Tuesday, October 5, 2021

Blake Ostler vs. Evangelical Protestant who Marinates in Dunning Kruger on Creation Ex Nihilo and Free-Will

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.