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    Theistic intuitions support the claim that God's creative... — Carmelics
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    Theistic intuitions support the claim that God's creative volitions are necessarily a causally sufficient condition (in the weak sense) of the existence of every other concrete object.

    CausationDivine Attributes
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Theistic intuitions clearly support the necessity of God's creative volitions as a causal condition of every other concrete object's existence.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.The weak sense of causal sufficiency (where other necessary conditions may also be required) is compatible with theistic intuitions.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Occasionalism (Malebranche) and concurrentism (Aquinas, Suárez) both deny that divine volition alone is causally sufficient, requiring either creature cooperation or secondary causes.
      ?

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    • 2.The 'weak sense' of causal sufficiency is under-specified: if other necessary conditions are permitted, God's volition may be merely one among several jointly sufficient causes, not a privileged one.
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    • 3.Theistic intuitions across traditions are deeply divided on whether God creates ex nihilo through discrete acts of will or through emanation, making 'theistic intuitions' too heterogeneous to ground the claim.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Spinoza's substance monism entails that finite modes follow necessarily from God's nature without distinct creative volitions, undermining the volition-causation model.
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    • 2.If God's nature necessitates all existing things, then 'creative volitions' are either redundant or collapse into God's essence, not discrete causal events.
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    Topics

    Divine AttributesCausation

    Key Terms

    Creative volitions(as used in philosophy of religion)
    God's acts of will or intentional decisions to create things; the choices God makes to bring things into existence.
    Necessarily
    "Necessarily" means something must be true in all possible situations—it's not just true right now, but couldn't be false under any circumstances. For example, "2+2=4 necessarily" means there's no possible way 2+2 could equal anything other than 4. This contrasts with "contingently" true facts, like "it's raining today," which happen to be true but could have been false.
    Theistic intuitions(as used in philosophy of religion)
    Basic gut feelings or instinctive beliefs that people have about God and how God works, based on common religious understanding rather than formal proof.
    Weak sense (in philosophy)(as used in philosophical analysis)
    A looser or less strict interpretation of an idea, as opposed to a 'strong sense' which would be more rigid or demanding.
    causally sufficient condition(Gomes's account of causal conditionals)
    'A' is a causally sufficient condition for 'B' when 'A' specifies the occurrence of an event that would cause another event 'B', by stating a condition the truth of which is sufficient for inferring the truth of 'B'.
    concrete object(Foundational primitive in Zalta's system)
    An object that actually exists in the sense captured by the existence predicate E!x; taken as primitive.

    Related

    If God's nature necessitates all existing things, then 'creative volitions' are ...Occasionalism (Malebranche) and concurrentism (Aquinas, Suárez) both deny that d...Spinoza's substance monism entails that finite modes follow necessarily from God...The 'weak sense' of causal sufficiency is under-specified: if other necessary co...
    +3 moreShow less
    The weak sense of causal sufficiency (where other necessary conditions may also ...Theistic intuitions across traditions are deeply divided on whether God creates ...

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: monotheism
    View source passageHide passage
    The problem with Scotus’s argument, then, is this. The inferences from 4 to 5, and from 6 to 7, are valid only upon the assumption that if a cause is sufficient to produce an effect no other cause is a necessary condition of that effect. But this is true only if a causally sufficient condition is such that it alone suffices to produce its effect, that is, if it is causally sufficient in the strong sense. If “causally sufficient condition” is taken in the strong sense, however, there are reasons
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Theistic intuitions clearly support the necessity of God's creative volitions as...

    Similar

    Theistic intuitions do not clearly support the claim that God's creati...98%Theistic intuitions clearly support the necessity of God's creative vo...96%God's creating Adam and Eve is a causally sufficient condition of Abel...83%The weak sense of causal sufficiency (where other necessary conditions...80%
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit