Yes! Full house!

Is anyone else playing Dunning-Kruger bingo?

Are you sceptical that Khaled's replies constitute an instance of it? If so, then so does your scepticism.

Oh, and argue something if you dare, or go away.

So you are not paid to teach. You just scream some 'teachings' at passers-by do you? — Bartricks

How did you deduce that from anything I said? That is screwed up I am not even going to try making sense of it.

But yes, there is no requirement - certainly wasn't when I was appointed anyway - to have any formal teaching qualification in order to be able to teach in a university. Ask most academics - they don't have them. None of my colleagues do anyway. Perhaps we should hire you to come in and tell us how it's done? — Bartricks

Some fucked up place you live in them. In the civilized world you can lecture without an educational degree in some places, they are usually reserved for primary and secondary levels. But you usually have to have a Ph.D. and usually experience in the field.

Ask most academics - they don't have them. None of my colleagues do anyway. — Bartricks

I did, and most of my colleagues have a masters degree.

Just more about how whether x is compatible with y turns essentially on whether s exists. — Bartricks

Whether x is compatible with y is actually a moot question unless x exists. If x does not exist then it is not compatible with anything. Which is the point I think you have missed all along.

Cookies are not compatible with milk unless there are actually cookies.

Is anyone else playing Dunning-Kruger bingo? — Isaac

No thanks, it is amusing enough watching the kettle call the pot black ass.

I am not so sure that your argument shows that theism and antinatalism are compatible. I take your argument to look like this:

1. If theists can say that God did not create humans, then antinatalism and theism are compatible.
2. Theists can say that God did not create humans.
3. Therefore, antinatalism and theism are compatible.

Premise 1 seems intuitive. Given that God is all good, He would only be able to do good things. On antinatalism, making humans is not good. Therefore, in order for one to be an antinatalist theist, one would need to show that God did not make humans. This premise seems airtight. On its face, premise 2 seems absurd and indefensible. After all, look around us and you'll see tons of humans. However, you make a very smart move that saves this premise. You justify premise 2 by claiming that it is possible that God created everything except humans. 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. To make this argument more plausible, one can point to replies that theists give to questions about where evil comes from. God did not create evil, he merely permits it (hopefully for good reasons). Why can't we say the same about humans?

I don't think this argument works, however. The reasons that theists can make this claim while maintaining coherent beliefs is that they say evil does not actually exist. In other words, evil does not have a positive ontological status. Evil is a deprivation of goodness, much like cold is a deprivation of heat and does not actually exist. Humans, on the other hand, are not a deprivation of something but are actually real. Further, in order to maintains God's ontological priority, we have to say that God created everything that exists, including humans. By ontological priority, the theist merely means that God exists prior to everything else that exists and, thus, everything is contingent on God's existence. I suppose someone might say we can deny that everything that exists is contingent on God, but this would be positing a necessary, coeternal object that exists independent of God's will. This would clearly cause some problems for the theist. All in all, I think these are good reasons to reject premise 2.

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).

That God dangles before us the ecstacy of heaven is proof enough that the earth is a shitty place to live in. Then, he plays a diabolical psychological trick (there must be a name for this) on us: he says "look, it could be worse" and points to hell. So, are we to thank God that He didn't send us to hell? Isn't that like someone asking you to be grateful that s/he didn't chop off both your hands, just your right hand? May be we should be appreciative of such magnanimity! God's evil and that's Him at his best! :lol:

Thanks for the reply! There are two things that I would like to address: first, I will reply to your comments about aseity and, second, I will discuss your objection about evil being a deprivation of goodness.

To start, I do not believe that theists (or anyone at all for that matter) can claim that humans possess the property of aseity. First, there are just too many obvious examples of humans existing contingently. For example, there was a time before I existed and my existence is dependent on many things outside of myself. Before my parents conceived me I did not exist and my existence is very much dependent on my parents. I assume your coming into existence worked roughly the same as mine. There are many possible worlds in which my parents never had me. Thus, we do not necessarily exist. I suppose that you might reply that the theist can just affirm pre-existent souls. I guess these souls would just exist somewhere and then forget everything when they get put in a body or something. I would need to hear an argument from someone about why a theist should believe in pre-existent souls, as I think it is rather counterintuitive to think that I existed before I showed up on earth. Second, I think that affirming that there are things which possess the property of aseity apart from God causes a few problems for theism. This would involve the denial of God's ontological priority, an important good-making property. If there are things which exist in and of themselves apart from God, then God is not ontologically prior to those things. Thus, this would require us to believe that God is not perfect, as he lacks a good-making property. Because of this, I do not think that theists can say that humans possess aseity.

As to your comments about evil, you employ some smart counterexamples. You said, "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." However, all of the examples that you employ are dissimilar in some important ways. Kindness and cruelty are attitudes that one can have. The lack of an attitude is indifference. Yet, goodness is not an attitude, it is a metaphysical term. Metaphysical terms cannot be indifferent, or have any attitudes at all. Further, goodness is higher up on the ontological ladder compared to attitudes. There are good attitudes, but not vice versa. We can say, "kindness is good," meaningfully, but we cannot say, "good is kindness," meaningfully. Kindness is a kind of good. For these reasons, I do not think your counterexamples work.

To start, I do not believe that theists (or anyone at all for that matter) can claim that humans possess the property of aseity. First, there are just too many obvious examples of humans existing contingently. — Raymond Rider

First, to exist with aseity is not to exist of necessity. It is to exist uncaused. That is, it is to exist, yet not to have been created. If a person exists of necessity, then they would exist with aseity. But it does not follow that if someone exists with aseity, then they exist of necessity.

Second, I did not claim that 'humans' have this property, for humans are a composite of immaterial mind and sensible body. It is our sensible bodies that have come into being. Our immaterial minds have not.

I would need to hear an argument from someone about why a theist should believe in pre-existent souls, as I think it is rather counterintuitive to think that I existed before I showed up on earth. — Raymond Rider

It is not counterintuitive, rather it simply contradicts a conventional view about when we started to exist. In this thread antinatalism and theism are both taken for granted. And our self-existence is implied by these two views. For if antinatalism is true, then God has not created us. Furthermore, God would not permit anyone else to create us. Thus, as we exist we can conclude that we exist uncreated - that is, we exist with aseity.

But there are other arguments for our self-existence. For instance, we are indivisible. That is, we have a no parts (one cannot have half a mind). Sensible objects - such as our bodies - are divisible. Thus we are not our bodies. And simple things - things without parts - are not of a sort that can be created, for there is nothing from which one can create them. Thus, we exist with aseity (and are not our sensible bodies).

Finally, we have free will and are morally responsible for what we do. We would not have free will and would not be morally responsible for anything we did if everything about us traced to external causes. if we have ever come into being then everything about us would trace to external causes. Thus we have not come into being (and thus we exist with aseity).

The aseity thesis is, then, not counter-intuitive at all, for it follows from some apparent self-evident truths about us. It is unconventional, that's all. But philosophy is not about vindicating conventional views, is it?

Second, I think that affirming that there are things which possess the property of aseity apart from God causes a few problems for theism. This would involve the denial of God's ontological priority, an important good-making property. If there are things which exist in and of themselves apart from God, then God is not ontologically prior to those things. Thus, this would require us to believe that God is not perfect, as he lacks a good-making property. — Raymond Rider

I use the term God to denote a person who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. That's an orthodox use of the term (it's standard in philosophy to take the term to denote such a being). If someone wants to pack more into the term than that, then they are simply not talking about what I am talking about when I use the term. (They are free to do so - let's not get into a pointless discussion over how a word is used - it's just that it is not how I am using the word). Ontological priority just means 'existing before other things' and yes, I deny God exists before us. We all exist with aseity. But that is entirely consistent with God having the properties of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence.

You say lacking ontological priority would be a defect - how? I'll tell you what would be a defect: being the creators of us. We are ignorant bad people. You think a morally perfect, all powerful all knowing person would create creatures like us? That - that - would be a defect. Far from presenting any problem for theism, our self-existence shows just how an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being's existence is entirely consistent with our own and explains why we are living here, in ignorance, in a dangerous world. My thesis generates no problems. It is the thesis that we are God's creations - a thesis that religious people subscribe to for dogmatic reasons and that enjoys no support from reasoned-reflection - that generates problems.

I use the term God to denote a person who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent — Bartricks

But if a God can't show us his omnipotence, how can he be omnipotent?

You think if someone can't show you something, then they can't have it? I can't show you my thoughts. I am thinking. Plus God could show us his omnipotence for an omnipotent being can do anything. As I have said elsewhere, you do not seem to grasp the concept of omnipotence.

God could show us his omnipotence. — Bartricks

No, he can't. His omnibenevolence forbids that. So he's not omnipotent.

can't show you my thoughts. — Bartricks

You just showed one.

No, he can't. His omnibenevolence forbids that. So he's not omnipotent. — EugeneW

He's omnipotent, so he can do anything, including demonstrating to us that he is omnipotent.

Omnibenevolence does not 'forbid' anything. Christ, you really don't get this do you? Omnipotent - it means being able to do anything. So, he can do anything. That includes making any act right and any act wrong.
Being omnibenevolent means being morally perfect. What does that involve? Well, it involves having the omnipotent being's full approval. And an omnipotent being is going to fully approve of himself. Thus an omnipotent being will also be morally perfect.

You just showed one. — EugeneW

No I didn't. Describing a thought is not the same as showing you it. I am aware of my thoughts in a way that you are not - I have an introspective awareness of them that you lack. That's not an essential feature of a thought - God could show us his thoughts if he wanted. But I personally lack the ability to give you an introspective awareness of my thoughts. All I can do is tell you about them. And believe me, some of the thoughts I am having about you are ones you don't want to know about.

Christ, you really don't get this do you? — Bartricks

Thanks for the compliment! If he would destroy the universe he would be ultimately evil. So he can't destroy it because he's omnibenevolent. So he's not omnipotent. Simple as that.

No I didn't. Describing a thought is not the same as showing you it. I am aware of my thoughts in a way that you are not - I have an introspective awareness of them that you lack. That's not an essential feature of a thought - God could show us his thoughts if he wanted. But I personally lack the ability to give you an introspective awareness of my thoughts. All I can do is tell you about them. And believe me, some of the thoughts I am having about you are ones you don't want to know about. — Bartricks

And more thoughts...

And believe me, some of the thoughts I am having about you are ones you don't want to know about. — Bartricks

Now I wanna know! Tell me! I won't get angry!

Thanks for the compliment! If he would destroy the universe he would be ultimately evil. So he can't destroy it because he's omnibenevolent. So he's not omnipotent. Simple as that. — EugeneW

This is kindergarten simple. He can do anything. That means he can do anything. That means he can destroy the universe. Doesn't mean he wants to. Doesn't mean he's going to. He can. I, for instance, could kick the head off my cat right now. I don't want to. I am not going to. I am never going to. But I have the ability to do it.

He's omnibenevolent. I have just told you what that involves. You just ignored that, yes? You are like a little parrot who is just going to keep chirping the same old things.

And more thoughts... — EugeneW

Chirp chirp. I'm Eugene and I don't understand what I am saying or what anyone says in response, but I am not going to let that stop me saying it.

Look matey, this is not going to work. I could keep saying intelligent stuff to you, but it'd be like putting high performance petrol into a horse.

God can't destroy the universe. He's not omnipotent. And even if he could (which would make him evil, cause omnibenevolent creatures can't do wrong), he can't show his omnipotence to me. Which makes him even less omnipotent. Squeek squeek! Tjilp tjilp!

but it'd be like putting high performance petrol into a horse. — Bartricks

You might better rethink that. Your horse could get killed. Or is that not what you think?

I, for instance, could kick the head off my cat right now. — Bartricks

No. You can't. Same for God.

Okay parrot boy.

Okay parrot boy

All the omnis of God contradict each other. His omnipotence contradicts his omnobenevolence. His omnipresence the likewise. His omniscience contradicts all the others. The poor thing is completely paralyzed.