Special Pleading and the PoE (Part 3)

Meow Mix said:

@Rise

Regarding humans' union with God.



This doesn't seem logically congruent with (per the Christian worldview) Adam and Eve choosing to disconnect from God. Specifically, I had said:



And you responded with "Those in union with God would by definition only act perfectly loving."

I asked:



And you responded with "They did. That’s the whole point of redemption. Jesus came to restore what we lost; which will culminate at the end of the age with a return to union with God and a restoration of eden-like conditions on earth. They made the choice to leave union with God."

This seems contradictory to me. If they were in a state of union where they would make perfect moral choices that could never lead to things like broken friendship, then how did they "break their friendship" (using this colloquially) with God?

Why would they be unable to disconnect from one another (broken friendship) but able to disconnect from God? Doesn't this fly in the face of saying that they were capable of infinitely making loving choices? Is it still loving of God to disconnect from God?

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Actually, I thought I had more to say here, but they're all variations of this confusion, so I shall leave this one here.

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In short if a person believes in Adam and Eve.... They made the choice for us all. When they chose to betrayal what god had set forth, they punished all humans.
No more living forever, no more life without suffering, no more life without evil, etc.

@Rise

Regarding special pleading and the PoE.

Now, part of me just wants to link the three posts about this topic that started all of this (titled "Special Pleading and the Problem of Evil, Special Pleading and the PoE (Part 2), and Special Pleading and the PoE (Part 3), and finally there's a corollary post with a Bayesian argument regarding one of the posts).

However I will save us both a lot of time and just state what I think is important because you will likely cut right to the heart of that matter, and the thing I want to talk about is the most difficult to elucidate (it is the subject of the first post in the series).

I submit that it's possible to fall into an epistemic trap whereby ignorance is used as an excuse to believe something we normally wouldn't believe in other contexts and such that no evidence is sufficient to get us out of the epistemic trap. I furthermore submit that this is a form of special pleading, because the only appeal that is made is an appeal to the very ignorance that gets us into the trap in the first place. I will try to explain more.

Have you ever seen Mars Attacks? There's a scene in particular where the Martians (who have constantly employed feigned friendship as a means to kill people when their guard is down) are running around with a translator that comically says, "Do not run. We are your friends" while they're blasting people with disintegrator rays.

Now, arguably the Martians are smarter than humans: surely at least humans are more ignorant than the Martians (who have better technology, visibly larger brains, etc).

Now we might have a Martian-sympathizer human who makes the following theodicy: "The Martians are our friends. They say so. Just because we perceive their actions as being malevolent doesn't mean that they are malevolent. In fact, we have good reason to think that they actually have a benevolent reason for doing what they're doing: we just can't understand it because they're smarter than us."

Day after day, more cities fall. More people are killed. The Martians move on to more and more cruel methods of murder, such as disgusting weapons that cause untold amounts of pain before finally killing the victim. Still, our Martian-theodicist insists, "They have a benevolent reason for this, they say so. We aren't smart enough to know what it is, who are we to question it? It's logically possible that they have good reasons, so your argument that their actions are malevolent isn't reasonable. First you'd have to show there's a logical impossibility that their reasons aren't benevolent."

Continents fall, so on and so forth, finally everybody is extinct, blah blah.

Now, can you see the problem? Once our theodicist fell into this epistemic trap, nothing could ever have convinced him within the confines of the trap that he was wrong. This is because he appealed to ignorance: "we don't know that they're malevolent because their reasons might be benevolent for reasons we don't understand."

Is the martian theodicist's position reasonable? Is the person saying the Martians appear to be malevolent reasonable?

This is why it's so sticky: technically the martian theodicist is right: it might be logically possible that the martians have unknowable reasons which make their actions benevolent, technically they're right that we can't know that's not the case!

But I wouldn't call their theodicy a reasonable one to uphold, and I submit that it's not reasonable to take precisely because of the inescapable nature of it: it's a trap. A reasonable person would not put themselves in an epistemic position that it's literally impossible to be evidenced out of.

At the same time, the person saying the Martians' actions is evidence of malevolence also seems prima facie reasonable.

So almost paradoxically, while the Martian-theodicist isn't technically wrong about their claim, they have fallen into an epistemic trap that they can't escape from: which seems like an unreasonable epistemic place to be. While the skeptic (of the Martians' claimed benevolence) seems prima facie to be the one with the reasonable position.

Now, I am not a professional philosopher. I'm self-taught. There may be better ways to describe this conundrum I'm trying to describe. But at the end of the day, I think I just have to ask my opponent if they think it's reasonable to fall into an epistemic trap they literally can't be convinced out of by evidence. If they agree that's not a great place to be, then they can't use the theodicy with any urgent insistence.

Does that make sense?

Furthermore, we can construct a parody of the same trap: for equally unknowable reasons, it's possible that all the perceived benevolence God does is actually malevolent for reasons we don't understand: who are we to say it isn't*? Once we fall into this trap, we can equally never be convinced otherwise: God could heal people and we might still be convinced it's actually malevolent for reasons beyond our understanding.

(* -- "But God doesn't/can't lie" doesn't work unless we somehow establish that independently of God simply saying so, because if God is malevolent for reasons we can't understand, obviously God could and would lie about that! In fact, per omnipotence, God could cause us to hold false beliefs that we believe to be true, and things like this! If we allow God to do unknowable things in unknowable ways in our argument, anything goes!)

Now obviously I'm not posing this parody seriously: I do not think either epistemic trap is one that we want to fall into because of their very nature of being inescapable. I don't know if there is a philosophical term for such traps, but there it is, I have tried to describe my argument about what I mean.

Meow Mix said:

@Rise

Regarding special pleading and the PoE.

Now, part of me just wants to link the three posts about this topic that started all of this (titled "Special Pleading and the Problem of Evil, Special Pleading and the PoE (Part 2), and Special Pleading and the PoE (Part 3), and finally there's a corollary post with a Bayesian argument regarding one of the posts).

However I will save us both a lot of time and just state what I think is important because you will likely cut right to the heart of that matter, and the thing I want to talk about is the most difficult to elucidate (it is the subject of the first post in the series).

I submit that it's possible to fall into an epistemic trap whereby ignorance is used as an excuse to believe something we normally wouldn't believe in other contexts and such that no evidence is sufficient to get us out of the epistemic trap. I furthermore submit that this is a form of special pleading, because the only appeal that is made is an appeal to the very ignorance that gets us into the trap in the first place. I will try to explain more.

Have you ever seen Mars Attacks? There's a scene in particular where the Martians (who have constantly employed feigned friendship as a means to kill people when their guard is down) are running around with a translator that comically says, "Do not run. We are your friends" while they're blasting people with disintegrator rays.

Now, arguably the Martians are smarter than humans: surely at least humans are more ignorant than the Martians (who have better technology, visibly larger brains, etc).

Now we might have a Martian-sympathizer human who makes the following theodicy: "The Martians are our friends. They say so. Just because we perceive their actions as being malevolent doesn't mean that they are malevolent. In fact, we have good reason to think that they actually have a benevolent reason for doing what they're doing: we just can't understand it because they're smarter than us."

Day after day, more cities fall. More people are killed. The Martians move on to more and more cruel methods of murder, such as disgusting weapons that cause untold amounts of pain before finally killing the victim. Still, our Martian-theodicist insists, "They have a benevolent reason for this, they say so. We aren't smart enough to know what it is, who are we to question it? It's logically possible that they have good reasons, so your argument that their actions are malevolent isn't reasonable. First you'd have to show there's a logical impossibility that their reasons aren't benevolent."

Continents fall, so on and so forth, finally everybody is extinct, blah blah.

Now, can you see the problem? Once our theodicist fell into this epistemic trap, nothing could ever have convinced him within the confines of the trap that he was wrong. This is because he appealed to ignorance: "we don't know that they're malevolent because their reasons might be benevolent for reasons we don't understand."

Is the martian theodicist's position reasonable? Is the person saying the Martians appear to be malevolent reasonable?

This is why it's so sticky: technically the martian theodicist is right: it might be logically possible that the martians have unknowable reasons which make their actions benevolent, technically they're right that we can't know that's not the case!

But I wouldn't call their theodicy a reasonable one to uphold, and I submit that it's not reasonable to take precisely because of the inescapable nature of it: it's a trap. A reasonable person would not put themselves in an epistemic position that it's literally impossible to be evidenced out of.

At the same time, the person saying the Martians' actions is evidence of malevolence also seems prima facie reasonable.

So almost paradoxically, while the Martian-theodicist isn't technically wrong about their claim, they have fallen into an epistemic trap that they can't escape from: which seems like an unreasonable epistemic place to be. While the skeptic (of the Martians' claimed benevolence) seems prima facie to be the one with the reasonable position.

Now, I am not a professional philosopher. I'm self-taught. There may be better ways to describe this conundrum I'm trying to describe. But at the end of the day, I think I just have to ask my opponent if they think it's reasonable to fall into an epistemic trap they literally can't be convinced out of by evidence. If they agree that's not a great place to be, then they can't use the theodicy with any urgent insistence.

Does that make sense?

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What is evil? Is evil to you and I evil to a lion?

I never use or take movies as a analogy. If i did then superman can fly and wonder woman can block multiple bullets with her wrist bands. Its true! I've seen it in movies.

This is the non-cognitivity thread.

Rise said:

There are three reasons why your argument is wrong:

1. You just refuted your own argument.

You said you couldn't explain why a nonsense statement made no sense - but then you go on to explain exactly and logically why your own example of nonsense doesn't make sense and what would need to be explained in order for it to make sense.

Proving what I said is true: That if a statement really is just nonsense then you should be able to logically identify why either:
a) You aren't given enough information for it to make sense.
b) Why it is logically incoherent.
c) What terms and concepts you need defined.

In the parts I quoted of yours you never gave any reasons why you thought my arguments lacked adequate information, or what terms needed to be defined, or what exactly you didn't understand. You didn't ask for clarification of any kind.

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OK, I see. Well, I did in the new thread for "God as the source of life/love." I don't have any problem with what you've said above.

Rise said:

2. You didn't state it was merely your opinion that it made no sense, or state that you personally couldn't understand it, but you stated as a claim to fact that you thought the fault rested with my statements not making sense.

Because you made a claim that my post was at fault, the onus is on you to provide proof for your claim by giving valid logical reasons why my post was at fault of not making sense as opposed to merely being your fault for not understanding it.

The burden of proof is on you as the one making the claim to support why your claim is true.
Otherwise you are just expressing your opinion, not a fact.

The fundamental error with your approach in this case is that you are assuming your ability to understand something is the determiner of whether or not it is intelligible or not. It might be the determiner of whether or not it's intelligible to you personally but it's not the determiner of whether or not their argument made sense from an objective standpoint.

The later can only be determined by giving valid logical reasons for why we should conclude that to be the case.

That is why it becomes a fallacy of appeal to personal incredulity or argument by assertion. Because it is a claim without support.
If you gave valid reasons for why my post didn't make objective sense then it wouldn't be a fallacy of appeal to personal incredulity.

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I get what you're saying, yet I don't get it at once. It feels like someone could be abusive with this by making dubious-sounding claims, giving partial definitions and explanations, declaring them good enough, and saying the listener's objections of not understanding are mere fallacies. I'm not saying that's what you're doing.

But for instance, recall what I said about how sometimes people can feel very much like they're saying something cognitive that isn't: they might feel like their explanation is sufficient, when to the listener, it still isn't. But now we're talking about when grains of sand become heaps and oh dear.

I just want us to be cognizant of these nuances. A person that says "nothing cognizes about what you just told me" can of course do it in bad faith, but they can do it in good faith as well (and it wouldn't be a fallacy). The clarification might not be enough or contain similar problems. As long as both people have good faith and assume the other person is in good faith as well I guess there won't be a problem and I'll shut up about it.

Rise said:

3. I believe you are applying a double standard that you would not accept for people to do to your posts.

Imagine if I responded to your thousands of words arguing against the cosmological argument, wherein you amply reference cosmological physics, by saying simply:
"That's just a bunch of nonsensical mumbo jumbo. It means nothing. You aren't saying anything. You probably don't even know what you're saying".

That would be a fallacy of appeal to personal incredulity and argument by assertion because my ability to understand what you are saying doesn't determine whether or not what you are saying makes objective sense.

The onus would be on me to give reasons why your post doesn't make sense so you can either explain why I am in error or you can correct the legitimate faults in your post.

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I understand what you're saying. Yet, the onus would be on me, too, to provide the clarification. It's a shared onus in some ways.

Rise said:

What you cannot do is just throw up your hands, say you don't understand, and start claiming my argument must be at fault because you don't understand it - without giving any reasons why we should think my post was at fault.

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You are right, and I think you will find I have tried to do this in the "source of life/love" post, which was entirely about its cognizability.

Meow Mix said:

I get what you're saying, yet I don't get it at once. It feels like someone could be abusive with this by making dubious-sounding claims, giving partial definitions and explanations, declaring them good enough, and saying the listener's objections of not understanding are mere fallacies. I'm not saying that's what you're doing.

But for instance, recall what I said about how sometimes people can feel very much like they're saying something cognitive that isn't: they might feel like their explanation is sufficient, when to the listener, it still isn't. But now we're talking about when grains of sand become heaps and oh dear.

I just want us to be cognizant of these nuances. A person that says "nothing cognizes about what you just told me" can of course do it in bad faith, but they can do it in good faith as well (and it wouldn't be a fallacy). The clarification might not be enough or contain similar problems. As long as both people have good faith and assume the other person is in good faith as well I guess there won't be a problem and I'll shut up about it.

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That is why I said we must go by objective standards of logic.
I can't insist my explanation makes perfect sense if you give specific reasons why it doesn't and I can't give a counter argument to that.
Likewise, you can't insist my explanation doesn't make sense without giving a logical reason why there's something wrong with it.

I never objected to you saying you don't understand or want clarification. I am happy to provide further elaboration and clarification.

I objected to you rejecting my argument as being nonsense without any attempt to seek clarification, as though you assumed there was nothing to understand, and without giving a single logical reason why you thought there was fault with what I said.

I understand what you're saying. Yet, the onus would be on me, too, to provide the clarification. It's a shared onus in some ways.

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The onus would only be on you to provide clarification for your argument if I can raise specific objections to your post that requires clarification or at the very least if I explain what I don't understand and ask for you to explain it differently or elaborate on it.

There is nothing for you to clarify if I can't identify what needs to be clarified first.

If all I did was respond to 3000 words of cosmological physics by saying "I don't get it." - well, that doesn't mean the onus is on you to retype everything a different way hoping I get it, and to keep doing it everytime I say I don't get it.

Me not getting it doesn't say there is any fault with your post that needs to be corrected. Sometimes people don't get things by reason of their own fault.
And such a short and vague statement by me would give you no indication about what you could do differently to help me get it.

Meow Mix said:

@Rise
Regarding omnipotence, logic, and the aseity-sovereignty paradox.

But this is precisely why omnipotence is defined by philosophers (including theologian philosophers) to include logical limits; that is what omnipotence means because saying there are no logical limits is a cognitively empty utterance (and for battling that part out, I refer to the cognitivity post).

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By saying that you haven't given an actual logical reason why God must be required to have such limits.
All you've done is appeal to the intellectual convenience of putting such limits on him (ie. It's something you can understand).

But who is to say that everything that is true is something you'll be capable of understanding?
That is fallacious thinking that puts one's own cognitive abilities on a pedestal and thinks one's abilities to understand something determines whether or not it's true.

Upon what logical basis can you claim that logic must transcend the universe other than an appeal to convenience?

Keep in mind, I am not advocating that logic doesn’t transcend universe – I am merely exposing that you have no basis for concluding that without a Biblical worldview that takes on the starting premise that the Bible is a true revelation that transcends the boundries of the universe from the being which transcends the universe.

Without that starting presumption, though, you cannot prove logic is not just an aspect of this universe that a transcendent being is not subject to.

You can’t prove it on a purely logical basis.

First (we'll get to omnipotence and cognitivity later), let me begin with a quote from Plantinga (paragraph format added for readability):

"Now suppose we return to the question whether our concepts apply to God. It is a piece of sheer confusion to say that there is such a person as God, but none of our concepts apply to him. If our concepts do not apply to God, then he does not have such properties as wisdom, being almighty and being the creator of the heavens and the earth.

Our concept of wisdom applies to a being if that being is wise; so a being to whom this concept did not apply would not be wise, whatever else it might be. If, therefore, our concepts do not apply to God, then our concepts of being loving, almighty, wise, creator and Redeemer do not apply to him, in which case he is not loving, almighty, wise, a creator or a Redeemer. He won't have any of the properties Christians ascribe to him.

In fact he won't have any of the properties of which we have concepts. He will not have such properties as self-identity, existence, and being either a material object or an immaterial object, these being properties of which we have concepts. Indeed, he won't have the property of being the referent of the term 'God,' or any other term; our concept being the referent of a term does not apply to him.

The fact is this being won't have any properties at all, since our concept of having at least one property does not apply to him. But how could there be such a thing? How could there be a being that didn't exist, wasn't self-identical, wasn't either a material object or an immaterial object, didn't have any properties? Does any of this even make marginal sense? It is clearly quite impossible that there be a thing to which none of our concepts apply."

We should be able to apply concepts to God in the first place, otherwise we can't say things at all like "God is omnipotent" or even "God is God," or "God is the referent of this sentence." God has properties that we refer to. But what is the significance of having properties? I will again let Plantinga explain:

"If God were distinct from such properties as wisdom, goodness and power but nonetheless had these properties, then he would be dependent on them. He would be dependent on them in a dual way. First, if, as Aquinas thinks, these properties are essential to him, then it is not possible that he should have existed and they not be 'in' him. But if they had not existed, they could not have been in him. Therefore he would not have existed if they had not. This connection between his existence and theirs, furthermore, is necessary; it is not due to his will and it is not within his power to abrogate it. That it holds is not up to him or within his control. He is obliged simply to put up with it. No doubt he wouldn't mind being thus constrained, but that is not the point. The point is that he would be dependent upon something else for his existence, and dependent in a way outside his control and beyond his power to alter; this runs counter to his aseity.

Secondly, under the envisaged conditions God would be dependent upon these properties for his character. He is, for example, wise. But then if there had been no such thing as wisdom, he would not have been wise. He is thus dependent upon these properties for his being the way he is, for being what he is like. And again he didn't bring it about that he is thus dependent; this dependence is not a result of his creative activity; and there is nothing he can do to change or overcome it. If he had properties and a nature distinct from him, then he would exist and display the character he does display because of a relation in which he stands to something other than himself. And this doesn't fit with his existence a se."

So, God not having properties is nonsense; while God having properties makes God dependent.

And so we come to the aseity-sovereignty paradox: could God have decided His own properties?

The answer can't be "yes" because that would be putting the cart before the horse. For God to have decided His own properties, He would have already had to have had properties: for instance, the power to perform property-forming, and the knowledge of how (and what possibilities there are). But if God already had to have properties in order to cause His own properties, it's clear that God would have at least had a set of primordial properties to even attempt to do so that were outside of God's control as described by Plantinga. That makes God dependent on these primordial properties, and being dependent on them means that something about them transcends God. (The alternative is to say that God is identical to his properties rather than possessing properties -- divine simplicity -- but this is just so much incoherent nonsense as seen from the first Plantinga quote).

What does it mean for "something about" God's properties to transcend God? Well, those properties have to be what they are (they are self-identical), and they aren't what they are not (corollaries of self-identity); and God Himself must be God (more self-identity): logic is transcendental to God, does not come forth from God's creative activity, God is subject to it beyond God's control, etc.

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I think you missed the point of what I was arguing because you appear to be talking about things that don't directly correlate with any of my main points. Which were:

1. You cannot claim to know that logic must transcend the universe.

2. You cannot therefore assume god must be bound by the laws of logic.

3. It is impossible for you to posit that abstract ideas like logic, which only come out of a mind and are only understood by minds, can exist prior to the mind of god and have casual power over the mind and actions of god. Abstract ideas don’t exist without a mind and therefore have no casual power. Unless you are positing some mind that existed prior to god and has subjugation over god.

4. By definition, god cannot be omnipotent if he is subject to laws that are over him, which would require a being with a mind over him, which god then has no power over and can’t change. If you insist on putting limits on god's omnipotence in such a way then you don't really believe omnipotence as an attribute can ever exist in anything, so your argument is self-refuting on the basis that you believe one of your premises is impossible.

5. The being that is subjecting god to itself to make god obey the law of logic has more claim of being omnipotent than god, but then you run into an infinite regress of always requiring some being above it to impose the law of logic on it.

The only way you get out of that infinite regress if you can say logic comes out of what the being’s nature is and the imposition of logic on our universe is a reflection of what that being is.


If what you posted is able to deal directly with any of those points then I welcome you explaining more specifically why you think it does. Because I don't see what the logical connection is you are trying to make between what you posted vs what I argued.

I will explain why further down.

Meow Mix said:

@Rise

Regarding omnipotence, logic, and the aseity-sovereignty paradox.

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By "logic" I do not mean the practice of thinking about logic (the reference), I mean the essence of limitation itself, which is the referent of logic. Logic does not require minds thinking about it to exist (and I will come back to this in the minor topics when you mention things about math requiring minds to exist, that makes the same equivocation between math the thinking process and math the referent (which is really just extended logic, which is really just consequences of limitation).

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You are asserting things without providing a basis for why they are true.
Why do you think you can claim it’s true that logic essentially transcends the universe?

Your claim that logic doesn’t need a mind outside of the limits of the universe can be shown to be false.
You are drawing a false equivalence between two different concepts here.
You are pointing to the fact that we can say logic is an objective aspect of the universe without mankind being here but then trying to illogically and falsely extrapolate that out to claim logic can exist as an abstract entity independent of either the universe or a mind.


If you look more closely at the issue you’ll realize you are failing to make a key distinction between the two concepts:

Why do we say math exists without man? Because math continues to be a true description of how the universe operates even if no man is there to observe it.
So in this sense you are only saying that math as an abstract idea exists in relation to what which it describes – the physics of the universe. Math is therefore dependent on the universe to exist or in the absence of the universe dependent on some other concrete thing that operates according to the same mathematical principles.

If you remove the universe and have nothing else then math ceases to exist because there is now nothing that objectively operates according to those principles. Math cannot exist as a disembodied abstract idea if you think math is only objectively independent of man because it comes to us as a description of how the universe works.
Math can only exist as a disembodied abstract idea from the universe if there is a mind to retain the idea in the absence of something for math to describe.

Likewise; why do you say logic exists without man? Because you observe the universe operates according to those laws and the universe would keep operating according to them if man were gone.

What happens if you remove the universe and have nothing? Same problem with math. You have nothing to observe to say logic exists. Logic cannot exist as a disembodied abstract idea if logic is nothing more than merely a description of how something concrete works. It can only continue existing as an abstract concept if a mind is there to retain the idea in the absence of a concrete object to apply the principle to.

There are only one of two ways you can say logic transcends the concrete universe.

The first is if you want to claim it comes out of a mind.
But if it comes out of a mind then it can be changed by that mind to be something different, so therefore the mind is not subject to it.

You can’t say that mind is subject to another mind, because you run into the same issue and haven’t changed anything – all you’ve done is pushed the issue back one identical step.

The second way you can claim logic transcends the concrete universe is by saying it is an essential attribute of the mind that created the universe, therefore the universe is merely a reflection of the creator. By doing that you also avoid the illogical infinite regress that doesn’t really answer the origin question.

But you cannot rationally invoke an abstract idea as existing independent of a mind to explain why this mind’s essential attribute is truth/logic. Abstract ideas don’t exist independent of anything else and have no casual power to create things from nothing.

If you want to claim this mind is a created being, and something else has created it to imbue it with the attribute of logic, then all you have done is pushed the question back one identical step without answering anything. Because now you still have to explain where the mind above this being is getting it’s logic from.


The second option is basically what you are advocating for: The problem is you’re doing it in a way that is impossible. You’re trying to say that there is transcendent logic that comes out of the essence of whatever makes up reality prior to the creation of the universe. Ok great, so far you’re in line with Biblical theism. But then you remove the mind that would be necessary to impart logic to the universe, or whatever logical construct you think preceded the universe. And then you try to deify the abstract concept of logic, imbuing it with casual powers. Misconstruing the nature of abstract ideas as that which cannot exist either without a mind or in the absence of something concrete to describe.

So in summation, God has properties, God is dependent on those properties, and so God is dependent on logic, and so logic is transcendental and distinct from God. This is not a problem for theism: theists are free to accept that God has a nature (as Plantinga does) quite happily.

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I think what I just posted above about our only two options for how we account for logic in the universe shows why I don’t think what you are talking about with regards to God’s properties deals with the issue I raised.

Because what you said doesn’t appear to me to change the fact that we are still left with only two choices with regards to how logic has come to define our universe (if we are starting from the premise that a being with a mind created our universe).

To re-iterate what those only two choices are:
1. A mind created the laws of logic, without being bound by them, and made our universe to operate according to them.
2. A mind created the universe in accordance with it’s own nature, out of it’s own nature, which is truth and logic, without having that nature imposed upon it by anything else.

We actually end up, logically, without even an appeal to the Bible for premising, being forced to conclude that #2 is the only option possible (as long as your two premises involve the idea that a creator god exists and that logic must transcend creation).

Because the first option results in the conclusion that the laws of logic don't have to transcend our universe.

There is no third option that doesn't end up being logically absurd and impossible. Because they all involve either infinite regression or deifying an abstract idea that doesn't even have the ability to exist or act casually on it’s own.

Whether or not option #2 is something you think you can mentally understand, it ends up being logically necessary by virtue of being the only possible option.

It is similar to how we are logically forced to conclude that if God created our universe which is bound by the laws of causality and time, that God Himself must necessarily be causeless and timeless in order to avoid what would be impossible in our universe - an infinite regression into the eternal past.

We might not understand how or why God could be causeless and timeless, considering that our only frame of reference for reality is this universe is causality and time – but we have no choice but conclude he must be that way because logic demands that must be God’s nature.


You can’t make a similar appeal to energy/matter operating according to fixed laws being uncaused in it’s creation.

You can’t make an appeal to math existing as an abstract idea floating in nothingness, then acting to bring energy/matter into existence.

Why?

Because only minds are known to be detached from being governed by casual laws. If they weren’t then we wouldn’t be conscious and have free will.

And only minds are known to be able to give existence to abstract ideas independent of them being encoded into governing the behavior of concrete things.

That is why, currently, we have no other logical termination point for the origination of everything from nothing without turning to an uncaused being with a mind as the ultimate source (This is at risk of drifting into cosmology again - But I feel it is too pertinent not to bring up in order to help illustrate and support my larger point about why an uncaused mind is the only logical termination point available to us in order to explain many things - including the idea that logic transcends the universe it describes).

Meow Mix said:

@Rise

Regarding omnipotence, logic, and the aseity-sovereignty paradox.

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FOOTNOTE ABOUT OMNIPOTENCE AND LOGICAL LIMITATION:

I'll close out with Harry Frankfurt on why proposing omnipotence without logical limits is non-cognitive. He is referencing Descartes for context:

Now, Frankfurt wrote this a long time ago and didn't use modern nomenclature. What he's saying is that a speaker can't even claim that omnipotence doesn't have logical limits without just uttering so much noncognitive nonsense: they're not forming a picture of something in their mind, they aren't communicating anything, they might as well be talking about slithey toves gimbling in wabes: not only does their listener have no meaning imparted to them, the speaker themselves never had any meaning to impart: they just made some empty utterances.

Having no logical limitations on omnipotence is the same as, for instance, saying God can create a rock so heavy He can't lift it (which is really saying "there is an irresistible force and an immovable object at the same time and in the same respect"), but no speaker actually cognizes what this utterance is even saying in aggregated (they can only cognize pieces of it; and that understanding vanishes when completed).

You might think, "well, just because we can't understand it doesn't mean it can't be the case," but the response to that is there's no "it" to understand, and no meaning to "it" when you utter it.

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You’re confusing two different concepts it seems.

Saying “omnipotence without limits is not logically possible” is not the same as saying “nothing is being communicated by your statement”.

The only reason you say it’s nonsense is because you don’t believe it’s logically possible.

But that doesn’t mean nothing is being communicated by the argument. Illogical ideas still communicate ideas.

You prove this by trying to use logic to disprove the validity of the idea being communicated.

So the question is not whether an idea is being communicated but whether or not that idea is logically valid.

But if you can’t explain why it is logically impossible then you can’t call it impossible. Therefore, you would have no basis for just calling it nonsense without a reason for why it should be regarded as nonsense.


You have given arguments for why you think omnipotence without limits is impossible, but there are several problems with your viewpoint:

1. If you are correct, then all you’re concluding is that omnipotence isn’t possible, period. Then you invalidate your own PoE question from the start because you believe one of it’s premises is false. Your definition of omnipotence isn’t actually true omnipotence.

All you’ve done is proved you don’t believe in omnipotence as a logical possibility. Which doesn’t necessarily invalidate anything Christians believe according to the Bible because the Biblical view of God doesn’t depend on the belief that God can violate His own nature. If you want to call that not being omnipotent in the absolute sense I suppose you’re welcome to; but it doesn’t change the Biblical fact that God created the universe and holds all power over it, and there is no equal to him, and there is no thing above him that He is subject to.


2. Your conclusion depends on premises you can’t claim are true.
You are depending on the premise that logic transcends not just the universe but also god himself.
But if you can't prove that premise is true then you can't claim god isn't free to do something that would be illogical according to the rules of our universe as we understand them.

Nontheists are perfectly fine with assuming logic is transcendentally true for two reasons:
One, it is self-evident and incorrigible. Attempting to surmise its absence only entails its presence. (The absence of logic = the absence of logic, and so by reductio ad absurdum, there must still be logic!)

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We aren’t talking about whether or not logic exists in our universe as something that is a self- evident fact of our own experience or as an observed fact about the universe itself. That much is not in dispute.

What we are talking about is two things:

1. Whether or not we have reason to believe logic transcends the bounds of this universe. And how we could prove it does.

You have no purely logical basis for assuming it must be true.

You can only assume it must be true if you are operating from a premise such as the Bible is true, wherein it tells us that is what we would expect to find beyond the bounds of universe and existing before our universe.


2. Even if we assume it does transcend the bounds of this universe; how does logic exist transcendently in a way that is not logically impossible?
A disembodied abstract concept of logic pre-existing god and subjugating god to itself doesn’t logically work for the reasons I outlined.
Any mind that would subject god to logic just creates an infinite regress.
And a pre-existing creation with laws god is subject to requires another mind to create it so it’s still an infinite regress situation.

The only logical solution is an eternal uncreated uncaused being with a mind whose nature is the embodiment of truth/logic unchanging in nature and unable to violate his own nature.

Isn’t it Interesting how that lines up exactly with what the Bible says about God?

Two, all of our worldviews entail brute assumptions: for instance we each brutely assume that our cognitive faculties are geared towards the truth (that they are capable of parsing truth from falsity), because we can't justify this assumption under any worldview without already holding the assumption.

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That is not relevant to the issue here.
The issue being debated is not whether we can assume our mind is geared towards understanding that objective truth and logic are real.

The issue here is: Where does this understanding originate from?

For the reasons I outlined above, it cannot transcend the universe unless it came originally from a mind. And more specifically a mind which embodied the attribute of Truth/logic and did not have that imposed upon it.

And if it does not transcend the universe then you can’t claim the creator of the universe is required to abide by it.

Yes, even theists: if the theist tries to say God gives them this justification, they first had to have examined that claim and decided it was true, etc. Both theists and nontheists are in the same exact boat when it comes to some axioms like this (that our cognitive faculties work, that logic is incorrigible and transcendental, etc.)

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The issue here is not what premises you have but whether or not you have a logical basis for your premises.

You don’t currently have any logical basis for your assumption that logic is transcendental above the universe.

You have no way of knowing by observation that logic transcends the universe. And you have no way of establishing it logically must do so.

But I have a basis for believing it does. Because I start from the premise that the Bible contains transcendental revelation about the nature of reality before and outside of our universe. Which tells us logic did exist as part of the essential nature of God Himself.

But I don’t even need to use the Bible’s premise to conclude logic can only be an aspect of God’s nature rather than a law he is subject to. We are logically forced to conclude that by pure logic as long as our starting premises are that God created the universe and that logic transcends creation in some way.

You intuitively know logic must transcend the universe. I believe you know that because God put that truth in you as part of other self evident knowings he built into you.

But you can’t logically prove your intuition is true without first accepting the premise of divine revelation that says logic transcends creation

So we both operate out of the same premise - but only one of us has a reason to believe that premise is true. Which was the point I was making.

Rise said:

You are asserting things without providing a basis for why they are true.
Why do you think you can claim it’s true that logic essentially transcends the universe?

Your claim that logic doesn’t need a mind outside of the limits of the universe can be shown to be false.
You are drawing a false equivalence between two different concepts here.
You are pointing to the fact that we can say logic is an objective aspect of the universe without mankind being here but then trying to illogically and falsely extrapolate that out to claim logic can exist as an abstract entity independent of either the universe or a mind.


If you look more closely at the issue you’ll realize you are failing to make a key distinction between the two concepts:

Why do we say math exists without man? Because math continues to be a true description of how the universe operates even if no man is there to observe it.
So in this sense you are only saying that math as an abstract idea exists in relation to what which it describes – the physics of the universe. Math is therefore dependent on the universe to exist or in the absence of the universe dependent on some other concrete thing that operates according to the same mathematical principles.

If you remove the universe and have nothing else then math ceases to exist because there is now nothing that objectively operates according to those principles. Math cannot exist as a disembodied abstract idea if you think math is objective independent of a mind only because it comes to us as a description of how the universe works.
Math can only exist as a disembodied abstract idea from the universe if there is a mind to retain the idea in the absence of something for math to describe.

Likewise; why do you say logic exists without man? Because you observe the universe operates according to those laws and the universe would keep operating according to them if man were gone.

What happens if you remove the universe and have nothing? Same problem with math. You have nothing to observe to say logic exists. Logic cannot exist as a disembodied abstract idea if logic is nothing more than merely a description of how something concrete works. It can only continue existing as an abstract concept if a mind is there to retain the idea in the absence of a concrete object to apply the principle to.

There are only one of two ways you can say logic transcends the concrete universe. The first is if you want to claim it comes out of a mind.
But if it comes out of a mind then it can be changed by that mind to be something different, so therefore the mind is not subject to it.

You can’t say that mind is subject to another mind, because you run into the same issue and haven’t changed anything – all you’ve done is pushed the issue back one identical step.

The second way you can claim logic transcends the concrete universe is by saying it is an essential attribute of the mind that created the universe, therefore the universe is merely a reflection of the creator. By doing that you also avoid the illogical infinite regress that doesn’t really answer the origin question.

But you cannot rationally invoke an abstract idea as existing independent of a mind to explain why this mind’s essential attribute is truth/logic. Abstract ideas don’t exist independent of anything else and have no casual power to create things from nothing.

If you want to claim this mind is a created being, and something else has created it to imbue it with the attribute of logic, then all you have done is pushed the question back one identical step without answering anything. Because now you still have to explain where the mind above this being is getting it’s logic from.


The second option is basically what you are advocating for: The problem is you’re doing it in a way that is impossible. You’re trying to say that there is transcendent logic that comes out of the essence of whatever makes up reality prior to the creation of the universe. Ok great, so far you’re in line with Biblical theism. But then you remove the mind that would be necessary to impart logic to the universe, or whatever logical construct you think preceded the universe. And then you try to deify the abstract concept of logic, imbuing it with casual powers. Misconstruing the nature of abstract ideas as that which cannot exist either without a mind or in the absence of something concrete to describe.



I think what I just posted above about our only two options for how we account for logic in the universe shows why I don’t think what you are talking about with regards to God’s properties deals with the issue I raised.

Because what you said doesn’t appear to me to change the fact that we are still left with only two choices with regards to how logic has come to define our universe (if we are starting from the premise that a being with a mind created our universe).

To re-iterate what those only two choices are:
1. A mind created the laws of logic, without being bound by them, and made our universe to operate according to them.
2. A mind created the universe in accordance with it’s own nature, out of it’s own nature, which is truth and logic, without having that nature imposed upon it by anything else.

We actually end up, logically, without even an appeal to the Bible for premising, being forced to conclude that #2 is the only option possible (as long as your two premises involve the idea that a creator god exists and that logic must transcend creation).

We might not understand how or why that could be, but it must be accepted as true out of the logical necessity of the fact that there is no other way things could be.

It is similar to how we are logically forced to conclude that if God created our universe which is bound by the laws of causality and time, that God Himself must necessarily be causeless and timeless in order to avoid what would be impossible in our universe - an infinite regression into the eternal past.

We might not understand how or why God could be causeless and timeless, considering that our only frame of reference for reality is this universe – but we have no choice but conclude he must be because logic demands that must be God’s nature.


You can’t make a similar appeal to energy/matter operating according to fixed laws being uncaused in it’s creation.
You can’t make an appeal to math existing as an abstract idea floating in nothingness, then acting to bring energy/matter into existence.

Only minds are known to be detached from being governed by casual laws. Because if they weren’t we weren’t be conscious and have free will.
And only minds are known to be able to hold abstract ideas independent of them being encoded into concrete things.

That is why, currently, we have no other logical termination point for the origination of everything from nothing without turning to an uncaused being with a mind (This is at risk of drifting into cosmology again - But I feel it is too pertinent not to bring up in order to help illustrate and support my larger point about why an uncaused mind is the only logical termination point available to us in order to explain many things - including the idea that logic transcends the universe it describes).

Click to expand...

I’m about to be on a camping trip but I can see we’ll have to talk about logic and math before getting into the rest. I will demonstrate that these exist independently of any mind; and that your view on this may possibly be equivocating between the reference of logic (i.e. the process we do when we “do logic”) and the referent of logic (which is limitation itself). You mistakenly treat the referent of logic (and math) as a concept, but it is not a concept (the conception is the reference, there is a thing to logic that is the referent).

I will respond fully to what you’ve typed when I’m back, just giving quick food for thought.

Meow Mix said:

I’m about to be on a camping trip but I can see we’ll have to talk about logic and math before getting into the rest. I will demonstrate that these exist independently of any mind; and that your view on this may possibly be equivocating between the reference of logic (i.e. the process we do when we “do logic”) and the referent of logic (which is limitation itself). You mistakenly treat the referent of logic (and math) as a concept, but it is not a concept (the conception is the reference, there is a thing to logic that is the referent).

I will respond fully to what you’ve typed when I’m back, just giving quick food for thought.

Click to expand...

You misunderstand then. I am not referring to the human process of logic but the reality of logic as an existing thing we know exists.
Just as I am not referring to the human process of calculating math but am referring to the reality of math as something we know exists.

I can leave you with further food for thought to chew on until you come back:
If you can prove math/logic is transcendent above everything that exists, and existing prior to it, then you will necessarily prove God exists.

You might be able to prove math/logic exists independent of any mind within the universe (and I agree with that), but it will be logically impossible for you to prove they can exist without a mind in a way that transcends the universe. That's why you are making a logical error by taking the fact that you can prove logic/math exists independent of human minds as proof that you could assume math/logic could transcend the universe without the requirement of a transcendent mind.

The reason transcendent math/logic would necessarily prove God's existence is because of the illogical absurdity/impossibility of an abstract concept existing by itself, without existing in a mind and without being embedded in a concrete thing as a description of how it is governed.

If math/logic transcends and/or precedes everything that they govern (energy/matter) then it would necessarily require that a mind precede everything as well and that mind be the source from which that comes. Which then necessarily requires us to conclude that mind is the creator of everything and thus imbued it with a reflection of it's own logical nature and gave it a coding machine language to govern it's form and behavior (ie math).

The only reason you can prove math/logic would exist independent of a human mind is precisely because it doesn't depend on human minds to exist (as evidenced by the fact that it is the machine code that the universe is governed by. Notice I said code, and not power. Code doesn't power your computer, it just tells it what to do. That's another reason why it's logically absurd to claim an abstract idea like math/logic has any power to cause or create anything. God still has to supply the action/casual power to create and move the universe. But He does it according to His math, which we see embedded in that action/creation)

But that cannot be logically extrapolated out to conclude that math/logic doesn't require a mind as it's source. The fact that such a source would transcend our universe and mankind is precisely why mankind is not necessary for logic/math to exist. But a mind is still necessary at some point that transcends mankind and our universe.

Therefore, proving that math and logic transcend the creation of everything would logically necessarily prove a theistic transcendent creator with a mind exists. For there is no other logical way we could have a universe governed by math and logic. No matter what you logically try to deduce it will always ultimately logically come back to requiring a mind somewhere at some point.

The Bible tells us this is what we'd expect to see as well.
Which is that God intended something in his mind and then spoke out his intention (ie. Language. And math is a type of language) to create our universe (Ie. power and action followed his intention as defined by language).
It also says by God's power of action and this same spoken word (which comes out of the intention of Gods mind) that God continues to, on an ongoing basis, uphold the operation of the mathematical laws that govern our universe and the powers that manifest those laws as our physics based reality.

Evidence that math is the product of an unfathomable super-intellect mind is it's unfathomable order and beauty, as reflected in fractals such as the mandelbrot set (just one of many examples one could point to of the uncanny order and beauty that is embedded in math).
As well as it's infinite nature - a nature which the Bible says we would expect of God and His mind. It is something beyond our ability to fully comprehend.

It is not reasonable that we would expect such order to arise by chance. Everything we know about informational language tells us that such language only is the product of a mind.

The ultimate problem with even string theories is that they all presuppose the existence of the same constant and universal language of math.
Who created the language and powered the superstrings to operate the way they do?

You're trying to explain why the universe is governed according to certain fine tuned mathematical arrangements without ever asking where the math language came from in the first place.

Meow Mix said:

@Rise

Regarding humans' union with God.



This doesn't seem logically congruent with (per the Christian worldview) Adam and Eve choosing to disconnect from God. Specifically, I had said:



And you responded with "Those in union with God would by definition only act perfectly loving."

I asked:



And you responded with "They did. That’s the whole point of redemption. Jesus came to restore what we lost; which will culminate at the end of the age with a return to union with God and a restoration of eden-like conditions on earth. They made the choice to leave union with God."

This seems contradictory to me. If they were in a state of union where they would make perfect moral choices that could never lead to things like broken friendship, then how did they "break their friendship" (using this colloquially) with God?

Why would they be unable to disconnect from one another (broken friendship) but able to disconnect from God? Doesn't this fly in the face of saying that they were capable of infinitely making loving choices? Is it still loving of God to disconnect from God?

-------------

Actually, I thought I had more to say here, but they're all variations of this confusion, so I shall leave this one here.

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God giving us the ability to choose that is the only way in which we could be said to have a free will choice to choose relationship with God.

It would be a logical necessity.

It would therefore seem to be most accurate to say that Adam and Eve, while in active union with God, was not capable of any sin but was left with the choice to leave that state - but if they make the choice to break union with God then all other sin becomes possible afterwards.

Why should we assume God is not capable of setting up such a scenario? Why should we think it is impossible for God to do such a thing?

That is why Adam and Eve could lead a sinless life in the Garden of Eden but still have the ability to choose to leave that state - and choosing that resulted in every other possible form of evil coming into the world.

That would be what the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was in the garden of Eden.
As long as they were in union with God, this tree represents the only possible option they had to do something against God’s will - but once they chose to partake of the fruit of that tree then that one sin of rebellion opened the door to every other possible sin becoming possible by disrupting unity with God's character and nature.

One of the most common objections is "why did God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden in the first place?"
Why not just never give them that option?

I suppose we can set side the question or whether or not God created the tree, as opposed to merely letting them have access to it, because either way it seems we still end up with the same answer:

The fact is that without that tree man would never have had the choice of whether or not they wanted relationship with God of their own free will.


That does raise the interesting question of whether or not the equivalent of that tree will always be there or if God would one day remove it after it has served it's purpose.

But that is not a question that is necessary to answer for the original issue of how evil can exist if God is benevolent. It is enough for that purpose to simply establish that God did not create evil and that it is a choice Adam made.


But, for the sake of edification, I can propose some things to consider:

We see in the Bible that angels were capable of rebelling against God as well - so it was not something that was an option only confined just to man on earth.

Will the option always remain but mankind will simply choose never to make that choice again because of what happened as a result of this?

Will God remove the option of disuniting from Him once people have made their free will choice to return back to God? So in that sense God is honoring their choice and solidifying it?

We do see in the Bible the concept that God "hardens the heart" of people to be firmly committed to the evil choice they have already decided to make so they will not deviate from what they really want. At the point He is done tying to strive with them to draw them to choose to do what is right.
Romans 1:18-32, 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12, , Exodus 8:15, Exodus 4:21, Deuteronomy 2:30.
This could be linked with 1 John 5:16-18 as the "sin that leads to death" that should not be prayed about on behalf of someone else.
Or the "unforgiveable sin" in Matthew 12:31-32. Similar to Hebrews 10:26-27.

By God choosing to not continue to put His Spirit upon man to try to get them to come into agreement with Him, He could effectively be solidifying their choice for evil by leaving them. Rather than it necessarily being something He puts upon them against their will. It could be more like simply leaving them to their will and no longer trying to get them to come around.

Could the reverse also be true? If someone chooses to love Truth, could God honor that choice for eternity by putting His Spirit upon them to such a degree, or in such a way, without any limits or caveats, so that it becomes impossible for someone to ever exercise a will contrary to God's?

You could also say that if God's Spirit were upon someone in such a way, and they were people who were already lovers of Truth, then they would never have motivation to want to leave it because they were simply getting more of what they always wanted.

Could it be as simple as saying that after seeing what happened to Adam that the option would always be there but no one would ever want to take it
?

I believe either option is a viable possibility at this point that could be consistent with what the Bible says. But I don't know yet if there is enough information in the Bible for us to say it must be a certain way. Nor do I see a logical necessity at this point to say one must be true over the other.


Ultimately that answer doesn't appear to matter with regards to determining what is true about the nature of God's benevolence in regards to the existence of evil. At this point it would seem to just be academic and curiosity about theology, as opposed to being something which any argument about the PoE rests on.

Meow Mix said:

@Rise

Regarding God as being the source of life and love. This isn't cognitive to me, and so I put the post on cognitivity first in this series. Allow me to help explain why it isn't cognitive to me, however.



God is often ascribed properties that sound similar to properties that we humans experience, but it often soon becomes clear that the theist means something completely different. For instance, I know what "love" is. I love my dad, I love my friends, I have felt romantic love, I love you as a fellow human being (indeed, even just as a fellow sentient and sapient being, I'm not human-centric), and so on.

But what does it mean to be a "source of love?" Clearly this is supposed to mean something other than what humans do when they impart love to one another by way of showing affection, or thinking about someone with a smile, or anything like this. But it isn't really clear to me exactly what.

Sometimes, theists try to make an argument by way of analogy. We might say that just as a dog is good in proportion to their nature as a dog, and a human is good in proportion to their nature as a human, that God is perfectly and infinitely good. But this analogical approach is doomed to failure, and this is why:

We have non-analogical knowledge of the nature of dogs to impart some meaning to what we're saying if we say dogs can be good in proportion to being dogs. We have no such knowledge of the nature of God to impart some meaning to what we're saying when we say "God has goodness in proportion to His nature as God." We might as well not be using the term "goodness" at all since we're uttering about something that isn't at all like a dog's goodness or a human's goodness.

To quote George H. Smith,



Now, I think Mr. Smith goes too far: we can ascribe properties if they're in cognizable contexts. If God is wise, then God is wise. That's not a problem. The problem arises when we use these terms but mean something different than we normally mean when we say them, and do so in proportion to an unfathomable nature. "God is wise" is okay, but "God is wise, but not like humans are wise; He is wise in proportion to His nature as God" is not okay: it's a pile of noncognitive nonsense.

"God knows more than humans do" is okay, and "God doesn't believe any false propositions, and only believes true propositions" is also okay: these are all things that we can understand and impart meaning. We can even conceive of what omniscience is if we say it is something like "God knows all things that are possible to know, and unfailingly believes only true propositions while believing no false propositions." That's all well and good because it's all in cognizable terms: we know what it means not to believe a false proposition, or to believe a true one; and we can abstract what it means to know all of them. So we're not saying here that we can't ascribe any properties to God, or that we can only ascribe properties that are in the same scope as humans' properties. What is being said is that some properties people try to ascribe to God are not so cognitive.

So what does it mean for God to be "the source of life?" What does "life" mean here? If it means anything other than what we usually mean (things are alive if they seek homeostasis, if they respond to stimuli, some list of properties like this that we vaguely understand with a few hiccups [such as, "are viruses alive?"]), then there is a problem: nothing is being communicated by the statement.

We could try to say something like "life is that property without which there is death," but we're just painting ourselves into a circular corner at that point (what is death? "that quality which exists in the absence of life," this gets us nowhere).

Same thing with "love," clearly you're not saying God is the source of "love" in the same context that we normally speak about when we talk about love, so what is it? What's being said?

Not only do I have to know what you mean by "life" and "love" for this to approach cognizability, I have to know what it means to "be the source of" these things. You tried to use an analogy like electricity, but again, analogy is doomed to failure without understanding the nature of the analogue. Are "life" and "love" some kind of property like energy that literally funnel into things? For instance, imagine that a Platonist says that the Platonic triangle is the source of triangularity: does that make any cognitive sense to you at all? Wouldn't you need to know what they even mean by that? (Because I don't know what they mean by that, either).

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I am all for answering honest questions and exegeting the Biblical meaning of terms - but I reject the premise upon which you are asking those questions. We must first deal with the wrong premise you are operating from.

The fundamental error behind your post is that you claim the following things:
1. That my argument is saying nothing.
2. That my argument requires more detailed definitions before it can say anything.
3. That my argument is circular reasoning without more detailed definitions.

The fatal flaw with your argument is that you only try to prove these points by way of making analogies and then attacking the analogies you create - but that's a strawman fallacy because your analogies don't accurately represent what I have argued.

This is the same fault you made when you tried to claim in a previous post that my argument was saying nothing by creating a nonsense statement as an analogy and then attacking your analogy instead of dealing directly with exposing any supposed faults in my argument by directly quoting it and using specific logical reasonings against it.

What I said in response to that applies here as well: You need to quote what I actually said and give specific logical reasons why what I said is in error. Not simply assert it is in error and then creating strawman analogies to attack instead of attacking my post directly.

If you want to be able to make the claim that I have used any kind of circular reasoning then the onus is on you to quote my actual arguments and specifically point to where the fallacy has supposedly occurred.

If you want to claim that my argument is logically saying nothing of substance, you need to quote it and give a specific reason why it fails to do so.

If you want to claim that it is necessary for me to give more detail about any term in order for my argument to make sense, then you need to explain specifically and logically why my argument can't stand without more definition.


It seems to me that you don't have a legitimate logical reason why my argument is at fault without a more detailed definition but it's simply a matter of personal preference on your part that you want more information before you're willing to accept it as an answer. But your preference and desire for more information doesn't mean my argument is logically insufficient or logically at fault.
And I think that is the issue here is that you aren't making a distinction between your desire to have more information and your claim that my argument is supposedly invalid without it.


Let me take you back to my argument in a very simplified form so you can see why it stands as is:

Premise 1: Death and evil exist in the world.
Premise 2: God's nature is life and love.
Premise 3: Death is the opposite of life and evil is the opposite of love.
Conclusion: Death and evil exist in the world when God's nature is removed from something.

The argument is valid and not circular by definition.
The argument communicates a real conclusion of a causal relationship between two events.

You have not articulated a specific reason why any of these definitions need to be defined more precisely than they already have in this thread in order for this argument to be valid.

It's not as complicated as you are trying to make it out to be.
I'll make this even more simple though: You already have your own definition of death and evil, right? Just take your definition and ask what the opposite of that is. Then tell me if you have any logical problem with the conclusion at that point and specifically why. You probably won't - because it's almost inconceivable that your definition of death and evil is not consistent enough with mine that it would fundamentally change the point of my conclusion.

The reason is because my point never depended on the precise definitions of these terms. The nuances of what we mean by these terms don't actually alter the conclusion I am making - which is that these things you don't like are the absence of God rather than being something created by God.

The exact definition of what the stuff you don't like is, and what the stuff you like is, doesn't fundamentally change the argument I was making that what you don't like is probably the absence of God rather than something created by God.

No differences in our definition of death or life is likely to change that fundamental conclusion. Therefore, the exact definitions aren't relevant unless you can give a legitimate reason why our definitions could potentially be so off-base that it invalidates my conclusion.

If there is a legitimate logical problem at that point, then you have logical grounds to claim I logically must define the terms more precisely in order to avoid some kind of logical problem.


The reason I challenge you to do this is to illustrate a point: Most of your complaints about supposedly needing more details are not legitimate logical objections to the soundness or validity of my arguments - but they represent merely personal preference on your part that you demand to know more before you're willing to accept it. But your personal preferences for details does not determine whether or not my argument is logically true.

If all you have is a personal desire for more information then you are free to communicate it as such, and I would be happy to oblige.
But what you can't do is communicate it as a claim that there is somehow fault with my argument that demands to be corrected with more information. You can't claim that without supporting your claim by giving specific arguments for why any specific piece of information is necessary.

Meow Mix said:

@Rise

Regarding God as being the source of life and love. This isn't cognitive to me, and so I put the post on cognitivity first in this series. Allow me to help explain why it isn't cognitive to me, however.

Click to expand...

So we come to my next question on this topic: are you or are you not saying that humans changed/had power over the very laws of physics?

Let me try to think about how to put forward my confusion to you.

You say that physical suffering exists because humans aren't connected to God's pipeline of life and love, whatever that means. I'll pretend it has meaning for a minute.

Humans suffer physically because of the laws of physics. My first question is, does this mean that being disconnected from life/love changes the laws of physics? Are the laws of physics that we currently observed exactly equivalent to "being disconnected?"

For instance, would God changing the gravitational constant be somehow "reconnecting" us to life/love? I ask because it seems like an omnipotent God could change the gravitational constant. Do you believe God can increase the gravitational constant if He likes?

You might perceive where I'm going with this: if humans suffer because of the laws of physics, and God can change the laws of physics per omnipotence, but you say that suffering exists because of "being disconnected from life/love," then it follows that you're saying the laws of physics are a consequence of being connected or disconnected from life/love, which would mean that God can't change the laws of physics (otherwise he would be messing with our connection to life/love, whatever that means). Can you see how this is kind of an incoherent mess as it stands right now?

If God can change the laws of physics, then why can't God change the laws of physics to disallow physical suffering (which is absolutely logically possible to do)?

It seems like your theodicy puts you between a rock and a hard place: either God can't alter physics, or God is still culpable for what physics does to our bodies.

Click to expand...

The PoE is called the problem of "evil", not the problem of "physical suffering".

You seem to be are operating under the false assumption that evil and death exists because of the laws of physics.

But, as I already explained, evil and death is simply the absence of God. The absence of which can be traced back to a free will choice to reject God.

If you start talking about "physical suffering" it seems like you're trying to skirt round the central issue of what is evil and why does it exist, in order to talk about things that might not necessarily be evil (like pain receptors meant to act as a physical guide).

I think at this point you need to define what you mean by "physical suffering" and why you think it qualifies as evil. And what wouldn't qualify as physical suffering or evil.
Because if it doesn't qualify as evil then it's not a concern for the PoE question.

But if you are more specific about what part of physical suffering you think is evil then I should be able to provide answers to your questions related to it.

Notice here how when I ask you to define your terms, I am giving you very specific logical reasons why your lack of definition here must be dealt with before I can give a counter argument to your claims.

What I am not doing is just saying your post is nonsense until you define X, Y, and Z, without proving my claim is true by providing reasons why more detailed definitions of those terms would even be relevant to your altering the conclusion.

@Rise

I will maybe be responding tomorrow or Tuesday, still camping through the early afternoon and I’m going to want to hit the town tonight like my parachute failed.

Two quick comments:

1) “The PoE” isn’t a single problem, it is really a class of problems that just has one recognizable (and unfortunate) historical name. It can be put in any terms an arguer likes and doesn’t have to be put in terms of “evil,” which I do not. I put the PoE in terms of suffering.

(PoE class arguments are really saying, “if God has these properties, why aren’t observations of the world congruent with God having those properties?” This can be conflict with benevolence vs. evil (as in the original), benevolence vs. suffering (as I’m wont to do), but it can also be, to borrow @9-10ths_Penguin ‘s analogy, if God is supposed to have a property of hating blue M&M’s vs. why we observe so many blue M&M’s.

PoE class arguments are really “if God has these properties then why does he act like he doesn’t exist? If he hates blue M&M’s why are there so many?” Etc.)

2) Regarding defining terms and whether they are cognitive, this is where a lot of things will be decided; I think, and it may come down to an impasse. I do not agree that you get to treat utterances as if they’re meaningful unless proven otherwise (I think it is the reverse: we generally grant that utterances are communication because we cognize them; but in instances where we don’t, we have no obligation to treat them as valid until they’re cognizable).

Both of these are incomplete, simplified responses typed through squinted eyes at 5:30 am, so the nuances, clarifications, explanations regarding other situations (e.g. such as possible response, “well then I don’t have to grant advanced scientific speech laden with technical terms has meaning until I can cognize it”, etc.) will have to wait.

A girl’s gotta have some breakfast before too much thinking. Maybe even coffee. And I hate coffee. Let alone campfire heated swill.

Meow Mix said:

@Rise
1) “The PoE” isn’t a single problem, it is really a class of problems that just has one recognizable (and unfortunate) historical name. It can be put in any terms an arguer likes and doesn’t have to be put in terms of “evil,” which I do not. I put the PoE in terms of suffering.

(PoE class arguments are really saying, “if God has these properties, why aren’t observations of the world congruent with God having those properties?” This can be conflict with benevolence vs. evil (as in the original), benevolence vs. suffering (as I’m wont to do), but it can also be, to borrow @9-10ths_Penguin ‘s analogy, if God is supposed to have a property of hating blue M&M’s vs. why we observe so many blue M&M’s.

PoE class arguments are really “if God has these properties then why does he act like he doesn’t exist? If he hates blue M&M’s why are there so many?” Etc.)

Click to expand...

This brings up an issue that drives a sword right through the heart of your entire original argument.
It renders all other major and minor arguments you have identified irrelevant in comparison.

It is an issue I mentioned more than once in this thread but which interestingly you did not pull out as a major or minor issue to be discussed.
I was actually planning to make a post focusing on this one issue after responding to your other posts precisely because I think it is the fundamental issue above all else. But given the nature of what you have argued here, I think we are left with no choice but to cut strait to this issue right now:

Your entire argument hinges on the assumption that suffering (however you define it) is not consistent with benevolence (however you define good vs evil).
But no specific definitions of these terms are likely to even be necessary to show why your argument is logically impossible and therefore invalid.

Because to say something is good vs evil is to place an objective moral value judgement on an action.
But you do not logically have the ability to place such an objective moral value judgement on the creator of the universe.
Therefore, the definition of good vs evil becomes logically irrelevant if you can't first establish why you think you have have the capability to place an objective value judgement of good vs evil on God's actions.

Placing an objective value judgement on something requires first an objective moral standard.

Under nontheism or atheism, no possibility for an objective moral standard exists. Therefore nothing can be judged as good or evil.

Why? Two reasons:

1. Morality by definition is a statement of how things are suppose to be as opposed to how things are. But there can be no statement of how things are suppose to be unless there was a mind who created the universe with an intent about how it is suppose to be. Without a creator with a mind everything just is the way it is and it's not suppose to be any particular way.

2. Objectivity by definition means something continues to be true regardless of what any person thinks/feels about it and no matter how many people feel/think that way.

Without a creator with a mind you have no intent behind creation, therefore no morality.

Without that mind being responsible for creating the universe, you have no objective source to appeal to for how things are suppose to be as opposed to how they currently are.


So we can stop right there and say on that basis alone your PoE question as given is invalid from the start. Unless you can resolve the issue of where you are getting your objective morality from.


But let's go further than that.
I can take your PoE question and turn it around on you by taking your presumption that objective morailty exists (which is implied by the mere fact that you presume to be able to judge what is benevolent and what is not) and using that to prove logically that not only that God must exist but that He must have almost all of the attributes we see in the Bible - purely on logical grounds, without the need to appeal to Scripture.

So merely by positing that objective morality exists you must assume a being must exist with the following properties (using arguments I have made in this post combined with arguments I have already made in previous posts within this thread):
-Is a personal being with a mind.
-Is the sole creator of our universe.
-Has no peers (because if he did it would mean potentially his morality couldn’t be the sole standard needed to be objective, therefore no objective morality could exist).
-Has the power/understanding to create our universe.
-Must be uncaused and timeless, transcendent before and outside of our universe, to avoid the logical impossibility of an infinite regression within our universe.
-Is the embodiment of truth, because otherwise objective truth can’t exist. The laws of logic cant exist because be definition they are just a description of what the properties of objective truth is (and the reason he must be the embodiment of truth/logic, rather than being subject to truth/logic, goes back to the arguments I already gave you about why there is no other way truth/logic could transcend the universe if our universe was created by a being with a mind). And we can’t logically say objective truth doesn’t exist because that would be a self defeating statement.
-Has an understanding of morality himself and imparts to us an understanding of what is moral. Which you admit when you assert objective morality is real because you can only do so on the basis of it’s existence being a self evident truth with no logical defeater. There is no other way it can be self evident to you unless you were built to know the truth of it.
-This being must be unchanging if objective truth and logic come out of it’s essential nature. Because to change from being logic to illogic would violate it’s nature and thus it’s nature could not essentially be logic. Plus, based on our self evident understand and observational experience of truth and logic, we must also assume this being is unchanging because logic is unchanging and never could conceivably change to be something contrary to what they are without ceasing to exist. Ie: objective truth and logic either exist or they don't. There is no third option where they exist but change to be functionally or essentially different while still continuing to be what currently defines them as truth and logic.
-His essential nature as the definition of objective truth means you must conclude there is no other super-being above or preceding this being which can subject this being to it. Otherwise that which is above him would be the source of truth.
-Which also means he must be the only definition possible of omnipotent because there is nothing which he doesn't have the potential to be in control over without violating his essential nature. Because he created everything. There logically can't be else above him or anything that preceded him so there can't be anything beyond the potential reach of his power.
-And if objective morality is defined by objective truth, then this being must necessarily also be the embodiment of the objective morality it imposes on the design of the universe.
-Since morality comes out of his essential nature and he is unchanging, we can conclude his objective morality is also unchanging.

You've basically just about described every attribute of God as seen in the Bible using nothing but the necessary logic that flows out of assuming objective morality exists. I can imagine now you may not fully understand the logical reasoning behind some of that but I am fully prepared to elaborate on any point there you want to dispute. It would be helpful if you could try to identify what specifically about it doesn't make sense to you and why you think it doesn't make sense.

Only a handful of religions either today or historically even posit the existence of a god with all those exact attributes. All the major ones today and historically all have their roots in Judaism. The rest are missing some or even most of those logically necessary attributes in their conception of deity. I am not even aware of any small tribal spiritual belief systems that are fully compatible with all these attributes. The closet contender I know of might possibly be the Cherokee great spirit.


So there are many reasons for which your original question simply collapses under the requirements of it's own premises. Any one of which is sufficient to bury your assertion that God either cannot be good or that God cannot exist because suffering exists.

1. If you try to claim an omnibenevolent being can't exist, from a nontheism/atheism perspective, on the basis that evil exists, then your argument contradicts itself because you have no objective standard to appeal to in order to claim evil exists. Therefore, you can't appeal to the existence of something that your worldview says can't exist (evil) in order to prove an omnibenevolent being can't exist.


2. If you accept God exists, and is the creator of the universe with no peers (which we could argue is also necessarily implied by calling him omnipotent, but which I didn't get into outlining because it doesn't seem necessary to do so at this point), then he becomes the definition of what is moral and imbues that purpose into his creation for the reasons I already outlined.

So you therefore have no standing to accuse God of having the wrong purpose in mind for creation because you have no alternative source of objective morality to appeal to with which to accuse God of getting it wrong.


3. Your premise of omniscience refutes your own claim. Because it is impossible for you to ever claim to have enough knowledge of a situation to understand why any action God takes is not the most perfectly good option available.

The burden of proof you bear for proving any action an omniscient being takes is immoral is simply beyond any person's cognitive capability to ever meet. It is a logical impossibile for you to ever be in a position of making such a determination.

Even if we assumed you had an objective moral standard outside of god with which to judge god, your cognitive capability to apply that standard better than god would not exist. Therefore you can never logically assume your conclusion about what would be the most moral action in a given circumstance is more right than god's


So taking this back to your argument:
You claim suffering exists.
You claim suffering is not consistent with benevolence.

Well, the burden is on you to establish first that suffering is not consistent with benevolence for your argument to go anywhere.

How are you going to do that without an objective standard of morality to appeal to other than God Himself?

You logically can't. It's impossible.

There's no logically possible way for you to argue against theism using this argument based on an appeal to objective morality as a nontheist/atheist.

To assume objective morality exists is to necessarily assume nontheism/atheism is wrong from the start.

The best you coud hope to try to achieve with an argument like the PoE is to argue that one type of theism is more true than another type of theism.

Meow Mix said:

2) Regarding defining terms and whether they are cognitive, this is where a lot of things will be decided; I think, and it may come down to an impasse. I do not agree that you get to treat utterances as if they’re meaningful unless proven otherwise (I think it is the reverse: we generally grant that utterances are communication because we cognize them; but in instances where we don’t, we have no obligation to treat them as valid until they’re cognizable).

Click to expand...

I believe the problem with how you are approaching this is you aren't often making a distinction between two different situations.

Situation 1: I don't understand what you are saying. I need clarification.

Situation 2: I am claiming your argument is invalid and that I know you can't be saying anything meaningful, simply on the basis that I don't understand it.

You can't, by definition, claim the later unless you can give supporting reasons why their argument is objectively failing to say anything.

It seems too often you are trying to claim an argument is false or invalid on the basis that you simply don't understand it, even though you can give no objective logical reasons why the argument is at fault.

It's fine to not understand it and to ask for clarification - but you can't honestly couch a request for more information with an accusation that the argument is meaningless or false. You logically have no basis for concluding an argument is false if you admit you don't even understand what it's arguing for.

That's why it would be fallacious for me to claim your cosmology arguments are false just because I don't understand what you are saying. And claiming that my not understanding what you are saying is proof that you are not saying anything.
That would be circular reasoning and a fallacy of appeal to personal incredulity because it falsely assumes your ability to understand something is the plumb line that determines whether or not something is true.

This is why we use objective logic to settle disputes over what makes sense - It's not a matter of opinion then.

I don't get to claim your cosmology arguments aren't saying anything unless I can give specific logical reasons why that is the case in order to prove my claim is true.

Both of these are incomplete, simplified responses typed through squinted eyes at 5:30 am, so the nuances, clarifications, explanations regarding other situations (e.g. such as possible response, “well then I don’t have to grant advanced scientific speech laden with technical terms has meaning until I can cognize it”, etc.) will have to wait.

A girl’s gotta have some breakfast before too much thinking. Maybe even coffee. And I hate coffee. Let alone campfire heated swill.

Click to expand...

There's no rush at all. I am still trying to catch up on older posts I haven't had the time to respond to, so I understand how life doesn't always permit the necessary time to deal with them all in a timely manner.

There could be a week where time doesn't permit to respond much if at all but that doesn't mean I don't intend to respond.

Koldo said:

How can death/corruption not be part of the design?
It is the only logical conclusion. If we assume an omniscient designer, any designed thing can only behave in ways that the designer could foresee.

Click to expand...

Where human creation is concerned 'death' was Not part of God's purpose for: humans.
Mortal humans can gain 'everlasting life' as long as they obey God.
To deliberately disobey God's moral design is what would bring an end to human life.
Adam sinned on purpose. Adam deliberately disobeyed his God.
Fallen father Adam passed down to us his acquired human imperfection.
Because we can't resurrect oneself or another is why God sent Jesus to Earth for us.
Faithful-to-death perfectly sinless Jesus can and will resurrect us - Revelation 1:18; Acts 24:15

We Never Know said:

In short if a person believes in Adam and Eve.... They made the choice for us all. When they chose to betrayal what god had set forth, they punished all humans.
No more living forever, no more life without suffering, no more life without evil, etc.

Click to expand...

Yes, the ^above^ would be ' No more.... ' if it were Not for God sending per-human heavenly Jesus to Earth for us.
Because we are innocent of what fallen father Adam did we are offered: everlasting life.
Coming future life without suffering when: No one will say, " I am sick...." - Isaiah 33:24
Even ' enemy death ' will be No more on Earth - 1 Corinthians 15:26; Isaiah 25:8

Segev Moran said:

.................How would you define Moral?
But that's exactly the philosophical idea behind the first "sin".
The story of Eden depicts a state of "perfection". This means that life and balance of existence were not flawed.
Once "Adam" chose to "break" this perfection, it caused a whole different set of laws.
If at this point "God" would cancel the freedom of choice, the whole point of our existence would have become obsolete.
As we advance scientifically, we slowly understand how much damage or good the human species can cause to earth and the universe.
We can solve world hunger in a few weeks... yet we are still not willing to accept the fact that we are all one collective and not really single entites.

Click to expand...

Adam set up ' People Rule ' as being superior to ' God Rule '
The passing of time would show if 'People Rule' is superior.

Advance scientifically ( sciencism <- worship of) or putting faith in science as the overall solution.
Put faith in the worship of science as a religion over the pure worship found in Jesus' teachings.
In other words, what Jesus taught would be 'morally correct' in God's eyes or POV.
I think it was Danny Kaye who said without birth control world hunger can Not be solved.
I've even heard of developing vaccines which can bring about population control.

Rise said:

So there are many reasons for which your original question simply collapses under the requirements of it's own premises. Any one of which is sufficient to bury your assertion that God either cannot be good or that God cannot exist because suffering exists.

1. If you try to claim an omnibenevolent being can't exist, from a nontheism/atheism perspective, on the basis that evil exists, then your argument contradicts itself because you have no objective standard to appeal to in order to claim evil exists. Therefore, you can't appeal to the existence of something that your worldview says can't exist (evil) in order to prove an omnibenevolent being can't exist.


2. If you accept God exists, and is the creator of the universe with no peers (which we could argue is also necessarily implied by calling him omnipotent, but which I didn't get into outlining because it doesn't seem necessary to do so at this point), then he becomes the definition of what is moral and imbues that purpose into his creation for the reasons I already outlined.

So you therefore have no standing to accuse God of having the wrong purpose in mind for creation because you have no alternative source of objective morality to appeal to with which to accuse God of getting it wrong.

Click to expand...

Even though atheists tend to be skeptical to the point we don't believe in objective morality, there is actually nothing preventing an atheist from believing in objective morality. It would be like believing that moral properties or dimensions, objectively, exist in the universe. We seem to have some sort of internalized moral compass that would be pointing out to an external reality, much like how our senses work.

There is also a certain problem with how you define morality: You say that morality is based on the intent of the creator, but why would anyone need to accept that definition?

Think of it this way: Imagine that God appeared out of nowhere and said his intents for human beings has been misunderstood all along. That he actually always intended for us to be raped and squashed like bugs. Would that take precedence over your own moral compass?

Mine wouldn't. Because even though I don't have a perfect definition for morality it revolves around the well-being of conscious beings. Therefore, suffering is not consistent with benevolence considering the very definitions we use.

If you can make a case as to why we must use your definitions, I am all ears. But so far it sounds like mere a personal preference.

3. Your premise of omniscience refutes your own claim. Because it is impossible for you to ever claim to have enough knowledge of a situation to understand why any action God takes is not the most perfectly good option available.

The burden of proof you bear for proving any action an omniscient being takes is immoral is simply beyond any person's cognitive capability to ever meet. It is a logical impossibile for you to ever be in a position of making such a determination.

Even if we assumed you had an objective moral standard outside of god with which to judge god, your cognitive capability to apply that standard better than god would not exist. Therefore you can never logically assume your conclusion about what would be the most moral action in a given circumstance is more right than god's


So taking this back to your argument:
You claim suffering exists.
You claim suffering is not consistent with benevolence.

Well, the burden is on you to establish first that suffering is not consistent with benevolence for your argument to go anywhere.

How are you going to do that without an objective standard of morality to appeal to other than God Himself?

You logically can't. It's impossible.

There's no logically possible way for you to argue against theism using this argument based on an appeal to objective morality as a nontheist/atheist.

To assume objective morality exists is to necessarily assume nontheism/atheism is wrong from the start.

The best you coud hope to try to achieve with an argument like the PoE is to argue that one type of theism is more true than another type of theism.

Click to expand...

It is trivial to know that any path that involves suffering is not the most optimal path given the premises we are working with.

If God is omnipotent then he doesn't need to follow any given path to achieve a goal. He can achieve any goal instantly. Any state of affairs that involves suffering is contrary, by definition, to what a omnibenevolent being would want, because an omnibenevolent would not, by definition, want suffering to exist.