So, to be clear, you are claiming the we, as individuals, are the source of the imperatives of reason? So 'Reason' is just another word for Bartricks, at least when I am using the term?
So, if I instruct myself to be cruel, then there is an imperative of reason enjoining me to be cruel? I have reason to be cruel and no reason not to be? And so Hitler had moral reason to do what he did as he was in favour of himself - and others - doing so? Indeed, your view is that immorality is just a form of self conflict, nothing more. Yes?
That view is extremely silly and is rejected by all moral philosophers.

As for my definition of Reason - Reason is the source of all reasons to do and believe things.

And a mind is a thinking thing.

It does follow. If all chickens had a single source, and it had to be an egg, then all chickens would come from that one egg (the claim that all chickens come from the same egg is, of course, absurd, but that'sbecause the claim that all chickens have a singular source is false). You have changed my premise from all reasons have a single source to each individual reason has a single source. No, all imperatives of Reason have the same, unifying source - Reason - which is why we call them 'imperatives of Reason'.

if all imperatives of morality are imperatives of Reason, and all imperatives of Reason have a single source, then it follows logically that moral imperatives have a single source.
And if only a mind can issue an imperative, then that single source is a mind.
So far so logical. To block that conclusion you must deny a premise.
Then I assert that the mind would have the three divine attributes. I can show that to be the case, but first let's agree that Reason is a mind. Then I can show why that mind will, by virtue of being the source of all reasons, be all powerful, all knowing, and all good.

The argument is deductively valid, so you need to deny a premise.

I am a divine command theorist. I arrived at the view after reflecting on the following argument:

1. Moral imperatives are imperatives of reason
2. Imperatives of reason have a single source: Reason
3. Only a mind issues imperatives
4. Therefore, moral imperatives are the imperatives of a single mind
5. The single mind whose imperatives are the imperatives of reason will be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent (God).

What mistake have I made?

me: provide an argument in support of your claim that God is incoherent.

You: thanks.

Note: I didn't ask you to be incoherent. Am I to suppose that you think you are God and that the incoherence of your remark was a practical demonstration?

Well, to be fair, you were broken before I came along. — Banno

Banno: "this bread is broken!"

Me: "It's sliced bread. It's not broken, it is improved - you can make sandwiches with it"

Banno: "It is broken. And to make a sandwich one simply butters two loaves and combines them"

Yes, that's right - I'm so bad at philosophy I'm paid to do it.

as if logic were a limit on god's powers — Banno

Er, I think the exact opposite of that - as you'd know if you bothered paying any attention at all or understood what you read. God is the source of the laws of logic and is thus in no way bound by them. No point in me saying that, is there? Not going to stick.

In erroneously defending god against logic, you have broken you own capacity to construct coherent arguments. — Banno

Er, what?

In trying to save god from logic you have rendered god incoherent - illogical. — Banno

No I haven't. Demonstrate, by means of an argument (no squiggling and squoggling) that the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being contains a contradiction. Do that without confusing being able to do something with doing it.

That's not an ability you have. You haven't and can't.

I do not see the problem that you want addressed.

I believe in God (by which I mean an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person). And I believe God created time.

But I don't see what problem there is with this. There was no time before God created time. Someone who asks what was happening before time came into being is confused, for nothing was happening as time is the medium in which things occur.

I think time is made of God's attitudes. There is, for us, something it feels like to remember something (or to seem to remember it) and something it is like to anticipate something. And then there's when we are doing neither. The visual sensation of the cup I am currently getting does not seem to me to be being remembered by me, or anticipated by me. And so it appears to have presentness. That is, for an experience to appear to be present is just for it to appear neither being remembered or anticipated by me. And that is also why the present is an all or nothing affair and does not come in degrees.

Our attitudes of remembering and anticipating do not, of course, constitute the pastness and futurity of anything. Rather, they are the means by which we are aware of the pastness or futurity of something. But in order to provide us with that awareness, they must themselves resemble the real qualities of pastness and futurity. And as an attitude can only resemble another attitude, we can conclude that pastness and futurity are attitudes and presentness is their absence. And as attitudes always have a mind that bears them, and as time is unified, we can conclude that time is made of the attitudes of a single mind - God. I say God, for God is omnipotent and if God was not the source of time then he would not be omnipotent.

Time, then, is made of God's attitudes. When God remembers something, it is past; and when God anticipates something, it is future, and when God does neither in respect of something, it is present.

We’re talking about the concept of God. — AJJ

No, we're talking about God. God is omnipotent. The concept of God is not omnipotent.

My chair is comfy. THe concept of my chair is not comfy.

You are a confused person. The concept of a confused person is not, however, confused.

Ok, so god can be incoherent. — Banno

Yes, can be, but isn't. Can be. Isn't. Can be. Isn't.

You: but can he be?

Me: yes

You: is he?

Me: no

You: can he be?

Me. Yes

You: is he?

Me: no

You: can he be?

Me: yes

You: he is?

Me: no.

No. He's. Not.

A concept is another word for an idea. God is not an idea. He's something there's an idea 'of'. Christ!

So, you think that if someone has the idea of God, then God exists??

God is NOT a concept. There is a concept 'of' God. All concepts are concepts 'of' things. It's called their intentionality. They're about things. Apart from the concept of a concept, concepts are not the things they are concepts of.

Er, what?
— Bartricks

I can be incoherent. Why can't god? Have I a power that god does not?
— Banno — Banno

You either don't understand English or you've had a stroke, for this really isn't hard to understand.

God can do anything. So anything you can do, God can do. Kinda obvious.

No 'God' is not a concept. There is the concept of God. God is what the concept is of.

The concept of God is the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person.

God himself is the person who answers to that concept.

The concept of a chair is a concept; chairs are those things which answer to the concept.

You are the one making the category error - a very common one. The mistake of confusing a concept with what it is the concept of.

If God ceases to be omnipotent - which is something he has the ability to do - then he, the person, will cease to answer to the concept of God. Which is just a convoluted way of saying that he'll cease to be God.

A bachelor (as opposed to a particular man who is a bachelor) does not have the potential to be married, because a bachelor can’t be married. — AJJ

No, the person, not the concept. Concepts don't have abilities, people do.

Now, once more, can a bachelor get married?

It's yes, right?

They won't be a bachelor after they do so.

But they can do so.

An unmarried man is a bachelor. That's true by definition.

Can the unmarried man get married? Yes. He has the ability to get married.

God is omnipotent. That's true by definition.

Can God cease to be omnipotent? Yes.

This really isn't hard! Why are you lot having such difficulties??

Er, what?

No. An unmarried man is a bachelor but has the potential to be married. Do you think that makes no sense?

If you think it makes sense - and you should, for it does - then apply that to God and omnipotence and the ability not to be omnipotent and find the same sense there, please.

SO, god cannot be incoherent? But you said he could do anything. — Banno

You don't seem to understand English or basic logic. God is coherent. That does not mean the same as 'God cannot be incoherent'.

If you say he stops being God once he creates the stone he cannot lift then you’ve effectively claimed that God can’t not be omnipotent (because in that case he stops being God). — AJJ

God is what you're called if you're omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, just as 'bachelor' is what you are called if you're male and lack a wife.

Can God - the person of God - cease to be omnipotent? Of course he can. Why would he not be able to cease to be omnipotent? How would an inability to cease to be omnipotent be a power and not a disability and thus constitute a contradictory idea? The idea that you have - you, not me - of omnipotence contains a contradiction and so is akin to the idea of a square circle. You seem to think that being omnipotent essentially involves having an 'inability'. That's a contradiction - an omnipotent being can do anything, but you are asserting that an omnipotent being can do anything and not some things. That's an actual contradiction and so actual nonsense.

Bartricks' argument places god firmly in the world of the uninteligible, the incoherent; he makes god into nonsense. — Banno

No it doesn't. Like I say, you just can't distinguish between being able to do something and actually doing it. God is not incoherent. Try and show it, I dare you. God is able - able - to do things that currently make no sense. That does not make God incoherent. God is not his actions, for one thing. And for God to be incoherent you'd need to demonstrate an actual contradiction arises through his possession of the properties of omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolence. Do that then.

I'm not interested in a refutation. But repeating "God can do anything" does not constitute an argument. — Banno

That was a premise in an argument. Do you think God is not omnipotent? Then you are misusing a word.

Huffing and puffing - it's all you've got. "Aw, but my hackneyed objections to God don't seem to work against Bartricks! What's going on? Why are they not working?? Wikipedia and Stanford - where are you? I need help!"

Not necessarily.

There are two ways - not one - in which God can create a stone too heavy for him to lift.

He can divest himself of omnipotence. That's one way. And in that case, he would have stopped being God (just as a bachelor ceases to be a bachelor when he takes a wife).

The other way - the more dramatic way - would be to realize a contradiction by making a stone too heavy for himself to lift at the same time as being able to lift it. That makes no sense of course, for at the moment the law of non contradiction obtains. And so it really doesn't make sense. It doesn't appear to make no sense, but really makes sense. No, it makes no actual sense. But God is in charge of what does and does not make sense and, by hypothesis, if he makes a stone too heavy for himself to lift at the same time as being able to lift it, then it would make sense. That's the nature of omnipotence - an omnipotent being has the power to make what does not make sense, make sense. Needless to say, the dumber element on this site have difficulty making sense of that. They think that in order for it to make sense that a person could transform what does not make sense into that which does make sense, it has already to make sense. Which is silly, of course.

God is omnipotent, but there are potential things that he cannot do (like lifting a certain stone). — AJJ

God is omnipotent, but potentially not omnipotent. What's the problem? Again, if he lacked the ability to divest himself of omnipotence, he would not be omnipotent, would he?

SO he can friddling a bleth? — Banno

Yes. He can do anything. So he can do that. Christ. Are you literally an infant?

That's settled, then. — Banno

You can't refute an argument by agreeing with it.

But god can do anything... — Banno

Yes. I know. I said that.

Are you dropping that now, and saying he can't friddling a bleth? — Banno

No. Can't you read? I said I don't have a clue how he'd do it - it makes no sense.

He can do things that make no sense, for he can make what makes no sense make sense. I don't know how though - I mean, if I did, they'd make sense wouldn't they. Dur.

Tell us again how god can friddling a bleth. — Banno

I never told you. I haven't a clue - it doesn't make any sense.

Refute the argument. You know - do some philosophy!

1. If a person is omnipotent, then they can do anything
2. If a person can do anything, then they can cease to be omnipotent
3. Therefore, if a person is omnipotent they can cease to be omnipotent
4. God is omnipotent
5. Therefore God can cease to be omnipotent

As David Lewis said, you can't refute an argument with an incredulous stare. That seems to be all you've got.

Yes, God can do anything. Reason constitutively determines what is and isn't possible and what does and does not make sense, and Reason is God. You have no rational criticism, just contempt. Cross little baby fists will not dent this rationality tank.

It's not my fault you can't grasp the difference between being able to realize a contradictory state of affairs and actually having done so.

It is obvious that to any question "can God do..." the answer is going to be 'yes', as God can do anything.

You then decide that if God can do things that make no sense to you, this is some kind of problem (as if God is beholden to you!).

God is in charge of what does and does not make sense. Now, the idea of a married bachelor makes no sense, as does a lot else. That, note, is not something I dispute. The point, though, is that it is by reason - and so by God - that these things do not make sense. Their 'not making sense' is of a piece with their being rebarbative to Reason. But God is Reason and thus their not making sense is in his gift.

THey do not make sense. But they do not have to not make sense. THey just don't make sense.

Needless to say, you need to respond to this with 'nonsense' and more 'can God 3 a turnip?' tediousness.

The two examples aren’t analogous. The possibility of marriage doesn’t affect the man’s bachelorhood, whereas the possibility of being unable to lift a stone does affect the claim of God’s omnipotence. — AJJ

Question begging. How? How does being able to do something imply a 'lack' of power rather than possession of one?

Being unable to divest himself of his omnipotence isn’t a deficiency if no such power exists. — AJJ

But it does and it is.

I have powers. I can divest myself of them. For instance, I could take a hammer and smash the fingers on my right hand. Now I can't do a load of things i could before. I have the power to do that.

An omnipotent being obviously has the power to divest himself of his powers. If he didn't, he wouldn't be omnipotent, he'd be hobbled.

I do not see what the problem is. How would God be omnipotent if he couldn't divest himself of his omnipotence?

If God could not get rid of his omnipotence he would not be omnipotent. It's a simple point.

There's no problem here. None. There's just confusion. There's just thinking that God is somehow bound by a definition. A mistake that theists and atheists seem united in making. I keep giving the example of the bachelor. Do you too think the bachelor is incapable of taking a wife? Is there a strange force that prevents them from saying 'yes' and that comes from the word bachelor?

God cannot create such a stone. — SwampMan

Why not?

But this is not a limitation on his power because "a stone that cannot be lifted by an omnipotent being" is a logical contradiction, a non-thing. — SwampMan

There is no logical contradiction unless you are assuming God is incapable of ceasing to be omnipotent And why on earth would you assume that? I mean that is a contradiction! An omnipotent person who is unable to cease to be omnipotent is 'not' omnipotent.

An omnipotent person is omnipotent at t1. And at t1 he can create a stone too heavy for him to lift. That's an 'ability', note. To be 'able' to do something at t1 does not mean one has done it at t1.

At t2 he exercises that ability and makes a stone too heavy for him to lift. At this point he has ceased to be omnipotent - indeed, that's what he had to do in order to make the stone. He made a stone too heavy for him to lift 'by' ceasing to be omnipotent.

At t2, then, he is not omnipotent and there is a stone he cannot lift.

So, God can make a stone too heavy for him to lift. That is God can make himself not be God. He wouldn't be God otherwise! If he's incapable of ceasing to be God, he is not God.

Like, it seems, everyone else here, you are reasoning like this:

Mike is a bachelor. Can Mike take a wife? No, for he is a bachelor and a bachelor lacks a wife. Therefore, Mike is incapable of taking a wife. But this is no restriction on Mike, for a married bachelor is a logical contradiction and being unable to actualize a contradiction is no restriction.

It's extraordinarily bad reasoning. Stop it. Mike is a bachelor. But that doesn't mean he lacks the ability to take a wife. He can take a wife, he'll just stop being a bachelor when he does.

God is omnipotent. That doesn't mean he lacks the ability not to be omnipotent. He can cease to be omnipotent (he wouldn't be omnipotent otherwise!). It is just that if he exercises that ability - the ability to cease to be omnipotent (an ability only he has) - he will, you know, cease to be omnipotent.

Hey, Bartricks, just out of curiosity, if God can do anything, can he score a goal in tennis?

Or can he score a hundred runs in Chess?

What about a home run in Poker? — Banno

Oi Banno, yes, he can do all of those things.

Can you grasp the difference between being able to do something and doing it? God can. The average 7 year old can. Can you? And if you can grasp it, will you kindly do so.

You justify premise 2 by claiming that it is possible that God created everything except humans. — Raymond Rider

Slightly more than that - I claim that it is entirely possible that God created nothing. Being omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent does not, so far as I can see, essentially involve having created anything at all.

God knew that humans would eventually come about, but He certainly did not want them. God merely permitted humans to come about but was not involved in their creation. — Raymond Rider

I would not make that claim. God would have stopped us coming into being, for he would not want a person to come into being without prior consent.

The combination of theism and antinatalism thus gets me to the conclusion that we have not been created, but exist in the same manner as God - that is, we exist with aseity.

God exists and billions of other souls exist. And nothing has created any of them, for some things exist uncreated and we and God are among those things.

These souls - some of them - are evilly disposed. We know this, for we are those souls.

To be evilly disposed is to be disposed to behave in ways that God disapproves of.

What would God do with such souls? Destroy them? Seems too harsh. Quarantine them? Yes, surely. That is what we ourselves do to those among us who show themselves to be very evil. We have the power, as a society, to destroy them. But we do not - we imprison them. And we imprison them primarily to protect innocent others from them; secondarily to give them something of what they deserve; and finally to reform them.

Thus as the best among us imprison the worst, it is reasonable to suppose God would do the same. And as we are not living in a world that God would suffer innocent people to live in, we can safely conclude that God is doing it to us: that we are in prison. And if we wonder what we might have done to deserve to be here, exposed to all the risks of harm this world creates for us, we need only look to those who, knowing what kind of a place this is, think nothing of exposing innocent others to it by breeding. Those who freely and knowingly suffer innocents to live in ignorance in a world like this one deserve themselves to live in ignorance in a world like this one. And here we are.

Evil is a deprivation of goodness, much like cold is a deprivation of heat and does not actually exist. — Raymond Rider

This seems false on its face. There is goodness, badness and indifference. Absence of goodness is mere indifference, not positive badness. Take cruelty - what is that an absence of? Kindness? But someone who is indifferent lacks kindness. To be cruel is far more than merely 'not' to be kind. And so on.

So the privation account is implausible and also does nothing in itself to overcome the problem of evil as it just relabels evil 'absence of good' but leaves the question of why God would permit it unanswered.

If God gives me a glass half empty, then there is a problem of evil: why did God give me a glass half empty when he had the power to give me a full glass, and the goodness to want to, other things being equal?
It does nothing to solve this to insist that the glass is not half empty, but half full.

God has not created us. He would not, as antinatalism is true. And nothing save religious dogma commits the theist to thinking he created us.

Why would God create creatures like us? It makes no sense. There is no benefit that accrues to us through being ignorant and evilly disposed. And God would not create us anyway, as to do that would be to make a significant imposition on another without prior consent, which is not something a good person does to another unless necessary to spare them some greater evil (which does not apply in the creation case, for the uncreated are at no risk of anything).

I'm only interested in abusing you. — ZzzoneiroCosm

And you're bad at that too. Which is a shame - I like a good insult almost as much as I like a good criticism.

I never give up, so once more: suicide would only be ruled out for God if God exists of necessity. Yet if God exists of necessity, then he will lack an ability that even we seem to have, namely the ability to cease to exist. Manifestly someone who lacks an ability that the rest of us have cannot at the same time be omnipotent. Thus, God does not exist of necessity and thus God can commit suicide. And that's true regardless of whether God is constrained by the laws of logic or the author of them.

I abuse you because you're a bully. — ZzzoneiroCosm

No, you started it with this:

You sound preposterous to me — ZzzoneiroCosm

Until that point I was simply arguing a point, albeit robustly. But those who are no good at philosophy are, in my experience, incapable of taking criticism of their views as anything other than personal attacks (and thus think it fine to make a personal attack in reply).

I love it when someone attacks my views and love it if the attack is a good one. Love it. You might want to try it some day. Attack the view, not the person.

So it might have happened long ago. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Yes. It hasn't though. We're going around in circles and it is entirely your fault.

You sound preposterous to me — ZzzoneiroCosm

I can only hope you're eight years old. What have you done to your mind and to your character, my friend? — ZzzoneiroCosm

God is a person? A PhD in ludicrosity? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Answer the question or shut your mouth, doc — ZzzoneiroCosm

Total nonsense and more evidence that you have no philosophical credentials — ZzzoneiroCosm

Don't hand it out if you can't take it.

Note too that I have all along been arguing things, whereas all you've been doing is asking questions you don't care to understand the answer to.

God can do anything - that's what being omnipotent involves. And as God can do anything, he can kill himself. Even someone who thinks God is bound by the law of non-contradiction can agree to that. You have provided precisely no reason - no philosophical defence - of your scepticism about this. All you have done is express your view that I am a preposterous person because I am saying things you don't immediately understand and lack the humility to think that may reflect a failing in you and not your interlocutor.

Note, you are not answering any of my questions, yet I have the good grace to answer yours, even though yours are as rubbish as they are insincere.

Anyway, here's my answer - I may not know of it. If I did, however, it would most likely be either by a rational intuition to that effect, or perhaps I may come to believe that the law of non-contradiction no longer obtains in a manner that God approves of, and that too would then qualify as an item of knowledge.

This is a ridiculously ignorant assertion and the end of this exchange. — ZzzoneiroCosm

No, it is an accurate description of what people you've never read or thought about are using the term to mean. And this is the end of this exchange. I grade your side of it F.

How do you know god isn't alive and dead simultaneously? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Because I know the law of non-contradiction is true. And if the law of non-contradiction is true, then there is no person who is alive and not alive at the same time. Therefore, God is not alive and dead at the same time.

What is the name of the argument form I just employed above?

Childishness — ZzzoneiroCosm

Oh, so you don't use 'God' to denote a potato? Okay - what do you use it to mean? Do you use it to mean what philosophers of religion use it to denote, namely an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person? Or do you just not have a clue what you're saying about anything but are not letting that stop you?