9. At around 51:00, Gangadean cites "common ground" as a source of unity within the church. What is supposed to be the content of common ground? I spoke about this some in my last post (Part 2, point 6), but I'll develop my thoughts on the matter a bit further.
a. Reason as the laws of thought.
b. Integrity/concern for consistency.
c. Rational presuppositionalism (as the method of critical thinking).
d. The principle of clarity (that the basic things about god, man, good and evil are clear to reason) and the need for clarity in connection to inexcusability.
Gangadean will often cite differences concerning a. through d. as grounds for discontinuing discussions with his disputants. The trouble is, Gangadean doesn't seem open to the possibility that he may be mistaken about what is required for intelligible discussions. In place of tight arguments that such common ground of this particular sort must be in place for conversations to make sense, he merely presupposes a number of principles (more on this below). But I'll shed light on some of these and suggest why they are no good.
As it concerns "reason as the laws of thought," I don't disagree that for instance, 'a is a' (the law of identity)--that's just saying a thing is what it is (and not something else). The same with the law of contradiction, and excluded middle (although I'm a bit more hesitant about this one due to problems of vagueness as well as the conditional form of excluded middle). Gangadeanians often have the mistaken view that I deny the so called, "laws of the thought." Now, I don't necessarily agree with the further identity claim that Gangadean makes---that reason is to be identified with the laws of thought--but that's because I don't quite understand what it means or even what the point of that is supposed to be. Still, I affirm the rather trivial metaphysical claim that a thing is what it is, and that two contradictory statements or propositions can't both be true. Where Gangadean and I differ is in what each of us professes as the reasons for believing these claims and the certainty with which we affirm them. For Gangadean these are so called "self-attesting" and "self-evident" principles and as such can be known with absolute certainty (such that one can't possibly be mistaken in believing them because they can't possible be other than true). In contrast, I don't really know whether or not a proposition can be "self-evident" or "self-attesting" (or how one goes about coming to know that something is), unless all we mean by that is that it strikes us as rather obvious.
Sometimes I'm tempted by the thought that there's a sense in which we must assume some propositions if we're going to do any amount of theorizing. That's because every argument needs premises or starting points. Some philosophers think something like this is right and speak of some claims as "axiomiatic" or i"ndispensible", but none of them are after certainty or clarity to begin with and Gangadean likes the eschew talk of axioms in this regard. The reason I mention the last bit is because there's something unsatisfying about counting a proposition as true simply because it serves our aims/purposes in theorizing or arguing. The natural question is why the fact that something must be assumed if we are to say present any arguments makes the former true. How would we go about proving a thing like this? And it feels an awful like a pragmatic reason to believe something is true (because it's suits our needs/goals/purposes) as opposed to a truth-relevant reason. Finally, I underlined 'assume' above because we can further fuss about what we mean by the word. Does assuming in the relevant sense amount to believing (and if so, to what degree)? Or does it mean simply holding fixed for the purposes of a particular line of inquiry?
When I've pressed Gangadeanian in the past about how they know when something is self-attesting or self-evident (and thus maximally clear to reason), they've responded that such propositions have a peculiar property--they make questioning possible. And that's similar to what I've just talked about (it's something like "transcendental reasoning"). I pointed out in my last post (point 6) that this seems to merely push the problem back a step because we now need for Gangadean to tell us how we know (with certainty) when a proposition makes questioning possible. After all, it seems logically possible that Gangadean and his clan are merely mistaken about their judgments in this respect so that what they believe makes questioning possible only appears to them to be that way. I think an appeal to intuition or common sense at this point is unavoidable and thus a problem for Gangadean's entire worldview. But there's more. As I hinted at above, we need an argument for why "a proposition makes questioning possible" entails that "it can't be questioned" and "it is true." Here again, I think Gangadean is banking on intuitions or common sense--but we shouldn't let him get away with that given his professed standards for clarity at the basic level.
Returning again to the point that Gangadean and I agree on say the law of identity, but disagree about the reasons for which we accept it and the certainty with which we do: I don't understand why I need to affirm these principles ("the laws of thought") with absolute certainty in the first place. I don't find myself questioning their veracity, but I also wouldn't take the following bet if an evil demon offered it to me: If i'm wrong about their truth, then everyone I know dies a grueling slow death and if I'm right, I get a quarter. So I can't say in sincerity that I'm absolutely certain (nor can I just make myself certain of them as if belief is within our voluntary control). Gangadean on the other hand, would be forced to take such a bet, since by his lights, it's literally impossible for him to be wrong about them (or for him to gain any more evidence of either their truth or falsity).
Do these differences between our positions matter upon final analysis? Depends who you ask. Gangadean and his followers certainly seem to think so although again, it's possible that they don't quite understand my position. Does it matter for whether we can have intelligible conversations? I don't see how---but again, Gangadean seems to think so (though he is without an argument for why that is). Does it matter for unity within the church? Once again, I don't see why or how--this is something in need of an argument and I'm skeptical that one will be forthcoming.
As to the last item on the list of "common ground principles" i.e., the principle of clarity, I wrote quite a bit about problems with the twin principles of clarity and inexcusability in part 1 of this series, so I won't rehearse those considerations here. Instead, we can again ask whether it matters for unity within the church or whether it can be grounds for exclusion either from the church or from intelligible conversation/engagement. Gangadean takes it for granted that the answer to both questions is, yes. But again, I simply don't see why. Notice that what he's resting his claim on is the following. That agreement on the most basic things will yield agreement on the less basic---and he's taking his doctrine of clarity as among the more basic. One thing to note is that even if it's true that by agreeing on the more basic, we will agree on the less basic (which I doubt), that doesn't rule out the possibility of coming to agreement on the less basic, another way. After all, Gangadean isn't claiming "if and only if we agree on the more basic, we will agree on the less basic."
Returning again to our disagreement about how certain we must be about say the laws of thought: I've also noted in the past that Gangadean thinks of this whole idea of clarity in a very special way. He thinks that for some proposition to be clear, is for it to be knowable with absolute certainty. It's a status reserved for those claims, which you couldn't possibly be wrong/mistaken about. But again, why must some things have this status in the first place? What if we can't have that kind of certainty about anything? What is supposed to follow from that? What's the downside? Gangadean usually argues that if we can't be absolutely certain about anything, then we can't know anything (skepticism). And that sounds really bad since knowledge is a desirable thing. Or else he tells you that there's no point in having discussions. But as I've noted before, what he doesn't tell you at this juncture is that he's assuming (without argument) that knowledge requires absolute certainty/clarity and that conversations are intelligible only if we have certainty. Neither of these very substantive claims is obvious. Nor can I see how he would argue that they are "self-attesting" or "self-evident." So it's yet another Gangadeanian article of faith. Once we are careful in drawing out some of Gangadean's presuppositions, we see that there is no necessary obstacle to disunity within the church, from those that fail to agree with the claim that we can be absolutely certain about some claims (principle of clarity).
10. At 53:00, Gangadean starts to talk about various passages in the bible like the first three chapters of Genesis. He'll also talk about the preface to the gospel of John (where the world/logos is said to be God and with God). I want to make a very general point that I've been hinting at throughout this series. Gangadean, like anyone approaching the text, is interpreting it. If you know about the many disputes that exist within the church you'll know that there are many ways to interpret a particular passage--though I'm not at all suggesting that "anything goes." I think there are better and worse interpretations and that we have to consider the reasons for and against interpreting a passage one way over another and make our best judgments. Strangely, Gangadean often presents his interpretations of scripture as ultimately authoritative and if you press him on it, he'll actually tell you that the "correct interpretations" are clear to reason (though I've also heard mixed reports from other Gangadeanians--one in particular, once told me that we can't expect to know what the bible says, with the same clarity as we can of basic things). That is to say, once the more basic stuff from reason alone is in place, you can via "good and necessary consequences" (deductive inference) figure out how to interpret special revelation (the bible). I recall once sitting in on a discussion session that Gangadean held (then called Logos Seminary) where he interpreted a particular passage one way and it wasn't obvious to many of us that that was the only way despite what he insisted--but he refused to move on until certain persons professed full agreement. I say all of this to provide one place to push back in your interactions with Gangadeanians when in the context of theological/hermeneutical discussions. Don't let them simply take liberties to interpret any given passage to fit their philosophical needs---instead ask them for decisive arguments for why the particular interpretation they provide is the only suitable one (also, can they rule out the possibility that there's an interpretation which none of us has yet to consider?). If they concede that we can't know with certainty what the text says, then that opens the door for questioning believers for instance, need certainty about other "more basic" matters.
11. At 54:00, Gangadean starts to talk about the "historic Christian faith" or sometimes what he speaks of as "historic Christianity." If you've encountered Gangadeanians, they are quick to bring up this notion and it does a great deal of work in their defense of their worldview. Gangadean sums up historic Christianity as reflected in the major creeds as many Christians, do. But he also importantly takes the Westminster Confession of faith as the "high water mark" of historic Christianity. Now reformed presbyterians tend to love the Westminster Confession of faith (because it has a strong Calvinist bent), but to say that it best reflects Christianity is a very substantive claim for which we need an argument. So we shouldn't let him or any Gangadeanian get away with merely asserting that this is so--again he needs to prove that this is so which is going to involve proving lots and lots of reformed interpretations of scripture. This last point made me think that during my many years under Gangadean's ministry, I never once learned how to prove these things--and I doubt any other Gangadeanians did, either. Instead, we were taught merely to agree with the claim that the WF confession of faith had got it all right. It would seem that fideism (as Gangadean defines it) is quite rampant in his church.
Q&A
12. At 1:09:00, a member of the audience asks Gangadean to explain "how the [human] soul is not eternal." Here's the basic argument Gangadean gives.
(1) I have one thought after another.
(2) If (1) and my soul were eternal, then I would be eternal in time.
(3) If I were eternal in time, then I would be all knowing.
(4) I am not all knowing.
(5) So, I am not eternal in time.
This is a bad argument. For one thing, Gangadean had better not help himself to the first premise on pain of violating his own principles. To reiterate, he's after clarity/certainty! In which case, he can't appeal to the common sense of the questioner (as he does in giving his answer). So what would a proof of premise (1) look like? I'm not sure it's possible to give a proof of the temporal ordering of thoughts. I know that Gangadeanians are with Kant in thinking that the reality of time is something of a transcendental (it's a precondition for the possibility of experience). But even granting this, it's of no help. Notice--I'm not asking how we know that there's such a thing as time. I'm asking how we can know (with absolute certainty) when particular phenomena (our thoughts) are ordered in time. Again, I think this is something that is ultimately going to have to resolve into an appeal to common sense or intuition which is no good for Gangadean's worldview.
More importantly, premise (3) is false. There's no contradiction in thinking of a being like me who exists eternally within time, but who fails to have all knowledge. As I've pointed out before, it's possible that I'm unmotivated to gain knowledge so that no matter how much time I have, I don't grow in knowledge (let alone the full extent of it)--this is because gaining knowledge takes work--it's a process and not something that merely happens to us! Another possibility is that I lose knowledge even as I gain it. For example, since knowledge entails belief, if I lose a belief that I once had, then I don't have it as a piece of knowledge. And there are lots of ways that a person might lose their beliefs in the pertinent sense. One might simply forget the proposition, for one thing. Or one might encounter misleading evidence which makes one doubt what one previously believed. In either case, one can lose knowledge by losing the relevant belief. As such, eternal existence within time doesn't entail omniscience by any stretch of the imagination.
Finally, if there are an infinite number of propositions, then it seems impossible to know them all regardless of how long you've been around--at least by successive addition. Regardless of how long you've been picking apples, if the set of apples in the universe were infinite, it's literally impossible for you to ever run out of apples to pick which means you won't ever have the set of all the apples. So the mere fact that you don't have all the apples, doesn't entail that you haven't been around eternally within time. It just means you can't get exhaust an infinite set in that way. The same with knowledge of an infinite number of propositions.
The upshot is that at least two of the five premises is questionable in which case the argument is unsound hence, it's not clear to reason that the (human) soul is not eternal.
13. At 1:10:00, an audience member asked Gangadean to clarify his claim that while spiritual death is inherent in sin (not seeking, not knowing what is clear), physical death was imposed later as a call back from sin. As Gangadean notes, the relevant issue here is the problem of natural evil. He first presents what he deems a "general revelation argument that physical death was not original in creation." Basically it's the Humean argument from evil which goes like this.
Humean Argument:
(1) If God is all powerful, then he could prevent natural evil.
(2) If God is all good, then he would prevent natural evil.
(3) If God could and would, then he must have prevented natural evil.
(4) Hence, he did prevent natural evil.
Most theists don't take this argument to be sound (I'll say more about that later). But, strangely, Gangadean, here takes it to be sound--i.e,. he takes it as proof that physical death/natural evil is not inherent in creation (though Hume intended it to be an argument against God's existence because he thought premise (4) to be false). But what he fails to appreciate is that taking that line is bad news for his view in that it proves too much. To see why note how the premises seem no less true if you replace each instance of 'natural evil' with 'moral evil.' This seems then to suggest that Gangadean would have to (on pain of inconsistency) deny that moral evil was inherent in creation. Maybe that's not so bad in itself because Gangadean might say that while natural evil isn't inherent in creation, the potential for it is inherent. But this won't quite work out because he's a soft-determinist meaning he thinks that every event is the necessary result of prior causes and that means the sin committed by Adam and Eve was determined by temporally prior facts about the creation event including how God created Adam and Eve. So, Gangadean cannot (on pain of inconsistency) hide behind the subterfuge of mere "potential to sin"--because it does violence to Gangadean's views about how every event is causally determined by prior causes which ultimately start with the creation event by God. That is, on Gangadean's view it can't be that God created Adam and Eve to have an equal probability of sinning and not sinning. If he did, according to Gangadean, this would undermine the very notion of God as creator and ruler as well as the notion of causality. So what really should stand in for 'natural evil' is not 'the potential for moral evil,' but rather something like 'the conditions sufficient for bringing about moral evil' or 'the conditions that guarantee the existence of moral evil.' Once we replace each occurrence of 'natural evil' with what I have suggested, we get a serious problem for Gangadean's position. This is because these new premises seem no less true than their counterparts in the original argument (so that if one accepts the Humean argument as sound as Gangadean does, then one ought to accept this new argument as sound). Consider:
Argument II:
(1)' If God is all powerful, then he could prevent the initial conditions which guarantee the presence of moral evil from ever obtaining.
(2)' If God is all good, then he would prevent the conditions which guarantee the presence of moral evil from ever obtaining.
(3)' If God could and would, then he must...
(4) Hence, he did prevent the initial conditions which guarantee the presence of moral evil conditions from ever obtaining.
If this argument is sound (as it should be according to Gangadean), then we have a serious problem for his worldview because it would entail that there is actually no moral evil in the world. The conclusion (4)' is in obvious tension with his views about human free will (compatibilism/soft-determinism) and the divine providence of God and so consistency demands that he deny this argument is sound. The rub is that in trying to deny any of the premises, it seems like he'll end up supplying us reasons to deny the analogue premises of the original Hume-inspired argument which he affirms. And that threatens his proof for why physical evil is not original in creation.
Not only that but we can run the very same kind of argument about natural evil. Not only did God, on Gangadean's view create the initial conditions which guaranteed that there would be moral evil, but given what he thinks about the relationship between moral evil and natural evil, he also created the initial conditions which guaranteed the presence of physical/natural evil. So we can create yet another equally problematic argument for Gangadean by replacing each appearance of 'moral evil' with 'natural evil' in argument II.
As I said most theists will deny premise (2) of the Humean argument and thus consistency would have them deny the analogues in the other versions. They have the resources to do so because they think that God might have morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil as well as the initial conditions which bring about evil. Of course, if you're a free will theodicist, then you are likely to assume a libertarian theory of free will, in which case you don't believe that God is ultimately the cause of evil because humans have a special kind of self-sufficiency. But none of these resources are available for Gangadean and so what I'm arguing is that there's a unique problem for his worldview. This is because he takes the Humean argument to be sound and is also committed to a form of determinism (soft) about events.
14. Gangadean then presents his theodicy. And I have a series of posts dedicated to raising problems for his theodicy (I charge that it's really bad and it's even question begging against the atheist).
Sometimes I'm tempted by the thought that there's a sense in which we must assume some propositions if we're going to do any amount of theorizing. That's because every argument needs premises or starting points. Some philosophers think something like this is right and speak of some claims as "axiomiatic" or i"ndispensible", but none of them are after certainty or clarity to begin with and Gangadean likes the eschew talk of axioms in this regard. The reason I mention the last bit is because there's something unsatisfying about counting a proposition as true simply because it serves our aims/purposes in theorizing or arguing. The natural question is why the fact that something must be assumed if we are to say present any arguments makes the former true. How would we go about proving a thing like this? And it feels an awful like a pragmatic reason to believe something is true (because it's suits our needs/goals/purposes) as opposed to a truth-relevant reason. Finally, I underlined 'assume' above because we can further fuss about what we mean by the word. Does assuming in the relevant sense amount to believing (and if so, to what degree)? Or does it mean simply holding fixed for the purposes of a particular line of inquiry?
When I've pressed Gangadeanian in the past about how they know when something is self-attesting or self-evident (and thus maximally clear to reason), they've responded that such propositions have a peculiar property--they make questioning possible. And that's similar to what I've just talked about (it's something like "transcendental reasoning"). I pointed out in my last post (point 6) that this seems to merely push the problem back a step because we now need for Gangadean to tell us how we know (with certainty) when a proposition makes questioning possible. After all, it seems logically possible that Gangadean and his clan are merely mistaken about their judgments in this respect so that what they believe makes questioning possible only appears to them to be that way. I think an appeal to intuition or common sense at this point is unavoidable and thus a problem for Gangadean's entire worldview. But there's more. As I hinted at above, we need an argument for why "a proposition makes questioning possible" entails that "it can't be questioned" and "it is true." Here again, I think Gangadean is banking on intuitions or common sense--but we shouldn't let him get away with that given his professed standards for clarity at the basic level.
Returning again to the point that Gangadean and I agree on say the law of identity, but disagree about the reasons for which we accept it and the certainty with which we do: I don't understand why I need to affirm these principles ("the laws of thought") with absolute certainty in the first place. I don't find myself questioning their veracity, but I also wouldn't take the following bet if an evil demon offered it to me: If i'm wrong about their truth, then everyone I know dies a grueling slow death and if I'm right, I get a quarter. So I can't say in sincerity that I'm absolutely certain (nor can I just make myself certain of them as if belief is within our voluntary control). Gangadean on the other hand, would be forced to take such a bet, since by his lights, it's literally impossible for him to be wrong about them (or for him to gain any more evidence of either their truth or falsity).
Do these differences between our positions matter upon final analysis? Depends who you ask. Gangadean and his followers certainly seem to think so although again, it's possible that they don't quite understand my position. Does it matter for whether we can have intelligible conversations? I don't see how---but again, Gangadean seems to think so (though he is without an argument for why that is). Does it matter for unity within the church? Once again, I don't see why or how--this is something in need of an argument and I'm skeptical that one will be forthcoming.
As to the last item on the list of "common ground principles" i.e., the principle of clarity, I wrote quite a bit about problems with the twin principles of clarity and inexcusability in part 1 of this series, so I won't rehearse those considerations here. Instead, we can again ask whether it matters for unity within the church or whether it can be grounds for exclusion either from the church or from intelligible conversation/engagement. Gangadean takes it for granted that the answer to both questions is, yes. But again, I simply don't see why. Notice that what he's resting his claim on is the following. That agreement on the most basic things will yield agreement on the less basic---and he's taking his doctrine of clarity as among the more basic. One thing to note is that even if it's true that by agreeing on the more basic, we will agree on the less basic (which I doubt), that doesn't rule out the possibility of coming to agreement on the less basic, another way. After all, Gangadean isn't claiming "if and only if we agree on the more basic, we will agree on the less basic."
Returning again to our disagreement about how certain we must be about say the laws of thought: I've also noted in the past that Gangadean thinks of this whole idea of clarity in a very special way. He thinks that for some proposition to be clear, is for it to be knowable with absolute certainty. It's a status reserved for those claims, which you couldn't possibly be wrong/mistaken about. But again, why must some things have this status in the first place? What if we can't have that kind of certainty about anything? What is supposed to follow from that? What's the downside? Gangadean usually argues that if we can't be absolutely certain about anything, then we can't know anything (skepticism). And that sounds really bad since knowledge is a desirable thing. Or else he tells you that there's no point in having discussions. But as I've noted before, what he doesn't tell you at this juncture is that he's assuming (without argument) that knowledge requires absolute certainty/clarity and that conversations are intelligible only if we have certainty. Neither of these very substantive claims is obvious. Nor can I see how he would argue that they are "self-attesting" or "self-evident." So it's yet another Gangadeanian article of faith. Once we are careful in drawing out some of Gangadean's presuppositions, we see that there is no necessary obstacle to disunity within the church, from those that fail to agree with the claim that we can be absolutely certain about some claims (principle of clarity).
10. At 53:00, Gangadean starts to talk about various passages in the bible like the first three chapters of Genesis. He'll also talk about the preface to the gospel of John (where the world/logos is said to be God and with God). I want to make a very general point that I've been hinting at throughout this series. Gangadean, like anyone approaching the text, is interpreting it. If you know about the many disputes that exist within the church you'll know that there are many ways to interpret a particular passage--though I'm not at all suggesting that "anything goes." I think there are better and worse interpretations and that we have to consider the reasons for and against interpreting a passage one way over another and make our best judgments. Strangely, Gangadean often presents his interpretations of scripture as ultimately authoritative and if you press him on it, he'll actually tell you that the "correct interpretations" are clear to reason (though I've also heard mixed reports from other Gangadeanians--one in particular, once told me that we can't expect to know what the bible says, with the same clarity as we can of basic things). That is to say, once the more basic stuff from reason alone is in place, you can via "good and necessary consequences" (deductive inference) figure out how to interpret special revelation (the bible). I recall once sitting in on a discussion session that Gangadean held (then called Logos Seminary) where he interpreted a particular passage one way and it wasn't obvious to many of us that that was the only way despite what he insisted--but he refused to move on until certain persons professed full agreement. I say all of this to provide one place to push back in your interactions with Gangadeanians when in the context of theological/hermeneutical discussions. Don't let them simply take liberties to interpret any given passage to fit their philosophical needs---instead ask them for decisive arguments for why the particular interpretation they provide is the only suitable one (also, can they rule out the possibility that there's an interpretation which none of us has yet to consider?). If they concede that we can't know with certainty what the text says, then that opens the door for questioning believers for instance, need certainty about other "more basic" matters.
11. At 54:00, Gangadean starts to talk about the "historic Christian faith" or sometimes what he speaks of as "historic Christianity." If you've encountered Gangadeanians, they are quick to bring up this notion and it does a great deal of work in their defense of their worldview. Gangadean sums up historic Christianity as reflected in the major creeds as many Christians, do. But he also importantly takes the Westminster Confession of faith as the "high water mark" of historic Christianity. Now reformed presbyterians tend to love the Westminster Confession of faith (because it has a strong Calvinist bent), but to say that it best reflects Christianity is a very substantive claim for which we need an argument. So we shouldn't let him or any Gangadeanian get away with merely asserting that this is so--again he needs to prove that this is so which is going to involve proving lots and lots of reformed interpretations of scripture. This last point made me think that during my many years under Gangadean's ministry, I never once learned how to prove these things--and I doubt any other Gangadeanians did, either. Instead, we were taught merely to agree with the claim that the WF confession of faith had got it all right. It would seem that fideism (as Gangadean defines it) is quite rampant in his church.
Q&A
12. At 1:09:00, a member of the audience asks Gangadean to explain "how the [human] soul is not eternal." Here's the basic argument Gangadean gives.
(1) I have one thought after another.
(2) If (1) and my soul were eternal, then I would be eternal in time.
(3) If I were eternal in time, then I would be all knowing.
(4) I am not all knowing.
(5) So, I am not eternal in time.
This is a bad argument. For one thing, Gangadean had better not help himself to the first premise on pain of violating his own principles. To reiterate, he's after clarity/certainty! In which case, he can't appeal to the common sense of the questioner (as he does in giving his answer). So what would a proof of premise (1) look like? I'm not sure it's possible to give a proof of the temporal ordering of thoughts. I know that Gangadeanians are with Kant in thinking that the reality of time is something of a transcendental (it's a precondition for the possibility of experience). But even granting this, it's of no help. Notice--I'm not asking how we know that there's such a thing as time. I'm asking how we can know (with absolute certainty) when particular phenomena (our thoughts) are ordered in time. Again, I think this is something that is ultimately going to have to resolve into an appeal to common sense or intuition which is no good for Gangadean's worldview.
More importantly, premise (3) is false. There's no contradiction in thinking of a being like me who exists eternally within time, but who fails to have all knowledge. As I've pointed out before, it's possible that I'm unmotivated to gain knowledge so that no matter how much time I have, I don't grow in knowledge (let alone the full extent of it)--this is because gaining knowledge takes work--it's a process and not something that merely happens to us! Another possibility is that I lose knowledge even as I gain it. For example, since knowledge entails belief, if I lose a belief that I once had, then I don't have it as a piece of knowledge. And there are lots of ways that a person might lose their beliefs in the pertinent sense. One might simply forget the proposition, for one thing. Or one might encounter misleading evidence which makes one doubt what one previously believed. In either case, one can lose knowledge by losing the relevant belief. As such, eternal existence within time doesn't entail omniscience by any stretch of the imagination.
Finally, if there are an infinite number of propositions, then it seems impossible to know them all regardless of how long you've been around--at least by successive addition. Regardless of how long you've been picking apples, if the set of apples in the universe were infinite, it's literally impossible for you to ever run out of apples to pick which means you won't ever have the set of all the apples. So the mere fact that you don't have all the apples, doesn't entail that you haven't been around eternally within time. It just means you can't get exhaust an infinite set in that way. The same with knowledge of an infinite number of propositions.
The upshot is that at least two of the five premises is questionable in which case the argument is unsound hence, it's not clear to reason that the (human) soul is not eternal.
13. At 1:10:00, an audience member asked Gangadean to clarify his claim that while spiritual death is inherent in sin (not seeking, not knowing what is clear), physical death was imposed later as a call back from sin. As Gangadean notes, the relevant issue here is the problem of natural evil. He first presents what he deems a "general revelation argument that physical death was not original in creation." Basically it's the Humean argument from evil which goes like this.
Humean Argument:
(1) If God is all powerful, then he could prevent natural evil.
(2) If God is all good, then he would prevent natural evil.
(3) If God could and would, then he must have prevented natural evil.
(4) Hence, he did prevent natural evil.
Most theists don't take this argument to be sound (I'll say more about that later). But, strangely, Gangadean, here takes it to be sound--i.e,. he takes it as proof that physical death/natural evil is not inherent in creation (though Hume intended it to be an argument against God's existence because he thought premise (4) to be false). But what he fails to appreciate is that taking that line is bad news for his view in that it proves too much. To see why note how the premises seem no less true if you replace each instance of 'natural evil' with 'moral evil.' This seems then to suggest that Gangadean would have to (on pain of inconsistency) deny that moral evil was inherent in creation. Maybe that's not so bad in itself because Gangadean might say that while natural evil isn't inherent in creation, the potential for it is inherent. But this won't quite work out because he's a soft-determinist meaning he thinks that every event is the necessary result of prior causes and that means the sin committed by Adam and Eve was determined by temporally prior facts about the creation event including how God created Adam and Eve. So, Gangadean cannot (on pain of inconsistency) hide behind the subterfuge of mere "potential to sin"--because it does violence to Gangadean's views about how every event is causally determined by prior causes which ultimately start with the creation event by God. That is, on Gangadean's view it can't be that God created Adam and Eve to have an equal probability of sinning and not sinning. If he did, according to Gangadean, this would undermine the very notion of God as creator and ruler as well as the notion of causality. So what really should stand in for 'natural evil' is not 'the potential for moral evil,' but rather something like 'the conditions sufficient for bringing about moral evil' or 'the conditions that guarantee the existence of moral evil.' Once we replace each occurrence of 'natural evil' with what I have suggested, we get a serious problem for Gangadean's position. This is because these new premises seem no less true than their counterparts in the original argument (so that if one accepts the Humean argument as sound as Gangadean does, then one ought to accept this new argument as sound). Consider:
Argument II:
(1)' If God is all powerful, then he could prevent the initial conditions which guarantee the presence of moral evil from ever obtaining.
(2)' If God is all good, then he would prevent the conditions which guarantee the presence of moral evil from ever obtaining.
(3)' If God could and would, then he must...
(4) Hence, he did prevent the initial conditions which guarantee the presence of moral evil conditions from ever obtaining.
If this argument is sound (as it should be according to Gangadean), then we have a serious problem for his worldview because it would entail that there is actually no moral evil in the world. The conclusion (4)' is in obvious tension with his views about human free will (compatibilism/soft-determinism) and the divine providence of God and so consistency demands that he deny this argument is sound. The rub is that in trying to deny any of the premises, it seems like he'll end up supplying us reasons to deny the analogue premises of the original Hume-inspired argument which he affirms. And that threatens his proof for why physical evil is not original in creation.
Not only that but we can run the very same kind of argument about natural evil. Not only did God, on Gangadean's view create the initial conditions which guaranteed that there would be moral evil, but given what he thinks about the relationship between moral evil and natural evil, he also created the initial conditions which guaranteed the presence of physical/natural evil. So we can create yet another equally problematic argument for Gangadean by replacing each appearance of 'moral evil' with 'natural evil' in argument II.
As I said most theists will deny premise (2) of the Humean argument and thus consistency would have them deny the analogues in the other versions. They have the resources to do so because they think that God might have morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil as well as the initial conditions which bring about evil. Of course, if you're a free will theodicist, then you are likely to assume a libertarian theory of free will, in which case you don't believe that God is ultimately the cause of evil because humans have a special kind of self-sufficiency. But none of these resources are available for Gangadean and so what I'm arguing is that there's a unique problem for his worldview. This is because he takes the Humean argument to be sound and is also committed to a form of determinism (soft) about events.
14. Gangadean then presents his theodicy. And I have a series of posts dedicated to raising problems for his theodicy (I charge that it's really bad and it's even question begging against the atheist).
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