Did you or did you not write the above as a response to:
Which was a response I gave to:
Now if you did write what you did as a response to what I said, how does what you wrote:
Even relate to:
?
I explained the reason why I asked the question: If this is what your defense ultimately will be, then discussing criteria is pointless. It´s pretending the moral value of an action could be rationally discussed with consistent criteria - while actually in the end there´s always "It´s good because God wanted it so."
God created the world because He wanted to. Was what you wrote even addressed to this? Or was it some tangent that you wanted to go off on instead of staying on track?
No, it´s always the same problem I am addressing:
1. There is no "crisis management" defense for God, because everything is exactly as God wanted it to (follows necessarily from omniscience+omnipotence+creatorship.
2. We are discussing the consistency of the claim of "omnibenevolence" (or, as you put it, "'God loves every human inviolably and infinitely") with God´s destructive measures as described in the bible.
3. God could have done things differently (follows necessarily from omnipotence).
So how is "God wanted it so" even an argument? It isn´t in dispute. So I am sensing that your ultimate argument will be something like "God´s actions are good because it´s what God wanted". If that is the case, we needn´t waste our time with pretending there are other criteria you would accept.
Switch them off?
We are talking about human beings, not robots quatona.
Well, simply switching "free moral agents" off painlessly doesn´t make them any more of a robot than exterminating them painfully by use of your destructive power over them. In both cases you have killed them.
You may not believe we actually are free moral agents, but the text we are working with assumes this. You cannot divorce or separate these events central to our discussion from their context.
As I said, I have - for purposes of this discussion and hypothetically - accepted your idea that we are "free moral agents" (even though I personally don´t believe we are).
(Of course, we are obviously not totally free: We have our genetic, hormonal, cultural and other dispositions and limitations. So God has given us a certain amount of freedom. Thus - even though this wasn´t my argument so far - we might actually figure the question into the discussion why God didn´t limit our freedom in other ways than he did; because that would have made His destructive crisis-management unnecessary.)
God made a man and a woman and told them to be fruitful and multiply. This means to come together and have children. They then produce after their own kind according to certain laws God had established. They also die according to certain laws God had established. God chose to work within these established laws and biological processes to accomplish His ends instead of causing people to freeze each time an evil though came into their head.
Actually, I am not seeing how the question "Are God´s choices (in the way He created, and in the way He later treated His creation) displaying an inviolable and infinite love for each single of His creatures can be answered by "Well, God chose so."
You have given me no reason to think that if God existed and created human beings as free moral agents, that He would cause them to freeze or reset their brain every time an evil thought or idea popped into their head. These people in question would have been like zombies walking around, continually having brain freezes and brain resets like a messed up robot. Such a life would be far more deleterious and pain laden than one curtailed by a quick death.
Since I didn´t suggest this, you may want to keep this argument in the back of your head for another opportunity to use it.
If anything, my argument would be: God could have created them with limitations of their freedom that would have prevented them from becoming intolerable for his actual goals, in the first place.
God produced that which he knew would become trash and detrimental to his own goals in his own eyes. That simply doesn´t look like a wise move.
One reason was to preserve the human race. Another was to end the suffering and pain of those who by being unrepentant and wicked, were heaping up upon themselves untold miseries and sorrows. Another was to purify the earth of the defiled blood which had been shed upon it. Another was to purify the blood-line from which all of the nations were to come.
So you are back at the crisis-management defense?
If God had allowed these evil people to continually breed, the world would have become hell on earth and human beings would have soon totally destroyed themselves.
God could have prevented that, in various ways. God is the omnipotent omniscient creator of everything. We mustn´t forget this.
Interesting to note, this is not a problem we are unfamiliar with even today. One push of a button and men could cause a chain reaction process which would obliterate not only himself from the earth, but everything else along with it. Here I am envisioning a nuclear holocaust.
So?
Wrong. Nothing God did made Adam and Eve's choice determined or necessary. They were free to either choose to obey or not. They were not constrained by anything other than their own desire.
If memory serves it wasn´t A&E whom God drowned in the flood.
But even with A&E God knew what would be the result. He chose to create them the very way that would result in that which He later considered a terrible mess and destruction-worthy. Noone in his right mind would do that, even less when being omnipotent.
If I were to say that, I would say it to demonstrate that if God exists, then He can and do whatever He wills with what He makes.
That he
can do it, is undisputed (for purposes of this discussion). It´s you who seems to occasionally forget it.
The question that you raised (or better: carried here) is: Does what He choose to do display an infinite and inviolable love for each of his creatures.
Counterproductive creation. Disproportional cirisis management.
And if this would have worked, then He would have done it. These people did not become as they were in one night. Nor were they ignorant of God's decrees. They persisted in rebellion and rejected the means of salvation God made available to them (the ark) for many years even prior to Noah even building the ark, which itself would have taken years to do.
Back at crisis management defense?
Such a possible world may not be feasible for God to create if at the same time, He has certain other goals or ends He wants to be accomplished.
And I and others keep asking you to tell us those ultimate goals and ends that make unavoidable that which otherwise looks like a poor plan, in the first place, and an unnecessarily cruel way of correcting this poor plan.
You may be suffering from what Plantinga has termed a "Leibniz Lapse". Leibniz reasoned that if God is omnipotent then the world He created, i.e. this world, is the best of all possible worlds, but such reasoning is fallacious by virtue of the fact that there are worlds which may be logically possible but nevertheless not feasible for God to actually bring about. Such a world you are thinking of may be logically possible, and yet still not be feasible for God to actually create, given the decisions free moral agents would make. So, when it comes to the set of logically possible worlds which God could actually have created, there may in fact be no other world which include as much moral good as the actual world without also including this much moral evil.
Well, I would question that it was a good idea to give his creatures "free moral agency" (or the exact amount of limited freedom he allowed them) when it was clear from the beginning that this was detrimental to his actual goals.
