Yes, it undermines moral responsibility, but again, only from a perspective which nobody, not even God occupies.

No, I am arguing that it undermines moral responsibility from my perspective (i.e. the one that I personally occupy). Whether or not someone genuinely has moral responsibility is not a function of whether or not their actions were foreknown. Why do you think responsibility is a matter of perspective in the first place? It is entirely a question of whether a person had, at the time of action, the ability to act in more than one way (responsibility) and a belief that they ought to act in some way rather than another (morality). Take either of those away and you have removed moral responsibility.

Still, it seems that Mark has hit the nail on the head. If the effects of causal determinants are logically and/or chronologically prior to what we are and/or what we choose (even if in accordance with desires over which we have no control), then it seems that who is saved and damned is a matter of sheer luck. Moreover, it seems that even in a secular model of determinism we are merely effects of causes over which we have no control. What we believe, what we do, the cards that are dealt us are a matter of sheer, dumb, random luck. How could there be any rational thought if my thoughts and conclusions are all the result of sheer, random, blind, dumb luck?

How else can an LDS determinist explain why some are righteous and some are not? Determinism requires the nature of each individual’s behavior to be logically prior to any decisions they actually make – dependent only on the limit of some sort of initial conditions.

So instead of God saving and condemning according to his own will and pleasure, as in Calvinism, or a person freely choosing to accept God’s grace, as in Arminianism, we have casino theology – the idea that the salvation and reprobation of all mankind is strictly a matter of random chance. What other alternative is there?

I repeat (yet again) I am describing a very specific form of Mormonism. If you have a different form in mind, then I have nothing to say to you.

(I probably need to start a new thread since things got very technical on the th philosophy of mind after about comment 180…)

Jeff, it is one thing to make such pontifications from a human perspective which denies that we have access to the kind of knowledge necessary to make such assertions; it is beyond the pale to speak about what is the case from God’s perspective (especially since from you perspective there is no such perspective).