Special Pleading and the PoE (Part 3)

[Rise]

In (1), you're pretty much implicitly saying "how things are supposed to be according to the creator

To say “how something is suppose to be according to the will of the creator” is to state a redundant tautology when you are talking about the creator of everything.

Because the Creator of everything is the only one who can ever logically have intention for what was created.

It is also logically impossible to create something without having an intention behind the act of creation.

It is also impossible for you to ever change or remove the intention God had for you when He created you.

Therefore, it is false to suggest that you have the ability to generate your own intentions that are on par with God’s intentions for you.

Since you did not create yourself and cannot recreate yourself, it is false to suggest you can have intentions for yourself. You can have desires contrary to God’s intentions for you, but your desires don’t override the intention you were created with.

The only thing you can have intentions for are the things which you create. But those intentions will necessarily be judged as to whether or not they line up with the intentions your Creator has for you.

For example:
-God intended for you to love others.
-No amount of desire or decision on your part to want to hate others will ever change the fact that you were created with the intention to love others.
-If you create an invention with the intention of doing hateful things to other people with it, then your creative intentions are judged to be in violation of what God created you to do.
-Therefore, although you have the ability to create and impart intention to your inventions, you don’t have the ability to decide what is moral with regards to your inventions because you are subject first to the morality God assigned to your creation.

." 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.

As I already said: not all intentions carry with them objective statements of moral purpose.

Your analogy fails to convey the key pieces of information about what I said because there is no implication in your analogy that the architect is in the position to dictate moral values or duties about what his creation should or must be used for.

It might be true to say he designed a room for a certain use: but we have no reason to conclude that you going against man’s intended design for a room constitutes a violation of the purpose God intended for you for. Therefore that wouldn’t be an issue of morality. Because a human architect doesn’t get to decide for you what is objectively moral. God has already set that for you.

To explain what I said again about the source of objective morality values:
1. Morality is defined as how things were intended/purposed to be. We have no other metric by which to judge right vs wrong. The only question is how do we determine how things were intended/purposed to be?
2. Objective moral values would therefore be defined as valuing how things are objectively intended to be.
3. God is the only one who could assign intention and purpose to everything as no one else could have created everything.
4. God is therefore the only one who can assign objective intention and purpose outside of the opinions and intentions of mankind.
5. Therefore, only God’s intentions can serve as objective moral values showing how things are intended to be.

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.

Objective moral duties was never a part of the argument I was making.

I was arguing for how logic can prove only God can be the source of objective moral values if God is premised to be the creator.
And further that if there is no creator then there can never be objective moral values.

I could make an argument for God being the source of objective moral duties too, but that would be a different argument from the one I was making which you are trying to dispute.

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.

You are making a category error.

You deciding you wish for something to have a different intention is not the same as actually changing what the intention was behind something.

It is logically impossible for you to alter the intention God had for you when He created you.
You can’t go back in time and give a different intention to your creation.
You can’t recreate yourself to give yourself a new intention.

Furthermore, since you yourself are created by God, you yourself are subject to whatever His intention was for you when He created you. Therefore, whatever you intend for something is subject to whether or not your intention lines up with God’s intention for you.

That is why all your analogies about one person creating an object and another person doing something different with it all fail at a fundamental level: because one person didn’t create that other person and has no authority over them to dictate what their intention/purpose is. Therefore, one person has no ability to decide for another what is moral.
Only God can decide for us what is moral, as our creator.
And we as created beings have no ability to override God’s intentions for us.
Choosing to disobey God’s intention is not the same as claiming to be able to override or replace it.

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).

...

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.

You are not understanding the nature of the argument to think objective moral duties are necessary to have objective moral values, as I explained above.

I also explained above why it is false to think that the existence of objective purpose implies objective duty.

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!)

I have also addressed that line of argument in detail in the above responses.

The errors in your thinking here:
1. That moral values are not different from moral duties.
2. That you have the ability to change or abolish your intention by having a desire for it to be different.
3. That your claim to have an intention about an external object carries equal weight to God’s intention for that as both it’s creator and your creator.
4. That your intentions for things you create aren’t subject to God’s intentions for you as His creation.

 

[Koldo]

That's the intent. You're thinking of the logical PoE as I just mentioned in another response I'm pretty sure. I'm attacking whether premises are true when taken in conjunction with each other and observations, not granting that they're true.



That's the point of the meta-epistemic argument I've been making. By "the meta-epistemic argument," I mean my argument that it's not reasonable to take premises that rely on human non-omniscience and lead them to a conclusion that defies all evidence which we can't refute because we're not omniscient. These kinds of arguments can be made arbitrarily and can't be escaped from, it's not reasonable to make them.

It can be boiled down to:

1) God can do things in ways humans can't know since they aren't omniscient
2) God has a property
3) Observations appear to conflict with (2)
C: The observations do not conflict with (2) because (1) makes the apparent conflicts congruent with (2) in some unknown way

But can't you see that we can fill this in with anything we want? Isn't that a problem?

1) Unies can do things in ways humans can't know since they aren't omniscient
2) Unies have (some property)
3) Observations appear to conflict with (2)
C: The observations do not conflict with (2) because (1) makes the apparent conflicts congruent with (2) in some unknown way

We can fill in any actor (as long as they're smarter or more powerful than humans; they don't even have to be omnipotent/omniscient), and we can fill in any property; and then it doesn't matter what we observe because our observations can never conflict with (2) because of (1)! This is a trap, and if we are reasonable, we should endeavor not to fall into traps that we can both build arbitrarily and then never be evidenced out of.

If (1) and (2) are taken as true, then (3) never matters, no matter what: never.

This is the meta-epistemic argument: reasonable actors avoid arbitrarily built epistemic traps, so we shouldn't do it.

So the only way we can avoid the trap is by making it non-arbitrarily. But how do we do that? We have to be aware of the trap and see if we can justify the premises very substantially. Do unies or a God exist? Do unies or God actually have the property in question in (2)?

So in this case, I'm attacking the omnibenevolence property on a couple of fronts: I'm arguing it shouldn't be defended by just assuming it and falling into the trap (because you have to assume it in order to get the trap), this is the meta-epistemic argument side. I'm arguing that there are other possibilities that have to be considered, and we can reasonably decide even with epistemic incompleteness (that's the argument from the principle of indifference). I'm arguing several things to attack whether the premise about the property (in this case, omnibenevolence) is true. The meta-epistemic argument attempts to limit possible responses by pointing out they can be arbitrarily built and can't be escaped from (and are so unreasonable), the argument from the principle of indifference attempts to argue that it's less likely that omnibenevolence is congruent with the observation of suffering than the alternatives where it's not.

I have read some of the posts here, but not all or even most of them, so excuse me if you have already gone over this point but...

Why not further elaborate on omnibenevolence by saying that 'God can not have a greater reason to enable suffering for omnibenevolence entails preventing suffering as one of his utmost priorities, meaning nothing can take precedence'?

I mean, why even allow someone to pull the 'there can be a justification for suffering that we don't know' card?

 

[Alienistic]

And we as created beings have no ability to override God’s intentions for us.

So, mankind are determined actors, puppets in “god’s” soap opera?

Like a large dollhouse in which this “god” tinkers and plays with. Experiments with. Because it can do and intend whatever it wants to it’s created puppets.

“God” creates many as doctors and then creates many others with illnesses, diseases in order for the doctor to have a job, duty, role to play and to make a financial living from the misery of others.

 

[Rise]

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.

I addressed why duty is not implied by values in the previous post.

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.

…

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

Your premise is false. My statement never assumed you should, or have to, do anything with regards to the device.

I was merely giving you an answer to your question of why you should care about using something according to it's design as opposed to not doing so.

If there is anything you care about then there are ways that misusing something could negatively impact what you care about.

This presumes there is something you do care about; which I don't think you would want to dispute.

Hence the conclusion: you have reason to care about operating according to your design even if you didn't have a duty to. To not operate according to your design is to invite harm upon what you care about with regards to yourself.

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)

Any point you try to make about man's invention and man's use of said invention is a fundamentally failed analogy for the reasons I outlined already in the last post. Because no man has the authority or position to dictate to another man what is objectively right. Only God is in the position to do that.

You are asking the wrong question if you ask whether or not it's harmful to use man's device in a way other than what he intended.

The real question you must be asking is whether or not cooking and eating food in this way is in line with what God intended you to do and what the potential consequences are of not following that design.

Debunking the Myth That Microwave Ovens Are Harmless - The Weston A. Price Foundation

There is harm associated with using a microwave and eating food cooked from it. And that's just what we know bout. There's a lot of stuff we no doubt don't understand about what effect it is having on us.

God didn't even design you to cook your food. It wasn't necessary in the Garden of Eden. Cooking denatures enzymes needed for efficient digestion and reduces vitamin content. Cooking is only necessary when you're trying to eat things you weren't originally designed by God to eat.

That is why the best health is achieved with a raw vegan diet. It is how we were intended and designed to consume food.

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.

You are making a category error.

Your ability to have intention towards something is not the same as saying you have the ability to create or recreate yourself and assign your own intention to yourself as a creation.

You can intend to eat an apple.

But the apple had an intention that God created it to serve when he created it.

Your subjective intention to eat the apple does not change God’s objective intention for what purpose the apple is to serve.

In this case the two happen to coincide.

But if they did not coincide, you would not change the objective intention behind the apple’s existence by your wrong intent for it’s use.

You choosing to throw the apple at someone’s head to bully them doesn’t mean the apple as a creation now has a new objective intention.

It’s objective intention remains the same – you’re just choosing to violate that intention

This also violates God’s intentions for you as a person.

God has intentions for why he created both you and the object you are interacting with which define what the objective intentions/purpose for those things are.

You will never have the ability to change those objective intentions/purpose by your own desires or actions. Everything you do will be judged by whether or not it aligns or deviates from the initial intention God created everything for.

 

[Rise]

How do you think free will and intention are related?

…

but I don't think you can argue that free agency doesn't entail projecting intention on the world.

You just got done telling me you think the ability to have intention is one of the defining attributes of what makes something free will. So I don’t see on what basis you would try to challenge my conclusion that free will and intention are linked together.

Your ability to have intention proves free will exists.

Your ability to have intention also proves consciousness exists.

For intention is not merely a defining attribute of free will, but the defining attribute of consciousness. For it is inconceivable to imagine something being in a state of self awareness without the ability to have their own intentions. We wouldn’t call that consciousness. You can’t create a definition for the concept of consciousness that doesn’t involve the ability to have intention. We also know of nothing that would quality as something we think is conscious without the ability to have it’s own intentions.

Consciousness disproves a materialistic explanation for reality. A physically deterministic existence would preclude having genuine intention and any kind of will (which requires by definition that the will be something you possess uniquely and have exclusive power over, not dictated by external forces.

When material sources are ruled out that leaves only a mind that could be the creative source of other minds. The mind is the only thing we know of in our universe that is not casually bound by deterministic physical forces but is capable of acting independently of those forces.

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);

Moral duties is a separate issue from moral values. The later is what I was dealing with in my arguments.

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?

You are misunderstanding what I have argued.

I re-iterated those arguments in detail in the previous post to address this issue already.

The question you must ask yourself is “Is you painting the tree white a violation of God’s intention for your behavior?”

If you answer no then your behavior falls under your freedom of choice.

"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).

Your opinion does nothing to change the fact that it is a valid possibility you are suppressing the truth of God in your heart for some reason. Just as the Bible says happens.

Especially given how we observe people routinely suppressing what they do, or should, know is true for various reasons.

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.

Your aren’t giving a logical argument in defense of our claim so much as you are expressing a tautology. It doesn’t necessary hold up to philosophical questioning. Someone who wanted to deny our ability to know anything would simply say that as far as they know they know something to be true but there’s no way of saying they aren’t just in a computer simulation being fed directives about what to know that doesn’t correspond with actual reality.
So they know something, but they can’t know that they truly know it.

We don’t even have to go into something so speculative and philosophical to show the weakness of your argument.

We can do the same by looking at common examples about subjective perceptions and senses in general. People absolutely are sure they know things somethings but it turns out they were wrong. They misremembered an event. Or they just had a sure sense of knowing something was true when it actually wasn’t.

As far as they believed and understood, they knew something. But it turns out they didn’t.

Someone is, therefore, perfectly within their logical right to assert they know something but be open to the possibility that they could be mistaken.

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..."

Those analogies are not relevant to what I was referring to.

When it comes to people suppressing truth, they do know what is true – but they want to deny it for various reasons.

In order to avoid cognitive dissonance they must come to consciously believe the lie they are telling themselves. But they never truly erase their deeper knowing of what is true, they just stop being willing to acknowledge it’s existence by spinning a story about why they don’t have to.

The point of bringing this issue up is not to claim to be able to prove you, or anyone else, is in such a state – but to point out that it’s a possibility.


How do you prove you’re not in such a state?

The same way a believer in the Bible prove they aren’t doing the things you accused them of.

We look for objective evidence and use objective logic/philosophy to demonstrate that we have good grounds for the position we take.


However, when atheists/materialists start refusing to believe what the evidence and logic demand, then we have to look at what the ulterior motives here are for why they persist in denying what the evidence demands they accept.

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

You missed the point:

Which is that you can’t deny that the world is full of people engaging in cognitive dissonance, believing things they know can’t be true.

They obviously aren’t catching it – because they don’t want to. They want to believe what they want to believe.

People not wanting to be honest with themselves and honestly consider the evidence and logic of something, but merely wanting their desires to be re-affirmed, is the root cause of all false belief.

That is precisely what the Bible says – that the evidence for God’s existing and God’s commands are evident to us all, but any people choose to reject that because they want to pursue their sinful behavior.

The fact that you find the Bible’s statement insulting doesn’t disprove the truth of it.

Jesus had a lot of truth to tell people that offended them. Their offense didn’t make his words untrue just because they were offended by it.

 

[Rise]

If I were an evil creating genius, I’d likely give mankind malfunctioning moral cognitive faculties so that I can control it, deceive it, manipulate it, and enslave it, carrying out my will and have them all convinced that I’m the only god and I am good. They’d defend me and justify me all day long. Being my good little soldiers all mentally trained to consciously parrot all of the same things in my defense.

We can safely say, then, that your scenario can't be true - because not everyone is defending God's truth.

So, mankind are determined actors, puppets in “god’s” soap opera?

Like a large dollhouse in which this “god” tinkers and plays with. Experiments with. Because it can do and intend whatever it wants to it’s created puppets.

“God” creates many as doctors and then creates many others with illnesses, diseases in order for the doctor to have a job, duty, role to play and to make a financial living from the misery of others.

You completely failed to understand the argument you are responding to.

You are making a category error, confusing two separate issues.

What God intends and purposes for you does not deny you the ability to have free will with regards to what you actually do.

 

[Alienistic]

We can safely say, then, that your scenario can't be true - because not everyone is defending God's truth.

Not everyone is intoxicated or drank the kool aid.
Or have been before and were able to come out of it.

What God intends and purposes for you does not deny you the ability to have free will with regards to what you actually do.

So, you’re saying mankind are both created puppets and have some freedom.

 

[Meow Mix]

You yourself live as though objective morality exists.
-You hold yourself to standards of behavior as though it were an objective value and duty.
-You admitted earlier you believe in trying to convince other people to follow what you think is right, which is treating it as though it were objectively right.
-You are willing to execute other people who violate your standard of right and wrong (nazis committing genocide) which again is treating your standard as though it were an objective standard. Otherwise where do you get the right to judge others as so wrong you get to execute them?

You are not treating your belief system as though it were just a preference.
If it were then you’d have no logical right to stop someone from trying to kill or torture you. It might be your preference that such a thing not happen, but logically they have just as much right to take what they want as you have to not want it to happen. You don’t even have the logical grounds to fight back against it. Much less kill them to stop it. If you were truly altruistic you’d just give them whatever they desire because there’s no right or wrong – just competing preferences.
So why not lay down your preferences for their preferences if you prefer being altruistic and no genuine right or wrong exists?

There is nothing functionally different about your behavior from someone who believes and lives as though objective morality exists.

The only difference is what you think the ontological source of this belief is.

But your ontological source is incoherent in the sense that it can't account for this behavior you exhibit that is consistent with treating morality as if it were real and objective.

People that actually live a life consistent with not believing in objective morality would be classified as having various types of mental illness.

My view is actually consistent.

1) Humans have value hierarchies
2) A hard form of doxastic voluntarism is false

That's it, that's all it takes to answer all of your objections and questions. For instance:
-You hold yourself to standards of behavior as though it were an objective value and duty: We all hold ourselves to standards of behavior because we value the behavior (1) and we can't help but to value the behavior (2). That doesn't make the standards of behavior agent-neutral or objective (as Nagel would say), they are agent-relative and subjective. There are objective facts as to why many values happen to be shared, but the fact that they are shared doesn't make them objective. No objective morality is required for this to be self-consistent.

-You admitted earlier you believe in trying to convince other people to follow what you think is right, which is treating it as though it were objectively right: Yes, if I value things like altruism and empathy and furthermore value other people being empathetic and altruistic, it follows logically (from what having a value even means) that I will exhibit behavior that seeks to further that preference. Despite a hard form of doxastic voluntarism being false, it is possible for peoples' values to change by exposure to new information, new ways of thinking, and so on: so it follows that I would behave in a way that tries to increase the amount of altruism and empathy in the world. No objective morality is required for this to be self-consistent.

-You are willing to execute other people who violate your standard of right and wrong (nazis committing genocide) which again is treating your standard as though it were an objective standard. Otherwise where do you get the right to judge others as so wrong you get to execute them: Your question belies your bias ("where do you get the right to..." implies already that there is an objective morality about the matter, which is precisely what is doubted). Because I value empathy and altruism, I am willing to do things like see Nazis committing genocide executed because this is behavior in accordance with my values: it's as simple as that. To ask "what gives the right" is a loaded question that already assumes the validity of objective morality, which I reject. I don't need a right (the very concept of which I reject in this exact context), there is only my values and my behavior which is informed by my values.

Now, you worried about a slippery slope whereby a person might go from "stopping Nazis from committing genocide by any means possible might lead to a person assuming anyone they don't like is a Nazi and killing them." Some points about this objection:

1) This objection isn't unique to the worldview I've presented. In any moral worldview, people are capable of making irrational judgments and behaving in ways that are dangerous to the society around them (e.g., a person that believes in moral objectivity may have participated in the Salem Witch Trials, and believed they were genuinely doing good by accusing an innocent woman of being a witch and causing them harm). This is less an objection to noncognitivism and more of an objection to how humans can be irrational and judgmental at times.

2) The worldview I've been describing isn't prescriptive, it's descriptive: objecting to it on the basis that some people do irrational things and that outcome is bad is just an argument from adverse consequences. However, (1) is the stronger counterpoint because it takes a special kind of person to make the leap to "anyone I disagree with is a Nazi." Yes, I'm sure there are people that you think do this (I have no doubt some actually do, but also suspect you may overinflate how common this is on the left, your presumed target with these comments; I am politically left for instance).

People are capable of using their reasoning to note that committing genocide is a little bit different (as judged by most of our values) from just advocating white supremacy for instance. We have a general sense of how most people reason these things out. It's safe to say that most people judge per their values that one is worse than the other. Perhaps there are some people that really do think making pro-white supremacy comments is equally as bad as genocide in all respects; but this is why we build societies with laws.

3) You assume that if, say, objective morality were false or noncognitive that if people "found out" about this, they'd turn into hedonistic murderers overnight. This is false precisely because of (1) and (2): if they valued not murdering before, they would still value not murdering now. If they were only abstaining from murdering because they were scared of consequences, then I daresay they never valued not murdering in the first place (and putting on your worldview's hat, I would daresay they were never a good person to begin with; they were just going through the motions). So (3) seems to be objecting that there are some people that just go through the motions: this exists in any moral worldview, how is it an objection to noncognitivism specifically?

The people that genuinely value not murdering would continue to not murder even if they attended Erin's Seminar on Noncognitivity and agreed that my worldview describes the world. The people that never really valued not murdering, well, wouldn't they still have been a problem if objective morality were true anyway? So what's the objection here?

That is false. You are begging the question by assuming having a value means you must do that value - but there is no logical requirement that someone has a duty to act according to what they value.

We build hypothetical imperatives based on our value hierarchies. If I value x, then I ought to do y. These hypothetical imperatives are propositional: they carry truth values. If I value altruism, if I value property, then I ought not steal this stranger's wallet.

Duty requires an authority to impose an obligation on you. Who is imposing this duty on you?

Deontology is demarcated from consequentialism. If we feel we ought to do something or not do something regardless of the consequences, then we are behaving deontologically: in philosophy this is a duty. It doesn't require some external authority to impose it. The word is used to mean that we're behaving deontologically rather than consequentially.

Hypothetical imperatives of the form "if I value x then I ought to do y" are deontological, because we do not consider "but I would rather do z;" or rather it's implied that "if I value x then I ought to do y and not z, even if I would rather do z at the time." If we value x, we're obliged not to do z; it's what it means to value x in these contexts.

It is like saying "I'm free to do what I want so I'm going to force myself to do that thing I already want"

You telling yourself what to do is simply called doing what you want. It's not a duty by any definition.

We can have dissonant desires obviously. When I was very young and up to dumb shenanigans there were times I had the opportunity to lie to my parents. Sometimes I took those opportunities, sometimes I told the truth. As I matured and developed, I valued the truth over lies even if it meant no more short term benefits like not being yelled at/disciplined. I can want to tell a lie badly, but I feel an obligation not to. That's a duty; self-imposed, based on a hypothetical imperative.

 

[Rise]

Not everyone is intoxicated or drank the kool aid.
Or have been before and were able to come out of it.

Your statement makes no sense with regards to what you are responding to.

Your hypothetical world involved god forcing everyone to believe a lie.

If that were true then no one would be able to "come out of it"

Therefore we can safely conclude your hypothetical world doesn't exist because not everyone is affirming the same belief.

So, you’re saying mankind are both created puppets and have some freedom.

You demonstrate a complete failure to understand the issues being talked about here.

If someone were a puppet then, by definition, they would have no control over anything they did.
A puppet has no will, no consciousness, nor any measure of autonomous action.

You cannot have freedom and be a puppet at the same time. That's a logical contradiction.

The error in your viewpoint was in failing to understand what I already corrected you on: That God creating you with a purpose in mind does nothing to constrain your freedom to act.

 

[Rise]

Snipping everything about terms, that's the least interesting thing to me by far, I will simply type out what I mean until I decide what terms to use. I do object that philosophers are generally comfortable with noncognitivists using terms and understanding they have different contexts, so I might be snarky and just use "borality" and "bulpable" or something like that. Fair warning.

No scholarly philosophical work can ever be done without clearly establishing the terms and concepts involved. This is the basis upon which modern analytic philosophy is conducted.
Properly defining concepts is half the battle.
If you don't properly define your concepts then it will be impossible for you to arrive at accurate conclusions.

The fact is, irrespective of whether or not you find this process interesting, that you are making philosophically bad arguments based on having inaccurate conceptual terminology.

Objectively the concept you are calling "morality" is nothing more than a preference by definition.
Therefore, there is no special term needed for it - we would just call it a preference, because that's what it is. There is no functional definitional difference between your concept of "morality" and a personal preference.

There is no functional definitional difference between your preference to not murder and your preference for chocolate ice cream.
You cannot qualify what makes one preference more special than another, or why, according to your conceptual worldview.

Therefore, your attempt to treat one type of preference as somehow different and special, even giving it a different name, is completely unjustified from a conceptual logical standpoint.

That is to try to give your preference a false sense of gravity and seriousness when no such treatment is warranted according to your worldview that objective right and wrong don't exist.

You do this because you know in your heart that there is a serious objective difference between your preference for chocolate ice cream and your deep inner knowing that murder is objectively wrong.

But according to your worldview they are both equally just preferences. The only difference is you have stronger emotions attached to one of them. But having stronger emotions attached to something doesn't make it objectively any different with regards to right or wrong.

But you can't get away with treating them as though they are equal preferences in your mind because your inner knowing says otherwise.

Mentally regarding these preferences as equally the same, to be objectively consistent with your worldview, is a price you are not willing to pay - because you know in your heart there really is something objectively wrong with murder and it can't be trivialized by comparing it genuine personal preferences.

That's just you trying to have your cake and eat it to. You're trying to treat your preference for not murdering as thought t's something sacred and special and lofty, something different from other preferences, even though you have no rational justification for this distinction. And even though your worldview demands you abandon what would just be irrational distinctions.

That is why clear conceptual definitions are important. By falsely defining morality you can try to hide behind a worldview that says morality doesn't exist while at the same time trying to pretend you can still have all the benefits of morality being real.
By clearly identifying that your concept of morality is really no different than any other type of preference we can demonstrate why your worldview doesn't work because it would require you to go places intellectually that you aren't prepared to.

You're trying to deny the full logical implications of your worldview by hiding behind a redefinition of morality that isn't conceptually or linguistically justified.

It is no different than atheists like Harris who try to redefine what objective morality means so they can pretend to still gain the benefits of having objective morality while at the same time denying it actually exists. Because their definition of objective morality is neither objective nor moral. It's just subjective survival instinct.

They play this game because they aren't willing to pay the intellectual price of having to live consistent with the implications of their worldview to admit that morality can't actually exist.
They aren't willing to live as though that is true.
So they try to pretend they have a reason to live as though it's true while at the same time denying the truth of what they want to live by.

Every popular atheist debater I have seen plays this game. Dawkins. Hitchens. Harris. Shermer. etc. Some of them like Dawkins and Shermer may concede that objective morality doesn't exist, but at the same time will still insist that some actions are objectively wrong and feel entitled to demand they stop. Completely oblivious to how they are violating their own worldview claims.

 

[Alienistic]

That is why clear conceptual definitions are important. By falsely defining morality you can try to hide behind a worldview that says morality doesn't exist while at the same time trying to pretend you can still have all the benefits of morality being real.
By clearly identifying that your concept of morality is really no different than any other type of preference we can demonstrate why your worldview doesn't work because it would require you to go places intellectually that you aren't prepared to.

While this was not in response to me, I will entertain it. I’m prepared to go there. I do agree that if my perceptive worldview didn’t have any kind of objective morality, then in the end it wouldn’t matter what anyone did.

So let’s say that there is an objective morality and our moralities were inherited by whatever a creator god put within us and there is only 1 god, the author and source of everything. The singular author of both good and evil.

This entity created both good and evil, programmed degrees of both natures within a created being and gave it free-will: therefore- any created beings choosing good and/or evil, they are doing the will of this entity. If it’s an entity that is labeled as “unconditionally loving,” then it is loving its good and evil children. Still, the same conclusion as someone without objective morality- that in the end it does not matter what anyone chooses or does.

If it’s said by anyone that we couldn’t know what good is without evil, then this god also created evil beings with the intention and purpose for them to be evil in order for beings to learn and see what good is.

 

[Alienistic]

If someone were a puppet then, by definition, they would have no control over anything they did.
A puppet has no will, no consciousness, nor any measure of autonomous action.

You cannot have freedom and be a puppet at the same time. That's a logical contradiction.

Puppet defined as a human being under the control, power, or influence by something else. Or anything determined or predetermined for it.

 

[Alienistic]

Your hypothetical world involved god forcing everyone to believe a lie.

If that were true then no one would be able to "come out of it"

Therefore we can safely conclude your hypothetical world doesn't exist because not everyone is affirming the same belief.

This seems too difficult to discuss because you’ve taken what I have written and added many things that I never said. This is fine, hopefully an honest or mistake from ignorance.

Will try one more time- it was never said that the entire world (everyone) would be deceived or forced to believe a lie.

 

[Meow Mix]

To say “how something is suppose to be according to the will of the creator” is to state a redundant tautology when you are talking about the creator of everything.

Because the Creator of everything is the only one who can ever logically have intention for what was created.

It is also logically impossible to create something without having an intention behind the act of creation.

It is also impossible for you to ever change or remove the intention God had for you when He created you.

Therefore, it is false to suggest that you have the ability to generate your own intentions that are on par with God’s intentions for you.

Since you did not create yourself and cannot recreate yourself, it is false to suggest you can have intentions for yourself. You can have desires contrary to God’s intentions for you, but your desires don’t override the intention you were created with.

The only thing you can have intentions for are the things which you create. But those intentions will necessarily be judged as to whether or not they line up with the intentions your Creator has for you.

None of this addresses the counterpoint, though.

The counterpoint is this: God created the world and had intentions for the world as it was created. But so what? Why should a free agent care what the intention was by a creator?

This still needs to be addressed: you're going to need a deontology to get from "the designer had an intention" to "we should care about that intention."

Or in other words, you're going to need a deontology to get from "the designer had an intention" to "we ought not to go against that intention."

I'm not sure what you mean by "it is false to suggest that you have the ability to generate your own intentions that are on par with God's intentions for you." What do you mean by "on par?" I think you're sneaking a deontological claim in here without possibly even realizing it, because "on par" implies there's an intention that is "better than" another intention.

For example:
-God intended for you to love others.
-No amount of desire or decision on your part to want to hate others will ever change the fact that you were created with the intention to love others.
-If you create an invention with the intention of doing hateful things to other people with it, then your creative intentions are judged to be in violation of what God created you to do.
-Therefore, although you have the ability to create and impart intention to your inventions, you don’t have the ability to decide what is moral with regards to your inventions because you are subject first to the morality God assigned to your creation.

If "moral" just means "in line with God's intention," then you still need a deontology to explain why we should care about that. We could make another term, zoral, to mean in line with Erin's intention. Why is moral > zoral? You need a deontology, otherwise it is just a neutral fact that something is line with God's intention or not and a neutral fact that something is in line with Erin's intention or not. One is not "better" than the other without a deontology.

So you could make hypothetical imperatives like "if you value God's intention, then you ought to follow God's intention."

But you're still not answering the microcosm question: why ought you value God's intention?

As I already said: not all intentions carry with them objective statements of moral purpose.

Your analogy fails to convey the key pieces of information about what I said because there is no implication in your analogy that the architect is in the position to dictate moral values or duties about what his creation should or must be used for.

You argue that morality is the way the world ought to be, but you have only given God's intention for it as the way it ought to be. But creating things with an intention doesn't make things objectively prescriptive. They're still just things, even if they were created with an intention in mind.

You need a deontology to get prescriptiveness out of any of it. I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but it's still true.

If God creates the trees and the rocks and the Earth and intends something for them, they are still just trees and rocks and the Earth. Another free agent doesn't have to agree with God's intention for the trees and rocks and Earth.

Things are just things. If you suggest that they inherently carry something that carries God's intention, then you are saying they carry some prescriptive property, which is a bold metaphysical claim that I don't think you're prepared to defend.

The rest of the post is about the same stuff, so I've truncated here.

 

[Meow Mix]

@Rise

Due to being in classes again I'm thinking I might want to go through and see what all the subjects are again at some point here to try to bring it all back together. We really ought to have been making other threads for some of these subjects.

(See what I did there? Ought to have -- I guess if we value threads that aren't incomprehensible tangles!)

The subjects I can think of that we're still hashing out are limitation/logic/omnipotence/aseity/sovereignty, all probably one good chunk of subject. Your claims about objective morality vs. my noncognitivism has become another subject. PoE is on hold and probably no longer relevant in the face of the other two arguments which will probably be ongoing a good while. That about cover it?

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

EDIT: I went through and wrote some mini-summaries from my side that might help organization:

Regarding the reasons for the Fall (#341)

Summary: Back and forth on why Adam and Eve would make a choice that leads to physical suffering existing. I've argued that we can rule out the reasons why someone might make this choice using a quadrilemma if they are rational actors, and argued the question is whether God made humans rational or not? Also, pointed out that if God didn't make humans rational or at least capable of irrationality, then it does become a matter of probability: the probability they would eventually make a wrong choice for irrational reasons approaches one over time. I argue that's a problem.

Regarding physical suffering (#342) (#358)

Summary (#342): Rise claims physical suffering is caused by the absence of God leading to physical death. I rebut that there are clearly physical causes of suffering and death (physical as in related to the physics of the universe).

Summary (#358): I make some points about the physis-based nature of physical suffering and draw a dilemma about this in the top part of the post.

Cognitivity and spirits being "in/on/over," cognitivity and God "being" a property like life, etc. (#346) (#350) (#351) (#358)
Summary (#346): I don't know what these things mean, reasons given in post.

Summary (#350): Biological definition of life, I point out that you still have to be using the words "life" and "death" in some unknown way that we don't normally use them. I make arguments about the cognitivity of the spiritual claims. I clarify that I am not a Platonist and I'm not making Platonist arguments. I discuss what properties are.

Summary (#351): I demonstrate how "God is truth" is nonsense towards the bottom.

Summary (#358): I point out that contradictory claims are being made now about whether God is in us or not: I'm told that He's not, but then I'm told that He is to even sustain existence, etc. I point out that these metaphysics are so nebulous as to be incomprehensible.

Being informed about making a choice with severe consequences (#346) (#358)
Summary (#346): Rise claims "if you are forced to believe God then you'll never choose to rebel because you'll never disbelieve what he says is true." I find this highly objectionable and respond. (Bottom portion of #346)

Summary (#358): Why don't modern humans get a choice (middle portion of #358).

Principle of Indifference as reason to doubt omnibenevolence/God seeking to prevent suffering (#348)

Summary: I make an argument for epistemic probability in helping non-omniscient creatures make rational choices.

The meta-epistemic argument against trap premises (#349)

Summary: I make the argument that traps can be formed arbitrarily and can't be escaped from, and the meta-epistemic argument that rational actors wouldn't willingly walk into an arbitrary, inescapable epistemic pitfall.

Aseity/sovereignty and omnipotence (#351)

Summary: I give the aseity-sovereignty paradox again as it hasn't been addressed. I talk about what a nature is and what properties are.

-----

Everything from #368 and on has been posted in the last day.

 

[Meow Mix]

You just got done telling me you think the ability to have intention is one of the defining attributes of what makes something free will. So I don’t see on what basis you would try to challenge my conclusion that free will and intention are linked together.

I think you misunderstood me: I was asserting they're linked, not challenging that intuition.

Consciousness disproves a materialistic explanation for reality. A physically deterministic existence would preclude having genuine intention and any kind of will (which requires by definition that the will be something you possess uniquely and have exclusive power over, not dictated by external forces.

I disagree, but do we really want to get into this on top of everything else we already have going? I'll just say that I disagree.

Your opinion does nothing to change the fact that it is a valid possibility you are suppressing the truth of God in your heart for some reason. Just as the Bible says happens.

Especially given how we observe people routinely suppressing what they do, or should, know is true for various reasons.

Your aren’t giving a logical argument in defense of our claim so much as you are expressing a tautology. It doesn’t necessary hold up to philosophical questioning. Someone who wanted to deny our ability to know anything would simply say that as far as they know they know something to be true but there’s no way of saying they aren’t just in a computer simulation being fed directives about what to know that doesn’t correspond with actual reality.
So they know something, but they can’t know that they truly know it.

We don’t even have to go into something so speculative and philosophical to show the weakness of your argument.

We can do the same by looking at common examples about subjective perceptions and senses in general. People absolutely are sure they know things somethings but it turns out they were wrong. They misremembered an event. Or they just had a sure sense of knowing something was true when it actually wasn’t.

As far as they believed and understood, they knew something. But it turns out they didn’t.

Someone is, therefore, perfectly within their logical right to assert they know something but be open to the possibility that they could be mistaken.

We weren't talking about mistaken claims of knowledge though. We were speaking about the ability to introspect whether we know something -- or to placate your recent points, to introspect at least that we think we know something.

We can't know or think we know something without being able to introspect it. Neither of us "knows" something we aren't aware that we know (or think we know). That's not how knowledge (or belief, which I think knowledge is a special type of) works.

It's also just against good discussion practices of assuming the good faith of our ideological opponents. If we're sitting there thinking our opponents are being dishonest, what's the point? I do not think this line is fruitful and I would rather spend my limited time on more constructive topics. I don't know a god exists, I have no introspection of any kind of knowledge or self-deception regarding this, that's the end of the story. I don't care to talk about this further, at least not in this thread. If you want to go deeper, open another thread and I'll engage if and when I have free time; but I'd rather spend my sparse time on interesting things.

However, when atheists/materialists start refusing to believe what the evidence and logic demand, then we have to look at what the ulterior motives here are for why they persist in denying what the evidence demands they accept.

I've made several concessions when I was in error because I'm an honest person. That includes being honest with myself. Again, I don't think this is fruitful. Someone disagreeing with you doesn't mean they have ulterior motives. Your arguments could be at fault.

You missed the point:

Which is that you can’t deny that the world is full of people engaging in cognitive dissonance, believing things they know can’t be true.

They obviously aren’t catching it – because they don’t want to. They want to believe what they want to believe.

People not wanting to be honest with themselves and honestly consider the evidence and logic of something, but merely wanting their desires to be re-affirmed, is the root cause of all false belief.

That is precisely what the Bible says – that the evidence for God’s existing and God’s commands are evident to us all, but any people choose to reject that because they want to pursue their sinful behavior.

The fact that you find the Bible’s statement insulting doesn’t disprove the truth of it.

Jesus had a lot of truth to tell people that offended them. Their offense didn’t make his words untrue just because they were offended by it.

People that are in cognitive dissonance don't stop and genuinely introspect to see if they're kidding themselves.

Accusing someone of lying to themselves is the same thing as accusing them of arguing in bad faith: that they haven't stopped to make sure they, themselves, are reasoning through things as best they can rather than with an agenda. It is insulting: it's assuming your opponent is arguing in bad faith.

I'm telling you right now that I don't have knowledge a god exists, and I introspect that I'm not kidding myself about that. That should be good enough.

 

[Rise]

Puppet defined as a human being under the control, power, or influence by something else. Or anything determined or predetermined for it.

A literal puppet is an inanimate physical object that is under the full control of the puppeteer. It does nothing of it's own volition.

puppet - definition and meaning

• noun A small figure of a person or animal, having a cloth body and hollow head, designed to be fitted over and manipulated by the hand.
• noun A figure having jointed parts animated from above by strings or wires; a marionette.
• noun A toy representing a human figure; a doll.
• noun One whose behavior is determined by the will of others.

The later definition is figurative and the only leeway you have in this regard - but it requires you to define to what extent you think someone's behavior is being controlled by another.

To call someone figuratively a puppet could imply, without you giving proper definition, any level of control ranging from total to minor.

Under total control, they would be no different than a literal puppet, not even capable of being conscious beings by definition because they would have no capability of having any sense of independent will or intention which is the defining feature of consciousness.

So we have no reason to assume you aren't implying you think god turns people into literal puppets, considering he would presumably have the power to do so, unless you specify to what extent you think god is controlling people.

This seems too difficult to discuss because you’ve taken what I have written and added many things that I never said. This is fine, hopefully an honest or mistake from ignorance.

I did not add anything to what you said. You failed to specify that you thought god would control only part of mankind and the verbage of your original statement would imply you think god would control everyone.

If that is not what you intended to communicate, thats fine, you can correct it - but you can't blame others for correctly reading what you wrote as you wrote it.

Let's look at what you said to see why:

If I were an evil creating genius, I’d likely give mankind malfunctioning moral cognitive faculties so that I can control it, deceive it, manipulate it, and enslave it, carrying out my will and have them all convinced that I’m the only god and I am good. They’d defend me and justify me all day long. Being my good little soldiers all mentally trained to consciously parrot all of the same things in my defense.

"give mankind" so you can "control it", have them "ALL convinced". All who? Mankind.
"they'd defend me". Who would? You just said you'd have them ALL convinced. All of mankind. So the only implication to read from this is that you are saying god would have all mankind convinced of a lie.

That may not be what you intended, but your language was confused and not specific enough to convey what you intended.

Will try one more time- it was never said that the entire world (everyone) would be deceived or forced to believe a lie.

There is still a problem with your hypothetical worldview.

You have posited the existence of an all powerful and all knowing god who is intentionally causing some people to believe a lie and controlling their behavior.

Given that premise - what gives you reason to think you're not one of those controlled people forced to believe a lie?

Who is to say this hypothetical god doesn't get a kick out of making people believe absurdly stupid ideas like he doesn't exist even though the evidence of his existence is obvious to other people?

You have no logical reason to think you're the one who is free of control.

Your worldview wouldn't allow for anyone to trust their senses or reason. Science would be impossible to conduct.
Which undermines what I presume is your belief that you think you have the ability to use reason to arrive at what is true.

Your scenario would make it absurd for us to even engage in reasoned inquiry into reality, or discussion about it; because nothing could be known, none of our senses could be trusted, and we would have no free will to reason to our own conclusions anyway.

So your scenario is just self defeating. You're trying to use reason to come up with a possible scenario for reality but your scenario precludes the possibility that you can use reason to come to any conclusion.

So we are left with no option but to reject your scenario if we start from the a priori belief that we have free will to make conclusions, that our senses are reliable unless proven otherwise, and we have the ability to use reason to make truthful statements about reality.

Since I don't believe you will reject any of those beliefs, we can safely reject your hypothetical view of god as not true.

While this was not in response to me, I will entertain it. I’m prepared to go there. I do agree that if my perceptive worldview didn’t have any kind of objective morality, then in the end it wouldn’t matter what anyone did.

Then where do you believe objective morality comes from?

Under materialism it is literally impossible for it to exist.

You have no designer/creator to assign intention to creation about how things are suppose to be.

You have no objective source outside of human feeling to arbitrate about what is right vs wrong morally.

The very definition of objective means it is true regardless of what people think about it.

So let’s say that there is an objective morality and our moralities were inherited by whatever a creator god put within us and there is only 1 god, the author and source of everything. The singular author of both good and evil.

This entity created both good and evil, programmed degrees of both natures within a created being and gave it free-will: therefore- any created beings choosing good and/or evil, they are doing the will of this entity. If it’s an entity that is labeled as “unconditionally loving,” then it is loving its good and evil children. Still, the same conclusion as someone without objective morality- that in the end it does not matter what anyone chooses or does.

You ran into a critical error.
Biblically, God is not the source or originator of evil.

Evil is the absence of God's good nature. An analogy would be how dark is the absence of light.
Dark is not a thing unto itself. It's an abstract concept but it has no tangible physical reality - it merely the description of the absence of something that is real, which is light.

The idea of a duality of two opposing forces may be found in other non-abrahamic religious ideas but it is not a Biblically true reality.

Therefore, any conclusion you try to draw from your false premise is going to be invalid and in error.

If it’s said by anyone that we couldn’t know what good is without evil, then this god also created evil beings with the intention and purpose for them to be evil in order for beings to learn and see what good is.

Biblically God did not create anyone to be evil either.
God created beings without moral flaw (as in the desire or propensity to do evil) but gave them free will choice to choose to abandon God's good nature. At which point the desire or propensity to do evil becomes evident in them.

 

[Rise]

The subjects I can think of that we're still hashing out are limitation/logic/omnipotence/aseity/sovereignty, all probably one good chunk of subject. Your claims about objective morality vs. my noncognitivism has become another subject. PoE is on hold and probably no longer relevant in the face of the other two arguments which will probably be ongoing a good while. That about cover it?

I haven't got to the latest round of your responses yet to see how things have unfolded. I am doing that next.

Before I did I thought it would be good to give some feedback on where I assess the state of the debate to be based on my last round of responses.

It seems to me the original issue as posed in your original post is resolved based on what I argued. I wouldn't say it is irrelevant so much as it has been successfully answered.

The issue has a few facets to it which I think have been resolved by this point

Regarding the PoE premises specifically:

1. That the PoE premises make it impossible to accuse God of being in error or malicious. So the question answers itself based on the premises.

2. That your "epistemic trap" doesn't represent an actual logical problem or contradiction of some sort, but just represents your personal preference to be able to judge God's morality. Even though logically you are not in a position to even do so.

3. That reformulating the PoE premises as you did ends up making the question philosophically invalid because you can't identify any particular belief system that shares all the premises of your formulation.

None of the other side issues are really necessary to deal with that other than perhaps getting into how morality and omnipotence are defined.


So I think where we are currently at has more to do with your other original question about why there is an incongruity between what you feel is moral vs what we see happening in reality.

I gave reasons for how that could be explained. Which leads us into issues such as :
4. The nature of death and sin vs life.
5. The nature of free will and consiousness.
6. The nature of morality and evil.
7. Specific reasons to explain why God doesn't stop evil immediately.

Which then seems to fan out into the additional issues of:
8. The nature of properties and God's aseity. Which relates to things like what the source of logic is.

I think those categories cover everything.


I think the problem here with why things are getting spread out is that there is a lack of clarity about what you are trying to argue and why.

Are you trying to show inconsistencies with the theological explanations I am offering or are you trying to attack certain Biblical premises as simply being untrue?

You started out trying to do the former with the way you posed your original PoE questions - but when you got an answer to the question you shifted into the later type of argument.

We need to back up here and be real clear about what exactly you are trying to argue.


You cannot show any contradiction with my answer to the PoE. It is theologically and logically consistent with it's own premises.

You haven't shown any contradiction with my theological explanation for why things are the way they are either. This Bible based explanation is consistent with it's own premises.

So what you are left then doing is trying to attack the premises of the Bible as being untrue.

And that's how we get on other issues such as
1. Is what the Bible says about the nature of morality true?
2. Is what the Bible says about the nature of death and life true?
3. Is what the Bible says about the aseity of God true?
4. Is what the Bible says about free will and consciousness true?
5. Can atheism affirm the existence of morality consistent with what our inner knowing is about morality?
6. Can atheism explain free will and consciousness to be consistent with our experience of it?
7. Can platonism explain the nature of reality in a coherent way? (you say you don't advocate platonism but if we got into it you'd see why it is).

It seems to me you are going off topic from your original argument when you try to do this

Your original argument was posed as a challenge to theism to explain how the PoE premises could be true in light of your experience of reality.

I offered reasons why your experience can be consistent with the PoE premises.

You did not undermine the logic or Biblical foundation of my conclusions. Therefore, the theological conclusions I gave are internally consistent with themselves and the question is answered on that front.

But now you're shifting to a type of argument that is different from your original question by trying to argue that one or more of the Biblical premises are supposedly not true.

And those arguments could all actually be spun off into their own separate threads if you are willing to accept that answering your original question in this thread doesn't require me to defend the Biblical premises as true - but only requires me to provide a theological consistent answer to your question to show why Biblical premises are not in contradiction with each other or our experience in reality. Whether or not those premises are actually true would be a separate issue to debate.


However, if you want to dispute the premises I use to answer the question, then it is impossible to not have the debate over those issues take place in this thread as part of the context of answering the original question.


I would recommend for clarity and conciseness that you pick one line of attack and stick with that: Either try to demonstrate supposed inconsistency with the theological viewpoint I have offered as an explanation, or cede that the question has been answered successfully in a theologically consistent way and then go try to argue about why you think specific premises can be shown to be supposedly false by appealing to extra-biblical evidence and reasoning.

If you do the later, it would be very easy to spin those issues off into separate threads. While keeping this thread focused on seeing whether or not someone's Biblical premises and interpretations of reality are consistent with itself.
If you don't want this thread to be focused only on assessing the consistency of someone's worldview with itself (as the original PoE was intended to do), then you necessarily require arguing over all the premises someone will use to answer the question in this thread.

 

[Rise]

What are some reasons why someone might make a choice with negative consequences?

1) They might believe they can avoid the consequences in some way (maybe the consequences aren't real, maybe they can win a confrontation, etc.)


2) They might believe that they can accomplish a goal while suffering negative consequences (a sacrifice for some goal believed in)


3) They might make a choice with negative consequences because they don't care about the negative consequences, or actively seek the negative consequences, or despise whatever positive thing the choice harms (or you might just say "because they are evil" in some worldviews)


4) They might make a choice with negative consequences because they are not rational/reasonable


With Adam and Eve, we're talking about a pre-Fall choice (since we're wondering why the Fall happened in the first place). So in your worldview, do you not have to go ahead and weed out (3) as a possibility?


Information weeds out (1) and (2) as possibilities (and this is why I bring up God giving them information). If they know the consequences are real and that they can't "win" a confrontation with God (and they know there is no reason to have a confrontation with God, at that), then (1) is weeded out. If they know that it isn't some sacrifice that will have positive side-benefits to make the choice, then that weeds out (2).



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But if God can create Adam and Eve to be rational beings, and we can weed out (1) and (2) if God gives them information, and we can rule out (3) since this is pre-Fall corruption, what is left to explain why Adam and Eve would make a choice with bad consequences?

Your argument is based on a false premise.

The false premise that Adam and Eve lacked sufficient information.

I already refuted your claim by pointing out that the basis for their fall was in choosing to disbelieve what God said was true and disbelieve who God was.

You cannot identify anything God could have said or done to change this choice.

No matter how much information or detail God would have given (and we don't know how much He did give), it would never be enough for someone who doesn't want to trust Gods Word is Truth.

Therefore, you cannot fault God for their choice.

Seems like we're left with wondering: were Adam and Eve rational/reasonable actors? This opens a whole can of worms, like "how much is God culpable for how much humans value reason?" For instance, could God have made humans less or more reasonable by nature? If so, then doesn't it stand to reason that God could have made Adam and Eve reasonable enough not to make a choice with negative consequences out of sheer irrationality?

Your question is based on the false premise that reason was responsible for the fall.

It is based on the false premise that they made the choice to not trust God because they didn't have enough information.

No, the Bible tells us that the reason they fell was because they chose not to trust God. And the reason they chose not to trust God is because they wanted something they thought they couldn't have without rejecting God.

It is the same reason we see in the New Testament why people today reject the truth of God - they desire something they think they can't have if they follow God.

If God has no control over how rational humans are, then doesn't it stand to reason that it does become a probability game: given enough time, the humans will eventually make the bad choice: the probability approaches one?



You have earlier stated that this isn't the case, so it seems like you must reject out of hand that God doesn't have control over how rational humans are: it seems a consequence, if you want to stick to that notion, that God can make humans highly or even perfectly rational!

Their choice wasn't based in bad reasoning.
It was a choice based on a lack of faith in who God is and what He said was true.

Therefore, you can't claim it was inevitable that they would sin as a result of bad reasoning.

If you say, "they could deceive themselves because they want something to be true that's not true," that would be irrational: so the question becomes, "why didn't God make them more rational?"
If you say, "God couldn't have made them more rational," then the problem becomes, "OK, then eventually, given enough time, they would have made an irrational choice, the probability would have approached one: so the Fall was inevitable, and God had to have known that!" Doesn't that seem like a problem?

You are making a category error.
Rationality is your ability to use logic.

But your logic is only as good as the data you put into the equation.

Adam and Eve had all the data - they just chose to not believe it was true.

If you reject truthful data then you cannot expect to end up with a logically true conclusion. And it has nothing to do with your powers of rationality at that point.

Addendum: if you believe that in the future, humans will never make bad choices again, and you say God will "remake" them in some other way, that seems to indicate they'll never make bad choices for irrational reasons, which seems to indicate you do believe God has power over how rational humans are. N'est-ce pas? Then why would self-deception ever be a problem unless God desires it to be?

You are not properly defining what it means to make a "bad choice".

In the context of the fall, the bad choice was choosing not to trust God.

It was not a bad decision on the basis of being logically flawed.

God will not, therefore, need to improve the rationality of people to be better than it was before the fall.

What will certainly change, however, is people's trust for God.

 

[Rise]

I'm spitballing here, but doesn't it feel prima facie like an omnipotent and omniscient being could do something convincing to convince a rational actor?

Like what, exactly?

Anything could be rationalized away if you start from the premise that you don't trust God.

There's a reason Sean Carroll said that no scientific theory is ever truly is disproven - because you can invent endless rationalizations to justify anything you want to believe.

Likewise, there is no end to the ways you could rationalize away whatever God says or does if you want to believe God is not true.

If the actor is rational, then they're not going to have a position of radical skepticism where they think God's lying "just because," or "because it's possible." If the actor is rational, they would weigh the consequences of God telling the truth vs. God lying.

You are falsely mischaracterizing what happened.

Eve did not decide to not trust God "just because".

She made a choice to disbelief God because she thought she stood to benefit by doing so.

You can't argue that people don't do this all the time. Rejecting what they otherwise should know to be true because they stand to benefit if the lie were true. It is what powers most nigerian prince scams. To say otherwise would be to say you aren't well acquainted enough with human psychology. I don't even think you would try to dispute that people regularly do that.

We could also say your argument is self-refuting on the basis that you aren't believer in Christ.

If your argument were true then you would be forced to take Pascal's wager and decide the consequences of eternal torment is too great to risk not choosing to believe in Christ and follow Him..

So I can answer your question by simply asking you why you aren't weighing the consequences of the Bible being true vs the consequences of it not being true and acting in accordance with what should be the logically safest choice.

Even if you tried to argue about not being sure which of the mutually exclusive religions is true - the logic of statistics demands you choose at least one of the options that claims a bad consequence for not following it. You have no logical grounds for being a nontheist/atheist because that is guaranteed to get you nothing and risk losing everything.

God could do something like implant a picture in their mind showing the horrors of the modern world (where it isn't real, and no one really ever suffered in merely transmitting the idea).

There are two fatal problems with your idea.

1. There's nothing to stop them from just assuming God is lying with the pictures he puts in their head. Obviously God has the power to just put pictures in your head if he wants to. If you also assume he is a liar then why wouldn't you just assume he is inventing fake pictures to show you.

2. You can't argue doing so would be without harm. People are emotionally and mentally traumatized when exposed to horrific visuals beyond what they are use to seeing and unable to cope with.

God could prove things that Satan can't,

Like what? You can't name an example that wouldn't be vulnerable to Eve dismissing as just some type of deception. Which refutes your claim that there was something God could have done different.

God can reveal Satan's origin and the reasons Satan might be lying (whereas Satan can only respond with "nuh uh" and "oh yeah, well what if God is lying?")

There are two fatal problems with your argument:

1. That doesn't solve the problem - you could just decide God of lying when he tells you about satan.

2. You are falsely assuming they didn't already have that information. We don't know the extent of information God revealed to them. It would be unreasonable to think the only thing God ever communicated to Adam and Eve are the few lines recorded for us in the Bible.

Parents grow tired of childrens' questions because parents are finite and have fundamentally limited ability to transmit information: God suffers neither tiring nor these limitations. There is no reason God can't give Adam and Eve literally everything they require to make an informed, rational choice. Unless you presume God can't build them rational, in which case you suffer the other problem (where, if God can't build them rational, then the probability they will choose wrong eventually for sheerly irrational reasons converges to one).

You have no reason to think God ever denied answering their questions.

As I already pointed out, you are operating from a false assumption that lack of information led to the fall.

These epistemic traps would be better debated under the epistemic trap section of the debate, because you can build anything with this form and never escape from it once you do, etc. These are conversation enders because you can "justify" anything and never be convinced otherwise once you adopt these. Literally nothing could be evidence against them, even if God created tortureworld ran by Pinhead and Freddy Krueger where everyone on Earth is pulled apart by hooked chains every day for eternity*. There are meta-epistemic reasons not to hold these, in other words.

You are committing the fallacy of circular reasoning.

You don't have logical reasons to justify your claim that you need to be able to judge for yourself whether or nor God is good.

Nor have you given any reasons that would justify how you possibly could be a position to do so. And if you can't do that then your claim to need to be able to is invalid on the grounds that it is impossible.

You merely assert that it would be bad as part of your premise, and then use your premise to prove your conclusion which is the exact same thing.

You are taking for granted your premise is true without ever first proving it is.



There are many fatal problems with your claim:

1. If you start from the premise that God is all good and all knowing, then it is impossible to ever find God in moral fault because you already know your premises are true and any investigation into God's actions would only confirm the truth of that premise. Therefore, you have no need to judge God's morality for yourself because He's already all good.

2. If you start from the premise that God is the sole creator then by definition He decides what is moral. Which makes it logically impossible for you to ever be right in disagreeing with God. So there is no need for you to judge God when you can never find Him at fault.

3. The fact that you are not all knowing means you would never be in a position to judge the outcome of God's actions to ascertain the goodness of them. So you are incapable of fulfilling your desire to accurately judge God.


You don't override the logic of any of that by simply saying "yeah, but I am just not comfortable being in that position, so I'd really like to think I could judge God for myself anyway".
Your personal preference is not based in logic or truth. It's not rational given the variables involved in the nature of God and His position as creator.

It is not rational for you to think you either need to, or were capable of, judging God (which not only presumes He is real, but presumes certain attributes are true about Him which make him God).

(* -- I feel compelled to nip a possible objection in the bud: I am not presuming that the tortureworld scenario would be inherently bad. I'm pointing out that it really could be explained by the epistemic trap despite our intuition: it is meant only to show that literally nothing could ever be evidence against the epistemic trap, not even the most extreme appearances)

You never answer the most important question: What does it matter if you can't judge God?

You don't assert that such a world is inherently bad. So why do you need to be able to judge it as bad?

You don't think objective morality exists - so why do you need to be able to judge God by an objective moral standard?

You don't even think it's possible to do that. So your claims are incoherent and self-refuting. You're demanding to be able to do to God something which you don't think is even possible: To judge him morally. When you don't even think morals exist.

Why do you need evidence to prove something is bad if bad doesn't exist?

You talk about intuition. Intuition of what? It can't be an intuition of morality because you don't think morality exists.

What you call intuition is therefore just your personal preference.


Well, why does it matter whether or not the word lines up with your personal preference?

Why does God need to make the world line up with your personal preference?

You can't ascribe any kind of moral duties to God when you don't think morality exists.