Special Pleading and the PoE (Part 3)

Meow Mix · Aug 24, 2021

Rise said:
I don't know that a lot of the things we're talking about are really necessary to actually resolve the PoE question. It's actually pretty straitforward from a logical standpoint.

Premise 1: God is all good. (which implies objective morality exists)
Premise 2: God is all knowing.
Premise 3: God is all powerful (except God doesn't violate His own nature).
Premise 4: Evil exists.
[And these are all standard accepted premises for Biblical theism. Nothing unique to me]
Conclusion: God has sufficiently good reason for permitting evil to exist.

It's an ironclad logical response because the only way you can disprove it is by proving 100% you can know that any action God has taken is not all good.

It's a burden of proof you simply aren't in a position to meet. Therefore, the premises of the formulation require us to conclude that because God is all good and all knowing that if he permits something there must be a good reason for it.

This is equivalent to having already fallen into the trap, and this is why the premises shouldn't allow for that: it is unreasonable to fall into epistemic traps. The point of the PoE is to get the premise-holder to doubt one or more of the premises, which is reasonable to do given the addition of the observation of suffering.

For instance, consider the principle of indifference: let's say that there's a closet door, and you're sure there can only be one of three things in the closet. The principle of indifference (Principle of indifference - Wikipedia.) would have us assign an epistemic probability of 33% for each object to be behind the door if we're not sure what the actual probabilities are: it would be reasonable of us to do since we're not omniscient.

Inductively, there are four explanations for the incongruence with the existence of suffering with the premises:

1) God has some right-making explanation for the existence of suffering (this is the typical theodicy: the suffering exists for a "good reason")
2) God does not have some right-making explanation for the existence of suffering: it just is what it is (meaning we must conclude the premises are wrong, reasonably)
3) God has some wrong-making explanation for the existence of suffering, where the suffering is for some worse reason than we're even aware of
4) God has both a right-making and a wrong-making explanation for the existence of suffering, which is at least still not congruent with "all-good" or "omnibenevolent" or "dislikes suffering," however we want to put it

Well, by the principle of indifference, and given our own non-omniscience of the probabilities, the epistemically assigned odds are only 25% that God is all-good or omnibenevolent or dislikes suffering: it's more likely (at 75%) that the premise isn't true! This is reasonable for us to induct precisely because of our lack of omniscience.

Now, we can object to the principle of indifference maybe (that would involve figuring out what epistemic probability "really is," and would fly in the face of induction: pretty much nobody wants to give up induction).

Or we can object that we're not checking the premises for truth, we're just straight up assuming the premises as true from the beginning: but then why grant the omnibenevolence/all-good/dislikes suffering premise in the first place as the skeptic? Then it just becomes a fight over whether it makes sense to start out assuming the premise is no-questions-asked true. But then this is just having the PoE debate anyway.

So you're right that the theist could just say "well if this premise is true, then the theodicy works." Sure. But the PoE-giver is skipping that step because they know their response to that is just gonna be "well why grant that premise is true?" Then the discussion becomes about why that premise should be granted, and then for instance suffering can be brought up as counter-evidence, and the discussion becomes about whether the premises are true all the same as if it had just started out that way in the first place (the discussion being about whether the premises are true, that is).

And if you don't think the PoE has already been answered by my simple formulation and conclusion in this post, then I think we need to first deal with why you think it isn't answered before we try to deal with the more nuanced version of the conclusion.

I've tried to elucidate that a little just above.

PoE is ultimately about questioning the premises, not just saying they're ironclad. If you start with ironclad premises you can arrive to any number of things, e.g.,

1) The Bible is true
2) The Bible says there was a global flood
C: Evidence that there was no global flood must have been fabricated

Obviously if we just say "yeah 1 and 2 are true," C follows; but the whole point of bringing up evidence is to get someone to doubt premises they had previously been holding. It would be missing the point to just not accept evidence because something follows if the premises must be true. The argument goes from the angle that the premises are possibly true, yet are assailable.

Meow Mix · Aug 24, 2021

Rise said:
It is not quite precise to say "god is that definition" you pulled up from the dictionary.

It would be more precise to say "God has something which is required for something to meet the definition".

Ok, God has something required for bodies to seek homeostasis, to respond to stimuli, this descriptive list: but we understand that this descriptive list of stuff is due to chemistry and physics. That is to say, chemistry and physics are necessary and sufficient to get the descriptive list that forms the definition of life.

But this would mean God "has" chemistry and physics. What does that mean? Does it mean God has the property of being the creator of chemistry and physics?

I have further questions depending on that answer.

The dictionary recognizes the opposite difference between life and death. God has that which you need to be in a state of life rather than death. However it is you think that should be biologically defined it won't change the fact is there is something beyond biological mechanistic processes, something spiritual, that is required for life to exist and for death to be avoided.

That spiritual thing is found only in God.

And it is a part of who/what He is.

Therefore, you can't have that thing without having God.

You say that we don't "have" God (or whatever) right now, how are we alive then? This is what doesn't make sense to me. I'm told God provides something necessary for us to be alive, and that we don't have whatever God's providing right now. This leads to something like this:

1) In order to be alive, humans require X
2) X only comes from God
3) God is not providing humans with X currently
4) Humans are alive currently (?)

This is explicitly contradictory. Do you mean something else like this?

1) In order not to die, humans require X
2) X only comes from God
3) God is not providing humans with X currently
C: Humans are physically mortal currently

That at least doesn't contradict, but it's still problematic: the reason humans physically die is because of physics. Per omnipotence, God should be able to change physics. I feel no objection prima facie to saying if God decided for gravity to be repulsive, that would be within God's power. But then our little syllogism makes little sense: since physics causes physical mortality, the only thing that X could be that God provides which prevents mortality would be physics itself. But this is equivalent to saying God, an omnipotent being, can't change physics (since you say it would be against His nature to give us X while "not in union" or whatever).

This would be a strange consequence of the worldview if I've understood it correctly! Have I?

To put it simply: the spiritual thing which God has that you need to have life rather than death would be absent from you.

And that thing which God has that you need is part of who God is.

What does it mean for a substance or property to be "part of who God is?" For instance, if I'm powering the Matrix as a human battery, it makes sense (we'll pretend it would be efficient) that the chemo-electrical energy is "part of who I am," but bodily. Is it something like that, but spiritually?

But if it's needed for life, and we're not getting it, how are we alive? This part needs to be more explicit to make sense. But this is already brought up just above, so I assume you'll answer this question there.

You are trying to solve the problem in physical materialistic terms without regard for the reality of a spiritual dimension which does not operate according to materialistic physics.

Biblically, what makes you alive rather than dead is not just the laws of physics but something spiritual.

It says God formed Adam from the dust of the ground (elements, one could say), but Adam did not begin to be alive until God breathed into Adam. The Hebrew worth for breath is from the same root as the word for life, spirit, soul, living being, etc.

Sure, but if we're "not in union" and don't have this breath, how are we alive? It's still contradictory.

I can imagine some schema that goes like... despite being in disunion, God gives us a finite amount, about 60-80 years' worth depending on medical advances where we're born? It's strange and feels contrived, but maybe that's what you mean? If so... well, it does feel contrived. Why is God able to do that while in "disunion?" I thought you said God literally can't unless in union? Unless I'm still not understanding, which is likely.

Your philosophical premise is not Biblicaly true.
God is singular and the embodiment of what He is. That something we describe in many ways and break down into separate ideas to help us understand it - but God is still a singular nature.
God is not a collection of separate things (properties) pieced together to assemble who He is

I had said, "...I don't know what it means to say that "God's nature is love." If you had said "God's nature is to be loving," that I would cognize. I know what "God is loving" means, I do not know what "God is love" means. Natures are about having properties, not being identical to them."

I don't know what this means. Are you saying God doesn't have properties? That would mean God isn't omnipotent or omniscient, or any of the other premises of the PoE in the first place. It would mean God doesn't have the property of being God, or of existing, or of knowing that He himself exists, or of being self-identical.

That's on the verge of being declarable as actual nonsense. If God doesn't have properties, then you're not referring to anything when you say "God," because the thing you're trying to refer to wouldn't even have the property of "being the referent for the term 'God.'"

Meow Mix · Aug 24, 2021

Rise said:
Whose argument?
Yours?
Your argument isn't relevant here if you are attacking someone else's premises.

What you define as omnipotent is not relevant to the PoE formulation which is an attack on Biblical beliefs. Which is why there would be no reason for me to respond to your definition of omnipotence unless you could identify it as a Biblical belief.

If the Bible claims that omnipotence is the power to do things that are not logically possible to do, then I wouldn't even bother with the PoE: I would already know that this interpretation of the Bible is wrong for being illogical nonsense. That's the tack I would take: it'd be a much easier argument to win than the PoE.

Your definition of omnipotence and it's required limits is not in line with what the Bible says about God's omnipotence.

If that's the case, then I can know the Bible (or at least this interpretation) is wrong, a priori, for being illogical. It's the equivalent of the Bible saying there is a married bachelor or a Euclidean square which is a Euclidean circle at the same time and in the same respect. I wouldn't need the PoE, the Bible would have already self-refuted and lost the argument.

Which is not that God is bound by the laws of logic as a pre-existing entity; but that God acts in accordance with the laws of logic because God is the embodiment of truth and the laws of logic are merely descriptions of truth. And God does not violate who He is or change.

You can't even say this without using identity, excluded middle, and non-contradiction. God can't be God without being self-identical; when you say "God is the ________ (put anything here)" that's saying God has that identity. "Being the embodiment of truth," aside from being yet another mystical sounding thing that isn't communicating anything to me, is at least carrying the implicit premise that this is God's identity to be such; and God must be self-identical to be that thing.

So you are saying "God is self-identical necessarily to be God [this is said implicitly when you say "God is X"], but is not bound to be self-identical," which is self-refuting. This argument defeats itself, and is illogical by definition.

This is why I pointed out the problem early on was that you aren't merely using someone else's beliefs to form the PoE and attack it - but you are trying to impose your own premises onto the formulation.

The platonism view of God you are advocating is not what the Bible says. It is not what Christians today or historically have generally believed.

You therefore need to identify whose premises you are trying to attack.
It sounds more like you are trying to attack Plantinga's premises specifically rather than Biblical Christianity in general.

But Plantinga's beliefs don't represent the Biblical viewpoint. Nor do they represent what the overwhelming majority of Christians or Jews today think or have historically thought about Biblical aseity in relationship to platonsim.

If the "overwhelming number" of Abrahamic folk believe illogical things about aseity and omnipotence, then as soon as they make that known, that'd be the angle of attack instead of the PoE. I still think the PoE is interesting to ponder, though. Plus, it'll catch any theists that fall through the cracks (those that don't have illogical beliefs about omnipotence or aseity).

The Bible explicitly says nothing existed, aside from God Himself, without God creating it.

There is no Biblical justification for the idea that abstract concepts/properties existed prior to God.

Limitation isn't abstract or a concept. If God existed, and God was God and not something else, like a horse or a basketball, then limitation existed in a way that God is dependent on (not in a temporal way, but in the same way that "If A > B and B > C then A > C" is relevantly dependent on "A = A" even if both are necessarily true).

Meow Mix · Aug 24, 2021

Rise said:
When I said what the definition of morality was, I was speaking from a logical and analytical philosophical perspective that forces us to arrive at what the true definition is.

You admit that morality is a statement of how things are suppose to be.

But you admit you believe there exists no objectively true definition of how things are suppose to be. And admit there couldn't be.

Therefore, you admit there is no morality by definition because there is no "how things are suppose to be".

There are different conceptions of what it means for "how things are supposed to be." There is the universal way, which is objected to by noncognitivism, and there is the value-based way: I value empathy, so I have beliefs about "how things are supposed to be." That's a morality. In post 320 I talked about how noncognitivists can still use these terms. If there is any confusion, I just need to help define them for you and demarcate when I'm speaking as a noncognitivist from when I'm speaking as someone humoring cognitivism.

If you object to that then I'll just make terms to use them the same way I normally would, which would be mildly annoying (like I could call what I normally call "morality" something like "smorality", it would be a mild annoyance but it would be better than typing it out every time; that's why we use terms in the first place). All that matters is that you understand what's being said. English, and every language really, assigns multiple contexts to the same words. This is no different, and it's accepted generally in philosophy for noncognitivists to use these terms because philosophers know what they mean when they do.

So either there is morality or there is not. You can't call your preference morality because by definition you aren't genuinely talking about true morality from an analytic philosophical perspective.

When noncognitivists talk about their deontologies, they are talking about beliefs about the way the world should be. These kinds of beliefs have the qualities that we call moral. The details are different. If you feel comfortable with "true morality" we can use that to refer to objective morality concepts, but I don't think it's necessary.

Noncognitivists have values, those values lead to feelings about oughts, and those oughts lead either to feeling something is right or feeling something is wrong, leading to guilt when something is felt to be wrong. It looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it's morality.

Or, here's another case of how it would be absurd to gatekeep words like this. Atomists believed that matter is made up of indivisible particles -- atoms. Atomic theory wasn't actually fully accepted by the time Boltzmann killed himself, and even after, it was already thought that atoms actually could be divided into smaller particles (such as Bohr's model). Ought we to be distraught that they use the word "atom?" But they're not true atoms, they're divisible!

Words don't matter as long as we understand what people are saying. Words often have complicated and confusing histories that are tied to ideas that may not even matter anymore for the usage of the word. Let us not care about what word is used as long as we know what is meant when the word is used.

There is no such thing as a duty you could impose on yourself because you don't have any authority to impose duty on yourself. You didn't create yourself. If you weren't created with purpose and duties then you have none and nothing you can do would change that.

All that's needed to create a duty is to believe there is one: this is what it means for us to have values in the first place, it means that we feel we ought to pursue them. Since we believe we ought to, we have a self-imposed duty. It's what it means to have something like valuing altruism: it means I can fulfill hypothetical imperatives like "if I value altruism, then I ought to do X."

Therefore, without an objective moral source, everything you prefer is just a preference regardless of how strongly you prefer it or what you tell yourself about it being a duty you hold yourself to.

It's never been claimed on account of my noncognitivism that moral beliefs are different in nature from preferences (they are a special type of preference, essentially, yes).

Your preferences can never logically be duties. Not to yourself or to others.

To be able to logically impose a duty would first require you to have the authority to decide how things are suppose to be.

No, duties can be about merely feeling the obligation of how something is supposed to be. Deontology is notoriously meta-ethics neutral (see: Nagel), or I can quote ye olde Stanford again:

Stanford Encyclopedia said:
Deontological Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Deontological theories are normative theories. They do not presuppose any particular position on moral ontology or on moral epistemology. Presumably, a deontologist can be a moral realist of either the natural (moral properties are identical to natural properties) or nonnatural (moral properties are not themselves natural properties even if they are nonreductively related to natural properties) variety. Or a deontologist can be an expressivist, a constructivist, a transcendentalist, a conventionalist, or a Divine command theorist regarding the nature of morality. Likewise, a deontologist can claim that we know the content of deontological morality by direct intuition, by Kantian reflection on our normative situation, or by reaching reflective equilibrium between our particular moral judgments and the theories we construct to explain them (theories of intuitions).

Nonetheless, although deontological theories can be agnostic regarding metaethics, some metaethical accounts seem less hospitable than others to deontology. For example, the stock furniture of deontological normative ethics—rights, duties, permissions—fits uneasily in the realist-naturalist’s corner of the metaethical universe. (Which is why many naturalists, if they are moral realists in their meta-ethics, are consequentialists in their ethics.) Nonnatural realism, conventionalism, transcendentalism, and Divine command seem more hospitable metaethical homes for deontology. (For example, the paradox of deontology above discussed may seem more tractable if morality is a matter of personal directives of a Supreme Commander to each of his human subordinates.) If these rough connections hold, then weaknesses with those metaethical accounts most hospitable to deontology will weaken deontology as a normative theory of action. Some deontologists have thus argued that these connections need not hold and that a naturalist-realist meta-ethics can ground a deontological ethics (Moore 2004).

To be super-clear, most noncognitivists are some form of expressivists, mentioned explicitly as capable of being deontological (e.g. moral statements are expressing something, rather than there being a truth to the moral statement outside of the hypothetical imperative).

Since you did not create reality, you don't get to decide how it is suppose to be.

The premise that only the creator of reality's intent for how they want it somehow means all within that reality must share that intent with how they want it to be is unjustified; you've just assumed it.

You can make the sentence true by typing it, "Since you did not create reality, you don't get to decide how it's supposed to be according to God's intent," but then we have to wonder "don't we have our own intent for it?" and "why ought we only care about the creator's intent when we have our own?"

You can say "it's against the creator's intent for you to have your own intent," but it's just a microcosm: the response could simply be "so?" We need something more, some justification: some deontology for why the creator's intent has to be ours, too. Ought to be ours.

"Because that's the way it's supposed to be, according to the creator" isn't an answer because it just circles back.

Any conclusion you did draw about how you think things are suppose to be would have no authority to impose itself upon creation and give it purpose that is objectively binding to creation and therefore objectively binding to others.

It is objectively true that if I know what someone's value hierarchy is, I can speak to them prescriptively: this is because of the values they hold.

Therefore, any idea you have of duty is merely just preference - objectively no different than your preference for one type of candy over another. Even if you feel it more strongly than another preference, its fundamental nature as a preference doesn't change.

That's never been denied. The difference is moral values come with duties we impose on ourselves, whereas preferences for candies don't. Whether that's a quantitative or qualitative difference is probably a moot question.

There are options available to a follower of God that aren't available to others.

You are operating from the false presumption that the hand of God plays no role here and it's just up to your own physical efforts.

There is a book called "Rees Howells: Interessor" which shows how intercessory prayer saved Britain from the Nazis and led to their ultimate defeat.

We see this throughout the Bible as well, where entire armies are wiped out by the power of God moving on behalf of protecting His people.

It should also be noted: Intercessory prayer is the first line of defense to change hearts to align with God's will so that nazism, or other equally bad ideologies like communism, doesn't take root in the first place.

There are also Biblical and historical or contemporary accounts of attackers having a change of heart in response to prayer which brings an end to conflict without either side having to be destroyed.

Are you claiming that prayer defeated the Nazis? You had to have known I'd be incredibly skeptical of this claim.

This also reminds me of Judges 1:19 re: God being "with" the Israelites, but they were unable to drive out some iron chariots (I am sure there is probably some exegesis that maybe clears this up, I don't know; just saying this made me think of that for some reason).

I'm not sure exactly what you're claiming here, it feels like you're telling me that magic works. We're moving into uncomfortable, less philosophical, less interesting territory with this. I'd rather we just stick to philosophy if possible.

Meow Mix · Aug 24, 2021

Rise said:
Your statement doesn't resolve the fundamental problem I raised.

Which is that the problem of evil never made sense, and still doesn't make sense, in any context other than as a challenge to the logical consistency of a god that has it's roots in Judaic belief.

Therefore, to pose the question in a way that does not line up with what an Abrahamic religion actually believes is to be philosophically pointless.

If you are making up your own premises to attack, under the pretense that someone out there probably believes it, then it's not a very useful philosophical exercise.

It's no more useful than for me to make up my own premise that god hates ice cream and use that premise to prove that god can't exist.

It might be a logically true argument - but what does it ultimately prove if no one actually believes in that god?

How does it get us any closer to what is true about reality if you haven't knocked down a genuine belief system but just a strawman of your own invention?

There are plenty of people that would accept the premises I put forth: if they must specify the premises further, then we examine what they're wanting to add. It's a good starting point. It makes sense to make the premises meta-ethically neutral. If someone wants to get into the meta-ethics to try to resolve it, then so be it.

It's also the case as I've said before: the other stuff that's come up in this debate is, at this point, more interesting and impactful. The PoE is still a good (and fun) exercise, though.

That doesn't resolve the fundamental problem here which is that it's flatly false to claim the PoE question is a philosophically neutral question that can be posed to theism in general and doesn't have to be posed to a particular religion specifically.

About a third of the world believes in a form of theism which would outright contradict the PoE premises. The non-abahamic religions like buddhism and hinduism.

Only the Abrahamic religions believe in the PoE premises. And that's because they are all rooted in Judaic belief about the nature of God.

And since that belief about God is rooted in the Hebrew Biblical texts, any PoE question is inherently posed as a challenge to Biblical conceptions of God.

There's no way of getting away from that.

Therefore, you can't pose the PoE question with premises that doesn't line up with Abrahamic beliefs and have the question retain any theological or philosophical usefulness.

As I said above, I think there are plenty of people that accept the premises; but even if I grant that there aren't for the sake of argument, there are theists that believe in something closer to the "God of Philosophy" than the particular Abrahamic gods. If I were to become a theist, it's very likely it would be something more like the sterile philosophical God than the characters depicted in the holy books because of all the baggage they come with that seems just so far from reality from my perspective. There's merit to the exercise as far as I'm concerned; and each post has attracted people interested in the problem.

Accepted by whom?

If it's not accepted by the Abrahamic faiths then you can't impose your definition of omnipotence on them and claim to be using their premises to disprove their beliefs.

Your definition of omnipotence contradicts what the Bible says about God.

Most theologians disagree, and I do mean most. William Lane Craig (whom you have turned to elsewhere: see Logical Truth and Omnipotence | Reasonable Faith) accepts that the limits of God's power are what is possible to actualize.

Now, he gets logic and math wrong in that same quote (he, too, is mistaking the reference [which is abstract/conceptual] with the referent [which is not]), but what he says about Descartes and universal possibilism is correct.

You are changing the definition of omnibenevolence again in a way that is no longer it's current or historical meaning. Nor does your definition fit what Abrahamic religions fully believe about God.

An Abrahamic theist doesn't believe the definition of omnibenevolence is "god doesn't like suffering".

An Abrahamic theist defines omnibenevolence as "God is morally all good, and objective morality exists".

If it's a consequence of the belief "God is morally all good" that "god doesn't like suffering," then the shoe still fits regardless of the reason for the shoe fitting.

Meow Mix · Aug 24, 2021

Rise said:
Such as:
Because we know God is all good, and all knowing, we must assume God has a good reason for not stopping it right away or fully,
That implies that there isn't a better way to achieve the good God aims at without this happening. Because God is all knowing and all good, so if there was a better way we would expect it would be taken.

Or:
Perhaps there are reasons it would contradict God's nature/character for Him to intervene to immediately force change. Such as if it would require violating free will, and free will is a greater good that must be preserved.

The argument has been made somewhere (though it may have been in a different series) how God, by changing physics, could remove the capacity for physical suffering without relevantly impacting free will.

As for the first paragraph, this goes back to what I argued in another post: the point is to doubt the premises: to examine them in the face of evidence. It's possible God has a good reason for suffering to exist, but it's also possible He doesn't. Refer to the argument made from the principle of indifference and epistemic limitation (post 321).

If it's just possibly true that God has a good reason, with the principle of indifference, only one out of four possibilities entails perfect goodness, or unfailingly disliking the existence of suffering: it's actually reasonable to induct that it's the least likely possibility. We'd have to attack induction or the principle of indifference (and so radically alter what epistemic probability and what's reasonable to believe even means) to get around that.

The issue I take with that is that you have no basis to be telling them they can't use their premises if you start from the assumption that you are trying to use their premises to refute their own beliefs.

If you try to attack their premises as not true then you have ceased to try to logically use their own premises against them.

It's a completely different kind of debate at that point.

It's a debate over attacking their premises as being untrue on philosophical or logical grounds instead of trying to show logical inconsistency in their existing premises. The later would require accepting their premises as-is and showing why they can't all be true.

Well this is awkward, because that's what I've been arguing for a couple of posts (not before you made this response, I mean just tonight). I'm doing the former, but perhaps some language I've used has given you the notion that I'm doing the latter (I can see it by using things like "using their premises against them" and "only applies if the premises do," but by this I just mean it gives the foundation for the attack).

I was not arguing that God can do illogical things.

Saying "God is omnipotent" and then saying "omnipotence doesn't have logical limits" is exactly equivalent to saying God can do illogical things, though: n'est-ce pas?

You might be surprised how many people on this forum alone don't seem to think that logic and truth are real concepts they are bound by. And if they don't think they are bound by them then why should they think god is bound by them?

Just in this thread alone we had someone try to say that there's no such thing as objective truth regarding interpreting what the Bible says. Which would imply he could say Jesus was a pink elephant in the 22nd century on Neptune and I could say Jesus was a Jewish man in 1st century Judea and there would be absolutely no way for either of us to prove our conclusion is right by interpreting what the Bible says about this fact.

I mean, true; but if someone wants to adopt something illogical to try to respond, I can just breathe a sigh of relief and attack that much easier, juicier target immediately instead.

Meow Mix · Aug 25, 2021

Rise said:
That is not relevant to the point I as making.

I was talking about the fact that there is no such thing as morality other than objective morality just as there is no such thing as truth other than objective truth.

While it might be subjectively true to say something believes something is true - there is only one objective truth about what is actually true. Whether it's knowable or not - there is only one truth because that is by definition that makes something truth. It is singular and exclusionary, and objective (has no regard for what people think is true)

I agree regarding truth. Yet a person self-contradicts by doubting objective truth; they do not self-contradict by doubting objective morality. It's not nonsensical to talk about non-objective morality.

None of my reasons were hidden nor just asserted. I was explicit with them and gave specific reasons for them.

You are confusing two separate issues.
I was arguing for objective moral values - while you are trying to deal with objective moral duties. They are entirely separate arguments.

What does it mean for a moral value to be objective? I suspect that you will arrive to a deontology and possibly even moral realism if you continue down that path: e.g., if you say it's objectively true we ought to value x. This would give you both moral realism (because it contains a moral truth) and a deontology (because valuing x means you ought to do y). If you reject moral realism, this is not a good path to go down for you. Otherwise, if this objection misses what you were saying, I need some more clarification on what you mean by objective moral values.

You are falsely claiming my argument has a premise of deontology (duties that arise from commands one is obligated to follow) because you probably did not understand my argument as being an argument for objective moral values which is different from objective moral duties.

My argument was specifically formulated to not require deontology for the conclusion to be true.
Therefore my argument has no requirement to establish why God's commands carry with them a duty to be obeyed. Because my argument was never based on the idea that God giving commands is what inherently makes something become an objective moral value and not just an objective moral duty.

Reasons why:
1. By breaking down the definition of morality philosophically to it's core essence of "a statement of how things are suppose to be".
2. By showing that purpose (ie. how things are suppose to be) can only be assigned to something by it's creator.
3. By showing that something can only be created by a mind with intention. The ability to have intention is something only minds possess and is probably one of the, if not the most, defining attributes of what it means to be conscious and have free will. (which is, side note: also why you can't truly be conscious without having free will. Because you associate consciousness with the ability to have intent. But you can't have intention without a free will).
4. We therefore are logically forced to arrive at the conclusion that if we are created then a statement of how things are suppose to be" (ie. morality) is already embedded in the act of creation itself and there was no way something can be created without assigning some kind of purpose via intention.

Now, the question of what obligates you to do what you are purposed to do is a different issue. That is not what I tried to establish nor was required to establish for the conclusion I was drawing.

In (1), you're pretty much implicitly saying "how things are supposed to be according to the creator." A thing can be created by God for some purpose according to God, but other wills, if they are free, could have some other purpose for it: like with the analogy with the architect that labels a room "bedroom" but someone turns it into a studio.

In order to get from "God infused the world with His intentions" to "we ought to follow those intentions instead of our own," you're going to need a deontology. Otherwise there is nothing wrong with altering what God intended for a thing towards what we free agents want a thing to be instead. It would just be a morally neutral fact that "God intended X to be Y initially, but free agent A imposed a new intention on X to be Z." There's nothing moral about that, it's just a naked, non-moral fact until A has some duty to keep X as Y, instead of using X as new intention Z.

I could also take this tack: you seem to be arguing that the fact that God created stuff with an intention gives them some kind of prescriptive property rather than just having descriptive properties: e.g., a rock would have some prescriptive property like "use me for this, not for that."

But claiming rocks possess such a prescriptive property is exactly the same thing as making a deontological claim -- "one ought not use this rock for that!"

Now as far as I know, you can just claim God imbues creation with prescriptive properties, but I don't know how you'd justify it. The skeptic can just say "I don't see a good reason to believe that," unless you provide one since you're making the claim. Me, I'd doubt the cognitivity of the claim before we even got that far: I don't know what a prescriptive property would be like, because (by the way) we'd be back to moral realism (yes, not just objective morality but moral realism) at that point (there would be oughts that are claimed to be truths, and so correspond to reality).

Which is that morality is inherent to the act of creation itself, it is impossible to be otherwise, therefore we know morality (how things are suppose to be) exists if the universe was create; but it is impossible for morality (how things are suppose to be) to exist if the universe was not created.

There is no way for any person to change the definition of how things are suppose to be (ie morality) or add a definition where one did not already exist. An objective definition of morality (ie. how things are suppose to be) either exists or it does not and that question hinges on whether or not our universe is created by a personal being with a mind. .

Every time you say "the way things are supposed to be," we must remember that what's really meant is "the way things are supposed to be according to God." So indeed, other agencies can't change the way things are supposed to be according to God, but the objection is "so what?" To have agency means to be able to decide to use things in a different way and we'd need a duty to explain why we oughtn't do it differently than God intended. Otherwise we can say "this is the way this rock is supposed to be according to God, this is the way this rock is supposed to be according to Erin."

Now, God is bigger and smarter than Erin, surely, should he have that pesky habit of existing. Erin may not have created the rock, but Erin can still have other purposes for it than God intended when He created it. The act of creation doesn't prima facie make God's intention better than Erin's intention: in order to get to that, we'd still need a deontology to make Erin's intentions wrong, and God's intentions right. It's problematic to say God creates the rock with a prescriptive property, so in what other way could the act of God creating the rock make His intentions for it matter more than some other agency's intentions for the rock?

A counter-argument that says, "because the rock is supposed to be the way God intended it when created" is a not-so-hidden ought (you'd be back to moral realism [not mere objective morality] and having to explain where the deontology of it comes from!)

Establishing deontology (the duty to obey your purpose. Ie objective moral duties) is a separate issue from establishing that objective purpose actually exists (ie. objective moral values).

The very term "objective purpose" is the same as ascribing a prescriptive property to the rock (to continue the rock thought experiment), come to think of it. So my comments above apply.

We could establish deontology by going over other attributes of God - but that would be a separate argument from the one I was trying to make. And my specific argument here doesn't depend on establishing deontology to be true in order for my conclusion to be true that objective moral values exist. Because proving the necessary existence of objective moral values does not require proving that objective moral duties exist).

I am doubtful that is the case until the objections raised here might be laid to rest.

Meow Mix · Aug 25, 2021

Rise said:
"Why you should care" and "why you are obligated to obey" are actually two different questions.
And neither of which is actually required for my original argument to go through.

Interesting points, I'll grant that they're different questions for now: but as I've argued, I think they are required for your argument.

If you buy a device but don't use it as the creator intended it to be used, you may at best break the device and render it useless, or at worse may incur injury or death upon yourself or others you care about for failing to use the device properly.

This is assuming we ought not render the device useless (and perhaps we just intend to use the device as a doorstop, why ought we care about its original function?), and ought not injure ourselves or others: we still need a deontology to get there.

Otherwise rendering the device useless is just a neutral fact. Or injuring ourselves, just a neutral fact.

Also, using devices against intentions isn't always going to lead to harm: microwave ovens came about due to observations of what radar equipment did to chocolate bars; perhaps the radar inventor might say "hey, you're not using my device the way I intended!" (Yes, I understand the radar inventor is not God; but there is still a point here)

Last point: why ought we avoid harm? This makes more sense under value-based deontology: if we value being alive and uninjured, then we ought to avoid harm!

I believe you are falsely categorizing the nature of purpose by calling it "some being's whims".

Purpose is embedded in the act of creation itself and it is impossible not to embed purpose into any act of creation.

To call it a whim seems to implies it's unnecessary or frivolous.

Forgive the term then, and insert "intention" instead.

You are asking the question from the false presumption that there exists any other purpose or that there could exist any other purpose that what the Creator of the universe gives it.

By virtue of being the creator of everything, God is the only one who can assign purpose to everything.

This seems to me prima facie like rejecting some essential quality of what makes free agency free. Can you imagine what it would mean to have free will but not being able to project intention? Projecting intention seems to be a defining factor of free will.

How do you think free will and intention are related? I think you can argue that it is wrong to impose an intention other than God's on the world (you'd need a deontology, and I suspect you'd end up with a moral realism); but I don't think you can argue that free agency doesn't entail projecting intention on the world.

Did God intend for you to create lampshades only according to a certain color?

If not, then your choice of what color to use was never a moral question to begin with.

Wait, but I thought that God's act of creation couldn't help but to imbed an intention by the very act of creating? If tree bark is brown, isn't it defying God's intention that it be brown to paint it eggshell?

Your level of impression with a given reasoning has no bearing on whether or not it’s true.

But that is missing the point of what I said: Which is that we have reason to believe it is possible for someone to will themselves to believe something.

"Not being impressed" is an obvious colloquialism for "have examined it and found it wanting." If I argued that you really don't believe in God, you're just afraid of death, and you're delusional and believe false things not because you've reasoned through them but because this fear has consumed you so totally and all this, I wouldn't be very impressed by that, either. (There are some extra special atheists that do this, as I'm sure you've seen: I roll my eyes at them just as hard as the whole "I secretly believe in God" nonsense).

You make two assertions here which aren’t true.
1. The idea that we have to know how we know something in order to know it is clearly false. People believe they know things all the time without ever even bothering to ask themselves how they know. People believe they know things that they never had to reason to a conclusion for in their life but simply have always known (the definition of “properly basic beliefs”), So this proves that the act of knowing doesn’t have to involve establishing why you know something before we can engage in the act of knowing.

In fact, some times we believe to know to be true have no answer for how we know it’s true other than the fact that we simply know deep down in our being that it is true; Such as knowing we exist in a physical reality and not a computer program.

I didn't say we have to know how we know; I said we have to know that we know in order to know. It would be absurd to claim to know it is raining but not to know that I know it's raining.

Now maybe there is some other knowledge-like state: for instance, probably the best example I can think of is an AI that has some secret stored away, but it doesn't have access to the memory. The robot doesn't know this secret: it's something else, some non-knowledge state. Likewise if I hit my head tomorrow and I have amnesia, I don't secretly know that my name is Erin: it isn't knowledge at that point. It might come back, but when it does, I will know that I know it, and it will be knowledge. In neither case is the robot or the amnesiac Erin doing something disingenuous, which is implied by "knowing X exists, but denying it." That's just nonsense, and I don't care to go further on that track. If someone wants to believe I know something that I don't, I can just know that they're wrong about that (and so is any worldview that leads to that belief) and carry on with an "anyways..."

2. That someone can’t say they don’t believe what they acknowledge is true. It seems to me people do this every time they engage in cognitive dissonance. They know one of the things they believe can’t be true but they continue to believe both. It does raise the question of whether or not they truly believe it though. But at least as far as they are consciously aware or willing to admit to themselves they do really believe it.

I think if they sat back and were honestly introspective they'd catch the dissonance. And that's what's being alleged here: that there are no honest skeptics. It's slightly insulting.

Rise · Aug 25, 2021

Meow Mix said:
This seems like a problem. Why didn't they believe God?

The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too.
-Genesis 3:6, NLT

It appears to be the same reason most people rebel against God - they want what satan promises them. So they engage in willfully allowing themselves to be deceived in the hopes that they will get what they want.

Eve didn't have any actual reason to believe the fruit would actually give her wisdom. God had explicitly told her it was bad and what the consequence would be. But she wanted to believe it was good because she coveted the idea of having that wisdom.and wanted to believe it could be true. She chose to believe God was lying to her and holding out on her, not realizing God is the definition of true wisdom and she already had everything she needed in God.

Here are some possibilities that come to mind:

1) They weren't equipped with enough information to realize that they should believe God. God, being omniscient, would have known that. If God didn't give them the necessary information, that seems to place some blame on God.

Your suggestion is based on a false premise that the problem with people's lives is they lack sufficient information to do what is right.

There are drug addicts that will openly tell you they know their habit is going to kill them one day - they just decide they want the drugs more than they want life.

The problem here is not a lack of information about the consequences of their lifestyle, but a choice they make. The reasons for which can be varied, but it utimately comes down a choice.

I heard of a survey done which showed most people would be willing to lose 10 years off their lifespan in order to keep eating meat.
In that case it's not a lack of information about what would happen (the question provides in it's premises the assumption of what would happen) but it is simply a choice about what people decide they want to value more. The sin of gluttony is valued over successfully stewarding the health of their body. (To clarify, I am not saying eat is morally wrong, but saying anything related to food would become a sin of gluttony when someone chooses the unnecessary desire of pleasuring their senses over what they know would be the morally right thing to do. Which is assuming that taking care of their body is the morally right thing to do).

Do you think satan and the fallen angels lacked sufficient information about the consequences of their choice? There is no reason to believe that would be the case.

You might not recognize the reality of people having choice over what they belief and what they do - but the Bible says they do. So we analyze the Genesis account in light of that fact in order to arrive at a Biblically consistent theology.

2) They were equipped with enough information to realize that they should believe God, but they weren't equipped with enough information to know that they shouldn't believe Satan. The problems here are similar to the problems with (1) as far as God's culpability.

You are making an assumption for which you have no basis.

You don't know what God did or did not tell them. The Bible does not claim to record every conversation between Adam and God.
Nor does it claim to tell us everything Adam knew or didn't know.

When I was younger, and leaving Christianity, I thought about this option a lot: I was under the impression at the time that Adam and Eve were innocent of knowledge of good and evil (pre-fruit). My objection at the time was, "well if they didn't know what evil was, then they didn't know what a lie was. How could they be blamed for believing the serpent? To a person that doesn't know what a lie is, anything that anyone tells them registers as true!" Now, that might be a little naïve now (and probably not congruent with your interpretation), but it feels relevant here.

There are two problems with that argument:

1. Your claim is self refuting because they obviously believed satan's claim that God was lying to them. Logically both claims can't be true, so Eve had to pick which one she thought was true.
Eve chose to believe satan instead of believe God.

2. You are reading into the name of the tree conclusions which are not necessarily required to be reached based on just the name of the tree.

There is a lot of nuance in the Hebrew word for knowledge that does not require assuming it refers only to the simple passing of spoken information from one person to another.

The amplified Bible translates it this way:

And [in that garden] the LORD God caused to grow from the ground every tree that is desirable and pleasing to the sight and good (suitable, pleasant) for food; the tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the [experiential] knowledge (recognition) of [the difference between] good and evil.

I am not taking a position that their translation is necessary the right one, but am posting it to point out how the possible nuance of the original language is lost can aid in giving a more full understanding of what happened.

3) They were equipped with enough information to realize they should believe God, and they were equipped with enough information to know that they shouldn't believe Satan, but they didn't fully understand the consequences of what would happen. (You have rejected this one by stating they cognized the consequences in an earlier thread). This one would also be a problem, because it again comes down to God being able to provide the adequate information omnipotently and omnisciently.

I don't see why you would claim I have supposedly rejected this option.

It seems you are claiming God should be required to give Adam and Eve his entire omniscient understanding of what their choice would result in and that what He did tell them wasn't sufficient.

Your premise is false because:
1. We don't know to what detailed extent God did or did not reveal the consequences of that choice to Adam. So you can't assume Adam was not properly equipped with what he needed to know.

2. You have no reason to believe God is required to give that level of information to Adam. You have no reason to believe the information God did give to Adam was not sufficient.

You have no reason to say it would not be sufficient for Adam to be told that Gods word is truth and that God tells you bad things will happen if you eat that tree.

Because if you aren't going to believe God when he tells you His word is truth and this tree is bad, then why would you be more likely to listen if he merely elaborated more on why the tree is bad?
You could just as easily assume he's lying about all those details too.

This comes back around to the same fallacious thinking you had that people will always do the right thing if they are given enough information. No, because that assumes they will want to believe the information that is true when it is presented to them.
Clearly this is not always the case with people.

It comes down a trust issue with God. Do you trust His word or not?

To use an analogy: A five year old doesn't need to be explained the detailed physics of thermodynamics, elemental behavior, and biology in order to be told don't touch the pot on the stove or it will burn you.

It's not a question of knowledge but a question of trust. Do you trust your parent is telling you the truth or do you insist on needing to find out for yourself what the consequences are?

3. You have no reason to believe God would not have a good reason for limiting information to the bare essentials even if God did do that. If we assume God is all good and all knowing then that would mean God has a good reason for doing this that is actually the best option to take.

4. You are assuming Adam is capable of being downloaded with the omniscience of God. But you can't assume that is the case. Based on how God has set up the universe's limits with space-time, and the limits God may have built into Adam, you have no reason to assume the entirety of God's understanding could be comprehended by Adam.

You may ask, why didn't God create Adam differently or the universe differently?

But you have no reason to assume God didn't have a good reason for how he did create Adam and the universe.
If we assume God is all good, and all knowing, as the Bible tells us He is, then we must logically assume God has good reason for how he has designed things.

4) They were equipped with enough information to realize they should believe God, they were equipped with enough information to know that they shouldn't believe Satan, they were cognizant of the consequences of their choice (death, famine, rape, disease, etc.), and they chose to do it anyway. But this is incongruent with your assertion that they were in "union with God," whatever that means, before making the choice such that they would be incapable of making hateful choices. That doesn't add up with your prior arguments.

What other possibilities are there?

The issue is not whether or not they were told what the consequences were - but the issue is why didn't they believe God when he told them what the consequences were.

Why did Eve choose to believe satan instead of God?
Because Eve wanted what satan was claiming they could get, so Eve chose to believe God was lying and chose to believe satan was telling the truth, because she thought she would get something out of it and thought there would be no negative consequences.

That is what Paul in the Bible tells us drives everyone to this day to reject the truth of God - they want to embrace sin so they choose to believe there will not be any consequences for it. Even though they know better in their heart.

The way you've said it here actually makes sense, though: the problem was the phrasing, perhaps. All of the "God puts his nature on things" and "God takes his nature off things," that is not a way of explaining that made any sense to me.

So I'm to understand that you simply mean, God provides a thing, and if God stops providing that thing, then you can't live forever.

Both ways of saying it are true.
But the other way is not the most accurate way of saying it because of what it omits about God himself being that thing you need to have in you to live rather than die.

It is true to say you need something only God has to live and not die.

But that is not to say it is some kind of object God hands to you off a shelf.

The thing which you need to live and not die is God Himself inside of you.

Which is why you cannot have life and reject God because it would be logically impossible.

Rise · Aug 25, 2021

Meow Mix said:
I'm assuming we're not talking about bodily death (so I think we're still being a little confusing on what's meant by "life" and "death," using them in different ways than we normally do: that's fine, if it's explained).

You assume incorrectly.

It is the absence of God in mankind that leads to physical death instead of the eternal physical life God designed and intended for mankind.

That is why at the end of the age the people of God will be resurrected with glorified new bodies and natures that are no longer subject to sin and live forever.

A key distinction that may need to be made is that people who die now and reside in heaven are not residing in physical bodies but are in spirit form.

They will get new incorruptible physical bodies free from the effects of the fall when the resurrection of all takes place upon the return of Jesus.

I don't understand what this has to do with physical suffering though, which is related to bodies and the physics of the universe. So, this still doesn't explain very much to me. This is an explanation that might matter if I asked "what happens to us after death," which I did not.

Those who are resurrected with new glorified physical bodies will not experience suffering that came as a result of the fall.

So this refutes your idea that suffering is an unavoidable fact of the way God set up the laws of physics.

Suffering is something people experience as a result of the effects of the fall.

Yeah, I don't really form a mental picture of what a spirit residing with, inside, and over means. Are these literal? Is there a misty thing floating next to, inside, and over people in the picture? I very much doubt it. So I don't know what this means; which is supposed to be explaining the "union" concept I also don't really get.

(Edit: I didn't mean to give the impression that I'm thinking of a physical mist. I understand spirits are supposed to be unphysical, so that was a poor choice of words. But I still don't understand what it's supposed to mean for a spirit to be in, upon, or over a thing).

The spirit of God and the spirit of a being are real things that can be residing in a particular area of space time.

I suppose you could say God's spirit is everywhere but our awareness of it can be made manifest in localized areas of spacetime.
This would be in contrast with the spirit of man or a demonic spirit which are not believed to be able to be everywhere at once but at localized to a particular space-time location. Although there is some belief or support for the idea of biolocation of the spirit, being in two places at once, there is no support for the idea that a finite being's spirit can be everywhere at once as God's spirit is believed to be.

We see this in the Bible as well as in reality today.

In the Bible we see God's presence manifest as a cloud of fog or light throughout Exodus, or in 1 kings 8:11 and 2 Chronicles 5:13-14 with the commissioning of the first temple.
We see this in heaven with Ezekiel 10:4.
We see it in the millennial reign of Jesus upon His return in Isaiah 4:5.
Zechariah 2:5.

When God's spirit is made manifest in greater measure it destroys that which doesn't align with it.
His nature is likened to a consuming fire (you could say energy/light). Hebrews 12:29.

That is why anywhere in the Bible where you see God's power overtly manifesting on a regular basis you see rebellion to God resulting in supernatural death; such as Exodus, Acts, or the greatest manifestation the world has yet to see in the book of Revelation.

That is why some believe in Revelation 14:10-11 that when it says those who rebelled and worshipped satan despite the great manifestation of God's truth and presence in that day will be tortured forever in the presence of God (his presence being synonymous with his spirit) - not necessarily because God is actively decreeing punishment upon them; but because God no longer hiding the manifestation of His presence so those that rejected God find themselves under constant torment to be in the presence of God but being in disunity with it.

I don't close the door on the possibility that God could administer suffering as part of His perfect justice against those who committed evil against others - but want to point out there are more nuanced ways of understanding what we see in Scripture.

Conversely, that is also why greater levels of God's intent for creation are manifested in those people who do unite with God when that unity is combined with the expression of God's spirit being made manifest in and around the person. Ie. They become more like Jesus and therefore move in the power and authority over creation which Jesus did. The power and authority which Adam lost in the fall.

That is why earlier I gave the analogy of a tuning fork that is tuned to resonate with a certain frequency.

The manifestation of God's spirit will be so strong in Jerusalem during the millennial reign of Christ upon His return that even lions will cease to attack other animals but eat straw instead, and children can play next to snakes without fear.

Rise · Aug 25, 2021

Meow Mix said:
I understand things like "my views are in line with this person's views." If you mean to just say people's views were in line with God's and mean only that, then just say that. The mystical sounding stuff isn't registering in a way that informs me of anything. If it's something else, maybe we need a different tack of explaining it to me?

Imagine to yourself, "Ok, Erin says that the leprechaun's chariminess resided in, around, and over Joe," and imagine what kinds of questions you would have about what that even means. That would give you a good idea of where I'm lost and maybe of how to help. No offense intended in comparing to something silly like a leprechaun, understand I'm just using an example of how something is said, not comparing concepts.

What I am trying to explain does not involve merely mental agreement; which is why it can't be explained only in those terms.
If I were to speak of it in those terms it might be accurate in one sense, but it would be leaving out a lot of other meaning that would be necessary to get a complete picture of what is going on.

Kind of like what I explained with why it might be accurate to say God gives you something which gives you life, but it would not be the whole picture; The whole picture being the fact that God Himself residing in you is necessary for you to have physical life.

I think I notice a recurring theme here where you seem to be thinking of reality only in materialistic terms of brains processing information and actuating bodies to move in response to that. Such a worldview does not give you a grid for plugging spiritual concepts or realities into. So it seems like you keep trying to understand spiritual concepts as just being indirect ways of communicating materialistic physical laws instead of recognizing them as something different.

The entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 2 deals with this subject of how the mind alone, without the spirit, is incapable of understanding the things of the spirit because they must be discerned by your spirit.

To use an analogy: You'll never be able to properly understand what sight is without a sensory device attached to your body for experiencing that. Likewise, you'll never be able to understand spiritual things without using the sensory device God has given you for receiving and discerning the spiritual aspect of reality.

If you don't recognize that this spiritual sensor exists inside of you then you can't expect to use it. You won't be listening for it's input. Or, when you do receive information through it, such as your inner sense of objective morality you can't get away from, you try to explain it away by natural processes.

The mind, consciousness, and free will, are all the same thing and take place at the spiritual aspect of reality and not as material processes. But, again, without recognizing a spiritual aspect to reality and your own ability to discern it, you are at a loss to explain this by material processes alone.

From a scientific perspective, you simply can't expect to create an accurate model for understanding reality if you deny one of the fundamental aspects that make up reality.

That is why good science can only come out of good worldview philosophy that makes room for things besides materialism to explain what we see. But good worldview philosophy can never be arrived at purely by human reasoning - it must be guided by theological revelation about the things which we have no capacity for discovering or knowing by ourselves.

This probably won't surprise you one bit, but I almost quit the show when it went all mystical, finger waggly "ascension" and nonsense zen deepities uttered as if they were profoundly wise (my eyes couldn't stop rolling). But then Daniel came back, lightened up (I loved his interactions with Vala so much), and the self-awareness of the show really kicked up a notch. Ended up loving the later seasons even more!

I don't recall much of it because it's been so long, but I seem to recall feeling the series was going downhill when it was sold to the sci-fi network after season 5.
I remember it being a real slog to get through the last two or three seasons. It was never the same without Oneill leading the team. At least they did bring Jackson back; which helped a lot.

The problem is still this: if you understand that not wanting to become more like God is equivalent to making the choice to bring death, disease, starvation, etc. upon literal billions of people in literally a worse genocide than Hitler or Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot combined, how do you make that choice unless you were given a faulty moral compass? How do you make that choice unless you weren't given the information you needed to make that informed choice?

Wouldn't making that choice qualify you as being irrevocably insane, irrevocably evil (under that worldview: or, under mine, you would have value hierarchies not at all in alignment with altruism and empathy)? Wouldn't that be a very severe design flaw, considering the choice is made before corruption by the choice according to the worldview?

I see where the misunderstand here is now.

They wouldn't have made the choice if they actually believed God when he said death would come upon them for eating of that tree.

It's not an issue of whether or not they understood - it's an issue of whether or not they believed what they understood.

Eve didn't believe.
She didn't believe God's warning was true.
She didn't believe there would be consequences at all.
She thought good would come of it for her.

You could say they must not have believed God was the embodiment of truth and goodness. If they did then they wouldn't have believed God could lie to them.

And if they won't believe what God says because they don't believe who God is then no amount of information God gave them would have necessarily changed that. Because they already decided they don't trust the source of that information.

Did they really know in their heart what the truth was but just wanted something bad enough that they were willing to reject God to get it? Perhaps. It could be the same kind of self deception people today are involved in when they suppress the truth to embrace sin because they think they want sin more than God.

But whether they were fully self decieved or only partly self deceieved it wouldn't seem to matter.

The fact would be that Adam and Eve were not created morally flawed in the sense that they desired to bring harm on others or themselves. An act of self deception was required before they could go through with something that would be harmful by denying the truth of what God had told them.

And self deception is the key word there - that is what makes them responsible for their choice. They made a choice to embrace a lie because they thought it would be better for themselves than the truth. It's not something that just happened to them, outside of their ability to control. They had everything they already needed to make the right choice.

You might try to argue that perhaps their ability to disbelief God is itself a design flaw - but that wouldn't be a moral flaw in the sense of desiring to do evil. You also can't call it a flaw when the ability to make a choice about whether or not they believe God is the essential requirement for free will relationship with God to exist. If you are forced to believe God then you'll never choose to rebel because you'll never disbelieve what he says is true.

Being able to make that choice for yourself of who God is and whether or not what He says is true we can assume is a greater good that warrants the risk of what we see has happened.

If you accept the premise that God is all good and all knowing, then you are forced to conclude that God has a necessary and good reason for how He has done things.

I don't think you or most people would disagree that they like their free will and wouldn't want to give it up.

Rise · Aug 25, 2021

Meow Mix said:
So I get that, but moral noncognitivists' terms are still called moral terms: the realist or cognitivist definitions of "moral" or "culpability" are not monopolies, there are other ways to use the words. See ye olde Stanford for instance in general (Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))

Noncognitivists' statements are still called moral statements even if they think moral statements are more like preferences than propositions. Saying "no, that's our word, you can't use it" would just gum up communication: would you rather we just make up our own word, like boral or something? Boral and bulpable (for culpable)? It would be silliness: all that's important is that you understand what we mean when we use the words (and we will be careful to demarcate when we're speaking from our own worldview as opposed to a cognitivist's or realist's).

That's like Krauss saying in his debate with Craig that "nothing means different things to different people" and that saying he didn't care how other people defined it.

The fact is, words represent specific concepts. And if you can't accurately define what a concept is then you can't accurately come to any philosophical conclusions about that concept and it's relationships to other concepts.

An analogy:
Imagine you are explaining something about the nature of the big bang.
Imagine I say your claims are wrong because planck time is limited to measuring a distance of about 100 meters therefore it cannot be used to prove your claim is true.
You say, what are you even talking about?
Planck time, I say. It is a unit of measurement whereby you take a piece of solid wood plank and ascertain the time it takes for a beetle to travel the length of a solid wood plank. It's limited to the size of the tallest trees because we can't make planks any bigger.
You respond, that is not what the word means, that is not the concept that is intended to be described by that word.
But I retort: Who are you to say you have a monopoly on the meaning of that word? You have to accept my definition is just as valid as yours.

You see, we can't have any real discussion about what is truth if the words we use to talk about what is true have no agreed upon meaning.

How is meaning determined in language? Common agreement by it's users. Dictionaries and encyclopedias are merely a reflection of what the common agreement is.

If a concept behind a word needs to be more properly defined in order to arrive at what is true then that is where usually the job of an analytic philosopher comes in dial in what the essential attribute of a concept is, what defines is, and what makes it different from other concepts.

That is why I said that the definition of morality can be boiled down to most simply be: "A statement of how things are suppose to be".
That is it's essential defining attribute.

And whether or not you want to accept that such a concept as "how things are suppose to be" exists, the fact is the majority of the world believes it does which is why Craig feels so comfortable standing up delivering a debate argument where he simply assumes as one of his premises that everyone believes objective morality exists.

What you mean by "morality" and "culpability" isn't in line with the concepts of what is generally accepted to be what is being referred to when people use those words to describe certain concepts.

Not anymore than Krauss's concept of "nothing" is in line with the concept of what is generally accepted to be conveyed by that word.

You are taking a word that means to particular concept both today and historically and smuggling in a completely different concept underneath that word.

It is not only philosophically confusing and harmful to getting to the truth, but it gets into the territory of being intellectual dishonest when certain people do it intentionally to equivocate their way out of a conceptual logical problem.(I am not saying you are being intellectually dishonest in this case).

In Krauss's case, he appears to know he is smuggling in a different concept under an existing word and ignoring it's existing concept. Or, at least if he didn't at first, he realizes it now, but decided he doesn't care. He would have to be doing it because the true concept of nothing gets in the way of what he wants to believes. But he can't ignore the implications of what the concept means to his beliefs. He can't just pretend nothing doesn't exist and that it doesn't have theory destroying implications for his beliefs. So he tries to pretend he's addressing the implications of the concept by replacing it with a completely different concept and calling it by the same name - hoping no one will notice the switch.

We run into similar problems if you try to shove a new concept under the definition of morality without recognizing what concept that word has always and still continues to denote.

There are different theories of justice than "knowing it was wrong to do." In fact ignorance of the law often doesn't excuse penalty for the law, for instance: I once got an incredibly stupid ticket (thankfully thrown out by the city) for failing to stop where there was no stop sign pulling out of a gas station. Apparently the law is that entering the public street from a private property, which the gas station qualified as, is illegal without a full stop first despite there being a stop sign or not. The city threw it out as unreasonable circumstances against the intent of the law, but they didn't have to. Anyway, that's pretty far off topic.

Different theories of justice don't change the conceptual implications of the word "culpable" which implies moral responsibility and/or legal fault.

To use that word with regards to God 's actions is to imply something that is logically impossible.

For the reasons I outlined about how God could be the only source of objective moral values and objective moral duties, not accountable to anything else, it would be logically impossible for you to claim God is in moral error (valuing the wrong thing) or at legal fault (ie with regards to not fulfilling required duties) because He is the one by which those things are applied to His creation.

All I'm saying is that noncognitivists can use words like moral, culpable, guilty, etc., and if you need me to, I can define them more precisely so you know what I mean when I say them (and I can again demarcate when I'm speaking from my worldview from when I'm entertaining yours/cognitivism).

I would say that, like Krauss, you can't take the word nothing and redefine it to no longer be nothing as a concept. You need to create a new word to describe your concept if nothing else fits.

Similarly, you can't take the word morality, which has a certain commonly agreed upon conceptual meaning, and redefine it according to a new concept that shares nothing with it's current and historical concept.

I reject your characterization of this issue as merely differences in worldview.
Krauss's definition of nothing is not merely a difference of opinion or a difference in world view - it's a conceptual error, a factual error, about the meaning of a concept, which he seems perfectly willing to do knowing is in error because it helps his worldview make more sense.
Likewise, your characterization of morality is a conceptual error not in line with what that word is established to commonly mean.

It's not merely my worldview against yours as though they are both equal and we can't determine what the true meaning is.

It is possible to be culpable without being punished in my worldview; in fact, it's the norm.

You misunderstand the point I was making: It is not relevant if certain justice systems refuse to punish all instances of culpability. It is only relevant that culpability as a word carries conceptual implications of wrongdoing. And wrongdoing is an inherently moral conclusion. Which is why culpability inherently carries with it the possibility of punishment even if not all judges choose to exercise that option.

And you can't accuse God of wrongdoing if He is the creator of everything. It logically doesn't work for all the reasons I have outlined previously.

For someone that's concerned with suffering, culpability revolves around whether someone's actions can be tied to intentions that relate to some kind of suffering, as in the examples I gave in an earlier post. I'm fairly sure this is able to form a cognitive picture in your mind of the relation between action, intent, and suffering that I'm talking about.

By using the word "culpable" in relation to God's presumed action/inaction with regards to suffering you are inherently making a moral claim that his intentions and actions are wrong somehow.

Which, as I explained, is impossible to do logically.

Rise · Aug 26, 2021

Meow Mix said:
This is equivalent to having already fallen into the trap, and this is why the premises shouldn't allow for that: it is unreasonable to fall into epistemic traps.

You are effectively engaging in the fallacy of circular reasoning.
"It's bad for you to conclude that God must have a good reason because it's bad for you to conclude God must have a good reason."

You haven't established there is actually anything wrong with drawing the only logical answer to the premises as given - If God is all good and all knowing then the only answer one can assume is that God has a good reason for what he does and it is actually the best option available.

There's no danger to you in concluding this if God is actually all good and all knowing. If that is true then you are in better hands with God's decision than any you could possibly make for yourself. And the premises start by assuming He is those things so there's no logical problem with it.

What you are really saying is that you don't trust God is all good and you want to be able to judge whether or not his actions fit your expectations of what should be done to determine if he is good or not.

But the premises don't allow for you to make that kind of judgement. The premises already assume He is all good.

Upon what basis do you presume to make yourself judge over God's actions if the premises are true?

The point of the PoE is to get the premise-holder to doubt one or more of the premises, which is reasonable to do given the addition of the observation of suffering.

Your objection is not logically valid.
You are effectively saying: "You aren't allowed to answer the question without rejecting a premise because that was not the goal of my question"

But your intentions for the question have no relevance to establishing what is logically true based on the premises.

For instance, consider the principle of indifference: let's say that there's a closet door, and you're sure there can only be one of three things in the closet. The principle of indifference (Principle of indifference - Wikipedia.) would have us assign an epistemic probability of 33% for each object to be behind the door if we're not sure what the actual probabilities are: it would be reasonable of us to do since we're not omniscient.

Inductively, there are four explanations for the incongruence with the existence of suffering with the premises:

1) God has some right-making explanation for the existence of suffering (this is the typical theodicy: the suffering exists for a "good reason")
2) God does not have some right-making explanation for the existence of suffering: it just is what it is (meaning we must conclude the premises are wrong, reasonably)
3) God has some wrong-making explanation for the existence of suffering, where the suffering is for some worse reason than we're even aware of
4) God has both a right-making and a wrong-making explanation for the existence of suffering, which is at least still not congruent with "all-good" or "omnibenevolent" or "dislikes suffering," however we want to put it

Well, by the principle of indifference, and given our own non-omniscience of the probabilities, the epistemically assigned odds are only 25% that God is all-good or omnibenevolent or dislikes suffering: it's more likely (at 75%) that the premise isn't true! This is reasonable for us to induct precisely because of our lack of omniscience.

Now, we can object to the principle of indifference maybe (that would involve figuring out what epistemic probability "really is," and would fly in the face of induction: pretty much nobody wants to give up induction).

I addressed your four possibilities in a previous post.

But what I want to say to this is that your logic is flawed because you do not solve logical formulations by rolling dice to determine the answer.

If we assume the three premises are true of the proper PoE (which is Biblical belief) then the only logical conclusion you can draw is that the existence of suffering is not incongruent with God's goodness but is allowed to exist for a greater good.

You can't escape the logic of that conclusion. It's forced by the premises.

That's why you need to try to modify the premise about omnibenevolence to make it mean something different than what it currently and historically always has meant - because if you don't then the PoE goes nowhere for the conclusion you want to force someone to draw.

Or we can object that we're not checking the premises for truth, we're just straight up assuming the premises as true from the beginning:

That is, of course, the definition of a premise. You say it like it's a problem, but it isn't given what the purpose of the PoE question is as a challenge to Biblical ideas about God by way of trying to show a supposed contradiction between three premises.

If you don't want to assume the three PoE premises then you don't pose the PoE question.
And if you aren't assuming the three PoE premises then you aren't asking the PoE question.

So obviously if you pose the PoE question with three premises the conclusion you will draw has to be consistent with the three premises.

If you can come up with a conclusion that is consistent with the three premises then you have no reason to drop a premise as impossible.

Therefore, you have no basis for claiming the Biblical idea of God is inconsistent with itself (which is what the PoE tries to do).

Rise · Aug 26, 2021

Meow Mix said:
but then why grant the omnibenevolence/all-good/dislikes suffering premise in the first place as the skeptic?
Then it just becomes a fight over whether it makes sense to start out assuming the premise is no-questions-asked true. But then this is just having the PoE debate anyway.

You are confusing two seperate issues.

If you pose the PoE you are doing it as a challenge to what someone else believes about God. The reason you grant them is because you think you can show why they are incompatible with each other and therefore presumably cause them to drop one or more of the premises.

The reason you start with the premises of the original PoE is very simple: Because that is what the Bible says about God.
The PoE was never intended to be anything more than a challenge to the Biblical idea of God, attempting to show supposed contradiction with what it said.

If you aren't willing to grant them, but want to argue with the premises to prove them wrong, then you aren't posing the PoE to begin with. You should dispense with the pretense of posing the PoE question and simply start attacking the Biblical idea that God is any one of those attributes with whatever reasons you believe you have for that claim.

You're trying to do a mix of both that doesn't logically work. You start by trying to pose the PoE as a Biblical contradiction that needs to be resolved, but when it is resolved using the Bible you demand the premises be altered to what you think they should be (even though that would no longer be what the Bible actually says about God).

So you're right that the theist could just say "well if this premise is true, then the theodicy works." Sure. But the PoE-giver is skipping that step because they know their response to that is just gonna be "well why grant that premise is true?"

You're asking the wrong question.

Based on what the person believes about God (That he is all good and all knowing), their worldview is logically consistent based on the response that God has sufficiently good reason for not doing something differently.

It's only not consistent if you can prove beyond any doubt that God can't have a good reason for what He is doing or not doing - and that's a burden of proof you can never meet. Therefore, you can never logically say this response is insufficient to answer the question.

The real question you need to be asking is "what reason do I have to force you abandon one of your premises when you've managed to give an answer that keeps all three intact?"

If you can't give a reason for why they should be forced to drop the premises they believe in then you have no basis for demanding they must drop one.

Now, that's not the same as saying you need to accept their premises are true - but the PoE was never designed to prove those premises are true. It assumes they are already true because it has a different goal in mind by trying to show a contradiction between them.

So you are demanding the PoE do something it was never designed to do. It's not designed to prove the first three premises are true. Nor does the argument require one to because the argument assumes they are true already.

The only option left for you at that point is to admit the PoE has been successfully answered from a logical standpoint and move on to trying to make a case for why you think one of those premises can't be true for other reasons.

Then the discussion becomes about why that premise should be granted, and then for instance suffering can be brought up as counter-evidence, and the discussion becomes about whether the premises are true all the same as if it had just started out that way in the first place (the discussion being about whether the premises are true, that is).

I've tried to elucidate that a little just above.

You are completely logically incapable of bringing up suffering as counter evidence against any of those three premises because you are completely incapable of ever meeting the necessary burden of proof to show that God can't possible have a good reason for any action or inaction He takes.

Therefore, given that the first three premises are assumed to be true, the only logical conclusion one can draw is that God must have sufficient good reason for what He does.

PoE is ultimately about questioning the premises, not just saying they're ironclad. If you start with ironclad premises you can arrive to any number of things, e.g.,

You're confusing two different topics as I outlined above.

The PoE tries to question the premises by first assuming they are true but then supposedly showing how they are in contradiction if they are true, therefore one or more must be false.

You aren't doing that. Which is the problem.

Because if you do that then the PoE gets answered and you can't refute the answer so the PoE is solved.

You're incapable of showing any contradiction between the premises that can't be resolved logically.

The only thing you could do at that point is try to attack the premises as being unsound for other reasons that don't involve showing a supposed contradiction between them.

But that is a completely different type of argument that has nothing to do with the PoE. At that point you are formulating a direct attack against a particular Biblical belief, and not merely trying to use the Bible's own premises to show a contradiction.

1) The Bible is true
2) The Bible says there was a global flood
C: Evidence that there was no global flood must have been fabricated

You see you are formulating a completely different type of argument at that point. The formulation you are using isn't even appropriate or sensical for the type of point you are trying to make here.

You aren't using the premises of the Bible against itself to show a supposed contradiction, as the PoE tries to.

You are instead formulating a direct attack against a fact found in the Bible and trying to show why reality supposedly doesn't line up with it.

Your argument would have to be more appropriate formulated as:
P1: The Bible says there was a global flood.
P2: Your claim that evidence shows otherwise.
C: Your claim that the Bible isn't true.

Your attempt to put that argument into a PoE formulation doesn't actually make sense because you aren't attempting to show contradiction between two different ideas found in the Bible.

Obviously if we just say "yeah 1 and 2 are true," C follows;

In your case C doesn't follow from 1 and 2. That's why your formulation makes no sense.
The reformulation I gave you makes C follow from 1 and 2, which is why that would be the correct way of doing it.

Which makes it nothing like the PoE at all at that point.

but the whole point of bringing up evidence is to get someone to doubt premises they had previously been holding. It would be missing the point to just not accept evidence because something follows if the premises must be true. The argument goes from the angle that the premises are possibly true, yet are assailable.

The way the PoE is structured forces you to assume the premises are true.
Just because you don't like the conclusion it gives you doesn't change the logic of the formulation.

It only causes you to doubt the premises if you don't have a sufficient answer that harmonizes them.

But we do have a sufficient answer that harmonizes them. So the PoE question is solved logically.

No one said you had to accept the premises are true based on that answer - it just proves you can't use the premises of the PoE to show any contradiction in what people believe about God from the Bible.

If you want to attack the premises then you are no longer using a formulation like the PoE that tries to show contradiction between the premises. Instead you need a new formulation designed to attack a specific premise directly for some reason.

Rise · Aug 26, 2021

Meow Mix said:
Ok, God has something required for bodies to seek homeostasis, to respond to stimuli, this descriptive list: but we understand that this descriptive list of stuff is due to chemistry and physics. That is to say, chemistry and physics are necessary and sufficient to get the descriptive list that forms the definition of life.

But this would mean God "has" chemistry and physics. What does that mean? Does it mean God has the property of being the creator of chemistry and physics?

I have further questions depending on that answer.

You are begging the question by assuming life and death are purely materialistic processes and there can't be any other spiritual component to this equation you aren't aware of.

You would have no way of proving life is a purely materialistic enterprise with no spiritual component to it.

Biblically we know that is not the case.

You say that we don't "have" God (or whatever) right now, how are we alive then?

This is what doesn't make sense to me. I'm told God provides something necessary for us to be alive, and that we don't have whatever God's providing right now. This leads to something like this:

1) In order to be alive, humans require X
2) X only comes from God
3) God is not providing humans with X currently
4) Humans are alive currently (?)

This is explicitly contradictory. Do you mean something else like this?

1) In order not to die, humans require X
2) X only comes from God
3) God is not providing humans with X currently
C: Humans are physically mortal currently

You aren't alive in the sense that Adam and Eve were before the fall. You are subject to physical death and entropy. They weren't.

Entropy starts trying to kill people from the moment they are conceived.

The entire lifetime of our body is defined as one constant struggle for our cells and organs being involved in a constant war to try in vain to beat back process of decay. But all they can do is slow down the inevitable.

Aging is what we experience as a result of the body getting worn down and being unable to keep up.

There is a reason the most effective anti-aging diets are those that put the least digestive and toxic strain on the body and therefore give it more energy to devote to detoxing and healing (like raw vegan) - it staves off the inevitable decline longer by allowing more of the body's resources to be devoted to warring against the process of decay. Assuming you take trace mineral supplements and possibly vitamins to make sure you're getting enough for the raw materials your body needs to rebuild itself.

That at least doesn't contradict, but it's still problematic: the reason humans physically die is because of physics.

Per omnipotence, God should be able to change physics.

You are assuming without basis that there is no other component to life than material physics such as a spiritual component.

This is false, Biblically, because Adam and Eve were not subject to death and after the resurrection the people of God will have new bodies that are not subject to death.

The Bible doesn't say God changes the laws of physics for them. It says He gives them something which is necessary for them to have life.

I feel no objection prima facie to saying if God decided for gravity to be repulsive, that would be within God's power. But then our little syllogism makes little sense: since physics causes physical mortality, the only thing that X could be that God provides which prevents mortality would be physics itself. But this is equivalent to saying God, an omnipotent being, can't change physics (since you say it would be against His nature to give us X while "not in union" or whatever).

This would be a strange consequence of the worldview if I've understood it correctly! Have I?

You are not acknowledging that Biblically that which you need from God for life is something spiritual, not material, and since that thing you need is God Himself there is no logical way for you to have it if you are separated from God.

This is, therefore, a logic problem and not a physics problem.

Biblically, physics is nothing more than a description of how Gods power is acting to hold the universe together.

But life is not an issue of God's power - it's an issue of relationship with God.

Something God can't force you to do if you are to have free will.

[quote
What does it mean for a substance or property to be "part of who God is?" For instance, if I'm powering the Matrix as a human battery, it makes sense (we'll pretend it would be efficient) that the chemo-electrical energy is "part of who I am," but bodily. Is it something like that, but spiritually?[/quote]

I don't see that it would be a bad analogy to think of God's Spirit as a type of resonate energy that is part of your being and interacts with your physical body in a way that provides something to it.
Of course it's not just a energy like an impersonal force, but it is God Himself.

I would try to use an analogy of sympathetic resonance with God's Spirit as like a substrate of reality that you can be tuned to or not and consequences result from being out of tune but great things happen by being in tune.

Much like in mythbusters how they were able to make a suspension bridge start to sway using a device small enough to fit in their hand. Simply by tuning the kinetic impulse to match the resonance frequency of the bridge. Based off a design Tesla is said to have invented which could have taken down a whole building if left attached to one of it's pillars long enough.

Being in tune with God's Spirit to resonate with it would, as I imagine it, similarly but inversely start a runaway cascade of constant and exponential improvement. Which may be what Paul refers to when he talks about being transformed from "glory to glory".

Sure, but if we're "not in union" and don't have this breath, how are we alive? It's still contradictory.

I think this may be a fitting analogy:
If you unplug your laptop from the wall, it won't immediately die. It can run for a while off what it has already been given. But it's death will become inevitable by virtue of being unplugged from it's only electrical source.

I can imagine some schema that goes like... despite being in disunion, God gives us a finite amount, about 60-80 years' worth depending on medical advances where we're born? It's strange and feels contrived, but maybe that's what you mean? If so... well, it does feel contrived. Why is God able to do that while in "disunion?" I thought you said God literally can't unless in union? Unless I'm still not understanding, which is likely.

I address that with the analogy above, but I wanted to point out something about lifespan.

Prior to the flood, people could live about 900 years.

After the flood we see a dramatic drop in lifespan that gradually got lower as time went on.

So it's not even just entropy in the sense of decay always winning out eventually in people's life - but conditions have been getting worse over time.

I had said, "...I don't know what it means to say that "God's nature is love." If you had said "God's nature is to be loving," that I would cognize. I know what "God is loving" means, I do not know what "God is love" means. Natures are about having properties, not being identical to them."

I don't know what this means. Are you saying God doesn't have properties? That would mean God isn't omnipotent or omniscient, or any of the other premises of the PoE in the first place. It would mean God doesn't have the property of being God, or of existing, or of knowing that He himself exists, or of being self-identical.

That's on the verge of being declarable as actual nonsense. If God doesn't have properties, then you're not referring to anything when you say "God," because the thing you're trying to refer to wouldn't even have the property of "being the referent for the term 'God.'"

The problem with your use of that term " properties" is that you appear to be coming from the platonist perspective of how plantinga understands God. But it's not a Biblical understanding of God.

Properties are not abstract objects that exist prior to God and then come together to make God what He is.

God is what He is and He is all those things that are ascribed to Him, but we draw our description of "properties" from trying to describe and understand who He already is.

The properties don't exist prior to God and get applied to God.

The properties we identify are descriptions of God's nature which has always been and never came into being. God is not composed of abstract objects called properties which had to exist before He did.

Rise · Aug 26, 2021

Meow Mix said:
If the Bible claims that omnipotence is the power to do things that are not logically possible to do, then I wouldn't even bother with the PoE: I would already know that this interpretation of the Bible is wrong for being illogical nonsense. That's the tack I would take: it'd be a much easier argument to win than the PoE.

That doesn't answer the question you are responding to of whose premises you are trying to attack with regards to the definition of omnipotence.

Your definition of omnipotence doesn't matter if you say you are trying to cause people to doubt their premises by using the PoE. That would first require using their own premises against them - not inventing your own premises and then demanding they replace their premises with your own.

If that's the case, then I can know the Bible (or at least this interpretation) is wrong, a priori, for being illogical. It's the equivalent of the Bible saying there is a married bachelor or a Euclidean square which is a Euclidean circle at the same time and in the same respect. I wouldn't need the PoE, the Bible would have already self-refuted and lost the argument.

You cannot prove the Biblical view of omnipotence is illogical unless you could prove platonism is true - but you can't.

The reason your definition of omnipotence is not either Biblically correct, historically correct with the understanding of that word, or even correct by the plain meaning of the word, is because you seek to place some abstract objects above god and preceding him which make god subject to themselves. Something which would be by definition something outside of himself he would have no power over.

Biblcally, there is nothing outside of God that he did not create or have power over.

The only limit on God is internal, which regards to be consistent with his nature.

On a sliding scale of power levels, your ideas of omnipotence are not as powerful or as all encompassing as the Biblical concept of omnipotence.

Biblically omnipotence is defined as power over everything outside of God.
You are not defining omnipotence that way, but are trying to force God to be subject to outside forces and abstract objects.

You cannot call your concept omnipotence that is consistent with the Biblical definition.
Nor could you prove the Biblical definition is impossible logically.

You can't even say this without using identity, excluded middle, and non-contradiction. God can't be God without being self-identical; when you say "God is the ________ (put anything here)" that's saying God has that identity. "Being the embodiment of truth," aside from being yet another mystical sounding thing that isn't communicating anything to me, is at least carrying the implicit premise that this is God's identity to be such; and God must be self-identical to be that thing.

So you are saying "God is self-identical necessarily to be God [this is said implicitly when you say "God is X"], but is not bound to be self-identical," which is self-refuting. This argument defeats itself, and is illogical by definition.

...

If the "overwhelming number" of Abrahamic folk believe illogical things about aseity and omnipotence, then as soon as they make that known, that'd be the angle of attack instead of the PoE. I still think the PoE is interesting to ponder, though. Plus, it'll catch any theists that fall through the cracks (those that don't have illogical beliefs about omnipotence or aseity).

...

Limitation isn't abstract or a concept. If God existed, and God was God and not something else, like a horse or a basketball, then limitation existed in a way that God is dependent on (not in a temporal way, but in the same way that "If A > B and B > C then A > C" is relevantly dependent on "A = A" even if both are necessarily true).

As I showed in previous posts; Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean there's anything logically wrong with the statement.
There is nothing you can show to be linguistically or logically wrong with the statement "God is Truth.

No one said God must acquire traits in order to be classified as God. That is betraying some platonist presumptions about the order of things that aren't logically required.

The generalized platonist perspective would be that there are an unlimited number of uncreated eternally existent abstract objects, basically ideas but without a mind, which just float around in nothingness and define reality. Concrete things are merely just giving form to the abstract forms that have always existed. So nothing can exist that was not already in the abstract blueprint for reality. But no mind created this blueprint according to platonism, it just always was there without any reason.

Platonism generally speaking therefore believes there is an abstract object called "god" which defines what "god" is and what properties are needed before something is considered "god".
It also believes there are other abstract objects for those properties that make up "god".

But you have no reason to believe platonism must be true. You can't prove it's true. You can't prove all the other competing philosophical possibilities to platonism are impossible.

And platonism is not what the Bible says about God. In fact, John 1 is a direct rebuke against the platonism the Greek audience would already be familiar with - explicitly saying God created all things both unseen and seen. Paul reaffirms this in Colossians 1:17

In the beginning the Word already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
2 He existed in the beginning with God.
3 God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.
4 The Word gave life to everything that was created,
and his life brought light to everyone.
-NLT

In the beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself. 2 He was [continually existing] in the beginning [co-eternally] with God. 3 All things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him not even one thing was made that has come into being. 4 In Him was life [and the power to bestow life], and the life was the Light of men.
-AMP

Biblically, God calls Himself "I am" for a reason.
He is not a list of properties required to become who He is. He is Himself. And there is nothing else like Him. Nothing to which he can fully be compared to.

So when we talk about what Truth is, we aren't talking about an idea that we invented. We only have the idea because God already is that reality and we are aware of it's existence.
And we aren't talking about an idea that preceded god and which God must conform to.
The opposite is true: The universe we see conforms to truth/logic because it reflects who God is.
God is not truth because he reflects a pre-existent abstract idea that he has conformed to.

Truth is also where we get logic from. The laws of logic are nothing more than what we have identified about how truth functions and is defined.

That's why God is Himself logic because He is himself Truth. And since the Bible tells us god never changes, He can never lie or contradict Himself.

Rise · Aug 26, 2021

Meow Mix said:
Are you claiming that prayer defeated the Nazis? You had to have known I'd be incredibly skeptical of this claim.

...

I'm not sure exactly what you're claiming here, it feels like you're telling me that magic works. We're moving into uncomfortable, less philosophical, less interesting territory with this. I'd rather we just stick to philosophy if possible.

You asked a question of me so I gave you an answer. If you are uncomfortable with spiritual answers then you aren't going to be comfortable getting any answer about any concept from the Bible. It would be impossible not to talk about the spiritual realities when trying to understand the material world we see from a Biblical perspective.

If you presume to start from the premise that the Bible can only be understood in materialistic terms then you'll find yourself incapable of understanding it - because that is not the premise upon which the Bible was written.

You seem to assume a priori that the spiritual aspect of reality can't be real. But you can't prove a materialistic worldview is true and you can't prove spiritual things don't exist.

This is directly relevant to the PoE as well. It ties in with why evil happens and why it is stopped or not stopped.

You can't begin to ask the "why" questions unless you're willing to look at spiritual answers for those questions.

You are also incorrect to try to demarcate spiritual vs philosophical realities.

What you call magic is just you not understanding what is happening or why.
If you did understand it then you would be able to talk about it in scientific or philosophical terms.

I can talk about a lot of these spiritual things you call magic in philosophical terms because I understand more theologically about what is going on and why. Even if I don't understand all of it, I know enough to be able to start talking about it philosophically instead of just dismissing it as unknowable magic talk.

If you want to probe deeper into why God could be doing things the way He does then you are getting into inherently spiritual territory that will necessarily give you spiritual answers. There's no way to talk about it otherwise.

And if you understand the spiritual realities then you can start to talk about them on a more philosophical level.

And that's not a problem unless you have an a priori commitment to materialism that refuses to consider the spiritual aspect of reality may exist.

This also reminds me of Judges 1:19 re: God being "with" the Israelites, but they were unable to drive out some iron chariots (I am sure there is probably some exegesis that maybe clears this up, I don't know; just saying this made me think of that for some reason).

It doesn't say because God didn't have the power to. It implies Israel didn't have the faith that God could help them drive out the inhabitants because they had iron chariots. Understanding why they would lose faith would require an understanding of how powerful the chariot was in warfare at that time against foot soldiers. The best analogy we have in modern warfare would be a rifleman squad vs an armored infantry fighting vehicle. Although you would need to have some understanding of how modern military warfare, tactics, and technology works to fully appreciate the nuance of that analogy; I suspect even the average person understands they would rather be in the armored vehicle with a big gun than on foot with a rifle.

We see throughout the Exodus and the conquest of canaan that Israel's unbelief ends up causing death or a failure to possess all that is promised to them.

It is a recurring problem throughout Israel's history after the conquest of canaan is complete - all the way up until the final destruction of the last temple by the Romans.

It is still a problem for the believer in Christ today.

This is the oldest problem of mankind - Eve didn't trust God.

People not trusting God is why they don't acquire what is promised to them or lose what they already have.

Rise · Aug 26, 2021

Meow Mix said:
There are different conceptions of what it means for "how things are supposed to be."

There is only one concept that is being communicated by me with the word "supposed" with regards to morality as a concept.

made or fashioned by intent or design
what's that button supposed to do
Definition of SUPPOSED

That would be where we get moral values.

Another definition:
required by or as if by authority

That would be where we get moral duties, which was not what I was referring to.

Although there are many different definitions of the word supposed, such as what you belief, none of those other meanings were intended when I used the word. I did not think there would be a need for a more precise word because I thought it would be understood which meaning I was intending.

I tried to specifically choose simple common language to make it more easily understandable.

I can restate this more precisely if needed:

Morality is at it's conceptual core a statement of how things were intended/designed to be.
The language is a little more stilted and less pithy but the concept is the same.

There is the universal way, which is objected to by noncognitivism, and there is the value-based way: I value empathy, so I have beliefs about "how things are supposed to be." That's a morality. In post 320 I talked about how noncognitivists can still use these terms. If there is any confusion, I just need to help define them for you and demarcate when I'm speaking as a noncognitivist from when I'm speaking as someone humoring cognitivism.

You are not using the concept I communicated to you accurately.

It morality is defined as how things are intended/designed to be then that requires a designer and only the designer can be the one to impart that definition to their creation.

Therefore, you are completely incapable of changing what the intent and design of creation is based on what you believe.

That is the definition of what objective is - it's true regardless of what any person believes about it.

That is why I said originally that to properly define morality as a concept is to determine that morality as a concept is inherently objective. It cannot be subjective and still be called morality as a concept.

To call whatever you believe "morality", or "how things are designed/intended to be", is factually false because it is logically impossible.

You are merely giving your opinion about how you think things are intended to be - but you can't even claim your opinion could possibly ever be true because it is logically impossible for there to be intent behind creation if you deny a creator exists.

There is no one to give intention to creation in your worldview therefore you can never have a valid opinion about how you think things are intended to be because no intention can logically ever exist.

Therefore, when you talk about how you believe things should be, you are merely only communicating your preference or desire for how they would be. There is absolutely no intent to creation implied behind your beliefs.

Which is why your opinion about how things should be carries no more weight or value logically/philosophically than you expressing your opinion about what flavor of ice cream you want. You might feel more strongly about it, but your emotions don't make it more true. Logically there's no valutative difference between your different types of opinions because in both cases there is presumed to be no objectively right answer.

This is not simply an issue of you having your concept and me having mine and we can't say one is more right than another. There is only one logically conceptual way to define the term "morality" based on what it is currently and historically understood to mean by the common body of english speakers. Which breaks down into being a statement that implies intent/design/purpose; which would both make it objective by being a standard outside of man and would require a creator because only minds can have intent.

That is why I used the analogy of comparing it to objective truth - You can't call it your truth vs my truth and still be talking about "truth" as a concept. Truth as a concept is, by definition, singular and exclusive. If two contradictory things can both be called true then it's only because you have changed the conceptual meaning of the the term truth to no longer be what truth currently and historically has always been taken to mean.

It is logically impossible to say there is an objective intent behind creation without requiring you to logically conclude there is a creator/designer.

Either there was a creator or there wasn't.
If there is a creator then it is logically possible not to have intent/design be part of the creation. So objective moral values exist by necessity if there is a creator.
If there isn't a creator then it is impossible to ever have intent/design behind the universe or anything in it.

If objective moral values do actually exist, therefore, a creator must necessarily exist.

You are denying that objective moral values exist - but most atheists/nontheists/agnostics won't do that. Even well known ones on debate stages try to have their cake and eat it too by affirming objective moral values and duties exist but trying to pretend they can have that without a Creator.
Most don't have the philosophical understanding to realize why they have to take that position in order to be consistent with their worldview.

I think you are verging on a similar error. You seem to be trying to affirm we can have functional objective morality, ie all the benefits of objective morality existing, while at the same time denying it actually exists. As though it is a kind of useful fiction we adopt out of necessity. Or, as it may be in your case, claiming we don't have a choice and it's part of our evolutionary programming.

But you haven't considered the full logical and philosophical ramifications of what is possible in a world where everyone admits no objective morality exists.

What is going to keep people moored to adhering to this useful fiction if they are fully aware it actually is a fiction?
Because even most hardcore atheists still want to believe objective morality is real. They aren't willing to give up belief in it. Even if they can't logically justify it.
They not only understand the danger of going down that route, but they are incapable of doing so because they believe deep in their heart that it is factually true to say that some things are just truly are wrong no matter what anyone believes about it. And because of that belief they simply can't entertain the cognitive dissonance of denying that objective moral values and duties exist.

You get around that by denying people have choice and it's just evolutionary programming - but if we were just materialistic robots we'd be bound by physical determinism and we wouldn't even be conscious beings with the ability to have intent.

Obviously we have conscious intent, so we can't just be bound by materialistic determinism. Our mind needs to transcend the limits of determinism.
Which means we have free will by definition. The defining aspect of consciousness - will (another way of saying intent) - is the same defining aspect of free will. Because will by definition doesn't even exist unless it's free. Just like you can't have intention about something without having free intention about it. Intention dictated by something else wouldn't be your intention by definition anymore.

Rise · Aug 26, 2021

Meow Mix said:
If you object to that then I'll just make terms to use them the same way I normally would, which would be mildly annoying (like I could call what I normally call "morality" something like "smorality", it would be a mild annoyance but it would be better than typing it out every time; that's why we use terms in the first place). All that matters is that you understand what's being said. English, and every language really, assigns multiple contexts to the same words. This is no different, and it's accepted generally in philosophy for noncognitivists to use these terms because philosophers know what they mean when they do.

When noncognitivists talk about their deontologies, they are talking about beliefs about the way the world should be. These kinds of beliefs have the qualities that we call moral. The details are different. If you feel comfortable with "true morality" we can use that to refer to objective morality concepts, but I don't think it's necessary.

We already have a term for the concept you are using: It's called a preference. As I outlined above. As I also explained, there are not multiple concepts of equal value hiding behind the word "morality" either today or historically.

Moral:
a: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior
b: expressing or teaching a conception of right
c: conforming to a standard of right behavior
Definition of MORAL

You cannot talk about right or wrong as concepts without talking in objective terms.

If you are not talking in objective terms then you cease to be talking abuot right or wrong as conceps.

Morality (from Latin: moralitas, lit. 'manner, character, proper behavior')
is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper (right) and those that are improper (wrong)
Morality - Wikipedia

That is why I said the definition of morality boils down to "how things are intended to be".

Because the only way you can have right or wrong is for there to be an objective intent behind how things are designed to be vs how they are now.

Without an intention/design then nothing can be said to be truly right or wrong because there is no standard for determining how things were intended/designed to be.

Anyone using that term the way you are is using it incorrectly.

Calling your preference "morality" loads a lot of false implications behind your preference that aren't logically justified.

Even inventing a new term for it implies there is something different about your concept when functionally it is no different than the existing concept of a preference.

It would be philosophically unnecessary and harmful to multiply terms beyond necessity - especially when a proper analytical examination of the concept reveals it already fits nicely in an existing conceptual category.

Noncognitivists have values, those values lead to feelings about oughts, and those oughts lead either to feeling something is right or feeling something is wrong, leading to guilt when something is felt to be wrong. It looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it's morality.

The defining characteristic, as I pointed out, of morality is design/intention with regards to something - because that is the only way you can make genuine statements about what is actually right or wrong about something. And any statement of right vs wrong is an inherently objective statement because you cannot have two contradictory conclusions on what is right without one of them being wrong.

Therefore, your feelings and beliefs don't even get to lay claim to being one possibility of what could be right if you deny a creator - because then by definition you have no possible way for there to ever be an intent behind reality so nothing actually can be right or wrong.

Therefore, under your worldview, the only possible definition for your feelings/beliefs is that of a preference/desire.

Or, here's another case of how it would be absurd to gatekeep words like this. Atomists believed that matter is made up of indivisible particles -- atoms. Atomic theory wasn't actually fully accepted by the time Boltzmann killed himself, and even after, it was already thought that atoms actually could be divided into smaller particles (such as Bohr's model). Ought we to be distraught that they use the word "atom?" But they're not true atoms, they're divisible!

I have by this point given a thorough a case for why in the instance of the word "morality" it is critical to properly identify the concept behind the word as much as it is important to correctly identify what concept is behind the word "truth".

These are foundational philosophical terms that deal with the core issues that matter most, the reason philosophy is even undertaken in the first place and regarded as having any real significance - What is true and what is our purpose?

We therefore can't afford to be cavalier with these definitions. The consequences of bad definitions for these terms like morality or truth would have catastrophic downstream effects on everything else you tried to analyze philosophically.

Therefore, your analogy of the atom doesn't reach the same philosophical significance.

One of the primary purposes of philosophy as a discipline is to define what concepts are and what makes them different from other concepts. If you don't do that then you can't accurately come to any conclusions about anything. Half the battle in philosophy is simply coming to accurate conceptualizations and definitions.

Analytic philosophy - Wikipedia
Many philosophers and historians have attempted to define or describe analytic philosophy. Those definitions often include an emphasis on conceptual analysis: A.P. Martinich draws an analogy between analytic philosophy's interest in conceptual analysis and analytic chemistry, which aims to determine chemical compositions

And, furthermore, you would be wrong to suggest that science has no need of this philosophical discipline to make sure their concepts and terms remain in harmony over time.

Without that you end up precisely with the problem of Krauss trying to argue that something can come from nothing by redefining the concept of nothing to be the concept of something.

The reason we have philosophers of science and philosophers of physics is precisely to keep such stupidity in check so it doesn't cause problems. In this case, however, redefining "nothing" has far worse implications than redefining the atom. Especially since "nothing" is so commonly known and understood to mean a particular thing that it is irresponsible and impossible to try to redefine it's meaning for your pet theory without inducing confusion. I can't say that redefining the concept of the atom ever had any such danger considering it was a more specialized word to stat with.

That is why Philosopher of History and Science Stephen Meyer said only the philosophers of science were in a position to actually properly define what science is. Because people in hyper specialized fields think the type of science they do is the only type of science not realizing there are other methods of science. You need someone with philosophical training and a broad overview of the field to be able to come to some conclusions about how science as a whole can be properly defined as a concept.

But truth and morality are not obscure technical words of the philosopher's discipline - they are commonly known and understood words, with solidified concepts, whose definitions go back as far as we have recorded history.

It is therefore inexcusable to throw away that conceptual definition and replace it with your own invention.
It is also philosophically and logically dangerous to do so, because you are going to make clear and accurate communication impossible and introduce widespread confusion.

Words don't matter as long as we understand what people are saying. Words often have complicated and confusing histories that are tied to ideas that may not even matter anymore for the usage of the word. Let us not care about what word is used as long as we know what is meant when the word is used.

Krauss calling nothing something proves that words do matter.
And you can't understand what he is saying if you think nothing means what it currently and historically has always meant.

Even if he were to define up front what nothing means to him that would not excuse his behavior either- he still factually is not talking about nothing. Nothing has a clear meaning in our language to describe a specific concept. It is the same meaning it has always had as long as we can trace it back. It is even a concept we can trace back to the earliest written languages and that concept is found to be the same as the one we have.

So you don't do away with nothing as a concept by simply redefining it to be a different concept. That is intellectually dishonest.

He has no basis for redefining the term to have a different concept.

His only motivation for doing that is because the concept of nothing ruins his worldview. So he wants to pretend he is addressing the concept of nothing without actually having to address it.

It's a shell game with words. He's making you think he's addressing the concept of nothing but really he's addressing an entirely different concept. But by intentionally calling them the same word he intends to make you think he has dealt with the true concept of nothing and put it to rest as far as his worldview is concerned.

Now I don't know if he is knowingly lying and trying to deceive people or if he just wants so badly to put this issue to rest that he has lied to himself and deceived himself into thinking this is an appropriate way to solve the problem of nothing for your worldview.

Likewise, the definitions of truth and moral are so clear currently and historically, and so widespread in their understanding, that it is completely inexcusable to start trying to redefine them as different concepts while still pretending you are talking about the same concept.

Rise · Aug 26, 2021

Meow Mix said:
All that's needed to create a duty is to believe there is one: this is what it means for us to have values in the first place, it means that we feel we ought to pursue them. Since we believe we ought to, we have a self-imposed duty. It's what it means to have something like valuing altruism: it means I can fulfill hypothetical imperatives like "if I value altruism, then I ought to do X."

...

No, duties can be about merely feeling the obligation of how something is supposed to be. Deontology is notoriously meta-ethics neutral (see: Nagel), or I can quote ye olde Stanford again:

...
To be super-clear, most noncognitivists are some form of expressivists, mentioned explicitly as capable of being deontological (e.g. moral statements are expressing something, rather than there being a truth to the moral statement outside of the hypothetical imperative).
...
It is objectively true that if I know what someone's value hierarchy is, I can speak to them prescriptively: this is because of the values they hold.

...

That's never been denied. The difference is moral values come with duties we impose on ourselves, whereas preferences for candies don't. Whether that's a quantitative or qualitative difference is probably a moot question.

Duty
: conduct due to parents and superiors
obligatory tasks, conduct, service, or functions that arise from one's position
a moral or legal obligation
the force of moral obligation

off duty

: free from assignment or responsibility

on duty

: engaged in or responsible for an assigned task or duty

Definition of DUTY

A duty (from "due" meaning "that which is owing"; Old French: deu, did, past participle of devoir; Latin: debere, debitum, whence "debt") is a commitment or expectation to perform some action in general or if certain circumstances arise.
Duty - Wikipedia

Duty is not defied by what you value - duties are always defined by a personal authority in relation to you that is able to command a certain behavior of you.

It is logically possible to have values but not have a duty to act on those values.

If you believe you have a duty to act on your values that raises the necessary question of "by whose authority are you obligated to do this?"

What obligates you to act on your values?

Again, you're just talking about a preference. You prefer to act on your values. But that's not the same as saying you have a genuine duty to act on them.

A duty would require a personal authority of some sort to command you to do something.

But you can't logically be your own authority for yourself to dictate duties to yourself - otherwise that's not duty by definition. Duty is defined as an outside authority (or standard developed by an authority) which subjugates you to it. If you subjugate yourself to your own standard you invented then that's simply called doing what you want - Ie. preference/desire.

It's never been claimed on account of my noncognitivism that moral beliefs are different in nature from preferences (they are a special type of preference, essentially, yes).

This is the fundamental problem with you attaching the word morality to your preference - you are trying to pretend your preference has has some kind of elevated or special significance which makes it carry more weight than other types of preferences. When the reality is they are both equally a preference. You might feel one more strongly, but as far as objective truth goes they are both no more right or wrong than any other preference you might have.

Logically speaking, according to your worldview, your preference to not torture and murder children cannot be said to be anymore genuinely right or wrong than you preference for chocolate or vanilla ice cream.

I believe the reason you want to put your behavioral preferences on a pedestal as something special and different is precisely because you know in your heart they are different - but your worldview can't justify the idea that they are.

I submit to you the possibility that the reason you know in your heart that your beliefs about right and wrong carry special weight and significance is precisely because you intuitively know as an experiential proper basic belief that objective morality does exist. To the point where you can't bring yourself to regard your behavior preferences as no better than your preference for a particular flavor of icecream.

But trying to give special honor in your mind to your behavioral preferences doesn't solve the logical problem of your worldview that would require you to logically regard them as no different - if you were going to be consistent with what you say you think is true.

The premise that only the creator of reality's intent for how they want it somehow means all within that reality must share that intent with how they want it to be is unjustified; you've just assumed it.

You misunderstand: Given that intent of a creation can only be determined by the creator by definition, is it logically impossible for you as a created being to change what the intention was for yourself as a creation.

You want to be able to decide what the intent of your creation is but you can't - it was already decided the moment you were created.

And if you don't believe in a creator then that means necessarily you have no intent behind your existence. Logically you cannot create for yourself an intent because you did not create yourself and you cannot recreate yourself.

You can make the sentence true by typing it, "Since you did not create reality, you don't get to decide how it's supposed to be according to God's intent," but then we have to wonder "don't we have our own intent for it?" and "why ought we only care about the creator's intent when we have our own?"

Same problem for you as above. You didn't create reality therefore you can't decide what the intention was for it.

And anything you did create with your hands falls under the question of not "did I give intent to what I just created" but rather "is what I created in line with the intent my creator has for me?"

So although you might be able to have a purposed intention for your invention - you don't get to decide whether or not the purpose you intended is morally right or wrong because that standard of morality has already been set by the one who created you and everything else.

You can say "it's against the creator's intent for you to have your own intent," but it's just a microcosm:

I addressed that above, but I wanted to point out that the Bible says we are made in the image of God. I believe that includes the ability to be creators to some extent at least because God is a creator. We obviously can have intention.

The key distinction here is the limits of what kinds of intention we can impart to our creations.

We cannot override the intentions/purposes that God has ascribed for us when He created us.

But there is freedom within that framework to have our own intentions and create things independently - and such things will be judged as to whether or not they are in keeping with God's intentions and purposes for what we are to do and use our creations for.

You can design a garden plan to feed your family or you can design a garden plan with hidden traps to kill your neighbors. These can be essentially the same kind of creative activity but with diametrically opposed moral objectives. One is right and one is wrong based on the fact that God did not purpose and intent you to do the later, but he did the former.

How you design the garden to feed your family can also have it's own moral implications. Are you stewarding the land according to God's intentions or are you destroying the topsoil and poisoning the land/water?

the response could simply be "so?" We need something more, some justification: some deontology for why the creator's intent has to be ours, too. Ought to be ours.

"Because that's the way it's supposed to be, according to the creator" isn't an answer because it just circles back.

You are talking about objective moral duties at this point, which is not what my argument was trying to establish. I was establishing objective moral values as a reality.

I could establish objective moral duties too, but we would be getting ahead of ourselves if we on't first deal with the reality of objective moral values.

There would be no point in debating whether or not God has the authority to put duties on us if we can't first settle whether or not objective moral values even exist - let alone where they come from.[/quote][/quote]

Special Pleading and the PoE (Part 3)

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