When discussing God stuff, it's more important to focus (initially) on teleology, more specifically, on human teleology, that is, on whether we have have an natural inclination for one or more activities, and what that activity or set of activities might be. Only after talking about that and how it relates to God would it make sense to talk about immateriality and immortality. After all, only the desire a truly human kind of fulfillment could lead one to desire to be eternally so fulfilled.
Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...
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