Oh, okay. I won't prove God then. (I thought it was a perfectly good point - an all-powerful being would exist - and so I was going to prove that he did).

You've just told me about some labels and then told me, on the basis of no argument whatsoever, that there is no point in arguing for the view I argued for. How silly. I argued for it, didn't you see? — Bartricks

What I was trying to explain to you is that the topic you've raised was the subject of a debate that went on for centuries in theology - not only Christian but also Islamic theology.

You can see that the position you assume naturally tends towards irrationalism, because it asserts that God's inscrutable will is both all-powerful and beyond all logic. Whereas the Scholastics saw reason as being operative principles of the divine intellect. The scholastic surely recognised there are truths beyond logic and reason, namely, revealed truth, but they don't say that God can (or perhaps would) contradict or arbitrarily change the rational order of things. To do so, would be tantamount to self-contradiction.

On the contrary, it tells us what goodness is - it is something like 'having a quality that God values you having" or some such. — Bartricks

I disagree. And not merely because, I don't know if God exists or not. We are assuming the existence of an omnipotent being. You said:

By 'God' I mean a person who is all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient) and all-good (omnibenevolent). I take it that possession of those properties is sufficient to make one God. — Bartricks

But is this a God that designed the universe, and set it going? Because in that case - good and bad are aspects of that design? Or this this an omnipotent kid poking at an ant pile in no-space, deciding what is good or bad on an ad hoc basis?

If it's God the Creator, you're asking him to intervene in his design, and what I'm saying is, that if he's both all good and all knowing, he cannot - because any intervention would necessarily have implications that were not good, some way down the line. He's already decided what good and bad are - and set them in motion, as consequences of the design.

You say:

Incidentally, it would be metaphysically possible for, say, torture to be morally good regardless of who or what determines the content of morality. Make the source of morality a platonic form, or make it human conventions, or whatever....it still remains possible, for what stops a Platonic form from overnight valuing torture, or what stops human convention changing so that torture becomes valued? Nothing. — Bartricks

That's wrong. Reality is cause and effect, and organisms evolve in relation to a causal reality. They have pain and pleasure responses that guide the organism, within the environment, as the basis of a definition of what is good or bad. Humans evolve in relation to reality, but also in tribal groups. Their physiology, behaviour and intellect are all honed in relation to reality by the function or die out, algorithm of evolution. They have to be correct to reality to survive. Moral behaviour is rewarded; and is about pleasure and pain, and truth to reality, and from there, in a social context - about honesty and justice. These are not abstract intellectual concepts subject to redefinition. Good and bad, right and wrong are premised in the relation between the organism and Creation.

I am going with God can do anything and has no bounds, otherwise, not God. As far as illogic and seeming contradictions: Platypus. I think they are awesome beasties, but really, what is that design based on? Lots of ability and maybe, a little weed.

Sure, there is some logic to your argument but there is a specific point of logic (the law of non-contradiction) that you are ignoring.
Also, not assertions. Being able “to do anything” leads to an unavoidable contradiction. Maybe your unfamiliar with the rock so heavy it cannot be lifted? I understand you think thats dispelled by another use of “power to do anything” that just changes the rules ad Infiniti but its not. The reason its not is because then that would mean the parameters of the original task were not met, trading one logical contradiction for another. For example in the classic “can god create a rock he cannot lift” the ability to do anything means god can create the rock he cannot lift, resulting in something god cannot do (lift the rock). Thats a logical contradiction. So to avoid this logical contradiction you can simply have god now change the rules so that now he can lift the rock. The initial logical contradiction is avoided but now god wasn't able to do something else, create a rock he couldnt lift. The concept of being able to “do anything” is incoherent, by definition including nonsense (“anything” includes the “thing” nonsense). The concept always leads to contradiction because it defies its own parameters, like the squared circle it makes no sense.
Now, you can ignore that breach of logic to your hearts content but when you do, and try discussing it, I don’t know what you are talking about. As I said before, neither do you. Thats not intended to be snide, I mean it literally. The idea of being able to do anything is firmly entrenched on the other side of human comprehension, you do not know how it could possibly work and neither do I. Its just like the squared circle, you can say it, say the words, sure, no problem but you cannot draw it and you cannot describe it because it makes no sense. So too with being able to “do anything”, the words are empty placeholders. Semantic illusions with no substance.

What I was trying to explain to you is that the topic you've raised was the subject of a debate that went on for centuries in theology - not only Christian but also Islamic theology. — Wayfarer

And why did you do that? I know it. It's irrelevant.

Why don't you address the argument I made rather than categorize things? There have been people in the past who have held my view - I mentioned two: Jesus and Descartes. Shall we list more? Shall we put a label on them and then smuggle under that label other views, tangential to that one, so as to muddy any debate we have on the issue and turn it into a label-fest? Shall we do that? Why would we do that? What would that achieve? You're a labeler, yes? When you hear a view, you like to put it in a jar and put a label on it. That's not thinking. That's not philosophy. It's just a weird kind of collecting that many people mistake for thinking.

Now, once more, a being who can do anything is not going to be bound by the laws of logic, for if they were they would not be able to do anything, but only those things that logic permits.

How could there be a being who is not bound by logic? Well, if logic itself is no more or less than the edicts of that being, then the being in question would not be bound by logic precisely because he is the source of it. As Hobbes put it "Nor is it possible for any person to be bound to himself; because he that can bind, can release; and therefore he that is bound to himself only, is not bound". So, if God is the source of the imperatives of Reason - of which those laws we call 'logic' are a subset - then God will not be bound by logic. And thus God will be able to do anything - including make contradictions true.

That is an argument. That is not a rejection of reason, but an employment of it - I am employing my reason to show that reason itself tells us that its source is God and that God is not bound by it.

But interestingly most contemporary philosophers of religion understand omnipotence differently. They interpret omnipotence to involve being able to do all that it is logically possible for one to do (actually, they normally qualify it a bit further to avoid certain problems). — Bartricks

The point I made was simply that this is not just the attitude of 'most contemporary philosophers of religion' but also of the Scholastics, and that it doesn't gel with your understanding of what 'omnipotence' must mean. And like a lot of people, you have a lot of strongly-held views which strike you as 'obvious', meaning that those who oppose them are 'confused' or 'deficient', of which I'm probably one, so I'll spare you the odious task of trying to set me straight.

But is this a God that designed the universe, and set it going? Because in that case - good and bad are aspects of that design? Or this this an omnipotent kid poking at an ant pile in no-space, deciding what is good or bad on an ad hoc basis? — counterpunch

Being able to do anything does not mean one has done everything. God 'could' make it the case that he created the universe. He could take out of existence anything that is in it. But from this we can't, I think, reliably conclude that he did, in fact, create everything that exists. But perhaps he did, I am unsure in no small part because why my reason tells me about free will implies that God did not create us. Anyway, I am simply not sure.

Re morality: as I said, what's morally right is determined by God's will. For an action to be right is for it to be an act that God is ordering us to perform (that is, God tells us - via our reason - that in such-and-such circumstances it is imperative that you do X; well that command 'is' the rightness of Xing). And for something to be morally good is for it to be valued by God. Note, rightness and goodness are not like paints that God is applying to things; for paint can exist independent of the painter, can't it? No, rightness is the property of being commanded by God (so 'what it is' for X to be right, is for God to be commanding us to do X); and goodness if the property of being valued by God.

Note, there is independent reason to think this is true (which I will not supply here), but it is also entailed by God's omnipotence, for if things were otherwise - if morality bound God - then God would not be omnipotent.

You, like so many, then suggest that this makes rightness and wrongness ad hoc. Well, it doesn't. For God is Reason and nothing is ad hoc with Reason. For what does it mean to say that something is ad hoc or arbitrary? It means 'for no reason'. But God 'is' Reason, and so to suggest that his willings and attitudes are arbitrary just shows that you don't know who you're talking about - it is like suggesting that it is just 'ad hoc' that 2 + 3 = 5. In no meaningful sense is that ad hoc.

The point I made was simply that this is not just the attitude of 'most contemporary philosophers of religion' but also of the Scholastics, and that it doesn't gel with your understanding of what 'omnipotence' must mean. — Wayfarer

I know. I mentioned philosophers because this is a philosophy forum and I thought it might be interesting to expose such a widely and uncritically held view as the absurdity that it is. (Pick up an introductory book to philosophy of religion and see how quickly my kind of view is rejected - it is normally dismissed in a paragraph).

And like a lot of people, you have a lot of strongly-held views which strike you as 'obvious', meaning that those who oppose them are 'confused' or 'deficient', of which I'm probably one, so I'll spare you the odious task of trying to set me straight. — Wayfarer

No, you're like most people. You prefer not to think. Not too much anyway. A philosopher would want to be put straight. Anyway, I tried putting you straight by explaining why an omnipotent would not be bound by reason.

Being able to do anything does not mean one has done everything. God 'could' make it the case that he created the universe. He could take out of existence anything that is in it. But from this we can't, I think, reliably conclude that he did, in fact, create everything that exists. But perhaps he did, I am unsure in no small part because why my reason tells me about free will implies that God did not create us. Anyway, I am simply not sure. — Bartricks

Well, okay then. I had a go at your thought experiment, and I totally get your argument. It's "No, he's omnipotent. He can do anything" in response to everything put to you. It was fun - but as you are unable to define terms, and say whether this is an omnipotent, omniscience, benevolent "person" - or God, the Creator of the universe - and if you cannot understand why that distinction is important to the argument, then I'll just say thanks and bid you farewell. Before I go though, let me ask you this: can your omnipotent being, or God, or whatever - create a rock so big he cannot lift it?

I think the problem here is that you don't understand the definitions you're given.
I gave you a very clear definition of God. Then you asked if God has created the universe. I don't know. How is it relevant to the issue under discussion? It might be, of course - but how? For instance, is 'not' being the creator of the universe incompatible with being able to do anything?

The issue is that with omnipotence and omniscience, God has both the knowledge and ability to make anything happen, to prevent or set events up to occur in any other way. Such a God is a doctor with every miracle cure and the opportunity to use it. A lot of people, in this instance, are very concerned with or confused by God's culpable negligence in this instance-- God has the power to fix any problem encountered, but actively chose not to.

I don't understand. You don't understand. We're like two blind men flailing at each other! I'm walking away. You keep flailing!

No, I think 'you' don't understand. I see no evidence that you do, anyway. So, at the moment I don't see why being able to do anything would mean one created everything. Explain please. Or am I right and it is sufficient that the omnipotent being 'could' make it such that he created everything, and 'could' destroy everything if he so wished?

If you had the keys, would you release prisoners from their cells?

Last night I saw upon the stair...

Logic marks out the statements that are well-formed from those that are not. That there is something an omnipotent being cannot do is not well-formed. This does not place a limitation on god, only on language.

That is, most of this thread is nonsense.

Moreover, talk of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being is quite analogous to talk of a little man who wasn't there. Were there a need, theologians would attempt to develop a coherent account of Antigonish.

Whereof one cannot speak, one writes nonsense in a philosophy forum.

edit.

The case against God would be prosecuted the crimes of the prisoners needn't to have occurred in the first place. God could have chosen a world those crimes and people never existed, instead making a version with similar people who were never dangerous, who never choose actions to hurt others with their free will (free will doesn't actually get God off the hook here, as God knows which people and their choices are going to exist).

You are thinking in almost the right direction, what's at stake is even greater than whether prisoners get released. It's whether they even get to exist at all.

God, could, indeed make a world in which these people, their crimes and their danger to others, never existed. Doing so though would have a consequence: those criminals would never exist. Worse, they would have been adjudged not worth existence by God here, for God deliberately chose to make other people instead, to avoid the criminals on account of how they exist.

Humans are sometimes, maybe even frequently for some us, in this situation. One example is making judgements on whether to complete pregnancies of children known to have certain maladies. We have the power to decide whether to have a person with Down's syndrome live or not. If we so choose, we can make it so they never live, never encounter certain difficulties or bring us their specific inconveniences. But that comes at a price: we are decreeing this instance of life not worth existence, suing our power to choose something else over it instead.

The omni God's evilness or negligence is not quite as cut and dried as it appears. In some respects, creating or allowing a less than moral world to exist is valuing the existence of those who are less than moral.

edit.

God's ability to do anything is a function of time. Does he have unlimited resources and it is quite apparent he hasn't perfected our lives yet. Existence is evil while God is not evil.

Well, I certainly agree that those who think a good, all knowing, all powerful being wouldn't have suffered us to live in a world like this one would be big hypocrites if they then suffered someone to live in it themselves by having children. And if they did that - and most do -they would, in my view, make themselves deserving of all that subsequently befalls them, as they are now being done by as they would do.

This thread is not about the problem of evil, but anyway the fact is that there are two problems of evil - the logical and the evidential. It is almost universally agreed that there is no logical problem of evil: God's existence is logically compatible with the existence of evil (my question to you shows that there are all manner of circumstances under which a good person would not give another everything they wanted). The problem of evil that remains and is debated to this day is the evidential problem.

That's important, because that means that if there is a proof of God's existence, then the evidential problem of evil disappears and becomes a mere puzzle.

Not sure I follow you. God can't be a slave to time, for then he would not be omnipotent. So time must be a slave to God. That is, God must have dominion over time. I suggest that this would be the case if time, like the laws of logic, was made of God's attitudes. What God remembers 'is' past, for 'to be past' is no more or less than to be being remembered by God; and what God anticipates 'is' future, for 'to be future' is no more or less than to be being anticipated by God. Something like that.
So, God does not get power from time; rather, time is in God's power.

edit. I'll private message you.

I want to follow up on an issue that Counterpunch raised, but then fled from discussing. And that's the issue of whether an omnipotent being would have created everything.

I don't think so. It is sufficient to be omnipotent that one 'can' do anything. I mean, there's no difference in power, it seems to me, between a being who can do anything and created a universe, and a being who can do anything and didn't.

Finding that there exist other beings aside from one's self is not, it seems to me, incompatible with being omnipotent, for it could still be the case that one could do anything.

If that's correct, then one could be omnipotent and have created nothing. Indeed, to insist otherwise would be once more to put restrictions on an omnipotent being.

So, God could have created everything if he had so wished, but whether he actually did so or not is an open question and it is not inconsistent with his being omnipotent that he created nothing at all. Or so I think at the moment.....

Also, not assertions. Being able “to do anything” leads to an unavoidable contradiction. Maybe your unfamiliar with the rock so heavy it cannot be lifted? — DingoJones

I'm familiar with this argument from Philosophy 101. It admits various interpretations. The only relevant one is: "Can God deprive himself of his own powers as God?"

First, a note on the logical structure of the Boulder argument: Lack of strength is weakness. Does it make sense to argue that a strong person must also be weak in order to be strong? Not lifting something (or alternatively, not creating it) is a non-action, and by definition it is not done.

We have asserted that God can do whatever he wants, meaning he can create an arbitrarily heavy boulder and also lift an arbitrarily heavy boulder. In order to create the boulder which he cannot lift, it does not mean that he creates a super-heavy boulder, but rather that he limits his own future ability to lift that boulder. Thus, a wise person might simply answer "no" to the question about the boulder, since God could still make an arbitrarily heavy boulder and lift an arbitrarily heavy boulder. What is it that God can't do? In particular, he can't not be able to do something, which we have already assumed.

But why is god unable to not be able to do something? It is because we have assumed that he has not chosen to limit his own powers, because in so doing he would no longer be God. Then the creation of being which can't lift boulders or can't create boulders is merely the Christian genesis.

Christians are the only true atheists, because the God of Christianity has chosen to stop existing.

Ive never heard that particular argument before. Not sure any of its necessary, breaking the law of non-contradiction is enough to show the incoherence of omniscience.

Im not sure how you define atheism but I wouldn't say its a matter of anything about god per say. Its about what the person believes not about the actions or non-actions of the thing people believe in.
Religion and the belief in god are mired in cognitive dissonance (holding two contradictory beliefs at the same time), thats how you can people like Bartricks that can’t understand their error. Its not that Bartricks doesnt understand logic, its that he doesnt apply it where it interferes in his desire to believe in god. Many religious folks are like this, its a hallmark of magical thinking. (Maybe thats the layman term for cognitive dissonance :chin: ?)

it is not inconsistent with his being omnipotent that he created nothing at all. — Bartricks

Then who is he benevolent toward? Himself? That sounds like a euphemism for masturbation!

Well, 'omnibenevolent' doesn't mean 'maximally benevolent'. It means 'morally perfect'.
And, as I've said before, being all powerful would mean that moral directives and moral values are God's directives and God's values, otherwise God would lack the power to make anything right and anything good.
So, from God's omnipotence comes God's omnibenevolence.
Now I fail to see from that, why this would mean God has created something. I mean, it's not inconsistent with him doing so, but it doesn't entail it. God could create nothing, value creating nothing, and esteem himself as a non-creator, and he would thereby be morally perfect.

So Robinson Crusoe is stuck on a desert island, alone. How can he be immoral?

I think your belief in reality is quite simply not skeptical enough.

Magical thinking is simply ritual activity without full understanding. We engage in magical thinking whenever we use a microwave.