Theists argue that God is the best explanation for objective moral truths. Atheists typically appeal to the Euthyphro Dilemma (ED) to show that God cannot be the foundation for morality. The ED asks whether something is good only because God wills it as such, or if God wills something because it is good. If something is good only because God considers it good, then goodness seems arbitrary and relative to God’s desires. If He had so chosen, murder could have been right and truth-telling could have been wrong. On the other hand, if God wills the good because it is inherently good, then goodness would be a standard that exists outside of God. He is subject to the moral law just as we are.
So either goodness is arbitrary or it is independent of God. Either God arbitrarily declares what is good or He recognizes what is good based on some standard outside of Himself. If the good is an arbitrary expression of God’s will, then the good is subjective rather than objective. While God may serve as the foundation for His subjective morality, He cannot serve as the foundation for objective moral truths. On the other hand, if God wills something because He recognizes it is objectively good, then something other than God is the standard of objective moral truths. He may inform us of those moral truths, but they do not depend on God for their existence.
Theists agree that both horns of this dilemma would undermine God as the foundation for objective moral truths, but argue that Euthyphro’s Dilemma is a false dilemma because there is a third option: The good is neither willed by God nor recognized by God, but simply is the very nature of God. Just because morality is independent of God’s will does not mean it’s independent of God. Morality is rooted in the very character of God. His character just is The Good. As Katherin Rogers writes, “God neither obeys the moral order, nor does He invent it. He is Goodness Itself….”[1] The character of God constitute the objective basis for morality. God’s commands, which flow from his nature, constitute our moral duties.
What I would like to focus my attention on, however, is not the theist’s solution to the ED, but why the second horn of the ED cannot be true given a theistic worldview. In theism, God is the metaphysical ultimate. His aseity means He alone exists necessarily. Everything else that exists does so contingently (as a creation of God) because He wills for it to exist. So if there was some moral standard that God Himself was beholden to, God would had to have created that moral standard. But a God who was not intrinsically good would not want to create the good or be willing to subject Himself to the good He created. He would only want to create the good and subject Himself to the good if He desired to do so, but He would only desire to do so if He was already good. If God has to be good in order to create the good, then goodness would have existed prior to goodness, which is nonsense. So God did not and cannot create the good. He just is The Good.
In summary, if goodness existed outside of God it would have to be created by God, but only a good God would want to create goodness. If He was already good, however, then there was no goodness to create. Goodness is not something that could be created by God. God’s very nature just is The Good.
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[1]Quoted in John Milliken, “Euthyphro, the Good, and the Right,” in Philosophia Christi, Vol 11, Number 1, 2009, p. 147. No reference cited.
Thinking to Believe 
June 7, 2019 at 5:41 pm
Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness (by forming the light): I make peace, and create evil (by making peace): I the Lord do all these things.
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June 7, 2019 at 6:22 pm
Very interesting. I’m not particularly familiar with theological counterarguments to the position. But have you considered the role timelessness/God’s eternal nature in this point about which came first goodness or God. Or the whole thing might be considered one of God’s paradoxes about the nature of things, going beyond binary logic. These are just some potential counterpoints that I’m sure a more learned theist could elaborate on. Great piece nonetheless!
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June 7, 2019 at 8:07 pm
The sticky wicket is that “God is Goodness Itself” is not found in Scripture, and definitely comes from Hellenic syncretism found in the 2nd century onward. It is not foregone that “God is Goodness Itself” is even a coherent statement; it relies on Platonic metaphysics which is, needless to say, not agreed-to-be-coherent. Aristotelian metaphysics was a development, but is DEFINITELY not coherent, and you need only read it critically+systematically to see that for yourself.
If we stick to Biblical statements alone, we find that “goodness” is treated very much like how R. M. Hare determined in the mid-20th century: “Commendability.” Morality is when prospective decisions are objectively tested, in terms of subjective interests held by beings within a system of relationships. The Bible’s moral glossary therefore uses the language of monetary and contractual exchange when discussing moral imperative and implication: Credit, debt, owe/obligation/ought, covenant, justice as “sedeq & mispat.” These are relationship words using subjective interests as currency; this is neither Platonism nor Aristotelianism.
God, as the Great Subject, made everything and owns everything and will bring everything into account. Everything is universally owed to him thereby, and shall be reckoned thereby. This universality of morality is Biblical. But “purely objective morality” is not.” That’s a Hellenic pagan intrusion, which Catholic Scholasticism embraced and Protestantism inherited.
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June 8, 2019 at 12:34 pm
The idea of “which came first” doesn’t fly. God has no beginning. Therefore “goodness” has no beginning. For Jesus stated “there is none good but God” (Mark 10:18)
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June 8, 2019 at 12:58 pm
The original post has a flaw in it. The presumption given is that God alone existed prior to the creation. That is not biblically accurate. God has never ever been alone albeit God has ever been absolutely singular. Such an idea of aloneness supposes God to have existed in infinite aloneness, in the midst of a an infinitely dark void of absolute nothingness. Taking that idea into the creation means that the creation was the result of a being driven mad by a past eternity of sensory deprivation. Therefore, the creation would have been due to insanity. And if one accepts the trinity, such insanity would be that of a personality disorder. Then, taking that scenario to its ultimate conclusion, humanity is at the whim of an insane being of ultimate power. Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. God has EVER been an absolutely singular God but has EVER existed in a vast and infinite Kingdom populated by subjects (Host) who have EVER existed with God as their King. That Kingdom was not created, God was not created and innumerable “gods” were not created. None of which had a beginning and exist in eternity. God exists in the midst of a reality we know nothing about but is of permanent existence (past, present and future). We, as part of the creation cannot conceive of such a reality. So it isn’t just God, that is uncreated and has ever existed. It is an entire reality. A reality which means the angels have ever existed and are uncreated since they too are immortal. So, the real paradox is “infinite existence coincides with no beginning”. I spend many hours speculating on an infinite past but like everyone else, just can’t wrap my head around it and probably never will.
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June 9, 2019 at 2:41 am
stanrock writes:
And what, precisely, is wrong with that? Although I dispute your assertion, if goodness is subjective, then the fact that you don’t like the “sticky wicket” cannot count against its veracity.
So, on your standard, disagreement entails refutation? If that is the case, your statements stand refuted on the same measure.
I have and most DEFINITELY disagree with you here. Given that many other philosophers would also disagree with you, I guess your assertion collapses. The “critics” either don’t understand what they’re criticizing (which explains their empty incoherence charge) or they unintentionally confuse analogical and equivocal terminology.
So, the world had to wait until the 20th century to find out what biblical goodness is? Can you find historical precedent for that previous to the 1900s?
Moreover, why is “commendable” superior to “reprehensible”? Who determines what is commendable and what is reprehensible? You explain:
So, this “objective” test is devised by whom? Why is it objective and who determines its objectivity? Since according to you it appears to function via the “subjective interests” of the players in a relationship system, the enterprise appears “objective” only within the system. But even that begs the question of why one has to abide by whatever compact or test devised by these relationship players. Thus, we end up with some sort of moral free-for-all. That’s hardly commendable.
And again, what’s wrong with ignoring your bills? Who says I “owe” anybody anything? What’s wrong with making a contract under false pretenses? If there isn’t an objective standard, you have no basis for evaluating the commendability of any act. So what if Al Capone’s morality doesn’t square with yours or the Bible’s. Al is simply pursuing his subjective interests.
Why must my account square with His? So what if he owns everything. What’s wrong with taking what I think I need? Who decides what I need? When did I ever agree to the terms of this contract?
Talk about incoherent! We’re going to be “reckoned” under some fallible (subjective) universal morality standard, not because we did anything objectively wrong, but merely because we didn’t abide by the arbitrary rules of the biggest kid on the block? And yes, pursuant to Jason’s post, they are arbitrarily “good” because the big guy says they are so in accordance with a subjective nature. That reduces God to the level of an immature child who can’t get his way.
If that’s the case, then you’re working with a different definition of God than Jason is. If God isn’t objectively good, then no act is objectively evil. On your account, people will be punished to one degree or another not because they did anything objectively wrong, but simply because we didn’t abide by the rules of a game they never agreed to play. And if you’re square with that, you have no basis for complaining about the wrongness of any act. You can only complain that people aren’t playing your game, not that they’re doing anything wrong.
Performative inconsistency aside, I believe that the philosophical definition of “good” as defined by Aristotle and refined by Aquinas corresponds with biblical teaching and most definitely finds its ontological ground in the not-finite essence of God. That’s not the topic of this post, so I won’t go further than that unless Jason personally opens it up.
By the way, the topic of the post is an aspect of the ED. Said dilemma doesn’t work if you assert a purely objectively good God. If God isn’t objectively good, then the ED fails because it attacks a God you don’t affirm. Or if you don’t assume arguendo that God is objectively good, the dilemma fails another way. Since there is no such thing as objective good, the ED exercise is pointless because you agree that good is subjective.
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June 9, 2019 at 12:38 pm
“God’s very nature just is The Good.”
I’m not sure how good existing apart from God and God being good by his very nature are significantly different. In either case you have a God who is constrained by forces beyond his control.
But my main problem with the “God’s nature is good” conclusion is that God being good doesn’t jibe with the evidence. I would start by asking what biblical evidence there is that God is good. I’m not talking about all the times he or his followers in the Bible claim he’s good, but about his actions in the Bible. There are almost no examples of him behaving in a way we would honestly call good.
The problem lies in the choices he’s made. As I’ve argued before, if God is all knowing and all powerful, as the Bible says, then one must acknowledge that he could have created any of an infinite variety of universes he could imagine with his infinite mind. And he had to have known before he even created our universe that if he chose to create THIS specific universe the result would be evil, right? Surely he could have imagined countless other universes where everyone happened to learn the right lessons and make the right choices, resulting in everything turning out good rather than so much evil…but he didn’t choose to create one of those universes. THIS was the universe he imagined and created, and thus we must conclude that this is the universe God WANTED to exist. So the only rational conclusion is that God WANTED evil to exist, he WANTED humanity to fall, he WANTED the world to become wicked, he WANTED to drown the world in a flood, and he WANTS billions of people to end up burning in hell. Because of HIS choices, he is the one entirely responsible for the existence of evil in our universe, and the cause of every atrocity. Given the claim that God is all-knowing and all-powerful…what more reasonable conclusion is there?
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June 9, 2019 at 1:30 pm
I wrote Post 6 past 2:30 am and flubbed a sentence. In the third-to-last paragraph a sentence should be amended to read:
On your account, people will be punished to one degree or another not because they did anything objectively wrong, but simply because they didn’t abide by the rules of a game they never agreed to play.
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June 9, 2019 at 1:45 pm
David Robertson asks:
Hi, David. I know you addressed your question to Jason, and he can certainly speak for himself, but I’d like to respond to your question nonetheless.
Since God is the ontological precondition for every created being, and since it is metaphysically impossible for any being but God to exist non-contingently, it is impossible for anything to exist prior to God. “Good” is considered by Christian theologians as either the very essence of God or it is an essential property (as opposed to accidental property) of God. God is purely and objectively Good by virtue of His essence and is consequently the standard upon which to evaluate goodness in creatures.
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June 9, 2019 at 1:52 pm
kimberly writes:
That isn’t what Jason wrote. Here it is again:
His aseity means He alone exists necessarily.
He didn’t say that God lived alone; he said that God alone (that means He’s the only one) exists necessarily. What Jason means by “necessarily” is that God is the only being who isn’t contingent. It is possible for contingent beings to go out of existence, but it is impossible for God to go out of existence because His essence is eternal.
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June 10, 2019 at 7:04 am
ah but God isn’t the only “contingent” Person. My point was that there exists an entire reality which was non-contingent until the creation. Contingency such as mortality (as in birth, mortal existence then death) and morality (supporting the consequences of immortality and sin) were incomprehensible to such a reality until the Creation. These are only associated with the creation. Not of God or His Kingdom.
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June 10, 2019 at 7:12 am
Derek…the alternative is that humanity never existed. Imagine the nearly infinite improbability of you as a person being alive at all. Billions of sperm throughout thousands of generations and one became “you”. And you dare to question God because of a little blip of pain that will go away in the blink of an eye? Such a perspective isn’t the “big picture”.
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June 10, 2019 at 8:07 am
@kimberly
Nobody said God is “contingent.” God is non-contingent and yes, He is the only non-contingent being.
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June 10, 2019 at 2:18 pm
thanks for catching that. I meant to say “non-contingent”. And, God isn’t the only non-contingent person. His Kingdom is non-contingent and eternal, populated by innumerable non-contingent subjects. Its why the angels, which are non-created beings are immortal and have ever existed.
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June 10, 2019 at 2:25 pm
“the alternative is that humanity never existed. Imagine the nearly infinite improbability of you as a person being alive at all. Billions of sperm throughout thousands of generations and one became “you”.”
Well, imagine picking five random cards from a deck. Getting that exact set of cards from a randomly shuffled deck of cards has a probability of 0.00000153908. Almost impossible, right? But yet you just got exactly that set or cards. Is that a miracle…or just the fact that SOME set of cards had to be dealt?
“And you dare to question God because of a little blip of pain that will go away in the blink of an eye? Such a perspective isn’t the “big picture”.”
Ah, but I AM looking at the big picture, which is the “all knowing and all powerful” part of God’s supposed abilities. The inevitable consequence of this is that any suffering he inflicts is OPTIONAL, by definition. If God brings a poor child into the world, knowing the child will slowly starve to death while being ravaged by disease so that it only lives a few miserable, agonizing years, only to then die horribly, does it matter that it will all “go away in the blink of an eye” as far as God is concerned? I don’t think so. And yet God lets that happen over 30,000 times each and every DAY. What’s the “big picture” there?
To put it into perspective, imagine you are immensely wealthy, with all the resources and logistics to easily feed 30,000 children who are dying of disease and starvation, with virtually no effort on your part. But instead you train a camera on each of those children and just watch them, day in and day out, as they suffer terribly and eventually die. That’s essentially what God does…only he’s worse because he was the one who knowingly brought those children into the world in the first place.
But let’s take it a step further and imagine that after each child nears death, you swoop in and save that child by providing emergency nutrition and antibiotics, allowing the child to survive and go on to live a happy, fulfilling, healthy life. Does that rescue at the end make up for all that unnecessary and deliberate suffering you allow each child to go through? What possibly good justification could you have for allowing that to happen? Should we regard you as “good by your very nature” for your actions? Or should we regard you as a cruel and sadistic philanthropist? Again, that’s essentially what God does…only he’s worse because, again, he was the one who knowingly brought those children into the world in the first place.
In short, the “big picture” is that God doesn’t have to deliberately and unnecessarily cause harm or suffering…but he does, all the time, every second of every day. Call me crazy, but that doesn’t sound like someone who is “good by his very nature.”
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June 10, 2019 at 2:40 pm
@kimberly
If angels and these other “innumerable…subjects” are non-contingent, that means they were never created and do not owe their existence to God, eternal or not. If they self-subsist, and if their essence is to exist without any kind of reliance upon God or anything else, then they, by definition, are Gods. But that’s an argument for another thread. We’ll get far afield if we venture down that line—which is probably what you want anyway because you typically don’t stay on topic.
In any event, you misread Jason’s post and accused him to arguing that there was a time when God was alone. I correctly showed you that isn’t what Jason wrote, yet you proceeded to go off topic anyway.
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June 10, 2019 at 6:36 pm
David R,
It’s God’s eternality that makes the question of which came first, God or good, very simple. My argument is that either the good is eternal because it is rooted in the very nature of God Himself (God is The Good), or the good was created at some point by God. But since God would have to first be good in order to create the good (which is nonsense), then it follows that the good is eternal because it is rooted in God’s very nature.
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June 10, 2019 at 6:36 pm
Stanrock,
I hear this kind of thing all the time, and I don’t agree with it. The fact of the matter is that Scripture deals with matters of metaphysics and epistemology. Those are philosophical issues, and thus to explain Scriptural truths we often need to express them in philosophical categories. Whether those categories came from the Greeks, the Arabs, or from your mother, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the categories are true. Obviously, not all Greek philosophical notions were true, but many are and they are often helpful in articulating Biblical truths. And I think it goes without saying that the Bible portrays God as morally perfect. Everything He does is morally good. That’s what we mean The Good.
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June 10, 2019 at 6:36 pm
Kimberly,
No such assumption was being made in my post. I have no idea where you are getting this from. No one thinks that God was existing in space from eternity past. Rather, space had a beginning. God is not a spatial being. And theists don’t hold that God created anything because He was lonely or bored.
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June 10, 2019 at 6:37 pm
Derekmathias,
If God’s very nature is good, how does that make goodness a force that he is constrained by? Goodness does not constrain anyone. Goodness is a perfection. If you just mean to say that He can’t change His goodness, you’d be right, but that’s not a problem, but a perfection.
As for the notion that the Biblical God is not good, I find it hard to take this seriously. Your main argument against it is that He created a world in which He allows others to do evil, but that’s just the old problem of evil argument that has been thoroughly refuted. Could a good God not have a good reason for creating a universe in which evil was present? For example, love requires freedom, but freedom entails the ability to choose either good or evil. Do you have a problem with a God who creates creatures capable of true love? And don’t forget, God didn’t set the world up to be evil, and He won’t allow the evil to continue forever. This is temporary, and it has a purpose. In fact, I could argue that a good and loving God would not create a world in which love was not possible, and thus, a good and loving God would only create a world in which free creatures exist. And in that world, when there is evil, it’s squarely the fault of the creatures who have chosen wrongly. The blame cannot be laid at God’s feet.
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June 11, 2019 at 9:37 am
that’s right….God is a God of gods. And, there were angels who rebelled against God after the Cosmos was created to test them. These are the devil and his angels.
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June 11, 2019 at 9:42 am
God doesn’t cause harm. Men do. all those “starving babies” are man’s work. And, as men will be held accountable. Even so, those “starving babies” will have life in the end while those accountable will not. Lazarus and the rich man.
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June 11, 2019 at 10:16 am
@kimberly
This is directly and forcefully refuted by the Scriptures you claim to affirm. But as stated, it’s off-topic, so I won’t pursue it further.
You’re still not going to apologize to Jason for misreading his argument? If I had done what you did, I would have immediately apologized. It’s the Christian thing to do. Why can’t you do that?
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June 11, 2019 at 10:23 am
@kimberly
Since Jason replied to Derek, he is tacitly opening the discussion a little beyond the ED. My problems with Derek notwithstanding, you’re not getting the force of his argument. And so long as you miss his point, replies such as yours are non-starters.
Derek is committing a basic logical fallacy. In short, he is being hoist with his own petard. I would point it out to him, but given our past interaction, I am not confident it will be productive.
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June 11, 2019 at 12:07 pm
Psalm 136:2 says it all really
O give thanks unto the God of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever.
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June 11, 2019 at 5:16 pm
“If God’s very nature is good, how does that make goodness a force that he is constrained by? Goodness does not constrain anyone. Goodness is a perfection. If you just mean to say that He can’t change His goodness, you’d be right, but that’s not a problem, but a perfection.”
“Perfection” or not, if God must always do good and can’t change his behavior, then that is constraint…by definition.
“Your main argument against it is that He created a world in which He allows others to do evil, but that’s just the old problem of evil argument that has been thoroughly refuted.”
No, that is not my main argument at all. It’s not that God has ALLOWS others to do evil, but that he deliberately chose to create a world where evil is pervasive. He COULD have imagined a world where everyone happens to do the “right” thing (regardless of whether or not free will exists), and then created that world. Those are the inevitable consequences of being all knowing and all powerful, right? But instead he chose to imagine a world where up to 95% or more (depending on your version of Christianity) of the population will end up in hell for making the “wrong” decisions, and that’s the world he created. As you can see, that has nothing to do with whether or not God “allows” evil, but that he CAUSES it to occur.
“Could a good God not have a good reason for creating a universe in which evil was present? For example, love requires freedom, but freedom entails the ability to choose either good or evil.”
Wait…no. Love is an emotion, and we don’t have a choice over the emotions we feel. Yes, we can suppress them and we can put ourselves in situations that increase or decrease the possibility that we’ll experience a particular emotion (for instance, you can reduce your chances of experiencing jealousy if you avoid romantic entanglements), but as for the emotions themselves? You don’t have a choice about whether or not you will experience them. I mean, find someone you deeply dislike and try to love them. It doesn’t work, does it? So love doesn’t require freedom, but the OPPOSITE of freedom.
Furthermore, freedom in one thing doesn’t mean you have to have freedom in another. It’s not an all-or-nothing requirement. For instance, most people do not have the freedom to want to rape, torture and kill their own family members because we have an instinctive familial bond with them. We are instead instinctively repulsed by the very notion of causing them harm. If God had expanded that familial instinct to automatically cover our responses to ALL sentient beings, so that we would never think to hurt others the way we would never think to hurt our own families, would that constraint on our freedom prevent us from loving? Of course not. Yet God didn’t make that choice; instead, he arranged it so that atrocities would be GUARANTEED to occur all over the world.
“God didn’t set the world up to be evil,”
But he DID, as I made clear above. He KNEW before he even created the universe that unless he made changes to his plan, he would end up sending almost everyone to hell. That’s the inevitable consequence of being all knowing, right?
“He won’t allow the evil to continue forever.”
But that’s the very problem. If God won’t allow evil to continue forever, clearly he can imagine a world where nobody commits evil. He could have created that world, but he didn’t do that. Instead he created THIS world, the one filled with atrocities and unimaginable suffering. Thus it would be unreasonable to ignore the possibility that God is not good, but instead profoundly evil. Because evidently he WANTED a world filled with atrocities and unimaginable suffering.
“And in that world, when there is evil, it’s squarely the fault of the creatures who have chosen wrongly. The blame cannot be laid at God’s feet.”
If God were NOT all knowing and/or NOT all powerful, I would agree with you. Such a God could still be good, doing the best he can but sometimes failing, resulting in this world of problems and imperfections. But an all-knowing and all-powerful God is incompatible with goodness because of the choices HE made, not because of the choices we’ve made. We had no say in the matter the instant he created THIS universe instead of a kinder one.
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June 11, 2019 at 5:46 pm
“God doesn’t cause harm.”
I think the entire world that drowned in the Great Flood would beg to differ with you.
“Men do. all those “starving babies” are man’s work. And, as men will be held accountable. Even so, those “starving babies” will have life in the end while those accountable will not”
Even if you blame humanity for letting babies die in agony from disease and starvation, even though God was the one who imagined this world and decided to create it, rather than creating a better world, the fact remains that tomorrow another 30,000 innocent children will die horribly from disease and starvation. Even if the whole world were to suddenly mobilize and do everything in our power to help those children, it’s too late for those that will die tomorrow. They will have suffered their entire short lives…only to die miserably.
How could a GOOD God punish children for the crimes of adults? How could a GOOD God bring those children into the world, only to suffer utter misery and die, experiencing nothing good? How could a GOOD God just sit idly by and watch those children suffer and die, while he lifts not a finger to help them? Can you reconcile all that evidence with a good God? I can’t.
And it gets worse. For everyone who is directly or indirectly responsible for causing those children to suffer and die, there is an easy out to escape punishment. All you have to do is confess your sins, ask Jesus for forgiveness, become born again…and you are no longer accountable for what you’ve done. Does that sound like justice to you? It certainly doesn’t to me.
Finally, what happens to those babies that die of disease and starvation? Well, they get a fast track to heaven, right? Well, no…at least not according to the Bible. You have to CHOOSE to be saved, and babies are too young to do that:
• John 3:3-18 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, NO ONE can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” … Whoever BELIEVES in him is not condemned, but whoever DOES NOT BELIEVE stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
Babies can’t believe, so according to this passage, they go to hell. Those people who can’t bear the thought of God being evil usually invoke the so-called “age of accountability”…but nowhere does that exist in the Bible. It’s completely made up. The best anyone can do is a few passages that suggest children are special…but even those must be creatively interpreted to imply dead babies go to heaven, and the “no one” part of John 3:3-18 must be simply ignored.
And even if somehow dead babies go to heaven…what does that do for Christianity and salvation? All Christians would have to do to save the most souls would be to *murder* all children, guaranteeing their salvation. Then those same Christians could simply ask for forgiveness and be saved:
• Matthew 12:31 And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.
• Mark 3:28-29 Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.
I do realize you are likely to reject all this information because considering God to be anything but good is a non-starter. But even so, surely you have to admit that my position is reasonable and justified, given the evidence.
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June 11, 2019 at 5:54 pm
“My problems with Derek notwithstanding, you’re not getting the force of his argument. And so long as you miss his point, replies such as yours are non-starters.”
Thank you for acknowledging that.
“Derek is committing a basic logical fallacy. In short, he is being hoist with his own petard. I would point it out to him, but given our past interaction, I am not confident it will be productive.”
I am unaware of any logical fallacy I may have made. Which argument have I made that is based on faulty reasoning? If I’ve resorted to a fallacy to support my position, please let me know and I will endeavor to immediately correct it.
Just to be clear, I am ALWAYS open to being persuaded by better evidence than that which I have presented…but I won’t be persuaded by claims with weaker evidence. This wouldn’t be a worthy discussion if I did, would it?
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June 12, 2019 at 6:46 am
@derekmathias
No way. After our last go-around—dozens of posts wherein you fought tooth and nail to deny the other obvious logical error you were making—there’s not a chance I’ll venture down that road again.
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June 12, 2019 at 6:49 am
@kimberly
You continue to post off-topic. Remember, you’re a guest in this “house” and are morally obligated to abide by your hosts’ rules.
I’ll reply to your off-topic post in a more appropriate setting under the thread Arguing for Monotheism.
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June 12, 2019 at 7:46 am
don’t bother. I’m not obligated to be here at all (morally or not) and will delete any subsequent emails from this site.
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June 12, 2019 at 7:49 am
@kimberly
Already done, for the record. And what you delete is your business.
By the way, you still owe Jason an apology.
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June 12, 2019 at 2:26 pm
“No way. After our last go-around—dozens of posts wherein you fought tooth and nail to deny the other obvious logical error you were making—there’s not a chance I’ll venture down that road again.”
I’m sorry you feel that way. But I can assure you I endeavor to NEVER make logically fallacious arguments. I’m quite familiar with the list of logical fallacies, and I encounter them all the time in arguments against me (the most common I encounter being appeals to ignorance, popularity, incredulity, consequences, and intuition, as well as equivocation, false dichotomy, special pleading, moving the goalpost, no true Scotsman, causal, straw man and ad hominem fallacies). If you change your mind and would like to clarify which fallacy I supposedly committed, I’d appreciate the heads up.
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June 12, 2019 at 6:08 pm
Theists argue that God is the best explanation for objective moral truths. Atheists typically appeal to the Euthyphro Dilemma (ED) to show that God cannot be the foundation for morality.
Personally I would argue that the higher powers are as responsible for the evil as much as they are responsible for the good; as much as they are responsible for morality and immorality. Trying to separate the higher power attributes of good and evil is like trying to separate the cream from the milk yet claim the higher powers are not responsible for souring of either part.
The problem of Good & Evil was a concept not well thought through, if thought about at all, by the pre-history, uneducated creatures who invented the Omni-Celestial Gods in the first place and for modern day man, to try to split the good and evil hairs and separate them into mouseholes like the wheat and chaff into categories separate from the higher powers denies the higher powers altogether.
Analyzing a few posters:
derekmathias:
so logical, only a believer would dare argue with his reasoning…..
@kimberly:
hovering in a mythological dimension only her imagination could phantom….
Scalia:
a traffic cop more interested in directing the topic than making sense without presumptive phantoms; probably a friend or cohort of @kimberly….
theosophical ruminator: has all the answers expected from a foundation built on the sands of generational philosophy like the sands of the desert, fixed and immutable, yet, ever shifting for infinitely versatile and fertile imaginations.
I particularly groan when I read premises that begin with the word “since” this, and “since” that; then, then this conclusion. But that conclusion cannot but be false when one accepts the “since” hypothetical. My intuitive reaction when I hear the term “since” at the beginning of a sentence to introduce a conclusion’s premise, is to think: since when? when you thought about it?; or, someone else thought about it? No matter how flowery the prose it is always missing the “knows”. That is the nature of belief based conclusions. The belief cake can never be anything more than part baked.
A perfect example of that kind of scholarly sounding rhetoric, perfectly illustrated, is the “…….God is…….”… hypothesis
Post 9:
“….Since God is the ontological precondition for every created being, and since it is metaphysically impossible for any being but God to exist non-contingently, it is impossible for anything to exist prior to God…..” therefore….”
With respect to this post I give considerable weight to dereckmathias, that IF there was a creator God, every aspect of that creation belongs squarely in the creator’s lap. No ifs, ands, buts or since.
The only logical conclusion is that the creative juices of the cosmos own their offspring.
This dilemma of the religious mind is easily resolved by removing religious cultural tradition from the mind. Because the fact is that the creative juices of the cosmos should never and cannot ever adequately be referred to as Omni-Anything if not Omni-Everything and like it or not, that includes the evil of starving children, diseased populations, virus carrying mosquitoes, rats and lice, a plethora of parasitic pathogens preying on people across the planet and your fellow man who is more likely than not, out to mug you, harm, injure and kill you, as the big cats are to eat you while walking peacefully on the plains of the Serengeti.
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June 12, 2019 at 8:38 pm
@rideabike47
Since (there’s that word again) you mention me in your post, I’ll start with that:
I’ve not seen you post here before, so it’s understandable that you’re unaware of the relatively recent history of some of the regulars. Several of them had gotten into the habit of hijacking Jason’s posts to talk about anything and everything other than what he posted about. “kimberly” was one of the frequent offenders. Jason recently had to ban the most egregious hijacker, and kimberly predictably tried to hijack this one. I was simply reminding her to keep on-topic. As I said, she’s a guest in this “house,” and is morally obligated to abide by the rules thereof.
By the way, I’m neither a friend nor a cohort of kimberly, so try offer another presumptive phantom in the blind hope of getting something right.
But you did not engage any of Jason’s counter arguments which leaves your criticisms of him rather bereft of substance. The topic of the thread is the ED. Do you care to post anything relevant?
You sound like a true friend or cohort. Anyway, since derek only shows up to vainly skewer theism, it’s not surprising that anybody who argues with him is a believer. You have a phenomenal grasp of the obvious. As I told him, I’m not going to burn 70-80 posts trying to get him to see the logical misstep he is making, and the fact that you’re fawning over him shows pretty clearly that you can’t see it either.
I went head-to-head with him under the Even if the universe is eternal, it still needs a cause thread. Even a philosopher who was sympathetic with him called his arguments “useless,” but go ahead and cheer-lead if it floats your boat.
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June 13, 2019 at 1:50 pm
“I went head-to-head with him under the Even if the universe is eternal, it still needs a cause thread. Even a philosopher who was sympathetic with him called his arguments “useless,” but go ahead and cheer-lead if it floats your boat.”
Now let’s not twist the facts, Scalia. We covered a wide range of topics in that argument, and “Stan” (the “philosopher,” as you call him), considered just one of my claims–that for all we know it’s possible we exist in a virtual world–as plausible but useless because it undermines empiricism. But he also acknowledged that I made it clear I don’t believe in the virtual world claim specifically BECAUSE it cannot be empirically demonstrated…which is also why I don’t believe in supernatural explanations. I stand by those claims.
Not that I’m endorsing Stan’s comments, but he did say the following in reference to your arguments:
“Derek is correctly saying that these arguments have
– failed to show the connections between what we observe in the world and the supposed attributes of God (including his being existent), and
– not sufficiently shown that alternative explanations for what we observe in the world are implausible.”
and
“The so-called “God proofs” are nearly all terrible, many of them medieval word tricks and appeals to vaguery. They work really well when preaching to the choir, but that’s about it.”
And that was the point of my argument.
So it’s a mischaracterization to say Stan called my arguments useless. Just sayin’….
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June 13, 2019 at 2:52 pm
Based on my back-and-forth with Stan, who also commented here, I didn’t twist any facts. I repeatedly stated that I was not defending the Kalam argument precisely because it doesn’t get us to God, and I did not fully explicate the Thomist arguments either. Stan was giving his opinion on proofs for God in general, and I correctly stated that he was sympathetic with you.
Moreover, I have tried to engage him on other threads, but he simply drops away without comment each time, including here.
I have no intention of reigniting the other debate here. Suffice it to say that if you’re still unable to see your logical misques, there’s no point in further dialog.
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June 14, 2019 at 10:39 am
Ugh! “…miscues…”
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June 14, 2019 at 2:30 pm
“Suffice it to say that if you’re still unable to see your logical misques, there’s no point in further dialog.”
That’s unfortunate, because I’m quite serious about endeavoring to never commit logical fallacies. Since you claim I committed them, yet refuse to list them, we’re once again talking about claims being made without sufficient evidence for those claims to justify belief.
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June 14, 2019 at 3:29 pm
I listed every one of them in the previous thread. The fact that you cannot or will not see them is all the ground I need to conclude that further discussion will not be productive.
For anybody interested, please see the previous debate and draw your own conclusions.
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June 14, 2019 at 4:56 pm
Scalia:
Just list the logical fallacies here for God’s; I can’t bother chasing threads. I am new so let’s here you refute Derek’s logic with sound reasoning of your own to counter my fawning over Mr Mathias. Or not.
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June 14, 2019 at 4:57 pm
For God’s sake.
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June 14, 2019 at 9:45 pm
@rideabike47
You’re not “chasing threads”; it’s only one thread, and all you have to do is click the link I conveniently supplied. If you’re not lying, and you’re really interested in seeing how I reply to Derek’s arguments, you can read to your heart’s content. I posted over 20 times in that thread.
And since (oh, there’s that word again) you’ve read through this thread, then you already know that I’m not going to waste my time on another debate with Derek. If he can’t see fundamental logical errors after they’re repeatedly pointed out to him, there’s not a chance he’ll see them here.
But I suspect you’re not really interested in seeing how I rebut his type of argumentation (else you would have read the link by now). You’re just trying to goad me into replying here. It’s not gonna happen. I’ve got better things to do with my time.
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June 15, 2019 at 7:43 am
Scalia:
“……. it’s only one thread, and all you have to do is click the link I conveniently supplied……… I posted over 20 times in that thread……”
If I read “….over 20 posts….”, by you, would I not have to read at least an equal amount by derekmathias.
To use your own words…….”I’m not going to waste my time….”
Furthermore, for your information and righteous logic, there are no words more accusatory than the words of the phrase, “….If you’re not lying,…”.
Beyond your ego, I perceive you have little discretionary insight. And need only draw your attention to how quickly you disparaged Kimberly because she owed an apology to Jason and that, not an apology demand from Jason, but from Scalia acting as a self appointed intermediary which is the hallmark of a religious self righteousness. This reminds me the way by which the God concept was imposed upon the masses in the beginning: self appointed messengers, oracles and prophets speaking “spiritually” on a made-up mission of their own devise crediting a made-up myth.
With all due respect and no respect is due, the glib remark, “If you’re not lying….”, is obvious, unashamedly shallow and I’m not buying your sincerity.
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June 15, 2019 at 9:22 pm
@rideabike47
You write:
First, nobody said that you had to read every post of mine. I simply told you to read to your heart’s content if that’s what you want to do. If all you’re interested in is seeing how I would rebut Derek’s arguments, you have an opportunity. Whether or not you avail yourself of that is of course entirely up to you. If you’re “not going to waste” your time doing that, then quit asking me waste my time here.
After accusing me of being pompous and a friend or cohort of kimberly, I would think that a person of such impeccable discretionary insight such as yourself would be less inclined to cast stones.
kimberly owes Jason an apology, and and telling a person to do exactly what that person needs to do is “self-righteous” only in the lexicon of a person bereft of anything substantive to say.
And the fact that you characterize it that way demonstrates your woeful ignorance of the topic. And it also discloses why you’re concentrating more on my rebuttals to Derek than on directly engaging Jason’s argument in the lead post.
And at this point I couldn’t care less what you buy. I most certainly question your honesty when you claim on one hand that you want to see how I rebut Derek’s “so logical” arguments while refusing to see just exactly how I did that on the other. If you don’t like my “accusatory” tone, you shouldn’t send conflicting signals.
If the shoe were on the other foot and an atheist told me he wouldn’t waste time on a poster due to a previous debate, I wouldn’t hesitate to read it to draw my own conclusions. Playing cat-and-mouse would rightly draw suspicion that I was being less than forthright. That’s life in the big city.
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June 16, 2019 at 6:29 pm
“I listed every one of them in the previous thread. The fact that you cannot or will not see them is all the ground I need to conclude that further discussion will not be productive.”
If you had pointed out valid examples of my committing fallacies in the other thread, I’m pretty sure you would be quick to list them. Your being dead set against doing so leads me to conclude you’re aware no such examples exist. That is why I pressed you on this–I don’t appreciate having my character impugned without evidence and with the expectation that everyone just accept it.
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June 16, 2019 at 6:45 pm
“If he can’t see fundamental logical errors after they’re repeatedly pointed out to him, there’s not a chance he’ll see them here.”
You must admit that there is a difference between making accusations of committing fallacies and actually being able to accurately demonstrate them. The successful refutation of any such accusations invalidates those accusations.
“If the shoe were on the other foot and an atheist told me he wouldn’t waste time on a poster due to a previous debate, I wouldn’t hesitate to read it to draw my own conclusions. Playing cat-and-mouse would rightly draw suspicion that I was being less than forthright.”
But playing cat-and-mouse is precisely what you’re doing: making accusations, claiming the evidence is there, but refusing to post that evidence. The most logical conclusion to me is that you recognize your accusations are not valid. And by making others do the work to investigate your accusations, you make it less likely that anyone will actually bother to do so.
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June 16, 2019 at 10:59 pm
derekmathias writes:
I did so over and over and over again. Anybody can go there and see it for themselves. I’m not making this up.
And this illustrates perfectly why it’s pointless to debate with you. The evidence is in the thread I linked to. Everybody who follows this blog is free to go there to verify for themselves whether or not my claim is valid. You think your character is “impugned” simply because people are directed to a previous debate? Nobody is obligated to accept by faith what I say. And the fact you’re getting twisted over my directing anybody interested to the reason why I consider it a waste of time to debate you is further evidence of your inability to see the nose on your face.
Must admit? Why would I have to “admit” it when I’ve freely provided the evidence for everybody to verify?
If I accused you of making a fallacious argument but refused to direct people to the thread wherein I pointed it out, then you could perhaps accuse me of playing cat-and-mouse. For the umpteenth time, I supplied the debate for the readers of this blog. People are free to ignore it, read it and agree with me, or read it and disagree with me.
And like I said, the fact that you cannot or will not see the obvious errors I pointed out previously demonstrates why it’s pointless to debate you.
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June 17, 2019 at 2:02 am
The writer says that Atheists typically appeal to the Euthyphro Dilemma (ED) to show that God cannot be the foundation for morality. This statement is a false statement because Atheists do not believe in God; at least, not in a Theist God so how can Atheists “typically” to the Euthyphro Dilemma (ED) show anything about that which they do not believe exists?
If God is The Good then why not call it Good instead of God; why not simply call the Concept Good, Good and leave it at that? Then we could accept diversity without prejudice.
THE HIGHER POWER(S) COULD NOT CREATE ONE WITHOUT CREATING THE OTHER.
The moral is that while Cains and Abels come from the same womb we tend to debit the Cains and credit the Abels; and not the Womb that births them both. Why?
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June 17, 2019 at 2:03 pm
“Everybody who follows this blog is free to go there to verify for themselves whether or not my claim is valid.”
But clearly you know there’s a slim to no chance that anyone will bother to follow the link and then wade through a loooooong thread to find the nuggets of evidence you claim is buried in the text somewhere. It seems you’re counting on nobody putting forth that effort and discovering that you have made false accusations. It reminds me of a part of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
😉
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June 17, 2019 at 2:38 pm
@derekmathias
You’re just as dishonest as your cheerleader. Practically every one of my posts in reply to you describes your mistakes in reasoning. Nothing is “locked in a filing cabinet,” and nobody needs a flashlight.
Anyway, we’re far afield and are now doing what Jason doesn’t want us to do: going off-topic. I’ve stated repeatedly that I have no interest debating you. You’re just gonna have to live with it because you’re not going to goad me otherwise.
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June 17, 2019 at 6:21 pm
derickmathias:
Scalia says “…You’re just as dishonest as your cheerleader…”
A wise person said, “Give me 3 minutes of knowledge and you can have 3 millennia of belief; I will advance and you will not”.
When the accuser cannot stop the accusations, you win……Congratulations, a tree is known by the fruit it bears so a man is known by the words he communicates for it is treasure from his heart. A dishonest heart will seek to find another upon whom to project his dishonesty for he cannot bear to carry the burden himself, though he try to give it away, it will not leave him.
Therfore reioyce hevens and ye that dwell in them. Woo to the inhabiters of the erth and of the see: for ye accuser is come doune vnto you which hath greet wrath because he knoweth that he hath but a short tyme.
Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them………day and night.
Another wise person whose name was Jesus said the same in this parable.
“When a defiling evil spirit, such as dishonesty, is expelled from someone, it drifts along through the desert looking for an oasis, some unsuspecting soul it can land on and bedevil. When it doesn’t find anyone, it says, ‘I’ll go back to my old haunt.’ On return it finds the person spotlessly clean, but vacant. It then runs out and rounds up seven other spirits more evil than itself and they all move in, whooping it up. That person ends up far worse off than if he’d never gotten cleaned up in the first place.”
Such a person is in conflict and though he tries to project in onto others, it will find no home away from its source and will return with companions and the acidic attitude grows stronger. Ugh.
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June 17, 2019 at 10:41 pm
rideabike47 writes:
Well…at least this one’s on-topic. Jason knows atheists don’t believe in God. Do you really think Jason didn’t know that?
What atheists are doing with the ED is assuming arguendo God’s existence to show either that on theism, goodness is either arbitrary or it stands apart from God. In the latter case, God is not good.
Actually, the majority of Christians have no problem calling God “The Good” because goodness is God’s essence. And we wouldn’t call it a concept because a concept is not a being.
While that is technically a good question, it’s not relevant to the topic. Again, the topic is that on theism, any assertion (as brought about by the ED) by Christians that goodness stands apart from God is unintelligible.
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June 18, 2019 at 12:11 am
A concept is an imaginary being which is what Gods are, conceptual beings in the same way that demons are conceptual beings, not actual beings with existence.
The Cains and Abels and the womb that births them both is absolutely on topic. It is merely a METAPHOR. What you do not acknowledge is that some atheists actually do believe in God but we don’t call it theism; we call it deism that is a-theism but not a-deism
Deism is the acceptance of the existence of a supreme being, but specifically a creator who does not intervene in the universe. Deism accepts the existence of a creator on the basis of reason but rejects the belief in a supernatural deity that interacts with humankind, you call theism.
It is not a big leap for deists but for theists a mighty gulf they cannot seem to bridge clinging onto the ancient traditions of demons and sin and guilt. Deists do not view a misstep on a hillside that causes a fall resulting in injury evil, even though the consequences are bad, they call it physics, loose gravel, pushing the limits outside the parameters of gravity.
The higher powers including gravity are supreme but have no personal interaction with its creatures and there is nothing supernatural about them; one goes beyond the limits at their peril. We cannot fly so we don’t jump off the mountain without a mitigator and that, is not a prayer for supernatural intervention it’s called a parachute.
The essence of God is not good, any more than the essence of gravity is good or not. Mankind decides the mouse-holes he wants to live by and live in but I personally cannot live in a belief bubble so the ED is not applicable to me and I believe the God of theism as the essence of good is unintelligible.
If one defies gravity that results in injury, the affected one may cry boo hoo “not good”; one who coasts down a hill in a go-cart or a snow-sled may laugh out loud, “very good!”
Few people realize it but we slice the global ocean up by many names all around the earth but it still remains one Global Ocean.
God creates; the creatures decide and blessed peace is for all human beings of goodwill.
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June 18, 2019 at 11:15 pm
rideabike47 writes:
Then your earlier question on why Christians won’t simply call God the “Concept Good” is answered in that they believe that God is a living being, not simply a concept. As surely as Jason knows that atheists don’t believe in God, surely you know that Christians believe God to be a living being.
Metaphor or not, it has nothing to do with the topic. Jason isn’t discussing the essence of evil nor is he discussing its origin. He first shows why the ED doesn’t work and specifically focuses on the following:
What I would like to focus my attention on, however, is not the theist’s solution to the ED, but why the second horn of the ED cannot be true given a theistic worldview. In theism, God is the metaphysical ultimate. His aseity means He alone exists necessarily. Everything else that exists does so contingently (as a creation of God) because He wills for it to exist. So if there was some moral standard that God Himself was beholden to, God would had to have created that moral standard. But a God who was not intrinsically good would not want to create the good or be willing to subject Himself to the good He created. He would only want to create the good and subject Himself to the good if He desired to do so, but He would only desire to do so if He was already good. If God has to be good in order to create the good, then goodness would have existed prior to goodness, which is nonsense. So God did not and cannot create the good. He just is The Good.
He is analyzing the ED from a theistic worldview. Hence, metaphors about Cains and Abels being birthed from the same mother have nothing to do with the topic.
Why in the world should I acknowledge it when that’s not the topic of the lead post? Moreover, deism is distinguished from theism in that it rejects supernatural revelation and God’s active intervention. Some deists, however, think that theists rely solely on supernatural revelation, and that is easily disproved historically. The majority of Christians are proponents of natural revelation and natural law, including yours truly.
On Christian theism, which is what the lead post is about, the essence of God is most certainly good. Your definition of “good” is vastly different from Christianity’s, but that’s a discussion for another thread. It’s the Christian definition that’s relevant here.
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June 19, 2019 at 12:37 am
Scalia:
It seems to me that your insistence posters speak only to a topic meant for the theist choir that only has room for a theist’s presumptive concepts is toxic to dialogue.
It would be easy enough to simply state that the topic of a living being is a fantasy that will never be proven nor can it ever be proven because it is impossible. Whoever heard of a belief system supplanting a knowledge system,,nobody. But knowledge supplants belief all the time. Knowledge is true3; belief is false.
Now it is obvious that as soon as one disagrees with your mindset then you regurgitate “…off topic…”. The entire topic is unintelligible, a complete fabricated fictional fantasy.
I understand of course you can’t stand to have your fantasy assailed by logic, reason and common sense because logic, reason and common sense are necessarily “…off topic…” in a belief system where resides your unintelligible topics of theism that make it impossible for you to entertain talk from anyone except by the mythology choir. You are chief among them and resent any challenge to a mindset, beset with religious insanity, talking mindset topic and debating nonsense while chastising everybody else’s comment that dares bring logic, reason and common sense into a supernatural concept to the ancient stone-age brain.
The mindset of man that believed everything about God that forced him to drag things around on the ground before he had knowledge to invent the wheel, a mindset that sacrificed his kids for a bumper crop before he knew anything about meteorology and a mindset that had tons of belief but no knowledge: knew nothing about electricity, nothing about DNA, nothing about infectious disease, nothing about the principles of infectious disease.
And the Christian brain is still stuck in ancestry ignorance that is wrapped in academic rhetoric it believes, gives credibility to nonsensical fantasies of God Myths. Yet the planets still bear the scars of mythology in the mindset as names of the ancient Gods: Mars, Saturn, Neptune. You reject learning even from ancient history and repeat the bizarre, in every Christian topic your mind fancies is grounded by a living being. “The truth” of knowledge, said Jesus, “will set you free”. But it is curious why the topics never include Christ, the very preface of what you claim to be: Christ-ian OMG.
Who follows a myth, leads a lonely life; it has no source; it is not to be found; is impossible to catch the spirit, raison d’etre.
It’s too obtuse to discuss topics of nonsense. Have a nice eternity in your search of phantom. You will never find it from the path you travel.
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June 19, 2019 at 5:59 am
This is part of Jason’s commenting policy:
1. The comments should be related to the post.
Moreover, he stated recently:
My commenting policy (https://theosophical.wordpress.com/commenting-policy/) is there for a reason. Unfortunately, with my schedule, I rarely review comments and people have been able to get away with breaking them for a long time. It has never been my desire to ban anyone from commenting on the site because I like to keep the channels of communication as open as possible. However, there are some commentators who repeatedly violate the rules, hijacking the threads to suit their own interests, and have been doing so for years. So, regrettably, for the first time in this blog’s history, I am going to ban commentators. I’m starting with one, but will expand the pool if necessary.
As I told kimberly, you’re a guest in somebody else’s house and as a guest, you should abide by your host’s rules. My commenting history here is extensive, and I’m not at all hesitant to engage posters who disagree with me so long as the disagreement is on topic. To my knowledge, Jason has never declared an open thread (as we often do on our blog), but again, that’s his prerogative.
If you really want to debate the existence of God, the origin of evil, etc., all you have to do is find a relevant post on these boards (the subject matter is in the right-hand column) and tell me where you’re at. The fact that you want to hijack this thread because you got twisted over my non-response to Derek is your problem, not mine. I respect my host’s wishes and you don’t. Not surprising.
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June 19, 2019 at 6:06 am
My link to Jason’s comment actually leads to his other website. My apologies. The appropriate link is HERE.
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June 19, 2019 at 6:14 am
I should add that the link to Jason’s post also contains the following:
welcome disagreement. But that disagreement must be respectful, and one must stay on topic. I recognize that sometimes, while in dialogue, other issues must be discussed in order to resolve the topic at hand. However, the goal is always to come back to the original topic, not to follow rabbit trail after rabbit trail.
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June 19, 2019 at 11:41 am
For hypotheses to be scientific hypotheses, the scientific method requires that one can test them.
Belief hypotheses:
“….Since God is the ontological precondition for every created being, and
since it is metaphysically impossible for any being but God to exist non-contingently,
it is impossible for anything to exist prior to God…..”
You are hung up and out to dry with Christian presumptive abstract theory with no basis in reality; you may say “IT IS” but that does not make “IT SO”. It is a good idea to subvert the masses with belief and goes back to my original, and accurate, observation about (Christian) traffic cops:; AKA, wannabee messengers for other entities real or imagined.
“…a traffic cop more interested in directing the topic than making sense without presumptive phantoms;…”
God is “that which nothing greater can be thought,” Anselm argued and that statement was correct, in my opinion. Unfortunately Christian contaminated the purity of that great thought by introducing the frailties of human attributes to the supremacy:
Christian (religious) contaminants:
pulpit bullies, personal relationship, interventionist, prayer, ritualism, sacrifice, prophets of, messengers for, financial security, graft, gold, cares, riches and pleasures of this world. The pure diluted by impurities, especially in the formation of rules, regulations, laws and penalties of ego, abuse, censorship, ostracization, excommunication, denied liberty, physical torture, crusades, war trials for heresy (Galileo) decree commandments and capital punishment;
and did I mention hatred, bigotry, discrimination (LBGTQEunuch community, other peoples, ethnicity, color, creed) and a litany of catalogued sins from ancient uncivilized nations; and, the most profound impurity of life itself, sexuality; not treated with prized openness, educating children in preparation for the most wonderful pleasure and responsibility in the human experience, procreation; but something piteous, dirty, sinful, to be hidden and disparaged, always off-topic, inappropriate, guilt-ridden, evil, and every human being born is fallen and condemned, cursed and unworthy of the life, as a result of it. Christianity itself, is the shame of humanity, a carbuncle on the soul of the human race and not only Christianity; just look at the impoverished world the great religions are tasked to resolve, are supposed to eliminate, supposedly destined to spread total equality to one total humanity.
Christians constantly use threatening tactics to impose their self importance and righteousness of which even on this Blog, the Christian tactic is at work as the upright among us are delighted to assume a self appointed role of enforcer. A show-off of pseudo power egotism likening a commentary blog to a man’s castle, not his own castle mind you but someone else’s castle. The audacity. Regurgitating the warfare tactic like a Galileo sentence of house arrest as if being off topic is heresy, for the rest of life.
..Ahhh the goodness of God personified by the choir singer, happy to deny its participants, by righteousness censorship of course, heliocentric messages that may influence participants away from the ancient mindset yet still alive and kicking and pricking its last legs on planet earth as its demise is already into its inevitable decline.
As knowledge supplants superstition and supernatural foundations, the sands of myths of a bygone era has been a receding sphere of influence now for years; there’s no going back.
Believers who still follow will follow the demise of belief by the Christian pied piper into his black hole because that all there is to offer with belief; it is a black hole. Don’t please, go there.
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June 19, 2019 at 12:28 pm
@rideabike47
Well! You’re really twisted now that you’ve been shown you’re violating another person’s wishes in his house, so you throw a hissy fit. I’ve offered to debate you on the topic of your choosing in the appropriate setting, although given the content of your screeds, I’m not confident you’re competent enough to put together something above the kindergarten debate team.
It’s clear at this point that you’re only interested in throwing temper tantrums, so have fun in your black hole. I’d warn you not to go there, but I see you’re already in it.
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June 19, 2019 at 12:41 pm
You have ceded the end of privilege to my communication.
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June 19, 2019 at 2:36 pm
Since you were more interested in hijacking this thread than to post relevant material, that’s exactly what you should do.
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June 20, 2019 at 12:09 pm
Jason writes:
This is true, but the notion that God created Good also fails due to the principle of proportionate causality—the effect is in some manner contained in the cause. God cannot not give what He does not have, so if He created Good, He must be, by definition, Good in a vastly more eminent manner.
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June 27, 2019 at 6:27 pm
You people like to debate just for the sake of debate. You don’t care who is right or even if there is no right response. You are all to impressed with yourselves, and not impressed enough with GOD, whose name is JESUS, at least in the New Testament.
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June 27, 2019 at 11:39 pm
@Ann
I beg to differ from you Ann. I certainly don’t debate for its own sake; I debate to contend for the faith.
When you generalize with words like “you people,” you’re lumping everybody into one bag—people I assume you don’t even know. The Savior said, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (Jn. 7:24). Unless you truly know somebody’s heart, then that kind of observation should be tempered. On the other hand, if you have evidence that some of us “don’t care who is right,” I’d certainly like to know whom you think is guilty and what that evidence is.
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June 30, 2019 at 8:19 pm
You are correct. I am lumping everyone into one bag, not to be ugly, but simply to mean the conversation, as a whole, gives the reader the impression of a political debate with each person having their own talking points and not a thoughtful discussion where each person really cared. One writer even called it a debate. It’s a reader’s impression only. Of course, I don’t know any of you, much less your heart. i came across this site and enjoyed reading a number of articles and then decided to read the comments on this one. After reading the article I read straight through all of the comments without any intention of leaving one of my own. I’m not judging you or any of those that commented. Let me give you an example. You can see three people very animated and gesturing to each other. From the looks of things, you believe they are arguing. Later after speaking to one of the group you discover they were planning a party. Everyone gets general impressions like this many times in a single day. That doesn’t mean they are judging. After reading your reply, I wondered, ” OK, what gave me that impression? So I went back and looked at the comments again and read things like, “I’m not wasting my time.” One writer had so many points to make, but much of it had nothing to do with the article, only a tirade against Christianity. Comments like ” You’re dishonest as your cheerleader.,” among many others, gave me that impression. Perhaps the tone or general impression of the discussion isn’t considered when writing comments, but those that comment are not in a room by themselves having a discussion. Their comments are read along with the article by perhaps thousands of people that are not usually participants, only readers. Because of that fact, I believe tone and general impressions do matter, especially on a Christian site, even though all commenters are not Christian. Otherwise, debaters could debate privately.
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July 1, 2019 at 8:46 am
Thanks for your explanation, Ann. Some of sentences you cite were written by me, so I guess I should do a little explaining too.
As I noted earlier, this is Jason Dulle’s blog, and he has a commenting policy. For years, several posters completely ignored it and were using his blog as a quasi Facebook forum to talk about anything to popped into their minds. Jason warned them on several occasions to stay on topic, but they ignored him as if he never said anything (assuming, I guess, that he’d never enforce what he said). Jason is extremely busy, so he doesn’t have the time to closely monitor this site, and that only “encouraged” said posters to continue hijacking his threads.
I’ve been commenting here for years and have done my best to keep my posts on topic in accordance with Jason’s wishes. I often get asked irrelevant questions, or attempts are made to get me to go off topic—and I steadfastly refuse to do so. Strangely enough, that’s taken as an indication of fear on my part to discuss whatever tangent my interlocutor wants to take me on. That’s strange because I’m not reluctant to talk about any theological issue in the appropriate forum. I moderate a political blog, so I know how important it is to keep things focused, but when I won’t go off topic, others have gotten angry and have called me things like “traffic cop,” but I know the game. Taking a person in another direction is rhetorical deflection due to the other party’s unwillingness to acknowledge the point. Regardless, Jason’s wishes should be respected.
As to the tone, the atheists here were snarky and/or off topic from the start. Many people, especially atheists, believe that they can be as rude and disrespectful as they can get away with, but when given just a mild taste of their own medicine, they flip out. Regardless a person’s worldview, arguments made in bad faith should not be respected. In my estimation, the atheists here were not arguing in good faith, and I therefore do not accord them the respect I give to others. Disagreement notwithstanding, I always treat a person with utmost respect so long as s/he argues in good faith. Once s/he starts playing this deflection game or argues dishonestly, there’s no point trying to have a serious discussion. I’ll simply point out (often acerbically) for a few posts why it’s pointless to continue and then drop it.
Nonetheless, I appreciate your comments about tone, and I will do what I can to measure mine with more restraint, but please also note that some people cannot see the problem until they’re the recipient of the same. As Lincoln once said, every time he heard somebody defend slavery, he had the urge to see it tried on that person. Sometimes, it’s necessary to taste your medicine.
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July 1, 2019 at 1:11 pm
I really enjoy the articles and find many of the comments insightful, but it is true that some, especially atheists, make ugly comments. After reading them again, I found your comments rather restrained except when provoked. It is probably not a good idea for me to read the article and all the comments in one setting. The comments get jumbled and chaotic, especially when I am unable to see what a comment has to do with the topic. At first I thought there was simply something I wasn’t grasping, but I’m intelligent and educated enough to figure out what I read. So I am glad to hear that someone else thought some of the comments did no belong. What I don’t get is why an atheist would bother to even be on this cite. How can one comment on goodness and God if God does not exist!? My background is Oneness. Let me ask you one final question about this cite. Is it for spiritual growth in the faith or for philosophical discussions as to the nature of God?
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July 1, 2019 at 2:00 pm
@Ann
Thanks again for your comments, Ann.
First, the reason atheists show up is their apparent need to “prove” that God doesn’t exist. Their usual justification for all that effort is political. They believe that Christians threaten the rights of others, so part of their strategy is to go out of their way to show Christians that faith in God is irrational. The more people they can get to defect from theism, the more political ground they stand to gain. That’s why they often stray from the topic. They have an agenda, and they pursue it with fundamentalist fervor.
Second, this site is for spiritual growth and philosophical discussions. Jason rightly believes that faith and reason go hand-in-hand and that of course means that faith in God is rationally justified.
Third, both Jason and I are Oneness Pentecostals. We agree far more often than we disagree, but I normally reply to him when I disagree due to the fact that back-slapping gets rather tedious. 🙂
Jason is more of a theistic personalist whereas I follow Thomistic metaphysics which of course means that I defend the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS). I also tend to be more conservative with respect to “holiness standards.”
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July 1, 2019 at 3:10 pm
Thank you. I’ll keep reading. God Bless!
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July 1, 2019 at 9:25 pm
Ann:
I am an atheist yet I believe in God; I believe that Jesus was an atheist and I believe that Jesus believed in the same God.
This site history, from my research, has always been open to a clash of ideas where theism believers, other God believers, religious believers, and non believers have commented. Alternate views cannot be expressed without going off the topic when the topic is false, misleading, skewed, presumptive, on topics that involve presumptive Gods or topics based on the presumptive God attributes, how unreasonable would it be to expect a writer to comment on a topic which is false from start to finish?
To demand that commentators speak only on topic is censorship; to characterize disagreement with the premise and the conclusion as off topic is censorship. This is what we call a Distinction without a difference.
Now the topic in this case is “Why God Could (OR) Not Create the Good” is an
Impossible topic to comment on except for believers who accept the presumptives: “God” & “Good” since the definition of both are elusive. Good necessarily is arbitrary, not for the God of theists but for man because it is man who discerns good or not good, not the God they claim to follow; and secondly the theist God does not exist.
But here’s the difference: the God you believe in and this site is dedicated to which is a personal God who hears our prayers and occasionally answers them, is a false God. The God I believe in and accept is the existence of a creator on the basis of reason but reject belief in a supernatural deity that interacts with humankind.
Commentators may boast “(this blog site)…is for spiritual growth and philosophical discussions…”; however, it is a dubious boast. A spiritual growth and philosophical discussion site would necessarily allow; and, not only allow but welcome, discourse outside the topic; otherwise, how can the “topic” or its objections be discussed for spiritual growth and philosophical discussions unless one allows for alternate, (off-topic) objections in equal time?
Atheists and those of a religious bent can live and socialize together quite happily – we’re lucky enough to live in a liberal and tolerant society. This does not mean we should pretend there are no ideological differences between us. Christianity theism and Secular deism cannot both be right. If the former is correct, deists are doomed to hell; if the atheists are on the money, Christians are allowing an aeons-old lie to restrict their freedoms and choices in their one shot at life. The stakes are high.
Instead of campaigning against a position that actively attempts to reduce the rigidity of Christian groups, let other offerings be put forward; spiritual growth and philosophical discussions should be an epic human adventure. If that leads some to read opinions which differ to your own, why worry? Why protest against anti-religion, anti theism? Theism after all, is merely Deism inserted with human ego and virtues. This has given rise to thousands of Cults and millions of Cultists: AKA, Christian Denominations – and those who bathe in the glory of their cult of choice. It’s a human failing to scissor their God to conform.
Christianity has almost everything going its way – culture and art for the last two millennia have been subject to its influence. It is in the home, it permeates society, and it recruits young. You can try to keep the flock faithful by silencing critics – or, failing that, petitioning the faithful to boycott their works. Alternatively, you can hone your own arguments, rally your evangelists, and spread the good word: and let your rivals do the same.
This is the “radical” concept Jesus introduced to the theism community in his day. It’s success was not immediately apparent but we deists having understood his parable: “…It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened…”
We wait; the time, ticking, approaches; the aeons-old lie, will die.
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July 1, 2019 at 9:45 pm
rideabike47 writes:
Yes, within the boundaries of this site’s Commenting Policy.
It is entirely irrelevant whether or not you like the rules of another person’s house. If you don’t like the rules, don’t come here. Nobody forces you to comment here. There are myriad other sites that have open forums. This is not one of them.
Of course it is. Whoever said it wasn’t? This isn’t the government, so you have no free speech rights here.
Yes and no. Some posts are just for believers and other posts are not. That’s the way this blog runs. But even atheists have seen problems with the ED, so they can most certainly comment on whether a being creating “good” is logically cogent.
And there are several threads on this site where you can make that case. It’s not as if you’re disallowed from ever expressing a disagreement with a lead post. As I told you previously, you can browse the entire site and comment at will the things you just wrote, so long as it is in the appropriate thread.
By commenting in the appropriate thread, that’s how. This blog has quite a few followers (580), so they get alerts to new posts. If any of them want to take you up on discussing the matters you raise, they’ll do so. Your insistence on commenting off-topic is in direct violation of your hosts wishes. Again, if you don’t like it, you are free to go someplace else.
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July 2, 2019 at 12:16 am
You wrote in Post 73…..?
I don’t care!
Nobody else on this blog cares either.
You don’t know just how irrelevant you are; belief-ego balloons cannot pop.
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July 2, 2019 at 7:12 am
Imagine the audacity:
Man has created caricature concept models of imagined phantoms he cannot fathom. Over eras and aeons of time Man names the phantoms he cannot fathom, Zeus, Apollo, Brahma from generation to generation, from every cultural mythology across the earth, the Shinto and Folk Gods, Hindu Gods and Goddesses and eventually the caricature Uni became Omni and followed the evolutionary pathway from which they could not evolve and morphed into the One True God, the all encompassing generic GOD.
And all the while mind you, the given attributes of the invented Phantom eventually came to the state of true existence by the artful psychological ploy of repetitious nonsense to the point of this comment:
In summary, if goodness existed outside of God it would have to be created by God, but only a good God would want to create goodness. If He was already good, however, then there was no goodness to create. Goodness is not something that could be created by God. God’s very nature just is The Good.
And the audacity then follows the human trajectory man designed so he could say, with all the gusto given to the imaginative Phantom he created:
“…This is true……………………”
A Liar knows no hole deep enough not to jump into and then lives the life in that black hole from which no escape was known when the jump into it was chosen. Such is the audacity; AKA, stupidity, of those who follow the myth of their own making. The Ego knows no shame too grotesque not to wander there and shame has no abasement too low for the unbridled Ego to continue the wild journey of belief.
Belief is the spoiler of a man’s soul; the road block to spiritual growth and the warning of Jesus? You will die in your sins if you do not listen to me…..You are from beneath; I am from above: you are of this world; I am not of this world.
You are full of rage and penance and guilt. If you followed me you would entertain the seekers, accommodate the questioners but you hate the seeker and you hate the questions because love in not in you. You are the hypocrite of the world, the shame of all that is abased and you think by sending away you have fulfllled your role but what a role you play: filled with rage, with hate, rules, regulations, exactly the role the Church has always played for its followers: guilt, sin, penalty:
sending you to ancient blogs to air current desires; stale and moldy blogs from disuse of 7 years, the letter of the law is more important than the spirit of the law. Hypocrite with a mind so last century.
Matthew 23:4-28
They pile heavy burdens on people’s shoulders and won’t lift a finger to help. Everything they do is just to show off in front of others.
do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
They are the last throes of demoniacs appealing like angels.
Ever wonder why no posts by Scalia ever refers to Jesus? I can tell you. He does not know Jesus, does not follow Jesus, cannot quote Jesus and cannot reference any Jesus messages unless it satisfies his own desire to give penalties, impose guilt or expose the sins of others. Scalia acts like a typical Pharisee who tries to fool Jesus with religious questions to make him seem lowly, as hypocrites often do to project their deficiencies onto others.
Scalia how about going to the political site you moderate and blog there. You offer nothing here. Trump needs you. Besides that every post on this thread is more appealing and sincere than any of your self righteous braggadocia comments about the rules of someone else’s site.
Of the 580 followers of this site how many are eagerly awaiting your next comment or waiting with bated breath to respond to anything your superior intellect will issue forth? How many? Any?
Get out of Dodge and back into your political belief system and where’s your own site? Can’t find any followers who want to be argued against, condemned by and debased with your acerbic venom. You should go to bible study 101 and learn how to treat people instead of how to browbeat people. Try the Jesus message for a change……no? not your style? Oh well.
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July 5, 2019 at 1:11 pm
Jason writes:
I addressed this question in an older thread, but since you mention it here, I’d like to ask you what your precise definition of “good” is. Thanks, in advance.
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July 26, 2019 at 2:58 pm
Philosophers have mischaracterized the nature of God from time to time over millennia, finally encapsulating him in a creed almost 2000 years ago. This is why they struggle with this question.
Eternal beings, however, exist according to eternal laws, not according to the dictates of uninspired humans. To think that there is a solitary Supreme that cannot create after its own kind is an example of the limits philosophers have placed on their Omni being/god.
They make limiting assumptions that include the idea that the only thing it has done is create one world (in spite of evidence of unlimited worlds), with one Bible (a single divine book of their choosing), with a limited number of people to be saved. Such is the absurdity of theological scholar conclusions acting according to their own wisdom.
They deny the authority and revelations of God beyond their chosen and limited canon, assuming that in their multitude of disagreements they are spokespersons for this being that is a complete mystery to them and who is not like them in any fashion. Yet, they state that they are metaphorically created in its image and claiming it is incorporeal and does not have an image that anyone can see.
There is a force dictating the order of the universe. It is either something, someone or nothing. It doesn’t need to be limited to one being as far as the divine order of creation. Yet such is the mainstream theological/philosophical conclusion, a solitary Divine sitting in an eternal vacuum until 6000 years ago.
God can only be sovereign within the truth by which he exists otherwise at one point he was sovereign over nothing. We assume God is a He or a least there is a he in the makeup of a godly being to whom we direct our worship.
Good and evil are co-eternal states of choice for intelligent beings that develop within the truths that exist. Beings more advanced that are all-powerful and all-knowing and of perfect love follow eternal laws of creation, redemption based on perfect justice and mercy that have the power to offer eternal life. If we live eternally as moral agents and abide by the laws we too will be all-knowing and all-powerful through their grace and our willingness to learn. The only reason we wouldn’t be like God is if he or they have no such capacity to save and exalt their children.
The proposed state of eternity as taught by the mainstream of Christian philosophers and theologians is an eternity of static inferiority either in heaven or hell somehow inspired by God’s love and it depends on whether they are good or not. Good is arbitrary if no other laws exist except for God’s whims and he would be the creator of all things including evil if he is, in fact, the first cause.
As we progress through the eternal plan of God as possessors of moral agency we either align ourselves with eternal truths, choosing good or evil. All blessings and cursings are predicated on eternal laws that bring order to an endless cosmos in which God governs. Separate stations exist according to the level of obedience to the laws. The highest order is inhabited by endless numbers of beings in endless kingdoms that have no bounds and they all act together by perfect love and laws and a process of salvation that never ends.
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July 26, 2019 at 3:24 pm
You make a lot of statements, but you offer no argument in support of your claims. You claim:
Please elaborate. Good and evil are merely “states of choice” that “develop within truths that exist”? How so? How do the “truths that exist” relate to good and evil?
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July 26, 2019 at 5:01 pm
If there are no states of eternal opposition there is no choice of any kind. If there is no choice there is no freedom. Good and evil exist because God does not exist in a vacuum of his own making.
If good and evil are not supported in a co-eternal fashion then they would be whimsical fabrications of a first and solitary cause, and we would be mere pawns in a game of some kind with no real implications other than those rules that the creator applies.
The penalties for sin and sin itself can’t be based on arbitrary concepts that only began to exist 6000 years ago or began to exist at all. Such would imply that God is an arbitrary and whimsical being, which no rational being would accept as a god or as the God who is our creator.
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July 26, 2019 at 5:42 pm
You didn’t quite answer my question. How do truths that exist relate to good and evil? What are these truths that exist? To answer “eternal states of opposition” doesn’t appear to answer the question.
Also, please define good and evil.
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July 27, 2019 at 10:54 am
I guess the dictionary definition of good and evil doesn’t work for this discussion. You ask for my definition so I will explain it as I understand how it pertains to eternity. Your answer should be in here somewhere hopefully. This is a philosophical discussion however so maybe not.
Good is obedience to the eternal laws of the heavens, evil is acting contrary to them. This is the eternal standard for the justice of God. The knowledge of the concepts of good and evil must be co-eternal with him otherwise they are temporary.
Theologian/philosophers assigned the state of supreme good to God and they are right I beleive, but they have also reached some erroneous conclusions. How can God be good if there is no standard on which to base it? Is God holy, good and just because he says so? If his existence was solitary until 6000 years ago then what purpose did his holiness serve? The tunnel vision of orthodox teachings ignores the obvious questions and just assumes that there is one good supreme Omni-being. God can’t be good unless there is an option that would allow the of exercising evil, otherwise, he is not truly a free being. If he can’t lead others to his state of a supreme good existence then he is not omnipotent either.
We know very little about eternal truth but what we do know is that God intended to introduce Adam and Eve to the knowledge of good and evil which they, the Gods, already possessed. Once man partook, the Gods said that the man (and woman) had become as they were. There is no opportunity for the supreme good without knowledge. How did God get the knowledge of good and evil? Did he/they invent it? Life and creation hardly make sense if that is the case.
What did Satan rebel against so that he was expelled from heaven, in a war no less? What allowed for a supposed creation of the Almighty to rise up in rebellion and cause a war that he would surely lose? (I am familiar with traditional arguments of free will and they fall short in explaining the situation.) Why was Satan allowed to continue the carnage on the earth and not simply eliminated at the time of his rebellion? What eternal standard does God uphold and based on what truth does he create free agents that can act against it? Satan has come to represent the state of supreme evil and Jesus Christ as the supreme state of good equal to God the Father in this way.
The purpose of mortal life is for the premortal offspring of God the Father to exercise their moral agency, to choose between good and evil without coercion. Here we live by faith. At birth, we enter mortal life forgetting the premortal experience and the war with Satan. God places his word at our disposal and sends messengers to awaken us spiritually if we will choose to heed it and he also allows Satan certain opportunities to try us. We, as fallen humans, will 100% commit sins under these conditions.
The Savior’s powers of redemption were foreordained to reconcile us to God by satisfying the penalties required by eternal laws of justice or the violation of the concepts of good. If there are no eternal laws on which sin and good are based then God could simply wave a wand and make sin and its consequences go away.
Mercy comes to us on a basis of law. That is why the penalties of sin were satisfied by someone that never committed a single sin and is, therefore, is worthy and capable of offering such a sacrifice. Each person as a moral agent is accountable to the degree of their understanding. At death, we are freed from the temptations and infirmities of mortality with the promise of the resurrection.
There will come a judgment and we will render an accounting with perfect understanding as to whether we chose good or evil. If we accept the Savior’s mercy and grace and repent of our sins we can be forgiven and escape the penalties of our sins that would have applied. Thus we too can become good and inherit a place with God.
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July 27, 2019 at 10:10 pm
@eternal wonderer
You wrote a lot of stuff that’s not germane to my questions, but I will try to draw out the meat of what you wrote and reply accordingly. You write:
So, in order for something to be “good,” it must obey “the eternal laws of the heavens.” What are these eternal laws, and are they good as well? If your answer to the latter question is yes, then good is not merely obedience to a law; the law itself is good. And if the law is good, what makes it good? Your definition of good is imprecise which affects the cogency of your argument.
Here you imply a sort of distinction between God and the concepts of good and evil. Again, this is most imprecise, so I’m left to guess what you’re getting at. It seems you’re saying that good and evil stand apart from God, which of course implies that God is not ontologically good–whether or not He knows what it is. Or, perhaps you’re saying that the eternal laws are the good, in which case God is not good in Himself. He is only good if he obeys the laws which appear to exist apart from Him.
Given the imprecision here, it would be nice if you fleshed this out because I don’t want to reply to something you’re not arguing.
So, the “state of supreme good” is ascribed to God, and you believe that is correct. So, good does not stand apart from God, it is part of God? Then good, again, isn’t obedience to some eternal law but is either God Himself or part of God? If not and you’re really saying that supreme good ascription is appropriate only because God is a really obedient God, then you cannot say that the theologians you criticize are correct because they don’t ascribe supreme goodness to God the way you do. You ascribe to them a belief they do not hold.
Back and forth we go. Supreme good is not in God (you imply); it is in some standard apart from God by which God can be evaluated on the basis of His obedience to it. Moreover, your God is free to commit evil else he is not free.
It appears from these statements that we go back to your apparent first assertion that goodness can only be ascribed to God on the basis of his conformity to laws which are logically prior to him. I’ll again defer comment until you clarify.
I will say, however, that you need to sue your history professors for malpractice. The questions you raise were directly and thoroughly addressed by Greek and Christian philosophers long, long ago. It’s a pity that you’ve merely parroted your teachers without making an independent investigation. Christian theology doesn’t “assume” that there is “one good supreme Omni-being.” That logically follows from biblical teaching and tightly woven metaphysical arguments. You may not agree with those arguments (once you’ve heard them), but it is inexcusable for you to “assume” that they were making assumptions about their doctrine. They who criticize assumptions shouldn’t be in the habit of making them.
One more thing:
You use the plural Gods twice and the plural pronoun they twice in reference to the Gods. This implies that goodness is a participatory attribute shared by beings, thus making goodness a logical prior principle to said Gods.
So, please be more precise and tell me what “Good” is, what eternal truth or laws are (even though you say you know little about it or them), and where these laws come from.
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