h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Andy.



I hope you will take this remark in the spirit of levity in which it is intended: but it seems to me that you must have taken the 'Opus Dei' sophistry/casuistry course. Either that or what I'm about to say just hasn't occurred to you.

God's omnipotence doesn't include His being able to do just anything. Evil is ruled out because He is perfectly good. That's unless you respond to the Euthyphro dilemma by saying that things are right because God says they are; rather than God says things are right because they are. This latter has to be correct. Would you really accept that if God were to tell us that torturing little children for fun is right, it would be? Surely He tells us what is right for us as His creation. Gives us the maker's manual, as it were. Would/could He give us a false one?

God won't do some things because they would be wrong and inconsistent with His goodness. In that sense, He can't do them. Hence He has to have made the universe as sustainably perfect as anything can be.

Have you read Swinburne's definition of omnipotence? I posted it recently, but here it is again. I don't accept Swinburne's temporal constraints; but you wouldn't expect 100% agreement with my old teacher.

"A person P is omnipotent at a time t if and only if he is able to bring about any logically contingent state of affairs x after t, the descriptions of which does not entail that P did not bring x about at t. This is subject to the restriction that a person is no less omnipotent for being unable to bring about a state of affairs if he believes that he has overriding reason not to bring it about. So, God is omnipotent even if he is unable to do what he believes wrong. The paradox of the stone has false premises."

toxx

Hi az back again (library),bookmark>

runs a household.> interesting choice of words, as to eating of floors,
just because floor is clean enough to eat off does not indicate loo is not a cess pit,,library time so will end here

Hi Toxx again, and thanks for the response.

I will have to read up on Swinburne. Like you I don't agree that God is free to do just anything, and I avoided that position in my earlier post by adding that creation should reflect the creator in some way - implying, not just in his freedom. But Leibniz's position seems to undermine God's freedom re creation (almost?) completely. Furthermore the contrary position as I outlined in my earlier post seems perfectly reasonable to me (well, it would, wouldn't it...).

Abelard held to the position of 'absolute optimism' (thanks for the terminology, F!) well before Leibniz did, so we've had lots of debates about this over the centuries. Well before Opus Dei came on the scene to rescue the noble art of casuistry from its decadence. Actually, Toxx, I think you're not so bad at it yourself!

Actually, all this doesn't really strengthen the case for there having been a fall since the beginning. I suppose you have noticed that it's only a preliminary wrinkle, which turns a more probable conclusion into a merely possible one (without the 'benefit' of Revelation). Personally I think God freely created the best of all possible worlds to begin with ('relative optimism'), and we ain't living in it now.

Pain may be a biological necessity, as Alji quite rightly said; but only in the literal sense. I brought up the subject of pain with reference to the earlier example of child abuse, so it had a wider sense when this discussion began.

I found the Aquinas quote I mentioned a couple of posts ago; it is in the 'Summa Contra Gentiles' chapter 52. The same chapter argues that it is not unreasonable to say that because one man sinned all men have contracted sin through their origin; 'if there be a sin that pertains to the whole specific nature, it is not unreasonable that it be transmitted from one man to another, even as the specific nature is.' (And much more besides.) I just thought I ought to say a bit more about that topic, after my half-joking response to you earlier. It was fair enough for you to use God's ineffability to defend a philosophical argument; but I echoed it in a theological setting, and it is fair to demand more from theologians in this area (they study God, after all).

Toxx, I'm afraid I'm going to be away from tomorrow for a few days, and I'm trying to clear my desk before I go. So that's it for now. But I hope to be back on Sunday.

Andrew, I am enjoying this conversation between you and Toxxin - I'll leave it to you both, cos you express your views so well!

Andy. My position on God's freedom echoes the one I take concerning human freedom of action. God is not free to act contrary to His nature. Being perfectly good, He certainly won't do anything that increases the total amount of evil in the system. OK, He *could* do such things, being omnipotent, but the question is academic. He can't/won't/doesn't will actions with evil consequences; and being omniscient, He know those consequences.

Similarly, our own actions reflect our genetic and environmental make-up; the totality of which is ourselves. They're *our* actions born out of our individuality. Similarly, God's actions are *His* - born out of His perfect personhood.



Aquinas is clearly not on the ball here! What about the sinless nature of the man Jesus? Is that not transmitted too along with the actions of everyone else on the planet? If not, why not? OK, we can see this as a metaphor expressing the fact that human nature is of an average standard (by definition). It is therefore inevitable that some evil will enter the system as long as humans have freewill. I can't read into this any stronger message concerning the individual than that we're all born with a tendency to be less than perfect. If this is what 'original sin' boils down to, then I readily accept its unsurprising truth.

It seems to me, however, that this is one feature of our lives to which no blame attaches to us. Nevertheless, it still has negative consequences, including the existence of moral evil. I guess the simple biblical story is easier for most people to get their heads round, but the details of the metaphor ought not to be analysed beyond the point where they're merely incidental to the chosen expository device!

Catch you late weekend.

Hi Adelaide.

toxx

So it's not the OT god you believe in Toxx?

Alji

Hi Alji. I don't actually believe in any god. However, I find a Deist+ God the only kind that is consistent with the evidence and internally coherent as a concept. This includes the 'Creator' of the OT and the loving and forgiving God of the NT.

So why do I come across as some kind of Christian apologist, I hear you ask. Partly it's because I feel better qualified to do it than most here, and there seems to be a gap in the market. Others can do official doctrine, historical aspects and textual analysis. I do the philosophy side and do not defend what I find indefensible or incoherent. My views are mine alone, but I hope my stuff can help others in their thinking - even if I'm just someone to argue against.

I try to tell it as I see it without attacking any individual, however implausible or even repellent (nobody here now!) I might find their beliefs. I don't argue against faith, except to suggest that it's a route that's more designed for those without the equipment to think analytically.

toxx

<>

Indeed, your stuff does help my thinking for one, and philosophy is like maths, I find it fascinating but I can't do it! So, thank you...

Adelaide. The fact that you can understand and critically appreciate philosophical discussion is only a short step from actually 'doing' philosophy. Less able philosophy graduates get no further than doing just the former and regurgitating it in their own words: "X said this, but Y said that".

My memory for quotes is pathetic, so I just thought about what was said and made my own mind up. Somehow I mostly seem to recall what I think! So, hey, I did OK in da finalz. Not many quotes, but the familiar opinionated stuff you find in my hootoo messages!

toxx

There was a point a dot or so back, when you were exchanging what looked like algebra with someone! If "p then q" etc... I admit I kind of glazed over at that point - but the words, I can follow...

Hi there Adelaide. I should have stuck with putting sugar in tea as my example. Saying the same thing with letter symbols allows us to get away from the particularities of sugar and whether we like it.

This helps with formal reasoning. That is a way of thinking where the form of the sentence allows us to reach certain conclusions from its information, but not others. However, as a psychologist I know perfectly well that using realistic examples is much easier for most people. In fact it's a very good way of questioning the 'formal' rules.

Keeping my psychological hat on, I can tell you that mostly we think using other means than strict formal reasoning. The main one is the 'mental model' of the situation. This is a bit like a picture or diagram in the mind. I seem to recall that you have a particular problem with something of this kind, although I'm afraid the details currently elude me.

toxx

Good to hear from you Toxxin. My problem is with visualising, I suppose my mental models are mostly verbal... I'd never really thought about it before. Maybe that's why equations give me the Williams!

Toxx,

You say:

". I don't actually believe in any god. However, I find a Deist+ God the only kind that is consistent with the evidence and internally coherent as a concept. This includes the 'Creator' of the OT and the loving and forgiving God of the NT."

And yet you have just spent two days debating the paradox of a world filled with pain, suffering and evil doings which was seemingly created by an omnipotent, loving and forgiving god. A god sufficiently omnipotent to create a universe out of nothing yet not sufficiently so to enable the co-existence of freewill with a world free (or even free-ish) of suffering.

How is this internally consistent?

F

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Alji

Fathom.



It seems I've not been debating clearly enough! Freewill and suffering go together because, for the value of freewill to lie in our being moral agents, our decisions must have have some ethical dimension.

Such a dimension means that our decisions and actions must have consequences that affect the amount of suffering in the world. Without suffering, we would be insulated against both pain and unethical action - which would make a nonsense of the latter and therefore of freewill.

In other words, you can't expect God to create cubes without creating shapes. He can't do that because it's an illogical request - not because His omnipotence is somehow deficient!

I have posted Swinburne's definition of omnipotence twice. He doesn't waste words. Note that it concerns producing 'logically contingent' states of affairs. Suffering-free freewill is a logically impossible state of affairs.

toxx

Adelaide. This is a parodox indeed! If you can't visualise, you would presumably have to think 'propositionally'. It is just such thinking that is represented by logical symbols. We don't call them equations, but WFFs (well-formed formulae).

I really must devise a set of questions/tasks for you in order to explore the possibilities. Clearly, you see things with normal vision - so you have imagery of the real world even if you can't turn words into something similar. This seems exceptional to me although I have one or two ideas. It's certainly a tricky one though.

toxx

Maybe; but there's suffering (negative consequences of ill judged expressions of freewill) and there's SUFFERING - severe and irreversible physical or psychological pain caused to random individuals without human action or deliberate omission.

Most suffering, now and throughout history, has been the result of accident rather than human intervention.

I'm not convinced that an omnipotent god couldn't come up with a world where people have freewill without including congenital disease, mass starvation or cataclysmic disasters. It absolutely does not square with a loving and forgiving god.

F

I struggled with this one, Fathom. Then I realised that for our physical actions arising from freewill to have any effect, there must be a physical world which can exhibit that effect in the right circumstances. Hence there have to be effects involving suffering independently of anything we do, but which we too can bring about.

If I can hurt you by hitting you with a stick, it's closely related to the fact that you can be hurt by a tree falling on you. It would seem supernatural to have one without the other!

The relationship between moral and physical evil isn't usually so obvious. Sometimes, as in the case of congenital illness, it's downright mysterious. Often we can work out the connection and prevent the worst of these things, giving us an opportunity to 'commit' moral good as well as evil. Surely that has to be possible too. On other occasions we can only reflect that, from an eternal point of view, nobody's suffering lasts for more than a lifetime - which is supposed to be but a drop in the ocean of our total existence.

toxx

Sorry for jumping in from the top, but I've got a logic question that seems relevant to the God thread.

This is a discussion of moral relativeism (quite short):
http://www.pisteuo.org/viewtopic.php?t=276

I've been talking with Ramzi and he claims the following arguement is valid:

>>1. Providing that the definition of Morality is: solves interpersonal conflicts.
2. People will disagree and argue [about the definition].
3. The def. of morality negates itself.
>>

Is it valid? I don't think so, but I can't prove it.