Why No 5K to Save the Zygotes?

In the manner of explaining why she lost faith in the pro-life movement, Libby Anne says this sort of argument made an impression on her:

Due to hormone imbalances, genetic anomalies, and a number of unknown factors, between 50 percent and 75 percent of embryos fail to implant in the uterus and are passed with the monthly menstrual flow. If we agree with pro-life advocates that every embryo is as morally valuable as an adult human, this means that more than half of humans immediately die. This fact provides pro-life advocates with an opportunity to follow through on their convictions. Surely, a moral response to a pandemic of this magnitude would be to rally the scientific community to devote the vast majority of its efforts to better understanding why this happens and trying to stop it. Yet the same pro-life leaders who declare that every embryo is morally equivalent to a fully developed child have done nothing to advocate such research. … Even if medicine could save only 10 percent of these embryos — and we don’t know because no one has cared enough to ask — it would be saving more lives than curing HIV, diabetes, and malaria combined. One could say that this massive loss of human life is natural, and therefore, humans are under no obligation to end it. But it is not clear why the same argument could not be used to justify complacency in the face of AIDS, cancer, heart disease, and other natural causes of human death.

The above paragraph is from Jonathan Dudley’s Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics. I think this is an interesting argument; it can be stated more formally like this:

[1] If the pro-life movement were morally consistent, it would advocate for research to mitigate the loss of human life naturally lost in the womb [premise].

[2] The pro-life movement fails to do this [premise].

[3] Therefore, pro-life movement is morally inconsistent [MT 1, 2].

Suppose this is right. Then the pro-life movement should make an effort to advocate for research to be morally consistent. But so what? That just says something about what the pro-life movement fails to do; it doesn’t say anything about the truth of what the pro-life movement believes about the human embryo, which is what ultimately matters.

Molinism and the Grounding Objection

Since I am attracted to the theory of middle knowledge (Molinism) as a way of reconciling God’s providence/foreknowledge and human freedom, I face the primary objection to the theory: the grounding objection. The grounding objection can be stated like this:

According to the argument, there appears to be no good answer to the question of what grounds the truth of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. They cannot be grounded in God because determinism would follow—the necessity of God’s being or His will would transfer to the counterfactuals. Additionally, the prevolitional character of middle knowledge speaks against grounding counterfactuals of creaturely freedom in the will of God.

First, what is a counterfactual of creaturely freedom (CCF)? They are statements that take the form “If it were the case that x was in circumstances C, then X would perform action A.” The classic CCF Molina liked to discuss was Peter’s denial, which might be styled like so: “If it were the case that Peter was in the circumstances described by Luke 22:54-56, then Peter would deny Christ” (call this P).

Second, Molina believed that God knew the truth value of P, “before” God created the world. But how? If Peter’s choice is not causally determined by God or physical substances in creation, then it seems that there nothing that makes P true. It seems that their needs to be something that exists to determine the fact of the matter. A professor of mine spells this ‘truth-maker assumption’ out more formally:

(TA): Necessarily, for any proposition p, if p is contingently true then there are some xs such that, necessarily, if the xs exist then p is true (Crisp, 2007:90).

But why believe (TA)? After all, there is nothing that exists that grounds the truth value of the claim, “There are no unicorns.” Perhaps a reply would be that there exists a null set of states of affairs in which unicorns are a constituent, and the existence of this null set is what grounds the truth of the claim “There are no unicorns.” Perhaps, then, sets of states of affairs do the work.

Nonetheless, it seems that the Molinist has a way out. My reading of Alfred Freddoso and Thomas Flint deploys the following strategy that reasons from cases we are likely to judge to be true. The enumerated points state the necessary and sufficient conditions of what it takes for a truth claim to be grounded.

A Correction to a Penal Substitution Syllogism

I came across this syllogism by Tom Schreiner in his chapter on penal substitution in the IVP 4 views book on the atonement. It goes like this:

[1] One must obey the law perfectly to be saved.

[2] No one keeps the law perfectly.

[3] Therefore, those who rely on the works of the law to be saved stand under God’s curse.

But this is invalid. Here’s how the first two premises look more formally

[1] Necessarily, for any x, if x obeys the law perfectly, then x will be saved.

[2] There is no x such that x obeys the law perfectly.

It does not follow from these two premises that [3] those who rely on the works of the law to be saved stand under God’s curse. For if someone were to rely on it and obey it perfectly, they would be saved. That is just what premise [1] claims. Instead, the argument should look like this:

[1*] Anyone will be saved who obeys the law perfectly.

[2] No one keeps the law perfectly.

[3*] Therefore, no one will be saved.

Nonetheless, [3*] is not equivalent with

[3] Those who rely on the works of the law to be saved stand under God’s curse.

For it is not the case that

[4] No one will be saved if and only if those who rely on the works of the law to be saved stand under God’s curse.

Premise [4] is a conjunction of which one of the conjuncts contains:

[5] If those who rely on the works of the law to be saved stand under God’s curse, then no one will be saved.

And [5], according to Galatians, is obviously false. The antecedent is true and the consequent is false, because there are some who are saved by virtue of faith in Christ. Perhaps what is needed to get to make [3] equivalent with [3*] is another premise that states, “If everyone relies on the works of the law to be saved and not on Christ, then no one will be saved.” That would do the trick, but then that seems to be precisely what Paul is arguing for, so to assume this premise would make the argument circular. But at least it would not be invalid (circular arguments are true after all).

UPDATE: A Correction to “A Correction to a Penal Substitution Syllogism”

In the text above, I contended that the the first premise read like this:

[1] Necessarily, for any x, if x obeys the law perfectly, then x will be saved.

But I was wrong. After reading it more carefully, it actually reads like this:

[1] Necessarily for any x, x is saved only if x obeys the law perfectly.

Premise [2] is still right:

[2] There is no x such that x obeys the law perfectly.

Thus, it still doesn’t follow that

[3] Those who rely on the works of the law to be saved stand under God’s curse.

All that follows is

[3*] No one is saved (that is, there is no x such that x is saved).

And I still think it is right to say that [3*] is not equivalent with [3], but upon further reflection I don’t see how to make [3*] equivalent with [3], so I retract the rest of what I say in the original post.

An Elegant Argument for the Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom

I came across this in a paper by Ted Warfield and I thought it was an elegant proof for the claim that God’s foreknowledge of the future is compatible with human freedom. The argument goes like this:

1. Plantinga will freely climb Mount Rushmore in 2000 AD.
2. It was true in 50 AD that Plantinga will climb Mount Rushmore in 2000 AD.
3. God exists in all possible worlds and is omniscient in all possible worlds.
4. God knew in 50 AD that Plantinga will climb Mount Rushmore in 2000 AD.

If premise [3] is true, then premise [2] is logically equivalent with premise [4]. And it follows that if [3] is true, then [4] is compatible with [1]. Thus there is a view of God and omniscience on which divine foreknowledge and human freedom are compatible.

The upshot: the necessity of the past (or ‘accidental necessity’ as it is sometimes called) does not nullify Plantinga’s freedom (even in the libertarian sense) to choose to climb Mount Rushmore in 2000 AD.

An Argument for Personhood from Conception

An argument for full human personhood from the moment of conception:

1. An adult human being is the end result of the continuous growth of the organism from conception.
2. At no point, from conception to adulthood, is there a change in the essential nature of the fetus from non-person to person.
3. Therefore, one is a person from the point of conception onward.

Adapted from Moral Choices by Scott Rae.

A Response to Theological Fatalism

I had the privilege of taking a class with William Lane Craig on divine omniscience this past January and he had us respond to this argument by the Open Theist philosopher William Hasker:

1. It is now true that Clarence will have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (Premise)
2. It is impossible that God should at any time believe what is false, or fail to believe anything that is true. (Premise: divine omniscience)
3. God has always believed that Clarence will have a cheese omelet tomorrow. (From 1, 2)
4. If God has always believed a certain thing, it is not in anyone’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that thing. (Premise: the unalterability of the past)
5. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that he would have a cheese omelet for breakfast. (From 3, 4)
6. It is not possible for it to be true both that God has always believed that Clarence would have a cheese omelet for breakfast, and that he does not in fact have one. (from 2)
7. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to refrain from having a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (From 5, 6) So Clarence’s eating the omelet tomorrow is not an act of free choice. (From the definition of free will.)

One can find it in both Hasker’s God, Time, and Knowledge and his contribution to The Openness of God. Interestingly enough, this is popular with some Calvinists who cite it as a simple logical refutation of the Arminian theory of simple foreknowledge. But I think it’s too simple. It should be noted that my response is largely an adaptation of what I learned in Dr. Craig’s class.

Nice Summary of Virtue Theory

I like to note nice summaries of philosophical positions when I see them. Here is one about virtue theory:

The idea behind a virtue theory is this. If we have a sufficiently robust account of the proper goal, or good, of an activity, we can identify the characteristics that persons need if they are to pursue that good. The proper objects of evaluation, therefore, include not just the products of successful activity — morally right actions (ethics) or reasonable beliefs (epistemology) — but also the personal characteristics that are essential to that activity. These are the virtues. Furthermore, a virtue theory can guide practice. For if we know the proper goal of an activity and we can discover the states that are required to attain that goal, we might figure out how to cultivate those states. So the success of a virtue theory depends upon having a conception of the good that is robust enough to enable us to identify the states that are required for its pursuit.

Read the whole thing.

The Problem of God’s Goodness

It has not gone unnoticed that to say “God is good” is to make an evaluative claim. Like all claims about the goodness of a thing we assume a position that gives us the ability, if not the right, to speak well of whatever it is we are evaluating. We are not just reporting our feelings or expressing a factual description about something. To be sure, emotion and description may be a part of what we are saying, but we are also making a normative claim: to say “X is good” means X ought to be seen as good.

This seems intuitive enough and perhaps trivial, but talk about God gets a bit trickier. Most believers find the idea of making evaluations of God character as somehow fundamentally mistaken. God is not in the dock, C.S. Lewis once wrote, it is we who are in the dock and it is he who sits on the bench. This much is factually true, and it seems improper for a mere creature to make character judgments about the creator.

Expressivism in the NY Times

John Marks tells us why he no longer believes in moral truth. As an atheist, he worked diligently to account for how the moral features of reality could be applied to our particular actions and everyday life. He describes the moment he became an “atheist” concerning objective morality. Here are some key excerpts:

The dominoes continued to fall. I had thought I was a secularist because I conceived of right and wrong as standing on their own two feet, without prop or crutch from God. We should do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, period. But this was a God too. It was the Godless God of secular morality, which commanded without commander – whose ways were thus even more mysterious than the God I did not believe in, who at least had the intelligible motive of rewarding us for doing what He wanted.

[...]

But suddenly I knew [moral truth] no more. I was not merely skeptical or agnostic about it; I had come to believe, and do still, that these [moral claims] are not wrong. But neither are they right; nor are they permissible. The entire set of moral attributions is out the window.

Jerry Walls’s Thought Experiment Against the use of Compatibism by Theological Determinism

In her article Why Christians Should not be Libertarians, Lynne Rudder Baker writes, “A person is morally responsible for willing an action X if (i) S wills X, (ii) S wants to will X, (iii) S wills X because she wants to will X, and (iv) S would still have willed X even she had known the provenance of her wanting to kill X” (p. 471).

Jerry Walls zeros in on (iv) and devises the following story:

Imagine a preschool that is run by a woman who is psychologically savvy, and deliberate does various things to condition the children, unknown to their parents. Some of the children she conditions grow up and behave as virtuous persons typically do, and live productive lives. Others, she conditions to behave in a perverse manner, some of whom even become rapists or child molesters themselves. Let us assume she completely succeeds in her project and each of the children turns out just as she intends. Somehow she manages to avoid detection, and a few years later, she decides to go to law school and several years later still she becomes a judge.

Now consider the case of one of the abused children who becomes a child molester. He wills to molest children and does so because he wills to do so. Let us suppose he even engages in his behavior with a sort of relish, but eventually, he is caught and arrested. Before his trial, however, he sees a court appointed psychiatrist who examines him to determine whether he is sane enough to be tried for his crimes. Under hypnosis, he is able to recall that he was abused as a small child, and his psychiatrist concludes that those experiences incline him powerfully toward his practice of child molestation, and helps him come to see this and understand why.

Now, having come to know the provenance of his actions in this fashion, would he not view them in an entirely different light than he did before? Would he still own those actions in the same way, or be likely to be “proud” if his previous behavior like Baker’s defiant racist?* More likely, would he not find his previous behavior shameful, or at the very least find himself baffled as to how he was responsible for it?

Suppose furthermore that when he was tried for his crimes, the judge eloquently condemns his behavior as a menace to society that deserves severe punishment, and she accordingly sentences him to life in prison, with no chance for parole. After he is imprisoned, he comes to the ironic realization that his judge was his preschool teacher years ago. He now reflection the face that not only was he conditioned toward his perverse behavior by the same person who was his judge, but that she just as easily could have conditioned him to become a well adjusted who behaved in a perfectly upright fashion. Again, it seems clear that such further knowledge of the provenance of his actions would further unsettle his previous sense of ownership for those actions, and he would think there was something profoundly unjust in his being held accountable for them and punished with life in prison.

Walls concludes this story with the following principle: “When the actions of a person are entirely determined by another intelligent being who intentionally determines (manipulates) the person to act exactly as the other being wishes, then the person cannot rightly be held accountable and punished for his actions.”

See the latest edition of Philosophia Christi for more.

*Baker tells the story of a proud racist who was conditioned from childhood by a racist environment, and yet is unabated in owning up to his racism by virtue of knowing this fact.

[Cross-posted at the Biconditional Blog]