the old testament was likely part of some ruling class's doctrine on why they are superior; one part of the old testament that supports this is how Lot's daughters got him drunk in a cave and had sex with him to continue the bloodline of their family. It's a blatant appeal to lineage.

The old testament is an attempt at giving a narration of what they believed was Divine Revelation by God (even if it wasn’t); and recording lineages was an aspect of giving a historical account of what was happening.

I think it has to be a combination of my theory on it being used as part of a social control scheme and number 2#.

The idea that the Biblical scriptures were a product of insanity or elitism seems implausible given that they were recording as different times and over a long period of time. It was and still is a generation-by-generation effort. You would have to believe that these were historically unfolding for the purpose of aristocracy…

 If you have observed children, you'll see that they have spontaneous imaginations: when humanity was early, they just didn't have access to the type of accumulated knowledge we have today, so they stayed more childlike in terms of belief and explanation.

To some extent this is true, but this begs the question by assuming that the Bible doesn’t have truth in it.

Interesting. I just don't understand how that ontologically would work; other than if there is some atemporal connection we have to each other.

But no one is divorcing them, just distinguishing. But still, we hippy males like to wear flowers in our long feminine hair too

The fact that you called it feminine concedes that you do think gender is tied to biology….

Can you come up with examples of liberal agendas? There are liberals, there are agendas, but "liberal agenda" paints a unified conspiracy when political agendas always have to do with money and power.

Liberalism in America tends to want the social and legal acceptance of:

1. Sexually deviant, homosexual, and transgender behaviors and practices;
2. The treatment of people relative to what they want to be as opposed to what they are (e.g., gender affirmation, putting the preferred gender on driver’s licenses, allowing men to enter female bathrooms, allowing men to play in female sports, etc.);
3. No enforceable immigration policies;
4. Murdering of children in the womb;
Etc.

I appreciate your response!

I think, and correct me if I am misunderstanding, you are viewing gender and sex as distinct; whereas my model here admits of no such distinction. Granted, I think semantically someone could cut it up differently where gender and sex are virtually (conceptually) but not really distinct and I may have no major quibbles with it. I am purposefully retaining an equality between sex and gender to avoid ideological and political confusions and agendas.

 its not a gender expectation that you see most men being taller than women, that's a biological expectation

Under my view, since gender and sex are the same, it is a gender expectation that men tend to be taller than women. This view is making a metaphysical distinction between the form (act) and the matter (potency) of a human being; where the form is the actualizing principle, the simple unity, the soul, which informs the body of what it is supposed to be (relative to the essence or quiddity of a human being). The soul, this form of the body, is innately gendered: there are two types of human souls—male and female.

I think under your view, and correct me if I am wrong, human beings are just a collection of organic parts; and so sex is purely the collection of organs and organic parts functioning together to provide some specific procreative role (e.g., maleness or femaleness). At this point, if we stipulate gender is equal to sex then you end up with essentially my view with respect to everything that truly matters for the political side of things; but under your view I would imagine gender is not identical to sex. Gender, as far as I cant tell in your view, is the social expectations of a person with a particular sex—is that right? If so, then this is the meat of our disagreement; because I would say that, if I were to conceptually distinguish gender and sex, gender is the social expression of sex. This is important because an expectation is not necessarily the upshot of biology. I think true gender, if they be conceptually separable, is always properly connected back to biology; otherwise, like I noted before, it explodes into triviality, prejudice, and irrationality.

 if someone always expected every man to be taller than women or they aren't 'a real man'.

This is a real problem for the kind of metaphysical account of the body that I expounded for your view (which I do not profess is accurate of your position of course per se); but not a problem for mine. Why? Because in your view ‘sex’ is just a collection of parts operating towards some procreative role and, consequently, there is no embodied essence of being a male or female; as each person is male or female only insofar as they sufficiently have enough of those parts and organic functions to count as one or the other. Technically, under this view, if you swap out enough sex-related parts of a human then you could achieve a sex change.

Under my view, on the contrary, human beings have a real essence embodied in themselves. This ‘code of what it is to be a human male or female’ is not identical to DNA: it is really there in their soul, which is the form, the simple ‘I’, the unity, which guides their biological development. This means that each human has the full essence of being a human male or female since conception but developmental factors can thwart their essence being realized properly in time. A woman would is infertile, e.g., is still a woman because she has a human female soul: the essence is there—not merely an abstraction of a collection of body parts making her sufficiently female (e.g,. DNA, fertility, sex organs, etc.). Even if a woman were inhumanly materially changed to lack the vast majority of stereotypical organic traits of femaleness she would still be a female under this view because her soul is female and to truly transition sexes would require killing her and creating a new human of the opposite sex (because her soul is what in virtue of which she is alive).

A real man, then, is not one that is necessarily taller than a woman—because the biological process can be inhibited or altered in ways where a woman could be tall for a woman or vice-versa—but a human substance that has a male soul.

Words change meaning all the time

Your statement here and thereafter are very true; however, semantics do matter in colloquial and political settings. I am merely noting a political stand that we need to conserve the meanings of the words to avoid liberal ideology where men go into women’s bathrooms or participate in female sports. Of course, I recognize that one could make an apolitical (virtual) distinction between sex and gender and note that sex is what really matters: I don’t have major issues with that.

So, what ended up happening? We added an adjective to marriage to clarify what type of marriage it is.

This is exactly my point. Semantics in colloquial speech are tools, nay weapons, for pushing agendas. You control what the average person believes by controlling the linguistics they have at their disposal. For people like me who want to conserve the meaning of marriage and do not support gay marriage, it naturally seems like a rhetorical attack to try to morph the term ‘marriage’ to include other types. Of course, if someone agrees with the political agenda of giving people a wide range of marriage types, then by all means they should morph the terms.

 But it was never intended to be an honest switch. It was intended to hide the use of trans sexual and expand the legal and civil rights of cross sex identity to those who could not afford it or were willing to go through the surgery

Agreed. This is why I have chosen to explain the gender vs. sex distinction differently than conceptually separating them to avoid the liberal agenda of making them really distinct (viz., purely a social construct). If they are purely a social construct, then we need to completely restructure our society to be hyper-libertarian.

There was a psychologist named Leon Festinger who came up with a theory of cognitive dissonance.

This is very interesting, and I could see this happening with all sides of debates. Thanks for sharing!

although I would personally avoid the term 'iiberal' because I most people will equate that as a political issue instead of the philosophical classification you are using. This is an underlying attempt by a small faction to persuade society to accept them through deceptive and conflationary language.

My philosophy here is politically motivated, just to clarify. I am collapsing the two conceptually to avoid people confusing them as really (as opposed to virtually) distinct; while retaining the obvious differences between the expressions of sex (what they would call gender) and sex itself (what they would call sex).

I don’t think the idea that gender is purely a social construct is niche in liberalism: they tend to push agendas that affirm that gender expectations are irrational, immoral, and hateful because they are not anchored in sex. After all, if women wearing dresses is purely a social construct, then how could someone be justified in viewing a man wearing a dress as wrong? Gender theory is an attempt at ad hoc rationalizing radical freedom to push people into feeling bad for having expectations of gender roles and identities.

Because if we are to use this definition of gender is written, the obvious conclusion is: "If gender is purely cultural, then you do not have a viable reason to be in cross sex spaces. Gender and sex are different."

True, but liberals tend to view gender as what matters for public spaces—not sex. They see sex as this irrelevant nature between someone legs that should not dictate how their life should go.

Cardinal Sarah put it the best: “gender ideology is a luciferian refusal to receive a sexual nature from God”.

When we say "healthy" this should only mean biological

I was referring to biology there insofar as the human develops properly in accord with their nature ingrained in their soul.

Gender as a cultural construct can never be objective

Gender is the procreative type ingrained in the nature of a substance: it is not a cultural construct. What we know of and can expect out of the tendencies and expressions of different genders is culturally and individually determined, like all knowledge, but should be the upshot or expression of something objective—it should be grounded in facts about gender (sex).

This is fitting, as I am a merely a feeble peasant...

Agreed. I view gender as socially enforced/acceptable prejudice and sexism.

To a certain extent I could see that when it comes to the more loosely associated aspects of gender to sex (like hair style); but a lot of it seems to be legitimate to me (such as feminine vs. masculine traits and behaviors).

In post-modern society we are very inclined to treat people as if by being a person they are the exact same as every other person; but a “person” is an abstraction: not a kind of substance. Having personhood is an aspect of certain natures—not a nature itself. Although men and women have the same moral worth, they are not equal in nature. They have different roles (teleological) in the human species: they are the yin and yang that solidify the survival and harmony of the species. To discriminate based off of sex just means to differentiate—to treat differently—based off of sex; and this is not per se wrong. You get a woman flowers when you wouldn’t have if they were a man; you draft men and not women for wars; etc.

I mentioned to another poster here that the game is to get you to say a trans person is the other sex without having you think you're saying a trans person is the other sex

Exactly! Or it is a convoluted game of noting the superficial point that there are an indefinite amount of personalities that someone would express.

But how would that ontology work? How would we all be ontologically tied together when we don't even exist in the same time?

Thus you have a theism on *your* terms, *not* on God's terms

Natural theology is the application of reason, and Her Principles, to the natural world God created to determine God’s existence and nature. There’s nothing about this that is personal or subjective.

Our reason is an image of the Divine Reason; which gives it its legitimacy.

Divine revelation, even if accepted merely as a concept, is necessary in order to overcome "natural theology". Because "natural theology" is self-centred with God merely as an object in it.

Natural theology is an attempt of determining God’s existence and His nature: it is not self-centered at all; other than being the attempt at acquiring truth, which is equally true of anything Divinely Revealed being accepted by people.

You're evaluating God on *your* terms, not on God's terms.

That is begging the question: you are assuming it is Divinely Revealed. I was using my analysis to determine if it is Divinely Revealed in the first place.

Any attempt of verifying the OT legitimacy will fall prey to your critique. E.g., well you method of verifying the OT’s historicity to verify that it is Divinely Revealed is “a bottom-up”, self-centered, and “on-your-own-terms” attempt; so it is illegitimate.

 I have no issue with new terms or approaches, but are the statements involved in these approaches valid?

I don’t think it succeeds, because they don’t really divorce male and female as sex from as gender. They still refer to, e.g., female qua gender as what socially we expect normally out of female qua sex; so they are still viewing it through the prism of “what should we expect this being of this nature to behave and represent?”.

Let’s say it is purely social though and that what we expect a sex to behave like is purely based off of unrelated factors to their nature. Then the view does succeed in divorcing them, but now it falls into superficiality. If gender is just some particular trope of expression that any person could decide to exhibit, then it is just a personal personality that someone is deciding to become; and then this would be utterly meaningless for important aspects of how we treat people of different natures. For example, is it meaningful to divy up bathrooms based off of purely subjective personality types? Not at all. We separate the bathrooms based off of natures to properly respect their dignities. Divvying up the bathrooms on personalities would be like having a chess player fanatic bathroom only, a gamers only bathroom, the ping-pong addicts bathroom; etc. This isn’t a meaningful differentiator for driver licenses, prisons, bathrooms, etc.

This is why, going back to my point about the political tension, the important aspect of gender theory is not itself but, rather, what it is being developed for: it is being used to peddle treating people in the sense of gender as if it is in the sense of sex. Neo-liberals want to be able to present themselves as if they are the opposite sex so that they now get treated as if they are one; and they came up with gender theory to try and justify it. The common view on gender theory isn’t merely that “gender” is analogous to social personality types and expressions: it’s the attempt of subverting normal gender (sex) roles for personality traits and social expressions. E.g., I am now a woman because I present myself as one, so now you should treat me as if I really am a woman (in terms of how we would treat one that is biologically a woman); and is the real meat of the disagreement.

If a person could truly change sexes, then this wouldn’t be a political issue; but it not is the case that they can’t but also for conservatives it doesn’t help that they normally hold that the soul has a gender (sex) which cannot be changed without killing the person.

100% Part of the approach here is to demonstrate the poor grammar involved in this attempt. If someone actually felt that gender was completely divorced from sex, I would likely see an argument somewhere saying, "You're right, we need to be more specific," or trying to justify the grammer. The only reply I've seen so far is, "Well people talk this way now, and we shouldn't debate what words should mean."

Fair enough. If I were playing devil’s advocate, I would say that gender is purely social; and sex is biological. How we decided to treat people based off of sex is truly social. So if you are treating a biological woman in X manner it would not be related to the woman’s biology or nature; if that is true, then if someone who isn’t a biological woman presents the same social cues that you use to determine how to treat a biological woman, then you would rationally need to treat the non-biological woman the same way.

My thought is that there must be some ontological reality binding humans one to another, i.e. that we are not merely individuals. Hence God, in creating humans, did not create a set of individuals, but actually also created a whole, and there is a concern for the whole qua whole (which does not deny a concern for the parts). If one buys into the Western notion of individualism too deeply, then traditional Christian doctrines such as Original Sin make little sense.

I am inclined to agree, except wouldn’t it be juridical and not ontologically?

What implication did I make where the consequent is illegitimate connected to the antecedent?

Long time no see, Philosophim! I hope you are doing well.

Gender - A cultural expectation of non-biological behavior in regards to an individual's sex

I know you are stipulating this definition for the sake of the OP, but it is worth mentioning that this precludes the main usage of the word throughout history. Gender has always been the upshot of biology (nature). With gender theory, we see a new development of trying to cleanly separate the two so that people that claim to be a woman or man without committing themselves to the absurdity of claiming to be biologically one when they are not.

If by ‘woman’ and ‘man’ you are referring to merely a set of social cues and behaviors that at person gives off that are typically associated with the given sex (of man or woman), then why semantically refer to these ‘genders’ as men and women? It seems like a blatant equivocation that muddies the waters—don’t you think?

I mean, if it really is the case that being a ‘man by gender’ is completely separable from being a ‘man by sex’ and this is a new distinction one is making (that has very little historical precedent), then why not call it ‘being a loto’ or some other word that isn’t deeply entrenched in biology?

I think that is what the ‘is a transwoman a woman’ political debate comes down to: conservatives do not want to reuse the biologically entrenched words to refer to something totally different, whereas liberals want to use it so they can piggy-back off of the various ways we deal with sex in terms of gender instead (like bathroom assignments).

CC: @Janus, @Colo Millz

It may help your conversation to note that virtual properties/distinctions are different than real properties/distinctions; and, for Scotists, there may be a third 'formal distinction'.

Triangularity and trilaterality are conceptually (virtually) distinct; but are not really distinct.

I want to show you that the "God of philosophers" (which is, basically, what you're arguing for) is impotent and inconsequential.

The concept of God argued in the OP is the classical theistic version of God; which is the metaphysical basis for the major “theims” in the West, such as Aristotle’s, Plato’s, Aquinas’, etc.

It provides, in-itself, a sufficient theory of ethics and an understanding of reality to live a good life. I don’t think one needs divine revelation for this (for the most part).

Do you pray to him?
Do you thank him for everything in your life?
Have you joined a community of people who also believe in the God you believe in?
Do you ask this God to destroy your enemies?
Do you destroy your enemies in the name of this God?

This is a derailment, though. Personally, I am a Christian now; but none of the above is required in order to live a sufficiently good life. Natural theology is sufficient.

The aspect of theism that is the most important is not worship: it is ethics, which governs politics, economics, and practical life.

What is the relevance of this God of yours in your life, other than that it's a concept connecting some metaphysical dots?

Metaphysics is not some abstraction that is meaningless for practical life: it informs it by giving a clearer understanding of the nature’s of things. Understanding the nature’s of things helps with understanding what is objectively good and bad; and this informs what is right and wrong.

What is good for you? What is good for society? How should I treat my neighbor? What should I do with my life? All of these are informed by ethics.

What exactly do you understand? Wherefrom did you get what you understand?

That is an unfeasible question to answer briefly: you are asking essentially for the entire historical development of my consciousness.

Without revelation, or at least the notion of revelation, one is dealing merely with the artifacts of one's own mind.

I would say one can know God through natural theology. For more on the arguments I would give, please see the link in the OP. I outline it in detail there.

I didn't create God, baker. You are confusing coming to understand something with creating something.

:up: I'll take a look.

I apologize for the incredibly belated response!

The problem with the analogy is that Original Sin doesn't merely deprive you of a gratuitous gift; it actually harms you. You come to harm (or come to be compromised) through no fault of your own, and because of someone else's poor decision.

I see what you are saying. The question arises: if God is not deploying a concept of group guilt, then why wouldn’t God simply restore that grace for those generations that came after (since they were individually innocent)?

This makes me hypothesize that it may have been impossible for God to do so because it would violate His nature OR that group guilt is not immoral. I lean towards the former.

My thought would be that God begins creation with a pure act of which He knows its full causality; i.e., if He chooses to create world A then causally all of this stuff in set sA will happen and if He chooses to create world B then causally … etc. If there is a best possible world, which is perfectly aligned with God’s nature (which would be causally harmonious and non-parasitically causally ordered), then a Great Fall would entail the necessary annihilation of that world and its re-creation; because the causality would always be altered indefinitely from the “sin spillage”. This restoration would be impossible through repairing it (that is, through preserving some of the world in restoring it back) because the very fabric of causality would be polluted (e.g., the molecular level would be poisoned). If this is true, then God could only restore the grace of those born after the Great Fall by an act of annihilation; and annihilation is an act of willing the bad of something (by willing its non-existence, which is bad for that thing since the more being it has—the more its essence is realized in existence—the better it is). God cannot will the bad of anything directly because His creation powers can only will a thing in accord with is form (perfectly) because He has perfect knowledge; and to will the bad of something is to will a depravity in its form. Consequently, once God wills something to be He cannot rescind it. Therefore, under this view, God would have to let natural death do its thing, for those who can die, as opposed to doing it Himself.

Of course, the highlight here is the hard pill to swallow that God can’t rescind existence from things (which would be by way of no longer willing their existence [actively]). However, God could annihilate particular things through other things (e.g., having fire burn a man); because He, in those instances, is simultaneously willing the good of both by willing their existence in perfect correspondence with their forms (e.g., the fire’s form and the man’s form) and allowing their interaction to dictate the outcome (e.g., the man burns alive). Annihilating an entire totality of creation, though, would require willing the bad of it in a direct way; and this is impossible for God to do.

What do you think?

How is the idea of a non-person deity consistent with the historical use of the term God?

Doesn't it seem to radically redefine what one means by God to refer to a being that is not a person? What kind of definition is Spinoza using (to decipher if his Substance is meaningfully identifiable as God or a god)?

I am a free agent Bob, so I have freedom of indifference and freedom of excellence.

You would be a free agent in the sense of freedom for excellence if you cultivated the virtues, you have sufficient knowledge of what is good, and your environment is conducive to your flourishing as a human.

Are you saying that God does not have freedom of indifference and therefore cannot sin?

Freedom of indifference and freedom for excellence are incompatible theories. The former holds that freedom fundamentally consists in being able to choose from contraries; whereas the latter holds that freedom fundamentally consists in having a state of being that is conducive to flourishing.

If one accepts freedom for excellence, then God is and is the only possibly perfectly free being because He is has perfect knowledge of what is good, is unimpeded by anything external to Him, and has the power to actualize what He wills; whereas if one accepts freedom of indifference, then God is and is the only possibly perfectly unfree being because He cannot will what is bad (or, depending on the view, He may not be able to do otherwise whatsoever).

My model is simpler since it requires only one substance.

Yes, but the goal is to explain the relevant data without multiplying entities without necessity; not come up with the simplest answer.

Is your God unconscious?

A conscious being, as I understand it, has a qualitative experience—qualia--such that there is something to be them experiencing the world. In a literal sense, this would require a being with complexity: with parts to facilitate a mediated interpretation of reality.

If God is conscious, it would be in a far weirder and incomprehensible way of knowing things immanently with no mediation. God, then, would not be conscious like we are: we are conscious because our brains facilitate the mediation of sense-data and our understanding of the world around us. There is something it is like to be us experiencing because we have mediated knowledge: we have faculties that cognize what is in reality. God, on the other hand, just knows reality and is intimately interrelated with it.

How? I even have certain knowledge

Because His experience of His experience is an experience. So if He has to experience His experiences, then He would also have to experience His experience of His experience and so on.

Novalis' "god-intoxicated man" is an acosmist (as I've pointed out ↪180 Proof), not "an atheist".

So, for Spinoza, God is all that exists and God is not a person? Is that the idea?

Sure, this is the portion of the argument that addresses omnipotence:

E: Proof of God as Pure Act and Divine Simplicity
1. An purely actual and absolutely simple being exists (see previous arguments).
2. Two absolutely simple beings cannot coexist because they would be ontologically
indistinguishable from each other.
3. Only one purely actual being can exist.
4. There must be at least one purely actual being because change (or composition or
essences/essen or contingency/necessity) is real.
5. There exists one, and only one, purely actual being and it is the first cause of all change.
6. This being is uniquely, absolutely simple since no other absolutely simple being can exist
and it is changeless: this is called Divine Simplicity.
7. Goodness, as a property, refers to the equality of a thing’s essence and existence.
8. This purely actual being must have an essence that is absolutely identical to its existence
because it has no parts (being that it is absolutely simple).
9. This being must be perfectly good thing (and it is the only perfectly good being because no
other absolutely simple being can exist and absolute simplicity is required for an essence
and existence to perfectly overlap).
10. To be actual only because something else actualized the potential for it to exist implies that
that thing exists contingently upon what actualized it.
11. To be actual only because something else actualized the potential for it to exist, therefore,
implies that a being which can change lacks the ability to exist in-itself (or of its own
accord).
12. All things subject to change, which are all beings with parts, are, then, contingent beings
that lack the ability to exist in-themselves.
13. A being, then, that is not subject to change exists in-itself (as pure act).
14. This purely actual being is uniquely a being that is changeless.
15. Therefore, this purely actual being is uniquely a being that subsistently exists.
16. A being that has being in and of itself is just Being itself.
17. Therefore, this purely actual and Divinely Simple being is identical to Being itself.
18. Pure act and being, then, are convertible.
19. Being in-itself is to be a necessary being.
20. Therefore, this being is necessary and uniquely necessary.

21. Power is the ability to actualize potentials.
22. Omnipotence is just the ability to have power in-itself and not derivatively from another.
23. This purely actual being, then, is uniquely omnipotent because it is the sole, true source of
actuality. It is unlimited by act outside of itself.
24. Omnipresence is just to be present in all things.
25. This purely actual being is Being itself and of which all other things get their actuality
derivatively from as its first cause of act; so this purely actual being is omnipresent.
26. This purely actual being cannot be affected by anything else and to be in space, time, or
subjected to natural laws is to be affected by them; therefore, this purely actual being is
outside of time, non-corporeal, and outside of natural laws.
27. Since this purely is not only outside of time but also incapable of any change whatsoever, it
must be eternal proper (as opposed to something like aeviternal).
28. Since this purely actual being is uniquely the only one that can exist and its nature entails
uniquely that its essence and existence are identical (making it partless); it follows that all
other caused things (by this being)—the totality of its creation—is comprised of parts
because every contingent being—every being which is caused by this necessary being—is at
least comprised of two parts: being and essence. No other essence entails its existence, so
not other essence and being can be identical and, so, no other being can be composed of no
parts.
29. Space, time, and natural laws, if they are real, are made of parts; for, at a minimum, their
essences do not entail their existences (that is, there very existence is comprised of essence
and being—thusly two parts at a minimum).
30. Therefore, space, time, and natural laws are contingent on their parts to exist.
31. Therefore, space, time, and natural laws—as contingent beings—have the potential to
continue to exist and had the potential to begin to exist (at some point).
32. This purely actual being would have to be the first cause of act for the beginning of space,
time, and natural laws and their continued existence; as both an actualized potential to
continue and begin to exist are change and this purely actual being is the first cause of
change. This is true for all other beings with parts, which is the totality of real things besides
this purely actual being.
33. All contingent beings are comprised of essence and being.
34. This purely actual being, being the first cause of the existence of contingent beings, must, in
order to cause them, apprehend the essences of those beings in order to infuse them with
being in a pure act.
35. Apprehension of essences is what it means to be an intelligence (intellect).
36. Therefore, this purely actual being must be an intelligence.
37. However, this purely actual being is absolutely simple; so its pure act of thought (intellect)
is identical to Being itself and pure act.

38. An intellect entails a will.
39. Therefore, this purely actual being must be a will.
40. However, this purely actual being is absolutely simple; so its pure act of thought, Being, act,
and will must be identical.
41. Omniscience is just to know the essences of all things that are real and could be real.
42. This purely actual being, as the first cause of anything that possibly could exist and with
knowledge of the essence of anything that possibly could exist, must be omniscient.
43. Love is to will the good of another for its own sake.
44. This purely actual being wills the existence of a thing in correspondence with its essence,
which is to will the good of that thing insofar as to will its existence.
45. Therefore, this purely actual being is all-loving (although not equally or necessarily
supremely loving).
46. A being that is all-good (perfect), divinely simple, purely actual, changeless, properly
eternal, non-corporeal, active cause of all things, the only necessary being, omnipresent,
omnipotent, omniscient, a will, an intelligence, and all-loving is what is called God.
47. Therefore, God exists.

(Strong Natural Theism, 1:E)

What do you mean by this

By analogical predication, I mean when one predicates a property of a thing by way of an analogy that is in no way meant to be taken as one and the same (viz., univocally) or completely different (viz., equivocally):

First, the predication can be univocal, meaning that the words are used in exactly the same manner. In our previous example, this would mean that God is good in exactly the same way that ice cream is good. A second form of predication is equivocal, meaning that although the words used to describe the two things are the same, they have completely unrelated meanings. To return again to our example, this would mean that when we call God good we are not using the word good to mean anything like the same thing as when we say ice cream is good.

The third form of predication is titled analogical. Here God is not good in exactly the same way that ice cream is good, but there is some kind of analogy between the way God is related to the word good and ice cream is related to the same word. That is to say, the meanings are not completely opposed or unrelated, but neither should we conclude that God’s goodness is just like the goodness of ice cream.

-- (https://amymantravadi.com/2020/03/26/the-analogy-of-being-in-the-works-of-thomas-aquinas/)

, and why do you hold that we are (or should be) speaking analogically and not univocally when we say such things?

I think it is important when specifically speaking of God to use analogical predication; because God's nature is not known to us as He is in Himself but, rather, is known to us by way of analogy to His effects. He is known from what He is not that He produces and not what He is.

God’s true nature is not apparent to us, as it is in-itself, exactly because He is never afforded to our senses (nor could He be) and is always the necessary precondition, as Being itself, for all things sensed.

Aquinas' idea here is that God will give moral instruction via divine revelation even in some cases where the moral instruction could be known without the divine revelation.

I think it is reasonable to conclude that many people may not, in practicality, reach knowledge through philosophy of God; so Divine Revelation may be fitting. I will say that I don’t think the arguments I give are highly technical nor something that a laymen is not smart enough to comprehend: I am making ordinary arguments from ordinary things in the natural world (e.g., change, contingency/necessity, etc.). However, this is not incompatible with the ‘strong natural theism’ I expounded: the central thesis merely claims that we can know through reason applied to the natural world around us about God’s nature—it could be equally true that God could expedite the process by just telling us.

I will say that knowing God through reason applied to the ordinary world is stronger and richer than if God were to reveal it to us; because epistemically it would be much less certain with Divine Revelation and it comes with many other disadvantages (such as requiring faith, tradition, etc.) unless we are talking about God supernaturally infusing us with immanent knowledge.

Sure, and that's a pretty common Christian response. But if someone is focused on individual guilt, then Original Sin will not satisfy them. Someone focused on individual guilt would insist that only one who has personally sinned is able to die

I don’t see why someone cannot hold an individual guilt theory and hold that Original Sin is the causal consequence of the first fall. If my parents are given 10,000,000 dollars and they waste it and I consequently get no inheritance, I don’t think that infringes or impedes on guilt being individualistic: I wasn’t owed that money. However, perhaps someone could rejoin that God, being perfectly good, would intervene and fix that causal chain for me so that I get what He intended for me (instead of letting me exist in the fallen world); but I think this requires that God is doing something wrong by allowing the evil to continue and this requires a demonstration of how God could intervene in a morally permissible way: I simply don’t see how He could.

Likewise, correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t think Orthodox and Catholic Christians believe that Aboriginal Sin is something one is guilty of: they believe that it is something one is not culpable for but still causally affects them.

As a Constitutional matter, the adjudication of States who required their citizens to comply with the taxation and practices of a particular religion were overturned through the use of the 14nth 

:up:

So, you like that all these materials are discussed in a single thread?

Well, it’s one view: mine. I want people to discuss the ‘strong natural theism’ I came up with. Naturally, worldviews contain many underlying materials to discuss.

An objection to Trinity: God/mind to me is defined as an irreducible substance with the ability to experience, freely decide, and create

The Trinity argument I gave presupposes a classical theistic sense of God, which most notably does not experience: God is not conscious in the same sense we are. He does not have subjective experience. Consequently:

Such a God experiences His Knowledge

He knows Himself: He does not ‘experience’ Himself.

Also, this idea of Him knowing/experiencing His knowledge/experience leads to an infinite regression.

He can create the universe as well. Therefore, the tree substance/Trinity is unnecessary

Nothing about what you said demonstrated that the Trinity is unnecessary. In fact, the OP’s argument for the Trinity claims that God’s self-knowledge is what causes the Trinity.

Which version of the Bible are you claiming inerrancy? In modern biblical studies, many different versions are often compared with each other.

I was speaking generically like a stereotypical Christian would about it. I would say stereotypical Christianity sees all legitimate copies of the Bible to be inerrant.

In any case, it may come down to whether one understands the Bible as being written in the language of man to understand the divine or as a divinely perfect language where every detail is meaningful.

Not really. This isn’t a dispute about God ‘dumming things down’: it’s about how God is said to do things in the OT that are incongruent with His nature (e.g., the Great Flood, laws about slavery, the conquest of Canaan, etc.).

When God ‘inspires’ rules in Exodus about keeping gentiles as property, that’s not a question about Him ‘dumming ethics down’.

Got it: thank you for the elaboration. So Spinoza is an atheist IMHO: I remember now. God refers to a Divine Person historically: this Substance is not a person. He would be right to classify it not as God, like Schopenhauer does with his universal will.

The point on divine freedom: freedom of indifference versus freedom of excellence, is an important one.

Yes, @MoK appears to be overlooking this distinction I have made and collapsing the discussion into ‘free will’.

On the demonstration of the Trinity, one issue I thought of is that the distinction between God's will and God's intellect is generally considered to be merely conceptual. It is a distinction that appears for us, but it isn't a real distinction (else God would not be simple). It's the same way "good" and "true" apply to being generally, but don't add anything to being; they are being as considered from some perspective. But then it would seem that the distinction would have to be real if it is generating subsistent relations, no?

Keen point. My response would be that you are absolutely right that His thinking and willing are the same; so when He wills the good of Himself it is identical to thinking of Himself as good. However, I would say that, as noted in my makeshift document in the OP, there are two and only two objects of God’s thought about Himself: His self-unity and Himself as that unified faculty. His faculties collapse ontologically into each other; and so it is one and the same faculty which God is; but this oneness, for God to know Himself perfectly, is distinct from knowledge of Himself in terms of that faculty. This thusly produces two objects of His thought, one the Holy Spirit and the other the Son.

The proofs of God are of course well-known by now, and not convincing at all IMO

Why are they unconvincing to you?

Then the proof of the trinity...it always makes me a bit sad to read these, because it's always obviously arbitrary post-hoc rationalizing

That’s a completely unjustified ad hominem and straw man. These arguments convinced me of Trinitarianism: I was not a Trinitarian before coming up with them.

I have no idea what self-subsistent being would be like. I also cannot see how anything in our investigations of nature could inform us about what self-existent being is like or that it gives us any reason to believe in self-existent being

That’s what the four proofs of God’s existence are setting after: reasons for believing in self-subsisting being and what it would be like (analogically).

You say we can know through natural theology that God is omnipotent, but you don't explain how natural theology enables us to know that

It’s in the link I shared in the OP. Did you read it?

Is natural theology different than revelation for you?

Yes. The field of study denoted as ‘natural theology’ is distinct from ‘revealed theology’: it is what we can know about God through reason applied to the natural world around us (devoid of divine revelation).

The difficulty here is that "salvation" is often understood as a Christian term, and in that context it is not something we can achieve on our own power.

Under this view, we cannot achieve repayment of our sins on our own; but God has to freely choose to save us by sacrificing Himself. Salvation here is referring to the restoration of the sinner into the proper order of creation.

I think the most fruitful things to pursue would be those things where you disagree with traditional Christians, in particular over whether some doctrine is accessible through natural reason (i.e. apart from revelation).

Sounds good. Here’s some differences and you can choose what you want us to discuss.

Stereotypical Christianity vs. “Bobism”

1. One must accept Christ in order to be saved; whereas one must sufficiently act in accord with God to be saved.

2. Justice is retributive; whereas justice is restorative.

3. The Great Sacrifice is freely chosen in a way where it could have been otherwise; The Great Sacrifice is a necessity of God’s freedom.

3. The Trinity, the good life, the path to salvation, etc. is revealed; all of those are naturally determinable.

4. Humans are the most loved by God; Persons of pure form are the most loved by God.

5. Unrepentant sinners go to eternal hell (viz., the lake of fire where there will be gnashing of teeth and great weeping); unrepentant sinners go to an indefinite hell that punishes them appropriately to get them to realize that their sins are bad until they repent.

6. The animal kingdom largely is ordered towards what is perfectly good (e.g., the lion eating the zebra is not bad); the animal kingdom is largely polluted with evil due to the Great Fall.

7. Humans caused the Great Fall; a person which existed prior to most if not all of evolution caused the Great Fall.

8. God can and has committed (retributively) just punishments without giving mercy; whereas God has to synthesize (Restorative) Justice and Mercy.

Etc.

 if we have a non-Deistic God who interacts with creation, then it is very intuitive to move into the idea that God has spoken and men have listened (i.e. faith)

Yes, but it isn’t necessary in order to understand everything that is vital to living a good life is my point. God does have to intervene in my view (such as to save us), but I am not sure exactly how often He would intervene. It seems to me that God doesn’t intervene much…

Anyway, I hope to have a closer look at your document in the near future.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

A quantum vacuum is not absolutely simple. A 'part' in this essay is being defined as 'something which contributes but is not identical to the whole'.

Is this a premise?

It is a part of my thesis.

Your OP seems focused on morality. Are you defining God as nothing more than the foundation of objective moral values? That may be all you need, and it lightens your burden of proof.

I think providing an accurate depiction of goodness and, by proxy, morality is vital to any metaphysical theory; however, I don’t think my OP is limited to that: it also provides a basis for ordinary things like change, contingency, composition, intelligibility, etc.

I noted mostly benefits that tie to our moral intuitions in the OP because I think those make the theory most advantageous.

I think that would pollute the forum with way to many posts.

My thought is that this is an attempt to justify Christianity upon rationality alone without reliance upon revelation, perhaps because you believe rationality is a firmer basis for belief than revelation or faith alone. Your views on the Trinity, incarnation and sacrifice, grace, mercy, and justice, and the distinctions between heaven, hell, and purgatory are clearly Christian. Suggesting that we could arrive at those ideas without introduction to and indoctrination to Christianity, but that we could arrive at that through reason alone will not ring true to anyone but a very devout Christian.

Exactly what I did is demonstrate that we can, and I in fact have, determined various aspects of God’s nature and His creation without appeal nor indoctrination into any major world religion because they all depend on Divine Revelation. Even if all the scriptures for all religions were found to be utterly false; my arguments would remain unimpeded.

You do move away from Christian orthodoxy in some places, like hell not being eternal, with the possibility of posthumous salvation, purgatory taking on a more traditional hell-like state

This is because I am not ad hoc rationalizing Christianity. I am not a Christian. I am going where reason applied to mundane things takes me (such as the nature of change, contingency, composition, etc.).

 you seem to redefine original sin, you describe a purely rational state when we go to heaven  (which seems consistent with your desire to prioritize rationality as an attribute)

Rationality is not distinct from faith: that would imply that to have faith is always irrational. I have faith that germs make me sick because doctor’s told me so and I trust the curriculum I had in school. I did not verify faithlessly that germs make me sick.

I do, however, to your point, prioritize faithless over faith-based understanding because faith requires trust in someone else to provide verification that one does not do themselves. So, of course, verifying something myself without the need for trust in anyone else is going to be more convincing for me than otherwise.

The reason that perfect knowledge is a part of our heavenly state is because reason is our highest faculty, because it (1) resembles God most and (2) it guides our actions, and its natural end is to know everything absolutely. That’s the whole point of intellect.

If I had to offer a single assessment, it would be that you're trying to sort out your very Christian beliefs and orientation in a way that comports with your philosophical leanings. It presents an account of your religious journey, which I think would be well received by a pastor with philosophical leanings and who isn't overly orthodox in his views, but less so to a conservative minded priest.

I genuinely am not trying to sort out Christian beliefs in the paper: I am just following the logic to where it takes me unbiasedly. If that takes me to conclusions a Christian might accept, then so be it.

I don't find it all persuasive in terms of convincing me that your views might arise without an a priori commitment to Christianity. The person who might find this interesting is a Christian who is troubled with some of the consequences of Christianity,

I understand where you are coming from; but I would challenge you to find fault with the writings themselves that I posted, because I didn’t depend on Christianity for my arguments. I began with natural theological arguments for God’s existence from change, contingency, composition, and essences.

f god is being itself, and there is no real separation (as opposed to conceptual distinction) between being and beings then there is no separation between god and nature.

God is subsistent being itself; which means that He exists before and independently of anything which depends on Him. Therefore, there is a separation between Being and beings; although beings would be dependent and thusly intimately related to Being itself.

This really gets into a much richer and far mysterious topic of what being is. The more I’ve thought about what being itself is, the more complicated it gets. I would ask you: what do you think self-subsistent being would be like? This is distinct from something which just happens to exist (viz., a contingent being like a chair).

Also since nature is not gendered, not a person at all, why refer to god as "He'.

Good question. It is metaphorical for God giving life to everything else, like a male gives life and a female makes life. There’s nothing particularly wrong with describing God as He, She, They, or just God: the only one that wouldn’t make any sense is ‘it’ because God is a person.

Doing this and the idea of an intervening god seem to place you more in the context of scriptural theology than natural theology

By ‘strong natural theism’, I was noting a position that is confined to the knowledge have of God naturalistically that is ‘strong’ because it takes the position that we can sufficiently know God this way; however, it is not incompatible with revealed theism either. It is not a dilemma.

We can know, through natural theology, that God could intervene if He wanted to because He is omnipotent and unaffected by anything external to Him; however, I do believe He also has to choose what is best, so if what is best is to not intervene at all then in effect He cannot intervene.

Whether or not the idea of separation of church and state was primarily motivated by deism is a completely separate topic. However, it is clear that not all the founding fathers were deists or atheists; and they did not establish a separation of church and state. The first amendment refers to congress, which is federal---not state--and state's had sanctioned churches for a long time afterwards. It is an interesting topic, though: Thomas Jefferson seemed adamantly in favor of a full separation like the one you noted.