property of
necessary existence -- otherwise it is necessary (a necessity of the
consequent) that the thing in question has only contingent existence and
depends on another for its existence because it doesn't have -- and cannot have
of logical necesseity -- the property of self-existence. As I stated above,
such a property is self contradictory. It entails saying that God created a
created thing such that it is not created and not a created thing. Even God
cannot confer such a power because he cannot do the logically impossible. It is
this contradiciton: "This thing that requires an active causal power to
exist can be created by God so that it isn't a thing that requires an active
causal power to exist."
Another part of the problem is that we intuitively bring to this
question our assumptions about the natural world given assumption of naturalism
and not of theistic creation out of nothing. What is the nature of a created
thing? I cannot remember who stated above that we ought to ask the question:
what is your view if God ceased to exist; what would happen to the natural
universe in that event? The answer is that the universe is sustained by God
moment to moment if he creates ex nihilo and it would cease to exist along with
God. (I know perfectly well that classical theists will claim that God's
non-existence is logically impossible because of the ontological argument -- so
this is a thought experiment for such folks per impossibile).
Rob Bowman: You
assume, for example, that God's act of causing a specific creature C to exist
at time t1 is a separate act from his act of causing C to exist at t2. I don't
see why this assumption must be true. Why cannot God will that C exists for a
specified period of time?
Rob, such an act would require God to give a
created entity the property of having power to endure through a period of time
without an active cause underlying its existence and thus requires conferring
on it a power of self-creation or self-sustenance. If Ce exists at t1 what
could keep CE in existence at t2 if it is not CE's nature to exist? You see,
conntingent things don't have it as part of their nature to exist. Only
necessarily existing things can have existence as part of their (or its)
nature. But of course no created thing can create itself ex nihilo nor does it
have a power of self-sustenance since it must be sustained itself from moment
to moiment without a the necessary property of self-sustenance or
self-existence and thus cannot have such a power by definition of what it means
to be created. What you propose was attempted in aniquity under the name of
perdurance and it had almost no takers because of the logical problems
associated with perdurance. That is why creation out of nothing has the
consequence that created things must be sustained in existence from one moment
to the next -- and thus entails occasionalism. I know that you won't accept
that fact no matter how clearly and logically it follows because it renders
your belief system unacceptable.
