I've read his Ethics and it seems to me like he believed in a form of deism; but, crucially, I don't see how it is incompatible with historical classical theism (like Aristotle's). Can you elaborate on what you mean by classical theism being outdated but Spinoza's Substance is not?

Can you elaborate on Spinoza's critiques of classical theism?

I think God is Being itself; so perhaps Spinoza's "Substance" is another way of describing it: what do you think?

Not really, to be honest. I see God as being perfectly capable of intervening if He wants to. Can you elaborate?

@Jamal removed it but I worked it out with them so that this time they hopefully won't.

How can you be anti something that doesn't exist?

Atheism is the belief that there are no gods. It isn’t anti-theism in the sense you are referring: it is the thesis that theism is wrong.

Likewise, religion is the worshiping of a divine deity. There are religious atheists; and there are areligious theists. I just point this out to show you how your view is parasitic on people who have tried to convert you or keep you in mainstream Christianity. This is what I really meant by what you quoted of me: your view is narrowed parasitically on one extreme view within one worldview and I am just trying to broaden the landscape for you to think about for yourself.

I'm assuming that you have a history of debate with this person?

Yes, although I love @frank to death :kiss: , they straw man Christianity all the time and refuse to engage with peoples’ responses that provide the iron manned versions.

As for the people who have not only questioned my ability to tackle big subjects, but also suggested that the reason for my philosophical endeavors is a substitute for trauma therapy, that gave me a wry chuckle.

Well, that’s an ad hominem attack and I am sorry they do that to you. I have no doubt that you are capable of reaching substantive positions on things.

I guess I'll gear up for word wars, brought to me by people who have no clue who I am or what I stand for.

See, that’s the thing though: these kinds of discussions don’t need to be ‘word wars’. It doesn’t need to be a formal debate where we try to convince the audience or where we be as uncharitable as possible to each other’s positions. Instead, this is a place for genuine, intellectual conversations geared towards knowing the truth.

Do other people see what I'm seeing?

Politically, I doubt we agree on anything; but that’s the whole point: we can discuss and learn from each other. Emerson once wisely said: ~”In some way every man is my superior, and in that I can learn from him”.

That was my reason for sharing this post - our world has been corrupted by religion, conditioning us to be led by a poor substitute for a powerful being.

Forgive me, I am not trying to put words in your mouth; but from my perspective it seems like you may have a really negative view of religion because of your horrible exposure to the really bad parts. For example, I think religion total net has done great things for humanity because it has shown us, however imperfectly, what is objectively good. Of course, this will lead us to presumably a disagreement in our ethical commitments; but, the way I see it, God ultimately has to be posited for there to be objective morality.

I disagree, as noted in my response before. Again, you thinking of liberty of indifference not liberty for excellence.

Bob, I gave you this definition of murder in our discussion two weeks ago

There’s no definition in your quote that you provided of yourself. What is your definition of murder? All you said is that it ‘must have a dead victim’.

My definition of murder is "a death not sanctioned by God".

Ok, this is a definition: thank you! Firstly, I want to hyper-focus on the fact that your definition here would prima facie allow for murder on earth for people who don’t completely die (e.g., have rational souls). Are you also still claiming that “a death” has to be a complete annihilation of a life? If so, then there cannot be murder of any humans on earth according to your view.

Secondly, I would like to just note how arbitrary this definition is. You just evaded the conversation by defining murder as “any case of directly intentionally killing an innocent person that does not involve God”. Why doesn’t it apply to God too?

Yes, and it's fair enough that you would press your point. Let's try to understand the logic a bit. First, your argument, which of course presupposes that murder is impermissible:

1. Murder is the direct intentional killing of an [innocent] person
2. The Angel of Death intentionally kills the innocent Amalekite infant
3. Therefore, the Angel of Death is a murderer

And then the reductio I mentioned (although I will not here present it as a reductio):

4. It is the Angel of Death's job to take life
5. It is not impermissible to do one's job
6. Therefore, the Angel of Death is not a murderer

This is the case where there is a logical standoff between two contradictory conclusions

But I don’t think you accept that reductio. I’ll run a parody argument to demonstrate my point:

4. It is the Heinrich Himmler’s job to mass execute jews.
5. It is not impermissible to one’s job.
6. Therefore, Himmler is not a murderer.

I think what you are really contending, which to me begs the question, is whether or not God has the authority to take innocent life; and this just loops back to our original point of contention.

Digging deeper, (4) and (5) have to do with the idea that death is inevitable, and that for a person to die is not inherently unjust. This opens up the can of worms of the metaphysics and ethics of death, and the adjacent can of worms is the question of God's sovereignty within which question is the matter of whether God is responsible for death (or whether God "directly intends" the fact of natural death)
…
For example, if everything that occurs is allowed by God to occur, and if this allowance counts as an intentional bringing-about, then it follows that everyone who dies is murdered

That’s an interesting point. I am going to have to think about that one and get back to you.

My prima facie response would be that the world is fallen due to sin, and that sin is what causally is responsible for our mortality. Without “evil of persons”, there would be no mortality. That seems like the only viable rejoinder.

But how is it inerrant if the author's are untrustworthy and give false information?

Maybe it is Divinely Inspired that way, but, at a minimum, that doesn't seem to cohere with God's nature. Don't you think?

How about God? Is God free?

Yes, God is absolutely free and absolutely incapable of doing otherwise in my view. This is fundamentally because freedom for excellence, as opposed to freedom of indifference, does not require the ability to have done otherwise.

You propose a God who has foreknowledge. If I know about God's foreknowledge, I can do the opposite since I am a free agent.

Well, I think this would assume that God has the same kind of foreknowledge as you in this case and that freedom consists in true agent indeterminacy—both of which I reject. When you have foreknowledge, it is temporal; God doesn’t have foreknowledge in the literal sense, because He is outside of change itself. The ‘whole’ is just immediately ‘in front’ of Him; which is different than you knowing something about what is going to happen next. Likewise, I don’t think you have the ability to have done otherwise simpliciter: I think libertarian freedom, leeway freedom, properly consists in the ability to do otherwise than what physically would have happened.

Now, you could say that if you had this ‘whole’ of all change ‘in front’ of you like God then you could go against God. Ok, but then you are God.

Now, if you have foreknowledge in the literal sense and know that God wants you to do something, X, but choose not to; well, that’s standard free will which doesn’t negate anything I said. God would know you will choose not to do X and that would be a part of His knowledge of ‘the whole’.

Welcome to the forum, Paula :smile: .

I am sorry to hear you have experienced what seems to be the worst aspects of organized religion. However, I would challenge you to aspire to learn the strongest and most plausible positions on all sides of the various topics-at-hand and reach your own informed decision. If you get too caught up in fending off the people with unsophisticated positions, on any topic (but in this case theology), then your position will be formulated parasitically on those positions which you wish to oppose and this makes your own position equally, but oppositely, malformed as your opponents.

With respect to theology, there are many sophisticated views on both sides of the theology debate which have no bearing on the ill-formed positions people on both sides can take in practical life.

As far as some of these people in this forum go, such as @frank, they will pump you will a false sense of accomplishment by feeding into straw mans and emotion-pumped critiques of ill-formulated religious views without having the integrity to contend honestly with those who provide the iron-manned versions.

 It is not a demon inhabiting a non-demonic inhabitant, but rather something which is inherently demonic

I apologize: I was not understanding you before. I thought you were referring to demonic possession. Indeed, I agree that it is much more questionable if demonic hybrids would have rights.

On the one hand, I want to say that created beings which violate the proper order of creation should be uprooted and this is not unjust to do (such as eliminating torture devices); on the other hand, persons have rights and a person is a substance of a rational nature. Consequently, (fallen and unfallen) angels would be persons with rights under this view; and since the ends do not justify the means, it follows that these demonic children would probably have rights (since they probably were substances of a rational nature).

It would be permissible, though, to isolate them if needed to stop them from their natural, evil pursuits (if that is intrinsic to being a demon-human hybrid). Stopping evil as it is being attempted is always permissible.

Could God wipe them out justly? I don’t know, but it would definitely violate the rationale I gave above for rights.

Yes, and I think it is something that our Protestant culture misses

I agree. The Bible is incredibly difficult to interpret (I’ve found).

I think the problem here is a sort of reductio. God and the Angel of Death are not generally deemed murderers, and therefore if one maintains a notion in which they are murders then an abnormal semantics is in play.

There are different approaches here. Some would say that God simply does not murder, some would say that no one is innocent before God

Yes, but no one that objects with those to me (so far) has ever coherently defined what ‘murder’ is. Like I said, that view may be internally coherent in some theory; but it isn’t coherent with the idea of rights I expounded above. Do you have a different definition of murder that you prefer such that God and the Angel of Death are not committing murder?

My definition, to recap, is that murder is the direct intentional killing of a person.

Fr. Stephen De Young must be in my YouTube algorithm now, because I stumbled upon <this short video on messiness>.

Interesting. It seems like Fr. Stephen is taking a more spiritual approach to the theology and the Bible (going back to the beginning of our conversation). His critique is fair insofar that systematizing is can go too far and systematize for the sole sake of doing so (e.g., Kant); but I wonder how valid this critique really is: he seems to just have given up on striving towards perfect knowledge. It seems like systematic knowledge is just the attempt at, or aspiration towards, complete knowledge. Should we really give that up? What do we have left after doing so?

Again, you are confusing identify relations with predication. When I say "The Son is God" I am not referring to something analogous to "S = G".

Collapse occurs at the syntactic level, not at the semantic level of possible worlds.

The semantic level is a linguistic expression of the syntactic level. My point is that if you reject the possible worlds theory, then you are rejecting S5 as well as standard modal logic.

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Bob, your definition of murder, the direct intentional killing of an innocent person applies only to you, to me, and to other people. It does not apply to God

Logically, it would apply to any circumstance where an innocent person is directly intentionally killed. God is not exempt: you would have to redefine murder to support your case. I am still waiting for a definition of murder from you.

The closest I see to one is here:

(5) When a person is dead to God. When a person ceased to exist to God.

To cease to exist to God is just for God to no longer will one’s existence, since we actively get our being from Him, and so this would be the ultimate death of ourselves as soul. Again, this is not what death means in the context of murder: we are talking about the death of a body.

What about respecting their decision as a free agent and not trying to impose upon their will by modifying it through rehabilitation, but instead giving them their just dessert? One ought be rewarded for bad behavior and good.

That eliminates mercy. God has to be both merciful and just at the same time.

Well, you believe in NT, and within it, Adam is cited.

I don’t, and this OP doesn’t suggest that. I am sympathetic to the NT though.

I am saying a perfect good God cannot create an imperfect good creatio
…
No, under my definition, a perfect God can only do things right! 

Again, you are confusing God willing evil and doing evil. Persons in creation would have the free will to do evil in virtue of merely having it.

I have a challenge for such a God

I don’t understand how that challenges the view of God I exposed before.

Evil cannot be transformed into good.

Evil is a privation; privations can produce good. Missing a limb is a privation, but this privation can produce courage, kindness, a renewed enjoyment/respect of life, etc.

It seems like, then, that aspect of the scripture was not Divinely Inspired. Maybe what God revealed to Samuel originally was; but I don't see how this view is consistent with Divine Inspiration.

I don't see how my argument is pseudo-logic because it uses analogical reasoning. Can you provide any part of my argument that cannot be translated formally into classical logic?

With respect to S5, possibility collapses into necessity because they are using the possible world theory. If something is possible IFF it exists in at least one possible world and necessity is to exist in all possible worlds, then it logically follows that a possibly necessary being must exist.

I don't think it is pacifistic. When Jesus is talking about loving your enemies, he is not intending that you should not stop them from doing evil. He is, rather, noting that you should stop them AND still will the good for them even though they don't deserve it. It is the difference between stopping an active shooter and then beating them viciously; and stopping the active shooter and then trying to rehabilitate them with love.

:up:

I'm not that familiar with it, but it seems pretty good. The only quibble I might have with it is the idea that it has to be sanctioned by a government. That would seem to imply that rebellions can never be just.

Is your position, then, that Samual lied about God commanding the slaughter of all the Amalekites?

I agree with (2), but I am not asking you what the best choice is. I am asking what you would do, and the implication is that you must be able to provide a better option than the one you are criticizing

That’s fair. I think letting them starve, all else being equal, is better than murdering them.

 For example, if the Amalekites and their children were not demonic then the act was immoral

But couldn’t God just drive them out? Why would God murder a child when He could just command the demon to leave the child’s body? Jesus drives out demons all the time in the NT.

This is analogous to if you could snap your fingers to cure this child of some deadly virus that needs to be contained but instead you execute them to solve the problem—how is that morally permissible?

God to pedagogically recommend that Israel carry out an act that is objectively but not subjectively immoral?

I would say no; for example, a judge that knows it is wrong to steal cannot advise to a citizen to steal irregardless if the citizen themselves understand it is a crime. (We are assuming here) God knows it is immoral; so He cannot command it.

Many of the various known contradictions in the Bible (including those I mentioned in 
↪response
 to Carlos) have to do with the perspective of the speaker

That’s interesting, I will have to take a deeper look into that.

For example, if there is an angel of death or a "grim reaper" who works at the behest of God, is the angel of death a murderer?

Yes, but then, again, you have to deny that murder is the direct intentional killing of an innocent person. You cannot have the cake here and eat it too.

If you do deny that definition, then I would like to hear your definition that is consistent with this view that God does not murder when killing innocent people.

Well, even on a modern understanding there is commission, there is "aiding and abetting," there is failing to oppose someone in your midst who is involved in commission, etc. So the idea that groups rather than mere individuals are responsible for abominable, public acts is supportable

Those examples you gave are relative to the individual so they are not examples that support group culpability. E.g., a person or group that aids or abets are culpable because they themselves did something that is involved with that practice—an innocent person who did not aid or abet but happens to be a part of the group would not get charged unless they demonstrate they themselves did aid and abet.

Over the years I have come to appreciate the complexity and ambiguity of the Bible, because it does mirror real life. How one is to resolve the difficult tensions and contradictions that arise in life is not obvious, and in the Bible we see people grappling with this same difficulty

Fair enough. What do you think of the Adam and Eve story?

Are you referring to the story of Adam and Eve? This story is nonsense!

I am unsure how you got to there from what I said: I was saying that God can allow evil—that’s not the same as doing evil. Maybe under your view God cannot allow evil either, but allowing evil and doing evil are still different.

I don’t think the Adam and Eve story is about historical events.

 Adam and Eve were put in a sinful situation in which God knew in advance that they would sin!

Well, that’s true of all of us. God knows ahead of time whether we will sin or not as well as knows how it will end; this doesn’t mean that God is doing evil by allowing you to make your own choices. I think you are thinking of God as if He is in time like us. A being out of time knowing everything that will happen is very different. One of the beauties of absolute goodness—of God—is that He transforms, in the final result, our evil into good. He does not make us do evil, but when we do the totality of the result of His creation over time ends with good coming out of it so that it did not happen in vain.

Yes, but in a perfect creation, all changes are perfect as well. So there could be a creation in which wrongdoing/sin does not exist within

Do you deny the existence of persons? Persons can cause evil in a perfect creation that originally had perfect changes!

:up:

At the end of the day, I was just trying to convey to @Banno that I was agreeing with them in that God's Justice is about restoring the property ordering of things but that this sometimes legitimately includes punishment.

[

The analogical reasoning you employ - arguing that because two things are similar in some respects, they're likely similar in others - is not up to the task of providing a proof

I am not arguing that two things similar in one respect are similar in others: that’s not analogical either. An analogy is a similarity between things in some regard—even if they are dissimilar in every other regard.

You'll have heard the standard existential arguments for the existence of God at the response that existence is not a predicate?

Yes I have and I think this could be a valid objection to Thomistic metaphysics if one accepts that existence is not a predicate whatsoever. I think being is a predicate insofar as an apple has redness as property just like it has being as a property. Some properties presuppose others (e.g., the property of blackness of the chair is necessary for its property of heating up fast due to hyper-absorption of light from the sun). Beingness is just the first property presupposed and necessarily preliminarily for all other properties of a given object.

The issue with the kind of S5 modal logic argument for God’s existence (a priori) is that possibility is thought of in terms of possible worlds: that’s the real issue.

For this ontological arguments from great-making properties like this one:

For example, consider
• God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived.
• Therefore, He must exist.
• Therefore, He must exist necessarily.
• Therefore, He must be pure act, or simple.
At each step, a move is made that runs contrary to the inexpressibility of existence conditions. It's invalid.

I would say an Anselm-style argument is invalid not because existence is an invalid predicate but because it also hinges on the S5 axiom in modal logic. I was discussing this with someone a while ago and it was an interesting conversation; but in the end it also does the same trick that the standard argument from modal logic does but instead with greatness. It considers the possibility of greatness an entailment of the necessity of greatness: if something is possibly great, then it is great—and this argument only holds if we think that a great being in one possible world must then exist in all possible worlds. This isn’t how they usually argue it, but I think that’s the real issue: they don’t believe it is possible to speak of a hypothetically maximally great being.
I cannot stress enough that my arguments start a posteriori: not a priori.

Put simply, if your argument concludes “and therefore this thing exists,” but the existence of the referent is not already presupposed, then your inference is invalid.

How am I doing that in my argument though? I didn’t make an argument like Anselm’s.

Folk try to get around this by making use of an explicit first order predication, usually written as "∃!"

I’ve never heard of that: that’s interesting. I don’t think we have to presuppose that a thing we are quantifying over is real in order predicate properties to it: that would entail we can’t think hypothetically or in terms of possibility.

The second issue is not unrelate. Modal collapse will occur when necessity and possibility are rendered the same

Yeah, good objection: let’s break this down. As you know, we have to be careful to note when we are predicating, equating, and positing existential quantification.

Let’s break down your version of the argument:

☐(Father = god)
☐(Son = god)
And so
☐(Father = Son)

But the assertion is, instead,
~☐(Father = Son)

First off, why did you use modality though? I was expecting the transitivity version of this (:

This falls prey to assuming we are equating when we say things like “The Father is God”; but that’s not the standard view (nor mine).

The statement “The Father is God” != “Father = God” because the former is predication and the latter is equivalency. This is the properly translated parody:

☐(Father = God as the knower)
☐(Son = God as the known)

And so
☐(Father != Son)

When we say “The Father is God”, we are saying “The Father has the nature of God”; and when we say “The Father and the Son are both God and not separate Gods”, we are saying “The Father and the Son have the same exact nature of God”.

That's interesting: can you outline an argument for everything being inherently triadic?

Making a religion in the colloquial sense of that term is more about, in my head, coming up with traditions, superstitions, rituals, etc. I am not really interested all that much in that: I went to a Catholic church once and it all seems so superficial to me. They didn't dive intellectually into knowing God better or cultivating the virtues: they just recited some chants, drank out the same cup (which is nasty), and did some recited prayers.

If I were to have a religion, Bobism, it would be to come together out of reverance for what is perfectly good; to learn more about what is good; to practice being good; and to remember what is good. It would look very different I think than mainstream religions that seem to manifest to the populace as a means of checking boxes off their list of to-dos.

Interesting, I thought Aquinas made a similar argument. I guess I just diverged from Tommy on this one.

CC: @Leontiskos @Count Timothy von Icarus @RogueAI

Now we are getting somewhere! I appreciate the elaborate response.

Despite claiming god to be a simple, it juxtaposes will and intellect; subject and object; father and son and so on. But those distinctions are the very thing denied by divine simplicity

I see where your head is at, but I think this is a misunderstanding. God’s properties are predicated analogically and not univocally. We can, and should, in fact, collapse them into the same thing and only refer to them as separate to explain something from different angles.

Firstly:

1. God’s all-goodness (perfection) is just a description of His self-unity [since goodness is just absolute unity]. He does not have a faculty or power of good: He is perfect goodness itself by being absolutely unified.
2. God’s absolute simplicity is just the same as His self-unity.
3. God’s necessity is just His simplicity (lack of parts) which is (from 2) the same as His self-unity.
4. God as Being itself is the same as His necessity as a simplicity (since subsistence in-itself is just necessary being that is simple) which is (from 2) the same as His self-unity.
5. God’s pure actuality is the same as Him as Being itself which is (from 4) the same as His self-unity.
6. God’s changelessness is the same as His pure actuality which is (from 5) the same as His self-unity.
7. God’s eternity proper is just His changelessness which is (from 6) the same as His self-unity.
8. God’s omnipresence is just Him as Being itself which is (from 4) the same as His self-unity (being provided to a thing through creation).

So His all-goodness, absolute simplicity, pure actuality, changelessness, eternity, and omnipresence are identical.

Secondly, His all-lovingness refers to His inability through creation to will the bad of something which is just a description of His how His faculty of willing works; and His non-corporeality is just a description of His inability to be affected by space (being changeless). These are reducible to His will and pure actuality (as analogically descriptions), and do not imply any separation in Him.

Thirdly, His willing, thinking, and power are identical. There’s no mind, will, and power in God in a literal sense: analogically, we speak of the one and same being as like a mind, like a will, like power (of pure act) itself. When I say “this light bulb is the like a sun radiating light”, I am not committed to the idea that the light bulb is a sun. God is like a will; and the shortcut way of describing that is “God is will”.

Fourthly, the Trinity refers to three real subsistent relations in one concrete nature: they are not separations in that nature. So they do not imply parts in God. They all, in fact, collapse into each other as the same (ontologically) rational nature.

God has two aspects we can describe then: His unified faculties and His self-unity; and His self-unity is just a depiction of His unified faculties as unified. So He is just One.

 Let's set aside the issue of how this debars god from thinking about things that are not real - the common "what if..." of modality

Let’s not! Thinking of a hypothetical is not the same as thinking of actuality. God thinks of metaphysically possible things as possible—not real; and so “what if this then that” does not create anything because it doesn’t think of this or that as actual—it posits their possibility. When I think of “what if a unicorn existed?”, I am not thereby thinking “this real unicorn”.

Is the Son then the same as that thinking, and so not more than a thought, or is the Son a second being caused by God's thinking of himself - in which case he is not simple, not One Being?

Both. Remember, under this view, God’s thinking and willing are the same: we are not thinking of two different faculties in God when we posit them. Consequently, God’s “abstact” knowledge is abstract but not like our abstract knowledge because our abstract knowledge is distinct ontologically from our willing powers (and consequently we can think without creating—God cannot do this!!!!).

Therefore, the Son is abstract knowledge of God and also thereby eternally generated out of God as created. This is necessarily entailed from God’s willing and thinking as identical.

Does this mean that there are two ontologically distinct beings—the Son and the Father—like two gods? No. Because when something is willed that is how it is created and to will is in accord with an object of desire or thought (which is to be realized/willed into existence); and the object of this thought of God is Himself who is ontologically simple. God then is willing the creation of an absolutely simple being which then would have to collapse into Himself (in nature).

In more modern terms there is a play on the use of the existential operator,

I didn’t really follow this: can you elaborate with an example?

Then there is the point I made earlier, the use of anthropomorphic language on which the charge of presuming what you wish to conclude rests

But we can only know what God is not from His effects; so we have to use analogies.

It's not a syllogism, since it misses the hidden assumption that thinking of something as real necessarily makes it real. God, then, can' think of things that are not real, something that is routine for us. So what we have here is a loaded metaphysical claim, not a deduction, as well as the contradiction in being an absolute simple and yet having identifiable will and intellect.

I didn’t give a syllogism: I recognize that and it was on purpose. I think everyone can see the premises going on in it. It would be painfully overkill to give a series of syllogisms for the entire argument: this one fatal flaw of analytic philosophy—it depends these rigid and superfluous graveyards of syllogisms. If you want, I can write it out that way: the argument is logically valid in classical logic.

Not really.

I think that, in answer to my question, "wouldn't you also have to say that (a') is condoning abortion during the first six weeks?", your "Yes" meant "No", because you went on to say "a' does not."

Sorry, I may have misread your original question. Yes, I would say that “No”; (a)’ does not condone abortion prior to six weeks: it omits that from the discussion. If you could demonstrate, in the given example, that the author is omitting it because they intent for it to be legal; then maybe that author is intending an implicit endorsement, but someone else could vote for it and not condone it because the verbiage itself does not condone it.

I take it that your objection to (a) is because (a) positively mentions exceptions for rape and incest, but you do not similarly object to (a') because it does not positively mention an "exception" for before 6 weeks, although it implicitly allows it because it only prohibits after 6 weeks?

Exactly.

Similarly, then, your objection to the legislation concerning slavery is that even if it greatly ameliorates the evils of how slavery is practiced, it still recognizes a right of masters to own slaves? And where exactly does it say this?

I believe I already responded to this, but I can provide it again if you would like.

:up:

Their view leads to the unhelpful absurdity that murder never happens on earth.

Would you make a car that you are sure will not take you to the end of a long journey

This is disanalogous to allowing evil. An analogous version of your example would be: “Would you make a car that works fine but you knew someone else could come and mess it up?”.

Perfect God can only create perfect things

Yes, but this doesn’t mean that those things are not subject to change.

In my dictionary, which present my word view, good is related to pleasure and evil is related to pai

But this makes your argument weaker; because then perfection isn’t about goodness necessarily, since God could create being without pain or pleasure—e.g., a rock.

 there are evil creatures who prefer evil too, like masochists.

A masochist doesn’t prefer evil; they does mis-hierarchize or misunderstand the goods. Specifically, they will in accord with getting a euphoric high where pain is the means and not the end. To truly prefer evil, is to will it as an end.

:broken:

No, I was thinking of offering a reductio ad absurdum against the argument, but it looks as though you agree that killing with indirect intention is not necessarily unjust.
…
Okay, I think you are reasoning well in this. :up:

:up:

What would you have decreed if you were instructing the Israelites?

The difficulty in this question is that:

1. It shifts the discussion from what a perfect being would do to what a nuanced, particular human would do; and

2. We don’t have to have knowledge of what the best choice is to know some of the bad choices. I can say that a pizza-lover does not throwaway a perfectly good pizza without speaking to what a pizza-lover’s best choice is in terms of what to do with it.

If I had to answer, I would say that I would have told the Israelites to focus on themselves and ignore the immoralities of the Amalekites: they don’t have a duty to sacrifice their own people in just wars against abominable nations. I think it is a, e.g., just war to conquer North Korean but I wouldn’t advocate for the US to start WWIII over it.

If I had to decree the just war, then I would say to:

1. Eliminate the enemy combatants while limiting innocent and non-combatant civilians;

2. Assimilate any of the people that they can without assuming significant risk to their own sovereignty and stability;

3. Segregate those who cannot be assimilated into their own areas and give them the freedom to leave (and go somewhere else) if they want;

4. Give as much aid as feasible to those segregated.

I would hold a significant weight to the in-group over the out-group; so I wouldn’t probably decree any commandments to sacrifice one’s own people to free another people.

Likewise, those who are not assimilated would not be citizens of Israel; so they would, in necessary, be left to themselves if Israel cannot afford to help them; and this could be all the way up to starvation, disease, and death.

The reason I don't personally find the critique overwhelming is because, faced with that situation, I have no clear alternative.* I guess I could say, "Assuming the children are not demonic, make sure to only intend to kill them indirectly." Yet such an approach would be incongruous in an ancient text and an ancient paradigm, and it would also somewhat undermine the whole "remove evil at its root" meaning of the text. I think the nub for you is that the text presupposes that a child can be deserving of death, and this is seen as incredible.

Yeah, but wouldn’t you agree it would be immoral what they did since it is directly intentional? I’m not saying they would have had this level of a sophistication in their ethics back then; but we know it to be immoral.

Interpret the text to be talking about indirect intention, and adjust one's interpretive hermeneutic (to deviate from the literal meaning).

This interpretation seems to superficially reinterpret the text though; given that it explicitly details directly intentionally killing children. Wouldn’t this interpretation jeopardize the entire Bible? If someone can reinterpret what is obviously meant one way as another, then why can’t I about anything therein?

Hold that life and death are in God's hands, that for God to kill is not murder, and that God can temporarily delegate this power.

This is the most plausible out of them all, and is the one Aquinas and Craig takes. Again, though, the bullet here is that one has to hold that murder is either not the direct intentional killing of an innocent person or that murder is not always unjust. That is a necessary consequence of this view.

Hold that the Amalekites were demons and demons can be justly killed

This is an interesting one I am admittedly not very familiar with: I’ll have to think about that one.

Hold to some form of group morality rather than a strict individual morality.

This has to be immoral: it would conflate culpability and innocence with the individual and group.

Hold to a pedagogical approach on the part of God.

Perhaps, taken singly, none of those are satisfactory. It is worth noting that the last option, which 
↪Hanover
 alluded to, seems to be supported by later texts such as Ezekiel 18:20. This goes to the fact that, read literally, the Bible does contradict itself. For example, if God does not change, God killed the Amalekite children for the wickedness of their parents, the Amalekite children were human, and Ezekiel 18:20 holds, then we have a contradiction. Indeed the literary genres found in the Bible are not really meant to support that level of scrutiny. This does not dissolve the problem, but it does complicate it.

Yeah, that’s true. I am not sure how to interpret the texts. Maybe it is all spiritual lessons; but then what isn’t and what is the lesson?

* Also, I am not willing to abandon Christianity on this basis. I would need a foundational alternative to Christianity to which to turn before I would be more comfortable with such a move

I am working on an alternative that I will share with you when it is ready to hear your thoughts.

I take it that your objection to (a) is because (a) positively mentions exceptions for rape and incest, but you do not similarly object to (a') because it does not positively mention an "exception" for before 6 weeks, although it implicitly allows it because it only prohibits after 6 weeks? — Gregory of the Beard of Ockham

Exactly. One explicates an endorsement; the other omits a discussion about it.

Similarly, then, your objection to the legislation concerning slavery is that even if it greatly ameliorates the evils of how slavery is practiced, it still recognizes a right of masters to own slaves? — Gregory of the Beard of Ockham

Yes.

And where exactly does it say this? — Gregory of the Beard of Ockham

All over the place. For example here:

20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.

-- Exodus 21:20-21.

And here:

44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

Leviticus 25:44-46

(a') Abortion is prohibited after six weeks of pregnancy.
(b') A woman has a right to an abortion during the first 6 weeks of pregnancy.
For the same reason that you thought (a) was condoning abortion in cases of rape and incest, wouldn't you also have to say that (a') is condoning abortion during the first six week? If not, why?

Yes, b’ is immoral to endorse: it positively affirms abortion; whereas a’ does not.

Think of it this way, which is harder to revoke: a bill that merely omits something that you could pass legislation on later or a bill that explicates the permissibility of something that you want to ban later? The latter of course. This also runs on moral lines: I can’t positively endorse abortion, but I can pragmatically endorse prohibiting abortion in as many cases as I can.

We can agree to hold God to at least as high a standard as ourselves.

Sort of. We usually consider culpability relative to what one can do, what they know, and what they do. God is absolutely free; whereas we are limited severely. By ‘standard’ here, I was really referring to culpability. I am culpable for voting for b’ but not for a’; and God is culpable for inspiring positively affirming rules about slaves in Exodus and not if He omitted affirming slavery in them; and I am less culpable than God because I have limited freedom, knowledge, and power.

Think of it this way. If an ordinary citizen votes for b’ and I think we both would hold them less culpable (granted it is immoral) than dictator that decrees b’. This is because that dictactor by way of having the power to decree it themselves could have decreed it differently. Imagine a being that has perfect knowledge and power that simply endorses b’ instead of a’: wouldn’t that be a weird mistake?

But that's not what I pointed out. The conclusion that god is father, son and spirit is not a cogent consequence of natural theology, but is dependent on revelation.

I gave you as a response an argument for it that was not dependent on revelation. I’ll give to you again:

God is purely actual and an intellect (nous).
1. An intellect that has the ability to learn has potential.
2. God has no potential (since He is purely actual).
3. Therefore, a part of God being fully realized as an intellect is that He must know everything perfectly that could exist or does exist.
4. He must, then, immediately know (prior to creation) Himself perfectly.
5. When He creates, He is willing something as real.
6. Since He is absolutely simple, His willing and thinking are identical.
7. Therefore, Him willing something as real is identical to Him thinking of something as real.
8. Therefore, when He thinks of something as real it must create something.
9. His perfect self-knowledge is Him thinking of Himself as real.
10. Therefore, His perfect self-knowledge creates something real.
11. What is created as real when He thinks of something as real is that something which is the object of His thought (e.g., He thinks of a man as real and the man, the object of thought, becomes real).
12. What is the object of His thought when self-knowing is Himself.
13. Therefore, He creates (generates) Himself as the object of His thought by Himself as the subject of thought.
14. This creation cannot create a god separate (ontologically) from Himself; because He is thinking of a being, as the object of His thought (which is Himself), that is absolutely simple and no two absolutely simple beings can exist.
15. Therefore, His creation of Himself out of Himself produces a real relation between Himself distinct in origin but not concrete nature.
16. This real relation, His self-knowledge’s generation of Himself, is subsistent because it is real.
17. This real, subsistent relation is a person because He is thinking of Himself and He is a being of a rational nature; so, too, Himself as created must be a being of a rational nature and a being of a rational nature is a person.
18. This person, His self-knowledge, is the Son; and He is called the Son because the Son is begotten (is generated or created) by God as the one thinking which is the Father (and He is the Father, metaphorically, because He gives life to the Son as opposed to receiving it like pregnancy).
19. Since God has perfect self-knowledge, He must know Himself as perfectly good (and He is perfectly good because goodness is the equality of a thing’s essence and existence and His essence and existence are absolutely identical).
20. His willing and thinking are identical because He is absolutely simple.
21. Therefore, Him thinking of Himself as perfectly good is identical to Him willing Himself as perfectly good.
22. Love is to will the good of something for its own sake.
23. God, then, in knowing Himself as perfectly good wills Himself as perfectly good and this is done purely for its own sake because He cannot be affected by anything (because He is purely actual).
24. God, then, perfectly loves Himself.
25. The degree of love for a thing is proportionate to how much one wills its good for its own sake and how good that thing is.
26. God wills Himself as perfectly good as what is perfectly good.
27. Therefore, God loves Himself the most.
28. Him creating something, as noted before, is just Him willing something as real.
29. He wills as real His own good supremely.
30. Therefore, something is created (generated) out of the love between the Father and the Son.
31. This generation is not a knowledge of Himself, like the Son, but a willing of what is good—Love.
32. This willing of the good has as its object Himself.
33. This willing, then, is a generation or creation of Love for Himself out of Himself.
34. Being real, a generation or creation, this Love cannot be merely the kind of love directed towards things (like when we, as one being, will the good of another) but, rather, must be a real relation in God distinct in origin between Himself and Himself but not in concrete nature (because what is being willed, and thusly created, is nothing but Himself as the object of that willing).
35. This Love must be, then, a person because a person is a being of a rational nature, God is a being of a rational nature, and this real relation between God and Himself refers to Himself which is a being that is absolutely simple (so it doesn’t generate a new god out of it).
36. The person of Love is the Holy Spirit.

What about this requires divine revelation? Are you referring to each person being semantically called the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? If so, those are metaphors: they’ve always been metaphors. The fact these have historical roots in Christianity doesn’t mean this argument depends on divine revelation. You could call them Perfect Knowledge, Perfect Knower, and Perfect Self-Love if you want.

I'm trying to address what you have written.

You never address what I write though: you keep referring to Christianity as if that has any bearing on the arguments I have given. I would be willing to bet you will ignore my elaboration on the Trinity above like last time and appeal to Christianity somehow. This is like the third time I’ve outlined the Trinity argument from natural theology to you.

Those terms are at least specialised Thomist terminology with their own language game, or perhaps just language on vacation, verging on word salad.

Irregardless, do you agree that it is natural theology?!??

It appears that you are trying your best to give a logical and reasoned account of a narrative that is inherently incoherent. I'm sorry if pointing this out appears disrespectful, but looking into logic and language is what we do here. You seem to be justifying an iron age myth using Greek logic. We might have moved on since these things were fashionable.

That’s not insulting: that’s fine. I’ve been trying to get you to engage in the metaphysics instead of straw manning me with Christianity this whole time. Please feel free to show me why this metaphysical framework fails.